The Hostage pa-2 Read online

  "No such luck."

  "You about ready?"

  "At your disposal, sir," Masterson said, and started for the door.

  Masterson was bumming a ride home with Darby, who lived near him in the suburb of San Isidro. His own embassy car had been in a fender bender-the second this month-and was in the shop.

  "The boss back?" Darby asked, as they got on the elevator that would take them to the basement.

  "He should be shortly; he took the Busquebus," Masterson replied.

  "Maybe he was hoping it would rain, too," Darby said.

  Masterson chuckled.

  If the demonstrations outside the embassy did nothing else, they made getting into and out of the embassy grounds a royal pain in the ass. The demonstrators, sure that the TV cameras would follow them, rushed to surround embassy cars. Beyond thumping on the roofs and shaking their fists at those inside the car-they could see only the drivers clearly; the windows in the rear were heavily darkened-they didn't do much damage. But it took the Mounted Police some time to break their ranks so that the cars could pass, and there was always the risk of running over one of them. Or, more likely, that a demonstrator-who hadn't been touched-would suddenly start howling for the cameras, loudly complaining the gringo imperialists had run over his foot with malicious intent. That was an almost sure way to get on the evening news and in Clarin, Buenos Aires's tabloid newspaper.

  The elevator took them to the basement, a dimly lit area against one wall of which was a line of cars. Most of them were the privately owned vehicles of secondary embassy personnel, not senior enough to have an official embassy car and driver, but ranking high enough to qualify for a parking slot in the basement. There was a reserved area on the curb outside the embassy grounds for the overflow.

  Closest to the ramp leading up from the basement were parking spaces for the embassy's vehicles, the Jeep Wagoneers and such used for taxi service, and for the half dozen nearly identical "embassy cars." These were new, or nearly new, BMWs. They were either dark blue or black 5- and 7-series models, and they were all armored. They all carried diplomat license plates.

  There were five of these vehicles lined up as Masterson and Darby crossed the basement. The big black 760Li reserved for the ambassador was there, and its spare, and Darby's car, and the consul general's, and Ken Lowery's. Lowery was the embassy's security officer. The military attache's car was gone-he had a tendency to go home early-and Masterson's was in the shop getting the right front fender replaced.

  Darby's driver, who had been sitting on a folding chair at the foot of the ramp with the other drivers, got up when he saw them coming and had both rear doors open for them by the time they reached Darby's car.

  One of the many reasons it wasn't much of a secret that Alex Darby was the CIA station chief was that he had a personal embassy car. None of the other attaches did.

  All the drivers were employees of the private security service that guarded the embassy. They were all supposed to be retired policemen, which permitted them the right to carry a gun. It wasn't much of a secret, either, that all of them were really in the employ of Argentina's intelligence service, called SIDE, which was sort of an Argentine version of the CIA, the Secret Service, and the FBI combined.

  "We'll be dropping Mr. Masterson at his house," Darby announced when they were in the car. "Go there first."

  "Actually, Betsy's going to be waiting for me-is, in fact, probably already waiting for me-at the Kansas," Masterson said. "Drop me there, please."

  The Kansas was a widely popular restaurant on Avenida Libertador in a classy section of Buenos Aires called San Isidro. Getting out of the embassy grounds was not simple. First, the security people checked the identity of the driver, and then the passengers, and then logged their Time Out on the appropriate form. Then, for reasons Masterson didn't pretend to understand, the car was searched, starting with the trunk and ending with the undercarriage being carefully examined using a large round mirror on a pole.

  Only then was the car permitted to approach the gate. When that happened, three three-foot-in-diameter barriers were lowered into the pavement. By the time that happened, the lookout stationed at the gate by the demonstrators had time to summon the protestors, and one of the Mounted Police sergeants had time to summon reinforcements, two dozen of whom either ran up on foot or trotted up on horseback, to force the passage of the car through the demonstrators.

  Then the double gates were opened, the car left the embassy grounds, and the demonstrators began to do their thing.

