The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“What’s wrong with the avionics in it?”

“On a scale of one to ten, they’re maybe one-point-five.”

“I was assured they were the best available.”

“Write this down, Alek. Never trust someone selling used cars or aircraft.”

“You’re saying I was cheated?”

His eyes are cold again.

“Of course not,” Castillo said, chuckling. “Everyone knows you can’t cheat an honest man. All I’m saying is that you don’t have the best available and, as a small token of my gratitude for past courtesies, now you do.”

Pevsner looked at him and smiled.

“What is it they say down here? Beware of Americans bearing gifts?”

A tall, trim woman with her hair done up in a long pigtail came into the room.

“What a pleasant surprise, Charley!” she exclaimed, in Russian.

Castillo stood and kissed her cheek.

“It’s nice to see you, Anna,” he said. “Alek saw me on the street, saw that I was starving, and offered me breakfast.”

“Actually, he accosted me in the men’s room of the ESSO service station just past the hospital,” Pevsner said.

She looked at her husband, then at Castillo.

“I never know when he’s teasing,” she said.

“Neither do I,” Castillo said.

“Regardless of where you met, I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “And so far as breakfast is concerned, how about American pancakes with tree syrup?”

“Maple syrup, maybe?”

“Maple syrup,” she confirmed. “They bleed trees to make it?”

“Indeed they do.”

“There’s an American boy—actually, there’s several—in Aleksandr’s class at Saint Agnes’s. They sometimes spend the night together, at the boy’s house or here. They served Aleksandr pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. He couldn’t get enough. So that’s what they gave him for his birthday present. A bag of the flour”—she demonstrated the size of a five-pound bag with her hands—“and a liter can of the syrup.”

“How nice for Aleksandr.”

“And, of course, Alek’s curiosity got the best of him and…”

“Tell me about bleeding the tree,” Pevsner said.

“Actually, they tap it. Maple trees. In the winter, when it’s cold. They drive a sort of funnel into the tree, the sap drips out into a cup below the funnel, they collect it and boil it until it’s thick. That’s all there is to it.”

“Extraordinary,” Pevsner said.

“We Americans are an extraordinary people, Alek. I thought you knew that.”

The older maid appeared with the tea and coffee and

Anna ordered pancakes with sausage. The maid, looking uncomfortable, reported she wasn’t sure there was enough flour left to make pancakes for everybody.