“You sure you can get one? And is the Tages Zeitung going to have to pay for it?”
“I’m sure I can get one. The CIA owns the taxi service and Ambassador Montvale told them I go to the head of the line. And, no, the Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund will pay for it.”
“Get two seats,” Otto said.
Castillo looked at him curiously.
“You’re right. Eric’s story was a little too detailed,” Görner said. “He said he fell over his dog going down the stairs. If he had fallen over that goddamned dog, he wouldn’t have told me. In fact, if he’d fallen down, period, he wouldn’t have told me. Now I really want to know what’s going on.”
“This is Colonel Castillo,” Charley said to the telephone. “I’m in Fulda, Germany, and I—and one other—have to get to Budapest as soon as possible. How’s the best way to do that?”
Thirty seconds later, he put down the phone.
“Our taxi will be at Leipzig-Halle in ninety minutes,” he said.
[TWO]
Office of the Ambassador
The Embassy of the United States of America
Lauro Miller 1776
Montevideo, República Oriental del Uruguay
1005 6 August 2005
“There’s something going on around here, Robert,” Ambassador McGrory said to Robert Howell, “that has the smell of rotten eggs and you and I are going to get to the bottom of it.”
“I’m not sure that I know what you mean, Mr. Ambassador.”
“I really would have thought, Robert,
that someone in your line of business would be curious about Mr. Yung. His being suddenly called to the States and then coming back here to handle the Lorimer matter.”
“I admit I wondered about that,” Howell said.
“It could, of course, have just happened. But I don’t think so.”
“What do you think it is, Mr. Ambassador?”
“That, I don’t know. That is what you and I are going to find out,” McGrory said.
“What is it you would like me to do, sir?”
“So long as he’s here, I want you to keep a very close eye on him. I want to know where he goes, who he talks to, etcetera. I suspect he has some connection with what happened at that estancia and I want to know what that connection is.”
“Is there some reason you think he has…‘some connection’…with what happened at Estancia Shangri-La?”
“Intuition,” McGrory said. “When you have been in this game as long as I have, you develop an intuition.”
“I’m sure that’s true, Mr. Ambassador.”
“So I want you to watch him very closely.”
Howell nodded. I think I have just become the fox placed in charge of the chicken coop.
“Yung will be here in few minutes,” McGrory said. “I want you to be here when I talk to him.”