The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

Señora Munz waited until Munz had disappeared into the crowd that was waiting to get on the escalator, then collected her purse and stood, motioning for the girls to get up, too.

Yung fished a bill from his pocket and laid it on the table as a tip for the busboy. He stood up and felt the weight of his semiautomatic pistol as it shifted slightly.

Jesus Christ, he suddenly remembered. I don’t have a round in the chamber!

It’ll take forever to work the action with this goddamned bandaged hand!

He walked quickly into the men’s room, into a stall, locked it, took out the pistol and worked the action by pressing the slide against the toilet paper holder. Then he put the pistol back in his shoulder holster, unlocked the stall door, and hurried out of the men’s room.

There was a moment’s panic when he couldn’t immediately locate Familia Munz. Then he saw them in the knot of people waiting to get on the escalator.

The younger girl saw him walking toward them, looked a little relieved, and smiled.

He smiled at her again, then made his way to the escalator.

XI

[ONE]

Piso 16, 1568 Avenida Arribeños

Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina

1940 8 August 2005

When Paul Sieno opened the steel apartment door for Castillo and El Coronel Alfredo Munz, SIDE, retired, Castillo saw that the living room of the apartment was crowded. Eric Kocian was sitting in a dark brown leather armchair, his elegantly shod feet resting, crossed, on a leather ottoman. He had a wineglass in one hand and a cigar in the other.

Holding court, Castillo thought, smiling.

A table holding platters of cheese and cold cuts, bottles of wine and ginger ale, and glasses was between two matching couches. Sándor Tor sat beside Susanna Sieno on one of them. Sergeant Major Jack Davidson and Colonel Jake Torine sat on the other, with Corporal Lester Bradley squeezed in between them. Fernando Lopez sat in an armchair obviously dragged from someplace else.

Everyone looked at Castillo and Munz.

Castillo thought, Davidson’s wondering who the hell Munz is and what he’s doing here.

Mr. Sieno very probably knows who he is, so she’s really curious about what he’s doing here.

And everybody—including Jack, Mr. Sieno, even Eric Kocian—is looking at me because they have the mistaken notion that James Bond just walked in with the answers to all their questions.

The truth is, once I get everybody settled in the safe house in Mayerling, and Munz’s family safely through Uruguay and onto the Gulfstream, I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do.

Since I don’t know who the bad guys are, or even who they’re working for, how the hell can I find the bastards?

I’m an Army officer, not Sherlock Holmes.

“Looks like we’re going to need some more chairs, doesn’t it?” Paul Sieno observed and went in search of them.

Max, who had been lying beside Kocian’s chair, got to his feet, and, with his stub of a tail rotating like a helo rotor, walked quickly to Castillo, obviously delighted to see him.

Castillo squatted and rubbed Max’s ears.

“Until he started to behave like that to Colonel Castillo,” Kocian announced, “I thought Max to be an excellent judge of character.”

The remark earned the chuckles and laughs Kocian expected it to.

“Eric,” Castillo said, in Hungarian, “say hello, politely, to Oberst Munz.”

Kocian replied, in German, “Since I don’t speak a word of Spanish, how am I going to do that?”