W. Griffin - The Hostage

A top-hatted doorman welcomed him to the Four Seasons and blew a whistle, which caused a bellman to appear.

"Find somewhere to park," Santini ordered Antonio. "I'll see that Senor Gossinger gets settled." Room 1550 in the Four Seasons was a small suite, a comfortable sitting room and a large bedroom, both facing toward the Main Railroad Station-which Castillo remembered was called "El Retiro"-and the docks and the River Plate beyond. There was something faint on the far horizon.

Castillo wondered aloud if they were high enough so that he was looking at the shore of Uruguay.

"Clear day," Santini replied. "Could be. Why don't we go out on the balcony and have a good look?"

"Why not?"

When they were out on the small balcony, Santini took a small, flat metal box from his pocket and ran it over the walls, then over the tiny table and two chairs, and finally over the floor.

"Clean," he announced. "But it never hurts to check."

Castillo smiled at him.

"Joel tells me there's a warrant out for you in Costa Rica," Santini said with a smile. "Grand Theft, Airplane."

"Joel's mistaken. The name on the warrant is 'Party or Parties Unknown.'"

Santini chuckled, then asked, "What's going on with you here?"

"I was sent to find out about our diplomat's wife who got herself kidnapped."

"When did kidnapping start to interest Special Forces?"

"Joel told you about that, too, huh? To look at him, you wouldn't think he talks too much."

"Your shameful secret is safe with me, Herr Gossinger."

"I guess you know I'm on loan from the Army to Matt Hall?" Santini nodded. "The President told him to send me down here to, quote, find out what happened and how it happened before anybody down there has time to write a cover-his-ass report, end quote."

Santini nodded, then offered:

"Mrs. Elizabeth Masterson, nice lady, wife of J. Winslow Masterson, our chief of mission. Nice guy. She was apparently snatched from the parking lot of a restaurant called Kansas, nice place, in San Isidro, which is an upscale suburb. So far, no communication from the kidnappers. I'm thinking that they may have been very disappointed to find the lady has a diplomatic passport; I wouldn't be surprised if they turn her loose. On the other hand, they may decide that a dead woman can't identify anybody."

"You give it good odds that they'd kill her?"

"They kidnapped a kid not so long ago-not a kid. He was twenty-three. In San Isidro, where they grabbed Mrs. Masterson. He was the son of a rich businessman. They cut off his fingers, one at a time, and sent them to Poppa, together with rising demands for ransom. Poppa finally paid, three hundred thousand American. That's roughly nine hundred thousand pesos, a fortune in a poor country. And shortly thereafter, they found the kid's body, shot in the head."

"Why'd they kill him?"

"Dead men tell no tales," Santini said, mockingly. "Hadn't you heard?"

"Wouldn't that discourage other people from paying ransom?"

"When they've got junior or the missus, you pay and hope you get them back alive. The only thing that may keep Mrs. Masterson alive is if the bad guys are smart enough to realize that killing her would really turn the heat up. That would embarrass the government." He paused, and then, mimicking the sonorous tone of a condescending professor, added, "My experience with the criminal element, lamentably, suggests that very few of them are mentally qualified to be able to modify their antisocial behavior and become nuclear physicists."

Castillo chuckled. "I don't know why I'm laughing," he said, then asked, "What did you say about the Kansas?"

"It's a nice restaurant. She was snatched from the parking lot in back of it. If you want, I'll take you out there for lunch, and you can have a look-see for yourself."

"Thank you. I'd like that. I won't know what I'm looking at, but I have to start somewhere."

"Pardon my ignorance, but why can't you just walk into the embassy and tell the security guy, Ken Lowery, nice guy, what you're doing down here?"

"That would put me in the system. The whole idea is for me not to be in the system."

"Nobody knows you've been sent down here? Not even the agency?"

"Especially the agency. I'm on their bad-guy list. Theirs and the FBI's."

Santini thoughtfully considered that.

"But I'd like to know about them. Or is that putting you on the spot?"

"You're okay with Joel. That's good enough for me. Anyway, there's not much to tell. The CIA station chief-his cover, so called, is commercial attache-is a good guy by the name of Alex Darby. From what I've seen, he's okay. There's no FBI at the embassy, but they sent a couple agents over yesterday from Montevideo to see if they could be useful. I just barely know them. Typical FBI agents."

"You think-what did you say his name is? Darby?- you think Darby's in tight with SIDE and/or the local cops?"

"You know what SIDE is?"

"The Argentine versions of the CIA and the FBI combined in one, right?"

Santini nodded, then asked, "You've been here before?"

"Yeah."

"Nobody at the embassy knows you?"

"I don't think so. I've never actually been inside the place."

Santini nodded, accepting that, and then answered the question:

"I would say Darby's tight with SIDE and Lowery's tight with the cops." He paused, and then asked, "What's going to happen if-when-they find out you're down here? Nosing around down here? I'm not going to say anything, but…"

"I really hope they don't. It would put Natalie Cohen on the spot with the ambassador for not telling him. She knows I'm down here, and why."

"You call the secretary of state by her first name?"

"No. I call her 'ma'am,'" Castillo said, but then added, smiling: "But she calls me Charley."

"Speaking of names, Joel said Gossinger's a beard."

"My name is really Castillo. Charley Castillo."

He put out his hand. Santini took it.

"Tony," he said, and then in Italian, "You don't look Italian."

Charley shook his head and replied, in Italian, "Half German and half Texan, heavy on the Hispanic heritage."

"You speak good Italian."

"Languages come pretty easy to me."

Santini nodded his acceptance of this, then asked, "How good a cover? If SIDE develops an interest in you, they'll check. They're pretty good at that."

"It'll hold up. Gossinger, who works for a German newspaper, the Tages Zeitung, is here to do a human-interest story on the survivors of the Graf Spee. If my editor at the Tages Zeitung hasn't already told the German embassy I'm here and said I would appreciate all courtesies, he will soon."

Santini looked at him a moment.

"Okay, so you speak Spanish, you've been here, you've got what sounds like a pretty good cover. But I still don't know how you can do what you're supposed to do without going to the embassy."

"I didn't say I wasn't going to go to the embassy. Charley Castillo's not going to the embassy."

"You're pretty good at this undercover business? Playingmake-believe? You could get away with playing Gossinger at the embassy?"

"Why not?"

"Can I make a suggestion?"

"I'm wide open."

"Even if they swallow you whole at the embassy as Herr Gossinger, they're not going to tell you anything. For one thing, it hasn't been in the papers or on the tube. The Argentines are embarrassed, and they put a lid on the story. We're not talking about it to the Americans-not the newspaper, not the New York Times, nobody. The Argentines are hoping that when the bad guys find out they've got a dip's wife they'll turn her loose, and the whole thing can be forgotten. Personally, I think they're pissing in the wind, but that's where it is right now. So if Herr Gossinger goes to the embassy and starts answering questions, Lowery and everybody else are going to wonder how the hell Herr Gossinger heard about it."