The Hostage

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Tell Charley to be careful. We don’t need a war with Argentina,” the secretary of state said, and hung up before Hall could reply.

  [TWO]

  Room 404 The Mayflower Hotel 1127 Connecticut Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 1120 21 July 2005

  Room 404—which was actually what the hotel called an “executive suite” and consisted of a living room, a large bedroom, a small dining room, and a second bedroom, which held a desk and could be used as an office—was registered to Karl W. Gossinger on a long-term basis.

  The bill for the suite was sent once every two weeks by fax to the Tages Zeitung in Fulda, Germany, and payment was made, usually the next day, by wire transfer to the hotel’s account in the Riggs National Bank.

  When he took the room, Herr Gossinger told the hotel he would need two outside telephone lines. One of these would be listed under his name and that of the Tages Zeitung. The second, which would not be listed, would be a fax line. He also told the hotel that Mr. C. G. Castillo, whom he described as an American associate, would be staying in the suite whenever he was in town, and the hotel should be prepared to take telephone calls, accept packages, and so forth for Mr. Castillo.

  Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger had been born out of wedlock in Bad Hersfeld, Germany, to an eighteen-year-old German girl and a nineteen-year-old American warrant officer helicopter pilot. The Huey pilot had gone to Vietnam shortly after their three-day-and-two-night affair.

  When Jorge Castillo never wrote as he had promised, Erika von und zu Gossinger tried to put him out of her mind, and when the baby was born, she christened him Karl Wilhelm, after her father and brother.

  Frau Erika—she never married; “Frau” was honorific— turned to the U.S. Army for help in finding the father of her only child only after she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Karl was twelve at the time. His grandfather and uncle, the only known relatives, had been killed in an autobahn accident some months before. Frau Erika reasoned that any family would be better for Karl than leaving him an orphan in Germany. Even an orphan with vast family wealth.

  Largely through the efforts of then-Major Allan Naylor of the 11th Armored Cavalry, which was stationed on the East German border near Fulda, WOJG Jorge Alejandro Castillo of San Antonio, Texas, was located. He was interred in San Antonio’s National Cemetery. A representation of the Medal of Honor was chiseled into his tombstone. He had died a hero in Vietnam, apparently without ever suspecting that when he had sown his seed it had been fertile.

  Once it was realized they were dealing with the love child of an officer whose courage had seen him posthumously awarded the nation’s highest recognition of valor, the Army shifted into high gear to make sure that everything possible would be done for the boy.

  Major Naylor was rushed to San Antonio to first find and then as gently as possible inform the late WOJG Castillo’s family about the boy.

  A pragmatist, Naylor had considered several unpleasant possibilities. One was that Mr. Castillo’s parents might not be overjoyed to learn that their son had left an illegitimate child in Germany, at least until they heard of his coming inheritance. That would put a new—and possibly unpleasant—light on the subject.

  Senior Army lawyers were looking into setting up a trust for the benefit of the boy—and only the boy.

  His concern proved to be without basis in fact. General Amory T. Stevens, the Fort Sam Houston commander,who had been Major Naylor’s father’s roommate at West Point, and was Naylor’s godfather, quickly told him that he knew the late Mr. Castillo’s parents.

  “They are Fernando and Alicia Castillo,” Stevens said. “Well known in Texas society as Don Fernando and Doña Alicia. The Don and Doña business isn’t only because they own much of downtown San Antonio; plus large chunks of land outside the city; plus, among others, a large ranch near Midland, under which is the Permian basin, but because of something of far more importance to Texans.

  “Doña Alicia is the great-, great-, whatever grand-daughter of a fellow named Manuel Martinez. Don Fernando is similarly directly descended from a fellow named Guillermo de Castillo. Manuel and Guillermo both fell in noble battle beside Jim Bowie, William Travis, and Davy Crockett at the Alamo.

