V

[ONE]

United States-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas
0730 5 February 2007
 
“What the fuck is that?” United States Border Patrol agent Guillermo Amarilla inquired in Spanish of Senior Patrol Agent Hector Hernandez as the latter stepped hard on the brakes of their green Jeep station wagon.
The station wagon skidded on the rutted dirt road, coming to a stop at nearly a right angle. On one side of the road was a sugarcane field. On the other was waist-high brush. The brush extended for about one hundred fifty yards, ending at the bank of the Rio Grande. The demarcation line between the United States and the Estados Unidos Mexicanos was at the center of the river, which at that point was just over one hundred yards wide.
The dirt road, ten yards from where the Jeep had stopped, was blocked.
An oblong insulated metal box was sitting on a plank suspended between two plastic five-gallon jerrycans.
Nailed to the plank was a large sign hand-lettered ¡¡PELIGROSO!! and ¡¡DANGER!!
Amarilla and Hernandez, without speaking, were out of the vehicle in seconds. Both held Remington Model 870 12-gauge pump shotguns. Crouching beside the station wagon, Hernandez carefully examined the brush, and Amarilla the sugarcane field.
“Undocumented immigrants” sometimes vented their displeasure with Border Patrol agents’ efficiency by ambushing Border Patrol vehicles.
Amarilla straightened up and continued looking.
After perhaps sixty seconds, he asked, “You hear anything?”
Hernandez shook his head, and stood erect.
“You think that’s a wetback IED?” Amarilla asked.
Both men had done tours with their National Guard units in Iraq, and had experience with improvised explosive devices.
“It could be a fucking bomb, Guillermo.”
“I don’t see any wires,” Amarilla said.
“You don’t think a cell phone would work out here?”
Hernandez sought the answer to his own question by taking his cell phone out of his shirt pocket.
“Cell phones work out here,” he announced.
“Maybe they left,” Guillermo offered.
“And maybe they’re waiting for us to get closer.”
“Should I put a couple of loads in it and see what happens?”
“No. It could be full of cold beer. These fuckers would love to be able to tell the story of the dumb fucks from La Migra who shot up a cooler full of cerveza.”
Guillermo took a closer look at the container.
“It’s got signs on it,” he said.
He reached into the station wagon and came out with a battered pair of binoculars.
After a moment, he said, “It says, ‘Danger: Biological Hazard.’ What the fuck?”
He handed the binoculars to Hernandez, who took a close look.
He exhaled audibly, then reached for his cell phone and hit a speed-dial number.
“Hernandez here,” he said into it. “I need a supervisor out here, right now, at mile thirty-three.”
There was a response, to which Hernandez responded, “I’ll tell him when he gets here. Just get a supervisor out here, now.”
 
 
Ten minutes later, a Bell Ranger helicopter settled to the ground at mile thirty-three.
Two men got out. Both had wings pinned to their uniforms. One was a handsome man with a full head of gray hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. He had a gold oak leaf pinned to his uniform collar points. In the Army, it would be a major’s insignia. Field Operations Supervisor Paul Peterson was known, more or less fondly, behind his back as “Our Gringo.”
The second man, who had what would be an Army captain’s “railroad tracks” pinned to his collar points, was Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Domingo García. He was known behind his back as “Hard Ass.”
Both men walked to Hernandez and Amarilla, who were leaning against their Jeep station wagon.
“What have you got?” Hard Ass inquired not very pleasantly.
Hernandez pointed to the obstruction in the road, then handed the binoculars to Peterson.
Peterson peered through them and studied the obstruction. After a long moment, he said, “What in the fuck is that?”

[TWO]

Ministro Pistarini International Airport
Ezeiza
Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
1135 5 February 2007
 
