Protocol for a Kidnapping (9 page)

He looked up from the photo at me and then back at the photo again. “This is your first visit to our country, Mr. St. Ives.” It was no question so I made no answer. “I hope you enjoy your stay, what little there will be of it.”

“I hope so, too,” I said because he seemed to be waiting for something—maybe to decide whether he liked the tone of my voice.

He shifted his glance to Arrie Tonzi and then back again to me. “Will Miss Tonzi serve as your translator throughout the negotiations?” he said.

“I don’t know yet. I don’t even know if a translator will be required.”

“It may be too much to hope that our criminals are bilingual.” I smiled at that, assuming it was a joke.

“We are extremely interested in capturing the kidnappers.” He paused. “Once the ambassador is safe, of course.”

I nodded and wondered how long it would take him to get around to it. It had once taken a Chicago detective bureau lieutenant forty-six minutes, but the detective had been so thick-witted that it took him a quarter of an hour to order breakfast. I’d timed him.

In criminal negotiations that make use of a go-between, it is to be expected that the law will offer him a proposal while the crook will make him a proposition. The proposition will fatten the go-between’s wallet as well as the crook’s while the proposal will benefit only the law, unless the go-between is unusual in his need of warm praise from such persons as assistant district attorneys, police precinct captains, and county sheriffs. But both underworld proposition and civic proposal are based on some variance of the double cross and I was interested in what Bartak’s version would be. He got right to it.

“It has occurred to me, Mr. St. Ives, that with a little skillful planning and some cooperation from you, it might be possible to apprehend the kidnappers without endangering the ambassador. Have you given this any thought?”

“None,” I said.

“My country regards kidnapping as a most reprehensible crime.”

“Most countries do.”

“If the kidnappers were caught and brought to swift justice, it would serve as a strong deterrent to any similar attempts in the future.”

“I might argue that,” I said, “but I wouldn’t argue that whoever caught them would increase his chances for promotion.”

Bartak closed the thin green folder carefully. He locked his hands together and rested them on top of it. He frowned to show that he was displeased with my remark. He then pulled his chin back toward his Adam’s apple to indicate that despite his displeasure he was going to make his proposal anyway. I waited.

“For many reasons, Mr. St. Ives, not the least of them being the simple, humanitarian ones, we have offered our full cooperation in securing the release of your ambassador. At the same time we cannot afford to appear indifferent toward the perpetration of the crime. Our chief interest lies in the safe return of Mr. Killingsworth. But we are vitally concerned with punishing the kidnappers. We believe that we have a plan which, with only a small measure of cooperation from you, will enable us to do both. It will also serve—”

I decided to cut him short. “If you have such a plan, Mr. Bartak, I’m sure it’s a good one, but I don’t want to hear it.”

He had a young face, one not yet old enough to conceal surprise, especially at something unpleasant, and for a moment he looked like a four-year-old who’s just learned the hard way that old Ruff can bite.

The frown returned to his sloping forehead, his stubby nose wrinkled as if it smelled gas, and his wide, thick mouth screwed itself up into something that lay between a pout and a snarl. The calm was gone from his voice, too, and when he spoke the words came tumbling out over each other as if in frantic haste to leave so that they could jump up and down on me.

“I must regard your remark as an insult directed at my government and myself!” he said, almost sputtering. “Your discourtesy endangers all chances for cooperation and, furthermore, it could endanger the life of your ambassador. This is no simple matter, Mr. St. Ives. I must point out that your refusal to cooperate with us in so important an undertaking may well cause my government to review its arrangements with the United States in other—”

I decided to break in again before I started World War III. “I’m deeply sorry if you interpreted my refusal to listen to your proposal as an insult, Mr. Bartak. It wasn’t meant to be and I apologize if it created such a misunderstanding. However, you must understand that as the private intermediary in this transaction I have certain obligations to the kidnappers as well as to the victim.”

I was going to continue but he interrupted, still excited. “You admit your obligation to criminals!” It seemed like a good point and he grabbed it and would have been off down the sidelines unless I pushed him out of bounds.

