The Hostage Part 33

He carefully laid the soggy sheet of paper on the gla.s.s-topped coffee table in the sitting room, then went into his bedroom and stripped off his clothing.

Four years of practicing West Point Cla.s.s 202- Personal Hygiene, or How to Take a Shower in No Time at All-paid off. Five minutes after entering his bedroom he came out of it, showered and dressed in slacks and a shirt.

First he called room service and ordered dinner, plus a bottle of Jack Daniel's and, after a moment's thought, a bottle of Famous Grouse and two bottles of Senetin cabernet sauvignon. He had shared a bottle of that with Amba.s.sador Silvio at lunch, and, as the amba.s.sador had said, it was really first cla.s.s.

Then he called the valet and told him he had a soaking wet suit that he absolutely had to have dried and pressed and back by six-thirty in the morning. That posed no problem for the valet, which made Castillo suspect the drying and pressing service of the Four Seasons was probably going to cost as much as the suit had when he'd bought it at the annual Brooks Brothers sale at thirty-five percent off the tag price.

Finally, he sat down on the couch and punched Kennedy's autodial b.u.t.ton on his cellular.

They could barely hear each other, which was explained when Kennedy said he'd never seen so much G.o.dd.a.m.n rain in his life. The rainstorm had apparently moved the fifteen miles or so between Jorge Newbery and Aeropuerto Internacional Ministro Pistarini de Ezeiza and was interfering with the cellular signals.

He was down to the last name on the list of FBI agents-he'd had to spell each one phonetically, sometimes twice-when the doorbell chimes bonged.

When he opened it, Special Agent Schneider, a lady who was probably from the valet service, and a man in a bartender's white jacket pushing a rolling table with the whiskey, wine, and the accoutrements were standing there.

Special Agent Schneider was wearing blue jeans and a sweater. Her hair looked damp.

He motioned them all into the room.

"Fix yourself a drink," he said. "Food's on the way."

He signed the bill for the drinks, then motioned the lady from the valet service into the bedroom and pointed out the waterlogged suit to her.

All of this while simultaneously spelling Daniel T. Westerly's name phonetically to Howard Kennedy for the third or fourth time, and being very much aware that Special Agent Schneider filled out both her sweater and her blue jeans in an incredibly delightful way. She wasn't wearing makeup, not even lipstick, and Castillo thought she looked fine without it.

Kennedy finally could hear Westerly's name spelled out phonetically.

"Westerly. Okay. He's a fingerprint guy. d.a.m.ned good at it, too. He once lifted two eight-point digits from a used condom." Okay. He's a fingerprint guy. d.a.m.ned good at it, too. He once lifted two eight-point digits from a used condom."

"That's it, Howard, that's the last of the names."

"All of them are on the major crimes team."

"Should any of them be of special interest to me?"

"No. Yung's the one who interests me. Watch yourself with him, Charley."

"I will. And you will inquire about Mr. Lorimer for me, right? Just as soon as you get where you're going?"

"The way it's raining, Charley, I may never get out of here."

That's two-no, four-sentences that came through intact.

"Howard, I like you. I'm going to make the rain stop."

"What?"

"Trust me, Howard, in ten minutes, fifteen tops, it will stop raining. I have issued the order. Have a nice flight, and remember to call."

He pushed the END b.u.t.ton and laid down the cellular. "What was that all about?" Special Agent Schneider asked.

"Not that I'm not delighted to see you, but I thought women took longer to shower and dress than men."

"That means you're not going to tell me, right?" Betty replied. "To answer the second question, Jack's calling his wife."

"You really don't want to know," Castillo said.

She raised her gla.s.s of bourbon.

"You're not drinking?"

"I'm going to have the wine."

"On your good behavior, are you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"This quote room unquote looks like a set for a movie," she said. "And mine's not exactly a slum, either. The whole bathroom is marble. Which raises the question, how do we pay for all this?"

"Wait until you see the view," he said and went to the windows and found the switch for the opening mechanism.

"That's beautiful!" she said and walked and stood beside him. "But it doesn't answer the question about the bill."

"When we get back to Washington, Agnes-Mrs. Forbison, who runs things in the Nebraska complex- will show you how to fill out the forms for travel expenses outside the country. When you get the check, sign it over to me."

"What I think that means is that you intend to pick up the difference between what the Secret Service will pay and what you will."

"I wanted to keep you and Jack separate from the FBI," Castillo said. "This is the only answer I could come up with on short notice."

The chimes bonged again.

This time it was Jack Britton and two waiters pushing two room-service carts loaded with food covered by stainless-steel domes. Britton was wearing a sports jacket, slacks, and a shirt and tie.

"I thought you didn't want to get dressed up for dinner," Castillo said.

"I changed my mind when I saw my room. Do you always live this good?"

"Whenever I can. Fix yourself a drink, Jack. And as soon as they've set up the food, I'll tell you what's going on."

"Just out of idle curiosity, what does this place cost by the night?"

"I really have no idea," Castillo said.