At the same moment that Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Domingo “Hard Ass” García had put the binocs to his eyes—when it was 0835 in McAllen, Texas, it was 1135 in Buenos Aires—Roscoe J. Danton of The Washington Times-Post stepped off the ramp leading from Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight 1007. As he entered the Ezeiza terminal proper, he thought for a moment that he had accidentally gone through the wrong door. He found himself in a large duty-free store, complete with three quite lovely young women handing out product-touting brochures.
“Clever,” he said, admiringly and out loud.
Someone down here has figured out a good way to get the traveling public into the duty-free store: place the store as the only passage between the arriving passenger ramp and the terminal.
But screw them. I won’t buy a thing.
He started walking through the store.
Fifty feet into it, though, he had a change of heart. He had come to a display of Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch whisky, and remembered what he had learned as a Boy Scout: “Be Prepared.”
Three boxes of his favorite intoxicant were cellophane-wrapped together and offered at a price he quickly computed to be about half of what he paid in Washington, D.C.
He picked up one of the packages and went through the exit cash register, charging his purchase to his—actually, The Washington Times-Post’s—American Express corporate credit card. He examined his receipt carefully and was pleased. It read that he had charged $87.40 for unspecified merchandise in the store.
If it had said “three bottles Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch,” there would have been a note from Accounting reminding him that intoxicants could be charged to The Washington Times-Post only when connected to business entertaining, and as he had not identified on his expense report whom he had entertained, it was presumed that the whisky was for his personal consumption and therefore the $87.40 would be deducted from his next paycheck, and in the future, please do not charge personal items to the corporate credit card.
Accounting, he theorized, would probably give him the benefit of the doubt in this instance because it didn’t say “whisky” and assume he had purchased, for example, items of personal hygiene, which were considered legitimate expenses when he was traveling.
Or maybe a battery for his—The Washington Times-Post’s—laptop computer.
He would not lie on his expense account. But he would take full advantage of the provisions regarding business travel in his employment contract.
He was entitled, for example, to first-class accommodations on airliners when traveling outside the continental United States on a flight lasting six hours or longer. On flights under six hours in length—say, Washington-London—his contract provided for business class.
It was for that reason that he had traveled on Aerolíneas Argentinas. When The Washington Times-Post Corporate Travel department had told him that only business class was available on Delta and American, he made them, per his contract, book him first-class seating on the Argentine carrier. His experience had taught him that once he accepted less than that to which he was entitled, the bastards in Corporate Travel henceforth would try to make it the rule.
Danton also was entitled by his contract, when on travel lasting more than twenty-four hours, to a hotel rated at four stars or better and, therein, a two-room suite rather than a simple room.
In the case of this trip, Corporate Travel had suggested they make a reservation for a two-room suite for him at the four-star-rated Plaza Hotel in Buenos Aires. The Plaza wasn’t a five-star hotel but boasted that it contained the oldest restaurant in Buenos Aires, a world-famous bar, and was directly across Plaza San Martín from the Argentine foreign ministry. To Danton, that suggested that it wasn’t going to be the Argentine version of a Marriott, and he had accepted Corporate Travel’s recommendation.
Carrying the Johnnie Walker, he went through the immigration checkpoint without any trouble. His luggage, however, took so long to appear on the carousel that he became genuinely worried that it had been sent to Havana or Moscow. But it did finally show up, and he changed his suspicions toward the officers of the Transportation Security Administration back in Miami, who were, he thought, entirely capable of putting some clever chalk mark on his luggage signaling everyone in the know that it belonged to an “uncooperative traveler” and, if it couldn’t be redirected to Moscow or Havana, then to the absolute end of whatever line it was in.
When the customs officials sifted through his suitcase and laptop briefcase with great care—and especially when they asked him if he was sure he was not trying to carry into the República Argentina more than ten thousand U.S. dollars in cash or negotiable securities or any amount of controlled substances—he was sure he saw the stealthy hand of the TSA at work.
Corporate Travel had told him that he should take a remise rather than a taxi from the airport to his hotel, explaining that Buenos Aires taxis were small and uncomfortable, and their drivers well-known for their skilled chicanery when dealing with foreigners. Remises, Travel had told him, which cost a little more, were private cars pressed into part-time service by their owners, who were more often than not the drivers. They could be hired only through an agent, who had kiosks in the terminal lobby.
The remise in which Roscoe was driven from Ezeiza international airport to Plaza San Martín and the Plaza Hotel was old, but clean and well cared for. And the driver delivered a lecture on Buenos Aires en route.
When the remise door was opened by a doorman wearing a gray frock coat and a silk top hat, and two bellmen stood ready to handle the baggage, Roscoe was in such a good mood that he handed the remise driver his American Express card and he told him to add a twenty-percent tip to the bill. Ten percent was Roscoe’s norm, even on The Washington Times-Post’s dime.
The driver asked if Roscoe could possibly pay in cash, preferably dollars, explaining that not only did American Express charge ten percent but also took two weeks or a month to pay up. He then showed Roscoe the English language Buenos Aires Herald, on the front page of which was the current exchange rate: one U.S. dollar was worth 3.8 pesos.
“If you give me a one-hundred-dollar bill, I’ll give you three hundred and ninety pesos,” the remise driver offered.
Roscoe handed him the bill, and the driver counted out three hundred and ninety pesos into his hand, mostly in small bills.
Roscoe then got rid of most of the small bills by counting out two hundred pesos—the agreed-upon price—into the driver’s hand. The driver thanked him, shook his hand, and said he hoped el señor would have a good time in Argentina.
Roscoe liked what he saw of the lobby of the Plaza—lots of polished marble and shiny brass—and when he got to reception, a smiling desk clerk told him they had his reservation, and slid a registration card across the marble to him.
On the top of it was printed, WELCOME TO THE MARRIOTT PLAZA HOTEL.
Shit, a Marriott!
Corporate Travel’s done it to me again!
Roscoe had hated the Marriott hotel chain since the night he had been asked to leave the bar in the Marriott Hotel next to the Washington Press Club after he complained that it was absurd for the bartender to have shut him off after only four drinks.
At the Plaza, though, he felt a lot better when the bellman took him to his suite. It was very nice, large, and well furnished. And he could see Plaza San Martín from its windows.
He took out the thick wad of pesos the remise driver had given him and decided that generosity now would result in good service later. He did some quick mental math and determined the peso equivalent of ten dollars, which came to thirty-eight pesos, rounded this figure upward, and handed the bellman forty pesos.
The bellman’s face did not show much appreciation for his munificence.
Well, fuck you, Pedro! he thought as the bellman went out the door.
Ten bucks is a lot of money for carrying one small suitcase!
Roscoe then shaved, took a shower, and got dressed.
The clock radio beside the bed showed that it was just shy of two o’clock. As he set his wristwatch to the local time, he thought it was entirely likely that the U.S. embassy ran on an eight-to-four schedule, with an hour or so lunch break starting at noon, and with any luck he could see commercial attaché Alexander B. Darby as soon as he could get to the embassy.
Miss Eleanor Dillworth had told him that Darby was another CIA Clandestine Service officer, a good guy, and if anybody could point him toward the shadowy and evil Colonel Castillo and his wicked companions, it was Darby.
Roscoe took out his laptop and opened it, intending to search the Internet for the address and telephone number of the U.S. embassy, Buenos Aires.
No sooner had he found the plug to connect with the Internet and had turned on the laptop than its screen flashed LOW BATTERY. He found the power cord and the electrical socket. His male plug did not match the two round holes in the electrical socket.
The concierge said he would send someone right up with an adapter plug.
Roscoe then tipped that bellman twenty pesos, thinking that the equivalent of five bucks was a more than generous reward for bringing an adapter worth no more than a buck.
This bellman, like the last one, did not seem at all overwhelmed by Roscoe’s generosity.
Roscoe shook his head as he plugged in the adapter. Ninety seconds later, he had the embassy’s address—Avenida Colombia 4300—and its telephone number, both of which he entered into his pocket organizer.
 
