The Hunters

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Thanks,” Castillo said. “Now, let me get on the horn to Dick Miller and get some money down here.”

  Darby nodded.

  “Do you—either of you—have to rush back to the embassy?” Castillo asked. “Or would you have time to look at some of Kocian’s files and see if anything rings a bell? At least until I get back?”

  “Back from where?”

  “Where I’m going, Alex,” Castillo said, smiling.

  “Curiosity underwhelms me. I’ll make time,” Darby said, smiling back.

  “Me, too,” Santini said.

  As he picked up the heavily corded telephone, Darby asked, “White House, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Darby again,” Darby said into the telephone. “Get me a secure line to the White House switchboard.”

  [FOUR]

  Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

  1025 8 August 2005

  Castillo was glad when he saw the sign indicating the exit from Route 8 to the Pilar Sheraton Hotel. He hadn’t been certain that he was on the right road to the Buena Vista Country Club or, for that matter, even on the right road to Pilar.

  He hadn’t been able to ask directions from Santini or Darby; that would have given them more than a hint of where he was going. He had had trouble getting on the Panamericana, the toll highway that led to Pilar, but he’d finally—after ten minutes—found it.

  And then he had trouble with the tollbooth. He had sat there for Christ only knew how long, holding a ten-peso note out the window with angry horns bleating behind him, until the horns finally woke him up to the fact that not only was there no attendant in the booth but that the barrier pole was up.

  As he pulled away, he saw an electronic gadget mounted inside the windshield, under the rearview mirror. The gadget had triggered the barrier-raising mechanism as he approached. He hadn’t noticed it.

  From the tollbooth to the sign pointing to the Sheraton Hotel exit, he had wondered about a number of things, including how he was going to get past the gate of the Buena Vista Country Club once he got there—if he got there. And what he was going to do if Aleksandr Pevsner wasn’t there. Or was there and didn’t want to see him.

  And how he was going to protect Eric Kocian if he couldn’t get through to Pevsner, presuming he could get past the Buena Vista Country Club gate to get in to see him.

  He knew that he wasn’t functioning well and the reason for it.

  In the past forty-eight hours—give or take; having crossed through so many time zones, he didn’t know how long it had been in real time—he had flown across the North Atlantic, then, at the controls of an airplane he’d never flown before, across the Mediterranean. And then, while Jake and Fernando were flying across the South Atlantic, instead of crashing on one of the Gulfstream’s comfortable couches he’d consumed at least a gallon of coffee so he could stay awake while trying to make some sense of Eric Kocian’s notes, much of which had been written in abbreviations known only to Kocian. And then he’d made his second takeoff and landing in the Gulfstream, coming down from Recife.

  And while he had been making a whirlwind tour of Paris, Fulda, and Budapest, there had been an attempt on his life, which had forced him to kill two people. Killing people always bothered him even when it was necessary.

  He knew that he was exhausted and that what he should be doing—especially if he was going to have to deal with Aleksandr Pevsner, where he would really need all his faculties, presuming he was going to be able to see Aleksandr Pevsner—was to crash for at least twenty-four hours.

  The problem there was, he didn’t think he had twenty-four hours.

  He approached the Pilar exit from Route 8.

  If memory serves—and please, God, let it serve—I get off here, make a sharp left onto the highway overpass, drive past the Jumbo supermarket on the left and the Mercedes showroom on the right, take the next right and then the next left, and then drive past the hospital, and, four clicks later, maybe a little less, turn right into the Buena Vista Country Club, where I probably won’t be able to get in. Or Pevsner won’t be there.

  There was a red traffic light when he reached the intersection where he was to turn right.

  For the first time, he looked at the instrument panel. A warning light was flashing. The fuel gauge needle was resting on EMPTY.

  “Oh, fuck! You’ve done it again, Inspector Clouseau!”

  There was a Shell gas station to his immediate left. But there also was a steady line of oncoming traffic that kept him from turning into it. And when the light turned green, he realized that his first idea—waiting for a chance to make the turn—was impractical. There was a symphony of automobile horns blasting angrily behind him.

