The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“I’m sure he can.”

“Then we will have to get them on the Gulfstream tomorrow without them going through the normal immigration procedures. We have to presume that—I like your description, David —these bastards may have access to our immigration computers. If there is no record of the Munzes leaving the country, perhaps they will waste a little time looking for them here.”

XII

[ONE]

El Presidente de la Rua Suite

The Four Seasons Hotel

Cerrito 1433

Buenos Aires, Argentina

0815 9 August 2005

Colonel Jacob Torine, USAF, went into the master bedroom and gently shook the shoulder of Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo, USA, who was asleep, lying spread-eagle in his underwear on the enormous bed.

When that didn’t work, Torine grabbed Castillo’s left foot, raised it three feet off the bed, then let it go.

That worked. Castillo sat up abruptly, his eyes wide-open at first, then glaring at Torine.

“I just ordered breakfast, Charley. It’s quarter after eight,” Torine said.

“Thanks,” Castillo said, without much enthusiasm, fell back on the bed, and then, grunting with the effort, sat up again and swung his feet out of the bed.

He took fresh underwear from his bag and walked stiff-leggedly into the huge marble bath. He turned on the cold-water faucet in the glass-walled shower, took off his underwear, and stepped under the flowing water. He stood under the cold water for a full minute before, shivering with cold, deciding that he now was sufficiently awake and could adjust the temperature.

Five minutes later, shaved and in trousers and shirt, Castillo went into the sitting room. Two waiters were arranging plates topped with chrome domes on a table.

Castillo nodded at Torine and Fernando Lopez, then walked to the enormous windows overlooking the tracks of the Retiro R

ailroad Station, the docks beyond that, and the river Plate.

“Nice view,” he thought aloud.

“I’m glad my wife doesn’t know about this,” Torine said. “She doesn’t mind me freezing my ass on some snow-covered runway in the middle of Alaska, but this would make her jealous.”

Castillo turned and smiled at him.

“I guess Yung called?” he said.

“Yeah. He said he was on his way to the Carrasco airport to pick up Artigas’s car, then would take the Munzes to the Belmont House. They’ll take turns guarding them. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“You were really wiped out, Gringo,” Fernando Lopez said.

“Understatement of the day,” Castillo said as he stretched his neck. He then added, “I’ve been thinking.”

“That’s always dangerous,” Lopez said.

Castillo walked to the table, sat down, and lifted one of the chrome-domed plate covers. The plate held an enormous pile of scrambled eggs. He spooned some eggs onto his plate, then found ham steaks under another dome and put one of them next to his eggs, meanwhile thinking: What I really have been thinking about is the time I spent in that bedroom with Betty Schneider. I thought about her just before I passed out. And I thought of her this morning, just as soon as I stopped being pissed at Jake for that leg-dropping wake-up call.

But that’s personal.

This is business.

“When we came in here last night, they called me Gossinger,” Castillo said. “And I remembered that I rented this place as Gossinger of the Tages Zeitung and they’re getting the bill. And that Otto Görner sent the German embassy here a wire—maybe an e-mail, maybe he even called—asking that I be given every courtesy.”