The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Yung just came onto the compound, Mr. Ambassador,” Señora Susanna Obregon reported from Ambassador McGrory’s office door.

“When he gets up here, make him wait five minutes and then show him in,” McGrory replied, and then added: “And don’t give him any coffee.”

He looked significantly at Howell.

“Making Special Agent Yung twiddle his thumbs for a while, Robert, will make the point that his being on the personal staff of the secretary or not, I am the senior officer of the United States government here.”

“I understand, sir.”

Fifteen minutes later, when Yung had not appeared, McGrory was about to reach for his telephone to find out where the hell he was when Señora Obregon stepped into his office, closed the door behind her, and asked, “Mr. Yung just came in. What shall I do with him?”

“Ask him to wait, please,” Ambassador McGrory replied and held up his hand, fingers and thumb extended, to remind her of how many minutes he wanted Yung to wait.

He then punched a button on his chronometer wristwatch, starting the timer.

“The ambassador will see you now, Mr. Yung,” McGrory’s secretary announced.

Yung got up off the chrome-and-plastic couch, laid on the coffee table the Buenos Aires Herald he had been reading, and walked to McGrory’s door.

“Good morning, Mr. Ambassador.”

“Welcome back to Uruguay, Yung,” the ambassador said, waving him first into the room, then into one of the chairs facing his desk. “You know Mr. Howell, of course?”

“Yes, sir. Good to see you, Mr. Howell.”

“May I offer you some coffee?” McGrory asked.

“Thank you, sir.”

McGrory flipped the switch on his intercom and ordered coffee.

“Long flight?” McGrory inquired as they waited.

“It didn’t seem as long, sir, as the ride from Ezeiza to Jorge Newbery. The piqueteros had the highway blocked. It took the taxi two hours to get downtown, moving five meters at a time.”

That was more information than McGrory wanted or needed.

“Well, you know the pickets,” he said. “Closing highways and bridges gives them something to do.”

“Yes, sir. I suppose that’s so.”

Señora Obregon served the coffee. McGrory waited until she had left the office, then asked, “I understand, Yung, that when you were here before you weren’t doing exactly what everyone—including Mr. Howell and I—thought you were doing.”

Yung didn’t reply.

“What, exactly, were you doing?” McGrory said, pointedly.

“With the exception, sir, that I was responding to specific requests for information from the State Department and answering those queries directly to the department rather than through the embassy, I was looking into money laundering like every other FBI agent here.”

“Why do you suppose that was necessary? And that I was not informed?”

“Sir, I have no idea. I’m pretty low on the totem pole. That’s what I was told to do and I did it.”

“Who told you to do it?”

“Mr. Quiglette,” Yung said, simply.