The Hostage pa-2 Read online

  "I'm afraid you'll have to check that," the stewardess told him.

  "Why do I suspect that all the luggage in the bins does not belong to first-class passengers?"

  "I'm afraid you'll have to check that," the stewardess repeated.

  "I don't suppose that since I thought I would have space in the first-class bins, and find that I don't, you could put this in with the coats and jackets? I really hate to check it."

  "I'm afraid you'll have to check it," the stewardess said firmly.

  It would also seem to logically follow, Castillo thought, watching the luggage carousel rotate at MIA, that since my suitcase was loaded, if not last, then close to last, it would be unloaded first. That obviously is not the case.

  The suitcase finally showed up. Castillo pulled out the handle and dragged it from luggage recovery. Surprising him not at all, the map in the entrance foyer showed him that Aerolineas Argentinas was at the other end of the airport, almost in Key West. It was a long walk through the crowded airport, which reminded him of his cousin Fernando Lopez's appraisal of Miami International: "It is the United States' token third world airport."

  That reminded him, Jesus Christ, I almost forgot! that he would have to call Fernando and/or Abuela, their grandmother, and tell them he would not be able to come home for the weekend, even if Fernando flew up to pick him up.

  He finally reached the Aerolineas Argentinas counter. There was a long line of people in the first-class line, all of whom seemed to have extra, overweight, or oversize luggage. There were far more such people than there were seats in the first-class compartment of either a 747 or a 767, which suggested that they were economy-class passengers who had taken advantage of there being no one in the first-class line.

  Twenty minutes later, he reached the head of the line and was given permission to approach the counter by the clerk, who beckoned to him with her index finger like the Queen of Spain summoning a footman.

  He laid a passport issued by the German Federal Republic and an American Express corporate credit card issued to the Tages Zeitung on the counter.

  "My name is Gossinger," he said. "I have an electronic ticket, I believe." Getting through airport security was-if possible-more harassing than usual. Castillo was randomly selected for close examination. Not only did the security people make him take his shoes off, but their pawing through his luggage effectively nullified his careful packing. And he was concerned about the detailed examination of his briefcase cum laptop carrier that was to come.

  They made him turn the laptop on to prove that it indeed was not an explosive device, but they didn't show much interest in the briefcase itself. That was a relief. Herr Gossinger did not want to have to explain what he was doing with C. G. Castillo's passport and Secret Service credentials.

  Finally they were through with him, and he went to the Club of the Americas, the first- and business-class lounge that served Aerolineas Argentinas and other South American airlines that did not have their own lounges.

  He fixed himself a double scotch on the rocks, then found a secluded corner and sat down. He took his cellular telephone from his pocket and punched an autodial key.

  "Hello?"

  "And how is my favorite girl?"

  "Your favorite girl is wondering if you're calling to tell me you're not coming home for the weekend."

  "Abuela, I'm in the airport in Miami, waiting to get on a plane for Buenos Aires."

  "Well, I'll give you this. Your excuses are out of the ordinary. Darling, I was so looking forward-"

  "Abuela, this wasn't my idea."

  "What are you going to do in Argentina? Am I allowed to ask?"

  No, you're not.

  "I should be back within the week."

  "Buenos Aires?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "It's winter down there now. You did think to pack warm clothing?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "If it's convenient, Carlos, I'm almost out of brandy. You know the kind."

  "I'll get you a case."

  "I think you're limited to six liters."

  "I'll find out."

  "Be careful. I talked to Jeanine Winters just this morning, and she said kidnapping is now the cottage industry down there."

  Jeanine Winters was a very old friend of Dona Alicia. The Winters family, Texans, had been operating an enormous cattle operation in Entre Rios province and a vineyard in Mendoza Province for generations.

  Jesus, has she heard about this diplomat's wife? Did Mrs. Winters hear about it already, and tell her?

  "Abuela, nobody's going to kidnap me."

  "Just be careful, Carlos, is all I'm saying."

  "Si, Abuela."

  "I'll say a prayer for you."

  "Thank you."

