Protocol for a Kidnapping (15 page)

“Of course,” I said. “I understand your concern. But I’m still not sure that the call was from the kidnappers.” It was only the forty-third lie that I’d told in the past few days and I wondered how long it would be before I no longer realized that I was lying.

“Why aren’t you sure?” Bartak asked.

“Because I didn’t talk to Ambassador Killingsworth. Unless I talk to him, there’s no deal. No transaction. No exchange.”

“You received a note,” Bartak said in an almost accusatory tone.

“The note wasn’t from Killingsworth.”

“So,” he said, drumming the fingers of his left hand on the table as if it helped him to think. “You are waiting to hear from Killingsworth himself?”

“Yes.”

“When do you expect him to call?”

“They said tomorrow—late tomorrow.”

“That is Saturday. That means that they will have had the ambassador for an entire week. That is too long.”

“It’s not unusual,” I said. “At least not in the States. I worked one kidnapping case where they kept the victim for an entire month.” I paused to finish my vodka. “Before they killed him.”

Bartak looked up sharply. “Are you suggesting that they might kill the ambassador?”

“I suggested that the last time we met. Look at it from their angle. They’ve had Killingsworth for almost a week. He’s heard them talk even if they’ve kept him blindfolded. He’ll be able to recognize their voices, if nothing else. So once they get Pernik and the money, why shouldn’t they kill him, especially if they think that the go-between has invited the police to hang around?”

“But surely you would not part with Pernik and the Swiss bank information until your ambassador is safe?”

I sighed. “Mr. Bartak, you have just hit upon the most delicate phase of the go-between business. It’s who goes first, the go-between or the criminal? There is no foolproof plan, believe me, because I’ve desperately tried to dream one up. Now it’s obvious that the kidnappers didn’t expect me to bring along a million dollars in currency. So they accepted the promise that the U.S. government would deposit a million dollars in a numbered account. I’ve announced this to the press. But what if the numbered account doesn’t exist? What recourse do the kidnappers have?”

“None,” he said.

“Ah,” I said, “but they do.”

He looked puzzled for the first time since I’d met him. “I do not follow you, Mr. St. Ives.”

“Look at it this way. The exchange has taken place. Mr. Killingsworth is back safe and sound in his embassy. The thieves have the Swiss account number. All they have to do is get to Switzerland and draw their money. But what, they think to themselves, what if the United States gave them a false number? Whom could they sue? Nobody. But they have one more thing to trade.”

“What?” he said, completely absorbed with my tale.

“They have your Nobel poet, Anton Pernik. If the Swiss account turns out to be false, they threaten to kill Pernik—wherever he is—and dump his body in the middle of Trg Republike or Lafayette Park and then both Belgrade and Washington would have a hell of a lot of explaining to do. I think you’d rather spend a million dollars yourself than to have that happen, wouldn’t you?”

Bartak shook his head, not in disagreement, but in seeming admiration. “You say there is no foolproof plan, Mr. St. Ives, but these Yugoslav kidnappers seem to have come up with one.”

“It’s not foolproof,” I said, “because it’s still based on faith. They believe that the U.S. government will deposit a million dollars to their account in a Swiss bank. Washington believes that they will hand over Killingsworth alive and well. Their ace in the hole—do you understand the expression?” He nodded that he did. “Their ace is Anton Pernik. My ace is my ability to cancel the Swiss account on a moment’s notice. But the kidnappers are still risking their lives and they’re betting that you won’t blow the whole thing by barging in at the last moment. If that happens, I think I can promise you one thing: Killingsworth dies.”

For a moment I thought I had him convinced. But he was a stubborn one. “I am not as stupid as you seem to think, Mr. St. Ives. I have no intention of interfering with the negotiations to the point where Mr. Killingsworth’s life would be endangered. His safety, as I’ve said before, is our paramount concern. But it is the only thing more important than the capture of the kidnappers. You said you had a proposition, a deal, you called it. I will now listen to it.”

He folded his hands on the table, cocked his chin up in the air, and looked down his nose at me. He was all set to say no. I decided to hand him the surprise.

