The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

"You'll have to excuse the robes, Mr. Castillo," Anna Pevsner said. "But my husband said he wasn't sure if you could come, and the children like to have a swim when they come from school."

"Well, I certainly don't want to interfere with that," Castillo said.

The six-year-old, Sergei, beamed at Castillo.

"I really hate to leave them alone in the pool," Anna said.

"Howard can watch them for a few minutes, darling," Pevsner said.

Kennedy came into the room.

"Howard, would you mind watching the children in the pool for a few minutes?"

"Not at all."

Howard is being banished from the conversation I'm about to have with Pevsner and his wife. What's going on?

The older two children, trailed by Kennedy, went out of the sitting room. Sergei marched up to Castillo, shook his hand, and ran after them.

"Nice kids, Alex," Castillo said.

"Thank you, Charley," Pevsner said, and then, as a younger maid-this one looked Argentine-came in with a tray holding glasses, a bottle of wine, and a large chrome corkscrew, said, "Ah, finally, the wine!"

"Why don't we sit down?" Anna asked, gesturing at the red-leather couch and armchairs.

Castillo sat in one of the armchairs. Anna sat on the couch, and Pevsner, after gesturing for the maid to put the tray on the coffee table, sat beside her and reached for the wine and corkscrew.

"Local wine," Pevsner said, "from a bodega near Mendoza, in the foothills of the Andes. Ever been to Mendoza, Charley?"

"Uh-huh. We have some friends there."

Pevsner poured the wine into enormous crystal glasses, handed one first to his wife, then one to Charley. Then he tapped his glass against Charley's.

"Welcome to our home, Charley," he said.

"Thank you."

Charley took a sip, and expressed his appreciation with a smile.

"Why do I think, Charley, that your curiosity is about to bubble over? 'What in hell is Alex doing here?'"

"Maybe you're reading my mind again," Castillo said.

"What we're doing, Charley, is hiding in the open," Pevsner said. "Aleksandr Pevsner, a Hungarian whose estates were seized by the communists, got everything back when freedom came, and then, having enough of both Hungarian winters and oppressive governments, sold everything and came to the New World to start life again. He invested his money in land and vineyards. Including this one, as a matter of fact." He tapped the wine bottle.

"Very clever," Castillo said.

"There's a tradition of that, you know, of

people running from what's going on in Europe to find peace in Argentina. There's a bona fide grand duke of the Austro-Hungarian empire-actually, his grandson, but he has taken the title and is pleased when I call him 'Your Grace'-in a little town called Maschwitz near here. He teases me that I have the same name as an infamous Russian scoundrel."

"Very clever," Castillo repeated.

"Think about it, Charley. Where could we live? In Russia? Russia is now not far from where it was before the 1917 revolution. Crime and corruption are rampant, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if communism-under another name, of course-came back. Anywhere in a Muslim country? I do business there, of course, but can you imagine Anna in an environment like that, not even allowed to drive a car? Living in constant fear that some Muslim fanatic will machine-gun her car because she's obviously an infidel? And while this may surprise you, there are people in Prague and Vienna and Budapest and Bucharest who don't like me."

"I'm shocked," Castillo said.

"There is corruption here, of course. And crime. The newspapers are full of stories of robbery and kidnapping. The result of that has been the development of what I call the country club culture. The upper classes live in places like this, and when they go to Buenos Aires, they frequently are accompanied by bodyguards-called 'security'-which raises no eyebrows whatever."