The Hostage

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  “Is Mr. Santini in there?” Castillo asked one of the Americans. He didn’t know his name, but he had been in the brainstorming session.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Would you tell him I’m here, please?”

  The man went into the room and Castillo bent over the largest of the floral displays to get a look at the card.

  I wonder if anyone took a look at this to make sure it won’t blow up?

  Of course they did. Munz wouldn’t let it into the building, much less up here, without checking.

  The card was impressive. It had a gold-embossed representation of the seal of the Republic of Argentina at the top, under which it had the name of the President.

  The message was handwritten: “With my profound condolences for your loss and my prayers for your rapid recovery.”

  Just as Santini came through the door, Charley looked at the card on the other floral display. This one carried the gold seal of the foreign minister, who also offered his condolences and prayers.

  Can I read anything of significance in them being outside her room, instead of inside?

  “Good morning,” Santini said, and then saw Colonel Torine and Jack Britton and Betty Schneider.

  “This is Colonel Torine, who’s flying the C-17,” Castillo said. “And Special Agents Britton and Schneider.”

  Santini smiled at Betty Schneider.

  “Did you really put all fourteen rounds in the bad guy’s face?” he asked.

  “Thirteen,” Betty said. “One went in his ear.”

  “You have an admirer in Joel Isaacson,” Santini said. “He told me. When this business is over, I think they’re going to want you on the protection detail.”

  When this business is over, Tony, Special Agent Schneider is going to give all this fun up, and come live with me in a rose-covered cottage by the side of the road.

  Or maybe on the ranch in Midland.

  I wonder if she’s ever been on a horse?

  Santini shook Britton’s and Torine’s hands, and then, gesturing down the corridor, said, “Come on. They gave me a room to use. The ambassador’s waiting for you.”

  Castillo wondered about the security of the room, and looked with a raised eyebrow at Santini. When Charley mouthed swept? Santini blinked once slowly and made a slight nod.

  “You must be Miss Schneider,” Ambassador Silvio said, offering his hand with a smile.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m very glad you’re here. Mrs. Masterson will probably be delighted to see a feminine face in the sea of men around her.”

  “Let’s hope so, sir,” Betty said.

  “You all might as well hear this,” Silvio said. “I’m torn between my sense of duty as a diplomat and my personal feelings. The Argentines are determined to go ahead with this business of having Mr. Masterson’s casket lying in state in the Catedral Metropolitana and awarding him the medal—the Grand Cross of the Great Liberator. Officially, I am delighted. Personally, and not only because I knew Jack well enough to know that his reaction would be, ‘A medal? For what? Getting shot?’ I wish the Argentines hadn’t had the idea. I also don’t like the idea of exposing Mrs. Masterson and the children to any possible danger.”

  “Colonel Munz assures me, sir,” Santini said, “that the level of protection being established at the cathedral will be as good, if not better, than that provided to the President. I almost asked him when was the last time someone took a shot at his President, then realized that with the country’s economy still in dire straits, there likely have been some serious threats. The bottom line, sir, is that I really can’t fault Munz’s plans. And I’ll be with her, and Special Agent Schneider and some other of our people.”

  “And the government would be—perhaps understandably—upset if I just told them, ‘Thank you, but no thank you,’ ” Silvio said, and then looked at Castillo. “Charley?”

  “Sir, isn’t it her call?” Castillo asked. “If she doesn’t want to go to the cathedral, we can say, truthfully, that she’s just too grief-stricken. I think the Argentines would understand that.”

  “You mean, have the casket lie in state, but not have Mrs. Masterson participate in the decoration ceremony?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s a good thought.”

  “Sir, I’d like to get the Mastersons out of the country as soon as possible. When are they going to let her leave here?”

  “She can leave anytime,” Santini answered. “They did another blood workup first thing this morning. She’s clean.”

  “When do the Argentines want to start the show?” Castillo asked.