 
“Embassy of the United States.”
“Mr. Alexander B. Darby, please.”
“There is no one here by that name, sir.”
“He’s the commercial counselor.”
“There’s no one here by that name, sir.”
“Have you a press officer?”
“Yes, sir.”
“May I speak with him, please?”
“It’s a her, sir. Ms. Sylvia Grunblatt.”
“Connect me with her, please.”
“Ms. Grunblatt’s line.”
“Ms. Grunblatt, please. Roscoe—”
“Ms. Grunblatt’s not available at the moment.”
“When will she be available?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know.”
“May I leave a message?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Please tell her Mr. Roscoe J. Danton of The Washington Times-Post is on his way to the embassy, and needs a few minutes of her valuable time. Got that?”
“Will you give it to me again, please? Slower?”

[THREE]

The Embassy of the United States of America
Avenida Colombia 4300
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1410 5 February 2007
 
It was a ten-minute drive from the Plaza Hotel to the American embassy.
The taxicab meter showed that the ride had cost fifteen pesos. Roscoe dug out his wad of pesos, handed the driver a twenty-peso note, and waited for his change.
Five pesos is too much of a tip.
Two pesos ought to be more than enough.
The driver looked at the twenty and then up at Roscoe. When Roscoe didn’t respond, the driver waved his fingers in a “give me more” gesture.
Roscoe pointed to the meter.
The cab driver said, “Argentine pesos.”
He then pointed to the note Roscoe had given him, and said, “Uruguay pesos.”
He then held up his index finger, and went on: “One Argentine peso is”—he held up all his fingers—“five Uruguay pesos. You pay with Uruguay pesos, is one hundred Uruguay pesos.”
Roscoe looked at his stack of pesos. They were indeed Uruguayan pesos.
That miserable sonofabitch remise driver screwed me!
He counted the Uruguayan pesos he had left. He didn’t have enough to make up the additional eighty pesos the cab driver was demanding.
He took a one-hundred-dollar bill from his wallet.
The cab driver examined it very, very carefully, and then first handed Roscoe his twenty-peso Uruguayan note, and then three one-hundred-peso Argentine notes. He stuck the American hundred in his pocket.
Roscoe was still examining the Argentine currency, trying to remember what that sonofabitch remise driver had told him was the exchange rate, when the cab driver took one of the Argentine hundred-peso bills back. He then pointed to the meter, and counted out eighty-five Argentine pesos and laid them in Roscoe’s hand.
Roscoe then remembered the exchange rate. It was supposed to be 3.8 Argentine pesos to the dollar, not 3.0.
“Muchas gracias,” the cab driver said, and drove off.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Roscoe said as he began walking toward the small building guarding access to the embassy grounds.
 
 
“My name is Roscoe Danton,” he said to the rent-a-cop behind a thick glass window. “I’d like to see Mr. Alexander B. Darby, the commercial counselor.”
“You got passport? American passport?” the rent-a-cop asked in a thick accent suggesting that he was not a fellow American.
Roscoe slid his passport through a slot below the window.
The rent-a-cop examined it carefully and then announced, “No Mr. Darby here.”
“Then I’d like to see Miss—” What the fuck was her name? “—Miss Rosenblum. The press officer.”
“No Miss Rosenblum. We got Miss Grunblatt, public affairs officer.”
“Then her, please?”
“What your business with Miss Grunblatt?”
“I’m a journalist, a senior writer of The Washington Times-Post.”
“You got papers?”
Have I got papers?
You can bet your fat Argentine ass, Pedro, that I have papers.
One at a time, Roscoe took them from his wallet. First he slid through the opening below the window his Pentagon press pass, then his State Department press pass, and finally—the ne plus ultra of all press credentials—his White House press pass.
They failed to dazzle the rent-a-cop, even after he had studied each intently. But finally he picked up a telephone receiver, spoke briefly into it—Roscoe could not hear what he was saying—and then hung up.
He signaled for Roscoe to go through a sturdy translucent glass door.
Roscoe signaled for the return of his passport and press passes.
The rent-a-cop shook his head and announced, “When you come out, you get back.”
Roscoe considered offering the observation that at the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House they just looked at press passes and gave them back, but in the end decided it would probably be counterproductive.
He went through the translucent door, on the other side of which were two more rent-a-cops behind a counter, and another sturdy glass door, this one transparent, and through which he could see neatly trimmed grass around a pathway leading to the embassy building itself.
It’s just as unbelievably ugly as the embassy in London, Roscoe decided.
Obviously designed by the same dropout from the University of Southern Arkansas School of Bunker and Warehouse Architecture.
The door would not open.
Roscoe looked back at the rent-a-cops.
One of them was pointing to the counter. The other was pointing to a sign on the wall:
NO ELECTRONIC OR INCENDIARY DEVICES BEYOND THIS POINT
Incendiary devices? Are they talking about cigar lighters?
“What in there?” one of the rent-a-cops demanded, pointing at Roscoe’s laptop case.
“My laptop. I’m a journalist. I need it to take notes.”
“Not past this point. You got cellular phone, organizer, butane lighter?”
“Guilty on all points.”
“You got or not got?”
“I got,” Roscoe said, and then put them on the counter.
“Keys set off wand,” one of the rent-a-cops said. “You got keys, better you leave them, too.”
Roscoe added his key chain to everything else.
One of the rent-a-cops came from behind the counter, waved the wand around Roscoe’s body, and then gestured toward the glass door.
This time it opened.
 
