by Ross Thomas
“There should have been more time,” Tavro said, his tone petulant, almost a whine.
“There wasn’t any.”
“Where do we go now?”
“We meet some people.”
“People?”
“Persons.”
“You did not say that there would be anyone else.”
“No,” I said, “I didn’t.”
“Who are they?”
“Friends.”
“I do not like it. I should have been consulted.”
“See whether the driver can go a little faster,” I said.
Tavro spoke to the driver and the car sped up to twenty-three or twenty-four miles an hour. I looked back several times, but there seemed to be no one following. As we drove more deeply into the blocks of apartments and flats, the traffic became almost nonexistent. Belgrade is not known for its night life.
The driver said something over his shoulder to Tavro who replied briefly.
“What did he say?” I said.
“That we are almost there.”
A new blue or black Mercedes sedan was parked at a corner and the taxi drew up behind it. I paid the driver and we got out. Wisdom left the driver’s seat of the new Mercedes and walked back toward us. He held his hands out as if apologizing and when he got closer he said, “We couldn’t help it, Phil. We tried but we honest to God couldn’t help it.”
“Help what?” I said.
The rear door of the new Mercedes opened.
“Help what?” I said again.
“Me,” Arrie Tonzi said as she stood by the car’s open door, smiling prettily at Jovan Tavro.
19
THE WIND WHIPPED AROUND the corner, billowing out the long skirt of Arrie’s brown suede coat. It picked up the strands of her blond hair and played with them for a moment before replacing them in a careless coiffure that she brushed out of her eyes with the gloved fingers of her left hand. The look she gave me was one of begging defiance, if there is such a thing. I glared at her and turned to Wisdom. “Get him in the car,” I said, indicating Jovan Tavro who huddled into his dark overcoat. “The backseat.”
“Who is the woman?” Tavro demanded.
“Just get in the car,” I said and walked over to Arrie. I closed the door of the Mercedes, took her by the elbow, and led her unprotestingly to the shelter of an apartment building entrance.
“Wisdom says he couldn’t help bringing you,” I said. “Why not?”
She tried for her go to hell grin, but failed to manage it. “I threatened that I’d tell Lehmann.”
“The embassy’s press guy?”
She nodded.
“Tell him what?”
“That the exchange is on and that he can release it to the press.”
I shook my head. “It took more than that.”
She looked away and then looked back again. “I went up to your room and you weren’t there. Henry and Park were, so I figured it out.”
“Just like that?” I said.
“We got some new information today.”
“Who’s we?”
She made a small gesture. “My boss.”
“What kind of information?”
“That something’s gone wrong with the exchange.”
“What?”
“That’s all we got, Phil, I swear it.”
“That still doesn’t explain how you got Wisdom and Knight to bring you along.”
She looked away again. “I told them that I’d learned something and that if I didn’t get it to you, it would blow everything.”
“They believed you?”
“I had to prove to them who I work for.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Okay. What else?”
“I don’t know what my boss learned or heard, but he did hear something and he’s having it checked out. It’s about the kidnapping. If they find out what they suspect, they’re going to move in whether State likes it or not.”
“And that’s your hot information?”
“I’ve got another item.”
“What?”
“Somebody else is mixed up in the kidnapping.”
“Who?”
She looked at me steadily this time. “Jovan Tavro,” she said. “The man who’s in the back of your car.”
I took her by the elbow again and we moved back to the car. If the CIA was edging its way in, then Arrie Tonzi was its one link to me—unless she was lying about everything. Or they could have manufactured the story and then told her to peddle it around, just to see who’d buy. But if the CIA had somehow connected Jovan Tavro with the kidnapping, then they knew something that Hamilton Coors very much hadn’t wanted them to know. No matter how I shook the puzzle, it refused to give a clear picture—except that I was stuck with Arrie Tonzi who, I decided, would have to earn her keep.
I knocked on the window of the Mercedes’ front door. Henry Knight rolled it down. “You have what you need?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go,” I said. “Park, you stay with our guest.”
“I insist on being told what is happening,” Tavro said from the backseat.
“What’ll I tell him?” Wisdom said.
“A story.”
“What about Arrie?” he asked.
“She goes with me and Knight. If we need any translating, she can tend to it.”
Knight got out of the car. “You happy?” he said to Arrie.
“I’m here anyway,” she said.
“Let’s go,” I said. We walked around the corner toward the building that contained the Pernik apartment. Through a glass door that led to the vestibule I could see two plainclothesmen seated in chairs. Both were nodding. I knocked on the door and one of the men stirred and looked around. I beckoned to him and he rose reluctantly. I turned to Arrie. “Tell him that we want to see Anton Pernik,” I said.
She nodded. The man opened the door and Arrie began talking to him in Serbo-Croatian. He shook his head at first, but then I heard her mention Bartak’s name and he began to look less surly. Finally, he held the door open and we went through.
“He wants to see our passports,” she said.
Knight and I handed ours to her and she handed them to the plainclothesman along with her own. He glanced at them and then tucked them away in his pocket. He said something to Arrie and she turned to me.
