Protocol for a Kidnapping

by Ross Thomas

  “That’s what he said. He knew Tavro and Tavro apparently squared it with his boss.”

  “Alexander Rankovic?”

  “The same. Jones fought with the Partisans.”

  “Huh.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means huh,” she said. “If I remember my crash course in Yugoslav history, there weren’t many Americans fighting with Tito. The U.S. liked Mihailović and his Cetniks better.”

  “So did the British,” I said.

  “At first,” she said. “Then they switched to Tito and parachuted Randolph Churchill in to show that they meant business.”

  “Jones said he was a radio operator with OSS.”

  “He could have been, but there weren’t many of them,”

  “You don’t think he was.”

  She shrugged. “What does it matter now?” she said. “He’s still dead.”

  We joined our host in a small dining room. There was bread and wine and the alaška čorba which turned out to be something like a Slavicized bouillabaisse with lots of paprika which I found quite tasty.

  “You are my first American guests,” our host said. “An honor you are doing us.”

  “Not at four o’clock in the morning,” I said.

  “It is the slow season. Next spring and summer will be many Americans coming.”

  “Did they last summer?”

  He shook his head. “Last summer we were not open. It was still the time that I must the permissions get.

  “What permissions?” I said.

  He spooned some more of the stew into his wide mouth, wiped it with the sleeve of his bathrobe, and tore off a double fistful of bread. He dunked the bread into the stew and crammed about a third of it into his mouth. As he chewed he studied us with a pair of pale gray eyes, the kind that you somehow expect to be blue and are faintly pleased and surprised when they aren’t. He seemed to be calculating how much of his story we were interested in and whether his English was up to the effort.

  “Since The Reform,” he said, “I must the permission get to open my hotel. It is private enterprise, yes?” I nodded. “So it is also a political question. First, the Communal Committee must its order of appearance decide—when to place it on the—” He stopped and said a Serbo-Croatian word to Arrie and she replied, “agenda.”

  “Yes, agenda,” he said. “Then the local organization of the Party must be consulted and then the veterans and the Socialist Union and the Socialist Youth and the Socialist Alliance of Working People. All must have their say, for serious questions must be answered.”

  “What kind of questions?” Arrie said.

  “Such as whether I can employ five workers or three. That is very important. Secondly, and I must to my own language go back for this.” He rattled off something that Arrie translated as, “Whether the Ritz Hotel, under the conditions of a socialist economy, will lead to a capitalist relationship or be completely integrated into the socialist system.”

  “What did they decide?” I said.

  “If I only four workers employed, there would no danger to our system be. So, I have four workers.” His eyes twinkled. “But also I have my wife, myself, my three sons, and their wives. They are family and do not count.”

  I told him that his competition up the street at the Palace Hotel was not at all eager to admit that the Ritz existed. He snorted. “Of course not,” he said. ‘They are afraid that I will away from them the tourist trade take. That is one. Two, they are all Serbs there and I am a Bosnian.” He paused. “That makes a great difference. But soon I will have an answer to my petition. Already through the Communal Committee it has gone.”

  “What petition?”

  “By spring I will two large advertising boards have at the ends of the city. They will draw much trade from the roads. It will in three languages be.”

  “Where’d you get the name?” I said, finishing the last of my soup.

  “You do not like it?” he said.

  “I think it’s fine. Ritz Hotel. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “There was much debate,” he said. “I wanted to call it the Hotel Uzice. I lost.”

  “Who wanted Ritz, your wife?”

  “No,” he said, “the chairman of the Socialist Alliance of Working People.”

  22

  I DIDN’T AWAKE UNTIL nearly ten when the management of the Ritz Hotel sent a smiling daughter-in-law up to our room with coffee. Arrie was still in bed, her mop of blond hair barely visible above the covers. She peeked out at me with one eye.

  “Who the Christ was that?” she said.

  “Room service with coffee.”

  “What time did we get to sleep?”

  “I don’t know; around five.”

  “Screwing’s the best tranquilizer there is.”

  “They’ve been trying to package it in one way or another for years.”

  She propped herself up in bed and I handed her a cup of coffee. “Takes two though,” she said.

  “Or three.”

  “You like that?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Threesies and foursies and whole rooms full, I guess.”

  “Three is better than one, but two is better than three.”

  “You’re conventional.”

  “Backward,” I said.

  “Hey, we tried that too last night, didn’t we? I like that.”

  She was sitting up in bed now, her knees up to her chin. “I’m going to have to try the other some time.”

  “What?”

  “A threesome. You want to play?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’d want another girl, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m selfish.”

  “Who?” she said.

  “Who what?”

  “Who’d you want?”

  “I’ll let you send the invitation.”

  “How about Gordana?”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  “Huh.”

  “Huh what?”

  “I was just thinking,” she said. “About Gordana. She wouldn’t be bad at all, would she?”

  “Not bad,” I agreed.

  “I never thought about it before. I mean not just like that, not imagining one particular person. What do you think she’d say?”

