Protocol for a Kidnapping (12 page)

“It could be that you didn’t try hard enough.”

He smiled boyishly. “Somehow I don’t think so, which is to your credit, of course. Now I must employ another method to delay the exchange.”

“What?”

“I can’t tell you. However, what I’m about to say is not a threat, dire or otherwise.”

“All right.”

“And I’ll apologize in advance for its melodramatic note.”

“Fine.”

“It’s only this, Mr. St. Ives. Before the week is over you will wish you had taken the bribe. Good night.”

Arrie was up and pacing the floor when I got back to my room.

“Who was it?” she said.

“Nobody you know.”

“What did they want?”

“They want me to delay the exchange.”

“Why?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Jesus, what
did
they say?”

“That you work for the CIA.”

“Oh.”

“Let’s go back to bed,” I said.

“They know,” she said. “Huh.”

I unbuttoned my shirt. “Didn’t you expect them to?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “What did you say?”

“When they told me?”

“Yes.”

“I told them I didn’t mind—that you probably needed the job.”

T
HE CALL FROM THE
kidnappers came through at 11:05 that morning and the one who did the talking sounded Italian and spoke English with an American accent, but since World War II most of them speak it that way.

“We can’t talk over this phone,” he said.

“I agree.”

“At eleven thirty a note’s gonna be delivered to you at the hotel. Be at the hotel desk to get it in person. It’ll tell you what to do. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” he said and hung up.

At eleven thirty I was strolling up and down before the hotel desk trying to pick out the plainclothesmen in the Metropol lobby. There were two possibles and three probables. A taxi driver came in and handed an envelope over to the desk clerk who glanced at it, nodded at me, and smiled when I thanked him for it. The taxi driver looked surprised when he was led off by two men, one of whom I’d scored as a possible, the other as a probable.

I went back up to my room to read the note. It was hand lettered—printed would be better—with a ballpoint pen and it said: “Be at public phone at NE corner Strosmajerova and Risanska near central train station at one sharp! Don’t be followed!! Burn this!!!”

All right!!! I thought and spent a few moments trying to memorize the street names before I gave up, located them on a city map, and marked the location with a big, black X. I used the toilet to dispose of the note.

I called Henry Knight and he sounded sleepy when he answered the phone. “How was your night on the town?” I said.

“Wicked,” he said. “Wisdom is a bottomless pit and this morning I’m dying and nobody cares.”

“Have some breakfast. They called.”

“When?”

“A few minutes ago. I have to go out.”

“You want some company?”

“Not yet. Maybe later this afternoon.”

“I’ll have recovered.”

“Tell Wisdom to stick around, too.”

“Anything else?”

“No,” I said and hung up.

When I’d come out of the shower that morning Arrie was dressed and drinking a cup of coffee. “I think you should know,” she said, “that I don’t consider last night to be just part of my job.”

“I don’t care about your job,” I said, kissed her, and poured a cup of coffee. “I really don’t. I told you that.”

“I’ve started to like you, Phil,” she said. “I mean honestly.”

“If we like each other, we’re off to a head start.”

“You’re not pissed off?” Her swearing had become an unconscious habit and the words that she once may have used for shock value were now just part of her vocabulary. I didn’t mind; the language is going to hell anyway.

“Not in the least,” I said and rumpled her hair which looked much the same when I was done. She gave it a couple of quick strokes with a comb, but it was like combing a blond mop.

“Well,” she said, “they must not think you’re too terribly important. Or something.”

“Why?”

“Not if they put me on to you.”

“What is it that you’re really supposed to do, take notes or arrive in the nick of time?”

She shrugged. “I just give them a daily report on whom you see and what you say. That’s all.” She lifted her face to be kissed again and what started as a breakfast peck turned into something more interesting. “You’re sexy in the morning,” she said. “I like that.”

“Which still leaves the afternoon to be explored.”

“I have to go,” she said, slipping into her long suede coat.

“Who’s your relief?” I said, grinning at her. “Something tall and brunette with a throaty voice and wicked eyes?”

