The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

Wrong. There's one more difference: Some sonofabitch shot the Masterson kids' daddy.

Castillo followed Mrs. Masterson and the six-year-old into the cathedral.

The President of the Republic of Argentina, whose face Castillo recognized, was now sitting across the nave of the cathedral with another man and two women, who Castillo guessed were the foreign minister and the appropriate wives. Colonel Gellini stood behind the President.

The organ, which had been playing softly, suddenly changed pitch and volume, and Castillo heard the scuffling of feet a

s people stood up.

Thirty seconds later a crucifer appeared in the nave, carrying an enormous golden cross and leading a long procession of richly garbed clergy, in two parallel columns, which split to go around the flag-draped casket of the late J. Winslow Masterson. [TWO] Estancia Shangri-La Tacuarembo Province Republica Oriental del Uruguay 1045 25 July 2005 Jean-Paul Bertrand had been sitting in his silk Sulka dressing robe before the wide, flat-screen Sony television in his bedroom since nine o'clock, watching the ceremonies marking the departure of J. Winslow Masterson from Argentina, first on Argentina's Channel Nine, and then on BBC, CNN, and Deutsche Welle, and now on Channel Nine again.

Jean-Paul Lorimer had acquired a Uruguayan immigration stamp on Jean-Paul Bertrand's Lebanese passport indicating Bertrand had legally entered Uruguay on July fourth, and another document dated the next day attesting to his legal residence in that country as an immigrant.

July fourth, of course, predated by nine days Jean-PaulLorimer's having gone missing from his apartment in Paris. It was unlikely that any party attempting to find Lorimer would be interested in anyone crossing any border on a date prior to a date Lorimer was known to have been in Paris.

He could, of course, have picked any date to be placed on the passport-the immigration stamp and the Certificate of Legal Residence had cost him ten thousand U.S. dollars in cash-but he had picked, as a fey notion, July fourth because it was now his, as well as the United States', independence day.

Once Jean-Paul Bertrand had the documents in his safe at Shangri-La, Jean-Paul Lorimer had ceased to exist, and Jean-Paul Bertrand could-after a suitable period, of course, of at least eighteen months, probably two years during which he would be very discreet-get on with his life.

Bertrand had been a little surprised at the amount of attention Jack Masterson's murder had caused around the world. He would not have thought the BBC or Deutsche Welle would have had nearly the interest in the murder of a relatively unimportant American diplomat that they showed. Jack had been the chief of mission, not the ambassador, and Buenos Aires was not really a major capital city of the world, although, in honesty, it had to be admitted that its restaurants did approach the level of those in Paris.

He was not surprised by the attention being paid by Argentine and American television. Jack had been shot in Argentina, which explained the Argentine interest. In all the time Jean-Paul had been coming to Uruguay, and especiallysince satellite television had become available, he had seen, with mingled amusement and disgust, that Argentine television was even more devoted to mindless game shows and gore than American television, which was really saying something.

The coverage of the murder-and today's events-by American television seemed to be based more on Jack's fame as the basketball player who had been paid sixty million dollars for getting himself run over by a beer truck than on his status as a diplomat. They had even sought out and placed the driver of the truck on the screen, asking his opinion of the murder of the man obviously destined for basketball greatness before the unfortunate accident.

And of course his fellow players, both from Notre Dame and the Boston Celtics, had been asked for their opinions of what had happened to Jack the Stack and what effect it would have on basketball and the nation generally. Jean-Paul had always been amused and a little disgusted that a basketball team whose name proclaimed Celtic heritage had been willing to pay an obscene amount of money to an obvious descendant of the Tutsi tribes of Rwanda and Burundi for his skill in being able to put an inflated leather sphere through a hoop.

From the comments of some of Jack's former play-mates, Jean-Paul was forced to conclude that many of them had no idea where Argentina was or what Jack the Stack was doing there at the time of his demise. One of them, who had apparently heard that Jack was "chief of mission," extrapolated this to conclude that Jack was a missionary bringing Christianity to the savage pagans of Argentina and expressed his happiness that Jack had found Jesus before going to meet his maker.

Jean-Paul had also been surprised by the long lines of Argentines who had filed into the Catedral Metropolitana to pass by Jack's casket. He wondered if it was idle curiosity, or had something to do with the funeral of Pope John Paul-also splendidly covered on television- or had been arranged by the Argentine government. He suspected it was a combination of all three factors.

He had hoped to see more of Betsy and the children-they were, after all, his sister and niece and nephews, and God alone knew when, or if, he would see them again. He didn't see them at all at the cathedral. There had been a shot from a helicopter of a convoy of vehicles racing on the autopista toward the Ezeiza airport that was described as the one carrying the Masterson family, but that might have been journalistic license, and anyway, nothing could be seen of the inside of the three large sport utility trucks in the convoy.

There was a very quick glimpse of them at the airfield, obviously taken with a camera kept some distance from the huge U.S. Air Force transport onto which they were rushed, surrounded by perhaps a dozen, probably more, heavily armed U.S. soldiers.

That whole scene offended, but did not surprise, Jean-Paul Bertrand. It was another manifestation of American arrogance. The thing to do diplomatically- using the term correctly-would be for the U.S. government to have sent a civilian airliner to transport Jack's body and his family home, not a menacing military transport painted in camouflage colors that more than likely had landed in Iraq or Afghanistan-or some other place where the United States was flexing its military muscles in flagrant disregard of the wishes of the United Nations-within the past week. And if it was necessary to "provide security"-which in itself was insulting to Argentina-to do it with some discretion. Guards in civilian clothing, with their weapons concealed, would have been appropriate. Soldiers armed with machine guns were not.

Jean-Paul corrected himself. Those aren't soldiers. They're something else: Air Force special operators wearing those funny hats with one side pinned up, like the Australians. They're-what do they call them?-Air Commandos.

That distinction is almost certainly lost on the Argentines.

What they see is heavily armed norteamericanos and a North American warplane sitting on their soil as if they own it.

Will the Americans ever learn?

Probably, almost certainly not.

I have seen this sort of thing countless times before.

The only difference is this time I have no reason to be shamed and embarrassed by the arrogance of my fellow Americans, for I am now Jean-Paul Bertrand, Lebanese citizen, currently resident in Uruguay.

Nothing much happened on the television screen for the next couple of minutes-replays of the activity at the cathedral, the convoy on the way to the airport, and the far too brief glimpse of his sister and niece and nephews being herded onto the Air Force transport-and Jean-Paulhad just stood up, intending to go into his toilet, when another convoy racing down the autopista came onto the screen.

This convoy, the announcer solemnly intoned, carried the last remains of J. Winslow Masterson, now the posthumous recipient of Argentina's Grand Cross of the Great Liberator.

Jean-Paul Bertrand sat back down and watched as the convoy approached the airfield and was waved through a heavily guarded gate and onto the tarmac before the terminal where the enormous transport waited for it.

The soldiers-he corrected himself again-the machine gun-armed Air Commandos were out again protecting the airplane as if they expected Iraqi terrorists to attempt to seize it at any moment.