“I’ll say it again, Charles: My orders are to find the Russians so that we can turn them over.”
“And Castillo? He’s going to turn him over, too?”
“I didn’t hear that, because you didn’t ask it. But a moment ago, I should have said that my orders are to find the Russians and Lieutenant Colonel Castillo, Retired.”
“And do what with Castillo when we find him?”
“The President did not share his thoughts on that with me, Mr. Ambassador.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Yeah. So how you doing? Have you found Castillo?”
“No, but I learned that Alex Darby’s in Ushuaia—that’s at the southern tip of South America—with some young floozy.”
“Darby’s doing what?”
“I’m afraid the source is reliable.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“I found that out about five minutes ago.”
“That might be a good place to stash those Russians.”
“That thought occurred to me about ten seconds ago.”
“There will be six officers—the most I could scare up on short notice meeting the criteria of reliable and available—on whatever American Airlines flight there is today from Dallas to Buenos Aires, one most likely landing in Argentina in the wee hours of tomorrow morning.”
“What the hell is that all about?”
“The President ordered me to send however many men it took to locate and detain the Russians. Shortly, they’re on their way there.”
“If they should find them, and that’s a big if, what are they going to do, kidnap them? The Argentines won’t stand for that. No country would.”
“This line is terrible. I don’t think you heard me when I said, ‘The President ordered me to send however many men it took to locate and detain the Russians.’”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Have you found Roscoe J. Danton? More important, have you learned (a) why he’s looking for Castillo, and (b) whether he’s found him?”
“I’m going to see him tomorrow. After I see the ambassador. I don’t know what I’m going to tell him about these people you’re sending down here.”
“You’ll think of something. That’s why they pay you the big bucks, Charles.”
“Fuck you,” Montvale said, and then said, “Break it down.”
Truman Ellsworth, Mizz Sylvia Grunblatt, I. Ronald Spears, one of his Secret Service agents, and a middle-aged man he did not recognize were waiting for him in the hall outside the communications cubicle.
“Ambassador Montvale,” the man said, “I’m Robert Lowe.”
When Montvale didn’t immediately reply, Lowe added: “From Mexico City.”
And you were ordered down here, what? A week ago?
You should have been here the next day.
Where the hell have you been? In one of those hotels on the white sandy beaches of Cancún or Cozumel, saying a tearful goodbye to your twenty-year-old tootsie?