  "Vaya con Dios, mi amor," Dona Alicia said, and hung up.

  III

  [ONE] Aeropuerto Internacional Ministro Pistarini de Ezeiza Buenos Aires, Argentina 0615 22 July 2005 Aerolineas Argentinas proved to be much more accommodating about luggage than Delta had been. Just as soon as Castillo had stepped aboard through the main cabin door, a steward had offered to take his briefcase on wheels from him.

  "I can store it with the coats, sir," the steward said. "Save you from having to hoist it into the overhead bin."

  This courtesy was followed as soon as he took his seat in the first-class compartment of the Boeing 767; a stewardess appeared with a tray of champagne glasses.

  He took one, even though he told himself he didn't need it after the three drinks he'd had in the Club of the Americas.

  He hadn't needed the glass of merlot that came with the appetizers just as soon as they reached cruising altitude, either, but he took that, and a second glass with the entree-a nice little filet mignon, served with roasted potatoes. And the glass of brandy he had with the camembert and crackers dessert wasn't needed, either.

  When the movie came on, he thought the odds were that in a couple of minutes he would doze off and sleep the sleep of the Half-Crocked and More or Less Innocent most of the way across the Southern Hemisphere.

  Nothing wrong with that. Unless you're sitting in the left seat in the cockpit, that's the only way to fly: unconscious.

  He didn't fall asleep. It was a Mel Gibson movie; Gibson was playing the role of a prosperous businessman whose kid was kidnapped.

  Well, let's see how he handles this; maybe I'll learn something, Castillo thought as he pushed the overhead button to summon a stewardess to order another brandy. Castillo thought Gibson was a fine actor. He had played, very credibly, the role of light colonel Hal Moore in the movie version of the book We Were Soldiers Once… and Young, written by Moore and Joe Galloway.

  Castillo had read the book, the story of what had happened to one of the first battalions of paratroopers who had been converted to air assault-helicopter inserted-troops at Fort Benning, and then followed them to Vietnam, where some nitwit in the First Cav had inserted them in the wrong place and almost gotten them wiped out.

  It was nonfiction, and he'd bought the book because he'd heard that Galloway-who had been at Fort Benning and then gone to Vietnam with the battalion-had done a good job describing the early days of Army aviation, and he thought it might tell him something about what the late WOJG Jorge Alejandro Castillo, boy chopper jockey, had gone through before he bought the farm. And because he knew the light bird battalion commander Galloway had written about-Moore-had wound up with three stars; there had to be a lesson in that alone.

  He'd really liked the book, and had taken a chance and gone to see the movie. He almost never went to war movies; most of them were awful. The ones that didn't make you laugh made you sick.

  The Soldiers movie had been as good as the book. He thought it was just about as realistic as the movie version of Black Hawk Down, Mark Bowden's book on the disaster that hit the special operators in Mogadishu in 1993, and he had viewed that one with the expert eye of someone who'd been flying a Blackhawk in Somalia at the time.

  And Castillo thought tha
t Gibson's portrayal of the battalion commander was right on the money. Gibson's portrayal of the distressed father was very credible, too. Gibson was being forced to make the very tough call between not paying the ransom, or following the advice of the FBI and the cops-and his hysterical wife, the mother of the child-to pay it. When a stewardess gently woke him to offer orange juice, Castillo was more than a little annoyed-if not very surprised-to realize that he had fallen asleep before Gibson had made the tough call.

  That last glass of brandy did you in. Now you'll never know what Gibson decided.

  I wonder what he did decide?

  What the hell would I do in his shoes?

  Jesus, it's only a movie.

  But you're about to get close to a real kidnapping.

  Let this missing the end of the movie be a lesson to you, Charley me boy.

  Now you're working. Lay off the booze.

  Except maybe for a glass or two of wine. Breakfast was nice, too: grapefruit juice that tasted like freshly squeezed, a mushroom omelet, and hard-crusted rolls served with large pats of unsalted butter.

  He remembered Don Fernando-Grandpa-saying, "The only thing the Argentines do well consistently is eat."

