The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

"Yeah."

"Nobody at the embassy knows you?"

"I don't think so. I've never actually been inside the place."

Santini nodded, accepting that, and then answered the question:

"I would say Darby's tight with SIDE and Lowery's tight with the cops." He paused, and then asked, "What's going to happen if-when-they find out you're down here? Nosing around down here? I'm not going to say anything, but…"

"I really hope they don't. It would put Natalie Cohen on the spot with the ambassador for not telling him. She knows I'm down here, and why."

"You call the secretary of state by her first name?"

"No. I call her 'ma'am,'" Castillo said, but then added, smiling: "But she calls me Charley."

"Speaking of names, Joel said Gossinger's a beard."

"My name is really Castillo. Charley Castillo."

He put out his hand. Santini took it.

"Tony," he said, and then in Italian, "You don't look Italian."

Charley shook his head and replied, in Italian, "Half German and half Texan, heavy on the Hispanic heritage."

"You speak good Italian."

"Languages come pretty easy to me."

Santini nodded his acceptance of this, then asked, "How good a cover? If SIDE develops an interest in you, they'll check. They're pretty good at that."

"It'll hold up. Gossinger, who works for a German newspaper, the Tages Zeitung, is here to do a human-interest story on the survivors of the Graf Spee. If my editor at the Tages Zeitung hasn't already told the German embassy I'm here and said I would appreciate all courtesies, he will soon."

Santini looked at him a moment.

"Okay, so you speak Spanish, you've been here, you've got what sounds like a pretty good cover. But I still don't know how you can do what you're supposed to do without going to the embassy."

"I didn't say I wasn't going to go to the embassy. Charley Castillo's not going to the embassy."

"You're pretty good at this undercover business? Playingmake-believe? You could get away with playing Gossinger at the embassy?"

"Why not?"

"Can I make a suggestion?"

"I'm wide open."

"Even if they swallow you whole at the embassy as Herr Gossinger, they're not going to tell you anything. For one thing, it hasn't been in the papers or on the tube. The Argentines are embarrassed, and they put a lid on the story. We're not talking about it to the Americans-not the newspaper, not the New York Times, nobody. The Argentines are hoping that when the bad guys find out they've got a dip's wife they'll turn her loose, and the whole thing can be forgotten. Personally, I think they're pissing in the wind, but that's where it is right now. So if Herr Gossinger goes to the embassy and starts answering questions, Lowery and everybody else are going to wonder how the hell Herr Gossinger heard about it."

"I hope Joel told you I wasn't sent here because I was the best-qualified man all around to conduct an undercover kidnapping investigation."

"Joel said you had two skills: you were one hell of a swordsman and pretty good about stealing stolen air-liners back from the bad guys."

"He didn't mention my poker playing?"

"No," Santini said, smiling. "But figure that out. If he told me that, he would be admitting you took him."

"Joel has one flaw in his character," Charley said. "He actually thinks he can play poker."