“And if you drove, we’d have at least one set of wheels in Uruguay, wouldn’t we? Okay, you drive. Next question: Where do you drive? Where do Dick and I take the plane?”
Alfredo Munz walked back to the table. “Aleksandr suggests flying into San Martín de los Andes . . .” he began.
Castillo’s face and shrug showed he didn’t understand.
“. . . a small town several hours’ drive from Bariloche.”
“Can we get the Gulfstream in there?”
“Aerolíneas Argentinas flies a 737 in there once a day, weather permitting. When they’re not expecting that flight, the control tower shuts down. What Aleksandr suggests—this is what he often does in the Lear—is file a flight plan to Bariloche, then land at San Martín, unload most of the passengers there, then go on to Bariloche. If any questions are asked, the pilot made a precautionary landing. Aleksandr will have people waiting in both places. Then they will drive to the house, instead of going to Llao-Llao and taking a boat from the hotel dock.”
“Okay, done. Still-open question: How do we get from where we’re going—where are we going?”
“Alek suggests Punta del Este,” Munz said.
“Why?” Castillo asked. “That has to be a couple of hundred miles from the estancia.”
Munz smiled.
“Maybe he thinks you’d have some trouble landing the Gulfstream at Tacuarembó International,” he said.
“Stupid question,” Castillo said, chagrined.
“And it’s the busy season in Punta,” Munz said. “One more private jet won’t attract much attention—certainly less than at Carrasco in Montevideo.”
“After deep and profound consideration, I have decided that we’ll go to Punta del Este,” Castillo said.
He took his cellular telephone from his pocket and slid it across the table to Miller.
“Autodial five will get you the weather at Ezeiza, Dick. Get us the weather to Bariloche and Punta del Este.”
Miller opened his laptop, waited until it awoke from its sleep mode, then picked up the cell phone.
“Alek also suggests we take Lee-Watson with us,” Munz said.
“If I ask why, would my stupidity show again?”
“He has a connection with the Conrad,” Munz said. “Alek thinks you should stay there. Keep the apartments in case we need them.”
“What apartments?”
“He owns half a dozen, maybe more, luxury apartments in those high-rises along the beach. Lee-Watson manages them for him; people rent them for a week, two weeks. They’re not safe houses but could be used for that purpose. No questions would be asked if strangers show up, rent cars, etcetera.”
Castillo nodded his understanding, then asked, “So, stay at the Conrad and then drive to Shangri-La in the morning?”
Munz nodded.
“Where is Lee-Watson?”
“Having a cup of tea in the breakfast room. I didn’t think you’d want him here for this.”
“Ask him to join us, please.”
[TWO]
Aeropuerto Internacional Capitán de Corbeta Carlos A. Curbelo
Maldonado Province
República Oriental del Uruguay
1705 3 January 2006
The wheels hardly chirped when the Lorimer Charitable & Benevolent Fund Gulfstream III touched down on the runway.
“You must have been practicing, Charley,” First Officer Miller said to Captain Castillo over the intercom. “That wasn’t your usual let’s-bounce-three-times-down-the-runway-and-see-if-we-can-blow-a-tire landing.”
“With all the time you’ve spent flying right seat with me, First Officer, I would’ve thought by now you’d have learned that landings come to me naturally, as a by-product of my superb reflexes and, of course, genius.”
A grunt came through Castillo’s headset.
“You ain’t no genius when you’re thinking with your dick, Captain. In fact, you ain’t never been too smart in that department.”
Castillo turned to look at Miller. “If you have something to say, Gimpy, say it,” he said unpleasantly.
Miller held up both hands, suggesting it had been only an idle, general comment.
Bullshit, Dick!
You’re just waiting to offer your heartfelt, well-meaning philosophical wisdom vis-à-vis my outrageous relationship with Svet.
Well, I should’ve expected it.
Everything so far today has gone well, almost perfectly, far better than one could reasonably expect.
Berezovsky’s wife and little girl and Marina, their Bouvier des Flandres pup had arrived quietly at Jorge Newbery at exactly the right time. The Gulfstream had gone wheels-up five minutes later. The odds were strong that no one had seen them.
Forty minutes into the flight, Sergeant Kensington had called over the secure AFC radio and reported: “Mr. Darby said to tell you that Ambassador Silvio says ambassadors can’t do visas—but that he asked the consul, who does, and who was delighted to authorize multiple-entry visas for any friends of Colonsel Castillo.”
Thirty-five minutes after that, they landed at the San Martín de los Andes airport. Max had barely begun his nose gear ritual when three Mercedes-Benz SUVs pulled up beside the Gulfstream.
There had been a brief but intensely emotional moment as everybody, tears running shamelessly down their cheeks, embraced everyone else. Castillo had been a little wet-eyed himself.
Then everyone—including Ivan the Terrible and Marina—loaded into the SUVs and took off.
Max looked at Castillo with his head cocked, as if asking, Where the hell are those people going with my children? But when he heard the whine as Miller began to restart the engines, he trotted quickly up the stairs into the fuselage without waiting to be told.
Five minutes later, they broke ground.
The fuel stop at Bariloche posed no problems whatever, and when Miller checked the weather he learned it would be perfect all the way to Punta del Este.
And they found that the immigration authorities had the same immigration setup at Bariloche as the Buquebus had in Buenos Aires. Which was: An Argentine immigration officer put the DEPARTED ARGENTINA stamp in their passports, officially stating that they had left Argentina. Then he slid the passports to a Uruguayan immigration officer sitting next to him, who put the ENTERED URUGUAY stamp in the passport. There would be no immigration formalities when they got to Punta del Este.
An hour into what would be the final leg, Sergeant Kensington called again to report that Alfredo, Darby, and “their friend” were aboard the Buquebus about to leave for Montevideo. That meant there had been no questions asked about Berezovsky’s new national identity card.
And the flight to Aeropuerto Internacional Capitán de Corbeta Carlos A. Curbelo had been smooth, uneventful, and had ended in what Castillo with all modesty considered to be one of his better landings.
And what that means, as stated clearly in Castillo Rule Seven, is:
“That inasmuch as everything has gone perfectly so far, something will surely fuck up big-time in the next couple of minutes.”
“The last time I landed here, we were the only airplane on the field,” Castillo said as they turned off the runway to trail a FOLLOW ME pickup truck to where they would be parked. “Now look at it!”
There were too many airplanes on the field to count, but the bigger aircraft among them were four glistening Boeing 737s. Two bore the logotypes of LAN-CHILE and Aerolíneas Argentinas. The other two—GOL and OceanAir—Castillo had never heard of, but to judge by the flag on their vertical stabilizers, both were Brazilian.