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"Yes, sir."
"I think the best way to handle this is just report everything you see or hear."
"Yes, sir."
"Any time of the day or night."
"Yes, sir."
Ambassador McGrory dismissed Howell with a wave of his hand, then rose from his desk and walked to the window. It provided a view of the Rambla, the road that ran along the Atlantic Ocean beach.
The water was muddy because it bore all the silt-and God only knows what e
lse-from the River Plate. It didn't become clear-really become the Atlantic Ocean-until Punta del Este, a hundred-odd kilometers north.
McGrory stood at the window for perhaps three minutes, debating whether or not to call his brother-in-law. He really didn't like Senator Homer Johns. While McGrory admitted that his brother-in-law had had a lot to do with his being named ambassador to Uruguay, it was also true that Homer not only reminded him of this entirely too often, but accompanied the reminder with some snide observation about McGrory's slow movement up the ranks of the foreign service.
McGrory didn't know why Homer bitterly hated the director of National Intelligence, Ambassador Charles W. Montvale, but he suspected it was because Montvale and not Homer had gotten that job when it was created after 9/11. Homer was on the Senate intelligence committee and thought the job should have been his.
Homer hadn't been at all sympathetic when McGrory had called him and told him how the deputy foreign minister, Alvarez, had as much as called him a liar in his own office when he had told him that there were no Special Forces teams operating in Uruguay; that anything like that could not take place without his permission.
And the senator hadn't been at all impressed when McGrory told him that he had figured out what had really happened with Lorimer at his estancia-that Lorimer had been a big-time drug dealer on the side, using his United Nations diplomatic passport whenever that helped.
The first time he'd told that to the senator, the senator's reply had been "Mike, that's the most absurd bullshit you've ever tried to hand me."
And Homer hadn't even apologized when McGrory had called him to report (a) the Uruguayan cops had finally figured out what had happened, a drug deal gone bad, just as McGrory had said, and (b) that he had gotten this from Deputy Foreign Minister Alvarez, together with an apology for what Alvarez had said to him in the beginning.
He'd gotten back a little at Homer-he didn't want to go too far with that, of course; there were more important diplomatic posts than Uruguay, and his brother-in-law could be helpful again in that regard-the last time Homer had called.
Homer said he'd just gotten word from a good source-a woman who had been canned by the CIA and was highly pissed-that Montvale had indeed sent a Special Forces team to Uruguay to keep Lorimer from running off at the mouth. Homer said she'd also supplied the name of the guy in charge: Castillo.
McGrory had smiled knowingly at the purported news.
"Homer," he'd said, "I know all about Castillo. He works for the Department of Homeland Security, and he just happened to be in Argentina and was put in charge of protecting the Masterson family until they could get out of Argentina. That's all. He's a lousy major, is all. I think your source is full of shit."
"You know about this Castillo, do you?"
"Yes, I do. Lorimer was killed by drug people, not by Special Forces."
"I don't know, Mike, my source sounded pretty sure of herself."
"Why did she come to you, Homer? As an outraged citizen? Or a disgruntled employee trying to make trouble for the CIA? Why'd she get fired?"
"She didn't tell me that," Homer had said, and then added: "She does have a reputation around town for sleeping around."
"Well, there you have it, Homer."
"Maybe. But what I want you to do anyway, Mike, is keep your eyes and ears open. I want to hear of anything at all that happens down there that's out of the ordinary. Let me decide whether or not it's important."
Okay, Ambassador McGrory thought, still looking out his window at the muddy waters of the River Plate, on the one hand, while Ambassador Lorimer coming down here is a little odd, it is true that New Orleans is under water, and that his daughter, Masterson's widow, now has her hands on that sixty million dollars Jack the Stack got when that beer truck ran over him. So having a butler and flying around in a chartered jet airplane isn't so strange.
What the hell could a retired old ambassador with a heart condition be into but waiting to die?
And on the other hand, Homer said he wants to hear anything out of the ordinary; to let him decide what's important.
So I'll call him and tell him about this.
And he can run it past his source, the lady with the round heels reputation who got canned from the CIA, and see what she has to say.