  He made the right turn and then the left, and there was an ESSO station right in front of him.

  He pulled in.

  “Thank God!”

  Two attendants appeared.

  “Fill it up,” Castillo ordered.

  He took his wallet from his pocket to get his credit-card.

  He dropped it.

  It bounced under the car and he and one of the attendants got on their hands and knees to retrieve it.

  He stood up.

  A tall, dark-haired, well-dressed man who appeared to be in his late thirties was walking purposefully toward the service station’s restroom.

  Jesus Christ, I’m hallucinating. That guy looks just like Pevsner!

  He looked around the pumps. There was a black Mercedes-Benz S600 at the next row of pumps. A burly man was speaking to the attendant. Another burly man walked to the hood of the car and leaned against the fender and watched the door to the men’s room.

  Castillo walked to the men’s room, pushed the door open, and walked to the urinal next to the man, who didn’t turn to look at him.

  “I just love these service station pissoirs,” Castillo announced, in Russian. “You never know who you’ll bump into in one of them.”

  Aleksandr Pevsner’s head snapped to look at him.

  The hairs on the back of Castillo’s neck rose.

  His eyes are like ice.

  And then Pevsner smiled.

  The door of the men’s room opened and the burly man who had been leaning on the Mercedes came in. He had his hand inside his suit jacket.

  “If he takes out a gun, Alek, I’ll have to kill him,” Castillo said.

  “It’s all right, János,” Pevsner said, in Hungarian. “The gentleman and I are old friends.” Then he switched to English. “How nice to see you, Charley. And quite a surprise. I somehow had the idea you were in the United States.”

  “Well, I get around a lot.”

  “And what brings you to this service station pissoir?”

  “Aside from having to take a leak, you mean?”

  “Uh-huh,” Pevsner said, chuckling.

  “Actually, bearing a small gift, I was on my way to see you.”

  “What is it they say? ‘A small world’? Or is it ‘truth is stranger than fiction’?”

  “Some people say both,” Castillo said.

  Pevsner turned from the urinal and walked to the washbasins. Castillo heard water running, then the sound of the hot-air blower of the hand dryer.

  “I hate these things,” Pevsner announced.

  Castillo finished and turned around. The burly Hungarian was gone. Castillo washed his hands, put them under the dryer, and said, “Me, too.”

  Then he offered his hand to Pevsner, who took it and then wrapped his arm around Castillo’s shoulder and hugged him.

  Then he turned him loose, put his hands on Castillo’s arms, and looked into his eyes.

  “You are a man of many surprises, Charley.”

  “I guess I should have called and told you I was coming.”

  “That would have been a good idea. Am I supposed to believe you just walked in here and were surprised to see me?”

  “No, I knew you were in here,” Castillo said. “I had just told the attendant to fill my tank—I
was running on fumes when I pulled in—when I saw you headed for the men’s room.”

  Pevsner smiled at him but didn’t say anything.

  “If you doubt me, Alek, check the pump to see how much they’ve pumped into it.”

  “Oh, I trust you, Charley. Why would you lie to me?”

  “Thank you. I would never lie to you unless it was necessary.”

  Pevsner smiled.

  “Well, let’s go out to the house and have what the Viennese call a kleines Frühstück.”

  “Thank you.”

  Pevsner waved him ahead of him out of the men’s room. When they were outside, he walked directly to the pump beside the Cherokee and examined the dial.

  “You were really out of petrol, weren’t you?”

  “You have a suspicious soul, Alek.”

  “In my line of business, I have to,” Pevsner said. “Why don’t we have János drive your Cherokee? If you wouldn’t mind? That would get us past the guards at the gate to Buena Vista easier.”

  “The keys are in it,” Castillo said. “Just let me pay the bill.”

  “János,” Pevsner ordered in Hungarian, “settle my friend’s bill, then drive his car to the house.”

