by Ross Thomas
I called Henry Knight and he sounded sleepy when he answered the phone. “How was your night on the town?” I said.
“Wicked,” he said. “Wisdom is a bottomless pit and this morning I’m dying and nobody cares.”
“Have some breakfast. They called.”
“When?”
“A few minutes ago. I have to go out.”
“You want some company?”
“Not yet. Maybe later this afternoon.”
“I’ll have recovered.”
“Tell Wisdom to stick around, too.”
“Anything else?”
“No,” I said and hung up.
When I’d come out of the shower that morning Arrie was dressed and drinking a cup of coffee. “I think you should know,” she said, “that I don’t consider last night to be just part of my job.”
“I don’t care about your job,” I said, kissed her, and poured a cup of coffee. “I really don’t. I told you that.”
“I’ve started to like you, Phil,” she said. “I mean honestly.”
“If we like each other, we’re off to a head start.”
“You’re not pissed off?” Her swearing had become an unconscious habit and the words that she once may have used for shock value were now just part of her vocabulary. I didn’t mind; the language is going to hell anyway.
“Not in the least,” I said and rumpled her hair which looked much the same when I was done. She gave it a couple of quick strokes with a comb, but it was like combing a blond mop.
“Well,” she said, “they must not think you’re too terribly important. Or something.”
“Why?”
“Not if they put me on to you.”
“What is it that you’re really supposed to do, take notes or arrive in the nick of time?”
She shrugged. “I just give them a daily report on whom you see and what you say. That’s all.” She lifted her face to be kissed again and what started as a breakfast peck turned into something more interesting. “You’re sexy in the morning,” she said. “I like that.”
“Which still leaves the afternoon to be explored.”
“I have to go,” she said, slipping into her long suede coat.
“Who’s your relief?” I said, grinning at her. “Something tall and brunette with a throaty voice and wicked eyes?”
She made a face at me. “If there is one, they haven’t told me. But that wouldn’t be unusual. I’m sort of junior junior.”
“You’re still the only one.”
“Only what?”
I grinned at her once more. “The only CIA agent I ever made love to.”
The weather had cleared, the temperature had climbed up to the low thirties, and I decided to walk to the corner of Strosmajerova and Risanska because it didn’t seem to be a mile, if that, and I needed the time to think and also to make sure that I wasn’t followed.
I started out briskly enough, with a healthy 120 paces a minute, and by the time I’d gone a block I’d spotted both of them. One was a pale blond man in a dark overcoat and a fur hat who preferred the opposite side of the street. The other was shorter, a little stout, and looked as if he might be puffing a bit to keep up the pace. Neither of them were experts, not according to the surveillance standards of a retired New York private detective who’d written a book on the subject that no one would publish. He had once spent a patient week teaching me how to spot and lose a tail in exchange for my editorial advice, which had been to send him to an agent who’d sold excerpts from the book to various law-and-order magazines.
One of these fine days, I promised myself as I crossed Marsala Tita near the Drama Theater, I would take up a trade that could be conducted entirely by mail. I might become a stamp dealer. If I had to deal with liars, their lies (as well as my own) would have to be written down and there’s something forbidding about committing a lie to paper, although it probably wouldn’t bother Hamilton Coors too much.
I headed diagonally across a large park toward Nemanjina Street. The park was crisscrossed with walks from which the snow had been carefully removed for those who liked to stroll through it in mid-February. Other than myself and my two shadowers there were only three other strollers and they all looked as if they were using the park as a shortcut.
After trying to guess how many lies Coors had told me, I started to wonder again whether Amfred Killingsworth was really smitten by the twenty-two-year-old beauty whose grandfather-poet wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to go to America, now that Sandburg was dead. Although the U.S. Department of State seemed to know all about its ambassador’s passionate love for Gordana Panić, a love that had caused him to balk at his recall, Killingsworth apparently had forgotten to tell the girl about it, unless she and her grandfather were both lying about her plans to become a Catholic nun.
