The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

Do I believe that?

No. I know better. There have been exceptions.

But the accusation has been made, justifiably, that C. G. Castillo has a tendency toward political incorrectness.

"Once Jack was in the foreign service, he started working his way up. Quickly working his way up. He's good at what he does. After this tour, they'll probably make him an ambassador."

"And you think the people who grabbed his wife knew this story?"

"Hell, this is the age of satellite television. The average Argentine twenty-year-old knows more about American professional basketball than I do."

Certainly more than I do. I have never understood why people stay glued to a television screen watching outsized mature adults in baggy shorts try to throw a basketball through a hoop.

"There aren't very many African Americans in Argentina," Lowery said. "Even fewer who stand six-feet-eight and get their pictures on the TV and in La Nacion and Clarin when they're standing in for the ambassador, or explaining a change in visa policy. 'Who is that huge black guy? Looks like a basketball player. Why, that's Jack the Stack, that's who he is, the guy who got all those millions when the cerveza truck ran over him.'"

"That makes sense."

"'Let's snatch his wife'" Lowery concluded.

"Yeah," Castillo agreed.

"So far, not a word from the kidnappers," Lowery said.

"Is that unusual?"

"The Policia Federal tell me they usually call within hours just to tell the family not to contact the police, and make their first demands either then, or within twenty-fourhours. It's been-my God, it will be forty-eight hours at seven tonight."

"How good are the police?"

"The ones that aren't kidnappers themselves are very good."

"Really?"

"They fired the whole San Isidro police commissariat-like a precinct-a while back on suspicion of being involved in kidnappings there."

"Were they?"

"Probably," Lowery said.

He looked thoughtfully at Castillo for a moment.

"Have I made it clear that I like Jack Masterson? Personally and professionally?"

Castillo nodded.

"I'm worried about him, both personally and professionally," Lowery said.

"How so?"

"The policy of never dealing with terrorists or kidnappers makes a lot of sense intellectually," Lowery said. "But emotionally? My wife hasn't been kidnapped, and I don't have the money to pay any ransom."

"You think if they contact him, he'll pay?"

"I don't know. If he did, he might get his wife back, and he might not. These people have… Just a couple of months ago, after a rich Argentine businessman paid an enormous ransom… after the kidnappers sent him his son's amputated fingers…"

"Santini told me that story," Castillo interrupted.

"… they found the boy's body. They'd shot him in the head."