The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

All that remained was to pack his briefcase, which also came with wheels and was large enough for his laptop computer. This was somewhat more difficult as it required carefully separating a section of the padding from the frame. Inside was a ten-by-thirteen-inch plastic folder. There was a sticky surface to keep things from sliding around, and the folder material itself was designed to confuse X-ray machines. Castillo carefully arranged his American passport; his U.S. Army identification card; C. G. Castillo's Gold American Express and Gold Visa credit cards; his Texas driver's license; and credentials identifying him as a supervisory special agent of the U.S. Secret Service on the sticky surface, closed the folder, and then replaced the padding.

He then went into the small dining area, and from a small refrigerator concealed in a credenza, took out a bottle of Dos Equis beer, popped the top, took a healthy swallow from the neck, burped, and then went into the living room, where he sat down in a red leather recliner-his, not the hotel's-shifted his weight so that it opened, and reached for the telephone.

He punched in a number from memory, took another sip of the Dos Equis, and then lay back in the chair as he waited for the call to be completed.

The general director of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., who was also the editor-in-chief of one of its holdings, the Tages Zeitung newspapers, answered his private line twenty seconds later.

"Goerner."

"Wie geht's, Otto?" Castillo said.

"Ach, der verlorene Sohn."

"Well, you may think of me as the prodigal son," Castillo said, switching to English, "but I like to think of myself as one of your more distinguished foreign correspondents."

"Distinguished, I don't know. But I'll go with most expensive."

Castillo thought of Otto Goerner as his oldest friend, and he certainly was that. Otto had been at Philipps University in Marburg an der Lahn with Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, Karl's uncle, and had been with the Tages Zeitung since their graduation. He had been around der Haus im Wald in Bad Hersfeld, as Uncle Otto, as far back as Castillo could remember. He remembered, too, the very early morning when Otto had brought the news of her father's and brother's death to his mother.

And how, when his mother had told him they had located his father's family and he would probably- "after"-be going to them in the United States, he had thrown a hysterical fit, demanding that he be allowed- "after"-to live with Uncle Otto.

And how, at the airport in Frankfurt, tears had run unashamedly down Otto's cheeks when he'd seen him off to the States. And how he had been a friend ever since. "How's ol' Whatsername and the kids?"

"Ol' Whatsername and your godchildren are doing very well, thank you for asking. To what do I owe the honor?"

"I'm off to Buenos Aires on a story, and I thought I'd see if there was anything else you wanted me to do down there."

"Can't think of anything, Karl," Otto said.

Goerner didn't ask what story Castillo would be pursuing in Argentina.

He's the opposite of a fool, Charley thought for the hundredth time, and without any question knows what I do for a living. But he never asks and I never tell him. All he does is give me what I ask for.

"I won't be gone long," Charley said. "Probably less-"

"Yeah, come to think of it, Karl, I do," Goerner interrupted.

"Okay, shoot." Karl Gossinger, the Tages Zeitung's Washington-based foreign correspondent, usually had a bylined story in the paper once a week. These were generally paraphrased- stolen-from the American Conservative magazine. There was a dual purpose. First, if someone checked on Gossinger, there was his picture, beside his latest story from Washington. And if they looked closer, the mast-head said the Tages Zeitung was founded by Hermann von und zu Gossinger in 1817. Using material from the American Conservative, moreover, gave Charley Castillo a chance to put before German readers what some Americans-including Charley-thought about the Germans turning their backs on America when the United States asked for their help in the Iraq war.

Editing only for grammar, Otto printed whatever Charley sent him without comment. Charley didn't know, or ask, whether this was because Otto agreed the Germans had behaved badly, or because the bottom line was that Charley owned the newspapers. "The Graf Spee," Goerner said.

Charley knew the story of the Graf Spee: The German pocket battleship, named after a World War I German hero, was scuttled just outside the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1939, to keep her from being sunk by three British cruisers waiting for her to come out. Her crew went to Buenos Aires. Her captain, Hans von Langsdorff, put on his dress uniform, laid her battle ensign on the floor of his hotel room, positioned himself so that his body would fall on it, and shot himself in the temple. He was buried in Buenos Aires.

The crew was interned in Argentina. When the war was over, many of her crew declined repatriation. And many of those who did return to the fatherland took one look at the destroyed remnants of the Thousand Year Reich and went back to Argentina as quickly as they could.

"What about the Graf Spee?" Charley asked.

"A fellow named Bardo-a young and very rich financier from Hamburg-has raised the money to salvage her and turn her into a museum in Montevideo. I could use a human-interest piece on the survivors, if any-they'd all be in their eighties. And most of them would be in Argentina."

Finding the survivors-if any-shouldn't be hard. And neither would taking some pictures and writing a feature story. And it would give journalist Gossinger a credible excuse to be in Argentina.

"I'll have a shot at it," Charley said. "Anything else?"

Goerner hesitated before replying.

"Karl, I'm a little reluctant to get into this…"

"Into what?"