“And then I showed it to the maître d’ of the Restaurant Lo de Tere—which is the sort of place I would take a lovely redhead if I was having a romantic interlude in Punta—and he said a woman who looked very much like the woman in the photo had been in his restaurant last night eating caviar and drinking champagne with a big tipper who looked just like the picture I showed him of you.
“But you weren’t in the Conrad. Or on the beach. Or having coffee in one of our quaint seaside coffeehouses. So I asked myself, ‘If I were in Uruguay and knew that I was not exactly welcome, where would I go?’
“And here I am.”
“And here we are,” Castillo said.
“So it would seem,” Ordóñez said. “On the way here, I wondered if maybe it had occurred to you that Shangri-La might be an ideal place to hide these fugitives from Russian justice.”
“That thought never entered my head,” Castillo said.
“There have been too many foreigners’ bodies here as it is,” Ordóñez said, and when he had, his eye caught Lorimer’s. “Forgive me, Mr. Ambassador, but that had to be said.”
Lorimer made a deprecating gesture.
Ordóñez looked again at Castillo. “And, for that matter, more than enough bodies in the Conrad. Everywhere you go, Colonel, there seem to be bodies.”
Castillo could think of no reply to make.
“That’s not going to happen anymore,” Ordóñez said simply.
“There’s more going on here, José, than you understand,” Munz said.
“Alfredo, whatever it is, I don’t want to know about it.” There was a moment’s silence, then Ordóñez went on: “Something else occurred to me on the drive here. How much easier it would be if you weren’t one of my oldest friends, Alfredo, or if I didn’t like—and admire—Colonel Castillo despite all the trouble he’s caused me. I even thought it would be very nice if I was one of those people who have a picture of Che Guevara on their office wall.”
Ordóñez smiled as he saw that the Che Guevara reference was lost on his audience.
“Why? Because if I were in the Che camp of followers, I would first find the people on the Interpol warrants, arrest them, then turn them over to the Russian embassy and see if the Russians really would pay the two hundred fifty thousand euros they’re offering as a reward.
“I would then escort Colonel Castillo and the rest of his entourage to their airplane, see that their passports were stamped ‘Not Valid for Reentry into Uruguay,’ and watch until the aircraft was in the air.
“That would allow me to go to my superior and report that the situation had been dealt with.”
He took a moment to have some more beef and wine.
“But I can’t do that,” Ordóñez finally said. “So I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. About ten o’clock tomorrow morning, I am going to tell my superior that although I rushed to Punta immediately on learning that Colonel Castillo and possibly the Russian embezzlers might be there, I got there an hour after Colonel Castillo and entourage flew away from Aeropuerto Internacional Capitán de Corbeta Carlos A. Curbelo, having filed a flight plan to Porto Alegre, Brazil.”
There was quiet while the pronouncement was considered.
Ordóñez met Castillo’s eyes, then Munz’s.
“Thank you, José,” Munz said.
There you go, Alfredo, Castillo thought, once again acting before asking.
But once again you’re right.
“Me, too, José,” Castillo said.
Ordóñez made a gesture that said, Of course. It is nothing.
He said, “And so, having of course never been here, I’m going to have another glass of the perfumed fairy Cabernet and leave.”
[TWO]
Berezovsky and Svetlana came out of the room where they had been waiting.
Castillo handed the FBI backgrounder to Berezovsky, who read it and then gave it to Svetlana.
“I do not know what this is,” Berezovsky said.
“It’s a backgrounder,” Castillo said. “The FBI sends this sort of thing to people they think would be—or should be—interested. It’s unofficial, but of course in effect it is official.”
“The question,” Darby said, “is: Where did it come from? My primary suspect is Montvale.”
“Ye olde knife in Ace’s back?” Delchamps said. “Despite his promise to lay off?”
“Could be Montvale,” Castillo said. “But it could be the FBI itself, never mind the President’s standing order of hands off the OOA. The FBI’s under the Department of Justice, not Montvale. They don’t like him any more than they like me. And by now the story of me having snatched Dmitri and Svet from the agency station chief in Vienna has had plenty of time to get around Washington. They have the capability of locating the Gulfstream; they know it was in Buenos Aires. That’d explain the ‘was seen in Buenos Aires’ line.
“So, thinking that it would be very nice indeed if they could embarrass Montvale and stick it to me and get credit for bagging the Russian defectors, they sent that backgrounder to both Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Shines a different light on their motto, ‘Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity,’ eh?”
Darby, DeWitt, and Davidson chuckled. Delchamps grunted.
“In Buenos Aires,” Castillo went on, “a couple of things might’ve happened. Maybe Artigas got the backgrounder and ‘lost’ it—”
“Who, Charley?” Dick Miller said.
“Julio Artigas. Used to be an FBI agent in Montevideo. He looks like Ordóñez’s brother. Smart. Good guy. He learned—intuited—more about us than was comfortable, so we had him transferred to OOA and moved him to the embassy in Buenos Aires. Inspector Doherty has made it clear to him that if he behaves, Doherty will take care of him in the FBI.”
Miller nodded his understanding.
“So he got the backgrounder and tore it up. Or he didn’t get it. Some other FBI agent did and took it to Ambassador Silvio for permission to tell SIDE or whatever, and Silvio said ‘Not yet’ or even ‘Hell, no.’
“The backgrounder also went to Montevideo, where (a) the FBI guys are still pissed at Two-Gun Yung, who they now know works for us, and (b) the ambassador is still pissed at us generally because of Two-Gun, and me personally. I can see McGrory—”
“Who?” Miller said again.
“The ambassador,” Castillo furnished. “I can see him smiling broadly, saying that he thought the local authorities should be made aware of the contents of the message. But then McGrory also says to slip it under Ordóñez’s door in the middle of the night, thus covering his ass by producing what is called ‘credible deniability.’ I thought it interesting that ‘FBI’ was nowhere to be found on this.”
He tapped the backgrounder with his fingertips.
“Yeah,” Darby said.
“Ol’ Ace really isn’t as dumb as he looks, is he?” Delchamps said, earning him a cold look from Svetlana.
“So, what does it mean?” Berezovsky said.
“Since we don’t know where else that backgrounder may have gone, I just don’t know what it means. But I don’t think it’s a very good idea for you and Svet—for that matter, any of us—to go back to Argentina right now.”
Delchamps said, “One thought that pops into my mind is that you face facts and abandon this wild idea of yours to take out the chemical factory.”
“Is that what you really think I should do?” Castillo said evenly. “That is, not do?”
“It’s an option, Ace.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s obviously the most sensible thing to do,” Delchamps said. “But on the other hand, I still have this romantic, second-childhood notion that I’d like to go out in a blaze of glory.”