  “What I’m saying, Allan, is that if this boy in Germany needed help, Don Fernando would quickly cut a check for whatever it would cost. What I’m not sure about is whether he—or, especially, Doña Alicia—is going to be willing to take the love child of their son and a German—probably Protestant—gringo into the family. The Castillos can give lessons in snobbery to the Queen of England.”

  Twenty-two hours after the late WOJG Castillo’s mother was informed, very delicately, that she had an illegitimate grandson, Doña Alicia was at the door of the von und zu Gossinger mansion in Bad Hersfeld. Don Fernando arrived nine hours later.

  Two weeks after that, the United States Consulate in Frankfurt am Main issued a passport to Carlos Guillermo Castillo. Don Fernando was not without influence in Washington. The same day—Frau Erika, then in hospital, having decided she didn’t want her son’s last memory of her to be of a pain-racked terminally ill woman in a drug-induced stupor—Carlos boarded a Pan American Airlines 747 for the United States. Frau Erika died five days later.

  On her death, as far as the government of the Federal Republic of Germany was concerned, American citizen with a new name or not, Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, native-born son, had become the last of the von und zu Gossinger line.

  At twenty-one, just before C. G. Castillo graduated from West Point, Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger came into his German inheritance, which included the Tages Zeitung newspaper chain, two breweries, vast—for Germany—farmlands, and other assets.

  A second identity, as Herr Karl Gossinger, foreign correspondent of the Tages Zeitung, had proved very useful to Major C. G. Castillo, U.S. Army Special Forces, in the past, and it probably would again in Argentina.

  In his suite at the Mayflower, C. G. Castillo was nearly finished with packing his luggage. He had carefully packed his small, guaranteed-to-fit-in-any-airplane-overhead-bin suitcase-on-wheels with enough winter clothing to last three or four days. When it was midsummer in Washington, it was midwinter in Buenos Aires. He didn’t think he’d be down there longer than that.

  All that remained was to pack his briefcase, which also came with wheels and was large enough for his laptop computer. This was somewhat more difficult as it required carefully separating a section of the padding from the frame. Inside was a ten-by-thirteen-inch plastic folder. There was a sticky surface to keep things from sliding around, and the folder material itself was designed to confuse X-ray machines. Castillo carefully arranged his American passport; his U.S. Army identification card; C. G. Castillo’s Gold American Express and Gold Visa credit cards; his Texas driver’s license; and credentials identifying him as a supervisory special agent of the U.S. Secret Service on the sticky surface, closed the folder, and then replaced the padding.

  He then went into the small dining area, and from a small refrigerator concealed in a credenza, took out a bottle of Dos Equis beer, popped the top, took a healthy swallow from the neck, burped, and then went into the living room, where he sat down in a red leather recliner—his, not the hotel’s—shifted his weight so that it opened, and reached for the telephone.

  He punched in a number from memory, took another sip of the Dos Equis, and then lay back in the chair as he waited for the call to be completed.

  The general director of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., who was also the editor-in-chief of one of its holdings, the Tages Zeitung newspapers, answered his private line twenty seconds later.

  “Göerner.”

  “Wie geht’s, Otto?” Castillo said.

  “Ach, der verlorene Sohn.”

  “Well, you may think of me as the prodigal son,” Castillo said, switching to English, “but I like to think of myself as one of your more distinguished foreign correspondents.”<
br />
  “Distinguished, I don’t know. But I’ll go with most expensive.”

  Castillo thought of Otto Göerner as his oldest friend, and he certainly was that. Otto had been at Philipps University in Marburg an der Lahn with Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, Karl’s uncle, and had been with the Tages Zeitung since their graduation. He had been around der Haus im Wald in Bad Hersfeld, as Uncle Otto, as far back as Castillo could remember. He remembered, too, the very early morning when Otto had brought the news of her father’s and brother’s death to his mother.

  And how, when his mother had told him they had located his father’s family and he would probably— “after”—be going to them in the United States, he had thrown a hysterical fit, demanding that he be allowed— “after”—to live with Uncle Otto.