"Why am I not surprised?" Betty said, and there was an unpleasant sarcastic tone in her voice.

"I really don't know how this works in the Secret Service," Castillo said. "But I don't think the presidential protection detail people stay in the economy motel ten blocks from where the President is staying to save the government money. I intend to find out. I don't want to spend my money to buy things I've bought to carry out what I've been ordered to do. The government is not on my list of favorite charities."

Britton nodded.

"I wanted to keep you two away from the FBI," Castillo said.

"They don't like you much, either," Britton said. "I picked that up on the airplane."

Castillo found an excuse not to get into that when he saw one of the waiters opening a bottle of the cabernet.

"I'll do that, thank you," he said in Spanish. "And we'll serve ourselves."

By the time Castillo had finished relating what had happened, and why he had asked that they be sent to Argentina, and what he expected of them, they had finished what had turned out to be an enormous meal.

And as they talked, Castillo had the feeling that his moral dilemma had solved itself. Special Agent Schneider was in fact a cop, and a smart one, and this was business, not romantic fantasy. And there was no question in his mind that if he made the first preliminary pa.s.s at Schneider, she would turn it down. Gently and kindly, probably, because Schneider was a good guy, but turn it down.

And it was after two A.M.

"Let's knock it off," he said. "I want to get started early in the morning. You want to eat here-we may think of something we missed-or do you want to meet in the restaurant downstairs at, say, quarter to seven?"

"If you don't mind, here," Special Agent Schneider said. "For personal reasons: I want to look out your windows in the daylight."

"Okay, here at quarter to seven," Britton said. "My a.s.s is dragging."

He got up from the table and walked to the door. Special Agent Schneider followed. Both waved a good-night, but neither said anything.

Three minutes after they had gone, Castillo was in bed. And then-he had no idea how much later-the door chimes bonged.

Oh, s.h.i.t! The floor waiter wants to get the G.o.dd.a.m.n dishes!

Not quite knowing why he did so, he picked up the Beretta from the bedside table and held it behind his back as he stormed out of the bedroom and across the sitting room to the door and jerked it open.

Special Agent Schneider was standing in the corridor.

"I seem to have dropped my handkerchief," she said.

He didn't reply.

"May I come in?"

He stepped out of the way.

"I thought it was the floor waiter," he said.

"Were you going to shoot him?" Special Agent Schneider asked.

He held up both hands-one of them holding the Beretta-helplessly.

She walked to the table and poured wine into a gla.s.s.

"I'm not sure this is a very good idea," he said.

She walked to him and handed him the gla.s.s and smiled.

"There stands the legendary Charley Castillo, in his underwear with a gun in one hand and a gla.s.s of wine in the other," she said, and shook her head, and then went back to the table and poured another gla.s.s of wine.

With her back to him, she said, "I thought of you all the way down here on the airplane. I thought of you at other times, of course, but I thought of you all the G.o.dd.a.m.ned time I was on the airplane."

Castillo saw her take a healthy swallow of the cabernet.

"One of the things I thought about," she went on, speaking softly, "was how I was going to handle the pa.s.s the man whose Secret Service code name is Don Juan was certainly going to make at me."

"I wouldn't dare make a pa.s.s at you," Castillo said, jocularly. "Not only would your brother break both my legs-"

"Let me finish, please, Charley," she interrupted firmly.

"Sorry."

"I had to be very careful, so as not to hurt your feelings-which I didn't want to do-or to p.i.s.s you off, because you might get your masculine ego in an uproar and do something c.r.a.ppy and screw me up with the Secret Service. From what I've seen so far, I like the Secret Service, and when I took the appointment, I burned my bridges with the department in Philadelphia."

"Christ, I wouldn't-"

"G.o.dd.a.m.n you, Charley, let me finish."

She turned to glare at him. He nodded, and she turned her back to him again.

She took another swallow of the cabernet, shook her head, and went on: "So then what happened was that you didn't make a pa.s.s at me, and my initial reaction to that was, 'Thank G.o.d!' and then I realized that you were being responsible, you were being the upstanding guy who would never make a pa.s.s at somebody who worked for him.

"And my reaction to that was, what the h.e.l.l is the difference? He's not going to make a pa.s.s at you, so that's it. Relax.

"And then when I left here and I saw you sitting at the table, I thought that's the loneliest guy in the world. And then I got in bed and faced the facts. The truth."

"Which is?" he asked softly.

"That what I really wanted to do was come back," she said, and turned her head to look at him, and then quickly looked away.

He didn't move or say anything.

"Which, obviously, was a pretty dumb thing," she said. "Sorry."

She turned and walked quickly toward the door.

He caught her arm and she tried to break loose, but he held on.

"What?" she asked.

"I don't think you've been out of my mind for more than thirty consecutive minutes since the last time I saw you in Philadelphia."

She turned to face him and looked up into his eyes.

"Oh, Jesus, Charley!"

"Oh, Jesus!" Presidential Agent Castillo said to Special Agent Schneider.