The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

Jesus, when you hear somebody's been snatched, you never think of the kids! What a rotten fucking way to make an easy buck, grabbing a kid's mother!

And here I am making nice watching Alex looking into his pizza oven.

There's nothing I could do in Buenos Aires, so why am I feeling guilty?

"Lost in thought, Charley?"

Castillo turned to see Howard Kennedy holding a glass of wine.

He had disappeared from the swimming pool when Castillo and Anna Pevsner had gone out to it, and he hadn't been around since.

"I was wondering what the Masterson kids are having for supper tonight," Castillo said.

"The kids of the wom…?"

Castillo nodded.

"Alex is working on it," Kennedy said. "There should be something soon."

"Jesus, I hope so. What's the penalty for kidnapping here? Do you know?"

"Not for sure, but I do know there's no death penalty period, and the average sentence for murder is fifteen years, which means they're on the street in seven-to-ten."

The Russian-speaking maid marched into the quincho with the now-baked pizza, and Alex Pevsner supervised her slicing of it with an enormous butcher knife. Pevsner was called to the telephone three times as they ate their supper-the pizza was followed by steaks and foil-wrapped potatoes from the parrilla; Castillo was stuffed-each time taking the call in a small closet with a small window through which Castillo could see him talking.

It reminded Charley of the "phone booth" off General Naylor's conference room at CentCom headquarters in Tampa, where the secure telephone was located.

Pevsner returned to the table without saying anything the first two times, but when he came out of the closet the third time, he signaled for Charley to come with him.

They walked thirty feet or so away from the quincho.

"I don't have anything for you, Charley, I'm sorry. This last call was from someone who knows the important people at SIDE… you know SIDE?"

Charley nodded.

"And if anybody knew anything, SIDE would. And they're looking hard. The pressure is on them."

"Well, thanks for the effort," Charley said.

"I'll keep trying," Pevsner said, then, "All of my sources believe this is not an ordinary kidnapping. My source with connections to the Policia Federal and the Gendarmeria said that they've hauled in for questioning everybody even suspected of being involved in kidnappings, and they came up with nothing." He paused and then asked, "Did this fellow actually get fifty million dollars after a truck ran over him?"

"Sixty million," Charley said.

"The kidnappers may not be Argentine. They might even be American."

"Yeah," Charley agreed, thoughtfully.

I'll put that thought in my e-mail to Hall. It's the only wild idea about this that didn't come up in that brainstorming session at the embassy.

Why e-mail? I'll be up all night if I start swapping e-mails with Hall. And Darby made it clear that he's going to blow my cover to the ambassador tomorrow anyway. It'd be better to get on the horn.

He took his cellular out and pressed an autodial number. He had the phone to his ear before he considered the genuine possibility that there might not be cellular service out here in the country.

"Darby."

"Charley Castillo. I want to get on a secure line to Washington. Can you do that for me?"

"I can, but there's the problem of you being just a Secret Service agent, and there would be questions."