Protocol for a Kidnapping (24 page)

“I’m going to borrow your car, Killingsworth,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to borrow your car. I need it. Tavro and Gordana are going with me. I want you to give us an hour’s start. When you get down to the village Arrie can tell someone who you are and they’ll call the authorities. I don’t care what you tell them about me.”

We were all standing. Tavro, with his coat on, was slightly behind Wisdom. I was next to Gordana, and Knight and Killingsworth were near the fireplace. Arrie was by herself near the table.

“All right,” I said, looking at Gordana. “Let’s go.”

“Tavro’s not going.” It was Arrie’s voice. I turned to look at her. She held a small automatic in her right hand. It was aimed at Tavro. “He’s not going anyplace, Phil. I’m sorry.”

“Aw, come on,” I said and started toward her. She kept her eyes on Tavro. He looked at me and then at the pistol. His face started working, as if he were trying to think of something to say. Instead, he shoved Wisdom violently at Arrie. The gun went off. Tavro ran toward the open door and through it and I could hear his leather heels clatter down the stairs.

Wisdom stumbled against the table, tried to catch it, but failed, and fell to the floor on his back. There was a small black and red hole under the pocket of his white shirt. Arrie stood frozen, the gun in her hand, staring at Wisdom, her mouth silently forming the word “No” over and over.

I ran to the window and forced it open. Tavro was in the meadow, trying to run through the deep snow. He floundered, fell, picked himself up, and tried to run again. I yelled at him. “Don’t try it, Tavro!”

He may have heard me because he stopped, looked back, and then tried to run again. They cut him down before he got three steps. It sounded like a submachine gun.

I turned from the window and ran back to Arrie who stood motionless, staring down at the fallen Wisdom, the gun still in her hand. I took the gun, ran back to the window, and tossed it into a snow bank. Then I went back to Wisdom. Knight had ripped open Wisdom’s shirt and was trying to stop the blood with his handkerchief. I handed him mine as I knelt down beside them.

Wisdom’s breath came in harsh wheezes. His eyes were closed. He opened them and looked at Knight. He smiled and shook his head slightly. He turned his eyes and found mine. Once more he shook his head, but only a little. “Don’t blame the kid, Phil.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t.”

Arrie was kneeling by him now. She was weeping.

“Not your fault, kid,” Wisdom said and tried to smile at her and almost made it before the pain hit. He shuddered and closed his eyes tightly and then looked up once more at Knight. This time he did smile, broadly. “Goddamn it, Carstairs,” he said, “get back to your post.” Then he died.

Knight kept the handkerchiefs pressed to the dead man’s chest, even when the metallic words boomed out from the bullhorn. “What’s it say?” I asked Arrie, but she was sobbing now. I turned to Gordana who stood, staring blankly down at the dead Wisdom. “The loud-speaker,” I said, “what’s it saying?”

She didn’t look at me. She kept on staring at Wisdom. “It is saying,” she said, “that we should come outside with our hands above our heads. It is saying it over and over.”

“Listen,” I said. “Tavro’s been killed. He was shot. Do you all understand?” I looked around. Killingsworth nodded dully. So did Gordana. “You understand, Arrie?” I said. This time she nodded.

“It was a submachine gun,” I said. “The same burst that killed Tavro also killed Wisdom. Is that understood?”

Knight raised his head and stared at me. There were tears streaming down his cheeks. They were not the tears of an actor.

“What the fuck are you doing, St. Ives?” he said. “Park’s hardly dead, the crap’s not even cold in his pants yet, and you’re already hustling one of your phony deals. He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he? Can’t you even let the poor bastard die right? There’s something wrong with you, St. Ives. You need something fixed. Now get away from us, goddamnit! Just get the fuck away!”

I moved back and watched Knight as he knelt by Wisdom, his head bent his shoulders shaking now as he sobbed unashamedly. Arrie touched my arm. I turned and she shook her head slightly. “Don’t say it,” she said, softly. “Don’t try to say anything. Not now. Later.”