  “Yes or no,” I said.

  “How do you ask someone? I mean do you just say, ‘How’d you like to join us in bed tonight because we think you’re pretty sexy-looking?’”

  “That’s one way.”

  “What’s she going to do now that her grandfather is dead?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Is she still going to become a nun?”

  “I think that’s postponed.”

  “But she wants to go to the States?”

  “Yes.”

  “That shouldn’t be any problem for her now. Passports aren’t hard to get. Why doesn’t she just get one and go? Why does she have to go through all this kidnapping exchange thing? They aren’t after her.”

  “I’m trying to get the ambassador back, remember?” I said. “They’re expecting Gordana.”

  “What about Tavro?”

  “If he’s lucky, he can use her grandfather’s exit permit to get out of the country. Permits aren’t easy for people like him to come by.”

  “How’d you get mixed up with Tavro?” she said.

  “Just curious?”

  She shook her head. “My boss can’t figure out how he got involved in the kidnapping. Tavro was very bad news at one time.”

  “When?”

  “When The Reform started. You know what The Reform is?”

  “The decentralization of power, both political and economic,” I said, droning the words. “It’s been going on for years.”

  “Tavro was one of those old-timers who tried to stop it. He got bounced for his trouble. Now there’re others who think it’s gone too far. My boss heard that Tavro is peddling information.”

  “What kind?”

>   “The kind that can get him in trouble.”

  “Maybe that’s why he wants to leave the country,” I said.

  “You don’t talk much in the morning, do you?”

  “Get dressed,” I said. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  “Shit,” she said and kicked back the covers.

  “At the end of the hall,” I said. “Last door on your left.”

  Gordana, Knight, and Wisdom were in the dining room having breakfast. I joined them and asked where Tavro was.

  “He went out,” Wisdom said. “About thirty minutes ago.”

  “For what?”

  “To buy a razor,” he said. “I told him to buy four of them.”

  “Did you have a nice sleep?” Gordana asked me.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Miss Tonzi did not keep you awake?”

  “Not so that I noticed.”

  “That is very good,” she said and smiled sweetly while Knight and Wisdom followed the conversation with deepening interest. “I was worried that you would not get enough sleep.”

  “Nobody worried about how much I got,” Knight said.

  “I did,” Wisdom said. “I worried so much I couldn’t sleep myself.” He turned to Gordana. “I even thought of coming by your room so that you could worry about St. Ives and I could worry about Knight.”

  She smiled at him. It was a lovely smile and Wisdom basked in it. “You should have,” she said. “Perhaps we could have comforted each other in some fashion.” She patted him on the cheek and he smiled and I sipped the coffee that one of management’s daughters-in-law had brought.

  “Maybe we could console each other tonight,” Wisdom said.

  “I am not sure where we will be tonight,” Gordana said. “Mr. St. Ives has not told us.” She smiled again at Wisdom. “But it is an interesting thought.”

  “With luck, you’ll be in either Venice or Vienna,” I said.

  “And with no luck where will we be?” she said.

  “I have no idea.”

  “When do we start?” Knight asked.

  “As soon as Tavro comes back.”

  He came into the dining room then, bundled up in his dark overcoat, his carplike face pink with cold. He beckoned me to join him and Wisdom said, “Make sure he got some blades.”

  Tavro drew me out into the lobby and then looked around carefully. “I have been making inquiries,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “Transport.”

  “You mean trains and buses?”

  He nodded. “They are being watched.”

  “Looking for you?”

  “I am not sure,” he said. “There has been a murder.”

  “Jones?”

  He shook his head this time. “The radio,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “It identified the murdered man.”

  “Who was he?”

  “The news report that I heard said that it was an American.”

  “Not Jones though?”

  “No. It said that the man was Philip St. Ives.”

  The dead man had to be my look-alike, Arso Stepinac. I tried to digest the report of my death, but it wasn’t much use, so I asked Tavro, “Who identified the body?”

  “Someone from the American embassy. Its press attaché, I think. I do not remember if they gave his name.”

  “Lehmann,” I said. I kept on trying to think, to sort it all out, and I thought I was almost getting somewhere when Tavro said, “How will this affect your plans?”

  “How the hell should I know?” I said.

  “That is why I was making inquiries about transport.”

  “You’d better stick with us,” I said.

  His normally glum look changed into one of despondency. “I apparently have little choice.”

  “Did you buy the razors?” I said.

  He nodded and produced four plastic-handled safety razors from his pocket. “They come with blades,” he said.

  “Give me one and tell the others to shave and get ready. We’re going to leave within the next twenty minutes.”

  Arrie was pulling on her pantyhose when I entered the room.

  “Any hot water?” I said.

  “You’ll have to use the cork.”

  I ran some water into the basin and used a thin bar of soap on my face. While I stroked off the whiskers, I said, “You said your boss was thinking of moving in on the kidnapping. Your real CIA-type boss, I mean.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You never mentioned his name.”

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t think it was any of your business.”