  No real damage was done, but the thumping on the roof of the BMW was unnerving, and so were the hateful faces of some of the demonstrators. Only some. From what Masterson could see, most of the demonstrators just seemed to be having a good time.

  In a minute or so, they were through the demonstrators and, finding a hole in the fast-moving traffic, headed for Avenida Libertador.

  Alex Darby gestured in the general direction of the Residence-the ambassador's home, a huge stone mansion-which faced on Avenida Libertador about five hundred yards from the embassy.

  Masterson looked and saw a pack of demonstrators running from the embassy to the residence.

  "No wonder he's taking his time getting back on the Busquebus," Darby said. "If he'd been at the embassy, he'd have had to run the gauntlet twice, once to get out of the embassy, and again to get in the residence." A hundred yards past the residence, there was no sign whatever of the howling mob at the embassy. There was a large park on their right, with joggers and people walking dogs, and rows of elegant apartment buildings on their left until they came to the railroad bridge. On the far side of the bridge they had the Army's polo fields to their left, and the racetrack, the Hipodromo, on their right. There was nothing going on at the polo fields, but the horse fanciers were already lining up for the evening's races.

  Then there were more rows of tall apartment buildings on both sides of the street.

  They passed under an elevated highway, which meant they were passing from the City of Buenos Aires into the Province of Buenos Aires. The City of Buenos Aires, Masterson often thought, was like the District of Columbia, and the province a state, like Maryland or Virginia.

  "It looks like traffic's not so bad," Alex said.

  Masterson leaned forward to look out the windshield.

  They were passing a Carrefour, a French-owned supermarket chain. Masterson, who had served a tour as a junior consular officer in the Paris embassy, and thought he had learned something of the French, refused to shop there.

  "You're right," Masterson said, just as the driver laid heavily on the horn.

  There came a violent push to the side of the BMW, immediately followed by the sound of tearing and crushing metal. The impact threw Darby and Masterson violently against their seat belts.

  There came another crash, this one from the rear, and again they felt the painful pressure of the restraints.

  The driver swore in rapid-fire Spanish.

  "Jesus Christ!" Masterson exploded, as he tried to sit straight in his seat.

  "You all right, Jack?" Darby asked.

  "Yeah, I think so," Masterson said. "Jesus Christ! Again! These goddamn crazy Argentine drivers!"

  "Take it easy," Darby said, quickly scanning the situation outside their windows with the practiced eye of a spook.

  Masterson tried to open the door. It wouldn't budge.

  "We'll have to get out your side, Alex," he said.

  "That's not going to be easy," Darby said, gesturing toward the flow of traffic on the street.

  The driver got out of the car, stepped into the flow of traffic, and held up his hand like a policeman. Masterson thought idly that the driver had probably started his career as a traffic cop.

  A policeman ran up. The driver snapped something at him, and the policeman took over the job of directing traffic. The driver came back to the car, and Darby and Masterson got out.

  Masterson saw the pickup that had first struck them was backing away fr
om them. It was a four-door Ford F-250 pickup with a massive set of stainless steel tubes mounted in front of the radiator. He thought first that the tubes-which were common on pickup trucks to push other vehicles out of the mud on country roads- were probably going to have a minor scratch or two and the BMW was probably going to need a new door and a new rear body panel.

  Then he saw the car, a Volkswagen Golf, that had hit them from the rear. The right side of the windshield was shattered. He went quickly to the passenger door and pulled it open. A young man, well-dressed, was sitting there, looking dazed, holding his fingers to his bloody forehead.

  Masterson had an unkind thought: If you didn't think seat belts were for sissies, you macho sonofabitch, your head wouldn't have tried to go through the windshield.

  He waved his fingers before the man's eyes. The man looked at him with mingled curiosity and annoyance.

  "Let's get you out of there, senor," Masterson said in fluent Spanish. "I think it would be better for you to lie down."

  He saw that the driver was an attractive young woman-probably Senor Macho's wife; Argentine men don't let their girlfriends drive their cars for fear it will make them look unmanly-who looked dazed but didn't seem to be hurt. She was wearing her seat belt, and the airbag on the steering wheel had deployed.