  And how, at the airport in Frankfurt, tears had run unashamedly down Otto’s cheeks when he’d seen him off to the States. And how he had been a friend ever since.

  “How’s ol’ Whatsername and the kids?”

  “Ol’ Whatsername and your godchildren are doing very well, thank you for asking. To what do I owe the honor?”

  “I’m off to Buenos Aires on a story, and I thought I’d see if there was anything else you wanted me to do down there.”

  “Can’t think of anything, Karl,” Otto said.

  Göerner didn’t ask what story Castillo would be pursuing in Argentina.

  He’s the opposite of a fool, Charley thought for the hundredth time, and without any question knows what I do for a living. But he never asks and I never tell him. All he does is give me what I ask for.

  “I won’t be gone long,” Charley said. “Probably less—”

  “Yeah, come to think of it, Karl, I do,” Göerner interrupted.

  “Okay, shoot.”

  Karl Gossinger, the Tages Zeitung’s Washington-based foreign correspondent, usually had a bylined story in the paper once a week. These were generally paraphrased— stolen—from the American Conservative magazine. There was a dual purpose. First, if someone checked on Gossinger, there was his picture, beside his latest story from Washington. And if they looked closer, the mast-head said the Tages Zeitung was founded by Hermann von und zu Gossinger in 1817. Using material from the American Conservative, moreover, gave Charley Castillo a chance to put before German readers what some Americans—including Charley—thought about the Germans turning their backs on America when the United States asked for their help in the Iraq war.

  Editing only for grammar, Otto printed whatever Charley sent him without comment. Charley didn’t know, or ask, whether this was because Otto agreed the Germans had behaved badly, or because the bottom line was that Charley owned the newspapers.

  “The Graf Spee,” Göerner said.

  Charley knew the story of the Graf Spee: The German pocket battleship, named after a World War I German hero, was scuttled just outside the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1939, to keep her from being sunk by three British cruisers waiting for her to come out. Her crew went to Buenos Aires. Her captain, Hans von Langsdorff, put on his dress uniform, laid her battle ensign on the floor of his hotel room, positioned himself so that his body would fall on it, and shot himself in the temple. He was buried in Buenos Aires.

  The crew was interned in Argentina. When the war was over, many of her crew declined repatriation. And many of those who did return to the fatherland took one look at the destroyed remnants of the Thousand Year Reich and went back to Argentina as quickly as they could.

  “What about the Graf Spee?” Charley asked.

  “A fellow named Bardo—a young and very rich financier from Hamburg—has raised the money to salvage her and turn her into a museum in Montevideo. I could use a human-interest piece on the survivors, if any—they’d all be in their eighties. And most of them would be in Argentina.”

  Finding the survivors—if any—shouldn’t be hard. And neither would taking some pictures and writing a feature story. And it would give journalist Gossinger a credible excuse to be in Argentina.

  “I’ll have a shot at it,” Charley said. “Anything else?”

  Göerner hesitated before replying.

  “Karl, I’m a little reluctant to get into this . . .”

  “Into what?”

  “I went over to Marburg an der Lahn a couple of weeks ago. They were doing a fund-raiser for the library at the university. All Alte Marburgers were invited. I overheard parts of a conversation between some of the big shots. What caught my attention was a line, something about ‘Der Führer was the first to come up with that idea. Ha, ha!’”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “You remember that during World War Two, Hitler—the top Nazi—sent a lot of money to Argentina to buy themselves a sanctuary when they lost the war?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “These guys were talking about moving money to Argentina.”

  “To buy sanctuary? Sanctuary from what? You’re talking about drug money?”

  “What I’m thinking about is Iraqi oil-for-food money bribes that may have wound up in the pockets of these guys.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Yeah, Jesus. Anyway, I’ve got people looking into it here, and the idea I had—probably not a good one—was that maybe you would hear something in Argentina.”

  “I’ll keep my ears open,” Charley said.