  “You are too generous, Alek.”

  As the Mercedes approached the redbrick, red-tile-roofed guardhouse at the entrance to the Buena Vista Country Club, the yellow-and-black-striped barrier pole across the road went up. They rolled past the two uniformed guards standing outside the guardhouse. Castillo saw two more inside, standing before a rack of what looked like Ithaca pump riot shotguns.

  The Mercedes rolled slowly—neat signs proclaimed a 30-kph speed limit and speed bumps reinforced it—down a curving road, past long rows of upscale houses set on well-manicured half-hectare lots. They passed several polo fields lined with large houses, then the clubhouse of a well-maintained golf course. There were thirty or so cars in the parking lot.

  They came next to an area of larger houses on much larger lots, most of them ringed with shrubbery tall enough so that only the upper floors of the houses were visible. Castillo saw that the shrubbery also concealed fences.

  “This is really a very nice place, Alek,” Castillo said.

  “And it never snows,” Pevsner said.

  The car slowed, then turned right through a still-opening sliding steel door the same shade of green as the double rows of closely planted pines cropped at about twelve feet. There was a fence of the same height between the rows.

  Inside, Castillo saw Pevsner’s Bell Ranger helicopter parked, its rotors tied down, on what looked like a putting green. A man in white coveralls was polishing the Plexiglas.

  Then the house, an English-looking near mansion of red brick with casement windows, came into view. Another burly man in a suit was standing outside waiting for them.

  “Come on in,” Pevsner said, opening the door before the burly man could reach it. “I’m looking forward to my kleines Frühstück. All I had before I took Aleksandr and Sergei into Buenos Aires was a cup of tea.”

  He waited until Castillo had slid across the seat and gotten out and then went on: “They were late—again—getting to Saint Agnes’s, which meant they missed the bus to Buenos Aires, which meant that I had to take them.”

  “What are they going to do in Buenos Aires?”

  “Tour the Colon Opera House. You know, backstage. Did you know, Charley, the Colon is larger than the Vienna Opera House?”

  “And Paris’s, too,” Castillo said. “The design criteria was make it larger than both. That, of course, was when Argentina had money.”

  “You know something about everything, don’t you?” Pevsner said as he led Castillo up a shallow flight of stairs and into the house.

  A middle-aged maid was waiting in the foyer, her hands folded on her small, crisply starched white apron.

  Pevsner said, in Russian, “Be so good as to ask madam if she is free to join Mr.”

  He hesitated and looked at Castillo.

  “Castillo,” Charley furnished.

  “…Castillo and I in the breakfast room.”

  When the maid bobbed her head, Pevsner switched to Hungarian and added, “I hope that since Herr Gossinger is not here, that means Señor Castillo is not working.”

  “You’re out of luck,” Castillo said. “And actually, Alek, I know everything about everything. Like you.”

  A glass-topped table in the French-windowed breakfast room was set with linen and silver for two. Pevsner waved Charley into one of the chairs and a moment later a maid—a different one, this one young and, Castillo suspected, Argentine—came in, pulled a third chair to the table, and set a third place.

  “Bring tea for me, please,” Pevsner ordered, “and coffee for Señor Castillo.”

  She had just finished when János appeared in the door, dangling the keys to the Cherokee delicately in sausagelike fingers.

  Castillo put his hand out for them, then said, “I would ask János to bring in your present, but it’s not for the house and he’d only have to carry it out again.”

  “Where should it go?”

  “Who maintains the avionics in your Ranger?” Castillo asked.

  When he saw the confusion on Pevsner’s face, he added: “What I’ve done is get you some decent avionics for your helicopter.”

  “What’s wrong with the avionics in it?”

  “On a scale of one to ten, they’re maybe one-point-five.”

  “I was assured they were the best available.”

  “Write this down, Alek. Never trust someone selling used cars or aircraft.”

  “You’re saying I was cheated?”

  His eyes are cold again.

