Protocol for a Kidnapping (23 page)

“Fuck off, Killingsworth,” I said, “I’ll tell you about it when I’m goddamned good and ready.”

I turned my back on him and walked over to the fire. They were all crowded around it, their hands and feet extended to the blaze. Arrie and Cordana had their shoes off. I looked around for something and finally found a large iron pot. I picked it up and walked across the room, down the stairs, and through the door that led outside. I dipped up a large pot of snow and took it back upstairs.

“Here,” I said to the two women, “rub your feet with this. You could have frostbite.”

“Well, by God, if any man alive could get us through it,” Wisdom said, “I knew St. Ives could.”

“What’s your name, young man?” Killingsworth said, putting his hand on Wisdom’s shoulder.

Wisdom popped to attention in his bare feet. “Wisdom, sir. I’m one of the St. Ives Irregulars. He brought us through hell, sir.”

“Jesus,” I said and tugged off my soaked shoes.

“At the pass, Mr. Ambassador,” Knight said in a rich voice full of respect and wonder. “Well, back at the pass I thought for a moment that we were all done for. If it hadn’t been for Colonel St. Ives, sir, well you could have written
finis
to this expedition.”

“What are they talking about?” Tavro asked me in a hoarse whisper.

“They’re full of frozen shit,” I said. “Some of it’s just beginning to thaw.”

“What’re you doing here, Tavro?” Killingsworth said, his big voice booming the question out.

Tavro looked at me and I took a handful of snow and rubbed it on my bare feet. “He’s with me, Killingsworth,” I said. I looked up at him. He hadn’t changed much in thirteen years. His hair was gray now and he wore it the way he always had, so that a thick lock of it fell down across his forehead. He was still handsome except for his blue eyes that were just a little pale and maybe just a little stupid, but then I was prejudiced. It was a big, wide face with a lot of chin and right now the big face looked puzzled and uncertain and I decided it was time to set him straight.

“Near Sarajevo,” he said. “They forced my car off the road. It was a new car.”

“Then what?”

“They brought me here and made me chop wood. There were two of them, an Italian and another one, a Croat, I think. They threatened to kill me.”

“Didn’t they tell you anything?”

“They told me I was being held for ransom, but they wouldn’t tell me how much or how long I’d have to wait. They didn’t tell me anything. I kept asking about my car, but they wouldn’t even tell me about that.”

“Your car’s okay,” I said. “The ransom was a million dollars. The government paid it. The kidnappers also demanded the release of Anton Pernik from house arrest and his safe conduct to the border. Gordana was to have gone with Pernik but he died. Tavro took his place. The kidnappers didn’t seem to care who came along. Anyway, I was tapped by the State Department to act as go-between in the deal. Mr. Wisdom and Mr. Knight came along to help out. You know Miss Tonzi here. She works for the CIA. I’m not sure why she’s along.”

“You don’t make any sense, St. Ives,” Killingsworth said.

“You’re not tied to a chair anymore, are you?”

“No.”

“Be grateful.” I turned back to the fireplace. “Anybody bring any booze?” I said.

“It just so happens that I have a pint of fair bourbon,” Wisdom said, handing it over to me.

“You’re a treasure, you are,” I said and took a long gulp.

“What now?” Arrie said.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

I looked at my watch. It was nearly three o’clock. “I’m not planning on walking down any mountain tonight, are you?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll just sprawl around the fireplace and sing songs till it gets light.”

“And then?”

I shrugged. “Then you, Killingsworth, Wisdom and Knight can start back for Sarajevo.”

“What about Tavro?”

“He and Gordana go with me.”

“Where?” she asked.

I grinned at her. “I still don’t know.”

I looked up and saw that Killingsworth was now talking to Gordana, his big face worked up into an expression of sadness. She was nodding, as if only half listening to what he had to say. Then she shook her head sharply and moved away. Killingsworth looked around as if bewildered, but then I remembered that he’d often looked that way. He saw me and came over to where I sat

“I have to talk you privately,” he said. “It’s important.”

