"Let me clarify that somewhat," Lorimer said. "Sadly, I did not have the same relationship with my son that Winslow Masterson enjoyed with his son Jack. I didn't particularly like Jean-Paul and he didn't like me. I doubt that Jean-Paul was involved in the illicit drug trade, not because he was my son and thus incapable of something like that, but because it's out of character for him."
He paused, then finished: "So, if he wasn't in the drug trade, Colonel, what was he doing that caused his murder?"
Castillo didn't reply.
"Please do me the courtesy, Colonel, of telling me 'I can't tell you' rather than 'I don't have any idea what you're talking about.'"
"I can't tell you, Mr. Ambassador."
"We are now at what is colloquially known as 'the deal breaker,'" Lorimer said. "You have your choice of telling me, which means I will listen to whatever else you have to say, or not telling me, which means our little chat is over, and Mrs. Lorimer and I will be on the first airplane we can catch to Uruguay. We've been imposing on the Mastersons' hospitality too long as it is."
"Mr. Ambassador, this information is classified Top Secret Presidential."
Lorimer didn't seem surprised.
"To me," Lorimer said simply, "that strongly suggests there has been a Presidential Finding."
Castillo didn't reply.
"I will take your silence to mean that there is a Presidential Finding and you don't have the authority to confirm that. Your choice, Colonel. Get on that satellite telephone and tell the secretary-or whoever has put you in your present predicament-that unless you are authorized to tell me about the Finding, the Lorimers are off to Estancia Shangri-La."
Well, what the hell!
If he goes down there-and there's no way I can stop him-the chances are that he'll do something-not on purpose-to compromise that operation, and thus the Presidential Finding.
And for some reason-which is probably foolish-I trust him.
He's a tough old bastard.
"I have that authority, Mr. Ambassador."
"And you're not going to tell me?"
"The President was at the air base in Biloxi when we returned from Argentina with Mr. Masterson's remains and his family. He informed me there that he had made a Finding. A covert and clandestine organization had been formed and charged with finding and rendering harmless those responsible for…"
Tapping the balls of his fingers together, Ambassador Lorimer considered for a good sixty seconds what Castillo had told him before raising his eyes to Castillo.
"So the ever-present silver lining is that Jean-Paul was not a drug dealer," he said. "Hell of a note when you're happy to hear your only son was just a thief from other thieves, not a drug dealer."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Ambassador."
"Why should you be sorry? From what I hear, you've been the knight in shining armor on a white horse in the whole sordid affair."
"That's not an accurate description, Mr. Ambassador."
"It's my judgment to make, Colonel," Lorimer said. "How much of what you have just told me does my daughter know?"
"Very little of it, sir. She doesn't have the need to know. I did tell her-and Mr. Masterson-that I was almost certain that the people who had murdered Mr. Masterson-"
"Were 'rendered harmless'?"
"Yes, sir."
"How can you be 'almost certain' of that?"
"You don't have the need to know that, sir."
"You wouldn't have told them that unless you were 'almost certain,' which means you weren't repeating what someone else had told you, but rather that you were personally involved."
Castillo didn't reply.
"All of this except for your possible concern that I would go down and somehow compromise the Presidential Finding-which is absurd-doesn't explain why you-and I mean you, not the secretary-don't want me to go to Uruguay."
"May I go off at a tangent for a moment, Mr. Ambassador?"
Lorimer nodded.
"I understand, sir, why you're anxious to…get out from under Mr. Masterson's hospitality-"
"Guests, as with fish, you know, begin to smell after three days."
"My grandfather was known to say that, often in more colorful terms," Castillo said. "Mr. Ambassador, what would it take to get you to go someplace-Paris, for example; Mr. Lorimer's apartment is there and available to you-for sixty days before you go to Uruguay?"
"The apartment is no longer available, Colonel. The man from the UN who brought me the check for Jean-Paul's death benefit-one hundred thousand euros-also brought with him an offer for Jean-Paul's apartment. Time and half what it was worth. They obviously wanted to make sure Jean-Paul was forgotten as soon as possible; now I know why."
"Mr. Ambassador, I am prepared to offer you fifty thousand dollars a month for two months to lease Estancia Shangri-La."
"Either that's your remarkably clumsy way of offering me a bribe to keep me away from the estancia-which raises again the unanswered question of why you don't want me down there-or you really want to lease the ranch, and that raises the really interesting question of why. What would you do with it?"
"I understand Phoenix, Arizona, is very nice this time of year, Mr. Ambassador."
"So is Bali, but I'm getting a little old for bare-breasted maidens in grass skirts. What do you want with the estancia, Colonel?"
"I'm running another operation down there, sir."
"You going to do it under the nose of this fellow McGrory again?"
Castillo nodded.
"I want to use it as a refueling point for several helicopters I want to get into Argentina."
"You mean get into Argentina black," Lorimer replied. He considered that a moment. "Okay. You're going to fly them off some ship in the middle of the night and under the radar, right? Refuel them in the middle of nowhere in Uruguay, and then on to Argentina?"
Castillo nodded.
"What's the operation?"
"We're going to try to get a DEA agent back from the drug dealers who kidnapped him."
"That sounds like a splendid idea," Lorimer said. "It also sounds like the DEA agent is not an ordinary DEA agent. We lose a lot of DEA agents in Mexico and all we do is wring our hands. We certainly don't send Special Forces teams in unmarked helicopters to get them back."
"This one's grandfather is a friend of the mayor of Chicago."
"That would make him special, wouldn't it? Okay, you can use the estancia, and I will forget that money you offered. If I remembered it, it would make me angry."
Castillo looked him in the eyes a long moment and said, "Thank you, sir."
"You're welcome. And now you can tell me the best way to get from the airport in Montevideo to Shangri-La. Rent a car? Buy one? How's the roads?"
Oh, shit!
I totally misread him…he's still determined to go.
"I can't talk you out of going down there, sir?"
"You didn't really expect that you could, did you?"
"I really hoped that I could."
Lorimer held up his hands in a gesture of mock sympathy.
"Look at it this way, Colonel," he said. "If I'm there-Jean-Paul's father, come to look after his inheritance-far fewer questions will be asked than if two or three men of military age showed up there by themselves and started hauling barrels of helicopter fuel onto the place."
Castillo didn't say anything.
"Don't look so worried. I didn't spend all my diplomatic career on the cocktail-party circuit."
"I'm sure you didn't, Mr. Ambassador."
"You ever hear of Stanleyville, in the ex-Belgian Congo?"
"Yes, sir."
"When the Belgians finally jumped their paratroops on it-out of USAF airplanes-to stop the cannibalism on the town square, we did things differently back then. We paid less attention to the sensitive nationalist feelings of the natives than to Americans in trouble. There I was on the airfield with two sergeants from the Army Security Agency who'd been running a radio station for me in the bush. We were waving American flags with one hand and.45s in the other."
Castillo shook his head in disbelief.