place in the handle.
“I don’t want this to get any further than it has to, Sergeant, which means that was the last time you call me ‘sir,’ but the cold and unvarnished truth is that I’m a soldier.”
“Sir, the ambassador didn’t say anything—”
“What part of don’t-call-me-‘sir’ didn’t you understand?”
“Sorry, s—”
“I don’t think the ambassador knows I’m a soldier. Actually—the reason I can give you orders—I’m a major.”
“Yes, s—” the sergeant said, and then, “Major, it comes automatically. I say ‘sir’ to civilians all the time.”
“Well, try not to say it to me, okay?”
“Yes, sir. Oh, shit.”
“I’m sorry I brought the subject up,” Castillo said, chuckling. “Let’s go, Sergeant.”
[FOUR]
Room 677 The German Hospital Avenida Pueyrredón Buenos Aires, Argentina 0940 23 July 2005
There were half a dozen uniformed Policía Federal in the lobby of the hospital, and when Castillo asked for Mrs. Masterson, one of them, a sergeant, walked up to him somewhat menacingly.
“Señor,” he began.
A tall, well-dressed man walked up.
“Señor Castillo?”
Charley nodded.
“Come with me, please, señor.”
“Get yourself a cup of coffee,” Castillo said to the Marine.
“The ambassador said I’m not to let you out of my sight.”
“Good, no ‘sir,’” Charley said. “Tell the ambassador I was difficult. Not to worry.”
Almost biting his lip not to say “sir,” the Marine said, “I’ll be right here.”
The tall man waved Castillo onto an elevator, nodding at another well-dressed man already on it as they entered. The man pushed the button for the sixth floor.
There was a sign saying Seimens had built the elevator.
And the lobby was spotless, waxed, and shiny. And that RAUCHEN VERBOTEN! sign in black and red!
When they say “German Hospital,” they mean German hospital.
When the door opened, Castillo saw more uniformed police and several other well-dressed men who he decided were almost certainly SIDE agents.
The tall man led him down a corridor to a door, opened it, and waved Castillo in.
Colonel Munz was in the room, which was some sort of monitoring center. There was a row of television sets—all of German manufacture—on the wall.
“I thought it would be best if Señor Darby and Señor Lowery spoke with Mrs. Masterson,” Munz greeted him, “as I don’t think she feels kindly about anything Argentine right now.”
He dismissed the tall man with a wave of his hand, and then pointed to the television monitors. On two of them Castillo could see Mrs. Masterson. She was in a hospital gown, sitting up in a bed. Lowery was on one side of her and Darby on the other. Something from a limp plastic bottle was dripping into her arm. He could hear Darby talking to her, but he couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“How long has she been out of it?” Castillo asked.
“About ten minutes,” Munz replied. “They found a drug in her blood. They’re giving her something to neutralize it. It’s obviously working.”
“I can’t hear what they’re saying.”
Munz walked to one of the monitors and increased the volume.
Darby was assuring her that the children were all right, that they were under the protection of both Argentine police and security people from the embassy.
Castillo got the feeling that Darby was repeating his assurances, meaning she had not yet completely come out from under the effects of the narcotic.
He heard Munz’s cellular buzz.
Munz said, “¿Hola?” but then switched to German.
It soon became obvious that he was speaking with someone who was not overly impressed with Colonel Munz of SIDE, or more likely not impressed at all. His explanations that something had happened that had kept him from coming home as promised, and from at least calling, apparently were not falling on appreciative ears. The odds were that El Coronel Munz was speaking with Señora Munz.
He turned his attention back to Darby’s gentle interrogation of Mrs. Masterson.
She didn’t have much to tell him. From the time she was grabbed and felt what was the prick of a hypodermic needle in her buttocks, she remembered practically nothing until she had woken up in the taxicab sitting beside her dead husband.
She did not get a good look at her abductors; she didn’t even know how many of them there had been. She had no idea where she had been taken. She could not describe the room in which she had been held.
Castillo had just had an uncomfortable thought, one that shamed him—Jesus, she’s still probably full of that drug—when Munz spoke to him, in German.
“Why do I suspect you speak German, Herr Castillo?”
Castillo turned to look at him.
“While I was talking to my wife, in a thick Hessian