I sighed and rose. We went over to the rough wooden table. Killingsworth sat down and hunched over it in what he may have hoped was a conspiratorial manner. “This man Tavro,” he said.

“What about him?”

“He’s dangerous.”

“So?”

“He approached me with information. He wanted me to help him get out of the country.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“But you took the information.”

Killingsworth looked around. “You have no idea how vital it is, St. Ives.”

“Hot stuff, huh?”

“It could well determine the future leaders of this country.”

“What’ve you done with it?” I said.

“That’s confidential, of course.”

“But it’s the real thing?”

“There’s no doubt about it,” he said.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Can you get him out of the country?”

“Maybe.”

“I can’t be involved, of course.”

“Of course.”

“But I did more or less promise him.”

“In exchange for the information?” I said.

“That’s right.”

“Well, I can try,” I said and started to rise. He used his right hand to pull me back down. “There’s one other thing.”

“What?”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think during the past week.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We’ve known each other for a long time.”

“A half hour ago you couldn’t remember my name.”

“A man sometimes does foolish things.”

“Such as?”

“This girl, Gordana Panić. We were, well, close and I made some promises, some foolish ones, I’m afraid, but now that I’ve had a chance to think it all through it would be far better if this entire affair didn’t involve her. Am I making myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” I said. “You want to give her the brush.”

Killingsworth frowned. “There’s my family to think of.”

“What about her?”

He ignored the question. “And as ambassador I should avoid any hint of scandal that could damage our relations with Belgrade.”

“You want me to fix things, right?”

“Could you?”

“Why should I?”

Maybe I wanted him to crawl a little. Or maybe it was because I thought I’d owed him something for thirteen years and now was my chance to pay it all back with compound interest. His face fell. Crumpled would be better. He was no longer Ambassador Amfred Killingsworth, millionaire publisher. He was only a fifty-year-old man who’d just about wrecked things because of a twenty-two-year-old girl and now he was trying to scramble back, trying to salvage it all, trying to make it as it had been before he fell in love too late in life. And that was probably what hurt most of all, that he couldn’t fall in love at fifty with someone who was twenty-two because he didn’t have the stomach for the sacrifices that it called for.

“Oh, hell, Killingsworth. I’ll see what I can do.”

His face brightened. It not only brightened, it shone. “You mean it?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll remember it, Phil. We’ve had a few differences, but that’s all water under the bridge. Wait till you see my report on how you’ve handled this. I’ll see that you get full credit.” He was babbling now, not saying anything really and I only half listened. Then he said, “Who brought you in?”

“Hamilton Coors,” I said. “You know him?”

“Of course I know him. Damned fine man. He’s a personal friend of mine, the best I’ve got in the Department.”

I nodded. It was all that I felt like doing. “Coors speaks well of you, too,” I said.

I was dozing by the fireplace about an hour later when I got my first night visitor. It was Tavro. I glanced about and the rest of them were sprawled out or huddled up near the warmth of the flames.

“I must speak with you,” Tavro said in his whispering rasp.

“Go ahead.”

He looked around, his sad fish face covered with a black and white stubble that made him look mean all the way through. “When will Killingsworth get back to Belgrade?”

“Tomorrow, I think.”

“He has information, papers, documents that are mine.”

“I thought you gave them to him.”

Tavro frowned. “It was a foolish mistake. I must have them back.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance.”

“Then I must leave immediately.” He started to rise. I caught his arm and pulled him back down.

“You don’t have a chance,” I said. “We’ll try it tomorrow with the girl. You can be her grandfather.”

He shook his head. “Mr. St. Ives, if the information that is contained in those documents that I gave your ambassador is revealed to anyone else, I will be dead before night.” I looked at him. His face was still grumpy and mean, but it was also serious.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Your ambassador, Mr. Killingsworth, does not have the background to assess their true significance.”

“He told me that it was hot stuff.”

“He was speaking as a newspaperman, not as a diplomat. The information that he possesses could destroy this government.”

“Isn’t that what you want?”