 
A U.S. Marine in dress trousers and a stiffly starched open-collared khaki shirt was waiting for him outside the main entrance to the embassy building. He had a large revolver in a holster suspended from what looked like a patent-leather Sam Browne harness.
“Mr. Danton?”
“Thank God, an American!”
“Mr. Danton?”
“Roscoe Danton, an alumnus of the Parris Island School for Boys, at your service, Sergeant.”
“If you will come with me, Mr. Danton?”
 
 
The sergeant led him into the building, through a magnetic detector, and down a corridor to the right.
He pointed to a wooden bench.
“If you will sit there, Mr. Danton, someone will attend to you shortly. Please do not leave this area.”
Roscoe dutifully sat down. The Marine sergeant marched away.
There was a cork bulletin board on the opposing wall.
After perhaps thirty seconds, Roscoe, more from a desire to assert his journalist status than curiosity—he had been thinking, Fuck you, Sergeant. I ain’t in the Crotch no more; you can’t order me around—stood up and had a look at it.
Among the other items on display was the embassy Daily Bulletin. It contained the usual bullshit Roscoe expected to see, and at the end of it was: UNOFFICIAL: ITEMS FOR SALE.
His eyes flickered over it.
“Bingo!” he said aloud.
Immediately after an offer to sell a baby carriage “in like-new condition”— Like-new condition? What did they do, turn the baby back in?—was an absolutely fascinating offer of something for sale:
2005 BMW. Royal Blue. Excellent Shape. 54K miles.
All papers in order for sale to US Diplomatic Personnel or Argentine Nationals. Priced for quick sale. Can be seen at 2330 O’Higgins. Ask doorman. Alex Darby. Phone 531-678-666.
Five seconds after Roscoe had read the offer, the paper on which it had been printed was off the wall and in his pocket.
He sat back down on the bench and trimmed his fingernails.
Maybe they have surveillance cameras.
Maybe they saw me tear that off.
If they did, so what?
 
 
“Mr. Danton, Ms. Grunblatt will see you now.”
Sylvia Grunblatt was sitting behind a large, cluttered desk. She was not svelte, but neither was she unpleasingly plump. She had very intelligent eyes.
“What can the embassy of the United States do for Roscoe J. Danton of The Washington Times-Post?” she greeted him. “How about a cup of coffee for openers?”
“I would be in your debt,” Roscoe said.
She poured coffee into a mug and handed it to him.
“Sugar? Canned cow?”
He shook his head.
“What brings you to the Paris of South America?” Grunblatt asked.
“I’m writing a feature with the working title, ‘Tacos and Tango.’”
“Sure you are,” she said. “What did you do, get demoted? I’m one of your fans, Mr. Danton, and you don’t write features for the Sunday magazine.”
“How about one with the lead, ‘U.S. diplomats living really high on the taxpayer’s dollar in the Paris of South America’?”
“If you were going to do that, you wouldn’t tell me.”
“I came down here to see Alex Darby,” Roscoe said.
“Nobody here by that name,” she said.
“You mean ‘Nobody here by that name now,’ right?”
“We had a commercial counselor by that name, but he’s gone. Retired.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t seem to recall. I could find out for you, but then we would get into privacy issues, wouldn’t we?”
“Or security issues. You know who cut his checks, Miss Grunblatt.”
“One, it’s Ms. Grunblatt—but you can call me Sylvia if ‘Mizz’ sticks in your craw.”
“And you may call me Roscoe, Sylvia.”
“And two, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Mr. Darby was our commercial counselor. Who fed you that other wild notion?”
“Eleanor Dillworth, another longtime toiler in the Clandestine Service of the agency whose name we dare not speak.”
“You know Eleanor, do you?”
“Eleanor came to me. Actually, she and her friend Patricia Davies Wilson came to me. Do you know Patricia?”
“I’ve heard the name somewhere. Eleanor came to you?”
“Both of them did. Whistles to their lips.”
“And who—at whom—did they wish to blow their whistles?”
“They seem to feel the villain is an Army officer named Castillo. Major Charley Castillo.”
“His Christian name is Carlos.”
“You know him?”
She nodded, and said, “If he’s the same man. He was sent down here when our consul general, J. Winslow Masterson, was kidnapped.”
“Sent by who—whom?”
“Our late President. Who then, after Jack Masterson was killed, put him in charge of getting Masterson’s family safely home.”
“Tell me about Major Castillo,” Danton said.
“Tell you what, Roscoe. You tell me what you think you know about Castillo and if I can, I’ll tell you if you’re right.”
“Nice try, Sylvia.”
“Excuse me?”
“If I tell you what I know about this guy, then you will know how close I am to learning what you don’t want to tell me about him.”
“Roscoe, I am a public affairs officer. It is my duty to answer any questions you might pose to the best of my ability. Providing of course that my answers would not include anything that is classified.”
