The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Danton smiled and waved at Pedro again.

He went on: “Duffy then told me there was a question with my papers, but since I was a friend of Mr. Darby, instead of being hauled off to Gendarmería Nacional headquarters until it could be straightened out, they would allow me to spend the night here in the River Plate Marriott. And they would be happy to drive me there.”

“Where do you think Alex is now, Roscoe?”

“Well, he’s not in his apartment. The next morning, Duffy showed up here and said that I was free to go. He was sure that I understood the situation and was grateful for my understanding. He also said that if I thought I would need a remise—that’s sort of a taxi—to get around Buenos Aires, he knew one he could recommend.

“So, I got in the remise and went back to Darby’s apartment. He was gone.

“I still had one card to play. You remember the Secret Service guy on the presidential protection detail who fell off the bumper of the limousine?”

“Tony Santini,” Montvale said. “Good man.”

“Yes, he is. We have shared a drink or two on occasion. Well, when I knew I was coming down here I remembered that when he got fired from the protection detail, they sent him down here to look for funny money. So, I tried to call him. I got some other Secret Service guy on the phone who told me Tony had retired, but that he thought he was still in Argentina in a country club—that’s Argentine for really tightly gated community—outside of town. I remembered the address: the Mayerling Country Club in Pilar. I’ve got a cousin named Pilar, and Mayerling was the Imperial Austrian hunting lodge where Emperor Franz Josef’s son shot his sixteen-year-old girlfriend and then committed suicide.

“So, I got in the remise Duffy suggested, and told the driver to take me out to this place. We go instead to the Gendarmería Nacional headquarters. Out comes Duffy, now in uniform. He’s the generalissimo or something of the Gendarmería Nacional. Duffy says I really don’t want to go to Mayerling. Too dangerous. People started out for Mayerling and were never heard from again. I got the message.”

“So, you never got to see Tony,” Montvale said. “Pity. I’m sure he would have helped you.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Roscoe, we may be in a position to help each other,” Montvale said. “Can we go off the record?”

“Yeah, sure. But why bother? You tell me something, I report it, and then you say, ‘I never said that,’ and Ellsworth says, ‘That’s right. I was there and the ambassador never said anything like that.’”

“Let me rephrase. What if these rumors you heard were true? What if there was a renegade lieutenant colonel named Castillo who did in fact snatch two senior Russian defectors from the CIA station chief in Vienna? What if he’s now trying to sell them to the CIA?”

“No shit?”

“What if the President sent an unnamed but very senior intelligence official—”

“Who used to be a diplomat, Mr. Ambassador?”

“—down here with orders to find Colonel Castillo and these two Russians and then load them onto an airplane and fly them to the States?”

“You’re going to pay the ransom, or whatever?”

“That’s the point. I’m trusting your discretion on this, Roscoe. I know you’re a patriotic American. No. The United States of America will not ransom the Russians. But they will be returned to the States and turned over to the CIA.”

“Kidnap them back, you mean?”

“The Russians will be returned to the United States and turned over to the CIA. And Colonel Castillo will be returned to the United States and the United States Army for what is euphemistically known as ‘disciplinary action.’”

“Jesus!”

“My search for these people has met with more success than yours, Roscoe,” Montvale said.

“You know where they are?”

“I’m in a position to offer you confirmation of those rumors you heard. I’m further in a position to give exclusive rights to—what shall I say?—‘the repatriation process’ and to the Russians, and to Colonel Castillo.”

“If I what?”

“How do I put this? If, splendid journalist that you are, you nevertheless failed to notice any unpleasantness that may occur during the repatriation process, any minor violations of Argentine law—or, for that matter, of American law. Do you take my meaning?”

Roscoe J. Danton thought: Fuck you, Montvale.

Once I’m back in the States, I’ll write whatever the hell I feel like writing about anything I see.