“Ambassador Killingsworth’s life, Mr. Bartak, may well depend on whether I fulfill my obligations to the criminals.” That got his attention, so I gave him the rest of it. “They didn’t hesitate to kidnap him. They won’t hesitate to kill the only witness to their crime if they suspect even the slightest trickery. So yes, you might say I have an obligation to the kidnappers and that obligation is to keep them happy and content.”

Bartak shook his head. He was a stubborn one. “The plan that you so rudely rejected, even before you knew its content, was designed with Mr. Killingsworth’s safety foremost in mind. We have cooperated fully with your government in this entire matter, even to the point of releasing Anton Pernik. I assure you that we would not advance a plan that would endanger the life of the ambassador.”

“No, I’m sure you wouldn’t,” I said. “But if I were a party to it, and something did happen, then it would be my responsibility. I won’t take that chance, not only because I’m concerned with Ambassador Killingsworth’s safety, but because I’m also very much concerned with mine.”

Telling them that you are a coward is always the easiest way out. They can understand that whether they are a Chicago detective bureau lieutenant or a high official in the Ministry of Interior. It also makes them feel superior. It made Bartak feel that way and he leaped at the chance to show me just how much.

“There is the distinct possibility, Mr. St. Ives, that the plan I spoke of does not depend entirely upon your cooperation.”

“I didn’t think that it would,” I said, “but I still don’t want to know what it is. This way I go into negotiations with what the lawyers call clean hands. If something goes wrong with your plan, neither you nor the kidnappers can blame me, because I know nothing about it. Is that satisfactory?”

Bartak thought about it for a moment. To help him do it, he drummed his fingers on the surface of his nicely polished desk. “Yes,” he said finally. “We have not entirely lost the element of surprise because you are certainly in no position to warn the kidnappers.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m not.”

He nodded his head, well satisfied with himself and with the way the morning had gone, and for all I knew, with his prospects for rapid advancement.

“Can I be of any further service to you, Mr. St. Ives?”

“I need the papers that will allow Anton Pernik and his granddaughter to leave Yugoslavia.”

“Of course,” he said and drew the fat blue file toward him, opened it, and took out a thick brown envelope. Before handing it to me, he said, “You understand, of course, that these papers are only exit permits. They are not passports. Once Pernik and his granddaughter have crossed its border, Yugoslavia is no longer responsible for their safety and well-being. They forfeit their rights to citizenship.”

“I understand,” I said and accepted the envelope.

Bartak rose. He was shorter than I’d thought, not more than five-foot-two or three. It may have been why he hadn’t risen when we came in. Or it may have been that his height didn’t concern him at all, but I doubted that, preferring to believe that he was the Ministry’s resident authority on Napoleon.

“I hope you also understand something else, Mr. St. Ives,” he said.

“What?”

“I hope you understand that while our concern for the safety of Ambassador Killingsworth is tremendously grave, that same degree of concern cannot be extended to Anton Pernik and his granddaughter.” I was about to tell him that I understood that fully, but he hurried on. Smoothly. “Or, for that matter, to you.”

I
T WAS MY SECOND
press conference within five days and it was pointless to argue about which of them had been the better farce. The one about the rats in New York probably had contained more substance while the one in Belgrade seemed to have more style, perhaps because of the international press corps. There weren’t three paragraphs of hard news in either of them.

But the one at the Metropol hotel did serve to help establish my bona fides as a private citizen who was what he said he was: an industrious, hardworking go-between and not what the press wished that I was: a tool—unwitting or otherwise—of the CIA or the State Department or something equally flamboyant.

They asked me some questions and I told them some lies when I had to and the truth when there was no point in lying. We traded a few remarks and, upon request, I gave them a couple of brief, overly lurid accounts of two other kidnappings that I’d been called in on. The Italians like those. Or perhaps they just liked Arrie Tonzi’s translation which she rendered in a melodramatic tone accompanied by appropriate gestures.