And then there was my look-alike, Arso Stepinac, who wanted me to delay the kidnap exchange for five days so that he could do something or other that he thought needed to be done. All that Jovan Tavro, with his sad carp face and his roses and his bitterness, wanted to do during those same five days was to stay alive until I could whisk him out of the country, probably under the noses of Stepinac and Slobodan Bartak, the ambitious, pint-size official in the Ministry of Interior who thought it would have been nice of me to double-cross the kidnappers. I speculated about whether Stepinac and Bartak knew each other and, if they did, whether they were working together or at cross purposes. The more I thought about it the more it didn’t really seem to matter.
By the time I came into view of the Hotel Astoria I was wondering about whether the CIA had taught Arrie Tonzi how to cook and by then it was time to get rid of my two tails.
“All hotels have basements,” the retired private detective had told me. “All basements have rear exits. So you go up, then down, then out.”
I went into the lobby of the Hotel Astoria, bought a package of Morava cigarettes for three dinars, lit one, and watched my two tails try to look unobtrusive as they entered and headed for opposite ends of the lobby. I went over to the room clerk, asked him what time it was, and then headed for the elevator. When it came, I saw my two escorts moving toward the room clerk.
I took the elevator up to the third floor, got out and walked down the service stairs to the basement which also contained the kitchen. That was even better. I nodded to the chef and his assistants as I went through the kitchen to the door that inevitably had to lead up to the alley and the trash cans. I took the alley until it ended on Gavrila Principa and turned right. Another block of quick walking and I was at the phone booth at Sarajevska and Nemanjina.
It was still cold and I had to stand around stamping my feet until it rang at exactly one o’clock. I picked it up and said hello and the Italian-American voice said, “You sure you weren’t followed?”
“I made sure,” I said. “When can I talk to Killingsworth?”
“Whaddya wanta talk to him for?”
“Did you take a look at this morning’s papers?”
“No, I didn’t take a look at this morning’s papers.”
“My picture’s in them. Also my name. It’s all about how I’m going to hand over a million dollars for Killingsworth. So how do I know you didn’t pick my name out of the paper and decide to make yourself a quick million?”
“Ah, hell,” he said, “there ain’t no million dollars.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear you say,” I said. “Now where’s Killingsworth?”
“We got him in a castle.”
“A castle?”
“Well, it used to be a castle, but now it’s more like a hunting lodge.”
“Who owns it?”
“Well, that depends. It used to belong to some Hungarian count before the war and after that he claimed to have sold it to a Greek businessman, but the government moved in and used it as a school for a while, so the Greek’s relatives are suing the government, but they’re not getting anywhere, so now nobody’s using it, especially in winter, because the only way you can get to it is
by horseback.”
“Where is it?”
“About thirty-five kilometers southeast of Sarajevo.”
“How do I get there?”
“I’ll have to meet you in Sarajevo.”
“When?”
“The sooner the better. The ambassador’s getting tired of it.”
“Tired of what?”
“Chopping wood. We need a lot of wood to keep warm and it keeps him quiet.”
“All right. Name where and when.”
“Saturday. You know Sarajevo?”
I sighed. “No, I don’t know Sarajevo.”
“Well, there’s a gypsy quarter there called Dajanil Osmanbeg. It’s in a suburb called Bistrik. I’ll meet you there at nine Saturday night in the old railway station.”
“How’ll you recognize me?”
“I’ll buy a copy of today’s paper.”
“There’ll be five of us,” I said. “Four men and a woman.”
He muttered a curse in Serbo-Croatian or, for all I knew, in Macedonian. “That means six horses,” he said.
“From Sarajevo?”
“No, we’ll take a car out of there. But there’s still five kilometers that you can only make with a horse unless you want to walk and I understand Pernik’s pretty old.”
“Try for the horses,” I said.
“Can you ride?”
“No, but I can hang on.”
“They’ll be wooden saddles.”
