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After examining it carefully, the rent-a-cop motioned that Castillo was now permitted to join one of two lines of people waiting their turn to deal with embassy staff seated comfortably behind thick plateglass windows. The scene reminded Castillo of the cashier windows in Las Vegas casinos.
He got in line and awaited his turn. Ten minutes later, it came.
"I'd like to see the ambassador, please."
"Passport, please."
The not-unattractive female behind the thick plate glass examined it, then carefully examined Castillo, and then said, "What time is your appointment?"
"I don't have an appointment. But if you will get the ambassador on the phone, I'm sure he'll see me."
The lady scribbled a number on a small pad and slid it through a tray at the bottom of the plate glass.
"You can call this number and ask for an appointment."
"Is there an American officer around here somewhere?"
Three minutes later, a pleasant-looking young man appeared behind the woman, looked at Castillo, and said, "Yes?"
Castillo remembered Edgar Delchamps telling him that new graduates of the CIA's Clandestine Services How-to-Be-a-Spy School were often given as their first assignment duties as an assistant consul at an embassy where their inexperience would not get them in trouble.
If I were into profiling, I'd bet my last dime I'm facing one now.
"Good afternoon," Castillo said politely, and slid his Army identification through the slot under the plate glass. "I'd like to see the ambassador. Would you be good enough to call his office and tell him I'm here?"
The fledgling spook examined the ID card and slid it back through the slot.
"Let me give you a number you can call, Colonel," the pleasant-looking young man said.
Castillo slid his Secret Service credentials through the slot.
"Listen to me carefully, please," Castillo began, keeping his voice low but his tone that of one not to be questioned. "If you don't get on the phone right now, I will personally tell the DCI that you wouldn't call the ambassador for me. And the result of that will be that you'll be sitting in one of the parking lot guard shacks at Langley this time next week."
They locked eyes.
The assistant consul picked up the telephone handset, then spoke into it.
A moment later, he slid the handset through the slot.
"I don't know where he is, Colonel," Ambassador Silvio's secretary said. "He went to Jorge Newbery to meet a VIP and hasn't checked in. Would you like to wait for him here?"
Sonofabitch, they're on the way to Nuestra Pequena Casa!
"No, thank you," Castillo replied. "When you're in touch, tell him I'll call him later."
Castillo slid the handset back through the slot, then without a word turned from the window and took out his cellular telephone.
A rent-a-cop laid his hand on Castillo's arm and pointed to a sign on the wall. It forbade the use of cellular telephones.
Castillo left the building and went back into the one-hundred-degree, one-hundred-percent-humidity Buenos Aires summer afternoon. He saw that the gendarme was waiting for him.
Castillo punched one of the cell phone's autodial buttons. Davidson answered on the second ring.
"He's here with Montvale," Davidson said by way of answering.
"Keep them there if you have to break Montvale's legs," Castillo said, and then began to walk on the sunbaked sidewalk toward the fine steak house called Rio Alba, the gendarme on his heels.
[TWO]
