Protocol for a Kidnapping (14 page)

“What?”

“Tell them not to wake me up.” He nodded brusquely, turned, and walked off down the street.

A
T FIVE O’CLOCK THAT
afternoon I was knocking on the door of Anton Pernik’s apartment under the expectant gaze of one of the plainclothes guards who was far more interested in getting a look at Gordana Panić than he was in me.

He gave her his best smile when she opened the door, but she didn’t smile back. She looked at me for a long moment and said, “Come in, Mr. St. Ives. You’re just in time.”

I followed her into the sitting room. She turned to survey it and then pointed at the large chair where her grandfather had held forth when I’d been there the first time.

“Sit there,” she said, “it’s comfortable. I’ll get us some brandy.”

She disappeared through a door and I looked around the room and it seemed much the same. The pictures of the men with their high collars and their slicked-back hair were still on the walls. The books were still behind the glass doors of their cases.

If anything had changed, it was Gordana. She had on a different dress, a dark red one that was shorter than the one she’d worn previously; but anyone can wear a new dress. Not everyone can wear a new mood that is so pronounced that it manifests a noticeably different personality.

When she came back with the brandy I said, “How is your grandfather?”

She didn’t answer until she served the drinks and was sitting in a straight-backed chair next to mine, the same one she had sat in during my other visit. I had to turn slightly to see her. She looked at me over the rim of her glass. “He’s been detained,” she said.

“Will he be back soon?” I said.

“No,” she said, “not soon.”

“I’ve heard from the kidnappers,” I said.

“Yes,” she said and drained her brandy. Her answer wasn’t quite what I expected.

“They want to exchange Killingsworth tomorrow night. In a place near Sarajevo.”

“I think I would like another brandy,” she said. “Would you care for one?”

“Why not?” I said and watched her move across the room. There seemed to be a difference in the way she walked, but it could have been the shorter dress. Maybe it was the brandy. I looked around the room again and I knew how it had changed. Nothing had been added, but something had been taken away. All the religious artifacts—the crosses, the paintings of Jesus and Mary, a carved ivory representation of the crucifixion, agonizing in its detail, and a number of other religious oils were gone, leaving pale outlines of where they had hung against the darker wallpaper.

When Gordana came back with the brandy, I said, “I see you’ve moved some things around. Are you thinking of taking them with you?”

She looked around the room, sipped her brandy, and nodded vaguely, “I moved them,” she said, adding, “to a more appropriate room.” Once more she looked at me over the rim of her glass. “Are you a religious person, Mr. St. Ives?”

“Not terribly,” I said. “Hardly at all, in fact.”

“Are you an atheist like Tito?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“But you are not a Catholic?”

“No.”

“If someone asked what your nationality was, what would you say?”

I looked at her. She had finished her second glass of brandy and she was smiling at me. It was a mischievous smile, but the look in her eyes was more than that. It was wicked.

“I’d say. American, I guess. Or United States citizen.

“But you have fifty states. Would you not say New Yorker or California-uh-an? Is that right?”

“That’s right, but I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t even say Ohioan, although that’s where I was born.”

“If you asked anyone in this country what they were, they would say Serb or Croat or Slovene or Montenegrin. I think Gospodin Tito is our only true Yugoslav, but then he’s only half Croat. His mother was a Slovene.”

“What would you call yourself?” I said.

“I would call myself Gospodjica Gordana,” she said, rising. She twirled and her red skirt twirled with her, giving me a fine full view of what I was sure were the world’s most beautiful legs. “Citizen Gordana,” she said, holding her glass aloft, “citizen of the world.”

“Nice,” I said, referring to her legs, but indicating the plum brandy.

“Would you like some more?”

“What are we celebrating?” I said.

She put her glass down and grasped the two arms of my chair and leaned forward until her face was close to mine. Very close. A quick glance down assured me that she, too, had joined the no-bra league. I had a hard time deciding where to rest my eyes, but finally decided on her face which was lovely and interesting and, after all, very close to mine. It would have been impolite not to.

