"Abuela, this wasn't my idea." 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, n.o.body's going to kidnap me." n.o.body'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. 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-cla.s.s compartment of the Boeing 767; a stewardess appeared with a tray of champagne gla.s.ses.

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 gla.s.s of merlot that came with the appetizers just as soon as they reached cruising alt.i.tude, either, but he took that, and a second gla.s.s with the entree-a nice little filet mignon, served with roasted potatoes. And the gla.s.s 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 c.o.c.kpit, 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 b.u.t.ton to summon a stewardess to order another brandy. Castillo thought as he pushed the overhead b.u.t.ton 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, We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young, written by Moore and Joe Galloway. 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 a.s.sault-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 Soldiers movie had been as good as the book. He thought it was just about as realistic as the movie version of movie had been as good as the book. He thought it was just about as realistic as the movie version of Black Hawk Down, 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. 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 that 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 gla.s.s of brandy did you in. Now you'll never know what Gibson decided.

I wonder what he did decide?

What the h.e.l.l 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 gla.s.s 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 b.u.t.ter.

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 r.e.t.a.r.ded 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 a.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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&M's, and two eight-ounce cans of cashews was hanging from the handle of the wheeled briefcase.

My intentions were n.o.ble. I thought I would see if they had any of Abuela' 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 d.a.m.ned good price on the Famous Grouse. And the cashews and M&M's were certainly a h.e.l.l 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 l.u.s.ted after the senorita pa.s.sing 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. Graf Spee."

"The law is the law, senor."

This guy never heard of the Graf Spee. 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 b.u.t.ton 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 b.u.t.ton.

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 gla.s.s. 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."