  I cut myself, just below the earlobe where it bleeds forever. I swore and Arrie came over to the basin. “Here,” she said and patted a piece of Kleenex over the cut. I sliced off another swath of whiskers. She watched me.

  “What’s your boss’s name?” I said, working now on the ones that grow just below the nose.

  “It’s still none of your business.”

  “I can guess.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Gordon Lehmann, the insecure press attaché.”

  She laughed. “Gordon! He’s a fuckhead.”

  “But he’s your boss.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “Don’t press it so hard,” I said. “You said your boss was moving in on the kidnapping. Well, Gordon Lehmann sure as hell moved last night.”

  “How?” she said.

  I rinsed out the razor and handed it to her. “Put it in your purse.”

  “How?” she said again.

  “Gordon Lehmann identified my dead body.”

  She bit her lower lip and squeezed her eyes closed as if trying to think. Then she opened them wide. “I told you he’s a fuckhead.”

  “He’s also CIA.”

  She sighed. “Yes,” she said, “the fuckhead’s also CIA.”

  Maybe it was because it was Saturday, but except for the new buildings around its main square, which imposed a measure of decorum, Titovo Uzice reminded me of some brawling, wide open western town where the nearest law is over in the next county and likely to stay there.

  We were looking for a gasoline station and the main street was jammed with men who reeled in and out of tiny grog shops. Women in a bastardization of native dress lined up at shops accompanied, often as not, by a squealing pig and a squawling child. Arrie, Wisdom, and I wandered into one dim place that featured four bearded cutthroats seated at a rough table, hacking away at lumps of meat and chunks of bread with their eight-inch pocket knives, and no doubt plotting the city’s next crime wave. When they learned that we were Americans instead of Germans, they ordered a round of drinks. I couldn’t identify what it was, but it burned all the way down and in revenge I bought a double round for them. The filling station, they said, was near the market, across the square, and around a corner.

  We threaded our way through the sidewalk drunks and then fought the car through the human traffic. The men were taller than most Yugoslavs, but the women seemed dumpier. Nearly everyone pulled, carried, or wore some kind of livestock—pigs, chickens, or lambs which they draped around their necks. The market stalls, another bastion of free enterprise, offered on-the-job training in bitter haggling and a refresher course in sharp dealing, its practices and methods. Horses, sometimes hitched to high-wheeled carts, added to the general merriment.

  “It hasn’t changed a great deal,” Tavro said. “It is still very much like it was before the war.”

  “The snow didn’t seem to bother them,” I said.

  “Some who live thirty kilometers away were up at three or four o’clock so that they could make it to market,” he said. “It is the custom.”

  Wisdom drove into the new-looking, eight-pump gasoline station which offered something called Jugo-petrol. While we waited for the attendant to fill the Mercedes’ tank I switched on the radio and caught what seemed to be a news p
rogram. Arrie gave a running translation and her voice cracked a little when she said, “The man was identified by the press attaché of the American embassy as being Philip St. Ives of New York City. Authorities are conducting a wide search for the driver of the hit-and-run automobile.”

  “You’re dead,” Knight said.

  “I know.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “Premature.”

  23

  THE NEWS OF MY death provided a conversational topic all the way to Visegrad where we crossed the Drina River over the bridge about which they’ve sung songs, recited epics, and even written a novel. The trip through the Zlatibor Mountains down to the valley of the Drina had been a series of memorable skids, fine views, and outstanding profanities by Wisdom who fought the Mercedes through the icy hairpins and switchbacks of the road that turned and twisted back upon itself like a piece of wet string. The view of Bosnia to the north and Montenegro to the south was spectacular in spots, awesome in others.

  “We fought through here,” Tavro said in a somber tone and I decided that he was essentially a man without humor. “It is a harsh land.”

  The bridge at Visegrad with its four and a half arches on one side and five and a half on the other rested on massive pillars built of stone which was the color of honey and we slowed down at its center, like a carload of Kansas tourists, to read the inscription which according to Arrie’s rapid translation said, “Bridge built by Mehmed Pasa Sikolovic in 1571. Destroyed or damaged by Germans in 1943 and rebuilt between 1949 and 1952. And that makes it four hundred years old.”

  “You’re in Carstairs country again, Park,” Knight said.

  “How so?”

  “We’ve just left Serbia and we’re now in the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.”

  “Ah,” Wisdom said. “The Gothic Carstairs.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “This,” Wisdom said, “is where Carstairs always flings his long, black cloak over his lean frame, thrusts the brace of finely wrought pistols through his belt, and plunges out into the bitter Herzegovinian night, his footsteps echoing hollowly on the worn steps of the ancient castle.”

  Sarajevo lies halfway between Trieste and Istanbul although it’s difficult to get there from either place. We arrived just before dusk, having averaged a nifty thirty-two kilometers an hour since leaving Titovo Uzice at eleven. We came down through the narrow gorge that leads into the city which stretches along the banks of the Miljacka River just in time to glimpse a minaret or two.