I turned and took her arm and motioned to Killingsworth and Gordana. The four of us went down the stairs and out into the snow with our hands above our heads. Down in the meadow where Tavro had fallen I could see a group of men clad in gray uniforms. There were two other men with them dressed in civilian clothes. One of the civilians turned and pointed at us. The men in uniforms started moving across the meadow in our direction. Other men in uniforms came out of the forest and took up places around the body of Tavro.

The men in uniforms reached us first. They looked at us curiously, their submachine guns aimed in our general direction. When Arrie asked a question, one of them nodded a little shamefacedly.

“He says we can take our hands down,” she said.

I watched the two men in civilian clothes come closer. They were both short and they had a hard time making it through the deep snow. The nearest one saw me and waved cheerfully, as if I were liege of the manor and he an invited guest. I didn’t wave back at Slobodan Bartak of the Ministry of Interior. I had been expecting him. The man behind Bartak didn’t wave at me. He gave me a stony look instead.

It was all I should have expected from Hamilton Coors and the U.S. Department of State.

T
HEY HEADED FOR KILLINGSWORTH
first, of course. He was after all the ambassador and there was protocol to be considered, even at a kidnapping.

I don’t know what lies Killingsworth told them. I didn’t try to listen. Instead I looked out across the meadow at the mountain peak whose name I would like to have known. Finally, I turned and said to anyone who cared to listen, “I’m going inside. I’m cold.”

Bartak turned from Killingsworth. He wore a broad, pleased smile on his face. “Well, Mr. St. Ives, it worked out much as I hoped it would.”

“Sure,” I said.

“The ambassador is safe and the kidnapper has been apprehended.”

“Tavro?” I said.

“Did you suspect that he was the one who engineered the kidnapping?”

I looked at Hamilton Coors. He stared back at me, not blinking, probably not even giving a damn. “No,” I said, “I didn’t suspect that.”

Bartak looked even more pleased, and the glint of early promotion was in his eyes. “Tavro had accomplices, of course. We’ll round them up soon enough.”

“An Italian,” I said, stubbornly keeping my end of the bargain. “One of them was an Italian, about thirty-five. I didn’t get a good look at the other one, but I think he was a Croat.”

Bartak nodded again, nothing but good humor. “You led us quite a chase,” he said.

I nodded. A blind man might have had some difficulty in following the trail I’d blazed across a good section of Yugoslavia. A four-year-old child would have had no trouble at all. The only thing I hadn’t down was to drop bread crumbs in the snow.

“It’s the way I had to operate,” I said and looked again at Hamilton Coors who returned my gaze, a slight smile on his face now. It could have meant anything or nothing at all.

“I was wondering if you heard the news of your death?” Bartak said, even chuckling a little.

“I heard it.”

“Yes, it was simply a matter of wrong identification. The person at your embassy, a Mr. Lehmann, identified the body as being yours, but then he said that you two had only met casually. I must say that the dead man did bear you a striking resemblance.”

“Who was he?” I said.

“We’re not yet sure,” Bartak said, “but we suspect that he somehow may have been involved in the kidnapping.”

“Because of where he was found?” I said.

Bartak dropped a little of his early morning good humor. “Yes, because of where he was found, almost directly across the street from Tavro’s house. A cottage really. He grew roses.”

“So he told me,” I said.

Hamilton Coors eased into the conversation, smooth as greased marble. “I really should talk to Mr. St. Ives about several matters, Mr. Bartak,” he said, taking my arm and steering me toward the castle before I blew the whole thing.

“There’s a dead man upstairs,” I said. “A friend of mine.”

“Really?” Hamilton Coors said. “We’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?”

Coors stood at the window of one of the small, bare upstairs rooms and looked out over the meadow. He rocked easily up and down on his toes, his hands clasped behind his back which was turned toward me.

“You didn’t want me to get him out, did you?” I said.

“Tavro?”

“Who else?”

“Your question’s hardly germane,” he said, “since you never had the slightest intention of trying to.” He turned around. “However, it worked out most satisfactorily, don’t you think?”

“What was Tavro’s real pitch.”

“Oh, he had information all right.”

“Was it any good?”

“Why do you ask?”

“He parted with it too easily. He handed it over to Killingsworth and then asked for help. After he handed it over it didn’t leave him any leverage. That’s why I say that he seemed more interested in peddling his information than he was in leaving the country.”

