The Shooters (Presidential Agent 4)

Tapping the balls of his fingers together, Ambassador Lorimer considered for a good sixty seconds what Castillo had told him before raising his eyes to Castillo.

"So the ever-present silver lining is that Jean-Paul was not a drug dealer," he said. "Hell of a note when you're happy to hear your only son was just a thief from other thieves, not a drug dealer."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ambassador."

"Why should you be sorry? From what I hear, you've been the knight in shining armor on a white horse in the whole sordid affair."

"That's not an accurate description, Mr. Ambassador."

"It's my judgment to make, Colonel," Lorimer said. "How much of what you have just told me does my daughter know?"

"Very little of it, sir. She doesn't have the need to know. I did tell her-and Mr. Masterson-that I was almost certain that the people who had murdered Mr. Masterson-"

"Were 'rendered harmless'?"

"Yes, sir."

"How can you be 'almost certain' of that?"

"You don't have the need to know that, sir."

"You wouldn't have told them that unless you were 'almost certain,' which means you weren't repeating what someone else had told you, but rather that you were personally involved."

Castillo didn't reply.

"All of this except for your possible concern that I would go down and somehow compromise the Presidential Finding-which is absurd-doesn't explain why you-and I mean you, not the secretary-don't want me to go to Uruguay."

"May I go off at a tangent for a moment, Mr. Ambassador?"

Lorimer nodded.

"I understand, sir, why you're anxious to…get out from under Mr. Masterson's hospitality-"

"Guests, as with fish, you know, begin to smell after three days."

"My grandfather was known to say that, often in more colorful terms," Castillo said. "Mr. Ambassador, what would it take to get you to go someplace-Paris, for example; Mr. Lorimer's apartment is there and available to you-for sixty days before you go to Uruguay?"

"The apartment is no longer available, Colonel. The man from the UN who brought me the check for Jean-Paul's death benefit-one hundred thousand euros-also brought with him an offer for Jean-Paul's apartment. Time and half what it was worth. They obviously wanted to make sure Jean-Paul was forgotten as soon as possible; now I know why."

"Mr. Ambassador, I am prepared to offer you fifty thousand dollars a month for two months to lease Estancia Shangri-La."

"Either that's your remarkably clumsy way of offering me a bribe to keep me away from the estancia-which raises again the unanswered question of why you don't want me down there-or you really want to lease the ranch, and that raises the really interesting question of why. What would you do wi

th it?"

"I understand Phoenix, Arizona, is very nice this time of year, Mr. Ambassador."

"So is Bali, but I'm getting a little old for bare-breasted maidens in grass skirts. What do you want with the estancia, Colonel?"

"I'm running another operation down there, sir."

"You going to do it under the nose of this fellow McGrory again?"

Castillo nodded.

"I want to use it as a refueling point for several helicopters I want to get into Argentina."

"You mean get into Argentina black," Lorimer replied. He considered that a moment. "Okay. You're going to fly them off some ship in the middle of the night and under the radar, right? Refuel them in the middle of nowhere in Uruguay, and then on to Argentina?"