W. Griffin: The Hostage

Probably after what they did to him, there is nothing of interest or value left.

And it doesn't matter, anyway. It's time for me to go.

The only question seems to be whether they will be waiting for me in Paris.

It is possible this is only a warning to me.

But certainly, I can't operate on that assumption.

Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer walked calmly out of the study, reclaimed his carry-on suitcase where he'd left it when coming in, paused thoughtfully a moment, then took the key to the apartment from his pocket and laid it on the table by the door.

Then he walked out of the apartment and onto Cobenzlgasse, dragging his suitcase behind him. He walked down the hill to the streetcar loop, and when one came, got on it.

When the streetcar reached the Vienna Opera on Karnter Ring, he got off and then boarded a streetcar that carried him to the Vienna West railroad station on Mariahilferstrasse.

He bought a ticket for a private single room on train EN 262, charging it to his United Nations Platinum American Express card.

Then, seeing that he had enough time before the train would leave for Paris's Gare de l'Est at eight thirty-four, he walked out of the station, found a coffeehouse and ordered a double coffee mit Schlagobers and took a copy of the Wiener Kurier from the rack to read while he drank his coffee. [TWO] 7, Rue Monsieur Paris VII, France 1205 13 July 2005 Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer took a last sad look around his apartment. He knew he was going to miss so many of his things-and not only the exquisite antiques he had been able to afford in recent years-but there was simply nothing that could be done about it.

He also had second thoughts about leaving nearly seven thousand euros in the safe. Seven thousand euros was right at eight thousand U.S. dollars. But leaving just about everything-including money in the safe-would almost certainly confuse, at least for a while, anyone looking for him.

And it wasn't as if he would be going to Shangri-La without adequate financial resources. Spread more or less equally between the Banco Central, the Banco CO-FAC, the Banco de Credito, and the Banco Hipotecario were sixteen million dollars, more money than Jean-Paul could have imagined having ten years before.

And in Shangri-La, there was both a luxury apartment overlooking a white sand beach of the Atlantic Ocean and, a hundred or so miles farther north, in San Jose, an isolated two-thousand-hectare estancia on which cattle were being profitably raised.

All of the property and bank accounts were in the name of Jean-Paul Bertrand, whose Lebanese passport, issued by the Lebanese foreign ministry, carried Jean-Paul Lorimer's photograph and thumbprint. Getting the passport had cost a fortune, but it was now obvious that it was money well spent.

Jean-Paul was taking with him only two medium-sized suitcases, plus the take-aboard suitcase he'd had with him in Vienna. Spread between the three was one hundred thousand U.S. dollars in neat little packs of five thousand dollars each. It was more or less concealed in shoes, socks, inner suit jacket pockets, and so on. He had already steeled himself to throwing away the cash if it developed he could not travel to Shangri-La without passing through a luggage inspection.

He also had five thousand dollars-in five packets of a thousand each-in various pockets of his suit and four passports, all bearing his likeness, but none of them issued by any government.

Jean-Paul had some trouble with the two suitcases and the carry-aboard until he managed to flag down a taxi, but after that things went smoothly.

From Charles de Gaulle International, he flew on Royal Air Maroc as Omar del Danti, a Moroccan national, to Mohamed V International in Casablanca. Two hours later, he boarded, as Maurice LeLand, a French national, an Air France flight to Dakar's Yoff International Airport in Senegal. Still as LeLand, at nine-thirty that night he boarded the Al Italia flight to Sao Paolo, Brazil. There he boarded a twin-turboprop aircraft belonging to Nordeste Linhas Aereas, a Brazilian regional airline, and flew to Santa Maria.

In Santa Maria, after calling his estancia manager, he got on an enormous intercity bus-nicer, he thought, than any Greyhound he'd ever been on. There was a television screen for each seat; a cold buffet; and even some rather nice, if generic, red wine-and rode it for about two hundred miles to Jaguarao, a farming town straddling the Brazil-Uruguay border.

Ricardo, his estancia manager, was waiting for him there with a Toyota Land Cruiser. They had a glass of a much better red, a local merlot, in a decent if somewhat primitive restaurant, and then drove out of town. Which also meant into Uruguay. If there was some sort of passport control on either side of the border, Dr. Lorimer didn't see it. Two hours later, the Land Cruiser turned off a well-maintained gravel road and passed under a wrought-iron sign reading SHANGRI-LA.

"Welcome home, Doctor," Ricardo said.

"Thank you, Ricardo," Jean-Paul said, and then, "I'm going to be here for a while. The fewer people who know that, the better."

"I understand, Doctor."

"And I think, man-to-man, Ricardo, that you will understand I'll more than likely be in need of a little company."

"Tonight, Doctor? You must be tired from your travel."

"Well, let's see if you can come up with something that will rekindle my energy."

"There are one or two maids, young girls," Ricardo said, "that you may find interesting."

"Good," Dr. Lorimer said.

Ten minutes later the Land Cruiser pulled up before a rambling one-story white-painted masonry house.

Half a dozen servants came quickly out of the house to welcome El Patron home. One of them, a light-skinned girl who appeared to be about sixteen, did indeed look interesting.

Dr. Lorimer smiled at her as he walked into the house. [THREE] The United States Embassy Avenida Colombia 4300 Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1825 20 July 2005 J. Winslow Masterson, a very tall, well-dressed, very black African American of forty-two, who was almost belligerently American and loathed most things French, stood leaning on the frame of his office window looking at the demonstration outside.

Masterson's office was on the second floor of the embassy building, just down the hall from that of the ambassador. Masterson was deputy chief of mission- read number two, or executive officer, or deputy ambassador-and at the moment was the acting minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the President of the United States to the Republic of Argentina.

The ambassador, Juan Manuel Silvio, was "across the river"-in Montevideo, Uruguay-having taken a more or less working lunch with Michael A. McGrory, the minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the President of the United States to the Republic of Uruguay. The two ambassadors or their chiefs of mission got together regularly, every two weeks, either in Buenos Aires or Montevideo.

Silvio had taken the red-eye, the first flight from Jorge Newbery airport in downtown Buenos Aires, which departed on the twenty-six-minute flight to Montevideo at 7:05 A.M., and he would return on the 3:10 P.M. Busquebus. The high-speed catamaran ferry made the trip in just over three hours. The ambassador said that much time allowed him to deal uninterrupted in the comfortable first-class cabin with at least some of the bureaucratic papers that accumulated on his desk. There were, Masterson guessed, maybe three hundred demonstrators today, banging pots and pans, held back by fences and maybe fifty cops of the Mounted Police, half of them actually on horseback.

The demonstrators waved-at least when they thought the TV cameras were rolling-banners protesting the International Money Fund, the United States' role therein, American fiscal policy, and America generally. There were at least a half dozen banners displaying the likeness of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.