Max came down the stairs, trotted to the limousine—causing the smiling man to lose his smile—stuck his big furry head into the open rear door of the limousine, and then, curiosity satisfied, headed for the nose gear.
Castillo unstrapped himself and went into the passenger compartment.
“Terribly sorry, my fault, old chap,” Cedric Lee-Watson greeted him. “I should have known something like this would happen.”
“What the hell is going on?” Castillo demanded angrily.
“The thing is, you see, is that I have something of a vice.”
“No!” Miller said in mock horror.
Castillo could not restrain a smile.
Lee-Watson mimed throwing dice.
“You’re a crapshooter?” Miller asked. “Shame on you!”
“The car is from the Conrad,” Lee-Watson said. “When I called to ask about accommodations for all of us, they must have assumed I was bringing friends.”
“High-rolling friends?” Miller asked.
Lee-Watson nodded.
“And so you have,” Miller went on. “Sometimes, when I’ve known that Lady Luck was smiling at me, I have been known to wager as much as two dollars on the turn of a card.”
Castillo chuckled. Then he said, “Well, what the hell do we do?”
“One option, Ace,” Edgar Delchamps called, “would be to get in the limousine and go to the hotel. It’s getting hot as hell in here.”
Castillo saw a Chrysler Town & Country van pull up behind the limousine, then a Chrysler Stratus behind the van. Two large men wearing wide-brimmed straw hats, sunglasses, and flowered Hawaiian-style shirts—which failed to conceal the outline of holstered pistols under them—got out of the front passenger seat of each and stood looking at the airplane.
“Let me deal with this,” Lee-Watson said, and went down the stair door.
Max appeared at the foot of the steps and started barking.
Castillo turned to look at Svetlana.
“Didn’t you hear Max, Cinderella? Your pumpkin is here.”
[THREE]
Restaurant Lo de Tere
Rambla Artigas and Calle 8
Punta del Este, Maldonado Province
Republica Oriental del Uruguay
2025 3 January 2006
Charley held Svetlana’s hand as they waited for her to judge if the Uruguayan caviar—as the waiter had promised them with a straight face—was really as good as that from the Caspian Sea.
Castillo sensed eyes on them and saw that an elderly, nice-looking couple a few tables away was smiling at them.
“What are you thinking?” Svetlana asked.
He lied.
“I was wondering if you’re going to be honest enough to admit that the Uruguayan fish eggs are as good as Russian.”
“I will be polite and say ‘very nice’ if they are at all edible, which I rather doubt.”
Everything else was still going so smoothly that he could not get Castillo Rule Seven out of his mind.
They had attracted much less attention than he expected when the limousine rolled up to the door of the Conrad. He thought there would be at least some people gaping at the limo to see the bride of the rock star or the rock star himself or a combination thereof emerge.
There were no gapers.
Their accommodations were first class, suggesting that Cedric Lee-Watson was not only a heavy roller, indeed, but a very unlucky one as well. They were all on an upper floor of the hotel, in suites with balconies that had provided Lester with an easy place to set up the AFC radio and Svetlana with a view of the swimming pool.
“I’ve got my bathing suit,” Svetlana had announced, instantly triggering memories in Castillo’s mind of the last time he had seen her in—actually mostly out of—it.
He had restrained his carnal urges until they returned from their swim, but had been on the verge of unleashing them when she entered the shower.
The telephone had dashed that hope. It was Alex Darby calling from Montevideo to announce that he and the others were in Montevideo and what he suggested was that they stay there overnight and drive to Shangri-La in the morning, rather than meet in Punta del Este and drive to the estancia together.
Castillo immediately decided that that was a sound proposition, based on a careful analysis of the tactical situation, which would also provide the opportunity for him to have a romantic dinner with Svetlana in some restaurant overlooking the blue South Atlantic.
With Svetlana and no one else.
“That’s fine with me, Alex,” he had pronounced solemnly. “We’ll see you at the estancia, say, about eleven, maybe a little later.”
Those plans hadn’t gone off perfectly. No sooner had he hung up the telephone and gone into the bedroom than Svetlana had come out of the shower and stood in her unmentionables while aiming a roaring hair-dryer at her hair.
When she saw him looking at her, she flicked off the dryer. “What do we do now?”
He gallantly put aside the first thought that occurred to him and suggested instead that when she had finished dressing—“No hurry, sweetheart”—that they walk along the beach until they came to a nice restaurant.
She’d smiled and flicked the dryer back on.
But that hadn’t gone off exactly as planned, either. They were perhaps a quarter-mile down the beach when he noticed that walking along the roadside, with a car trailing, were Corporal Lester Bradley and two of the Russian gorillas who had met the plane. The former wore a black fanny pack, which hung heavily, as if it possibly held, for example, a Model 1911A1 Colt .45 ACP semiautomatic and three or four full magazines, while the latter wore coats and ties and who knew what weaponry concealed.
The headwaiter of the Restaurant Lo de Tere discovered a last-minute reservation cancellation a remarkable thirty seconds after Castillo had slipped him the equivalent of twenty-five U.S. dollars.
“I’m in a generous mood,” Castillo then had told the headwaiter, holding up another twenty-five dollars’ worth of Uruguayan currency. “There’s a hungry-looking young man, looks like a college student, hovering near the door, probably wondering if he can afford your excellent restaurant. You tell him you have special prices for students and put the difference on mine.”
The extended Uruguayan currency had been snatched from his hand.