“Who do you think kidnapped Killingsworth?”

His nose came down an inch. “Do you mean their names?”

I shook my head. “I mean when the news first broke, who did you think it was? Somebody who was mad at you for keeping Anton Pernik under house arrest, some misguided patriots or poetry lovers perhaps?”

“We did suspect that,” he said stiffly.

“But you now accept my theory that Pernik may be used as a kind of a hostage?”

He nodded. Reluctantly. “It has merit.”

“The press would think so,” I said and sat back to let it sink home.

His face got all scrunched up again to show that he was angry and when the full implications of what I’d said hit home he started turning a deep red, first his ears, then his neck, and finally his cheeks. When he finally spoke, it was a sputter. “That is blackmail!”

I nodded cheerfully. “I know. You might want to check it out with your own press people, but from my experience the headlines should go something like this: ‘Yugoslavs Risk Nobel Poet’s Life to Save U.S. Ambassador.’ Of course, right now
the
press thinks like you did—that the kidnappers are friends or admirers of Pernik’s.”

The flush subsided in Bartak’s face and when he spoke his tone was low and cold. And mean. “What is it that you want, Mr. St. Ives?”

“My deal, remember? You give me something, and then I give you something in exchange.”

I waited, but he said nothing. He only stared at me and there was nothing in his eyes to indicate that he saw anything he liked.

I continued. “I want the guards taken off Anton Pernik’s apartment within the hour. I want surveillance of me and my two colleagues ended immediately. You can keep the phone taps going because I won’t say anything important anyhow.” I looked at my watch. “I want thirty-six hours to get Ambassador Killingsworth back safely. If I fail to do so within that period of time, then I’ll withdraw from the negotiations and recommend to the American embassy that they be handed over to you.” Bartak brightened a little at that, but not much. He started to say something, but I waved him to silence.

“In addition, once Killingsworth is safe, I’ll immediately furnish you with every detail that I have about the kidnappers. You can ask any kind of questions that you want and I’ll volunteer every scrap of information that I think’s pertinent. That’s the proposition.”

Bartak looked grim and about ten years older than he had when he first sat down at the table. I decided that the experience could only help his professional growth. “My counterproposal,” he said, snapping it out. “I’ll give you the thirty-six hours.” He looked at his own watch. “Until five Sunday morning, correct?” I nodded. “I will not withdraw the guards from Pernik’s apartment. The surveillance of you and your colleagues will have to be left to my discretion.”

“Done,” I said, but I didn’t offer him my hand because I thought he might bite it.

He rose and teetered up on his toes again to give him more height. His face was a study in disdain, but I was almost accustomed to being looked at like that.

“I don’t like to be blackmailed, Mr. St. Ives,” he said and waited for a moment as if expecting a reply. When I said nothing he turned on his heel and marched out of the bar. I sat there, looking at my empty glass, and finally came up with a reply to his last remark. But it wasn’t very clever and it wasn’t even smart. It was only nasty and snide and I was glad that I hadn’t come up with it sooner because I needed to list one good deed for the day and I couldn’t think of any others.

W
HEN I CAME OUT
of the bar the hotel’s paging system started blaring my name through the lobby. At the information desk a rather uppity clerk sniffed and said that yes, there was a message for me, a note, but that “some person” had refused to leave it with the desk and was insisting on turning it over to me himself. The clerk pointed a nicely cared for finger at “some person” so I turned to see who it was.

He was no more than sixteen or seventeen and had pimples and wore his brown hair down around his shoulders in frizzy curls. He leaned against one of the walls, working hard on a mouthful of gum while he gave the Metropol’s lobby and guests a contemptuous sneer. I walked over to him.

“Hi,” he said.

“You got something for me?”

“You’re Mr. St. Ives?”

“That’s right.”

“I got a letter for you. I’m supposed to wait while you read it.” If his English had any accent, it was pure American and I suspected that he had learned it at the movies.

I waited for him to hand the letter over to me, but when he made no move, I said, “How much?”

His eyes were roving around the lobby again. “How much does it cost for a room here?”

“Mine costs two hundred dinars a day, but I held out for a view.”

