English in my bathroom providing all sorts of information about Buenos Aires. Are you an opera fan, by any chance, Major Lunsford? This Wednesday they’re doing The Flying Dutchman.”
“Would you be surprised if I told you, mi coronel, that I am very fond of Die Fleigende Hollander?”
“Nothing about you would surprise me, Major,” Lowell said.
Lowell glanced out the window and saw they had doubled back and were headed back toward the bright lights of the Avenida de 9 Julio.
Then the Buick braked suddenly and turned off the street into what looked like the service entrance to one of the office buildings. The headlights picked out two soldiers in uniform, with 9-mm Uzi submachine guns slung around their necks.
There was a whining of electric motors, and then the large metal door to the street began to close. When it was just about closed, lights came on, and Lowell saw that the black Falcon that had been trailing them had pulled in beside them.
And then he saw Teniente Coronel Fosterwood, in uniform, coming down a flight of steps set into the concrete loading dock toward the car. The driver of Buick barely beat him to the door and opened it.
“Ah, Craig, so sorry we’re so late,” he said. “I understand that Americans like to eat in what we call the afternoon.”
“Frankly, Ricky, we have just about emptied that magnificent basket of fruit,” Lowell said. They shook hands.
He waved them up the concrete steps to the landing dock and down a corridor to an elevator and into it.
The elevator operator had an Uzi slung under his arm.
The elevator stopped, and Fosterwood led them down a paneled corridor, in which there was another man with an Uzi, and waved them through a double door.
It was an office. The large sturdy man who had met them at Ezeiza was seated behind a large, ornately carved desk. There were two Argentine flags against the wall behind the desk, on either side of an antique sword—a cavalry saber, Lowell corrected himself—in a glass case.
There was a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label scotch on the desk, and a water pitcher.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” General Pascual Angel Pistarini said, rising from a leather armchair. “Thank you for joining us.”
He put out his right hand. His left held a large square glass dark with something Lowell suspected had come from the bottle on the SIDE guy’s desk.
“We’re honored to be here, General,” Lowell said, shaking his hand.
“Let me first formally present Teniente Coronel Guillermo Rangio, the deputy director of SIDE,” Pistarini said. “You have met both of these gentlemen, Guillermo.”
Rangio rose from behind the large desk and shook hands, wordlessly, with both of them.
“That out of the way,” Pistarini said, “I think under the circumstances we should address one another by our Christian names, or better still, what is your phrase, our ‘nicknames’?”
Craig Lowell had an immediate flashback to Bad Nauheim, Germany, in 1946. Major General Porterman K. Waterford, commanding general of the U.S. Constabulary, had assembled his newly formed polo team in a stable.
“Gentlemen, on the polo field, we will relax somewhat military courtesy,” he said. “I will address you by your Christian names, or your nicknames, whichever you prefer, and you, in turn, may address me either as ‘Sir’ or ’General.’ ”
Lowell had laughed then, and he barely managed to suppress a laugh now. No one in this room was about to call Pistarini “Pascual. ”
“Craig knows that Ricky is Ricky, Willi,” Pistarini said to Rangio. “But I don’t know what Major Lunsford is called by his friends.”
“Father, sir,” Lunsford.
Pistarini’s face tightened. “Isn’t that how one refers to priests in English?”
“Yes, sir,” Lunsford said. “But in my case, it makes reference to my Christian names George Washington, as in ‘Father of his Country.’ ”
“I see,” Pistarini said, visibly relieved. “Well, then, Father, that’s what we’ll call you, with your permission, of course.”
“I would be honored, sir,” Father said.
Fosterwood nudged Lowell’s arm, and when Lowell looked, handed him one of the square glasses. Then he handed Lunsford one.
“I thought we should drink to the successful transoceanic flight of a man who once sat behind that desk,” Pistarini said. “Have you heard about that, Craig?”
“Yes, sir. Did you hear, General, that the Brazilian Air Force is accompanying the plane to the Point of No Return?”
“No, I didn’t,” Pistarini admitted.
And that got your attention, didn’t it, Willi? Lowell thought. There was a visible crack in your studiously stern countenance.
“Would you say, Craig,” Pistarini asked, “that your government had something to do