  "Alex," Masterson called, "get this lady out of here."

  Then he pulled his cloth handkerchief from his pants pocket, pressed it to the man's bleeding forehead, and placed the man's right hand to hold it.

  "Keep pressure on it," Masterson said as he helped the man out of the Volkswagen and to the curb. He got him to sit, then asked, "Need to lie down?"

  "I'm all right," the man said. "Muchas gracias."

  "You're sure? Nothing's broken?"

  The man moved his torso as if testing for broken bones, and then smiled wanly.

  Alex Darby led the young woman to the curb. She saw the man and the bloody handkerchief, sucked in her breath audibly, and dropped to her knees to comfort him.

  It was an intimate moment. Masterson looked away.

  The big Ford truck that had crashed into them was disappearing into the Carrefour parking lot.

  The sonofabitch is running away!

  Masterson shouted at the policeman directing traffic, finally caught his attention, and, pointing at the pickup, shouted that he was running away.

  The policeman gestured that he understood, but as he was occupied directing traffic, there wasn't much that he could do.

  Goddammit to hell!

  Masterson took his cellular telephone from his inside pocket and punched an autodial number. When there was no response, he looked at the screen.

  No bars! I am in the only fucking place in Buenos Aires where there's no cellular signal!

  Darby saw the cellular in Masterson's hand and asked, "You're calling the embassy?"

  "No goddamn signal."

  Darby took his cellular out and confirmed that.

  "I'll call it in with the radio," he said, and walked quickly to the BMW.

  A minute later he came back.

  "Lowery asked if we're all right," he said. "I told him yes. He's sending an Automobile Club wrecker and a car. It'll probably take a little while for the car. The demonstrators are still at it."

  "The sonofabitch who hit us took off," Masterson said.

  "Really? You're sure?"

  "Yes, goddammit, I'm sure."

  "Take it easy, Jack. These things happen. Nobody's hurt."

  "He is," Masterson said, nodding at Senor Macho.

  "The cops and an ambulance will be here soon, I'm sure."

  "Betsy's going to shit a brick when I'm late," Masterson said. "And I can't call her."

  "Get on the radio and have the guard at Post One call her at the Kansas."

  Masterson considered that.

  "No," he decided aloud. "She'll just have to be pissed. I don't want the guard calling her and telling her I've been in another wreck." [FOUR] Restaurant Kansas Avenida Libertador San Isidro Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1925 20 July 2005 Elizabeth "Betsy" Masterson, a tall, slim, well-groomed thirty-seven-year-old, with the sharp features and brownish black skin that made her think her ancestors had been of the Watusi tribe, was seated alone at the bar of Kansas-the only place smoking was permitted in the elegant steakhouse. She looked at her watch for the fifth time in the past ten minutes, exhaled audibly, had unkind thoughts about the opposite sex generally and Jack, her husband, specifically, and then signaled to the bartender for another Lagarde merlot, and lit another cigarette.

  Goddamn him! He knows that I hate to sit at the bar alone, as if I'm looking for a man. And he said he'd be here between quarter to seven and seven!

  Jack's embassy car had been in a fender bender- another fender bender, the second this month-and was in the shop, and he had caught a ride to work, and was catching a ride home, with Alex Darby, the embassy's commercial attache. Jack had called her and asked if she could pick him up at Kansas, as for some reason it would be inconvenient for Alex to drop him at the house.

  The Mastersons and the Darbys, both on their second tours in Buenos Aires, had opted for embassy houses in San Isidro, rather than for apartments in Palermo or Belgrano.

  Their first tours had taught them there was a downside to the elegant apartments the embassy leased in the city. They were of course closer to the embassy, but they were noisy, sometimes the elevators and the air-conditioning didn't work, and parking required negotiating a narrow access road to a crowded garage sometimes two floors below street level. And they had communal swimming pools, if they had swimming pools at all.

