The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“As much as anybody, Charley,” Darby said, then pointed out the window.

“Chez nous, mon colonel,” he went on. “And a bargain at four grand a month, especially since Monsieur Jean-Paul Lorimer-Bertrand is paying for it.”

Castillo saw a sprawling brick house with a red tile roof sitting fifty feet off the road on a manicured lawn.

“Surrounded by nice shrubbery concealing more razor wire and motion detectors,” Darby added. “It has a pool, a croquet field, and a very nice quincho, in which Sergeant Kensington has set up shop.”

The house also had a three-car garage. As Darby’s BMW entered the cobblestone drive, the door to one of the garages opened and he drove inside.

Susanna Sieno was waiting for them at an interior door, which led from the garage into the house.

When they were in a spacious, nicely furnished living room with plateglass walls offering a view of the garden, she pointed.

“The Grand Duke seems to be satisfied with our humble offering,” she said.

Eric Kocian, elegant in an entirely white outfit, from hat to shoes, was sitting in a white-leather-upholstered stainless steel recliner beside the swimming pool. He was drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigar. A matching table held an ashtray, a coffee service, and a copy of the Buenos Aires Herald.

To the right of the swimming pool was a small cottage built in the style of the main house, obviously the quincho that Darby had mentioned. There was a DirecTV satellite dish antenna mounted on the roof. Castillo looked but could not see the antenna that he knew Kensington had put up for the AFC Delta Force radio.

Kensington knows what he’s doing. The radio is set up somewhere.

And there are two of them. I’ve never heard that any of them ever went down, but redundancy is always nice.

“I’ve got to talk to Billy and right now,” Castillo said.

“Privately?” Darby asked.

“No. I want both of you in on it,” Castillo said.

“You took your time coming, Karlchen,” the old man greeted him poolside. “And as you can see, Max has found a new friend. He probably won’t even notice you’re here.”

He gestured to the other side of the swimming pool, where Max was chasing after a soccer ball that Corporal Lester Bradley had kicked into the distance.

Castillo saw the grip of a Model 1911A1 Colt pistol sticking out of Bradley’s waistband, under his jacket.

I can’t let Billy get away with that crack, Castillo decided. He whistled shrilly.

Max, who had just picked up the soccer ball in his mouth with no more difficulty than a lesser canine would have had with a tennis ball, stopped, looked, then came happily running over to him.

Castillo looked at Kocian, smiled smugly, then looked back at Max and said, “I can’t believe he got that in his mouth.”

“It no longer holds air,” Kocian said. “Max was annoyed the first time he bit into it and it hissed at him. So he gave it a good bite to make it behave.”

Max dropped the limp soccer ball at Castillo’s feet. Castillo rubbed his ears, then kicked the ball as hard as he could so that it would sail over the swimming pool. He failed. The ball landed in the pool. Max ran up to the four-foot-tall fence that surrounded the pool, looked at the barrier, then, with no apparent effort, jumped over it. He then leaped into the pool, grabbed the ball, paddled around a moment until he figured the best way to get out of the pool was via the steps on the shallow end, swam there, got out, jumped back over the fence, and trotted over to them.

“That was a mistake, Karlchen,” Kocian said. “What he will do now is drop the ball at our feet and shake himself.”

Max did precisely that.

“Max, you sonofabitch!” Castillo said, laughing.

“You would find that amusing!” Kocian said. “Look at my trousers!”

“That isn’t the only mistake I’ve made. Does that surprise you?”

“Not at all, frankly,” Kocian said. “But we all make them. The last time for me was in January. Or was it December? I misspelled a word. Are you going to tell me what yours was?”

Colonel Alfredo Munz walked up.