W. Griffin - The Hostage

"I thought you didn't want to get dressed up for dinner," Castillo said.

"I changed my mind when I saw my room. Do you always live this good?"

"Whenever I can. Fix yourself a drink, Jack. And as soon as they've set up the food, I'll tell you what's going on."

"Just out of idle curiosity, what does this place cost by the night?"

"I really have no idea," Castillo said.

"Why am I not surprised?" Betty said, and there was an unpleasant sarcastic tone in her voice.

"I really don't know how this works in the Secret Service," Castillo said. "But I don't think the presidential protection detail people stay in the economy motel ten blocks from where the President is staying to save the government money. I intend to find out. I don't want to spend my money to buy things I've bought to carry out what I've been ordered to do. The government is not on my list of favorite charities."

Britton nodded.

"I wanted to keep you two away from the FBI," Castillo said.

"They don't like you much, either," Britton said. "I picked that up on the airplane."

Castillo found an excuse not to get into that when he saw one of the waiters opening a bottle of the cabernet.

"I'll do that, thank you," he said in Spanish. "And we'll serve ourselves." By the time Castillo had finished relating what had happened, and why he had asked that they be sent to Argentina, and what he expected of them, they had finished what had turned out to be an enormous meal.

And as they talked, Castillo had the feeling that his moral dilemma had solved itself. Special Agent Schneider was in fact a cop, and a smart one, and this was business, not romantic fantasy. And there was no question in his mind that if he made the first preliminary pass at Schneider, she would turn it down. Gently and kindly, probably, because Schneider was a good guy, but turn it down.

And it was after two A.M.

"Let's knock it off," he said. "I want to get started early in the morning. You want to eat here-we may think of something we missed-or do you want to meet in the restaurant downstairs at, say, quarter to seven?"

"If you don't mind, here," Special Agent Schneider said. "For personal reasons: I want to look out your windows in the daylight."

"Okay, here at quarter to seven," Britton said. "My ass is dragging."

He got up from the table and walked to the door. Special Agent Schneider followed. Both waved a good-night, but neither said anything.

Three minutes after they had gone, Castillo was in bed. And then-he had no idea how much later-the door chimes bonged.

Oh, shit! The floor waiter wants to get the goddamn dishes!

Not quite knowing why he did so, he picked up the Beretta from the bedside table and held it behind his back as he stormed out of the bedroom and across the sitting room to the door and jerked it open.

Special Agent Schneider was standing in the corridor.

"I seem to have dropped my handkerchief," she said.

He didn't reply.

"May I come in?"

He stepped out of the way.

"I thought it was the floor waiter," he said.

"Were you going to shoot him?" Special Agent Schneider asked.

He held up both hands-one of them holding the Beretta-helplessly.

She walked to the table and poured wine into a glass.

"I'm not sure this is a very good idea," he said.

She walked to him and handed him the glass and smiled.

"There stands the legendary Charley Castillo, in his underwear with a gun in one hand and a glass of wine in the other," she said, and shook her head, and then went back to the table and poured another glass of wine.

With her back to him, she said, "I thought of you all the way down here on the airplane. I thought of you at other times, of course, but I thought of you all the goddamned time I was on the airplane."

Castillo saw her take a healthy swallow of the cabernet.

"One of the things I thought about," she went on, speaking softly, "was how I was going to handle the pass the man whose Secret Service code name is Don Juan was certainly going to make at me."

"I wouldn't dare make a pass at you," Castillo said, jocularly. "Not only would your brother break both my legs-"

"Let me finish, please, Charley," she interrupted firmly.

"Sorry."

"I had to be very careful, so as not to hurt your feelings-which I didn't want to do-or to piss you off, because you might get your masculine ego in an uproar and do something crappy and screw me up with the Secret Service. From what I've seen so far, I like the Secret Service, and when I took the appointment, I burned my bridges with the department in Philadelphia."

"Christ, I wouldn't-"

"Goddamn you, Charley, let me finish."

She turned to glare at him. He nodded, and she turned her back to him again.

She took another swallow of the cabernet, shook her head, and went on: "So then what happened was that you didn't make a pass at me, and my initial reaction to that was, 'Thank God!' and then I realized that you were being responsible, you were being the upstanding guy who would never make a pass at somebody who worked for him.

"And my reaction to that was, what the hell is the difference? He's not going to make a pass at you, so that's it. Relax.

"And then when I left here and I saw you sitting at the table, I thought that's the loneliest guy in the world. And then I got in bed and faced the facts. The truth."

"Which is?" he asked softly.

"That what I really wanted to do was come back," she said, and turned her head to look at him, and then quickly looked away.

He didn't move or say anything.

"Which, obviously, was a pretty dumb thing," she said. "Sorry."

She turned and walked quickly toward the door.

He caught her arm and she tried to break loose, but he held on.

"What?" she asked.

"I don't think you've been out of my mind for more than thirty consecutive minutes since the last time I saw you in Philadelphia."

She turned to face him and looked up into his eyes.

"Oh, Jesus, Charley!" "Oh, Jesus!" Presidential Agent Castillo said to Special Agent Schneider.

He had just rolled onto his back, breathing heavily, and put his arm over his eyes.

"Yeah," Betty said. After a moment, she shifted around on the bed so that she could rest her head on his chest.

He put his arm around her and ran the balls of his fingers gently up and down her spine.

"What happens now?" Charley asked. "Your brother comes in and breaks both my legs?"

"Well, he'd have no trouble finding us," Betty said. "We left a trail of my clothes from the living room into here."

He chuckled.

"What are you thinking now, Charley? 'I knew all along she'd be easy'?"

"Worse than that. I think-ignore that-I know I'm in love with you."

"You're under no obligation to say something like that."

"'Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,'" Castillo quoted. "I think John Lennon said that."

She tweaked his nipple.

"That's from the Bible," she said, chuckling.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"No response? In other words, are my feelings for you reciprocated? Partially reciprocated? Or reciprocated not at all?"

She raised her head and looked down at him.

"My God, couldn't you tell?" she asked, then: "You want me to say it, don't you?"

He nodded.

"Okay. I love you. I guess I knew that when I walked into Counterterrorism and saw the guy who'd thought I was a hooker in the Warwick bar and my heart jumped."

"Oh, boy!" [FOUR] The Buenos Aires Herald Azopardo 455 Buenos Aires, Argentina 0327 24 July 2005 At almost exactly this time-although neither of them cared a whit what hour it was, or even what day, as Charley reached down to pull Betty onto him-a small white Fiat van pulled away from the loading dock at the Buenos Aires Herald building in downtown Buenos Aires.