The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

"I figured that. Santini would spot a phony right away. Or would have been told to ask no questions."

"I don't think I could talk you into asking no questions?"

"Not a chance."

"The President sent me down here to find out what's going on with Masterson's wife."

"The way you said that, it sounds as if the President himself said, 'Castillo, go to Buenos Aires'; that it didn't come down through channels."

"What the President said was, 'I want to know how and why that happened, and I don't want to wait until whoever's in charge down there has time to write a cover-his-ass report.'"

"He said that to you?"

Castillo nodded.

"Is that what you think I'm going to do, write a cover-my-ass report?"

"No. I think what you want to do is whatever it takes to get that poor bastard's wife back to him alive."

"Thank you," Darby said.

There was a long silence, and then Darby said, "What we're going to do now is have a nice lunch, during which I will make up my mind what I'm going to tell who about you and when."

"You'll tell me what you decide?"

"Yeah, I'll tell you."

"Thank you," Castillo said.

IV

[ONE] Restaurant Kansas Avenida Libertador San Isidro Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1315 22 July 2005 "How much of that sixty million did he actually get, do you think?" Castillo asked Darby.

They were sitting at a table in the crowded bar of the Kansas, smoking cigars with their coffee.

They had been sitting for several minutes without speaking, lost in their own thoughts, and the question came out of the blue. It took Darby a moment to come back from wherever he had been.

"I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, Charley, that that's not curiosity."

"I was wondering if there is a ransom demand, and he says, 'Fuck the rules, I want my wife back, I'll pay,' where would he get the money, how would he get it down here?"

"What is that line, 'Great minds run on parallel paths'?"

"Something like that."

"The answer to the first part of the question is that the IRS took their bite-at his level, right at half, countingLouisiana state income tax-out of the lost-wages part of the settlement. In other words, he got something like eight and a half million, and taxes ate half of that. The rest of the settlement was compensation for pain and suffering, et cetera. That's tax free."

"You're talking more than forty million dollars. Where is it?"

"It's more than that now. There's a guy-he and Jack went to some private high school together-in the Hibernia National Bank and Trust in New Orleans who's been managing it for him. Managing it very well."

"He's from New Orleans?"

Darby shook his head. "Just across the border in Mississippi, a place called Pass Christian, on the gulf. Betsy's from New Orleans; her father, who's a retired ambassador, lives there."

"You checked Masterson out, I guess?"