“And?”
Castillo was silent a moment, then shrugged and shook his head again, and said, “I just don’t know, Jack.”
“Okay. We’ll wing it.”
Castillo glanced at the Mercedes-Benz parked beside them. Then he looked over his shoulder and said, “Max, you stay.”
Castillo opened his door. When he did so, one of the gendarmes got out of the Mercedes and stood by the open door.
When Castillo headed for what he thought of as the embassy employee’s gate in the fence, the gendarme closed the vehicle’s door and walked after him.
Davidson backed out of the parking spot and drove toward the restaurant Rio Alba, which was a block from the embassy in the shadow of—at fifty stories—Argentina’s tallest building. The gendarmería Mercedes followed him.
The fence surrounding the embassy had three gates, a large one to pass vehicular traffic and two smaller ones for people. The employees’ gate was a simple affair, a turnstile guarded by two uniformed, armed guards of an Argentine security firm.
Castillo was absolutely certain that a couple of Argentine rent-a-cops wouldn’t deny entrance to the embassy grounds to a United States federal law-enforcement officer who presented the proper identification.
He was wrong.
The rent-a-cops were not at all impressed with the credentials identifying C. G. Castillo as a supervisory special agent of the United States Secret Service.
The rent-a-cops advised him that if he wished to enter the embassy grounds, he would have to use the Main Visitors’ Gate, which was some three hundred yards distant, down a sunbaked sidewalk.
Castillo bit his tongue and started for the other gate, with the gendarme on his heels.
The last hundred yards of the sidewalk was lined with people—clearly not many of them, if any, U.S. citizens—patiently baking in the sun as they awaited their turn to pass through the Main Visitors’ Gate to apply for visas and other services.
There has to be a gate for U.S. citizens.
For Christ’s sake, this is the American embassy!
He did not see anything that looked helpful until he was almost at the single-story Main Visitors’ Gate building. Then he came across a ridiculously small sign that had an arrow and the legend: U.S CITIZENS.
He pushed open the door and was promptly stopped by another Argentine rent-a-cop who—not very charmingly—asked to see Castillo’s passport.
After examining it carefully, the rent-a-cop motioned that Castillo was now permitted to join one of two lines of people waiting their turn to deal with embassy staff seated comfortably behind thick plateglass windows. The scene reminded Castillo of the cashier windows in Las Vegas casinos.
He got in line and awaited his turn. Ten minutes later, it came.
“I’d like to see the ambassador, please.”
“Passport, please.”
The not-unattractive female behind the thick plate glass examined it, then carefully examined Castillo, and then said, “What time is your appointment?”
“I don’t have an appointment. But if you will get the ambassador on the phone, I’m sure he’ll see me.”
The lady scribbled a number on a small pad and slid it through a tray at the bottom of the plate glass.
“You can call this number and ask for an appointment.”
“Is there an American officer around here somewhere?”
Three minutes later, a pleasant-looking young man appeared behind the woman, looked at Castillo, and said, “Yes?”
Castillo remembered Edgar Delchamps telling him that new graduates of the CIA’s Clandestine Services How-to-Be-a-Spy School were often given as their first assignment duties as an assistant consul at an embassy where their inexperience would not get them in trouble.
If I were into profiling, I’d bet my last dime I’m facing one now.
“Good afternoon,” Castillo said politely, and slid his Army identification through the slot under the plate glass. “I’d like to see the ambassador. Would you be good enough to call his office and tell him I’m here?”
The fledgling spook examined the ID card and slid it back through the slot.
“Let me give you a number you can call, Colonel,” the pleasant-looking young man said.
Castillo slid his Secret Service credentials through the slot.
“Listen to me carefully, please,” Castillo began, keeping his voice low but his tone that of one not to be questioned. “If you don’t get on the phone right now, I will personally tell the DCI that you wouldn’t call the ambassador for me. And the result of that will be that you’ll be sitting in one of the parking lot guard shacks at Langley this time next week.”
They locked eyes.
The assistant consul picked up the telephone handset, then spoke into it.
A moment later, he slid the handset through the slot.
“I don’t know where he is, Colonel,” Ambassador Silvio’s secretary said. “He went to Jorge Newbery to meet a VIP and hasn’t checked in. Would you like to wait for him here?”
Sonofabitch, they’re on the way to Nuestra Pequeña Casa!
“No, thank you,” Castillo replied. “When you’re in touch, tell him I’ll call him later.”
Castillo slid the handset back through the slot, then without a word turned from the window and took out his cellular telephone.
A rent-a-cop laid his hand on Castillo’s arm and pointed to a sign on the wall. It forbade the use of cellular telephones.
Castillo left the building and went back into the one-hundred-degree, one-hundred-percent-humidity Buenos Aires summer afternoon. He saw that the gendarme was waiting for him.
Castillo punched one of the cell phone’s autodial buttons. Davidson answered on the second ring.
“He’s here with Montvale,” Davidson said by way of answering.
“Keep them there if you have to break Montvale’s legs,” Castillo said, and then began to walk on the sunbaked sidewalk toward the fine steak house called Río Alba, the gendarme on his heels.
[TWO]
Jack Davidson and his gendarme were sitting at a table just inside the restaurant door. Both looked to be halfway through with eating their luncheon of steaks.
Davidson caught Castillo’s eye and indicated with a nod toward the rear of the restaurant.
“You wait here with them,” Castillo said to his gendarme, motioning to the table with Davidson and the other gendarme. Their table had a clear view of a round table at the rear of the establishment.
Castillo walked toward the round table, seated at which were the Honorable Charles W. Montvale, the United States Director of National Intelligence who liked to be called “Ambassador”—in his long career of public service he had been deputy secretary of State, secretary of the Treasury, and ambassador to the European Union—the United States Ambassador to Argentina Juan Manuel Silvio, and a man in his late fifties, tall and trim with closely cropped hair.
Castillo decided unkindly that the tall, trim man’s suit indeed looked, as Davidson had said, as if it had come off a chromed rack at Sears, Roebuck & Co.
At a table against the wall were two neatly dressed, muscular men who Castillo decided were almost certainly from the agency or were Montvale’s Secret Service bodyguards. Montvale spotted Castillo, paused momentarily in the act of forking a piece of steak to his mouth, then completed the motion.
“Well, what a pleasant surprise!” Castillo announced as he approached. “I was just at the embassy to make my manners, Ambassador Silvio, but they didn’t seem to know where you were. And Mr. Montvale! What brings you down this way?”
“I think you’ve got a very good idea, Colonel,” Montvale said sharply, chewing as he spoke.
Castillo glanced around the room, then looked back at Montvale. “Aside from thinking you’ve heard the reputation of the Río Alba as the world’s best steak house, I haven’t a clue.”