“We are celebrating, Gospodin St. Ives,
me!
”

Well, there wasn’t anything else to do so I did it. I kissed her. She knew how to do it. Her tongue darted into my mouth, seeking, caressing, a warm, wet determined explorer. I soon found that she wore nothing under her dress and that her skin was as smooth and delightful to touch as it was to look at. Her hands got busy too and then we were naked on the floor and all over each other, feverishly probing, tasting, and demanding from each other. Nobody gave very much; it was all take, and at that particular time and place it was the way we both wanted it and so that’s what we did. And then she gave a half scream, cutting it off by sinking her teeth into my shoulder as her hips arched high and hard into mine and her nails raked my back. She shuddered violently, once, twice, and then she was pounding her body against mine again and gasping, shuddering once again, but less violently, and then subsiding slowly, quietly.

We lay there on the Oriental rugs, thinking our own thoughts. I memorized a pattern in one of the rugs. She ran her fingers down the side of my neck. I propped myself up on my elbows and studied her. There was a warm, sexual glow about Gordana that made her indescribably beautiful, but that’s all. Earlier that day, I had looked at another girl who had that same glow, but who was not nearly so beautiful, not half, who had hair that flopped around over a pert, saucy face and I had felt something, tenderness, affection, care. Something. I found myself feeling only admiration for Gordana, which isn’t a hell of a lot of emotion.

“I am not in love with you,” she said.

“I know.”

“And you are not in love with me.”

“That’s good. That makes it simpler.”

“How?”

“Do you think I am a little girl?”

“No.”

“Amfred did until I taught him otherwise.”

“Are you in love with him?” I said.

“With Amfred? With Ambassador Killingsworth?” She smiled mockingly. “He is married.”

“That’s no answer.”

“He is old.”

“He’s fifty and he’s rich.”

“I like him. He is a foolish man, but I like him.”

“Better than Arso Stepinac who’s not so foolish and not so old and not nearly so rich?”

“Arso,” she said. “He wanted to be engaged, but how could I be engaged to the Church and to him, too? But I agreed. It was to be a secret. He promised.”

“Tell me about Killingsworth.”

“Poor Amfred. He is so clumsy. But nice—like a big, clumsy, friendly dog.”

“I assume that your grandfather doesn’t know anything about either Killingsworth or Stepinac.”

“Or St. Ives?” she said.

“Or St. Ives.”

“Or a number of others,” she said and stretched, thrusting herself against me. “You are very good.” She giggled. “I cannot say in the bed so I will say on the floor. You are very good on the floor, Gospodin St. Ives.”

“Why gospodin?” I said. “Why not comrade?”

“I am not a Communist,” she said, “but, should the necessity arise—” She shrugged prettily. She did everything prettily and so far she was the prettiest liar I’d ever met.

“What happened to your engagement to Stepinac?”

“He became jealous. So I tore it off. Tore is not right, is it?”

“Broke,” I said, suffering a bad case of déjà vu.

“Yes, I broke it off. He wrote me many letters. Passionate ones.” She rolled her eyes naughtily. “One could not believe that a man who says he is of the police could be so passionate. There were so many letters that even Grandfather grew suspicious.”

“Where is your grandfather?” I said. “Or have I asked that before?”

“He is detained,” she said and closed her eyes and drew me down to her again, snuggling up against me.

“Where?” I said, propping myself back up on an elbow.

“Do you think I’m attractive?” she said.

“You know what I think.”

“Would I be attractive in New York? Or Washington?”

“Anywhere.”

She sighed deeply and snuggled some more. “It would have been so nice in New York, I think. Yes, I would prefer New York. I am tired of living in a capital. Or perhaps I shall become a nun after all,” she said.

“Isn’t that the plan?”

She smiled, more to herself than to me. “That is the plan. My engagement to the Church. Such a long engagement. I could not wait.” She pushed me away gently. “But now it doesn’t matter.”

“What doesn’t?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing matters because it’s all over.”

“What?” I could never recall asking so many questing and getting such nonsense answers.

“Come,” she said, rising with a smooth grace and reaching for my hand, “let us go see Grandfather. He is waiting.”

