The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

"I borrowed it from a friend."

"Sure."

Kennedy looked at him and smiled, but didn't respond directly. He handed Charley's cellular back to him.

"I'd love to push the autodial buttons on that, and see who answers."

"Who do you think might answer?"

"They call the FBI guys in embassies 'legal attaches,' I guess you know."

"Cross my heart and hope to die," Castillo responded, "none of the autodial buttons will call the FBI. I don't even know anybody in the FBI here. As a matter of fact, I just learned they don't even have an FBI detachment, or whatever, at the embassy. What about your buttons?"

Kennedy didn't reply directly to that, either. Instead, he said, "So what's on your agenda right now? Can I drop you someplace?"

"I'm going to the embassy."

"It's right on my way. I'll drop you."

"On your way to where?"

"The King Faisal Islamic Center. It's just a couple of blocks from the embassy."

"I have a hard time picturing you touching your forehead to the floor in prayer."

"It's business, Charley. Just business."

"Isn't that the line the Mafia uses, just before they shoot people?"

"Would that the Arabs were as easy to deal with as the Mafia," Kennedy said, and stood up. He took a wad of money from his pocket and dropped several bills on the table. "You want a ride or not?"

A black Mercedes-Benz S500 with heavily darkened windows was waiting for Kennedy when he came through the revolving door. A large man who looked vaguely familiar got quickly out of the front passenger seat and opened the rear door.

"You remember Herr Gossinger, don't you, Frederic?" Kennedy said.

"Guten morgen, Herr Gossinger," the man said without expression.

The last time I saw you was in Vienna. I pegged you as either Hungarian or Czech, but what the hell. It all used to be Austria.

"Gruss Gott!" Charley said, trying to sound as Viennese as possible.

Kennedy got quickly in the backseat, and Charley slid in after him. [TWO] The United States Embassy Avenida Colombia 4300 Buenos Aires, Argentina 0905 22 July 2005 As Kennedy's Mercedes turned off Avenida Libertador, Castillo could see both the American embassy and the ambassador's residence, a large, vaguely European-looking mansion fronting on Libertador. A large, armored, blue Policia Federal van was parked on the street across from it, but Charley couldn't see any police.

The embassy sat a block away, overlooking a park, behind both a steel picket fence and a half circle of highway-divider concrete barricades. It was unquestionably American, he thought somewhat unpatriotically.

Another building-the embassies in London and Montevideo come to mind-built to the pattern that should have won the architect the opposite of the Pritzker Prize: one for designing the Ugliest Office Buildings of the Century.

The only thing that keeps people from confusing that drab concrete oblong with a misplaced airport warehouse is that the gray walls are perforated with neat rows of square inset windows.

There are probably a thousand roadside Marriott or Hilton motels that are better-looking and look American. Why the hell couldn't they have used brick, and thrown in a couple of columns? Made it look a little like Monticello, or even the White House?

The intensity of his reaction surprised him.

Why am I pissed?

Fatigue? Hangover?

Being sent down here to do something I have no idea how to do?