He whistled. “That’s sixteen bucks.”

“The letter,” I said.

“I’m supposed to see some ID.”

“Where’d you learn it?” I said, reaching for my billfold.

“What?”

“Your English.”

He shrugged. “I belong to a film society.”

“It must meet every day,” I said and handed him my New York driver’s license. He looked at it and then handed it back. One of his hands disappeared under the folds of his long green cape that looked as if it had been cut from a blanket and reappeared holding an envelope.

“I’m supposed to wait while you read it,” he said.

“I know.”

I opened the envelope and the message was brief, concise, even trenchant. It said:

How do you propose to get a dead man out of the country? I think we should discuss it. The boy will guide you.

Bjelo-Stepinac

“Shit,” I said and put it away in my coat pocket.

The kid looked hopeful. “Bad news?”

“Just average,” I said. “Let’s go. What do we do, walk or take a cab?”

“I got my bike,” he said. “You can ride on the back.”

“Bike?”

“Motorcycle.”

“We’ll freeze.”

He looked at me scornfully. “It’s not that cold.”

I glanced around the lobby. A man in a brown topcoat dropped his eyes back to his newspaper. A younger man suddenly became fascinated with a wall advertisement for JAT. I turned back to the kid. “Let’s go,” I said. “Right now.”

He liked the idea and we moved quickly across the lobby, through the hotel’s entrance, and out into the street. It was dark, but the streetlights furnished enough illumination to make out a motorcycle parked at the curb about a hundred feet away. The kid trotted toward it. I turned once to watch two men hurry from the hotel, buttoning their overcoats. They were the newspaper reader and the one who had liked the JAT poster.

The kid knew how to ride his bike. It was a 250 cc BMW and I never got around to asking him how long he had saved for it. He had the engine started by the time I got my leg over the buddy seat. He paused only long enough to give the throttle a couple of twists with his gloved hands to produce the standard varooms that are obligatory for all motorcycle departures and we were off. I twisted my head in time to see the two men who had been in the lobby pile into a Volkswagen. I shouted at the kid, “Can you lose a Volkswagen?”

He nodded vigorously and to prove it he made a sharp right turn off Bulevar Revolucije at the Federal Assembly which almost lost me instead. From there on he turned almost every block. We headed north and east, but after the first two turns I was lost. I gripped the back of the buddy seat at first, but that proved impractical so I held on to his waist. My hands froze there just as well. While they were freezing I kept thinking, “You’re too old for this, St. Ives. Your bones are brittle with age.” If he had stopped, I would have gotten off, but he didn’t so I hung on and tried to think of someone to blame. I came up with Myron Greene and silently swore at him for a while and then tried to think of people who might know of a job in public relations.

The kid rounded another corner and screeched the machine to a halt. “What’s the fare?” I said, getting off quickly.

He shrugged. “You don’t owe me nothing.”

I found a hundred dinars and handed them to him. “It was an unforgettable experience. Where am I supposed to go?”

“Down there toward the river,” he said, pointing to a narrow street that sloped toward the Danube. He leaned forward to peer at me. “You know something?” he said.

“What?”

“The guy who gave me the letter.”

“What about him?”

“He looks a lot like you. But he’s younger.”

“Everybody is,” I said and turned, heading for the narrow street. The kid said good-bye with a couple of varooms that blasted off the buildings.

The street had no name that I could see, not even one written in the usual Cyrillic letters which make finding any place in Belgrade twice as much fun. The street was bordered by two large brick warehouses. I walked down it slowly, listening to the sound of my leather heels as they struck the pavement, making measured and solemn echoes.

There were no windows in the warehouses and the street that ran between them was barely wide enough to permit the passage of trucks. I noticed that in several places the bricks were scarred where drivers had misjudged either the width of their trucks or the narrowness of the street. I kept walking, listening to the sound of my footsteps. At the end of the street between two buildings was a darker patch of something that I took to be a slice of the Danube.

He came from the left, out of the setback in a warehouse. “Keep on walking,” he said. It was Stepinac and he fell into step with me as we neared the end of the narrow street which really wasn’t much more than an alley.