“I prefer western,” I said.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Okay,” he said. “Nine o’clock at the railway station. You got where it is?”
“Near the gypsy quarter, Dajanil Osmanbeg,” I said. “In Bistrik, a suburb of Sarajevo.”
“That’s pretty good. It’s not quite the right accent, but it’s pretty good.”
“I studied at Linguaphone,” I said.
“What?”
“It must be the connection.”
“One more thing,” he said.
“What?”
“Don’t be followed!”
“I won’t!” I said and hung up.
I crossed the street and headed up Gavrila Principa again, turned left into the alley, made my way around the trash cans, went down the flight of steps that led to the entrance of the kitchen, nodded at the chef who nodded back this time, walked up the stairs to the third floor, caught the elevator down to the lobby, and went over to the desk clerk and said, “I’m expecting to meet some friends here. Has anybody been asking for Mr. St. Ives?”
He swallowed a couple of times and then nervously pointed to the two who’d followed me from the Metropol hotel and who now looked as if they were trying to blend with the wallpaper.
“Would these be the gentlemen?” he said I looked at the blond one, who looked away, and then at the short, stocky one who suddenly busied himself with a hangnail. “No,” I said, loudly enough for them both to hear, “I’m afraid I don’t know these gentlemen.”
14
I HAD BEEN TALKING for almost half an hour. My throat was dry and scratchy so I decided to try some of the plum brandy that I had bought on my way back from the Hotel Astoria. Park Wisdom shuddered as I drank it. We were in my room and he was slumped in a chair by the window, a trifle pale, more than a little wan. Henry Knight was stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He looked better than Wisdom, but almost anyone could have.
“Where does it hurt?” I said to Wisdom who smiled feebly.
“Do you remember your pas de deux with the belly dancer?” Knight said to the ceiling.
“I thought your one-man revival of The Glass Menagerie was more interesting,” Wisdom said to the window.
“We made a lot of friends during the evening,” Knight said.
“Fostered understanding,” Wisdom said. “Gained valuable insight, too.”
“Oh, Christ, I’m dying,” Knight said.
“It’s my turn on the bed,” Wisdom said. “Die in a chair.”
“Sure you wouldn’t care for a drop?” I said, offering the bottle around.
Knight groaned, swung his feet to the floor and pushed himself up. Wisdom rose gingerly and walked slowly to the bed. Knight eased himself into the chair by the window and Wisdom carefully lowered himself onto the bed. “When do you want me to rent the car?” he said.
“Now,” I said. “This afternoon. Go for a drive, the fresh air will give you a reason for living.”
“And you think we might be followed?” Knight said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I can only suffer.”
“You’re seeing who this afternoon?” Wisdom said.
“Bill Jones.”
“Bill Jones,” he said. “What a nice, simple name. He’s probably looking forward to a quiet evening at hearthside surrounded by his family. He feels no pain. He suffers no remorse. I wish my name were Bill Jones.”
“Who do you think might follow us?” Knight said. “Friends of that guy who looks like you or friends of the other one from the Ministry of Interior, what’s his name—”
“Slobodan Bartak,” Wisdom said. “He doesn’t have a nice, simple name.”
“Either or both,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter. Just give them a nice, long ride.”
“There’ll be trouble in the Balkans come spring, gentlemen,” Wisdom said to the ceiling. “Mark my word.”
“Do you mean war, Sir Malcolm?” Knight said.
“Only needs a spark, Worlington-Hoopes.”
“To ignite the tinderbox of Europe,” Knight said.
“Damned fine phrase, Worlington-Hoopes. Yours?”
“Go rent the car,” I said.
At the door, Wisdom turned and said, “What time are you seeing Grandpa Pernik?”
“Arrie set the appointment up for five.”
“When you see Gordana,” he said, “tell her, well, you know, tell her that I love her.”
“You’ve recovered,” I said.
