The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“So what? There’s not going to be an open-casket viewing. Who’ll know?”

“I will.”

“Yung, you’re something!” Howell said. He said it with admiration.

Yung had thought of the admiration in Howell’s voice on the flight back to Montevideo.

And of other things:

Artigas no longer thinks of me as a jerk, either. I told myself I didn’t give a damn what the other FBI guys thought of me before all this happened. I was doing my job and doing it well, even if I couldn’t let them know.

But I guess the truth is, I did mind.

And now, after I’m gone, instead of remembering me as the little Chink who was a flaming pain in the ass they’ll wonder.

Artigas won’t tell them what he suspects happened at the estancia, but they will all conclude that I was somehow involved in something important that they don’t know about.

And Castillo, too. He didn’t make much of a secret that he thought I was some sort of FBI goody-goody. The only reason he sent me back down here is that I was the only one who could hide the tracks of that sixteen million he made off with.

But he was right about that, too. I can never go back to the FBI. They gave me sort of a pass on being close to Howard Kennedy before he changed sides, sending me to Uruguay for the State Department.

But they won’t give me another pass after this. They’re going to want to know everything I know about Castillo, and since I won’t—couldn’t even if I wanted to—tell them anything about a Presidential Finding mission that’ll be it. I really would, like Castillo said, wind up investigating parking meter fraud in Kansas for the rest of my career.

Working for Castillo—the Office of Organizational Analysis—now that I think about it, won’t be as bad as I originally thought.

It would seem, really, that I have a talent for that sort of thing. I would have given odds that I would have broken out in a cold sweat when I saw where I dropped that Ninja. I didn’t.

The sonofabitch had a submachine gun he would have used on me if I hadn’t blown him away. Why should I feel guilty about taking him down?

Castillo may not be thrilled about having me. Okay. But he’s stuck with me. All I’ll have to do is play my cards right and eventually he’ll accept me. I can do a lot for OOA. They need somebody like me. And they know when something goes down, I can hold my own. I proved it.

Fuck the FBI!

“You want to get a drink somewhere?” Artigas asked as they walked from the helicopter to their cars.

All of their cars were parked nose up against the Policía Federal hangar. Howell had picked up Artigas that morning and driven him to the airport. Both lived in apartments not far from the embassy on the Rambla. Ordóñez had met them at the airport. Yung had driven to the airport in his own car from his apartment in Carrasco.

“My ass is dragging,” Yung replied. “I’m going to get in a shower and then go to bed. I’ll see you at the embassy about nine, okay?”

“Your call. Goodnight, Dave,” Artigas said, touched Yung’s shoulder, and opened the passenger’s door of Howell’s car.

“Thanks for everything, Ordóñez,” Yung said. “I really appreciate all you’ve done.”

“Di nada, mi amigo,” Ordóñez said. “I’ll probably see you tomorrow.”

“Absolutely.”

And you won’t learn anything more tomorrow than you did today.

Yung put the Louis Vuitton suitcase in the backseat of his Chevy Blazer and got behind the wheel.

It was a ten-minute drive from the airport to Yung’s apartment.

He lived in a three-story building, two apartments to a floor, on Avenida Bernardo Barran. All the apartments had balconies overlooking the beach. He thought his—the right-hand apartment on the third floor—had the best view, and he thought that he would probably miss the apartment when he was back living in D.C., where the rents were astronomical and he couldn’t afford anything this nice.

Well, fuck it. Maybe working for Castillo, I won’t be spending all that much time in Washington.

The garage was in the basement of the building. There was a clicker-activated solenoid that opened the steel-mesh door most of the time when you pushed the button after you pulled off the street and into the steeply slanted driveway.