"Oh, Jesus H. Christ!" he said softly.

He took his cellular from his shirt pocket and pushed an autodial b.u.t.ton.

Answer the f.u.c.king phone, Alex!

"Alex Darby."

"Alex, I think you'd better come back here. Come to the rear of the parking lot."

Darby heard the tone of Masterson's voice.

"Jesus, what's up?"

"The Bus is here. The door was half open. Betsy's purse is on the backseat. No Betsy. I don't like the looks of this."

"On my way, Jack."

"Hand me the microphone and turn the speaker up," Alex Darby said to his driver. "And then head back to the Kansas. Fast."

"Si, senor," the driver said, and took the shortwave radio microphone from where it lay on the pa.s.senger seat and handed it to Darby. The shortwave net provided encrypted voice communication. the driver said, and took the shortwave radio microphone from where it lay on the pa.s.senger seat and handed it to Darby. The shortwave net provided encrypted voice communication.

Allegedly, the encryption was unbreakable. Very few people believed this.

Alex keyed the mic. "Darby to Lowery."

Almost instantly, the speaker came to life. "Yeah, Alex. What's up?"

"I just had a call from Jack Masterson. Something very unusual is going on at the Kansas on Aven-"

"In San Isidro?" Lowery cut him off. "That Kansas?"

"Right. His van is there, and his wife's purse, but no wife. Jack sounds very concerned."

"I'll call the San Isidro cops," Lowery said. "I'm in Belgrano; ten, twelve minutes out. On my way."

"Thanks, Ken."

"Let's hope she's in the can, powdering her nose," Lowery said. "See you there. Lowery out."

Jack Masterson, scanning the parking lot and making mental notes of what and who were in the immediate area, pushed another autodial b.u.t.ton on his cellular phone.

"Post One, Staff Sergeant Taylor," the Marine guard on duty at the emba.s.sy said, as he answered the unlisted telephone.

"This is Masterson. I need to speak to Ken Lowery now."

"Sir, Mr. Lowery has left the emba.s.sy. May I suggest you try to get him on the radio?"

"I don't have a G.o.dd.a.m.n radio. You contact him, and tell him to call me on my cellular. Tell him it's an emergency."

"Yes, sir."

[FIVE].

The Residence Avenida Libertador y Calle John F. Kennedy Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2110 20 July 2005

"Hola?" Amba.s.sador Juan Manuel Silvio said, picking up the telephone beside his armchair in the sitting room of the amba.s.sadorial apartment on the third floor of the residence. Amba.s.sador Juan Manuel Silvio said, picking up the telephone beside his armchair in the sitting room of the amba.s.sadorial apartment on the third floor of the residence.

"Alex, Mr. Amba.s.sador. We have a problem."

"Tell me."

"Everything points to Betsy Masterson having been kidnapped from the parking lot of the Kansas in San Isidro about an hour ago."

For a long moment, the amba.s.sador didn't reply. He was always careful with his words.

"Ken Lowery is aware of this?" he asked, finally.

"Yes, sir. I'm in Ken's car, headed downtown from the Kansas."

"Jack?"

"I talked him into going home, sir. My wife is on her way over there."

"Why don't you and Ken come here, Alex?" Silvio asked. "And I think it might be useful if Tony Santini came, too. I could call him."

Anthony J. Santini, listed in the emba.s.sy telephone directory as the a.s.sistant financial attache, was in fact a Secret Service agent dispatched to Buenos Aires to, as he put it, "look for funny money." That meant both counterfeit currency and illegally acquired money being laundered.

"I'll call him, sir."

"Then I'll see you here in a few minutes, Alex. Thank you," the amba.s.sador said, and hung up.

"You'll call who?" Ken Lowery inquired.

"Tony Santini," Alex Darby replied. "The amba.s.sador wants him there, too."

"The residence or the emba.s.sy?"

"Residence," Darby replied, then added, "I guess he figures Tony is the closest thing we have to the FBI."

There were no "legal attaches"-FBI agents-at the emba.s.sy at the moment. There were a half dozen "across the river" looking for money-laundering operations. Money laundering in Argentina had just about dried up after the Argentine government had, without warning several years before, forcibly converted dollar deposits to pesos at an unfavorable rate and then sequestered the pesos. International drug dealers didn't trust Argentine banks any more than industry did and moved their laundering to Uruguay and elsewhere.

Darby punched an autodial b.u.t.ton on his cellular to call Santini.

Amba.s.sador Juan Manuel Silvio was a tall, lithe, fair-skinned, well-tailored man, with an erect carriage and an aristocratic manner, and when he opened the door to the amba.s.sadorial apartment Alex Darby thought again that Silvio looked like the models in advertis.e.m.e.nts for twelve-year-old scotch or ten-thousand-dollar wrist.w.a.tches.

He was a Cuban-American, brought from Castro's Cuba as a child. His family had arrived in Miami, he said, on their forty-six-foot Chris-Craft sportfisherman with nothing but the clothing on their backs and a large cigar humidor stuffed with his mother's jewelry and hundred-dollar bills.

