The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

There were nods and yes sirs.

“What about Putin’s friend, Colonel?” Yung asked. “My ex-friend? Do we need a code name for him?”

“I think we do,” Castillo said. “How does ‘Schmidt’ strike you?”

Artigas’s eyebrows rose at hearing the name of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Now that I’ve burned my bureau bridges,” Yung said, “that’s fine with me.”

Artigas wondered: Now, what the hell does that mean?

“Okay. Kennedy is now Schmidt,” Castillo said.

There’s an FBI back-channel locate-report-but-do-not-detain out on a former agent named Howard Kennedy, Artigas thought, then said so aloud, adding, “Did you know that?”

“I suspected it,” Castillo said.

“Same guy?”

Castillo nodded.

“You used to work with him, right, Yung?” Artigas asked.

Yung nodded uncomfortably.

“Dave, when did you decide your bureau bridges were burned?” Castillo asked.

“Couple of days ago,” Yung said. “I’m still not sure if I burned them or you burned them for me, but when I looked they were gloriously aflame.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“The question is, how do you feel about it?”

“I’m glad to have you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Then I feel fine about it, Colonel,” Yung said.

If he’s not high on painkillers, or anything else, what the hell happened to make him change his mind?

Castillo gave him a double thumbs-up gesture.

“Okay,” Santini said. “Alfredo thinks it’s likely that some of the people after him are Putin’s guys. I think we have to accept that. I think we have to presume that the Ninjas are on him, too. And he thinks SIDE may also be on him.”

“Let’s talk about that,” Castillo said.

“Why do you think SIDE is surveilling you, Alfredo?”

“What the Argentine government wants to do is forget—have everyone forget—what happened to Mr. Masterson,” Munz replied. “And they’ve heard what happened in Uruguay and don’t want to be surprised by any developments in the matter. They don’t know what my relationship with Ale…Putin really was or is. Officially, I was keeping an eye on Putin for SIDE.”

“They know he’s here, Colonel?” Ambassador Silvio said.

“I found him,” Munz said, simply.

“Then why didn’t they act on one or more of the Interpol warrants out on him? Do you know?”

Munz answered that with the gesture of rubbing the thumb and index finger of his right hand together.

“All I was told was to keep him under surveillance,” he said. “And that a decision about what to do with him would come later.”