  “They want to move the body to the cathedral this afternoon,” Silvio said. “Then, they will permit the public to pay its respects from six until ten tonight, and from eight to ten in the morning. They’re going to provide an honor guard, and I’ve asked the Marines to be ready to do the same. They’ve scheduled the award ceremony for ten, starting with a mass, which will be celebrated by the papal nuncio. Fortunately, Jack was a Roman Catholic.”

  “As opposed to being a Southern Baptist, you mean?” Santini said, and immediately added, “I didn’t mean to be flippant.”

  “If Jack had been a Southern Baptist, or Jewish, or a Mormon,” the ambassador said, “that probably would pose a problem.”

  “How’s the security at her house?” Castillo asked.

  “I went out there in the wee hours,” Santini replied. “It looked fine to me.”

  “And if she leaves the hospital in, say, an hour, how long is it going to take to set up a secure motorcade?”

  “Munz says give him thirty minutes’ notice. He has people standing by.”

  “Will the motorcade be secure?” Ambassador Silvio asked.

  “Actually, sir, there will be three motorcades,” Santini said, “each consisting of a Gendarmeria National lead car, followed by a Policía Federal car, followed by two armored embassy cars with blacked-out windows, followed by another Policía Federal car and an ambulance and a Gendarmeria chase car. They will go to the house in San Isidro by three different routes. The embassy cars will have security personnel in both. Mrs. Masterson will be in one of them.”

  “Which one?” Castillo asked.

  “I’ll decide that just before we leave the hospital,” Santini said.

  Castillo had just thought, That three-motorcade business is really clever; thank God Santini really knows how to handle things like this, when the ambassador asked,

  “Sound good to you, Charley?” which brought on the sobering realization, Jesus Christ, Santini may be good, but this is my responsibility.

  “It sounds fine to me, sir,” Castillo said.

  “Well, let’s go see how Mrs. Masterson feels about all this,” Ambassador Silvio said. “As Charley says, it’s her call.”

  No, Castillo thought, it’s not. It’s mine. I have both the responsibility for her safety, and the authority to say, “No way are we going to put her in the line of fire again. I don’t care if the Argentines like it or not.”

  The roll-down metal shutters over the windows of Elizabeth Masterson’s room were closed. The fluorescent lights in the room were harsh.

  She was sitting in an armchair, wearing a dressing gown. The ashtray on the small table beside her was full of butts. Most of them were long, as if she’d taken just a few puffs before putting them out.

  “Good morning, Betsy,” Ambassador Silvio said, taking the dirty ashtray from the table and handing it to one of the guards at the door with the unspoken order to bring a clean one. “How are you?”

  “How would you suppose I am, Mr. Ambassador?” she asked, sarcastically.

  “I hoped I was Juan to you, Betsy,” Silvio said. “You remember Mr. Castillo from yesterday?”

  “Good morning,” Castillo said.

  She acknowledged his presence with a slight inclination of her head and the faintest of smiles.

  Yesterday she looked sick. Today she looks bitter. And more than a little wary. She ob
viously would prefer that I not be here. What the hell is she hiding?

  “Mrs. Masterson,” Castillo said, “this is Special Agent Schneider of the Secret Service. If you have no objection, she’ll be with you and the children.”

  “Hello,” Mrs. Masterson said, with a smile that looked genuine. She put out her hand.

  “I’m very sorry about your husband, Mrs. Masterson,” Special Agent Schneider said.

  “Thank you. Would you be offended— What do I call you?”

  “Betty would be fine, ma’am.”

  “Would you be offended, Betty, if I said you’re not what comes to mind when you hear ‘Secret Service’?”

  “Not at all.”

  Betsy Masterson turned to Silvio.

  “I heard a doctor tell a nurse—I guess they think I don’t speak Spanish—something about a ceremony at the Catedral Metropolitana. What’s that all about?”

