The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“I really should not be playing James Bond with you as much as I have been.”

“And is the rest of the sentence ‘and I won’t in the future’?”

“Hey, Gringo. You need me, I’m there. You know that. But I have Maria and the kids and Abuela to think of.”

“Touché.”

“All I’m saying is you now have people working for you. Please don’t call me unless you really need me.”

“Done.”

“And you need an airplane. Maybe not that G-III, but an airplane. A bigger one than the Lear. And not just because Maria and Abuela are not only going to smell a rat if you keep using the Lear but are going to start nosing around. Neither of us wants that.”

“You’re right. So to hell with Grandpa’s advice. Let’s hope Smiley calls you tonight instead of tomorrow.”

“I don’t like the way you’re agreeing with me so easily.”

“What should I do, agree with you hardly? You’re right, Fernando, it’s as simple as that. I wasn’t thinking.”

“You’re making me feel like a shit, you know that?”

“What I was just thinking was how lucky I am to have you as my brother.”

“I’m not your brother, Cuz.”

“If you won’t tell, I won’t.”

“What I want from you, Gringo, is your word that when you need me you’ll call me.”

“Done.”

“No rest for the weary,” Dick Miller now said over the phone. “You never heard that?”

“Something specific?” Castillo asked.

“Well, how about the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security sticking his head in the door and saying, ‘I really hate to do this to him, but I think you better get Charley on the horn and tell him to get back here as soon as he can.’”

“Well, that’s certainly specific enough. Did he say why?”

“No. But it may have something to do with General Naylor having called him five minutes before—they put that call on your line by mistake.”

“I wonder what he wants?”

“Or it may have something to do with our new liaison officer,” Miller said.

“Our new what?”

“Ambassador Montvale has been kind enough to assign a liaison officer to the Office of Organizational Analysis. He was here first thing this morning, just bubbling over with enthusiasm to get right to work liaising things.”

“That’s the last thing we need! Montvale’s surrogate’s nose in our business.”

“Or it may have something to do with what Mr. Ellsworth—our new liaison officer’s name is Truman C. Ellsworth—brought with him when he came over this morning to start liaising.”

“Which is?”

“This isn’t even classified. It’s just a standard interoffice memorandum from the director of National Intelligence to the chief of the Office of Organizational Analysis. It says that he thought you might be interested to know that he has learned from, quote, Central Intelligence Agency officers in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, end quote, that a man named Bertrand who was murdered in the course of a robbery in Uruguay has been tentatively identified as really being a UN diplomat named Lorimer and that Mr. Lorimer was the brother-in-law of the late J. Winslow Masterson.”

“That’s interesting, isn’t it?” Castillo said. “Did the memo say anything about who might have robbed or murdered this man?”