“You ever hear what C. Harry Whelan has to say about public affairs officers such as yourself?”
She shook her head.
“Quote: Their function is not the dissemination of information but rather the containment thereof. They really should be called ‘misinformation officers.’ End quote.”
“Oh, God! He’s onto us! There is nothing left for me to do but to go home and slit my wrists.”
He chuckled.
Sylvia made the time out signal with her hands.
“Can we go off the record, Roscoe?”
“Briefly.”
“What exactly did Eleanor tell you?”
“I presume that ‘off the record’ means that you’re not going to send an urgent message to Foggy Bottom telling Natalie Cohen what Eleanor told me.”
“Girl Scout’s honor.”
“Okay. Actually, she didn’t tell me much. She said I wouldn’t believe what an evil man this guy Castillo is unless I found out myself. What she did was suggest that Castillo had stolen two Russian defectors from her when she was in Vienna. And then pointed me at Alexander Darby.”
Sylvia looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then said, “Eleanor and I go back a long time—”
“Meaning you have taken Darby’s place as the resident spook?”
She shook her head and raised her right arm as if swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her God.
“Meaning we go back a long time,” she said. “Eleanor is very good at what she’s done for all those years. If she says Charley Castillo stole two heavy Russian spooks from under her nose, that means there were two Russian spooks, and she believes Charley Castillo stole them.”
“She said that it cost her her job.”
“Stories like that are circulating, and I’ve heard them,” Sylvia said. “What I can’t figure is why Charley would do something like that unless someone—maybe even our late President—told him to. And I can’t imagine why he brought them here.”
“He brought Russian spooks here?”
“Ambassador Montvale thinks he did.”
“How do you know that?”
“A friend of mine—you don’t need to know who—was in the Río Alba—that’s a restaurant around the corner, magnificent steaks; you ought to make an effort to eat there—at a table near my ambassador’s. He was having lunch with Montvale. Castillo walked in. Montvale told him all would be forgiven if he gave him the Russians. Castillo told him to attempt a physiologically impossible act of self-reproduction. Montvale threatened to have him arrested; he had a couple of Secret Service guys with him. Castillo said if the Secret Service made a move, they would be arrested by a couple of Gendarmería Nacional—they’re the local heavy cops—he had with him.
“The meeting adjourned to the embassy. I guess they were afraid someone might hear them talking. When the meeting was over, Montvale went to the airport without any Russians, got on his Citation Four, and flew back to Washington. Castillo walked out of the embassy and I haven’t seen him since. Reminding you that we’re off the record, my ambassador, who is a really good guy, thinks Castillo is a really good guy.”
“Interesting.”
“One more interesting thing: Right after we bombed whatever the hell it was we bombed in the Congo, a lot of people around here, including Alex Darby, suddenly decided to retire.”
“What people?”
“No names. But a Secret Service guy, and a ‘legal attaché,’ which is diplomat-speak for FBI agent, and even a couple of people in our embassies in Asunción, Paraguay, and across the River Plate in Uruguay.”
“Are you going to tell me where I can find Alexander Darby?”
“I don’t know, and don’t want to know, where he is. The last time I saw him was at Ezeiza.”
“The airport?”
She nodded. “Alex is somebody else I’ve known for a long time. A really good guy. I drove him to the airport.”
“He went home?”
She paused before replying: “Alex applied for, and was issued, a regular passport. I drove him to the airport. He left the country—went through immigration—on his diplomatic passport. Then he went back through the line and entered the country as a tourist on his regular passport. When he came out, he handed me—as an officer of the embassy—his dip’s passport. Then I drove him to his apartment. I haven’t seen him since.”
“You going to tell me where that apartment is?”
“We’re back on the record, Mr. Danton. I cannot of course violate Mr. Darby’s privacy by giving you that information. I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course. And thank you very much, Mizz Grunblatt.”
“Anytime, Mr. Danton. We try to be of service.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Did you ever hear what Winston Churchill said about journalists, Mr. Danton?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Churchill said, ‘Journalists are the semiliterate cretins hired to fill the spaces between the advertisements.’”
“Oh, God! He’s onto us! Now I suppose there’s nothing left for me but to slash my wrists.”
“That’s a thought. Good morning, Mr. Danton.”

