“I guess they got tired of beating on you, or maybe they got scared when you passed out. At any rate, they brought us back to town, dropped us off somewhere in La Boca.”

  The only light in the room came from a lamp beside the bed where he lay. He became aware of bandages, on his forehead and side. “Who did this?”

  “What do you mean—who were they? Or who bandaged you up?”

  “Who fixed me up?”

  “Moi,” she said, bowing her head modestly. “Medical supplies courtesy the Sphinx, mostly peroxide and Betadine.”

  “Thank you.” His thinking was muzzy and slow. “So who were those guys?”

  “Well, we’re alive,” she said, “so I’m guessing they’re local muscle. Pistoleros, they’re called, guns for hire.”

  “But the police car …”

  “The Argentine police are famous for corruption. A lot of them moonlight as pistoleros. But I don’t think they were connected with Sigma. Kamaradenwerk, or something along those lines—thugs who look out for the old Germans. The local network could have been alerted lots of ways. My Interpol friend—I gave him a fake name, but he might have seen an ID photo. Maybe it was the stolen package at American Express. Maybe it was my investigator guy, Machado. Maybe your pistol-packin’ priest. But enough questions. I want you to take it easy.”

  He tried to sit up, felt a pain in his side, lay back down. Now he remembered being kicked in the stomach, the groin, the kidneys.

  His eyelids kept drooping, the room going in and out of focus, and soon he succumbed to sleep.

  When he awoke again, it was still night, and the room was mostly dark. The only light came from the street, but it was enough to see the shape in bed next to him. He could smell her faint perfume. He thought, Now she’s willing to share a bed.

  The next time he awoke, the room was bright. It hurt his eyes to look around. He heard the sound of water running in the bathroom, and struggled to sit up.

  Anna emerged in a cloud of steam, wrapped in a bath towel.

  “He’s awake,” she said. “How’s it feel?”

  “A little better.”

  “Good. You want me to order some coffee from room service?”

  “They have room service here?”

  “Yeah, you’re feeling better,” she said with a laugh. “The old sense of humor’s starting to come back.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Understandable. We didn’t have a chance to eat dinner last night.” She turned back toward the bathroom.

  He was in a clean T-shirt and boxer shorts. “Who changed my clothes?”

  “Me.”

  “My shorts, too?”

  “Mm-hmm. You were soaked in blood.”

  Well, well, he thought, amused. Our first moment of intimacy and I slept through it.

  She began brushing her teeth and reemerged a few minutes later, makeup applied, wearing a white T-shirt and violet gym shorts.

  “What do you think happened?” he asked. His head was beginning to clear. “You think your call to that private detective, what’s-his-name, was intercepted?”

  “Possibly.”

  “From now on we use my digital phone only. Let’s assume even the Sphinx’s switchboard is tapped.”

  She placed two pillows behind him. She wore no perfume now but smelled pleasantly of soap and shampoo. “Mind if I use it now to call our last hotel? My friend in Washington thinks I’m staying there, and might be trying to reach me.” She tossed him a copy of the International Herald Tribune. “You take it easy. Read, sleep, whatever.”

  “Make sure it’s charged. You might have to plug it in.”

  He leaned back and idly flipped through the pages. An earthquake in the Gujarat state in India. A California utilities company facing a shareholders’ lawsuit. World leaders set to gather at the International Children’s Health Forum. He put the paper aside and shut his eyes, but only to rest. He’d had enough sleep. He-listened to her talk to the hotel in La Recoleta, her voice lulling. She had a lively, infectious laugh.

  She appeared to have lost her sharp edge, her defensiveness. Now she seemed confident and assured, but without the brittleness. Maybe it was his weakness that allowed her to be strong. Maybe she liked to nurture. Maybe it was the shared adventure they had just been through, or his concern for her, or maybe it was pity for what had happened to him, or misplaced guilt. Maybe it was all these things.

  She ended the phone conversation. “Well, this is interesting.”

