The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

I do until someone-and that means the President- tells me I don't.

"Welcome aboard, Tony," Castillo said. "That's presuming someone important doesn't say 'Not only no, but hell no you can't have Santini.'"

"We'll worry about that when it happens. From what Tom told me, I don't think it will. So what's up?"

"You have a look at the package from Fort Bragg?"

Santini nodded. "Very impressive weaponry," he said. "And black jumpsuits. And those face masks! This may be an indelicate question, but who are we going to whack?"

"The answer to that is Top Secret-Presidential, Tony," Castillo said, seriously.

"Okay," Santini said, his voice now serious. "Understood."

"My orders are to locate and render harmless the people who murdered Masterson and Markham."

"It's about time we started playing by their rules," Santini said after a moment.

"The President apparently has made that decision," Castillo said.

"Now all we have to do is find them, huh? How do we do that?"

"You remember Mrs. Masterson's brother, the UN guy we couldn't find to tell him about Masterson?"

Santini nodded.

"It seems he was the head bagman for the oil-for-food payoffs," Castillo said. "He went missing-probably from Vienna-immediately after he found one of his assistants dead of a slit throat in Vienna. Nasty. Before they killed him, they pulled several of his teeth with a pair of pliers.

"The CIA guy in Paris and my source in Vienna think Lorimer is probably in the Seine or the Danube. I don't."

"Why not?"

"Wait until you hear this. When we landed in Mississippi, Mrs. Masterson told me the reason she was abducted was because they thought she would know where her brother was. They killed Masterson to show her how serious they were about wanting to know; the Masterson kids would be next. And I think they whacked Sergeant Markham and almost whacked Schneider to show her they could get to whoever they wanted to."

"I had a gut feeling at the time they were after you," Santini said. "It was your car."

"That thought has run through my mind," Castillo said.

"She didn't know where he was? Or she figured her kids were more important? Which?"

"She didn't know," Castillo said.

A knock at the door announced the arrival of Alex Darby.

"Why do I feel I'm late for the party?" Darby asked, and then looked at Fernando and Kranz.

"Fernando Lopez, Seymour Kranz, Alex Darby," Castillo said.

"And these gentlemen are?" Darby asked.

"Mr. Lopez is an airplane pilot under contract to the Office of Organizational Analysis," Castillo said.

"To the what?"

"The Office of Organizational Analysis. You don't know what that is?"

"Never heard of it," Darby confessed.

"I'm surprised. It's in the Department of Homeland Security."