  Five minutes after a stewardess served a second cup of coffee, Castillo sensed that the pilot had retarded the throttles a tad, and two minutes after that a steward announced-in Spanish, English, and German, which Herr Gossinger thought was a nice touch-that they were beginning their approach to Buenos Aires, where the local time was five-thirty and the temperature was three degrees Celsius.

  I really am going to freeze my ass in this seersucker. As the 767 taxied up to the terminal, another 767 caught his eye. It was parked on the tarmac, not at one of the terminal's airways. The legend painted in Arabic and English on its glistening white fuselage read "Pan Arabic."

  Good ol' Alex Pevsner told me one of the reasons he hadn't stolen that 727 was that he didn't need an old airplane. And then he had added, "I just bought a nearly new 767 from an airline that went belly up in Argentina."

  I wonder if that's it.

  Probably not. But you never know with Pevsner. Castillo was the third person to get off the 767-after a portly housewife towing a howling five-year-old-and when he rolled his bags into the terminal, he thought for a moment that he had inadvertently gone through a door that should have been locked.

  He hadn't. He was in a duty-free store, and a young woman-Jesus, I like that; long legs, dark eyes, and a splendid bosom-handed him a flyer announcing both that day's bargains and that he could take three hundred U.S. dollars' worth of goods duty-free into Argentina in addition to what was already permitted.

  The duty-free store people have solved their problem of getting travelers into their emporium by making it impossible to get to Immigration and Customs without passing through the store; they've built it on both sides of the corridor.

  Clever.

  But screw them. I don't need anything.

  When he got to the Immigration window, a large bag containing a double-box of Famous Grouse scotch, a half-pound bag of M amp;M's, and two eight-ounce cans of cashews was hanging from the handle of the wheeled briefcase.

  My intentions were noble. I thought I would see if they had any of Abuela's Reserva San Juan Extra Anejo, so that I would be sure to remember to bring her some. They didn't, but they did have a damned good price on the Famous Grouse. And the cashews and M amp;M's were certainly a hell of a lot cheaper than the ten-bucks-a-can cashews and five-dollar one-ounce packages of nuts Hyatt offers in their minibars.

  You're rationalizing again, Charley. The truth is you have no strength of character. If the duty-free-store spending spree isn't enough proof of that, note the way you lusted after the senorita passing out the flyers. You promised yourself you would be faithful to your Secret Service trainee-is that what they're calling her? Maybe cadet?-Betty Schneider, even though she professes not to want to get to know you better than she does now, which is to say, hardly at all. And absolutely not at all in the biblical sense. "And are you in Argentina on business or pleasure, Senor Gossinger?"

  "Business and pleasure."

  "What's the nature of your business?"

  "I'm a journalist, here on a story."

  "You understand that as a journalist, you will have to register with the Ministry of Information?"

  "I'm only going to be here for a few days. Just to do a story on the survivors of the Graf Spee."

  "The law is the law, senor."

  This guy never heard of the Graf Spee.

  "I certainly understand, and I'll register just as soon as I can. Probably later today."

  That was pretty stupid, Inspector Clouseau. You didn't have to tell him you were a journalist. You could have told him you were a used-car salesman on vacation.

  How come James Bond never gets asked what he's doing when he goes through Immigration?

  Customs didn't give him any trouble. The customs officers pushed a button for each traveler, which randomly flashed a red and a green light. If it came up red, your bags went through the X-ray machine. If it came up green, they waved you through. Castillo won the push of the button.

  He pushed through the doors to the arrival lobby.

  There was a stocky man holding a crudely lettered sign with GOSSINGER on it.

  "My name is Gossinger."

  A balding, short, heavyset man in his forties standing next to the man with the sign put out his hand.

  "Mr. Gossinger, my name is Santini. Mr. Isaacson asked me to meet you. Welcome to Argentina."

  Castillo picked up on the "Mr. Isaacson." Not Joel. Not Agent. And responded accordingly.

  "That was very kind of him. And kind of you. How do you do?"

  "Some of the taxi drivers here at the airport tend to take advantage of unwary visitors."