[FOUR]

Apartment 32-B
O’Higgins 2330
Belgrano
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1505 5 February 2007
 
“I will miss the view,” Alexander B. Darby—a small, plump man with a pencil-line mustache—said as he stood with Liam Duffy, Edgar Delchamps, and his wife, and gestured out the windows of the Darbys’ apartment on the thirty-second floor. It occupied half of the top floor of the four-year-old building, high enough to overlook almost all of the other apartment buildings between O’Higgins and the River Plate.
“What you’re supposed to be going to miss, you sonofabitch, is your loving wife and adorable children,” Julia Darby—a trim woman who wore her black hair in a pageboy—said.
And was immediately sorry.
“Strike that, Alex,” she added. “I was just lashing out at the fickle finger of fate.”
“It’s okay, honey. And I really don’t think it will be for long.”
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” Julia said solemnly.
“And the movers never show up when they’re supposed to,” Edgar Delchamps said as solemnly.
The apartment showed signs that the movers were expected any moment. Cardboard boxes were stacked all over, and suitcases were arranged by the door.
“And it is always the cocktail hour somewhere in the world, so why not here and now?” Alex said.
Julia smiled at Edgar and Liam, and said, “Every once in a great while, he has a good idea. The embassy’s glasses are in the cupboard, so all we have to do is find something to put in them.”
“The booze is in the suitcase with the ‘seven’ stuck on it,” Alex said, and looked at the suitcases by the door. “Which, of course, is the one on the bottom.” He switched to Spanish. “Give me a hand, will you, Liam?”
Liam Duffy—a well-dressed, muscular, ruddy-faced blond man in his forties—looked to be what his name suggested, a true son of Erin. But he was in fact an Argentine whose family had migrated to Argentina more than a century before.
They went to the stack of suitcases, moved them around, and in about a minute Alex Darby was able to triumphantly raise a bottle of twelve-year-old Famous Grouse Malt Scotch whisky.
The house telephone rang.
Julia answered it.
“It’s the concierge,” she announced. “Somebody’s here to look at the car.”
“Tell him to show it to him,” Alex said.
He walked into the kitchen carrying the whisky. Liam followed him.
Ninety seconds later, the telephone rang again, and again Julia answered it.
When Alex and Liam returned from the kitchen, Julia announced, “It’s the movers.”
“Which one?”
“His,” Julia said, nodding at Duffy.
“Have them sent up,” Alex said.
“I’m way ahead of you, my darling,” Julia said as she reached for her glass.
Seconds later, the doorbell chimed, signaling there was someone in the elevator foyer.
Duffy went to the door and opened it, then waved three men into the apartment. They were all wearing business suits but there was something about them that suggested the military.
“The suitcases to the left of the doorway,” Duffy said in Spanish. “Be very careful of the blue one with the number seven on it.”
“Sí, mí comandante,” one of them said.
“Did they find a pilot for the Aero Commander?” Duffy asked.
“Sí, mí general. All is ready at Aeroparque Jorge Newbery.”
“Whoopee!” Julia Darby said.
“And the people to stay with Familia Darby?” Duffy asked.
“In place, mí comandante.”
“Whoopee again,” Julia said.
Duffy nodded at the men.
The doorbell rang again.
Duffy pulled it open.
A thirty-eight-year-old Presbyterian from Chevy Chase, Maryland, stood there.
“Mr. Darby?” Roscoe Danton asked.
“I’m Alex Darby. Come in.”
Roscoe entered the apartment and offered his hand to him.
“Roscoe Danton,” he said.
“That was a quick look at the BMW, wasn’t it?” Darby asked.
“Actually, Mr. Darby, I’m not here about the car. I came to see you,” Danton said. “I’m a journalist at The Washington Times-Post. Eleanor Dillworth sent me.”
Darby’s reaction was Pavlovian. One spook does not admit knowing another spook unless he knows whoever is asking the question has the right to know.
Spooks also believe that journalists should be told only that which is in the best interests of the spook to tell them.
“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake,” Darby said, politely. “I’m afraid I don’t know a Miss Duckworth.”
“Dillworth.” Roscoe made the correction even as he intuited things were about to go wrong. “Eleanor Dillworth.”
Comandante General Liam Duffy also experienced a Pavlovian reaction when he saw the look in Darby’s eyes. He made a barely perceptible gesture with the index finger of his left hand.
The two men about to carry luggage from the apartment quickly set it down and moved quickly to each side of Roscoe Danton. The third man, who was already on the elevator landing, turned and came back into the apartment, looking to Duffy for guidance.
Duffy made another small gesture with his left hand, rubbing his thumb against his index finger. This gesture had two meanings, money and papers.
In this case, the third man intuited it meant papers. He walked to Danton and said, reasonably pleasantly, in English, “Papers, please, Señor.”
“Excuse me?” Roscoe said.
Julia Darby looked annoyed rather than concerned.
“Gendarmería Nacional,” the man said. “Documents, please, passport and other identity.”
Roscoe wordlessly handed over his passport.
The third man made a give me the rest gesture.
Roscoe took out his wallet and started to look for his White House press pass.
The third man snatched the wallet from his fingers and handed it and the passport to Liam Duffy.
“My press passes are in there,” Roscoe said. “Including my White House—”
Duffy silenced him with a raised hand, examined the passport and the contents of the wallet, and then handed all of it to Darby.
Then he made another gesture, patting his chest with both hands.
The two men standing beside him instantly started to pat down Roscoe, finally signaling that he was clean except for a wad of currency, a sheaf of papers, several ballpoint pens, a box of wooden matches, and two cigars. They handed everything to Duffy.
“How did you happen to come to this address, Mr. Danton?” Darby asked, courteously.
Roscoe decided to tell the truth.
“I saw the for-sale ad, for the BMW, in the daily bulletin at the embassy,” he said. He pointed to the sheaf of papers.
“What were you doing at the embassy?”
“I went there to see if they could point me at you.”
“Why would you want to be pointed at me?”
“I told you, Eleanor Dillworth said you would be helpful.”
“In what way?”
“That you could point me toward Colonel Carlos Castillo.”
“I know no one by that name. An Argentine Army officer?”
“An American officer, Mr. Darby,” Roscoe replied, stopping himself at the last second from saying, As you fucking well know.
“I don’t know what’s going on here, Mr. Danton,” Darby said. “But apparently someone has given you incorrect information. I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced. How did you get here?”
“In a taxi.”
“Where are you staying?”
“The Plaza Hotel.”
“Well, the least we can for you is give you a ride back there,” Darby said. “We can do that, can’t we, Liam?”
“Absolutely,” Liam said.
“Nice to have met you, Mr. Danton,” Darby said, and gestured toward the door.
“Likewise,” Roscoe Danton snapped sarcastically. “And I’ll pass on the free ride, thank you just the same.”
Comandante General Liam Duffy locked eyes with Danton, and evenly said, “Let me explain something to you, Señor. There are some irregularities with your documents—”
“What kind of irregularities?” Danton interrupted angrily.
Duffy ignored him. He went on: “I’m sure they can be quickly cleared up. Possibly even today and certainly by the morning. Our usual procedure is taking people with irregular documents to our headquarters. Then we would notify the U.S. embassy and ask them to verify your documents. Sometimes, they can do that immediately. In the case of someone like yourself, a distinguished journalist, I’m sure they would go out of their way to hasten this procedure—”
“Call the public affairs officer,” Danton interrupted again. “Sylvia Grunblatt. She knows who I am.”
Duffy ignored him again. “—and by late today, or certainly by tomorrow morning, a consular officer would come by our headquarters, verify the legitimacy of your documents, which would then be returned to you and you could go about your business.
“But, in the meantime, you would be held. We can’t, as I’m sure you understand, have people running around Buenos Aires with questionable documents. Now, partly because I am anxious to do everything I can for a prominent North American journalist such as you purport to be, and partly because Señor Darby feels sorry for you, what I’m willing to do is take you to your hotel and let you wait there. With the understanding, of course, that you would not leave the Plaza until your documents are checked and we return them to you. Believe me, Señor, the Plaza is far more comfortable a place to wait than the detention facilities at our headquarters.”
Danton held up both hands at shoulder height.
“I surrender,” he said. “The Plaza it is.”
“Comandante, will you take this gentleman to the Plaza?”
“Sí, mí comandante.”
 