“Like this?”

“Come,” she said, tugging me through a door and down a hall. “Grandfather is waiting.” She was smiling now, but sadly, and some tears were rolling down her cheeks. I could only stare at her. “In here,” she said. “He is in here.”

She opened a door and Anton Pernik, Nobel laureate, lay quietly on a bed, his eyes closed, his hands clasped around a rosary. He was dead. She walked over to him, leaned down, and kissed him on the forehead. She turned to me, naked and lovely, and said, “He is dead.”

“So I see. When?”

She looked around the room. All the religious artifacts and pictures that were missing from the sitting room had been hung on the walls of the bedroom. “He found comfort in such symbols,” she said, making a vague gesture.

“When did he die?” I said, feeling more naked than I’d ever felt in my life.

“This morning. Early this morning. In his sleep. I don’t think he minded. I don’t think he really wanted to go to America, but he thought I did. He thought I wanted to become a nun.”

“Do you?”

I stood in the doorway without a stitch on, looking at the lovely nude girl and her dead grandfather and, as if from a distance, I watched my mind function. I wasn’t proud of what it did, but I was glad to see that it could still work. It did it protestingly, sending out signals of distress and disgust, but it kept on working and when it was done, it spewed out the end product. It wasn’t pretty.

“Do I what?” Gordana said.

“Do you really want to go to New York?”

She shook her head. “It is impossible now. I have no money. My grandfather is dead. I cannot go.”

“Do you want to?” I said. “Do you want to go badly?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Very badly. I’ll do anything to go.

I stared at her, not liking her much just then, but not liking myself at all.

“You may have to,” I said.

W
HEN I GOT BACK
to the Metropol at seven o’clock I wasn’t surprised to find Slobodan Bartak of the Ministry of Interior waiting for me in the lobby and looking as if he might spit acid.

He approached almost at a lope, his short torso thrust forward, his face screwed up into a twisted advertisement of anger and disapproval. I stopped and waited for him. He halted before me, locked his hands behind his back, teetered up on his toes, and when he spoke his voice was a bitter, petulant charge. “I have been waiting for more than an hour.”

“Did we have an appointment?”

“You have heard from the kidnappers.”

“Ah,” I said.

“Well?”

“Let’s make a deal.”

“Deal?”

“A trade, a transaction.”

“What kind of transaction?”

“I’m sure that there’s some old Yugoslav tradition that calls for a drink during negotiations.”

“I know of no such tradition,” Bartak said. “If one drinks, one drinks after negotiations, not during.”

I took his elbow and turned him toward the bar and toward a drink I did not want. “Let’s fly in the face of tradition,” I said.

“Fly?”

“Where did you learn English?”

He stopped. “What is wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” I said. “You speak it very well.”

“I learned it at the government school,” he said, once more moving toward the bar. “I was first in my class.”

We chose a table in the corner and when the waiter came I ordered vodka. I was tired of plum brandy. Bartak ordered Scotch, probably because I was paying. Neither of us commented on the other’s choice which was just as well because it only would have been something nasty.

Bartak tasted his drink and said, “You have heard from the kidnappers.”

“You said that before.”

“It is true.”

I shrugged. “I may have.”

“What do you mean may?”

“They only said they were the kidnappers.”

Bartak wriggled forward in his chair. He was interested now. “What else did they say?”

“They were primarily concerned about the million dollars.”

“Yes?”

“I told them that it was already on deposit for them in a Swiss bank. The State Department made the arrangements, you know.”

“When do they want to make the exchange?” Bartak said.

“It’s as I said. They only claimed to be the kidnappers.”

“What do you mean?”

“That they could have been anybody. My picture was all over the front page, the story was in all the papers. The call could have been a hoax.”

Bartak pounced on that. “So it was a call?”

“Yes.”

“But not to your phone in the hotel.”

I wagged my head at him sorrowfully. “Now you’ve done it, Mr. Bartak. You’ve gone and tapped my telephone.”

He looked as if he might try bluster at first, but changed his mind in favor of guile. His kind came equipped with a sly look. “Only as a precautionary measure.”