At the beginning of Diplomatic Intrigue John Pauley and Carl Friedrich return to the United States embassy in the South American country of Colonia after a frustrating year working in the Washington bureaucracy. As the new ambassador Carl insisted John be his deputy. This is a complete turnaround from their earlier relationship in which Carl called John Johnny-Come- Lately, scorning him as an irregular foreign service officer who, because he was a science specialist, had not come up through the ranks. Shortly after their arrival Carl and his wife Betty are called back to the States for a funeral. As acting ambassador John is immediately confronted by a demonstration in front of the embassy protesting the imminent extradition by the United States of a Colonial naval officer who fled the country accused of murder and torture under the previous military government.
John expertly handles the demonstrators and decides to go through with the farewell party that evening for Henry Nielsen after all. It was Henry who advised John a year ago not to go to Washington to take a job like the one Henry himself has now accepted. For both men deputy assistant secretary of state has an enchanting ring. John’s old friend from the Foreign Ministry, Edgardo Martn Ponce Tedesco, accompanies Ricardo Sanchez Cardona to the party, John’s nemesis who had declared him persona non grata and expelled him when John exposed Colonia’s nuclear program as a sham. Edgardo announces Sanchez Cardona as the new foreign minister.
John’s wife Barbara and seventeen-year-old son Charley arrive at their new post in time for Christmas, coming in on the same plane as Captain Federico Morales, the naval officer extradited from the United States. Carl hosts a welcome party for them. Carl is much too good- looking to be a foreign service officer. Formerly a ladies man he is now a faithful husband and father. Charley meets Karen King, daughter of the public affairs officer Graham King and his wife Susan. Karen is also interested in archeology and she and Charley agree to go to a nearby ruin Karen has already visited. She suspects it is a burial ground for victims of the military’s human rights violations.
At the site, Charley and Karen elude a military patrol, for they are on an army base. They have an idyllic afternoon by an old pond near the ruin of a Jesuit mission. Among other things they try some of Karen’s cocaine, Charley for the first time. Karen stows the drugs in Charley’s nearly identical back pack by mistake, which another patrol seizes...
Arriving home somewhat the worse for his experiences, Charley learns there has been a coup Sanchez Cardona has assumed the office of the president. The former president is under house arrest. The government seizes the nuclear authority. Its head, Mara Elena Montoya, threatens Sanchez Cardona that she and Edgardo will reveal what they know about deaths under the old military regime if he makes changes at the authority. Sanchez Cardona pardons the extradited Captain Morales, also known as the Blond Avenger. Morales suspects that Sanchez Cardona has pardoned him for what he knows and might tell at the trial. On the basis of Charley’s seized backpack, the government charges him with drug possession and subversion on a military base as well.
The ousted Colonial president finds sanctuary in the embassy. While Washington debates recognition of the Sanchez Cardona government, Barbara take the president concealed in an embassy car to Buenos Aires where he receives asylum. The Embassy begins to see that the army leveled charges against Charley based on what it thinks he knows about graves. John and Carl fail to hear from Edgardo. They need to learn what he knows about the army’s human rights violations in the past, much of which he has learned from the Mothers of the Missing, a group of women who, in black head scarfs and holding candles, haunt the go
