"You understand what I've just said, Mark?"
"Yes, sir," the director of the FBI said.
Castillo happened to look at General Naylor, who was shaking his head as if in disbelief.
"Okay, Charley," the President asked, jocularly. "What else can I do for you?"
"I don't suppose you would let me go back to being a simple soldier, would you, Mr. President?"
General Naylor's eyebrows rose.
"From what I have seen, Charley," the President said, "I doubt if you were ever a simple soldier. But to answer your question, no, I would not. That's out of the question." "And what was the President's reaction?" Alex Pevsner asked.
"He said that if he finds out you're breaking any laws in the United States, he will cheerfully throw you in jail. But he told the director of Central Intelligence that if he's running any sort of operation to tip you to anybody to stop it."
"And you believe he really said that to the CIA?"
"I was there when he said it. He appreciates what you did helping us find that airplane."
Pevsner looked with his brilliant blue eyes into Castillo's face for a long moment. "I was about to say that I will show my appreciation for the President's appreciation by seeing what I can find out about the diplomat's wife…"
"Thank you," Castillo said.
"Let me finish, please," Pevsner said sharply. "But, obviously, if you reported to him that I had told you thus and so, that would locate me here, and I don't want that. So I will make inquiries with the understanding that if I am able to learn anything, you will tell no one the source of your information. Okay?"
"Understood. Thank you, Alex."
"Anna, why don't you get a pair of my swimming trunks for Charley? Then you can have a swim while I'm on the phone."
"I should be getting back to Buenos Aires," Castillo said.
"I think your time would be more profitably spent waiting for me to find out what I can," Pevsner said, somewhat sharply, and then added, far more charmingly: "And Anna and I would really like you to stay for dinner."
"Thank you," Castillo said.
"If there were developments, someone from the embassy would call you, right?"
"Uh-huh."
"Then have a swim, and later we'll have some more wine and I will personally prepare an Argentine pizza for you."
You will personally prepare an Argentine pizza?
"Sounds fine, Alex. Thank you." [FIVE] The pizza oven, a wood-fired, six-foot-wide, clay-covered brick dome, was about twenty feet from the swimming pool in front of a thatch-roofed quincho, which was a building devoted to the broiling of food over a wood-fired parrilla, and then eating it picnic-style.
There were fires-tended by a young Argentine man-blazing in both the parrilla and the oven when Castillo followed Anna and the children through a flap in the heavy plastic swimming pool enclosure to walk to the quincho, where more enormous crystal glasses and a half dozen bottles of wine awaited them.
There was also a wooden table, near the oven, covered with a tablecloth, at which two young Argentine maids, under the stern supervision of the middle-aged Russian-speaking maid, were kneading pizza dough and chopping tomatoes and other pizza toppings.
Castillo felt a tug at his sleeve and looked down to see that Sergei was smilingly offering him a plate of empanadas, a deep-fried meat-filled dumpling.
"Muchas gracias," Castillo said, taking one.
"De nada," Sergei said.
"It would appear Sergei is taken with you," Pevsner said. Castillo hadn't seen him come into the quincho.
"At least one member of your family is a good judge of character."