The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

"Just that the wife of the chief of mission is missing under mysterious circumstances."

"The husband's climbing the walls, understandably," Lowery said. "She was waiting for him in a restaurant in San Isidro. When he got there, her purse and car were there, and she wasn't."

"And you think she was kidnapped?"

Low

ery hesitated before replying, then asked, "Have you got much experience with this sort of thing, Mr. Castillo?"

"A little."

Once, for example, I helped snatch two Iraqi generals, one Russian general, one Russian colonel, and half a dozen other non-Iraqis from a Scud site in the Iraqi desert. I don't think that's what you have in mind, but let's see where this goes.

"Frankly, I don't," Lowery said. "Let me tell you what I've got, and you tell me what you think."

"Sure."

"I don't think these people were just hanging around the Kansas parking lot to grab the first woman they thought looked as if someone would pay to get her back. Too many well-heeled folks pass through that parking lot on any given night, and never a nab. They were looking for Mrs. Masterson."

"That suggests they think the government would pay to get her back. Don't they know that we don't pay ransom to turn people loose?"

"Jack Masterson has money," Lowery said. "Lots of money. You don't know who he is?"

Castillo shook his head.

"'Jack the Stack'?" Lowery asked.

Castillo shook his head again.

"The basketball player?"

That didn't ring a bell, but there was a very slight tinkle. "Oh."

"In the fourth month of his professional basketball career," Lowery explained, "for which, over a five-year period, Jack the Stack was to be paid ten million dollars…"

Castillo's eyebrows went up. Christ, now I know! "But he was run over by a beer truck when leaving the stadium," Castillo said.

"Driven by a guy who had been sampling his product," Lowery finished. "He had twice as much alcohol in his blood than necessary to be considered legally under the influence."

"And there was a settlement," Castillo said.

"One hell of a settlement. Without even going to court. Jack wasn't badly injured, but enough so that he would never be able to play professional ball again. The brewery didn't want to go to court because not only were they going to lose-they were responsible and knew it; the truck driver was their agent-but there would be all sorts of the wrong kind of publicity. They paid not only the ten million he would have earned under his contract, but also what he could reasonably have expected to earn in the rest of his professional career. It came to sixty million, not counting the money he could have made with endorsements."

"I always wondered what happened to him after he left the game," Castillo said.

My thoughts were unkind. I wondered how long it would take him-like the winners of a lottery or heavyweight champions-to piss away all that money and wind up broke, reduced to greeting people in the lobby of some casino in Las Vegas.

And he wound up a diplomat?

Oh, you are a fine judge of character, Charley Castillo!

"Jack could have, of course, bought an island in the Bahamas and spent the rest of his life fishing, but he's not that kind of guy. He wanted to do something with his life, and he had an education."

"The foreign service seems a long way from a basketball court," Castillo said.

"Not if your wife is the daughter of an ambassador- and, for that matter, your brother-in-law a pretty highly placed guy in the United Nations. Jack had a degree- cum laude-in political science, so when he took the foreign service examination and passed it with flying colors, no one was really surprised."

"You don't think of pro athletes having cum laude degrees in anything," Castillo said.