  "That happens at a lot of airports," Charley replied. "La Guardia comes immediately to mind."

  Santini smiled, and then said: "We have a remise- you know what a remise is?"

  Charley nodded.

  "… with an honest driver," Santini finished, then gestured toward the doors. "Shall we go?"

  When the man with the sign got two steps ahead of him, Santini quickly gestured-his index finger across his lips-for Castillo to say nothing important in the presence of the driver. Castillo quickly nodded his head.

  They stood for a couple of minutes on the curb while the driver went for the car. Santini didn't say a word. Castillo, feeling colder by the second in his summer suit, silently hoped the driver hurried.

  The car was a large, black Volkswagen with heavily tinted glass. As the driver bent to put Castillo's luggage in the trunk, Castillo saw that he had a pistol-it looked like a Beretta 9mm-in a belt holster.

  Santini opened the rear door and motioned for Castillo to get in. When he had, Santini slid in beside him. When the driver got behind the wheel, Santini asked, "You don't speak Spanish, do you?"

  Castillo asked with a raised eyebrow how he should reply. Santini, just perceptibly, shook his head.

  "I'm afraid not," Castillo said.

  "Pity," Santini said. "Mr. Isaacson didn't say where you would be staying."

  "The Hyatt."

  "It's now the Four Seasons, formerly Hyatt Park. They sold it."

  "I guess nobody told my travel agent," Castillo said.

  "You heard that, Antonio?" Santini asked. "The Four Seasons?"

  "Si, senor."

  The Volkswagen started off. It was a thirty-minute drive from the airport to the hotel. First down the crowded but nonetheless high-speed autopista toll road, and then onto Avenida 9 Julio, which Castillo remembered was supposed to be the widest avenue in the world.

  As they came close to the Four Seasons, formerly Hyatt Park, Castillo saw that it was next to the French embassy, an enormous turn-of-the-century mansion. He'd forgotten that.

  A top-hatted doorman welcomed him to the Four Seasons and blew a whistle, which caused a bellman to appear.

  "Find some
where to park," Santini ordered Antonio. "I'll see that Senor Gossinger gets settled." Room 1550 in the Four Seasons was a small suite, a comfortable sitting room and a large bedroom, both facing toward the Main Railroad Station-which Castillo remembered was called "El Retiro"-and the docks and the River Plate beyond. There was something faint on the far horizon.

  Castillo wondered aloud if they were high enough so that he was looking at the shore of Uruguay.

  "Clear day," Santini replied. "Could be. Why don't we go out on the balcony and have a good look?"

  "Why not?"

  When they were out on the small balcony, Santini took a small, flat metal box from his pocket and ran it over the walls, then over the tiny table and two chairs, and finally over the floor.

  "Clean," he announced. "But it never hurts to check."

  Castillo smiled at him.

  "Joel tells me there's a warrant out for you in Costa Rica," Santini said with a smile. "Grand Theft, Airplane."

  "Joel's mistaken. The name on the warrant is 'Party or Parties Unknown.'"

  Santini chuckled, then asked, "What's going on with you here?"

  "I was sent to find out about our diplomat's wife who got herself kidnapped."

  "When did kidnapping start to interest Special Forces?"

  "Joel told you about that, too, huh? To look at him, you wouldn't think he talks too much."

  "Your shameful secret is safe with me, Herr Gossinger."

  "I guess you know I'm on loan from the Army to Matt Hall?" Santini nodded. "The President told him to send me down here to, quote, find out what happened and how it happened before anybody down there has time to write a cover-his-ass report, end quote."

  Santini nodded, then offered:

  "Mrs. Elizabeth Masterson, nice lady, wife of J. Winslow Masterson, our chief of mission. Nice guy. She was apparently snatched from the parking lot of a restaurant called Kansas, nice place, in San Isidro, which is an upscale suburb. So far, no communication from the kidnappers. I'm thinking that they may have been very disappointed to find the lady has a diplomatic passport; I wouldn't be surprised if they turn her loose. On the other hand, they may decide that a dead woman can't identify anybody."