She made a face at me. “If there is one, they haven’t told me. But that wouldn’t be unusual. I’m sort of junior junior.”

“You’re still the only one.”

“Only what?”

I grinned at her once more. “The only CIA agent I ever made love to.”

The weather had cleared, the temperature had climbed up to the low thirties, and I decided to walk to the corner of Strosmajerova and Risanska because it didn’t seem to be a mile, if that, and I needed the time to think and also to make sure that I wasn’t followed.

I started out briskly enough, with a healthy 120 paces a minute, and by the time I’d gone a block I’d spotted both of them. One was a pale blond man in a dark overcoat and a fur hat who preferred the opposite side of the street. The other was shorter, a little stout, and looked as if he might be puffing a bit to keep up the pace. Neither of them were experts, not according to the surveillance standards of a retired New York private detective who’d written a book on the subject that no one would publish. He had once spent a patient week teaching me how to spot and lose a tail in exchange for my editorial advice, which had been to send him to an agent who’d sold excerpts from the book to various law-and-order magazines.

One of these fine days, I promised myself as I crossed Marsala Tita near the Drama Theater, I would take up a trade that could be conducted entirely by mail. I might become a stamp dealer. If I had to deal with liars, their lies (as well as my own) would have to be written down and there’s something forbidding about committing a lie to paper, although it probably wouldn’t bother Hamilton Coors too much.

I headed diagonally across a large park toward Nemanjina Street. The park was crisscrossed with walks from which the snow had been carefully removed for those who liked to stroll through it in mid-February. Other than myself and my two shadowers there were only three other strollers and they all looked as if they were using the park as a shortcut.

After trying to guess how many lies Coors had told me, I started to wonder again whether Amfred Killingsworth was really smitten by the twenty-two-year-old beauty whose grandfather-poet wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to go to America, now that Sandburg was dead. Although the U.S. Department of State seemed to know all about its ambassador’s passionate love for Gordana Panić, a love that had caused him to balk at his recall, Killingsworth apparently had forgotten to tell the girl about it, unless she and her grandfather were both lying about her plans to become a Catholic nun.

And then there was my look-alike, Arso Stepinac, who wanted me to delay the kidnap exchange for five days so that he could do something or other that he thought needed to be done. All that Jovan Tavro, with his sad carp face and his roses and his bitterness, wanted to do during those same five days was to stay alive until I could whisk him out of the country, probably under the noses of Stepinac and Slobodan Bartak, the ambitious, pint-size official in the Ministry of Interior who thought it would have been nice of me to double-cross the kidnappers. I speculated about whether Stepinac and Bartak knew each other and, if they did, whether they were working together or at cross purposes. The more I thought about it the more it didn’t really seem to matter.

By the time I came into view of the Hotel Astoria I was wondering about whether the CIA had taught Arrie Tonzi how to cook and by then it was time to get rid of my two tails.

“All hotels have basements,” the retired private detective had told me. “All basements have rear exits. So you go up, then down, then out.”

I went into the lobby of the Hotel Astoria, bought a package of Morava cigarettes for three dinars, lit one, and watched my two tails try to look unobtrusive as they entered and headed for opposite ends of the lobby. I went over to the room clerk, asked him what time it was, and then headed for the elevator. When it came, I saw my two escorts moving toward the room clerk.

I took the elevator up to the third floor, got out and walked down the service stairs to the basement which also contained the kitchen. That was even better. I nodded to the chef and his assistants as I went through the kitchen to the door that inevitably had to lead up to the alley and the trash cans. I took the alley until it ended on Gavrila Principa and turned right. Another block of quick walking and I was at the phone booth at Sarajevska and Nemanjina.

It was still cold and I had to stand around stamping my feet until it rang at exactly one o’clock. I picked it up and said hello and the Italian-American voice said, “You sure you weren’t followed?”

“I made sure,” I said. “When can I talk to Killingsworth?”

“Whaddya wanta talk to him for?”

“Did you take a look at this morning’s papers?”

“No, I didn’t take a look at this morning’s papers.”

“My picture’s in them. Also my name. It’s all about how I’m going to hand over a million dollars for Killingsworth. So how do I know you didn’t pick my name out of the paper and decide to make yourself a quick million?”