  “Actually, it’s the reason I’m here, Betsy,” Silvio replied. “What the Argentine government wants to do is to place Jack’s casket in the cathedral—to have him lie in state, in other words, with an honor guard—let the public pay their respects tonight and tomorrow morning, and then, in connection with a memorial mass to be celebrated by the papal nuncio, to award Jack the Grand Cross of the Great Liberator. Either the President or the foreign minister—probably the President—will do that. It’s quite an honor.”

  “Jack didn’t like either one of them,” she said, then immediately added, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “You can say anything you want to say,” Silvio said.

  “Am I expected to participate in this?”

  “All you would have to do is be there, and that’s entirely up to you, Betsy. Mr. Castillo and I are agreed that it’s your decision. The entire diplomatic corps will be there.”

  “In other words, it would be what Jack would call a command performance?” she asked, but it was a statement, not a question.

  “Jack had a good many friends in the diplomatic corps,” Silvio said.

  “When Jack thought it was in the interests of the United States, he could make the devil himself think they were close friends,” she said.

  “That’s true,” Silvio said, with a smile.

  “Jack would want me to participate in something like this, so okay.”

  “To repeat myself, Betsy, that’s entirely up to you.”

  “Not really,” she said. “My father would not understand my not participating. It’s always been duty first with him, too. He used to say—and I don’t think he was joking—that a diplomat should be like a Jesuit priest, who gives up his personal life and comfort to serve something far more important. And we both know Jack went along with that notion. Which brings me to my family. Have they been told what’s happened?”

  “I spoke with Ambassador Lorimer shortly after I saw you yesterday,” Silvio said. “I didn’t get into your abduction, just . . . what happened to Jack.”

  “What exactly did you tell him?”

  “That Jack had been assassinated by parties unknown,” Silvio said. “I’m aware of Ambassador Lorimer’s physical condition—”

  “That was the right thing to do. Thank you.”

  “He wanted to telephone, but I told him—I guess this is a diplomatic obfuscation; I really believed it was in a good cause—that you had been sedated, and it probably would be best to wait until you felt yourself again, at which time you would call him.”

  “Again, Juan, that was the right thing to do. And thank you again. Well, I feel myself again. When do I get out of here?”

  “An hour after you say the word, Mrs. Masterson,” Castillo said. “It will take us about that long to arrange your transportation.”

  She looked at him, and not with gratitude.

  I don’t think I’ve done anything to annoy her—except maybe being an intruder into the diplomatic community—so that leaves her being afraid of me.

  What the hell is that all about?

  And how come her brother, the UN diplomat—Jean-Paul Lorimer—wasn’t in the conversation? She didn’t ask if he’d been notified, and he wasn’t mentioned in that diplomatic holy orders speech she gave.

  “What’s the word?” she asked, almost belligerently. “I want to get out of here and be with my children.”

  “You just said it, Mrs. Lorimer. I’ll tell Mr. Santini to get things rolling.”

  “Good.”

  “Mrs. Masterson,” Castillo went on, “Colonel Torine, the pilot of the C-17—the Globemaster III that the President sent down here—is outside. I thought perhaps he could tell you about what’s planned to get you and the children out of here and back to the States. And that you could tell him what you require.”

  She looked at him and nodded, then turned to Betty Schneider.

  “Would my children be safe at the ceremony in the cathedral?”

  “The head of SIDE, Mrs. Masterson—” Castillo began.

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Castillo, I asked her.”

  “Excuse me.”

  Betty exchanged a glance with Charley, who nodded, and turned to Mrs. Masterson. “Mr. Santini and Mr. Castillo are better equipped to answer that, Mrs. Masterson, than I am.”

  “Still, I’d like to hear what you think, please.”

  Betty nodded, and then after a just-perceptible hesitation said, “The Secret Service is pretty good at protecting people, Mrs. Masterson, but it’s not perfect. President Reagan was shot. A crazy woman shot at President Ford twice.”

  “Let me put it this way: If they were your children, would you take them to the cathedral?”