"My father was one of the few who recognized Castro as more than a joke," he had once told Darby. "What he didn't get quite right was how quickly Castro would march into Havana."

Darby knew he wasn't boasting, but the opposite. Silvio was proud of-and greatly admired-his fellow Cubans who had arrived in Miami "with nothing but the clothes on their backs" and subsequently prospered. He simply wanted to make it plain that it had been much easier for his family than it had been for other refugees.

Silvio graduated from his father's alma mater, Spring Hill College, a Jesuit inst.i.tution in Mobile, Alabama, with a long history of educating the children of upper-cla.s.s Latin Americans, took a law degree at Harvard, and then a doctorate in political science at the University of Alabama.

He joined the State Department on graduation.

He joked, "My father decided that the family owed one son to the service of the United States. I am the youngest son, so, to my brothers' delight, here I am, while they bask in the Miami sun."

Alex Darby liked the amba.s.sador both personally and professionally. He had served in other American emba.s.sies where the amba.s.sadors-career State Department and political appointees alike-had demonstrated an appalling lack of knowledge of geopolitics and history, and had regarded the CIA especially, and the other emba.s.sy "outsiders"-the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Secret Service and even the military attaches who worked under the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)-as dangerous nuisances who had to be kept on a very tight leash lest they disrupt the amiable ambience of diplomatic c.o.c.ktail parties.

It was a given to Amba.s.sador Silvio that communism in Latin America was not dead; that it posed a genuine threat to the United States; that Islamic fascism was present in Latin America and growing stronger, and posed an even greater threat to the United States; and that the drug trade financed both.

His att.i.tude toward and support of Darby and the other outsiders made their work easier, even if it did tend to annoy the "real" Foreign Service staff at the emba.s.sy.

The amba.s.sador heard out Darby's report of what had happened, considered what he had heard for a long moment, and then asked Lowery and Santini if either had anything to add.

Lowery said, "No, sir," and Santini shook his head.

"The priorities, as I see them," the amba.s.sador said, "are to get Betsy back to her family, and then to help Jack through this. Any comments on that?"

All three men shook their heads. Lowery said, "No, sir," again.

"The Policia Federal are in on this, I presume?"

"Yes, sir," Lowery said.

"Were you considering involving SIDE, Alex?"

"I think SIDE already knows what's happened, sir," Darby replied. "But I can make a call or two if-"

"Let's hold off on that for a while. Do you think SIDE has informed the Foreign Ministry?"

"I think we have to a.s.sume they will, sir. The Policia Federal probably already have."

"Do you think this is politically motivated? Do we have any reason to suspect this is a terrorist act?"

"It may be, of course," Darby said. "But we've always thought that if the rag-heads were going to do anything, it would be a violent act, either a bomb at the emba.s.sy or here, or a drive-by a.s.sa.s.sination attempt on you-"

"You think it may be a run-of-the-mill kidnapping?" Silvio interrupted.

"Sir, I don't know what to think. But if I had to make a choice, that seems most likely."

"But kidnapping not only an American, but one with diplomatic status . . . that doesn't strike me as being smart."

"It will certainly get SIDE and the police off their a- Get them moving," Lowery said. "This is really going to embarra.s.s the government."

"Mr. Santini? You have any thoughts?"

"Not many, sir. But my experience with what the sociologists call the 'criminal element' has been that they often do stupid things because they're usually stupid. I wouldn't be surprised if these guys missed the diplomat tag on the car."

"And when they learn who Mrs. Masterson is? You think they may let her go?"

"I hate to say this, sir," Santini replied, "but I think it's better than fifty-fifty that they won't. She can identify them."

"Jesus Christ!" Lowery said.

"Another scenario," Santini said, "is that they won't care about her diplomatic status, and may just demand a ransom, and if paid, let her go. We can a.s.sume only that they're willing to break the law, not that they are going to act rationally."

The amba.s.sador asked, "Is this going to be on television tonight, and on the front page of Clarin Clarin in the morning?" in the morning?"

"Very possibly," Darby said. "Unless there is strong pressure from the government-the foreign minister or maybe the President or one of his cronies-to keep it quiet."

"That would be-pressure from on high-more effective in keeping this out of the press than anything we could do, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, it would," Darby said, simply.

"I'll call the foreign minister right now," the amba.s.sador said. "Before I call Washington."

"I think that's a good idea, sir," Lowery said.

"Alex, why don't you stop by Jack's house? Tell him that everything that can be done is being done? And that he's in my prayers?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll call him myself just as soon as I get off the phone-I may even go out there-but . . ."

"I understand, Mr. Amba.s.sador," Darby said.

"I don't think it needs to be said, does it, that I want to know of any development right away? No matter what the hour?"

[SIX].

"Reynolds," the man answering the telephone announced.

"This is the Southern Cone desk?" Amba.s.sador Silvio asked.

There was a more formal t.i.tle, of course, for that section of the State Department charged with diplomatic affairs in the republics of Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina, but "Southern Cone" fit to describe the three nations at the southern tip of South America and was commonly used.

"Yes, it is. Who is this, please?"

"My name is Silvio. I'm the amba.s.sador in Buenos Aires."