The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

He felt a sense of relief when the Traffik turned off Avenida Arribeños, crossed the sidewalk, and almost immediately disappeared from sight down a steep ramp into a basement garage.

Castillo spotted surveillance cameras in the garage and another in the elevator, and still another when the elevator opened onto a foyer on the sixteenth floor. He had just decided that the cameras in the basement and elevator were connected with the apartment building’s security system but that the one in the foyer might not be when he spotted a third lens hidden in the tack of a prancing-stallion wall decoration.

That one goes to a monitor inside the apartment.

The door from the foyer was steel. Sieno unlocked it by punching in a series of numbers on a small numerical keyboard. When Sieno pulled the door open, Castillo was surprised to see another steel door behind it, and even more surprised when that door opened inward, revealing a trim, pale, freckled redhead in a white blouse and blue jeans who smiled and said, “Welcome!”

Everyone filed inside.

“Gentlemen, this is my wife, Susanna,” Sieno said, and then, pointing, “Susanna, this is Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, and, of course, you know Ricardo.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you all,” she said. “How are you, Ricardo?”

Sieno smiled and said, “I was hoping the boss would be here before we got here, so he could make the introductions.”

“I’m a little surprised that your wife is here,” Castillo said

, not very pleasantly.

“Well, she both lives here and works here,” Sieno said. “Another reason I was hoping the boss would get here before we did, so he could explain that.”

“Why don’t I get us all some coffee while we’re waiting?” Mr. Sieno said.

“Paul, why would I not be surprised to learn your charming wife has a security clearance—clearances—not normally given to diplomats’ wives?” Castillo said.

“Actually, she has several. Some with names.”

“Issued here? Or?”

“In Virginia, as a matter of fact,” Mr. Sieno said.

“I’ve heard of husband-and-wife teams,” Castillo said. “But this is the first one I’ve ever actually met.”

“We’re double-dippers,” Susanna Sieno said. “The rule is that both can get paid only if both were field officers before they marched down the aisle.”

Castillo smiled at her and then said, “Okay. Let me make if official. Anything that you hear here or see here, Mr. Sieno, is classified Top Secret Presidential.”

“I understand.”

Castillo thought: Only a Langley chairwarmer who’s never been in the field would be naïve enough to think that Sieno hasn’t told her—she’s not only his wife but a working spook—everything that’s happened from the moment Mr. Masterson was grabbed.

Including that a hotshot named Castillo showed up down here and started giving everybody, including the station chief, orders.

That’s why she told me she was a double-dipper, a spook herself, not just married to one.

“That being understood between us, I’m Charley Castillo. This is Colonel Jake Torine, my cousin Fernando Lopez, Sándor Tor, and Eric Kocian.”

“And that is Max,” Billy Kocian said in English as he walked to her and—some what startling her—took and kissed the hand she extended to him. “It is my great pleasure, madam.”

There was the sound of door chimes playing a melody as if one chime didn’t work.

“That’s probably the boss,” Susanna Sieno said. “The chimes go off when somebody pushes the clicker for the garage door.”

She turned and opened what looked like a closet door. Behind the door was a bank of monitors. One showed a Jeep Cherokee waiting for the door to the basement garage to open. Others showed the garage, the elevator, the foyer outside, the lobby, the sidewalks outside, and several antennae on the roof.

Eric Kocian’s eyebrows rose but he said nothing.

One of the monitors showed the Jeep Cherokee pulling into a slot in the garage. Alex Darby got out. A monitor showed him unloading a large duffel bag that looked like it contained heavy metal objects—like guns—and walking toward the elevator.