“He says that he’ll keep them until we come down,” she said.
I shook my head. “Not all of us are coming down,” I said. “Think of something to get them back.”
She shook her head in bewilderment “What?”
“You’re the CIA agent, honey,” Knight said, bowing slightly to the plainclothesman, “come up with something brilliant.”
Arrie turned back to the plainclothesman and, holding out her hand, said something. The plainclothesman’s eyebrows went up, he laughed and winked, and then brought out the passports and handed them to Arrie. She thanked him and then handed them to us.
“What did you tell him?” I said as we started up the stairs.
“That you and I might be spending the night and possibly wouldn’t see him again before he went off duty.”
“Well, if it wasn’t brilliant, it was quick,” I said.
Apparently, the two policemen downstairs were the only ones on duty at night. None was guarding the door to the Pernik flat. I knocked and the door was opened immediately by Gordana Panić.
“Has anyone tried to see him?” I said.
She shook her head. “No one.”
“What about Stepinac?” I said.
She ducked her head like a child caught in its first lie. “He came to see me, not my grandfather.”
“But you told him that the old man was dead.”
“I had to,” she said. “It was the only way.”
“Well, Stepinac’s dead,” I said, not trying to ease her shock, if there was to be any.
She repeated the word. “Dead?”
“Like your grandfather.”
&nb
sp; She gestured vaguely around the room. “But he was here and we talked and he had some brandy and—” She ended it there and looked at Arrie and then at Knight. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“I’ll need some of his clothes,” Knight said. “His overcoat and hat and gloves and a scarf, if he had one.”
“Whose?” she said.
“Your grandfather’s,” I said. “Knight’s going to impersonate him while we go past the guards downstairs.”
“Pernik is dead?” Arrie said to me.
“That’s right,” I said.
“When did he—”
I interrupted her. “I haven’t got time to give you a running explanation and you don’t deserve one. Just pick up what you can as we go along.”
“The clothes. I need his clothes,” Knight was saying to Gordana.
“They’re back here,” she said, moving toward the bedroom where the dead man lay. Knight followed her and I followed Knight. All three of us filed into the bedroom where the old man still lay clutching his rosary. “Good Christ,” Knight said.
“In this cupboard,” Gordana said, opening a closet.
Knight rummaged through it and took out a hat, a coat, and a scarf. “Did he have any gloves?” he said.
Gordana produced a pair from the drawer of a bureau and handed them to Knight. He put the hat on first, wearing it low over his eyes. He slipped into the topcoat which was too short for him until he stooped to compensate for its lack of length. He wrapped the scarf around his neck and most of his chin.
“Glasses,” he said. “He wore glasses.”
Gordana looked around the room. “I put them someplace,” she said. “Someplace safe.” She opened and closed drawers until she found them in what seemed to be her sewing box. “Here,” she said, handing them to Knight.
“Is this your best mirror?” he said, pointing to the one above the bureau. She nodded and Knight took articles from the pocket of his own topcoat which he had folded on a chair. “That coat cost me two hundred and twenty-five bucks, skipper,” he said to me. “It goes on the expense account if I have to leave it here.”
“One double-breasted, foreign intrigue trench coat,” I said. “Duly entered.”
Knight removed Pernik’s clothing and started opening his packages as Gordana and I watched. “All I could get hold of was powder and pancake makeup and an eyebrow pencil,” he said. “But if it’s only a quick glance, it may do.”
“What about your hair?” I said.
“I’ll have to shave off my sideburns,” he said. “There’s no time for dye and I couldn’t find any in that hotel shop anyway. The hat and the scarf’ll cover most of my hair. I can use powder in the eyebrows.” He turned to Gordana. “Your grandfather have a razor?”
She nodded. “It is the old-fashioned kind with a straight blade.”
“Don’t you have one?” he said.
She shook her head. “I do not find use for one.”
I could attest to that but I didn’t. “Use the straightedge,” I said.
“Where is it?” Knight asked.
“In the bath,” she said. “Come, I’ll show you.”
While they were gone I stared at the old man who looked no deader than he had looked at half past five that afternoon when his nude granddaughter and her new lover had come calling.
Knight came back into the bedroom looking almost naked without his sideburns. Gordana followed him. “She watched,” he said. “She likes to watch men shave.”
“Cut yourself?” I said.
“Only a nick.”
He turned to the mirror over the bureau and started applying the pancake makeup and the powder. “It’s more a question of mimicry than it is of makeup,” he said. “I just want to create an old man’s face—any old man. But my movements—my walk and my gestures—will provide the real misdirection. If they recognize them as familiar, they won’t look at the face too much. The familiar clothing will help too.”
He worked on his face for fifteen minutes, rubbing here, patting there, and drawing lines with the eyebrow pencil. Then he put on the hat, an old, almost shapeless felt, and pulled it down low over his forehead. He wrapped the long, blue woolen scarf around his neck and chin, making it ride high up on the back of his collar. He shrugged into the coat and adjusted the glasses so that they rode halfway down his nose. He looked up at the ceiling, as if trying to remember something, and then with a dip and shrug he started to walk across the room in a slow, shuffling, sliding gait that drew a gasp from Gordana.
