He handed Castillo a plastic yellow visitor's pa.s.s on what looked like a dog tag chain, and pushed a clipboard to him.

"If you'll sign that, please, sir."

"And if you'll follow me, sir," Santini said, "we'll see if we can't straighten this out with Mr. Lowery."

"He the security guy?" Castillo asked.

"Yes, sir, he is."

Castillo hung the visitor's badge around his neck and followed Santini through the metal detector.

Inside, behind the Marine guard post enclosure, was a foyer. In the center of it were two elevator doors, one of them open. Santini waved Castillo through it and pushed a floor b.u.t.ton.

"I would say that we are about to corner the security lion in his lair," Santini said, when the door had closed and they were alone, "except that he's more of a p.u.s.s.y-cat."

The door from the third-floor corridor to the emba.s.sy security officer's office was open. Kenneth W. Lowery- he looks a h.e.l.l of a lot like Howard Kennedy-was sitting at his desk, talking on the telephone.

When he saw Santini, he smiled and waved him in.

"I'll get back to you," Lowery said, and hung up the telephone.

"Good morning, Tony," he said.

"Say h.e.l.lo to Supervisory Secret Service Agent Castillo," Santini said. "He's in town to complain about my expense sheet."

"Having seen your lifestyle, I can see where that would be entirely possible," Lowery said, getting up and extending his hand across his desk. "Nice to meet you."

"How are you?" Castillo said.

"What are the chances of getting Mr. Castillo a frequent visitor badge? He's going to be in and out."

"How long are you going to be here, Mr. Castillo?"

"Call me 'Charley,' please," Castillo said. "As long as it takes to get Santini to admit he's been robbing the service blind. That shouldn't take more than a week or so."

"Could I see your credentials, please? And your travel orders?"

"Credentials, yes," Castillo said. "Travel orders, no."

"You don't have travel orders?" Lowery asked.

"Blanket," Castillo said.

Lowery examined the credentials carefully.

"I don't think I've ever met a supervisory special agent before," he said, making it a question.

How the h.e.l.l do I respond to that?

"I wasn't notified that you were coming," Lowery said.

Another question, not a statement.

"That's why they call it the Secret Service," Santini said. "What we do is secret; we don't tell anyone."

Lowery did not find that amusing.

"Except for having a couple of chats with Santini, I have no business with the emba.s.sy," Castillo said. "If there's a problem with this frequent visitor badge he thinks I should have, forget it." He paused and added: "There's a number you can call to verify my bona fides on the back side of the photo ID."

"Oh, no. No problem at all," Lowery said quickly. "Can I borrow these for a moment? I'll have my secretary make up the badge."

"Sure," Castillo said.

Lowery went through a side door and came back a moment later.

"Take just a couple of minutes. She'll type it out and then plasticize it. I told her to make it out for two weeks. That be long enough?"

"More than long enough," Castillo said. "Thank you."

"Can I offer you a cup of coffee while we're waiting?"

"Yes, thank you."

Lowery went through the door again, and returned shortly with three china mugs.

"I know Tony takes his black," Lowery said. "But there's . . ."

"He takes it black? Then what's that thirty-eight-dollar item for cream and sugar, Santini?"

Lowery looked at him, then laughed.

"Tony's been telling me about your problem," Castillo said.

"What problem is that?" Lowery asked warily.

"The missing wife," Castillo said.

Lowery flashed Santini a dirty look.

Santini rose to it.

"Come on, Ken, it's not as if Mr. Castillo works for the New York Times. New York Times."

Lowery considered that for a moment.

"Actually, just before you came in, I was wondering how long it will be before the Times Times guy hears about it." He paused, then added: "What did Tony tell you?" guy hears about it." He paused, then added: "What did Tony tell you?"

"Just that the wife of the chief of mission is missing under mysterious circ.u.mstances."

"The husband's climbing the walls, understandably," Lowery said. "She was waiting for him in a restaurant in San Isidro. When he got there, her purse and car were there, and she wasn't."

"And you think she was kidnapped?"

Lowery hesitated before replying, then asked, "Have you got much experience with this sort of thing, Mr. Castillo?"

"A little."

Once, for example, I helped s.n.a.t.c.h two Iraqi generals, one Russian general, one Russian colonel, and half a dozen other non-Iraqis from a Scud site in the Iraqi desert. I don't think that's what you have in mind, but let's see where this goes.

"Frankly, I don't," Lowery said. "Let me tell you what I've got, and you tell me what you think."

"Sure."