 
“What the hell was that all about?” Julia Darby asked.
“If I were still an officer of the Clandestine Service,” Alex Darby replied, “I would hazard a guess that it has something to do with this.”
He held up a copy of the letter Colonel Vladlen Solomatin had given to Eric Kocian in Budapest.
“If I were still an officer of the Clandestine Service,” Edgar Delchamps said, “I would know not only what Roscoe Danton is up to, but also what Comrade Colonel Solomatin is up to.”
“You think I’m wrong?” Liam Duffy asked.
“No. Vladimir Putin may very well have dispatched one of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki hit squads—or several of them—to whack us all,” Delchamps said. “But I don’t think Roscoe Danton is a deep-cover SVR asset who came out of his closet to do the deed. He’s a pretty good journalist, actually.”
“What was that about Eleanor pointing him at Alex? At Charley?” Julia asked. “Did he make that up?”
“I don’t think so. Eleanor got fired when Charley stole her defectors. She’s pissed. Understandably,” Alex Darby said. “I think she’d like to watch as Charley was castrated with a dull knife.”
“I don’t think she likes me much either,” Delchamps said.
“And you know why,” Alex said.
“I don’t,” Julia said.
“Quickly changing the subject,” Delchamps said, “I suggest we get the hell out of Dodge as quickly as possible. Just as soon as the movers come.”
“I can leave somebody here to deal with the movers,” Liam said.
“And Sylvia has the car keys—and the power of attorney—to sell the car,” Darby said. “Moving Julia and the boys to the safe house in Pilar until it’s time to go to Ezeiza seems to be the thing to do. Honey, will you go get the boys?”
“No,” Julia said. “I’m a mommy. Mommies don’t like it much when their sons look at them with loathing, disgust, and ice-cold hate. You go get them.”
“It’s not that bad, honey,” Alex argued. “People who—hell, people who sell air conditioners get transferred, with little or no notice, all the time. Their children get jerked out of school. It’s not the end of the world.”
“You tell them that,” she said.
“They’ll like Saint Albans, once they get used to it,” Alex said somewhat lamely.
“Why? Because you went there?” Julia challenged.
“No. Because Al Gore and Jesse Jackson, Jr., did,” Alex said, and after a moment added, “I’ll be right back. With my pitiful abused namesake and his pathetic little brother.”
 
 
When the door to the elevator foyer had closed behind her husband, Julia asked, “What are you going to do, Edgar? Eventually, I mean.”
Delchamps considered the question a long moment before replying.
“I don’t know, Julia,” he said. “Like Alex, this business of ... of selling air conditioners ... is all I know. What I won’t be doing is hanging around the gate at Langley with the other dinosaurs telling spy stories.”
“I didn’t know what Alex did for a living until the night he proposed,” Julia said. “And then he told me he was in research for the agency.”
“They call that obfuscation,” Delchamps said.
“You never got married, did you?”
He shook his head.
The telephone rang.
This time it was the embassy movers.

[FIVE]

The President’s Study
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
0935 5 February 2007
 