  “Hmm?” He opened his eyes. She was standing beside the bed, her hair tousled, her breasts outlined beneath the white cotton T-shirt. He felt the tug of arousal.

  “I got a message from Sergio the private eye, apologizing for being late, he was tied up on a case. Sounds entirely innocent.”

  “Call was intercepted at the hotel, probably.”

  “I’m going to meet him.”

  “Are you crazy? Haven’t you had enough traps for one lifetime?”

  “On my terms. My arrangement.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I know what I’m doing. I may screw up—I do screw up sometimes—but you know, I’m actually considered pretty good at what I do.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But you don’t do organized crime or drugs, you don’t do shoot-’em-up stuff. I think we’re both in over our heads.”

  He felt oddly protective of her, even though she was no doubt a far better shot than he, more equipped to defend herself. Yet at the same time—even more perplexing—he felt safer with her around.

  She came over and sat on the bed next to him. He edged over a bit to give her room. “I appreciate your worrying about me,” she said. “But I’ve been trained, and I have been a field agent.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “No apology necessary. No offense taken.”

  He stole a quick glance at her. He wanted to say, My God, you’re beautiful, but he didn’t know how she might take it. She still seemed pretty defensive.

  She said, “Are you doing this for your brother or for your father?”

  The question caught him by surprise. He hadn’t expected such bluntness. And he realized the answer wasn’t simple. “Maybe both,” he said. “Mostly for Peter, of course.”

  “How well did you and Peter get along?”

  “Do you know any twins?” he asked.

  “Not well.”

  “I suspect it’s the closest relationship there is, closer than many husbands and wives. Not that I know about that firsthand. But we protected each other. We could almost read each other’s mind. Even when we fought—and we did, believe me—afterward we each felt more guilty than angry. We competed with each other in sports and such, but not really in any other way. When he was happy, I was happy. When something good happened to him, I felt like it had happened to me. And vice versa.”

  To his surprise he saw tears in her eyes. For some reason that brought tears to his own.

  He continued, “When I say we were close, that seems so inadequate. You don’t say you’re ‘close’ to your leg or your hand, right? He was like a part of my body.”

  It all came back to him suddenly, a jumble of memories, or really, images. Peter’s murder. His mind-boggling reappearance. The two of them, as kids, running through the house, laughing. Peter’s funeral.

  He turned away in embarrassment, covered his face with his hand, unable to stanch the sob that welled up.

  He heard a low keening and realized that Anna was crying too, which surprised him and, most of all, moved him. She took his hand in hers and squeezed tight. Her cheeks glistening with tears, she put an arm gently around his shoulders, then both of her arms, and she embraced him, seemingly careful of his wounds, and laid her face damply on his shoulder. It was a moment of intimacy that at once startled him and felt natural, part of the complex, passionate Anna he was slowly coming to know. He took solace from her, and she from him. He could feel her heart thudding against his chest, her warmth. She raised her head off his shoulder and slowly, tentatively at first, placed her lips against his, her eyes closed tight. They kissed slowly, tenderly at first, then deeply and with abandon. His arms encircled her lithe body, his fingers exploring her as his mouth and tongue did the same. They had crossed a line each of them had invisibly and firmly drawn some time ago, a boundary, a high wall between natural impulses, containing and isolating the powerful electrical charges that now crackled back and forth between them. And somehow, when they made love, it didn’t seem as awkward as he’d imagined it might be, when he’d allowed himself to imagine it.

  Finally, exhausted, they napped for half an hour or so, entwined in each other.

  When he awoke, he saw that she was gone.

  The gray-haired man parked his rented Mercedes and walked several cobblestone blocks down Estomba until he located the house. He was in the heart of a barrio of Buenos Aires called Belgrano, one of the wealthiest residential sections. A young man passed by walking six dogs at once. The gray-haired man, in a well-tailored blue suit, gave him a neighborly smile.

  The house was a Georgian-style mansion built of red bricks. He walked past it, seeming to admire the architecture, then he turned back, having noted the security booth on the sidewalk in front of the house: an off-white windowed sentry box in which stood a uniformed man wearing an orange Day-Glo reflective vest. There seemed to be one of these security booths on every block around here.

