AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"I thought it would be best if Senor Darby and Senor 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 Senora 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 accent, I saw your reflection on one of the monitors. You were smiling."
Why the hell is she lying? And to Darby, who is an old and close friend?
"Guilty," Castillo said, speaking German. "My mother was German. A Hessian, as a matter of fact."
And I've got to get an e-mail off to the Tages Zeitung, which I don't think I'll mention to Munz.
And I want to call Pevsner.
I should have gotten his phone number; all I have is Kennedy's cellular number.
Well, he can either give me the number or have Pevsner call me.
Maybe she's just scared. She has every right to be.
She must know that Darby's the resident spook, and that she is now safely in his hands.
"Really?" Munz said. "Where in Hesse was your mother from?"
Jesus, is he onto something? Has he connected me with Gossinger at the Four Seasons? Both Santini and Darby said SIDE is good.
"A little town called Bad Hersfeld."
"I know it. My father's family was from Giessen, and my wife's family from Kassel."
