Walsh blinked as yet another unexpected maneuver from the absent-minded pilots shook him from his reverie. Redrick’s stomach was somewhere in his throat as the plane banked to the right without warning and descended to the ground along some unthinkable trajectory.

      Out of the corner of his eye, Walsh noted Rosenblum and Bohnenkamp were not exactly masculine specimens from a brochure. The first covered his mouth with a checkered handkerchief and tried his best not to empty his stomach into his own hands. The German simply bent his head to his knees and clasped the back of his head, freezing in the fetal position.

      He noted the surprised look of the American and explained with a pale smile:

      “The instructor at the base taught us this way. He said that in the event of a plane crash, this position gives the maximum chances of surviving the impact.”

      Walsh shrugged his shoulders, got up, and walked towards the cockpit. The floor tilted thirty degrees to the left. He had to rest against the wall and grab the straps on the ceiling. Pulling open the corrugated door of the cockpit, he stuck his head in and almost staggered back. Through the windshield, heavy thunderclouds appeared to be rushing straight towards him.

      The co-pilot, in his canned glasses and flight helmet, turned to him.

      “Something wrong?” he asked in an ordinary voice, raised over the noise of the engines and the elements outside.

      “Why is our descent so steep?”

      “A simple precaution,” the pilot explained without a trace of concern in his voice. “In Argentina, the government does not particularly like us Yankees. So, we won’t land at a standard airfield, but at a private one owned by a local cattle breeder. He has a couple of his own planes, and he sometimes provides, not for free, of course, services to local smugglers. To us too, from time to time.”

      At that moment, the plane broke through the lower layer of cloud, and pampa floated below them, overgrown in places with rare, but tough and dense bushes. And in front of them lay the endless expanse of the Atlantic.

      “To the left, at eleven o'clock,” said the commander. The plane banked and now Walsh saw the landing strip. It was highlighted by bonfires on the sides with a ‘T’ sign laid out in white panels at the start of the strip. Only a couple of hundred yards separated the shore from the end of the strip.

      Redrick closed the cockpit door, staggering back to his seat. His companions gave him exhausted, questioning looks.

      “Let's sit down,” Walsh said and set an example for everyone, gripping the brace on the wall near the window. He might have imagined it, but he could swear he heard his colleagues let out a barely restrained sigh of relief.

      The plane once again slid down. Under the window, a flat dirt pad rolled by, then the wheels crashed against the runway. The plane throttled down and rolled along the ground.

      Rosenblum looked at his checkered handkerchief, which he had pinched over his mouth just a minute ago, then waved his hand and, pulling off his hat, dabbed his overheated bald spot with the same piece of cloth.

      “Does anyone know these pilots?” he asked for no reason.

      Walsh just shrugged.

      The embassy’s third secretary, Joseph Barkley, hung up the phone and brooded. At thirty-five, he could be quite content with life. Well, at least for now.

      Work in a place that’s warm in every way imaginable, not just the weather. Golf on Saturdays with advisor Wrightley, a beautiful wife, the prospect of transferring somewhere closer to the coveted Capitol… This idyllic situation lasted almost three years, until he received the call from Washington today. They told him that a plane carrying CIA agents crossed the Argentine border. It had landed without incident at the Casa Nuestra ranch, a couple of hundred miles from the Argentine capital. Barkley knew this ranch, which served as a temporary base for the American special services, and therefore, he had the right to expect the collapse of his entire well-established world order soon.

      From his experience at the embassy, he knew that the appearance of employees of this secret department in a particular country usually preceded, if not a coup d’état, then at least the profound upheaval of the local state system. That was the last thing Barkley wanted right now. Two years later, when he leaves this very hospitable land, would have been ideal, but not now…

      After shifting several papers on his table, Barkley again picked up the phone and barked a short, "Come in!" The office door flew open. Alan Cowan, his twenty-seven-year-old assistant, an ambitious guy who had arrived from Washington as reinforcement, slid in without a sound. Cowan followed the classic path of a junior diplomat. A successful Harvard graduate, a job in the ‘entourage’ of a senator from Louisiana, and a coveted appointment to the diplomatic corps. True, they did not send him to Europe, as Alan had dreamed, but it did not bother this talented young man at all. Alan, with his pale, almost Scandinavian skin, carried out any order Barkley issued and proved himself to be irreplaceable. There was no service the efficient assistant would not be ready to provide. And he always fulfilled his assignments with unstinting zeal.

      Looking faithfully at the chief with his whitish eyes, continually brushing his unruly straw bangs from his forehead, Cowen opened his ever-present notebook, ready to take shorthand.

      “It’s like this, young man,” said the imposing Barkley as he leaned back in an antique, probably Victorian, armchair of dark rosewood. “We’re being visited by a representative delegation of the ‘knights of the cloak and dagger’. At their head is a certain Redrick Walsh – he was in charge of their station in Chile. Dig up for me everything that you can find in the public domain. Well, and for what you can’t find… There are all kinds of rumors from Washington and the Big Apple. Dig into your connections in the Joint Chiefs, representatives from the military. Well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you.”

      “What am I digging for?”

      “Everything. I want to know, before I feel the pain in my gut, if these guys prefer the cloak or the dagger. And what can we expect from them here? Tomorrow afternoon, I will traditionally report on the situation in the country and the city to Ambassador Griffiths. He’s very sensitive about the facts I provide him, so you, my friend, must try your best.”

      Cowan clicked his heels like an army cadet and nodded with his blond bangs.

      “Of course, Councilor Barkley. As always, Councilor Barkley.”

      The secretary chuckled. ‘Councilor’. Before he would reach this status, of course, he still has many mountains to climb. The adulation of the boy. Even so, it's nice, and there's no need to hide it. And the arrival of these ‘spies’. Maybe this is a chance? As Seneca used to say? Chance does not scream about itself. It is always there, quietly waiting for you to notice it.

      “That’s it,” he said and nodded to Cowan, who, flickering like a pale shadow, disappeared behind a door that didn’t even slam. Barkley chuckled: the capital school…

      He got up and walked over to the large window, behind which sad streams flowed along a cobbled path after a long day’s rain. The winter here was, as always, mild, but neither sunny nor pleasant. The southern hemisphere, the proximity of Antarctica… He could not wait for September. Or better yet, a transfer somewhere in the Caribbean. The diplomat shook his head, fending off his delusion. If the latest news is anything to go by, there will be a lot