Tavro looked away and then returned his gaze to me. It contained as much sincerity as he was capable of displaying, perhaps more. “Not if it would take Russian tanks, Mr. St. Ives.”

“Like Czechoslovakia, huh?”

“You do not believe me?”

“No.”

Tavro shook his head and then smiled as if he felt sorry for my stupidity—which he may have. “Think about this, Mr. St. Ives. If I were not telling the truth, I certainly would not be here.”

I nodded as he rose. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go first tomorrow. The others can come out later.”

“Tomorrow,” he said, as if he were not at all sure that there would be such a thing. Then he rose and walked to the far end of the fireplace where he stood and looked into the flames for a long time. I watched him for a while and then I tried to go to sleep, and almost succeeded until something warm and wet started licking my ear.

“What’re you doing?” It was Arrie, of course.

“Trying to sleep,” I said. “Doesn’t the sandman stop by your place anymore?”

“I was cold.”

I put my arm around her. She snuggled against my chest. “I bet they have rooms upstairs,” she said.

“We’d freeze before we got there.”

“What did Tavro want?”

“Out.”

“You still going to help him?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“Probably.”

“None of it’s gone right, has it?”

I looked down at her, but she had turned her face away from me. “None of what?” I said.

“None of what you thought you were supposed to do.”

“No, it’s all gone wrong.”

“It could get worse,” she said.

“I don’t see how.”

She sighed and snuggled closer. “You will if you try to get him out.”

T
HE COLD AWAKENED ME.
Thin gray light was coming through the tall windows. The fire had died down. I gently lifted Arrie’s head from my chest and made her a pillow of my topcoat. She curled into it without waking. I rose and went over to the fireplace, put three large logs on, and waited until they caught. I squatted down and warmed my hands before the flames. And then I thought for a long time, until the thinking threatened to become the end itself rather than the method by which the end is reached.

I rose and walked over to the windows. Before me stretched a broad, snow-covered meadow that was lined by thick forests of fir and pine. Beyond the meadow was more forest that rose until it thinned out into snow and rocks and became the peak of a mountain whose name I would like to have known.

Below the castle near the edge of the forest, two deer, a buck and a doe, took small, delicate, tentative steps into the deep snow. They stopped, looked around suspiciously, and then bounded across the meadow, hurrying into the safety of the forest on the other side.

I turned from the window and went back to the fireplace. Tavro was propped up against the stone wall, his overcoat drawn up to his chin. I bent down and shook his arm. He opened his eyes and then opened and closed his mouth several times as if he tasted something bad.

“It’s time we started,” I said and moved over to where Gordana sat sleeping with her head on Wisdom’s shoulder. I shook her gently and she stirred, but didn’t open her eyes, and I had to shake her again. She opened her eyes slowly and smiled at me. It was a child’s smile that contained a child’s faith and I didn’t feel that I deserved it.

“It’s time,” I said and she nodded and stretched. Wisdom also awakened.

“What time is it?” he said.

I looked at my watch. “Nearly seven thirty.”

The rest of them began to stir. Killingsworth rose and stretched and looked around as if he felt he should say something, something wise perhaps, like telling the rest of us where the toilet was. He didn’t. Knight was up looking rumpled but ruggedly handsome. I envied him. Arrie was the last to awaken. She got up quickly, clutching her purse to her as though she thought someone might snatch it away.

“I think I found some coffee,” Wisdom said, poking around in a box of canned goods.

“Make some in that pot that I used for snow,” I said. “There should be enough water left in it.”

He nodded, opened the paper sack of coffee, and threw a couple of handfuls of the grounds into the pot and hung it over the fire with a metal hook that swung from the wall. I don’t think Wisdom did much cooking for himself.

One by one they trooped downstairs and out into the snow to relieve themselves and when they came back they dipped tin cups into the coffee and drank it gratefully even though it was indescribably bad. They turned toward me instinctively, it seemed, even Killingsworth, as though waiting for me to tell them what to do next now that they’d gone to the toilet. I took another sip of coffee and lit a cigarette.