  A very quiet, very safe neighborhood, Trevor Griffiths thought. Good. The security guard looked him over. Trevor nodded in a neighborly manner, and approached the booth as if to ask the guard a question.

  Anna carefully packaged Ben’s photograph and brought it to a DHL office, paying to get it to Denneen’s home address in Dupont Circle as quickly as possible. Everything she did now involved some degree of risk, but she hadn’t mentioned DHL on the phone or even to Ben in the room, and she made sure that no one followed her there. She was reasonably certain the photo would arrive safely.

  Now she stood in a doorway of a shop beneath a red Lucky Strike sign, watching the windows of a café at the corner of Junin and Viamonte, just down the street from the Facultad Medecina. The café’s name, Entre Tiempo, was painted on the plate glass in jumbled letters, presumably signifying wacky fun within. Couples strolled by absorbed in each other, gaggles of students wearing backpacks. A slew of passing yellow-and-black taxis.

  This time there would be no surprises.

  She’d reconnoitered this site in advance, arranged to meet Sergio Machado here at six-thirty precisely, arrived a full forty-five minutes beforehand. A public place in broad daylight. She’d asked him to take a seat at a table in the window, if one was available, or as close to the window as possible. And to bring his cell phone. Machado seemed more amused than annoyed by her precautions.

  At twenty-five after six, a silver-haired man in a blue blazer and openneck button-down blue shirt, fitting the description he’d supplied over the phone, entered the café. A minute or so later he appeared at a table by the window and looked out onto the street. She pulled back into the shop so she couldn’t be seen and continued to watch through the glass door. She’d already explained to the shopkeeper that she was waiting here for her husband.

  At six thirty-five, Machado hailed a waiter.

  A few minutes later the waiter set down a bottle of Coca-Cola.

  If Machado had been complicit in last night’s kidnapping, there would surely be others stationed nearby, but she saw no sign of anyone. No one lingering, pretending to window-shop, dawdling at a newsstand, sitting in a car idling by a curb. She knew what to look for. Machado was alone.

  Were there others in place in the café awaiting her arrival?

  Perhaps. But she was prepared for the possibility.

  At six forty-five, she switched on Ben’s phone and called Machado’s cell.

  It rang once. “Si?”

  “It’s Anna Navarro.”

  “You get lost somewhere?”

  “God, this city’s so confusing,” she said. “I guess I got the wrong place—would you mind terribly meeting me here, where I am now? I just know I’ll get lost again!” She gave him directions to a café a few blocks away.

  She watched as he got up, left some change, and, without appearing to signal to, or consult with, anyone inside the café, emerged. She knew what he looked like, but presumably he wouldn’t recognize her.

  He crossed the street and walked past her, and she got a better glimpse of him. The silver hair was premature; he was a man in his forties with soft brown eyes and a pleasant look about him. He carried no briefcase or file, just his phone.

  She waited a few seconds, then followed him.

  He located the café easily, and went inside. She joined him a minute or so later.

  “You mind explaining what all this was about?” Machado asked.

  She related what had happened to her and Ben the night before. She watched his face closely; he seemed appalled.

  Machado had the saturnine look of an Italian film star of the 1960s. He was deeply and meticulously tanned. Around his neck was a thin gold chain, and another gold chain encircled his left wrist. A vertical worry line was scored deeply between his close-set fawn’s eyes. He wore no wedding band.

  “The police here, they are totally corrupt, you are absolutely right,” he said. “They hire me to do investigative work for them, as an outside consultant, because they don’t trust their own people!”

  “I’m not surprised.” The fear left over from the abduction had become anger.

  “You know, we have no cop shows here in Argentina like you have in America, because here cops aren’t heroes. They’re scum. I know. I was in Federal Police for twenty-one years. Got my pension and left.”

  A long table nearby, some sort of student study group by the look of them, burst into laughter.

