"Sure you are," she said. "What did you do, get demoted? I'm one of your fans, Mr. Danton, and you don't write features for the Sunday magazine."
"How about one with the lead, 'U.S. diplomats living really high on the taxpayer's dollar in the Paris of South America'?"
"If you were going to do that, you wouldn't tell me."
"I came down here to see Alex Darby," Roscoe said.
"Nobody here by that name," she said.
"You mean 'Nobody here by that name now,' right?"
"We had a commercial counselor by that name, but he's gone. Retired."
"When was that?"
"I don't seem to recall. I could find out for you, but then we would get into privacy issues, wouldn't we?"
"Or security issues. You know who cut his checks, Miss Grunblatt."
"One, it's Ms. Grunblatt-but you can call me Sylvia if 'Mizz' sticks in your craw."
"And you may call me Roscoe, Sylvia."
"And two, I have no idea what you're talking about. Mr. Darby was our commercial counselor. Who fed you that other wild notion?"
"Eleanor Dillworth, another longtime toiler in the Clandestine Service of the agency whose name we dare not speak."
"You know Eleanor, do you?"
"Eleanor came to me. Actually, she and her friend Patricia Davies Wilson came to me. Do you know Patricia?"
"I've heard the name somewhere. Eleanor came to you?"
"Both of them did. Whistles to their lips."
"And who-at whom-did they wish to blow their whistles?"
"They seem to feel the villain is an Army officer named Castillo. Major Charley Castillo."
"His Christian name is Carlos."
"You know him?"
She nodded, and said, "If he's the same man. He was sent down here when our consul general, J. Winslow Masterson, was kidnapped."
"Sent by who-whom?"
"Our late President. Who then, after Jack Masterson was killed, put him in charge of getting Masterson's family safely home."
"Tell me about Major Castillo," Danton said.
"Tell you what, Roscoe. You tell me what you think you know about Castillo and if I can, I'll tell you if you're right."
"Nice try, Sylvia."
"Excuse me?"
"If I tell you what I know about this guy, then you will know how close I am to learning what you don't want to tell me about him."
"Roscoe, I am a public affairs officer. It is my duty to answer any questions you might pose to the best of my ability. Providing of course that my answers would not include anything that is classified."
"You ever hear what C. Harry Whelan has to say about public affairs officers such as yourself?"
She shook her head.
"Quote: Their function is not the dissemination of information but rather the containment thereof. They really should be called 'misinformation officers.' End quote."
"Oh, God! He's onto us! There is nothing left for me to do but to go home and slit my wrists."
He chuckled.
Sylvia made the time out signal with her hands.
"Can we go off the record, Roscoe?"
"Briefly."
"What exactly did Eleanor tell you?"
"I presume that 'off the record' means that you're not going to send an urgent message to Foggy Bottom telling Natalie Cohen what Eleanor told me."
"Girl Scout's honor."
"Okay. Actually, she didn't tell me much. She said I wouldn't believe what an evil man this guy Castillo is unless I found out myself. What she did was suggest that Castillo had stolen two Russian defectors from her when she was in Vienna. And then pointed me at Alexander Darby."
Sylvia looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then said, "Eleanor and I go back a long time-"
"Meaning you have taken Darby's place as the resident spook?"
She shook her head and raised her right arm as if swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her God.
"Meaning we go back a long time," she said. "Eleanor is very good at what she's done for all those years. If she says Charley Castillo stole two heavy Russian spooks from under her nose, that means there were two Russian spooks, and she believes Charley Castillo stole them."
"She said that it cost her her job."
"Stories like that are circulating, and I've heard them," Sylvia said. "What I can't figure is why Charley would do something like that unless someone-maybe even our late President-told him to. And I can't imagine why he brought them here."
"He brought Russian spooks here?"
"Ambassador Montvale thinks he did."
"How do you know that?"
"A friend of mine-you don't need to know who-was in the Rio Alba-that's a restaurant around the corner, magnificent steaks; you ought to make an effort to eat there-at a table near my ambassador's. He was having lunch with Montvale. Castillo walked in. Montvale told him all would be forgiven if he gave him the Russians. Castillo told him to attempt a physiologically impossible act of self-reproduction. Montvale threatened to have him arrested; he had a couple of Secret Service guys with him. Castillo said if the Secret Service made a move, they would be arrested by a couple of Gendarmeria Nacional-they're the local heavy cops-he had with him.
"The meeting adjourned to the embassy. I guess they were afraid someone might hear them talking. When the meeting was over, Montvale went to the airport without any Russians, got on his Citation Four, and flew back to Washington. Castillo walked out of the embassy and I haven't seen him since. Reminding you that we're off the record, my ambassador, who is a really good guy, thinks Castillo is a really good guy."
"Interesting."
"One more interesting thing: Right after we bombed whatever the hell it was we bombed in the Congo, a lot of people around here, including Alex Darby, suddenly decided to retire."
"What people?"
"No names. But a Secret Service guy, and a 'legal attache,' which is diplomat-speak for FBI agent, and even a couple of people in our embassies in Asuncion, Paraguay, and across the River Plate in Uruguay."
"Are you going to tell me where I can find Alexander Darby?"
"I don't know, and don't want to know, where he is. The last time I saw him was at Ezeiza."
"The airport?"
She nodded. "Alex is somebody else I've known for a long time. A really good guy. I drove him to the airport."
"He went home?"
She paused before replying: "Alex applied for, and was issued, a regular passport. I drove him to the airport. He left the country-went through immigration-on his diplomatic passport. Then he went back through the line and entered the country as a tourist on his regular passport. When he came out, he handed me-as an officer of the embassy-his dip's passport. Then I drove him to his apartment. I haven't seen him since."
"You going to tell me where that apartment is?"
"We're back on the record, Mr. Danton. I cannot of course violate Mr. Darby's privacy by giving you that information. I'm sure you understand."
"Of course. And thank you very much, Mizz Grunblatt."
"Anytime, Mr. Danton. We try to be of service."
"That's comforting."
"Did you ever hear what Winston Churchill said about journalists, Mr. Danton?"
"Can't say that I have."
"Churchill said, 'Journalists are the semiliterate cretins hired to fill the spaces between the advertisements.'"
"Oh, God! He's onto us! Now I suppose there's nothing left for me but to slash my wrists."
"That's a thought. Good morning, Mr. Danton." [FOUR] Apartment 32-B O'Higgins 2330 Belgrano Buenos Aires, Argentina 1505 5 February 2007 "I will miss the view," Alexander B. Darby-a small, plump man with a pencil-line mustache-said as he stood with Liam Duffy, Edgar Delchamps, and his wife, and gestured out the windows of the Darbys' apartment on the thirty-second floor. It occupied half of the top floor of the four-year-old building, high enough to overlook almost all of the other apartment buildings between O'Higgins and the River Plate.
"What you're supposed to be going to miss, you sonofabitch, is your loving wife and adorable children," Julia Darby-a trim woman who wore her black hair in a pageboy-said.