“What am I looking at, Charles?” President Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen inquired of Ambassador Charles M. Montvale, the director of National Intelligence.
Before Montvale could reply, the President thought he knew the answer to his question, and went on: “This is the—what should I call it?—the package that caused all the uproar at Fort Detrick yesterday, right? And why am I looking at this now, instead of yesterday?”
“These photographs were taken less than an hour ago, Mr. President,” Montvale said. “On a dirt road one hundred fifty yards inside our border near McAllen, Texas.”
The President looked at him, waiting for him to continue.
“A routine patrol by the Border Patrol found that sitting on the road at about half past seven, Texas time. The intel took some time to work its way up the chain of command. The Border Patrol agents who found it reported it to their superiors, who reported it—”
“I know how a chain of command works, Charles,” the President interrupted.
“Homeland Security finally got it to me just minutes ago,” Montvale said.
“Cut to the chase, for Christ’s sake,” the President snapped. “Is that another load of Congo-X or not?”
“We are proceeding on the assumption that it is, Mr. President, and working to confirm that, one way or the other—”
“What the hell does that mean?” the President interrupted again.
“As soon as this was brought to my attention, Mr. President, I contacted Colonel Hamilton at Fort Detrick. I was prepared to fly him out there.”
“And is that what’s happening?”
“No, sir. Colonel Hamilton felt that opening the beer cooler on-site would be ill-advised.”
“‘Beer cooler’?”
“Yes, sir. The outer container is an insulated box commonly used to keep beer or, for that matter, anything else cold. They’re commonly available all over. The FBI has determined the one sent to Colonel Hamilton was purchased at a Sam’s Club in Miami.”
“I don’t know why I’m allowing myself to go off on a tangent like this, but why don’t you just call it an ‘insulated box’?”
“Perhaps we should, sir. But the Congo-X at Fort Detrick was in a blue rubber barrel, resembling a beer barrel, in the insulated—”
“Okay, okay. I get it. So what’s with Colonel Hamilton?”
“Colonel Hamilton said further that in addition to the risk posed by opening the insulated box on-site, to determine whether whatever it holds was Congo-X or not, he would have to take all sorts of various laboratory equipment—”
“So you’re moving it to Detrick, right? Is that safe?”
“We believe it is the safest step we can take, sir.”
“And that’s under way?”
“Yes, sir. The insulated box will be—by now has been—taken to the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in a Border Patrol helicopter. From there it will be—by now, is being—transported to Andrews Air Force Base here in a Navy C-20H. That’s a Gulfstream Four, Mr. President.”
“Thank you for the clarification, Charles,” the President said sarcastically. “One can never know too many details like that. And when the beer cooler-slash-insulated box gets to Andrews? Is everything set up there to cause another public relations disaster, like the one we had yesterday?”
“An Army helicopter will be standing by at Andrews, sir, to fly the insulated container to Fort Detrick. It should not attract undue attention, sir.”
“It better not.”
“Mr. President, what caused the, the—”
“‘Disaster’ is probably the word you’re looking for, Charles,” the President said.
“—excitement at Fort Detrick yesterday was Colonel Hamilton declaring a Potential Level Four Biological Hazard Disaster. That probably won’t happen today.”
The President snorted, and then asked, “So what’s going to happen when the insulated container from Texas is delivered to Hamilton?”
“He will determine whether the container contains more Congo-X.”
“And if it does?”
“Excuse me?”
“If it does contain more of this noxious substance—now, that’s an understatement, isn’t it? ‘Noxious substance’?—what is he going to do about that?”
“The colonel has been experimenting with high-temperature incineration as a means of destroying Congo-X. He has had some success, but he is not prepared to declare that the solution.”
“So we then have several questions that need answering, don’t we? One, what is this stuff? Two, how do we deal with it? More important, three, who’s sending it to us? And, four, why are they sending it to us?”
“Yes, sir, that’s true.”
“And you have no answers?”
“I think we can safely presume, sir, that it was sent to us by the same people who were operating the ‘fish farm’ that we destroyed in the Congo.”
“I think we can ‘safely presume’ that we didn’t destroy everything that needed destroying in the Congo, can’t we?”
“I’m afraid we have to proceed on that assumption, Mr. President.”
“And you have no recommendations?”
“Sir?”
“It seems to me our options range from sending Natalie Cohen to Moscow and Teheran to get on her knees and beg for mercy all the way up to nuking both the Kremlin and wherever that unshaven little Iranian bastard hangs his hat in Teheran.”
“There are more options than those extremes, Mr. President.”
“Such as?”
“Sir, it seems to me that if whoever sent these two packages of Congo-X wanted to cause us harm, they would have already done so.”
“That thought has also run through my mind,” Clendennen said sarcastically.
“It would therefore follow they want something. What we have to do is learn what they want.”
“Would you be surprised, Charles, if I told you that thought has also run through my mind?”
Montvale didn’t reply.
“I want you to set up a meeting here at, say, five,” the President said. “We’ll brainstorm it. You, Natalie, the DCI, the FBI director, the secretary of Defense, the heads of Homeland Security and the DIA. And Colonel Hamilton, too. By then he’ll probably know if this new stuff is more Congo-X or not. In any event, he can bring everybody up to speed on what he does know.”
“Yes, sir. That’s probably a good idea.”
“I thought you might think so,” President Clendennen said.

[SIX]

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Eisenhower Executive Office Building
17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
1010 5 February 2007
 
Truman C. Ellsworth, whose title was “executive assistant to the director of National Intelligence,” learned only after having served in that position for three months that the title was most commonly used by members of the secretarial sorority to denote those women who were more than just secretaries. Those females who had, in other words, their own secretaries to do the typing, filing, and fetching of coffee.
By the time he found out, it was too late to do anything about it.
Ellsworth, a tall, silver-haired, rather elegant man in his fifties, had chosen the title himself when Charles M. Montvale had asked him to again leave his successful, even distinguished law practice in New York to work for him, as his deputy, in the newly created Directorate of National Intelligence.
He wouldn’t have the title of deputy, Montvale explained, because there was already a deputy director of National Intelligence, whom Montvale privately described as “a connected cretin” who had been appointed by the President in the discharge of some political debt.
Montvale said he would make—and he quickly had made—it clear that Truman C. Ellsworth was number two in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and that any title would do. Ellsworth chose “executive assistant” because an executive is someone who executes and he was inarguably going to be Montvale’s assistant.
In this role, while Charles M. Montvale sat on his office couch, Truman C. Ellsworth sat behind Montvale’s desk and called first the secretary of State, Natalie Cohen, whom he knew socially well enough to address by her first name, and told her that the President had asked “the boss” to set up a five o’clock meeting at the White House to discuss “a new development in the Congo business.”
She said she would of course be there.
Then Truman called, in turn, Wyatt Vanderpool, the secretary of Defense; John “Jack” Powell, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Mark Schmidt, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Lieutenant General William W. Withers, U.S. Army, the commanding general of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He told them, somewhat more curtly, that “the ambassador” had told him to call them to summon them to a five P.M. brainstorming session at the White House vis-à-vis the new development in the Congo affair. He wasn’t able to reach the secretary of Homeland Security, but he did get through to Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Mason Andrews.
Ellsworth returned the telephone receiver to its cradle and reported as much to Ambassador Montvale: “I got through to everybody but DHS, Charles. I had to settle for Mason Andrews.”
“I wish I had thought of this when you had Jack Powell on the line,” Montvale said.
“Thought of what, Charles?”
“Castillo may be involved in this—probably is, in some way—and I have no idea where he is.”
Ellsworth’s eyebrows rose.
“I daresay that the colonel, retired, in compliance with his orders, has dropped off the face of the earth.”
“I want to know where he is,” Montvale said. “I forgot that the President told me the next time he asked, he expected me to be able to tell him where Castillo is.”
“Well, you can tell Jack Powell to start looking for him when you see him at the White House.”
“That’s seven hours from now,” Montvale said. “Get him on a secure line, please, Truman. I will speak with him.”
Ellsworth reached for a red telephone on the desk, and said into it, “White House, will you please get DCI Powell on a secure line for Ambassador Montvale?”