  “Just that, Karl,” Göerner said seriously. “If you hear something, anything, pass it to me. But stop there. You understand me?”

  That’s as close as he’s ever come to saying, “You and I know you’re not really a journalist.”

  “I take your point.”

  “I also have people looking into the mysterious deaths of people who knew about these oil-for-food bribes.”

  “I take your point, Otto.”

  “Aside from that, have a good steak and a bottle of wine for me, and don’t try to spread your pollen on more than ten or twelve of those lovely Argentine señoritas.”

  “Didn’t I tell you? I have taken a vow of chastity. Celibacy is supposed to increase your mental powers.”

  “Ach, Gott, Karlchen,” Göerner laughed. “Keep in touch.”

  “Kiss my godchildren, and say hello to Ol’ Whatsername.”

  “My regards to Fernando and your grandmother. Auf wiedersehen!”

  The line went dead.

  Castillo hung up, shifted his weight in the chair so the back came up, and then got out of it. He finished the bottle of Dos Equis as he looked around the apartment to see if he had forgotten anything, and then put on the jacket to his seersucker suit.

  He looked at himself in the mirror.

  I am probably going to freeze my ass off in Buenos Aires until I can get to the Hyatt, but on the other hand, I won’t have to go through Reagan and Miami International wearing a woolen sports coat.

  [THREE]

  Miami International Airport Miami, Florida 1850 21 July 2005

  As Castillo stood before the luggage carousel waiting for his suitcase, he had very unkind thoughts about Delta Airlines, on whose flight 431 he had just arrived.

  When he boarded the airplane at Ronald Reagan Washington National, he had had the suitcase in hand. All of the overhead luggage bins in the first-class section were full. The first-class section itself had not been anywhere near full—probably because Delta’s DCA-MIA first-class fare bordered on the rapacious—which suggested, ergo sum, that the luggage in the first-class bins had been placed there by people traveling economy class as they passed through the first-class section en route to the rear of the aircraft.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to check that,” the stewardess told him.

  “Why do I suspect that all the luggage in the bins does not belong to first-class passengers?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to check that,” the stewardess repeated.

  “I don’t suppose that since I thought I would have space in the first-class bins, and find that I don’t, you could put this in with the coats and jackets? I really hate to check
it.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to check it,” the stewardess said firmly.

  It would also seem to logically follow, Castillo thought, watching the luggage carousel rotate at MIA, that since my suitcase was loaded, if not last, then close to last, it would be unloaded first. That obviously is not the case.

  The suitcase finally showed up. Castillo pulled out the handle and dragged it from luggage recovery. Surprising him not at all, the map in the entrance foyer showed him that Aerolíneas Argentinas was at the other end of the airport, almost in Key West. It was a long walk through the crowded airport, which reminded him of his cousin Fernando Lopez’s appraisal of Miami International: “It is the United States’ token third world airport.”

  That reminded him, Jesus Christ, I almost forgot! that he would have to call Fernando and/or Abuela, their grandmother, and tell them he would not be able to come home for the weekend, even if Fernando flew up to pick him up.

  He finally reached the Aerolíneas Argentinas counter. There was a long line of people in the first-class line, all of whom seemed to have extra, overweight, or oversize luggage. There were far more such people than there were seats in the first-class compartment of either a 747 or a 767, which suggested that they were economy-class passengers who had taken advantage of there being no one in the first-class line.

  Twenty minutes later, he reached the head of the line and was given permission to approach the counter by the clerk, who beckoned to him with her index finger like the Queen of Spain summoning a footman.

  He laid a passport issued by the German Federal Republic and an American Express corporate credit card issued to the Tages Zeitung on the counter.

  “My name is Gossinger,” he said. “I have an electronic ticket, I believe.”

  Getting through airport security was—if possible—more harassing than usual. Castillo was randomly selected for close examination. Not only did the security people make him take his shoes off, but their pawing through his luggage effectively nullified his careful packing. And he was concerned about the detailed examination of his briefcase cum laptop carrier that was to come.