  “Of course not,” Castillo said, chuckling. “Everyone knows you can’t cheat an honest man. All I’m saying is that you don’t have the best available and, as a small token of my gratitude for past courtesies, now you do.”

  Pevsner looked at him and smiled.

  “What is it they say down here? Beware of Americans bearing gifts?”

  A tall, trim woman with her hair done up in a long pigtail came into the room.

  “What a pleasant surprise, Charley!” she exclaimed, in Russian.

  Castillo stood and kissed her cheek.

  “It’s nice to see you, Anna,” he said. “Alek saw me on the street, saw that I was starving, and offered me breakfast.”

  “Actually, he accosted me in the men’s room of the ESSO service station just past the hospital,” Pevsner said.

  She looked at her husband, then at Castillo.

  “I never know when he’s teasing,” she said.

  “Neither do I,” Castillo said.

  “Regardless of where you met, I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “And so far as breakfast is concerned, how about American pancakes with tree syrup?”

  “Maple syrup, maybe?”

  “Maple syrup,” she confirmed. “They bleed trees to make it?”

  “Indeed they do.”

  “There’s an American boy—actually, there’s several—in Aleksandr’s class at Saint Agnes’s. They sometimes spend the night together, at the boy’s house or here. They served Aleksandr pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. He couldn’t get enough. So that’s what they gave him for his birthday present. A bag of the flour”—she demonstrated the size of a five-pound bag with her hands—“and a liter can of the syrup.”

  “How nice for Aleksandr.”

  “And, of course, Alek’s curiosity got the best of him and…”

  “Tell me about bleeding the tree,” Pevsner said.

  “Actually, they tap it. Maple trees. In the winter, when it’s cold. They drive a sort of funnel into the tree, the sap drips out into a cup below the funnel, they collect it and boil it until it’s thick. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Extraordinary,” Pevsner said.

  “We Americans are an extraordinary people, Alek. I thought you knew that.”

  The older maid appeared with the tea and coffee and
Anna ordered pancakes with sausage. The maid, looking uncomfortable, reported she wasn’t sure there was enough flour left to make pancakes for everybody.

  “Then just forget it,” Castillo said. “I don’t want to steal Alek Junior’s breakfast.”

  “Nonsense,” Pevsner announced. “Make what you have, and I’ll see about getting more of the flour.”

  “I’m sure they sell it in the embassy store,” Castillo said. “I’ll get you some before I go.”

  “Go where?”

  “To the States.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “Tomorrow maybe. More likely, the day after tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Charley,” Anna Pevsner said, laying her hand on his, “could you really? I’ve tried every store in Buenos Aires and they just look at me as if I’m crazy.”

  “Consider it done.”

  And if that store in the embassy doesn’t have any, the chief of the Office of Organizational Analysis will make sure there’s five—ten—pounds of the best pancake flour available in the next diplomatic pouch.

  Pleasing Madam Pevsner and Alek Junior is sure to please Alek Senior. Probably more than the fifty thousand—maybe more—dollars’ worth of avionics in the Cherokee.

  “How would you get it out here?” Pevsner asked.

  The translation of that is, “Without anybody learning A. Pevsner, prominent Russian mafioso and international arms dealer, resides in the Buena Vista Country Club?”

  “If I can’t bring it myself, maybe you could have János meet me someplace.”

  “You just say when and where, Charley,” Pevsner said, “and János will be there. Alek is really crazy for pancakes.”

  “Both of them are,” Anna said.

  “Or maybe Howard Kennedy can meet me,” Castillo said. “He’s in the Four Seasons, right? Where I’m staying?”

  “Howard’s not here right now,” Pevsner said.

  “Well, then, maybe Colonel Munz?”

  “Didn’t he tell you, Charley?” Anna said.

  “Tell me what?”

  “You’re not going to believe this,” she said, “and I know I shouldn’t be smiling, but he is—or was—a policeman for all those years before he came to work for Alek. What he did, Charley, was shoot himself in the shoulder while he was cleaning his pistol.”