After examining it carefully, the rent-a-cop motioned that Castillo was now permitted to join one of two lines of people waiting their turn to deal with embassy staff seated comfortably behind thick plateglass windows. The scene reminded Castillo of the cashier windows in Las Vegas casinos.
He got in line and awaited his turn. Ten minutes later, it came.
“I’d like to see the ambassador, please.”
“Passport, please.”
The not-unattractive female behind the thick plate glass examined it, then carefully examined Castillo, and then said, “What time is your appointment?”
“I don’t have an appointment. But if you will get the ambassador on the phone, I’m sure he’ll see me.”
The lady scribbled a number on a small pad and slid it through a tray at the bottom of the plate glass.
“You can call this number and ask for an appointment.”
“Is there an American officer around here somewhere?”
Three minutes later, a pleasant-looking young man appeared behind the woman, looked at Castillo, and said, “Yes?”
Castillo remembered Edgar Delchamps telling him that new graduates of the CIA’s Clandestine Services How-to-Be-a-Spy School were often given as their first assignment duties as an assistant consul at an embassy where their inexperience would not get them in trouble.
“Good afternoon,” Castillo said politely, and slid his Army identification through the slot under the plate glass. “I’d like to see the ambassador. Would you be good enough to call his office and tell him I’m here?”
The fledgling spook examined the ID card and slid it back through the slot.
“Let me give you a number you can call, Colonel,” the pleasant-looking young man said.
Castillo slid his Secret Service credentials through the slot.
“Listen to me carefully, please,” Castillo began, keeping his voice low but his tone that of one not to be questioned. “If you don’t get on the phone right now, I will personally tell the DCI that you wouldn’t call the ambassador for me. And the result of that will be that you’ll be sitting in one of the parking lot guard shacks at Langley this time next week.”
They locked eyes.
The assistant consul picked up the telephone handset, then spoke into it.
A moment later, he slid the handset through the slot.
“I don’t know where he is, Colonel,” Ambassador Silvio’s secretary said. “He went to Jorge Newbery to meet a VIP and hasn’t checked in. Would you like to wait for him here?”
“No, thank you,” Castillo replied. “When you’re in touch, tell him I’ll call him later.”
Castillo slid the handset back through the slot, then without a word turned from the window and took out his cellular telephone.
A rent-a-cop laid his hand on Castillo’s arm and pointed to a sign on the wall. It forbade the use of cellular telephones.
Castillo left the building and went back into the one-hundred-degree, one-hundred-percent-humidity Buenos Aires summer afternoon. He saw that the gendarme was waiting for him.
Castillo punched one of the cell phone’s autodial buttons. Davidson answered on the second ring.
“He’s here with Montvale,” Davidson said by way of answering.
“Keep them there if you have to break Montvale’s legs,” Castillo said, and then began to walk on the sunbaked sidewalk toward the fine steak house called Rio Alba, the gendarme on his heels.
[TWO]
Jack Davidson and his gendarme were sitting at a table just inside the restaurant door. Both looked to be halfway through with eating their luncheon of steaks.
Davidson caught Castillo’s eye and indicated with a nod toward the rear of the restaurant.
“You wait here with them,” Castillo said to his gendarme, motioning to the table with Davidson and the other gendarme. Their table had a clear view of a round table at the rear of the establishment.
Castillo walked toward the round table, seated at which were the Honorable Charles W. Montvale, the United States Director of National Intelligence who liked to be called “Ambassador”—in his long career of public service he had been deputy secretary of State, secretary of the Treasury, and ambassador to the European Union—the United States Ambassador to Argentina Juan Manuel Silvio, and a man in his late fifties, tall and trim with closely cropped hair.
Castillo decided unkindly that the tall, trim man’s suit indeed looked, as Davidson had said, as if it had come off a chromed rack at Sears, Roebuck & Co.
At a table against the wall were two neatly dressed, muscular men who Castillo decided were almost certainly from the agency or were Montvale’s Secret Service bodyguards. Montvale spotted Castillo, paused momentarily in the act of forking a piece of steak to his mouth, then completed the motion.
“Well, what a pleasant surprise!” Castillo announced as he approached. “I was just at the embassy to make my manners, Ambassador Silvio, but they didn’t seem to know where you were. And Mr. Montvale! What brings you down this way?”
“I think you’ve got a very good idea, Colonel,” Montvale said sharply, chewing as he spoke.
Castillo glanced around the room, then looked back at Montvale. “Aside from thinking you’ve heard the reputation of the Rio Alba as the world’s best steak house, I haven’t a clue.”
Montvale swallowed, then sipped at his glass of red wine. “Why don’t you sit down, Colonel.”
“Thank you very much.”
Castillo took his seat, looked around for a waiter, and motioned for him to come over.
“I’m starved. I had breakfast very early,” he said in English to Montvale, and then switched to Spanish to address the waiter: “Would you bring me a Roquefort empanada, please, and then a bife de chorizo punto, papas fritas, and a tomato and onion salad?”
He picked up the bottle of wine on the table, read the label, made a face, returned the bottle to the table, and added, “And a bottle of Saint Felicien Cabernet Sauvignon, please.”
“Something wrong with that wine, Colonel?” Montvale said, an edge of sarcasm rising in his tone.
“Well, according to the label, it’s Malbec.”
“Yes. And?”
“And, Mr. Montvale, I thought you knew. ‘Malbec’ is French for ‘bad taste.’ I don’t know about you, sir, but that’s enough to warn me off.”
Ambassador Silvio chuckled.
The man in the Sears, Roebuck suit stared icily at Castillo.
Castillo reached across the table and offered him his hand.
“My name is Castillo, sir. Any friend of Mr. Montvale—”
“
“How do you do, sir?” Castillo said politely.
“Of Special Operations Command,” Montvale added.
“Oh, really? Well, if we can find the time, sir, maybe we can play ‘Do You Know?’ I know some people there.”
Colonel Remley neither smiled nor replied.
“Speaking of time, Castillo,” Montvale said. “I’d like to get back to Washington as soon as possible. How long is it going to take for you to get your ‘guests’ to the airport?”
“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
Montvale, looking over the top of his wineglass, stared down Castillo. “You know goddamn well who I’m talking about.”
The waiter arrived with Castillo’s wine. Castillo took his time going through the ritual of approving the bottle, finally taking a long sip, swirling it in his mouth, then shrugging to the waiter as if signifying that it’d have to do.
After the waiter poured the large glass half full and left, Castillo picked up the glass, looked at Montvale, and
