They were passing a Carrefour, a French-owned supermarket chain. Masterson, who had served a tour as a junior consular officer in the Paris embassy, and thought he had learned something of the French, refused to shop there.
"You're right," Masterson said, just as the driver laid heavily on the horn.
There came a violent push to the side of the BMW, immediately followed by the sound of tearing and crushing metal. The impact threw Darby and Masterson violently against their seat belts.
There came another crash, this one from the rear, and again they felt the painful pressure of the restraints.
The driver swore in rapid-fire Spanish.
"Jesus Christ!" Masterson exploded, as he tried to sit straight in his seat.
"You all right, Jack?" Darby asked.
"Yeah, I think so," Masterson said. "Jesus Christ! Again! These goddamn crazy Argentine drivers!"
"Take it easy," Darby said, quickly scanning the situation outside their windows with the practiced eye of a spook.
Masterson tried to open the door. It wouldn't budge.
"We'll have to get out your side, Alex," he said.
"That's not going to be easy," Darby said, gesturing toward the flow of traffic on the street.
The driver got out of the car, stepped into the flow of traffic, and held up his hand like a policeman. Masterson thought idly that the driver had probably started his career as a traffic cop.
A policeman ran up. The driver snapped something at him, and the policeman took over the job of directing traffic. The driver came back to the car, and Darby and Masterson got out.
Masterson saw the pickup that had first struck them was backing away fr
om them. It was a four-door Ford F-250 pickup with a massive set of stainless steel tubes mounted in front of the radiator. He thought first that the tubes-which were common on pickup trucks to push other vehicles out of the mud on country roads- were probably going to have a minor scratch or two and the BMW was probably going to need a new door and a new rear body panel.
Then he saw the car, a Volkswagen Golf, that had hit them from the rear. The right side of the windshield was shattered. He went quickly to the passenger door and pulled it open. A young man, well-dressed, was sitting there, looking dazed, holding his fingers to his bloody forehead.
Masterson had an unkind thought: If you didn't think seat belts were for sissies, you macho sonofabitch, your head wouldn't have tried to go through the windshield.
He waved his fingers before the man's eyes. The man looked at him with mingled curiosity and annoyance.
"Let's get you out of there, senor," Masterson said in fluent Spanish. "I think it would be better for you to lie down."
He saw that the driver was an attractive young woman-probably Senor Macho's wife; Argentine men don't let their girlfriends drive their cars for fear it will make them look unmanly-who looked dazed but didn't seem to be hurt. She was wearing her seat belt, and the airbag on the steering wheel had deployed.
"Alex," Masterson called, "get this lady out of here."
Then he pulled his cloth handkerchief from his pants pocket, pressed it to the man's bleeding forehead, and placed the man's right hand to hold it.
"Keep pressure on it," Masterson said as he helped the man out of the Volkswagen and to the curb. He got him to sit, then asked, "Need to lie down?"
"I'm all right," the man said. "Muchas gracias."
"You're sure? Nothing's broken?"
The man moved his torso as if testing for broken bones, and then smiled wanly.
Alex Darby led the young woman to the curb. She saw the man and the bloody handkerchief, sucked in her breath audibly, and dropped to her knees to comfort him.
It was an intimate moment. Masterson looked away.
The big Ford truck that had crashed into them was disappearing into the Carrefour parking lot.