"I don't think these people were just hanging around the Kansas parking lot to grab the first woman they thought looked as if someone would pay to get her back. Too many well-heeled folks pa.s.s through that parking lot on any given night, and never a nab. They were looking for Mrs. Masterson."

"That suggests they think the government would pay to get her back. Don't they know that we don't pay ransom to turn people loose?"

"Jack Masterson has money," Lowery said. "Lots of money. You don't know who he is?"

Castillo shook his head.

"'Jack the Stack'?" Lowery asked.

Castillo shook his head again.

"The basketball player?"

That didn't ring a bell, but there was a very slight tinkle. "Oh."

"In the fourth month of his professional basketball career," Lowery explained, "for which, over a five-year period, Jack the Stack was to be paid ten million dollars . . ."

Castillo's eyebrows went up. Christ, now I know! Christ, now I know! "But he was run over by a beer truck when leaving the stadium," Castillo said. "But he was run over by a beer truck when leaving the stadium," Castillo said.

"Driven by a guy who had been sampling his product," Lowery finished. "He had twice as much alcohol in his blood than necessary to be considered legally under the influence."

"And there was a settlement," Castillo said.

"One h.e.l.l of a settlement. Without even going to court. Jack wasn't badly injured, but enough so that he would never be able to play professional ball again. The brewery didn't want to go to court because not only were they going to lose-they were responsible and knew it; the truck driver was their agent-but there would be all sorts of the wrong kind of publicity. They paid not only the ten million he would have earned under his contract, but also what he could reasonably have expected to earn in the rest of his professional career. It came to sixty million, not counting the money he could have made with endors.e.m.e.nts."

"I always wondered what happened to him after he left the game," Castillo said.

My thoughts were unkind. I wondered how long it would take him-like the winners of a lottery or heavyweight champions-to p.i.s.s away all that money and wind up broke, reduced to greeting people in the lobby of some casino in Las Vegas.

And he wound up a diplomat?

Oh, you are a fine judge of character, Charley Castillo!

"Jack could have, of course, bought an island in the Bahamas and spent the rest of his life fishing, but he's not that kind of guy. He wanted to do something with his life, and he had an education."

"The foreign service seems a long way from a basketball court," Castillo said.

"Not if your wife is the daughter of an amba.s.sador- and, for that matter, your brother-in-law a pretty highly placed guy in the United Nations. Jack had a degree- c.u.m laude-in political science, so when he took the foreign service examination and pa.s.sed it with flying colors, no one was really surprised."

"You don't think of pro athletes having c.u.m laude degrees in anything," Castillo said.

Do I believe that?

No. I know better. There have been exceptions.

But the accusation has been made, justifiably, that C. G. Castillo has a tendency toward political incorrectness.

"Once Jack was in the foreign service, he started working his way up. Quickly working his way up. He's good at what he does. After this tour, they'll probably make him an amba.s.sador."

"And you think the people who grabbed his wife knew this story?"

"h.e.l.l, this is the age of satellite television. The average Argentine twenty-year-old knows more about American professional basketball than I do."

Certainly more than I do. I have never understood why people stay glued to a television screen watching outsized mature adults in baggy shorts try to throw a basketball through a hoop.

"There aren't very many African Americans in Argentina," Lowery said. "Even fewer who stand six-feet-eight and get their pictures on the TV and in La Nacion La Nacion and and Clarin Clarin when they're standing in for the amba.s.sador, or explaining a change in visa policy. when they're standing in for the amba.s.sador, or explaining a change in visa policy. 'Who is that huge black guy? Looks like a basketball player. Why, that's Jack the Stack, that's who he is, the guy who got all those millions when the 'Who is that huge black guy? Looks like a basketball player. Why, that's Jack the Stack, that's who he is, the guy who got all those millions when the cerveza cerveza truck ran over him.'" truck ran over him.'"

"That makes sense."

"'Let's s.n.a.t.c.h his wife'" Lowery concluded. Lowery concluded.

"Yeah," Castillo agreed.

"So far, not a word from the kidnappers," Lowery said.

"Is that unusual?"

"The Policia Federal tell me they usually call within hours just to tell the family not to contact the police, and make their first demands either then, or within twenty-fourhours. It's been-my G.o.d, it will be forty-eight hours at seven tonight."

"How good are the police?"

"The ones that aren't kidnappers themselves are very good."

"Really?"

"They fired the whole San Isidro police commissariat-like a precinct-a while back on suspicion of being involved in kidnappings there."

"Were they?"

"Probably," Lowery said.

He looked thoughtfully at Castillo for a moment.

"Have I made it clear that I like Jack Masterson? Personally and professionally?"