The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

He heard Munz groan.

Jesus, he must be lying on his wounded shoulder. That must have really hurt.

“Sorry, Alfredo,” Castillo called.

“Anybody behind you?”

“No.”

“Then slow down a little and keep weaving through the streets. You might as well head for Libertador.”

“Who’s following us?”

“I wish to hell I knew,” Munz said. “When you get to Libertador, turn toward the city. Look for a COTO supermarket on the left. Pull into the parking lot behind it.”

As Castillo parked the Cherokee, he saw that the only people in the parking lot were women loading plastic bags of groceries into their cars.

“Nobody followed us,” Castillo said. “And there’s nobody close in the parking lot. You want to come up front?”

Castillo heard Munz sigh, then the sound of the rear door opening. A moment later, he slipped into the front seat.

“So how are you, Alfredo?” Castillo asked, in German.

“Until you got that speed bump, Karl, I was feeling all right.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

Munz made a deprecating gesture.

“Who are we running from?” Castillo asked. “And why?”

“People are watching me,” Munz said, seriously, and then, when he heard himself, chuckled and added, “‘They probably want to beam me up to their spaceship and extract my sperm,’ said the paranoid.”

Castillo chuckled. “Who?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is the morning after you went to the States—I slept all of the day you left and right through the night, thanks to those little yellow pills Sergeant Kensington gave me—when I went onto my balcony, there was a car, a Citroën, with two men in it, parked across the street. There was a pair of binoculars on the dashboard. And there have been other cars, other people, ever since.”

“But you don’t know who?”

“No, and I wasn’t—still am not—in any condition to ask people questions.”

“Did you tell Pevsner?”

Munz shook his head.

“Why not?”

Castillo sensed that Munz was making up his mind whether to reply at all.

“Now that I’m no longer the head of SIDE, I’m not as much use to Señor Pevsner as I was,” he said, finally. “Perhaps he’s decided I’m now a liability. If I wasn’t around, there are all sorts of questions that I would not be able to answer about him.”

Castillo considered his own reply carefully before making it. “Unfortunately, Alfredo, that’s a real possibility.”

Munz nodded.

“I didn’t ask about your shoulder,” Castillo said.

“And I didn’t ask what you’re doing back here in Argentina.”