Coors turned away from me and walked over to a wall. He inspected it to see whether it was clean enough to lean against. It was and he leaned against it, his arms folded across his chest. He had on a suit different from the one that I’d seen him in last, a dark green one with pale gray stripes. The search that he had made for a tie had been worth it.

“What did he tell you about his information?” he said.

“That it could bring Russian tanks into Belgrade. Could it?”

Coors frowned and walked back to the window and let me look at his back again. “The CIA thinks so.”

“And you don’t?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But Tavro wanted the information broadcast.”

“Tavro and the people behind him. They wanted somebody else to do it, of course. Preferably the Americans.” Coors turned around again. “Why did you go through with it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You must have known that the CIA was mixing in. You must have known that early on.”

“It was. They tried to bribe me.”

“How much?”

“Ten thousand pounds.”

Coors shook his head. “They like to spend money. It does something for them.”

“They first approached me in New York, but I didn’t know it was the CIA then. They even arranged a phony hit-and-run.”

“The same chap?”

I nodded. “Your security wasn’t too good. He was waiting for me in the lobby of my hotel when I got back. He was playing at being Artur Bjelo then.”

Coors tugged at his lower lip. “We saw that it was leaked to them just after you left Washington. We wanted to see how fast they’d move.”

“They met me at the airport in Belgrade.”

“The Tonzi girl?”

I nodded. “She accidentally shot my friend. Bartak doesn’t have to know about it though.”

“No,” Coors said, “he doesn’t. Have you—uh—tried to arrange things?” I nodded and there was a brief silence.

“Who killed Stepinac?” I said.

Coors shrugged. “Tavro’s people, I assume. They thought that he was going to tip you off about Tavro.”

“You mean that Tavro really didn’t want out of the country?”

This time Coors only nodded. “That was all part of his sales pitch, of course—to give his information a dash of authenticity, although it really didn’t need it”

“He added another touch when he got an old friend of his killed,” I said. “An American.”

“I heard about him,” Coors said. “Was his name really Bill Jones?”

I nodded. “Jones’s house was bugged. He was supposed to set up a meeting between me and Tavro. He wasn’t able to get in touch with Tavro, but the meeting came off anyhow. That puzzled Jones a bit before he died. It also puzzled me for a while.”

There was a brief silence and then I asked, “What are you going to do with Tavro’s information?”

“Sit on it.”

“What’s the CIA want to do?”

Coors looked up at the ceiling and pursed his lips. “That’s really the crux of the matter, I suppose. That’s why Tavro died. If Tavro had found out that we weren’t going to use the information, he might have peddled it to someone else. The French perhaps. The CIA didn’t want that, of course. If they couldn’t have it themselves, they didn’t want anyone else to have it. It’s their dog-in-the-manger attitude really.”

“But you’ve got it,” I said. “Or at least Killingsworth does.”

“Ah,” Coors said. “But they know that we won’t use it, so it’s just as if we really don’t have it. It’s quite a subtle point, don’t you think?”

“The CIA wouldn’t have used it,” I said. “They wouldn’t have brought tanks into Belgrade.”

“Of course not,” Coors said. “But they would have bargained with it. They would have gotten something they wanted. That’s why they tried to delay the exchange. They wanted time to try to get the information from Tavro. Failing that, they had him killed so nobody else could get it.”

I shook my head. “You had him killed really. You set him up.”

Coors decided to inspect his fingernails. “We don’t operate quite that way.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “Tavro was trying to give authenticity to his information by lying about how bad he needed to get out of the country. So you obliged him. You turned him over to me. You might as well have killed him.”

“If you had tried, you might have succeeded.”

“But I had no intention of trying. You knew that. That’s the real reason you hired me. You wanted something to happen to Tavro. It did.”

“Yes,” Coors said. “I suppose it did.” He looked around the room. “How did Killingsworth take his ordeal?”

“He’s over his romance.”

Coors smiled a little. “A passing fancy, I suppose.”

“I want the girl out,” I said.

“The granddaughter?”

I nodded.

He shook his head. “I don’t think that can be arranged.”

“Find a way,” I said. “She’d like to go to New York. You can also find a way to pay for it for a year or two.”