  “Fortunately for me, I don’t have to make that choice. And I certainly wouldn’t presume to advise you what to do.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your honesty,” Mrs. Masterson said, and then looked at Castillo. “My children and I will attend the ceremony at the cathedral. I want them to have that memory, of their father being honored. And Jack—and my father—would see it as my duty.”

  Castillo nodded.

  And again, no mention of the brother.

  “Send in your colonel, please, Mr. Castillo,” Mrs. Masterson said. “I’d like to be able to tell my children what’s the agenda.”

  Castillo nodded again, and left the room.

  El Coronel Alfredo Munz was standing in the corridor with Colonel Torine, Jack Britton, and Tony Santini.

  “She has decided to attend the ceremony, with the children,” Castillo announced. “And she wants to go home.”

  “Give me thirty minutes,” Santini said.

  “I told her an hour,” Castillo said. “Which will give me a chance to take a look at her house before we send her out there.”

  “Everything’s in place, Charley,” Santini said evenly.

  “I’d like a fresh look myself,” Munz said. “I directed some modifications to the plan.”

  Well, maybe that got me off the hook with Santini, who understandably wonders who the hell I think I am to be checking his work.

  “Tony, what this probably is is me covering my ass, but I want to see for myself the arrangements at the house and at the cathedral,” Castillo said.

  “Your call, Charley.”

  “And I want you to get Schneider a cell phone. I want the number of mine on an autodial button on it, and I want the number of her phone on mine.”

  Santini reached in his pocket and came out with a cellular telephone.

  “I already gave one to Jack and one to Colonel Torine,” he said. “And if you’ll give me yours, I’ll put their numbers in it.”

  Castillo handed him his telephone and then looked at Britton. “I’m presuming you’ve met Colonel Munz.”

  “Yes, sir. He’s offered, when you’re finished with me here, to send me to his headquarters and show me the investigation so far.”

  Castillo turned to Munz. “Thank you, Alfredo. Will it be possible for us to get a copy of the investigation report?”

  “Of course. It may take some time to g
et it translated.”

  “You give me the report, I’ll translate it.”

  Munz nodded.

  “Colonel, why don’t you go in there and tell Mrs. Masterson about the travel plans?”

  “When do you want to go wheels-up, Charley?”

  “What I’d like to do is go directly from the cathedral to Ezeiza,” Castillo said. “I haven’t asked her—or the ambassador—but shoot for that.”

  “You’re not going in there with me?” Torine asked.

  “I have the feeling she’d rather I just went away,” Castillo said. “But yeah, just as soon as Tony gives me my cellular back, I’m going in there. I’ve got to get you some wheels.”

  [FOUR]

  Dr. Jose Arribena 25 San Isidro Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1035 24 July 2005

  Major C. G. Castillo stood in the middle of the residential street in front of the Mastersons’ property in the upscale San Isidro neighborhood. He pulled out his cell phone, punched an autodial button, and Special Agent Schneider answered on the second ring.

  “Schneider.”

  “Hello, baby.”

  “Yes, Mr. Castillo?”

  “I love you.”

  “So I have been led to believe.”

  “And vice versa?”

  “That is my understanding of the situation. Where did you say you were, sir?”

  “I’m standing on the street in front of the Masterson house.”

  “And you’re satisfied with the security arrangements, sir?”

  “I’d like to have a couple of Abrams tanks and a couple of twenty-millimeter Gatlings, but yeah, I am. Since you’re all business, I’ll let you know what to expect.”

  “Please.”

  “The whole area—maybe ten blocks on a side—is cordoned off. Provincial cops stop everybody trying to get in. They demand identification and want to know where everyone is going. Then they search the car.

  There’s a second ring inside the outer one, this one manned by the Gendarmeria National. More military than cops. They’re armed with submachine guns. Same routine, more thorough. This is an upscale residential neighborhood, people have to get to—and out of—their houses.”

  “And the house itself, sir?”

  “I’m not finished, Special Agent Schneider.”