“We’ll take care of the cost of the meeting room,” Gordon Lehmann said when the conference was over. It was something that he thought I might be worrying about. It wasn’t but I thanked him anyway and asked him to join us for lunch. He shook his head and said that he should get back to the embassy.

“What’s that address?” I said.

“Kneza Milosa fifty,” he said and spelled it for me. “The phone’s 645-655. Extension seventeen.”

While I was writing it down on the back of my airline ticket he said, “Were you ever in PR, Phil?”

I told him no, that I’d never had the pleasure, that I’d always worked for newspapers, and mentioned the name of the one that I’d worked for in New York and he said he remembered my column and then asked, “Do you think it would be helpful if I got some actual newspaper experience? I came right to State from school.”

It would take more than that, I thought, but said, “I don’t think it’s really necessary, Gordon.” And then, because he very much seemed to need something more, I added, “You’re doing a hell of a fine job here.” It was a lie, but since I had been lying all morning, to almost anyone who would listen, one more couldn’t hurt anything and it might even keep him from brooding the rest of the afternoon away.

They really should try as hard to keep sensitive people out of public relations as they do to keep embezzlers out of banks. But my line or two of praise was all that Lehmann’s ego needed, at least till suppertime, and he headed happily back to the embassy to compose a brilliant aide-mémoire or two on the conference.

At my elbow, Arrie Tonzi said, “You’re full of nifties, aren’t you?”

“Why?”

“In just one morning I get to watch you put the slam on Bartak, handle the press conference like you’d scripted it, and then find time to administer to the tortured sensibilities of our press attaché, poor wretch.”

“He’s all right,” I said.

“He’s miserable and you know it. That’s why you spread the word balm on. Either you’re schizy, St. Ives, or beneath that grim exterior beats a bleeding heart.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said. “Let’s eat.”

We were joined at lunch by Wisdom and Knight who had been sitting at the rear of the press conference. When I asked what they thought of it, Wisdom said that it had been highly informative, but my jokes were old. Knight said he had found it entertaining and amusing, but noticed that I lacked stage presence and offered to teach me a few simple but useful gestures.

“Anything else?” I said.

“What’s on for later, after our naps?” Wisdom asked.

“We go calling on the Nobel poet and his granddaughter.”

“Have you got anything to tell them yet,” Knight asked, “such as how or when or where?”

“Not yet.”

“This is just a get-acquainted session?” Wisdom said.

“That’s right.”

“What if they don’t like me?”

“Eat your caviar,” I said. “It’s fresh from the Danube.”

It took Arrie Tonzi five phone calls to get all the permissions that were needed for us to make an appointment with Anton Pernik.

“He doesn’t have a phone,” she said when she came back from making the last call, “but someone in Bartak’s office will send him a telegram. The appointment’s for four o’clock. You want me to go along?”

“I think so,” I said, “if it’s convenient for you.”

“I’d like to meet him.”

At fifteen minutes to four we were heading south on Marshal Tito Avenue which seemed to be about twice as wide as Pennsylvania Avenue but handled less than a tenth as much traffic. We followed the avenue for a mile or so and then turned left. After that I was lost. The driver made three or four more turns, moving deeper into what seemed to be a district devoted to six- and seven-storied flats that wore their depressing sameness like shabby uniforms.

We pulled up before one that seemed no different from the scores of others we had passed except for the two men in dark suits who lounged inside the entrance and who might as well have carried signs advertising that they were plainclothes cops.

Arrie had a chat with them and showed them her credentials and then introduced us as they smiled and spoke politely, but insisted on looking at our passports. One of them accompanied us into the building and up two flights of stairs where he greeted two more plainsclothesmen, who were just as friendly, but who didn’t insist on examining our passports. We followed the cop who’d escorted us from below down the hall. He knocked on an apartment door politely. While we waited we smiled at each other as strangers do whose language difference bars them from talking about the weather which was a little warmer than it had been the day before.

When the door opened I completely understood why Amfred Killingsworth had told the U.S. Department of State to go to hell. Although beauty and loveliness are totally inadequate words, she had the kind that could make kings abdicate, presidents abscond, and prime ministers turn to treason.