“Ah, hell,” he said, “there ain’t no million dollars.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear you say,” I said. “Now where’s Killingsworth?”

“We got him in a castle.”

“A castle?”

“Well, it used to be a castle, but now it’s more like a hunting lodge.”

“Who owns it?”

“Well, that depends. It used to belong to some Hungarian count before the war and after that he claimed to have sold it to a Greek businessman, but the government moved in and used it as a school for a while, so the Greek’s relatives are suing the government, but they’re not getting anywhere, so now nobody’s using it, especially in winter, because the only way you can get to it is by horseback.”

“Where is it?”

“About thirty-five kilometers southeast of Sarajevo.”

“How do I get there?”

“I’ll have to meet you in Sarajevo.”

“When?”

“The sooner the better. The ambassador’s getting tired of it.”

“Tired of what?”

“Chopping wood. We need a lot of wood to keep warm and it keeps him quiet.”

“All right. Name where and when.”

“Saturday. You know Sarajevo?”

I sighed. “No, I don’t know Sarajevo.”

“Well, there’s a gypsy quarter there called Dajanil Osmanbeg. It’s in a suburb called Bistrik. I’ll meet you there at nine Saturday night in the old railway station.”

“How’ll you recognize me?”

“I’ll buy a copy of today’s paper.”

“There’ll be five of us,” I said. “Four men and a woman.”

He muttered a curse in Serbo-Croatian or, for all I knew, in Macedonian. “That means six horses,” he said.

“From Sarajevo?”

“No, we’ll take a car out of there. But there’s still five kilometers that you can only make with a horse unless you want to walk and I understand Pernik’s pretty old.”

“Try for the horses,” I said.

“Can you ride?”

“No, but I can hang on.”

“They’ll be wooden saddles.”

“I prefer western,” I said.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Okay,” he said. “Nine o’clock at the railway station. You got where it is?”

“Near the gypsy quarter, Dajanil Osmanbeg,” I said. “In Bistrik, a suburb of Sarajevo.”

“That’s pretty good. It’s not quite the right accent, but it’s pretty good.”

“I studied at Linguaphone,” I said.

“What?”

“It must be the connection.”

“One more thing,” he said.

“What?”

“Don’t be followed!”

“I won’t!” I said and hung up.

I crossed the street and headed up Gavrila Principa again, turned left into the alley, made my way around the trash cans, went down the flight of steps that led to the entrance of the kitchen, nodded at the chef who nodded back this time, walked up the stairs to the third floor, caught the elevator down to the lobby, and went over to the desk clerk and said, “I’m expecting to meet some friends here. Has anybody been asking for Mr. St. Ives?”

He swallowed a couple of times and then nervously pointed to the two who’d followed me from the Metropol hotel and who now looked as if they were trying to blend with the wallpaper.

“Would these be the gentlemen?” he said I looked at the blond one, who looked away, and then at the short, stocky one who suddenly busied himself with a hangnail. “No,” I said, loudly enough for them both to hear, “I’m afraid I don’t know these gentlemen.”

I
HAD BEEN TALKING
for almost half an hour. My throat was dry and scratchy so I decided to try some of the plum brandy that I had bought on my way back from the Hotel Astoria. Park Wisdom shuddered as I drank it. We were in my room and he was slumped in a chair by the window, a trifle pale, more than a little wan. Henry Knight was stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He looked better than Wisdom, but almost anyone could have.

“Where does it hurt?” I said to Wisdom who smiled feebly.

“Do you remember your
pas de deux
with the belly dancer?” Knight said to the ceiling.

“I thought your one-man revival of
The Glass Menagerie
was more interesting,” Wisdom said to the window.

“We made a lot of friends during the evening,” Knight said.

“Fostered understanding,” Wisdom said. “Gained valuable insight, too.”

“Oh, Christ, I’m dying,” Knight said.

“It’s my turn on the bed,” Wisdom said. “Die in a chair.”

“Sure you wouldn’t care for a drop?” I said, offering the bottle around.