"Thank you."
Pevsner waved him ahead of him out of the men's room. When they were outside, he walked directly to the pump beside the Cherokee and examined the dial.
"You were really out of petrol, weren't you?"
"You have a suspicious soul, Alek."
"In my line of business, I have to," Pevsner said. "Why don't we have Janos drive your Cherokee? If you wouldn't mind? That would get us past the guards at the gate to Buena Vista easier."
"The keys are in it," Castillo said. "Just let me pay the bill."
"Janos," Pevsner ordered in Hungarian, "settle my friend's bill, then drive his car to the house."
"You are too generous, Alek." As the Mercedes approached the redbrick, red-tile-roofed guardhouse at the entrance to the Buena Vista Country Club, the yellow-and-black-striped barrier pole across the road went up. They rolled past the two uniformed guards standing outside the guardhouse. Castillo saw two more inside, standing before a rack of what looked like Ithaca pump riot shotguns.
The Mercedes rolled slowly-neat signs proclaimed a 30-kph speed limit and speed bumps reinforced it-down a curving road, past long rows of upscale houses set on well-manicured half-hectare lots. They passed several polo fields lined with large houses, then the clubhouse of a well-maintained golf course. There were thirty or so cars in the parking lot.
They came next to an area of larger houses on much larger lots, most of them ringed with shrubbery tall enough so that only the upper floors of the houses were visible. Castillo saw that the shrubbery also concealed fences.
"This is really a very nice place, Alek," Castillo said.
"And it never snows," Pevsner said.
The car slowed, then turned right through a still-opening sliding steel door the same shade of green as the double rows of closely planted pines cropped at about twelve feet. There was a fence of the same height between the rows.
Inside, Castillo saw Pevsner's Bell Ranger helicopter parked, its rotors tied down, on what looked like a putting green. A man in white coveralls was polishing the Plexiglas.
Then the house, an English-looking near mansion of red brick with casement windows, came into view. Another burly man in a suit was standing outside waiting for them.
"Come on in," Pevsner said, opening the door before the burly man could reach it. "I'm looking forward to my kleines Fruhstuck. All I had before I took Aleksandr and Sergei into Buenos Aires was a cup of tea."
He waited until Castillo had slid across the seat and gotten out and then went on: "They were late-again-getting to Saint Agnes's, which meant they missed the bus to Buenos Aires, which meant that I had to take them."
"What are they going to do in Buenos Aires?"
"Tour the Colon Opera House. You know, backstage. Did you know, Charley, the Colon is larger than the Vienna Opera House?"
"And Paris's, too," Castillo said. "The design criteria was make it larger than both. That, of course, was when Argentina had money."
"You know something about everything, don't you?" Pevsner said as he led Castillo up a shallow flight of stairs and into the house.
A middle-aged maid was waiting in the foyer, her hands folded on her small, crisply starched white apron.
Pevsner said, in Russian, "Be so good as to ask madam if she is free to join Mr."
He hesitated and looked at Castillo.
"Castillo," Charley furnished.
"…Castillo and I in the breakfast room."
When the maid bobbed her head, Pevsner switched to Hungarian and added, "I hope that since Herr Gossinger is not here, that means Senor Castillo is not working."
"You're out of luck," Castillo said. "And actually, Alek, I know everything about everything. Like you."
A glass-topped table in the French-windowed breakfast room was set with linen and silver for two. Pevsner waved Charley into one of the chairs and a moment later a maid-a different one, this one young and, Castillo suspected, Argentine-came in, pulled a third chair to the table, and set a third place.
"Bring tea for me, please," Pevsner ordered, "and coffee for Senor Castillo."
She had just finished when Janos appeared in the door, dangling the keys to the Cherokee delicately in sausagelike fingers.
Castillo put his hand out for them, then said, "I would ask Janos to bring in your present, but it's not for the house and he'd only have to carry it out again."
"Where should it go?"
"Who maintains the avionics in your Ranger?" Castillo asked.
When he saw the confusion on Pevsner's face, he added: "What I've done is get you some decent avionics for your helicopter."
"What's wrong with the avionics in it?"
"On a scale of one to ten, they're maybe one-point-five."
"I was assured they were the best available."
"Write this down, Alek. Never trust someone selling used cars or aircraft."
"You're saying I was cheated?"
His eyes are cold again.
"Of course not," Castillo said, chuckling. "Everyone knows you can't cheat an honest man. All I'm saying is that you don't have the best available and, as a small token of my gratitude for past courtesies, now you do."
Pevsner looked at him and smiled.
"What is it they say down here? Beware of Americans bearing gifts?"
A tall, trim woman with her hair done up in a long pigtail came into the room.
"What a pleasant surprise, Charley!" she exclaimed, in Russian.
Castillo stood and kissed her cheek.
"It's nice to see you, Anna," he said. "Alek saw me on the street, saw that I was starving, and offered me breakfast."
"Actually, he accosted me in the men's room of the ESSO service station just past the hospital," Pevsner said.
She looked at her husband, then at Castillo.
"I never know when he's teasing," she said.
"Neither do I," Castillo said.
"Regardless of where you met, I'm glad you're here," she said. "And so far as breakfast is concerned, how about American pancakes with tree syrup?"
"Maple syrup, maybe?"
"Maple syrup," she confirmed. "They bleed trees to make it?"
"Indeed they do."
"There's an American boy-actually, there's several-in Aleksandr's class at Saint Agnes's. They sometimes spend the night together, at the boy's house or here. They served Aleksandr pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. He couldn't get enough. So that's what they gave him for his birthday present. A bag of the flour"-she demonstrated the size of a five-pound bag with her hands-"and a liter can of the syrup."
"How nice for Aleksandr."
"And, of course, Alek's curiosity got the best of him and…"
"Tell me about bleeding the tree," Pevsner said.
"Actually, they tap it. Maple trees. In the winter, when it's cold. They drive a sort of funnel into the tree, the sap drips out into a cup below the funnel, they collect it and boil it until it's thick. That's all there is to it."
"Extraordinary," Pevsner said.
"We Americans are an extraordinary people, Alek. I thought you knew that."
The older maid appeared with the tea and coffee and Anna ordered pancakes with sausage. The maid, looking uncomfortable, reported she wasn't sure there was enough flour left to make pancakes for everybody.
"Then just forget it," Castillo said. "I don't want to steal Alek Junior's breakfast."
"Nonsense," Pevsner announced. "Make what you have, and I'll see about getting more of the flour."
"I'm sure they sell it in the embassy store," Castillo said. "I'll get you some before I go."
"Go where?"
"To the States."
"And when will that be?"
"Tomorrow maybe. More likely, the day after tomorrow."
"Oh, Charley," Anna Pevsner said, laying her hand on his, "could you really? I've tried every store in Buenos Aires and they just look at me as if I'm crazy."
"Consider it done."
And if that store in the embassy doesn't have any, the chief of the Office of Organizational Analysis will make sure there's five-ten-pounds of the best pancake flour available in the next diplomatic pouch.
Pleasing Madam Pevsner and Alek Junior is sure to please Alek Senior. Probably more than the fifty thousand-maybe more-dollars' worth of avionics in the Cherokee.