The White Vixen by David Tindell Page B

cheek. “Ian, I really can’t explain how I feel. But I do care about you. A great deal. You must believe that.”
    He took her hand and kissed it. “That makes me feel better,” he said. “Thought I was losing you there.”
    She glanced at a clock on the wall, and saw that her flight would be called in about twenty minutes. “When will you be returning to England?” she asked.
    “We sail day after tomorrow,” he said. “Heading east, calling in Tahiti, then Chile and around the Cape and over to the Falklands. The Admiralty apparently are a bit concerned about the Argentines. A couple days there, then likely home. A long haul, but I should be in London in about ten weeks.”
    “Perhaps we can see each other then,” she said, surprising herself.
    He smiled. “I’d like that. I’d like that a great deal, in fact.” That grin, so dashing…
    “ Wuthering Heights ,” she said.
    “What?”
    “The movie,” she said. “I finally remembered. You reminded me of someone, an actor in a movie. I saw it in college, in a film appreciation class. Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights .”
    “Oh, my,” he said. “What a coincidence. I had been thinking that you resembled an actress. France Nuyen, French and Vietnamese, I believe. She played an alien warrior queen on an episode of Star Trek .” He laughed. “I had no idea we were so famous.”
    She smiled back, and this time when the stirrings came, she didn’t move to stop them.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    Buenos Aires, Argentina
    December 1981
     
     
    “The president will be with you in a moment, sir,” the attractive secretary announced, putting her telephone back in its cradle.
    “Thank you,” Wilhelm Baumann said, but she was already back at her typewriter, staring at a steno pad through horn-rimmed glasses. Willy looked over at the door to the inner office, and at the stern-looking, sidearmed suboficial of the Gendarmaria Nacional standing at parade rest next to it. Besides himself, the secretary and the sergeant, there were no other people in this office, which occupied a surprisingly small section of La Casa de Gobiermo , the Government House, known since 1873 as Casa Rosada, the Pink House. Willy had never been inside the massive building, but had occasionally viewed it from Plaza de Mayo across the street, pondering its rather odd mix of styles, the result of decades of modifications by Swedish, French and Italian architects. A few times he’d been part of crowds who filled the plaza to hear a speech by the president from the building’s large balcony. Dieter told him of hearing Juan Perón, and his charismatic wife Evita, speak more than once from that very stage. The current president had not yet chosen to address his people that way, although he spoke to them on nationwide television and radio shortly after assuming power. Even though he had an appointment, Willy made sure to check the flagpole on his way in; yes, the presidential banner flew underneath the Argentine colors, signaling that the president was in.
    In some respects, Willy Baumann should have felt insulted. His request for an audience with General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri should have resulted in a personal invitation to meet him at his estate, perhaps even for a private dinner. Instead, there was this rather brusque summons to this office, in the mid-afternoon of what had turned out to be a hot December day. Another indication of how much—or how little—importance Galtieri attached to this meeting; even the lowliest Argentine bureaucrat typically would have left his office by now, especially during summer, when his unreliable air conditioner would be taxed beyond its capacity to provide tolerable working conditions indoors.
    The German inside Willy Baumann forced him to shake his head at the thought. Dieter Baumann had worked from dawn to past dusk for years, and even today spent two to three hours a day on official Bund business, if his health permitted. His son