W. Griffin - The Hostage

His price was that none of his officers be tried as Nazis, and that the Americans arrange to get their families out of Germany to somewhere safe-like South America, Argentina being preferred-with their husbands to join them later.

The deal was struck.

When Castillo had first heard the story, as a West Point cadet, he had been fascinated. He had wondered then who had made the decision to deal with Gehlen; it had to have been someone really senior. If the story had gotten out, there would have been a political eruption.

He had been trying ever since-and for years he had held security clearances that gave him access to a great deal of heavily classified files-to find out more. He hadn't learned much. The conclusion he had drawn, without any proof whatsoever, was that the decision to deal with Gehlen had been made by President Harry S Truman himself, probably at the recommendation of General Eisenhower, who at the time was commander in chief in Europe. Almost as soon as Roosevelt had died, and Truman had started dealing with the Soviet Union, he had recognized the Soviet threat. "My mother came here in 1946, and my father in 1950," Munz went on. "He became one of the few civilian instructors at the military academy. When he died several years ago, he was buried here quite close to a man named Hans von Langsdorff. That name ring a bell?"

"The Graf Spee captain," Castillo said.

Why is he telling me this?

To let me know he's one of the good guys?

Maybe Darby has him in his pocket, and he wants me to know?

Or maybe he wants me to think that he's muy simpatico, and I will thereafter regard him as a pal and tell him things I shouldn't.

Well, I don't have time to stay here and play games with him.

"When Mr. Darby comes out of there, would you ask him to give me a call? I don't see any point in hanging around here."

"Certainly," Munz said. [FIVE] Room 1550 The Four Seasons Hotel Cerrito 1433 Buenos Aires, Argentina 1035 23 July 2005 "Why don't we go in the bar and get you a cup of coffee while you're waiting for me?" Castillo said to the sergeant as they entered the hotel lobby.

"We're back to the ambassador saying I'm not supposed to let you out of my sight."

"I need thirty minutes out of your sight," Castillo said. "If you think you have to, Sergeant, call the ambassador and tell him I said that. Otherwise, your waiting in the bar will be our little secret."

"I would say, 'Yes, sir,' but you told me not to. Just don't take off on me, please? That would put my ass in a crack."

"I'll be down in thirty minutes, maybe a little less," Castillo said.

He walked the sergeant into the bar, got a bar tab, signed it-making sure the sergeant didn't see the Gossinger signature-and then rode the elevator to his room.

There was no fax press release from the embassy for Herr Gossinger waiting in his room; nor, when he called, was it waiting downstairs to be delivered. He wondered if Ms. Sylvia Grunblatt had overlooked sending it, or had intentionally not done so. Castillo knew that that didn't matter right now. He got out his laptop computer, and, working from his memory of the press release, wrote the story of the murdered diplomat, and then e-mailed it to Otto Goerner at the Tages Zeitung. He thought about calling him immediately, but decided that he might not read it right away, and that he would call him after he talked to Pevsner.

Alex Pevsner answered Kennedy's cellular on the second buzz.

"?Hola?"

"That you, Alex?"

"I heard what happened about thirty minutes ago. I thought you would call, and I knew you didn't have the number here, so I asked Howard for his cellular. I should have given the number to you. How is Mrs. Masterson?"

"You heard about that, too?" Castillo replied, and then went on without waiting for an answer. "They doped her-bupivacaine, I'm told-and she doesn't seem to remember much of what happened."

"But she'll be all right?"

"I think so. Yes."

"Anna was concerned."

"I don't suppose you've heard anything?"

"My source-and he's close to a man named Munz, who is the power at SIDE-tells me he doesn't think this is a kidnapping for ransom."

"He say what he thinks it is?"

"He doesn't have any idea, and neither, apparently, does Colonel Munz. If I hear anything, I'll let you know. Is it all right if I call your cellular number?"

"Of course."

"Let me give you the numbers here," Pevsner said, and did so. "Goerner."

"Did you get my Masterson story?"

"I'm fine, Karl. And how are you? I've been a little concerned."

"About what?"

"I got your story. Very interesting. So far, there's nothing on the wires or CNN."

"There will be shortly."

"I'm impressed with your-what do they say in the States? Your 'scoop.'"

"Well, I try to earn my keep."

"I hope you haven't had time to work on the oil-for-food scandal I mentioned."

"I haven't. Why do you ask?"

"I got a story from our guy in Vienna yesterday. I would have called to tell you about it, but, as usual, I didn't know where to find you. If you check your e-mail, you'll find a rather anxious message from me. There's also a rather pointed message on your voice mail at the Mayflower in Washington."

"What sort of a story?"

"The Vienna police were called to an apartment on the Cobenzlgasse to investigate a terrible odor. It came from the decomposing corpse-he'd apparently been dead for ten days or so-of a Lebanese man named Henri Douchon."

A mental image of the Cobenzlgasse, the cobblestone street in Grinzing leading up the hill to the Vienna Woods, popped into Castillo's mind. He had met Alex Pevsner for the first time at the top of the hill.

"Who's he?"

"From what I've been told, he was a middleman, a very important middleman, in the oil-for-food arrangement; the illegal part."

"What's that got to do with me?"

"According to my man, before they cut Herr Douchon's throat-almost decapitating him-they pulled several of his fingernails out, and several of his teeth. He was strapped into a chair."

"Jesus!"

"I don't want anyone pulling your teeth out with a pair of pliers, Karlchen, much less cutting your throat. I want you to forget everything I told you about there possibly being an Argentine connection."

"That cow is out of the barn, Otto."

"If I had known how to reach you yesterday, I was going to tell you not to make inquiries, discreet or otherwise, about Oil for Food, moving money to Argentina, or anything remotely connected with either."

"Not to worry, I won't have time now. I'm on the kidnapping story."

"Yes, I'm sure you are," Goerner said.

That was a not-very-well-veiled reference to what he knows I do for a living.

"One of the reasons I called was to ask what-off the top of your head-you think might entice someone to kidnap a diplomat's wife?"

"When I gave your story to the foreign news editor- it will run in all the papers, with your byline and photograph-he asked me, 'Isn't Masterson that football player who got seventy-five million dollars after he was run over by a coal truck?'"

"Basketball, sixty million, and a beer truck," Castillo said.

"That wasn't in your story, Karlchen," Goerner said. "We're going to see if the AP or CNN or BBC mentions it. Then we'll either quote them in our wrap-up, or run it as a sidebar."

Why the hell didn't I mention it? I was writing a news story, not an embassy press release.

Because you are not a bona fide journalist, that's why.

"It should have been in the story," Castillo said.

"What did you say, sixty million? That would inspire a kidnapper, I'm sure."

"One of my sources, a good one"-you know who he is, Otto. Alex Pevsner-"just told me there is some doubt in the minds of the senior cops here-they're called SIDE, sort of a combined CIA and FBI-that the abduction and the murder had anything to do with collecting a ransom."