“It is exactly how he walked!” she said.
Knight walked back toward us. “He walked on the outside of his feet,” he said. “A lot of old men do.” He peered at Gordana over his glasses, using a stooped, slouching posture. “How do you like it, my dear?” he asked in a deep voice that was an almost perfect replica of Pernik’s—accent, inflection and all.
She glanced at her dead grandfather quickly. “You do not look as he looked, but you sound and walk as he did. It is fantastic.”
“It’ll be fantastic,” Knight said, “if they ask me to say something in Serbo-Croatian.” He slumped back into his old man’s posture and shuffled out of the room. Gordana turned to me.
“I am—I am sorry about Stepinac,” she said. “I did not mean to seem so stupid earlier, but it was a shock and I do not need any more shocks. I have had enough. How did he die?”
“It was an accident,” I said.
She shook her head. “I did not love him, but he was nice to me. I am sorry that he is dead. That is not much, is it, to be only sorry?”
“You can’t do anything else,” I said. “Do you want anything here?” I gestured at the room and the bed where the old man lay.
She shook her head. “I want nothing from here. Nothing.” She walked over and put her hand on her grandfather’s forehead. “He is cold,” she said and turned back to me. “Were we terrible this afternoon? If we were terrible, I will forget it.”
“I don’t know what we were,” I said.
“I will forget only part of it then,” she said. “I will forget only the terrible part. The rest I will remember. Will you?”
“I’ll remember it all,” I said.
She nodded, looked at her grandfather once more, and said something to him in Serbo-Croatian.
“What did you say?” I asked her.
She smiled faintly. “I said, ‘Good-bye, Grandfather.’”
20
THE PLAINCLOTHESMAN WHO HAD looked at our passports wanted to talk. Arrie went first down the stairs followed by Gordana and Knight, moving slowly and carefully in his old man’s gait. Arrie chattered away in Serbo-Croatian and when the guard looked up at Knight, Gordana moved in close to the policeman, smiling and murmuring something that caused him to look at her carefully.
As Knight went past the talkative guard, Gordana put her hand on the man’s shoulder and he reached up and gave it a small squeeze. The other guard turned his attention toward his colleague’s flirtation.
Knight moved slowly to the entrance door. Gordana caught up with him and took his arm, as a dutiful granddaughter should. Arrie and I followed and we were almost at the door when the talkative guard called something. I couldn’t understand what he said, but I did catch the name Pernik.
“What’s he want?” I said to Arrie as Knight stopped and turned slowly. The guard approached him.
“He wants some papers that Bartak gave you for Pernik and Gordana,” Arrie said. I stepped into the guard’s path and made a show of taking the thick brown envelope from my pocket and handing it over. The man examined its contents and kept two forms. Arrie asked him what they were and he told her with a bored shrug. “They’re the forms necessary for Pernik to leave his house,” she said.
The plainclothesman handed me back the envelope, waved casually at Knight who gave him an old man’s wave in return, and we left the apartment. I hurried to catch up with Knight “Keep up your imitation,” I told him. “Somebody might be watching this place.�
� He nodded and shuffled on down the street until we were around the corner where the Mercedes was parked. I put Knight and Gordana in the backseat next to Tavro. Arrie sat between Wisdom and me in the front
“Where to?” Wisdom said, starting the engine.
“I’ll give you directions,” I said.
As we started, Tavro said, “I demand to be told who these people are and what it is that you’re planning, Mr. St. Ives.”
I kept looking at a map of Belgrade as I said to Wisdom, “I thought you were going to tell him a story.”
“I did,” he said, “but he wasn’t much interested. Which way?”
“The next left,” I said.
“I repeat my request Mr. St. Ives,” Tavro said in a cold tone.
I turned partially in the seat. “The gentleman at the wheel and the one next to you are colleagues of mine. The young lady in the rear is your new granddaughter, Gordana Panić. The papers that I have which may get you out of the country say that you’re Anton Pernik, a poet by trade.”
Tavro muttered something. “What’d he say?” I asked Arrie.
“That Pernik is a discredited poet.”
“He’s also a dead one,” I said.
“But his papers are still good?” Tavro asked, leaning forward.
“They’re official, if that’s what you mean.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No,” I said, “I didn’t kill him.”
“If you have his papers, it is a logical question,” Tavro said. “Who is the other woman?”
“This one?” I said, turning to look at Arrie.
“Yes.”
“She’s with the CIA.”
This time Tavro didn’t mutter his comment, and I didn’t ask for a translation. Profanity can be a universal language.
“You’re telling everybody, aren’t you?” Arrie said to me.
“I thought you could take the credit in case anything goes right.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much danger of that,” Wisdom said. “By the way, where are we headed?”
“Someplace safe, I hope,” I told him. “If I can find it again.”
