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."
"Unfair, Charley," Pevsner said. "I'm an excellent judge of character, and Anna is even better."
Castillo smiled but didn't reply.
Pevsner handed him a glass of wine.
"Come with me and watch as I personally prepare your pizza," Pevsner said.
"I wouldn't miss that for the world."
"The secret is the oven temperature," Pevsner said as he walked up to the domed oven. "And this is the way you test that."
He walked to the table, behind which the three maids and the young man were lined up, and picked from it a page from a newspaper. He crumpled it in his hands and walked back to the oven.
The young man trotted over and raised its iron door with a wrought-iron rod. Pevsner tossed the balled-up paper into the oven and signaled to the young man that he should lower the door.
"One, two, three, four, five, six," Pevsner counted aloud, then gestured for the door to be raised.
The newspaper was blazing merrily.
"If it doesn't ignite in six seconds, it's not hot enough," Pevsner announced very seriously, gesturing for the door to be closed again.
"Fascinating," Castillo said.
Pevsner gestured for him to go with him to the table.
The Russian-speaking maid came around with a two-foot-wide pizza dough on a large wooden paddle. She held it between Pevsner and the maids, who stood waiting behind the table with large serving spoons. With his index finger, Pevsner directed one maid to spoon tomato sauce onto the dough, and kept pointing the finger until he decided there was a sufficiency.
He repeated the process with red and green peppers, then with several kinds of salami and pieces of bacon and chicken, finally concluding the process by supervising the spread of what looked like Parmesan cheese over the whole thing.
Then he marched back to the oven with the maid holding the pizza on a paddle trailing him, gestured to the young man to raise the door, and then gestured for the maid to slide the pizza into the oven, and finally for the young man to close the door.
Charley had a hard time keeping a smile off his face.
So far, he hasn't touched the pizza he's personally preparing for me with so much as his pinkie!
"I will now prepare another," Pevsner announced and marched back to the table, where he repeated the process twice more. This time, however, the prepared but unbaked pizzas on paddles were laid on the table.
"I can usually trust them," Pevsner said, "once I've made sure the temperature is right, to put them into the oven and take them out, but I like to prepare them myself."
"If you want something done right, do it yourself," Charley heard himself saying solemnly.
"Exactly," Pevsner said.
It's not fair of me to make fun of him. What's the matter with me? He's being nice, this whole thing is nice, the little kid, Sergei, handing me an empanada is nice. The whole family thing is nice. It reminds me of Grandpa dodging Abuela to slip Fernando and me a couple of slugs of wine at the ranch in Midland while he was roasting a pig over an open fire for the family. Except, of course, that Grandpa did everything but butcher the pig and crank the spit.
This is family. This is nice.
I think Betty Schneider would like this. Not the guy with the shotgun in his golf cart, but Anna and the three kids, and proud Papa preparing a pizza for everybody with his own unsullied hands.
I wonder what the Masterson kids are going to have for supper tonight?
I wonder what that poor bastard has told them, is telling them?
Is he pretending everything is going to be all right?
Preparing them for the worst?
Jesus, when you hear somebody's been snatched, you never think of the kids! What a rotten fucking way to make an easy buck, grabbing a kid's mother!
And here I am making nice watching Alex looking into his pizza oven.
There's nothing I could do in Buenos Aires, so why am I feeling guilty?
"Lost in thought, Charley?"
Castillo turned to see Howard Kennedy holding a glass of wine.
He had disappeared from the swimming pool when Castillo and Anna Pevsner had gone out to it, and he hadn't been around since.
"I was wondering what the Masterson kids are having for supper tonight," Castillo said.
"The kids of the wom…?"
Castillo nodded.
"Alex is working on it," Kennedy said. "There should be something soon."
"Jesus, I hope so. What's the penalty for kidnapping here? Do you know?"
"Not for sure, but I do know there's no death penalty period, and the average sentence for murder is fifteen years, which means they're on the street in seven-to-ten."
The Russian-speaking maid marched into the quincho with the now-baked pizza, and Alex Pevsner supervised her slicing of it with an enormous butcher knife. Pevsner was called to the telephone three times as they ate their supper-the pizza was followed by steaks and foil-wrapped potatoes from the parrilla; Castillo was stuffed-each time taking the call in a small closet with a small window through which Castillo could see him talking.
It reminded Charley of the "phone booth" off General Naylor's conference room at CentCom headquarters in Tampa, where the secure telephone was located.
Pevsner returned to the table without saying anything the first two times, but when he came out of the closet the third time, he signaled for Charley to come with him.
They walked thirty feet or so away from the quincho.
"I don't have anything for you, Charley, I'm sorry. This last call was from someone who knows the important people at SIDE… you know SIDE?"
Charley nodded.
"And if anybody knew anything, SIDE would. And they're looking hard. The pressure is on them."
"Well, thanks for the effort," Charley said.
"I'll keep trying," Pevsner said, then, "All of my sources believe this is not an ordinary kidnapping. My source with connections to the Policia Federal and the Gendarmeria said that they've hauled in for questioning everybody even suspected of being involved in kidnappings, and they came up with nothing." He paused and then asked, "Did this fellow actually get fifty million dollars after a truck ran over him?"
"Sixty million," Charley said.
"The kidnappers may not be Argentine. They might even be American."
"Yeah," Charley agreed, thoughtfully.
I'll put that thought in my e-mail to Hall. It's the only wild idea about this that didn't come up in that brainstorming session at the embassy.
Why e-mail? I'll be up all night if I start swapping e-mails with Hall. And Darby made it clear that he's going to blow my cover to the ambassador tomorrow anyway. It'd be better to get on the horn.
He took his cellular out and pressed an autodial number. He had the phone to his ear before he considered the genuine possibility that there might not be cellular service out here in the country.
"Darby."
"Charley Castillo. I want to get on a secure line to Washington. Can you do that for me?"
"I can, but there's the problem of you being just a Secret Service agent, and there would be questions."
"Go ahead and tell the ambassador. Why not?"
"Okay. I think that's probably the best thing to do. I'll set up things at the embassy. Where are you?"