  “Everyone here is afraid of the police,” he went on heatedly. “Police brutality. They charge for protection. They shoot to kill whenever they want. You like their uniforms?”

  “They look like New York City cops.”

  “That’s because their uniforms were copied exactly from the NYPD. And that’s all they copied.” He flashed an endearing smile. “So what can I do for you.”

  “I need to find a man named Josef Strasser.”

  His eyes widened. “Ah, well, you know, this old bastard lives under a false name. I don’t know where he lives, but I can ask some questions. Not so easy. You gonna extradite?”

  “No, actually, I need to have a talk with him.”

  He straightened. “Really?”

  “I may have a way to locate him, but I’ll need your help.” She related Ben’s meeting with Lenz’s widow. “If Vera Lenz or her stepson are in touch with Strasser, and they called to warn him, say—could you find out what number they dialed?”

  “Ah,” he said. “Very nice. Yes of course, but only if you can get Señora Lenz’s telephone number.”

  She handed him a slip of paper with the number on it.

  “The phone companies in Argentina, they record the beginning and end of all telephone conversations, the number called and how long the call. It is the Excalibur system, they call it. My friends in the police, for the right price, they will get for me all calls made from that number.”

  And as if to demonstrate how easy it was, he placed a call, spoke briefly, read off the number on the scrap of paper.

  “No problem,” he said. “We’ll know soon. Come, I buy you a steak.”

  They walked a few blocks to his car, a white Ford Escort whose backseat had for some reason been removed. He took her to an old-style restaurant near the Cementerio de la Recoleta called Estilo Munich, its walls adorned with stuffed boar’s and stag’s heads. The floor was marble but looked like drab linoleum; the ceiling was acoustic tile. Weary waiters shuffled slowly between the tables.

  “I will order for you bife de chorizo,” Machado said. “With chimichurri sauce. Jugoso, it is O.K.?”

  “Rare is how I like it, yes. Any symbolism in the fact that you brought me to a restaurant called Munich?”

  “They serve one of the best steaks in Buenos Aires, and we are a city that knows steaks.” He gave her a complicit glance. “Used to be a lot of restaurants in BA called Munich—very fashionable once. Not so fashionable now.”

  “Not so many Germans.”

  He took a pull of the Carrascal. His cell phone rang; he spoke briefly, put it back. “My girlfriend,” he apologized. “I thought we might have some results on our search, but no.”

  “If Strasser has managed to live here for so long without anybody finding him, he must have some good false ID.”

  “People like him got excellent false papers. For a long time only Jakob Sonnenfeld was able to trace them. For years, you know, there was a rumor that Martin Bormann was still alive in Argentina, until his skull turned up in Germany. Nineteen seventy-two, in Berlin. They were building a bridge, they dug up, the ground, and they found a skull. Identified it as Bormann’s.”

  “Was it?”

  “A couple of years ago they finally did the DNA test. It was Bormann’s skull, yes.”

  “What about the rest of his body?”

  “Never found. I think he was buried here, in Bariloche, and someone brought the skull to Germany. To mislead the pursuers.” His eyes sparkled with amusement. “You know Bormann’s son lives here. He’s a Catholic priest. Really.” Another swig of Carrascal. “It’s true. Always rumors about Bormann. It is like with Josef Mengele. After he was buried everyone thinks he faked his own death. With Lenz the same thing. For years after his death was announced, there was rumors that he’s still alive. Then they found his bones.”

  “Were they DNA-tested, too?”

  “I don’t think.”

  “No one found his skull anywhere.”

  “No skull.”

  “Could he still be alive somewhere?”

  Machado laughed. “He’d be more than one hundred twenty.”

  “Well, only the good die young. He died of a stroke, didn’t he?”

  “This is the public line. But I think Lenz was murdered by Israeli agents. You know, when Eichmann came here, he and his wife took false names, but their three sons—they used the name Eichmann! At school everyone knew the boys as Eichmann. But no one came to find them, you see. No one came to look for them until Sonnenfeld.”