  The houses the embassy leased in San Isidro were nice, and came with a garden, a quincho- outdoor barbecue-and a swimming pool. This was important if you had kids, and the Mastersons had three. The schools were better in San Isidro, and the shopping, and Avenida Libertador was lined with nice shops and lots of good restaurants. And of course there were easy-access garages for what the State Department called Privately Owned Vehicles.

  The Masterson POV was a dark green 2004 Chrysler Town amp; Country van. With three kids, all with bicycles, you needed something that large. But it was big, and Betsy didn't even like to think about trying to park what the Mastersons called "the Bus" in an underground garage in the city.

  When she went to Buenos Aires, to have lunch with Jack or whatever, she never used a garage. The Bus had diplomat license plates, and that meant you could park anywhere you wanted. You couldn't be ticketed or towed. Or even stopped for speeding. Diplomatic immunity.

  The price for the house and the nice shops, good restaurants, and better schools of San Isidro was the twice-a-day thirty-sometimes forty-five-minute ride through the insane traffic on Libertador to the embassy. But Jack paid that.

  Her bartender-one of four tending the oval bar island-came up with a bottle of Lagarde in one hand and a fresh glass in the other. He asked with a raised eyebrow if she wanted the new glass.

  "This is fine, thank you," Betsy said in Spanish.

  The bartender filled her glass almost to the brim.

  I probably shouldn't have done that, she thought. The way they pour in here, two glasses is half a bottle, and with half a bottle in me I'm probably going to say something- however well deserved-to Jack that I'll regret later.

  But she picked the glass up carefully and took a good swallow from it.

  She looked up at the two enormous television screens mounted high on the wall for the bar patrons. One of them showed a soccer game-what Argentines, as well as most of the world, called "football"-and the other was tuned to a news channel.

  There was no sound that she could hear.

  Typical Argentina, she thought unkindly. Rather than make a decision to provide the audio to one channel, which would annoy the watchers of the other, compromise by turning both off. That way, nobody should be annoyed.

  She didn't really understand the football, so she turned her attention to the news. There was another demonstration a
t the American embassy. Hordes of people banging on drums and kitchen pots, and waving banners, including several of Che Guevara-which for some reason really annoyed Jack-being held behind barriers by the Mounted Police.

  That's probably why Jack's late. He couldn't get out of the embassy. But he could have called.

  The image of a distinguished-looking, gray-bearded man in a business suit standing before a microphone came on the screen. Betsy recognized him as the prominent businessman whose college-aged son had been a high-profile kidnapping victim. As the demands for ransom went higher and higher, the kidnappers had cut off the boy's fingers, one by one, and sent them to his father to prove he was still alive. Shortly after the father paid, the boy's body-shot in the head-was found. The father was now one of the biggest thorns in the side of the President and his administration.

  Kidnapping-sometimes with the participation of the cops-was big business in Argentina. The Buenos Aires Herald, the American-owned English-language newspaper, had that morning run the story of the kidnapping of a thirteen-year-old girl, thought to be sold into prostitution.

  Such a beautiful country with such ugly problems.

  The image shifted to one of a second-rate American movie star being herded through a horde of fans at the Ezeiza airport.

  Betsy took a healthy swallow of the merlot, checked the entrance again for signs of her husband, and returned her attention to the TV screen.

  Ten minutes later-well, enough's enough. To hell with him. Let him stand on the curb and try to flag a taxi down. I'm sorry it's not raining- she laid her American Express card on the bar, caught the bartender's eye, and pointed at the card. He smiled, and nodded, and walked to the cash register.

  When he laid the tab on the bar before her, she saw that the two glasses of the really nice merlot and the very nice plate of mixed cheeses and crackers came to $24.50 in Argentine pesos. Or eight bucks U.S.

  She felt a twinge of guilt. The Mastersons had lived well enough on their first tour, when the peso equaled the dollar. Now, with the dramatic devaluation of the peso, they lived like kings. It was indeed nice, but also it was difficult to completely enjoy with so many suffering so visibly.