“ . . . There’s an old pal of mine who fell off the side step of the Vice President’s limo. It didn’t matter that it was covered with ice. He fell off. And he was off the detail.”
“And what happened to him?”
“He’s in Buenos Aires.”
“So . . . is this what you’re saying?” Britton asked a bit bitterly. “That Buenos Aires is sort of a Secret Service gulag? The dumping ground for Protection Service rejects?”
“Enough is enough, Jack,” Castillo said, his tone now cold. “What’s it going to be?”
“If we go down there, what happens to my job?” Sandra asked.
Castillo didn’t reply.
Sandra then answered the question herself: “The same that would happen if we went to Saint Louis, Kansas City, or wherever that guy said. How long would we have to stay?”
“As long as Tom and I think is necessary,” Castillo said.
“And the AALs walk on this,” Britton said more than a little bitterly.
“Not necessarily,” Castillo said. “But you’re never going back on the Protection Detail.”
“So then what finally happens to me?”
“Tom and I will, sooner or later but probably sooner, find something for you to do.”
“You mean go to work for you?”
Castillo nodded.
“You didn’t mention that,” Britton said.
“You didn’t give him much of a chance, Rambo,” Davidson said.
“I’d like that,” Britton said simply. “Thank you.”
“When do we go?” Sandra asked.
“As soon as we can get you on a plane,” Castillo said. “Maybe even tonight.”
“All we have is an overnight bag,” Sandra said.
“They have wonderful shops in Buenos Aires,” Doña Alicia said.
“Let’s give Tony a heads-up,” McGuire said, and added to the Brittons: “Tony Santini’s the old pal who fell off the limo.”
“We have a state-of-the-art communications system down there,” Castillo said, “but in his wisdom the kindly chief of OOA figured the odds of anything happening today were slim to none, and so told the guys sitting on the radio to take Christmas day off. So we’ll have to use this primitive device.”
Castillo put his cellular telephone on the table, pushed a speed-dial button, then the speakerphone button.
Proof that the system worked came twenty seconds later when a male voice answered, “Boy, it didn’t take long for Munz to call you to tell you, did it, Charley?”
“And a merry, merry Christmas to you, too, Tony. It didn’t take Munz long to call me to tell me what?”
“You haven’t heard about your Irish pal Duffy?”
“What about him?”
“They tried to take him out about seven o’clock last night. He had his wife and kids with him. Out in Pilar. He’s one pissed-off Irishman.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“No. Thank God.”
“They get the people that did it?”
“No. But this is not the time to be on the roads in a Ford F-150 pickup with a dented rear end. Duffy rammed his way through what was supposed to be a stop-and-shoot ambush. Every gendarme in Argentina is working Christmas looking for it.”
“Is Alfredo looking into who did it?”
“I thought it was probably him on the phone just now.”
“Have him send what he finds out to Miller.”
“Done.”
“What I called about, Tony: You remember Jack Britton?”
“Sure.”
“Party or parties unknown—probably those Muslims he was undercover with—tried to take him and his wife out yesterday afternoon.”
“Well, so long Protection Detail. Is he all right? His wife? Where are they going to send him? I could sure use him down here when they’re through with him.”
“How about as soon as I can get them on a plane?”
“That’s a little unusual, isn’t it?”
“He said unkind things to the supervisory special agent in charge when he told him he was off the detail. Isaacson turned him over to me just before they were going to handcuff him. I need to put him on ice.”
“He told off the SAC? Good for him! I wish I had.”
Delchamps laughed.
“Who was that?” Santini said.
“Edgar Delchamps,” Delchamps said. “Ace has you on speakerphone, Tony. We’ve got a whole host of folks at the Christmas dinner table working on this.”
“Glad to hear it,” Santini said.
“Why do you need Britton, Tony?” Castillo said.
“I keep hearing things like there’s a raghead connection with our friends in Asunción that we didn’t pick up on. He can pass himself off as a raghead, I seem to recall.”
“I don’t want him going undercover.”
“Why not?”
“Say, ‘Yes, sir, Charley. I understand he’s not to go undercover.’ ”
“Yes, sir, Charley.”
Castillo thought he heard a mix of annoyance and sarcasm in the reply. He knew he saw gratitude in Sandra Britton’s eyes.
“Okay,” he went on, “as soon as we have the schedule, we’ll give you a heads-up. Put them in Nuestra Pequeña Casa. If Munz wants to tell Duffy, fine. Otherwise, not. I have a gut feeling.”
“Yes, sir, Charley, sir.”
Castillo ignored that. He said, “Alex Darby presumably knows about Duffy?”
“Yeah, sure. And anticipating your next question, Alex called Bob Howell in Montevideo so that he could give a heads-up to the China Post people sitting on the ambassador at Shangri-La. He told me that Munz had already called Ordóñez to give him a heads-up. I’d say all the bases are pretty well covered. But what the hell’s going on, Charley?”
“I wish I knew. You’ll be among the first to know if I ever find out. I’ll be in touch, Tony. Take good care of the Brittons.”
“Anybody who says rude things to a SAC is my kind of guy, Charley. Try to stay out of trouble.”
Castillo broke the connection.
He looked at Britton.
“Masterson’s mother and father—ambassador, retired—lost their home in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina. They’re now living on the estancia in Uruguay—Shangri-La—which he inherited from his late son, who was the bagman for the oil-for-food cesspool. I couldn’t talk the ambassador out of it. And I really had a hard time getting him to agree to having four guys from China Post—even on our payroll, not that he couldn’t have easily afforded paying them himself—to go down there to sit on him.”
“ ‘China Post’?” Mr. and Mrs. Britton asked in unison.
“Some people think that Shanghai Post Number One (In Exile) of the American Legion,” Davidson explained, “is sort of an employment agency for retired special operators seeking more or less honest employment.”
“What Santini just told me,” Castillo said, “was that Alex Darby, the CIA station chief in Buenos Aires, has given Bob Howell, the station chief in Montevideo, a heads-up, and that Alfredo Munz, who works for us . . .”
“Sort of the OOA station chief,” Davidson injected drily.
“. . . down there has given a heads-up to Chief Inspector José Ordóñez of the Interior Police Division of the Policía Nacional del Uruguay,” Castillo went on. “A really smart cop, even if he doesn’t like me very much. One of the first things I want you to do down there is get with him. Bottom line, I think, as Santini said, we have all the bases covered down there.”
“Carlos,” Doña Alicia said. “Did I understand correctly that another friend of yours has been attacked? He and his family?”
He looked at her for a long moment before replying.
“It looks that way, Abuela. But Liam Duffy is more a friend of Alfredo Munz than mine.”
“Just a coincidence, would you say, Karlchen?” Kocian asked. “Two such incidents on the same day?”
Plus your friend, Billy. That makes three.