The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

"How'd you wind up here?"

"I was born here. One day, maybe, I'll tell you how my mother and father got here. And my wife's parents."

"Okay."

She's not drugged. She's making decisions. She's lying.

Munz changed his mind.

"You ever hear of the Gehlen Organization?"

Castillo nodded. Immediately after World War II, a German general staff officer, Reinhardt Gehlen, who had been in charge of "Eastern Intelligence," had gone to the Americans and offered to turn over not only his files, but his entire intelligence network-which included, among other things of great intelligence value, in-place spies in the Soviet Army and in Moscow.

His price was that none of his officers be tried as Nazis, and that the Americans arrange to get their families out of Germany to somewhere safe-like South America, Argentina being preferred-with their husbands to join them later.

The deal was struck.

When Castillo had first heard the story, as a West Point cadet, he had been fascinated. He had wondered then who had made the decision to deal with Gehlen; it had to have been someone really senior. If the story had gotten out, there would have been a political eruption.

He had been trying ever since-and for years he had held security clearances that gave him access to a great deal of heavily classified files-to find out more. He hadn't learned much. The conclusion he had drawn, without any proof whatsoever, was that the decision to deal with Gehlen had been made by President Harry S Truman himself, probably at the recommendation of General Eisenhower, who at the time was commander in chief in Europe. Almost as soon as Roosevelt had died, and Truman had started dealing with the Soviet Union, he had recognized the Soviet threat. "My mother came here in 1946, and my father in 1950," Munz went on. "He became one of the few civilian instructors at the military academy. When he died several years ago, he was buried here quite close to a man named Hans von Langsdorff. That name ring a bell?"

"The Graf Spee captain," Castillo said.

Why is he telling me this?

To let me know he's one of the good guys?

Maybe Darby has him in his pocket, and he wants me to know?

Or maybe he wants me to think that he's muy simpatico, and I will thereafter regard him as a pal and tell him things I shouldn't.

Well, I don't have time to stay here and play games with him.

"When Mr. Darby comes out of there, would you ask him to give me a call? I don't see any point in hanging around here."

"Certainly," Munz said. [FIVE] Room 1550 The Four Seasons Hotel Cerrito 1433 Buenos Aires, Argentina 1035 23 July 2005 "Why don't we go in the bar and get you a cup of coffee while you're waiting for me?" Castillo said to the sergeant as they entered the hotel lobby.

"We're back to the ambassador saying I'm not supposed to let you out of my sight."

"I need thirty minutes out of your sight," Castillo said. "If you think you have to, Sergeant, call the ambassador and tell him I said that. Otherwise, your waiting in the bar will be our little secret."

"I would say, 'Yes, sir,' but you told me not to. Just don't take off on me, please? That would put my ass in a crack."

"I'll be down in thirty minutes, maybe a little less," Castillo said.

He walked the sergeant into the bar, got a bar tab, signed it-making sure the sergeant didn't see the Gossinger signature-and then rode the elevator to his room.

There was no fax press release from the embassy for Herr Gossinger waiting in his room; nor, when he called, was it waiting downstairs to be delivered. He wondered if Ms. Sylvia Grunblatt had overlooked sending it, or had intentionally not done so. Castillo knew that that didn't matter right now. He got out his laptop computer, and, working from his memory of the press release, wrote the story of the murdered diplomat, and then e-mailed it to Otto Goerner at the Tages Zeitung. He thought about calling him immediately, but decided that he might not read it right away, and that he would call him after he talked to Pevsner.

Alex Pevsner answered Kennedy's cellular on the second buzz.

"?Hola?"

"That you, Alex?"

"I heard what happened about thirty minutes ago. I thought you would call, and I knew you didn't have the number here, so I asked Howard for his cellular. I should have given the number to you. How is Mrs. Masterson?"

"You heard about that, too?" Castillo replied, and then went on without waiting for an answer. "They doped her-bupivacaine, I'm told-and she doesn't seem to remember much of what happened."