I used the garage exit of the Metropol to avoid being followed, caught a rare, government-owned taxi at the main post office, and handed the driver the address that Tavro had written down. It was another trip through blocks of buildings and apartments that seemed to fall into three distinct styles: early Hapsburg, with all of Vienna’s turgid froth, but none of its charm; late Stalinoid, grim and stark enough to create galloping paranoia; and what I suppose could be called Enlightened Revisionism, which had a lot of glass and aluminum and colored panels and whose twin could be found near any good-sized shopping center on the outskirts of Kansas City.
The driver stopped before a small old house on a block that the Nazi bombers seemed to have missed which was about three miles from the center of Belgrade. It was a short narrow street and the houses that nestled along the edge of the sidewalk had a turn-of-the-century air about them. They were built of dark brown brick and varied in height from two to four stories. The house that the driver kept pointing at was a three-story building with two dormer windows and a tiled, dark red roof. I could see no house number, but I paid the driver what was on the meter and his socialist conscience didn’t object to the tip.
The sun was out although it was still cold. Three cats, one tortoiseshell and two tabbies, sat on the third riser of the stone steps that led to the door and washed themselves and blinked at the sun and yawned at each other. They looked well fed.
I knocked on the door and when no one answered, I knocked again. The door opened about six inches and a woman’s face looked out at me. She had gray hair. “Mr. Jones,” I said. She nodded and then closed the door. I waited. The door opened wide this time and a man dressed in blue Levis and a gray work shirt looked at me with calm, dark brown eyes. He was taller than I, more than six feet, and he had broad heavy shoulders and a bull chest and almost no hips that I could see. His dark hair was sparse on top and he wore it full at the sides where its gray ends lapped and curled over the tops of his long ears.
“I’m looking for Bill Jones,” I said.
“I’m Jones,” he said in a deep grating voice whose harsh vibrato threatened to rattle the windows. “You’re the American.”
“St. Ives,” I said. “Philip St. Ives.”
He nodded and then, almost as an afterthought, held out his right hand. It was a big, hard hand, but he didn’t use it to show how tough he was. He wouldn’t need to. When I was inside he kept the door ajar and said something in soft Serbo-Croatian. The three cats scampered in and trotted down a hall toward the rear of the house.
“Belong to the kids,” Jones said gruffly. We went into a sitting room and he waved me to an overstuffed chair that was covered with a worn plum-colored fabric. It matched the sofa that Jones lowered himself into. There were some crude oils on the walls of mountain scenes, along with the stuffed heads of a large buck and a wild-eyed wolf. There was also a framed photograph of some smiling men in various uniforms in what looked to be a forest setting who toasted the camera with their canteen cups. They had rifles and submachine guns slung over their shoulders. A white tile stove gave off heat in one corner. The floor was covered with dark Oriental rugs.
Jones sat on the couch, leaning forward, his forearms resting on his knees. He had a careful, watchful face, heavy-chinned and full-lipped, with a blunt, strong nose and a deep, frowning V between his thick eyebrows. Harsh lines, almost furrows, formed trenches around his mouth. I judged him to be somewhere between fifty and fifty-five.
“You want to get in touch with Tavro,” he said, making it a statement. “When?”
“Tonight.”
He nodded. “Okay. I’ll get word to him. You want to meet at that same place?”
“The Impossible?”
He nodded.
“That’s fine,” I said.
“What time?”
“Late. Around ten.”
He nodded again as the gray-haired woman came in carrying a beaten brass tray with three cups and three glasses on it. The tortoiseshell cat followed her into the room and jumped up on Jones’s lap. He stroked its head with one large hand and it turned on its purring machine. “This is the wife,” Jones said as the woman offered me the coffee and slivovica. “She doesn’t speak much English.” He said something in Serbo-Croatian and the woman smiled at me. Despite the gray hair and drab dress, she was glowingly attractive and it was obvious that she once had been pretty, perhaps even beautiful. I said thank you and she smiled again and then served Jones.
