XII
[ONE] El Presidente de la Rua Suite The Four Seasons Hotel Cerrito 1433 Buenos Aires, Argentina 0815 9 August 2005 Colonel Jacob Torine, USAF, went into the master bedroom and gently shook the shoulder of Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo, USA, who was asleep, lying spread-eagle in his underwear on the enormous bed.
When that didn't work, Torine grabbed Castillo's left foot, raised it three feet off the bed, then let it go.
That worked. Castillo sat up abruptly, his eyes wide-open at first, then glaring at Torine.
"I just ordered breakfast, Charley. It's quarter after eight," Torine said.
"Thanks," Castillo said, without much enthusiasm, fell back on the bed, and then, grunting with the effort, sat up again and swung his feet out of the bed.
He took fresh underwear from his bag and walked stiff-leggedly into the huge marble bath. He turned on the cold-water faucet in the glass-walled shower, took off his underwear, and stepped under the flowing water. He stood under the cold water for a full minute before, shivering with cold, deciding that he now was sufficiently awake and could adjust the temperature.
Five minutes later, shaved and in trousers and shirt, Castillo went into the sitting room. Two waiters were arranging plates topped with chrome domes on a table.
Castillo nodded at Torine and Fernando Lopez, then walked to the enormous windows overlooking the tracks of the Retiro Railroad Station, the docks beyond that, and the river Plate.
"Nice view," he thought aloud.
"I'm glad my wife doesn't know about this," Torine said. "She doesn't mind me freezing my ass on some snow-covered runway in the middle of Alaska, but this would make her jealous."
Castillo turned and smiled at him.
"I guess Yung called?" he said.
"Yeah. He said he was on his way to the Carrasco airport to pick up Artigas's car, then would take the Munzes to the Belmont House. They'll take turns guarding them. I didn't want to wake you."
"You were really wiped out, Gringo," Fernando Lopez said.
"Understatement of the day," Castillo said as he stretched his neck. He then added, "I've been thinking."
"That's always dangerous," Lopez said.
Castillo walked to the table, sat down, and lifted one of the chrome-domed plate covers. The plate held an enormous pile of scrambled eggs. He spooned some eggs onto his plate, then found ham steaks under another dome and put one of them next to his eggs, meanwhile thinking: What I really have been thinking about is the time I spent in that bedroom with Betty Schneider. I thought about her just before I passed out. And I thought of her this morning, just as soon as I stopped being pissed at Jake for that leg-dropping wake-up call.
But that's personal.
This is business.
"When we came in here last night, they called me Gossinger," Castillo said. "And I remembered that I rented this place as Gossinger of the Tages Zeitung and they're getting the bill. And that Otto Gorner sent the German embassy here a wire-maybe an e-mail, maybe he even called-asking that I be given every courtesy."
"So?"
"Hiding Billy Kocian is going to be as easy as hiding a giraffe on the White House lawn."
"True," Torine said. "The old guy is spectacular. I love his hat."
He mimed Kocian's up on one side and down on the other hat brim.
"You're going to move him in here," Lopez asked, "after all that business about renting the safe house right now?"
"No. But I'm going to keep this apartment and tell the hotel that Mr. Eric Kocian of the Tages Zeitung newspapers will be staying here -when he is not staying in a Pilar country house that the newspaper has rented for him- and to continue to send the bills to the newspaper. And when I get out to the safe house and can get a secure line to the White House switchboard, I'm going to call Otto and tell him to call the German ambassador to tell him who Eric is and that he's here-and why-and to…"
"Why is he here?" Torine asked.
"He's working on three stories," Castillo said. "One, some character from Hamburg is going to try to raise the Graf Spee from its watery grave off Montevideo. Two, he's going to do a piece on the German sailors from the Graf Spee who stayed here. And, three, he's naturally interested in the story of the murdered American diplomat, which is of great interest in Germany."
"What are you trying to do, Gringo, make him a really visible target?" Lopez asked.
"Exactly. One so visible that SIDE will decide it's in the national interests of Argentina to see that nothing happens to him. The Argentine government doesn't want any more headlines about foreigners being murdered here. And a foreign journalist? If anything happened to Billy, it would be on front pages all over the world."
"You're devious, Colonel Castillo," Torine said.
"I like to think so," Castillo said. "Thank you, sir."
"They whacked the sergeant and almost whacked your girlfriend when they were riding around in an embassy car," Lopez said. "Not to mention Masterson."
"They weren't expecting trouble," Castillo said. "Billy will have at least Jack Davidson and Sandor Tor with him all the time and they know what they're doing. And there will be others, too."
"What's Eric Kocian going to think of this brainstorm of yours?" Lopez asked.
"I won't know that until I ask him," Castillo said. "So this is what's going to happen. Darby's going to pick me up here at nine. I'll get Billy Kocian settled in Mayerling and make the phone calls. You go to Jorge Newbery and get the plane ready."
"I think it would be better to have three flight plans," Torine said. "One from here to Carrasco, a second from Carrasco to Quito, and a third from Quito to San Antonio, rather than one with legs."
"Fine," Castillo said.
"It's only about thirty minutes from Jorge Newbery to Carrasco," Torine went on. "We won't have to take on fuel, but it would be better if we did. It's almost six hours to Quito from Montevideo."
"Let's err on the side of caution," Lopez said.
"Agreed," Castillo said.
"It's another five and a half hours from Quito to San Antonio," Torine said. "Figure an hour on the ground at Quito, that makes twelve and a half, call it thirteen, from wheels-up in Montevideo until touchdown in San Antonio."
Castillo nodded and said, "We'll need food and something to drink."
Torine nodded. "It would be better if we got that in Montevideo."
"I'll call when I'm leaving Mayerling. Then you call Yung and tell him to pack a picnic lunch but not have the hotel do it."
He looked down at his plate and saw that he had eaten everything he'd put there.
"I better get dressed."
"Gringo, I'm still not happy about taking the Munzes to Midland," Lopez said.
"Right now, I don't see another option. But when I get on the radio, I'll call Abuela and make sure she stays in San Antonio."
Castillo went into the master bedroom to finish dressing.
He had just finished tying his necktie when the doorman called to say his car was waiting for him. [TWO] Mayerling Country Club Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1020 9 August 2005 The entrance to the Mayerling Country Club was very much like the entrance to the Buena Vista Country Club, four miles or so away on the other side of Route 8, where Aleksandr Pevsner lived. There was a guardhouse, with armed guards controlling a barrier pole. And, like Buena Vista, there was a shrubbery-shrouded, twelve-foot-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire, behind which the roofs of only a few houses were visible from the road.
There was immediate proof that the security was good when the guards refused to pass Alex Darby's BMW until they called the house and got permission from someone-they later learned it was Mr. Sieno-to pass.
"Would they have passed us if you had CD plates on this?" Castillo asked as they drove slowly along the curving country club road at the prescribed thirty-kilometer-per-hour speed limit announced every one hundred meters by neatly lettered signs and reinforced by speed bumps every two hundred meters.