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"Joel tells me there's a warrant out for you in Costa Rica," Santini said with a smile. "Grand Theft, Airplane."
"Joel's mistaken. The name on the warrant is 'Party or Parties Unknown.'"
Santini chuckled, then asked, "What's going on with you here?"
"I was sent to find out about our diplomat's wife who got herself kidnapped."
"When did kidnapping start to interest Special Forces?"
"Joel told you about that, too, huh? To look at him, you wouldn't think he talks too much."
"Your shameful secret is safe with me, Herr Gossinger."
"I guess you know I'm on loan from the Army to Matt Hall?" Santini nodded. "The President told him to send me down here to, quote, find out what happened and how it happened before anybody down there has time to write a cover-his-ass report, end quote."
Santini nodded, then offered:
"Mrs. Elizabeth Masterson, nice lady, wife of J. Winslow Masterson, our chief of mission. Nice guy. She was apparently snatched from the parking lot of a restaurant called Kansas, nice place, in San Isidro, which is an upscale suburb. So far, no communication from the kidnappers. I'm thinking that they may have been very disappointed to find the lady has a diplomatic passport; I wouldn't be surprised if they turn her loose. On the other hand, they may decide that a dead woman can't identify anybody."
"You give it good odds that they'd kill her?"
"They kidnapped a kid not so long ago-not a kid. He was twenty-three. In San Isidro, where they grabbed Mrs. Masterson. He was the son of a rich businessman. They cut off his fingers, one at a time, and sent them to Poppa, together with rising demands for ransom. Poppa finally paid, three hundred thousand American. That's roughly nine hundred thousand pesos, a fortune in a poor country. And shortly thereafter, they found the kid's body, shot in the head."
"Why'd they kill him?"
"Dead men tell no tales," Santini said, mockingly. "Hadn't you heard?"
"Wouldn't that discourage other people from paying ransom?"
"When they've got junior or the missus, you pay and hope you get them back alive. The only thing that may keep Mrs. Masterson alive is if the bad guys are smart enough to realize that killing her would really turn the heat up. That would embarrass the government." He paused, and then, mimicking the sonorous tone of a condescending professor, added, "My experience with the criminal element, lamentably, suggests that very few of them are mentally qualified to be able to modify their antisocial behavior and become nuclear physicists."
Castillo chuckled. "I don't know why I'm laughing," he said, then asked, "What did you say about the Kansas?"
"It's a nice restaurant. She was snatched from the parking lot in back of it. If you want, I'll take you out there for lunch, and you can have a look-see for yourself."
"Thank you. I'd like that. I won't know what I'm looking at, but I have to start somewhere."
"Pardon my ignorance, but why can't you just walk into the embassy and tell the security guy, Ken Lowery, nice guy, what you're doing down here?"
"That would put me in the system. The whole idea is for me not to be in the system."
"Nobody knows you've been sent down here? Not even the agency?"
"Especially the agency. I'm on their bad-guy list. Theirs and the FBI's."
Santini thoughtfully considered that.
"But I'd like to know about them. Or is that putting you on the spot?"
"You're okay with Joel. That's good enough for me. Anyway, there's not much to tell. The CIA station chief-his cover, so called, is commercial attache-is a good guy by the name of Alex Darby. From what I've seen, he's okay. There's no FBI at the embassy, but they sent a couple agents over yesterday from Montevideo to see if they could be useful. I just barely know them. Typical FBI agents."
"You think-what did you say his name is? Darby?- you think Darby's in tight with SIDE and/or the local cops?"
"You know what SIDE is?"
"The Argentine versions of the CIA and the FBI combined in one, right?"
Santini nodded, then asked, "You've been here before?"
