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"These Good Samaritans just happen to be in Montevideo, right?"
Castillo laughed.
"No, sir. They'd actually be shooters from Fort Bragg…"
"That's a very politically incorrect term, 'shooters,'" the ambassador said. "I like it."
"They would have a satellite radio with them. That would be useful. And they would provide you and Mrs. Lorimer with a little security."
"I would be delighted to have your friends stay with us as long as necessary and be very grateful for their assistance."
"Thank you, sir."
Ambassador Lorimer stood up, picked up his now empty cognac snifter, returned to the bottles on the credenza, and poured a half inch of Remy Martin into it. He raised the glass to Castillo.
"Since you're on the wagon, Colonel: Mud in your eye."
"I suspect there will be another time, sir."
"I hope so."
Lorimer looked at him intently for a moment, so intently that Castillo asked, "Sir, is there something else?"
"I always look into a man's eyes when I'm negotiating with him," Lorimer said. "I did so just now. And while I was doing that, I had the odd feeling I'd recently seen eyes very much like yours before."
"Had you, sir?"
"Yes. I just remembered where. On that nice boy you brought with you. The general's grandson. He has eyes just like yours."
I've seen eyes very much like yours, too.
On Aleksandr Pevsner.
"I didn't notice," Castillo said.
The ambassador drained the snifter, then waved Castillo ahead of him out of the library.
J. Winslow Masterson III and Randolph Richardson IV were kicking a soccer ball on the lawn for Max. The adults and the younger Masterson children were sitting in white wicker rockers on the porch.
Just as Castillo was about to warn them that Max was likely to take a bite from the ball, Max did. There was a whistling hiss, which caused Max to drop the ball, push it tentatively with his paw, and then take it into his mouth and give it a good bite.
"Awesome!" Masterson III cried. "Did you see that?"
"I owe you a soccer ball," Castillo said.
"Don't be silly, Charley," Betsy Masterson said, then turned to her father. "How'd your little chat go?"
"Splendidly," the ambassador said. "Colonel Castillo and I are agreed there's absolutely no reason your mother and I can't go to Uruguay."
"Dad, that's absurd," Betsy Masterson said. "Worse than absurd. Insane."
"That's not exactly what I said, Mr. Ambassador," Charley protested.
"Be that as it may," Ambassador Lorimer said, "for the next several months, Betsy, your mother and I will be using Jean-Paul's home in Uruguay in lieu of our own, which is now, as you may have heard, the dikes having been overwhelmed, under twenty feet of water and Mississippi River mud."
Betsy Masterson looked at him in exasperation, as if gathering her thoughts.
"I am reliably informed," Lorimer went on reasonably, "that the house is quite comfortable, that there is a staff to take care of your mother and myself more than adequately-if not quite at the level of Winslow and Dianne's hospitality, for which we will be forever grateful-"
