Don't Ask

by Donald E. Westlake

  "just like all those countries over there keep splitting up."

  "Balkanization," Grijk said with astonishing clarity.

  "That's the long form," Tiny warned him. "Anyway, out east you got the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church, that's a schism from the regular Roman Catholic. And in some little places, you got the Eastern C/worthodox, that's a schism from the Orthodox. Okay?

  We set on that?"

  "All set," John agreed. "That's all the religion I'm gonna need for a month."

  "Me, too," Tiny agreed. "Anyway, when the AustroHungarian Empire broke up, that province that was the two countries got to be one country, and the Commies kept it that country, and now the Commies are out, and it's splitting into two countries. So when it was one country, it was a member at the UN, it had a seat, and the question is, which of the halves gets to have that seat, because that's the one with the seniority and the financial help already in place and all of that, and the loser has to apply to become a member, and there's some countries in the world might want to blackball the loser, whichever one it is, so the important thing for both Tsergovia and Votskojek--"

  Grijk made that sound again.

  "--is to get the seat that's already there. To be the successor to the previous country."

  Andy said, "Tiny, I can't seem to remember the name of the country before it split up. I mean, you mentioned it, didn't you?"

  Thunderclouds crossed Grijk's face. It was fascinating to watch, like being in a car, driving across the plains of Nebraska, and seeing the storms far away as they march over the wheat fields. Darkness, lightning, slanting rain, all moved this way and that over the rugged terrain of Grijk Krugnk's face. J.C. was so interested in this visual phenomenon that she almost forgot to listen to Tiny"s answer, which was:

  "No, I didn't mention it, Andy, and I'm not gonna mention it, and I'll tell you why. You want to think of Tsergovia and Votskojek --"

  There went Grijk again, through the storms.

  "--as a really bad marriage, so when it came to the end what you got was a really bad divorce, so in both countries now it's illegal to mention the name of the old country that used to be."

  "Punishable," Grijk said with gloomy appetite, "by det."

  "If anybody from those two countries," Tiny went on, "even hears the old name, they go berserk. You want Grijk here to go berserk?"

  Everybody in the room contemplated Grijk, who was looking half-berserk as it was. Everybody in the room came to the same conclusion, which Andy voiced for them all: "I don't think so."

  "Good," Tiny said. "I can tell you this much. In the list of the hundred and fifty-nine countries that are in the UN--"

  "You're kidding," Andy said. "There can't be that many countries."

  "You're right, there can't," Tiny agreed, "but there are. And on the list, where this old country used to be, there's now a space between Benin and Bhutan."

  Stan said, "Between what and who?"

  "Benin and Bhutan. Those are countries, both of them."

  This time, when Andy said, "You're kidding," Stan said it right along with him.

  "I'm not," Tiny assured them. "Hanging out with Grijk here, I been picking up stuff about a lotta places. You won't believe the countries there are. How about the Comoros?"

  "Isn't that," Andy asked, "what happens when you get knocked out?"

  "No. How about Lesotho and Vanuata?"

  "They sound like medicines," John suggested, "meant to keep people calm.

  People like Grijk over there."

  Grijk grinned, flashing a couple of teeth. "Boy," he said to John, "you god id down perfect." "Thank you," John said.

  Andy said, "Tiny? Tell us some more countries. You got any more like that?"

  "Tons," Tiny said. "How about Cape Verde?"

  "I thought that was in Louisiana."

  "It isn't. It's in the Atlantic Ocean off Africa."

  "Next to Atlantis," John suggested.

  "I don't know that one," Tiny said. "But I do know Bahrain and Qatar--"

  "You get that in your throat," Andy said.

  "--and Burkina Faso, and Oman--"

  "No, man," Stan said.

  "Yes, man," Tiny said. "And Djibouti."

  John said, "How can you say that without snapping your fingers?"

  "Say what?"

  "Djibouti," John said, and snapped his fingers. It did something for the name.

  "I will from now on," Tiny promised. "And there's the Maldives. And Sao Tome and Principe, that's one country."

  "What's one country?" Andy wanted to know.

  "Sao Tome and Principe," Tiny repeated, and shrugged. "Maybe they're gonna break up, like Grijk's crowd. You all had enough?"

  While they all agreed they'd had enough, J.C. pondered. What would be a nice name for a country? Jaycenia. Tayloronia. Needs work.

  "So here's the situation," Tiny was saying while J.C. mused. "The whole problem of who's gonna be the successor country at the UN is such a political mess that nobody wants to touch it. So they turned it over to a priest. An archbishop."

  "I get it," Andy said. "He's gonna be on the side of the religion in the country, right? I mean, the same religion he is."

  "Wrong," Tiny said. "What you got in the country--the two countries--is Roman Catholics and Eastern Unorthodoxes. So the UN made up a commission, and at the head of the commission they put this Eastern Orthodox archbishop from Bulgaria or Poland or someplace, that wouldn't automatically agree with either side, in fact he'd automatically disagree with the whole crowd, and the commission he's in charge of is gonna decide. Which means, he is. And the word is, the archbishop, being another kind of nut--"

  "A religious nut," Andy suggested.

  "The world is full of those," John said. "If they were a money crop,"

  Tiny agreed, "nobodyd ever go hungry again. Anyway, the archbishop decided, this saint's relic is the crucial factor. It's the thing gives the legitimacy to the country, makes the straight line back to the founding, before the AustroHungarians and all those people, so whoever's got the bone has to be the legitimate heir."

  "And he won't mind," John asked, "if Grijk's bunch steal it? Are you sure of this?"

  "That's not the way it works," Tiny said.

  John nodded. "I didn't think it was gonna be."

  "The way it works," Tiny said, "the bone was in the cathedral at Novi Glad, and Novi Glad's now the capital of Votskojek--so those are the--Grijk, I wish you wouldn't keep doing that every time I mention the name of the place; it's getting me all geechy."

  "I will try," Grijk said, "do restrain myselv."

  "Thank you. Where was I?"

  John said, "Still the capital."

  "Right. So they got it, they got the bone right there. So to stall things a little, the Tsergovians told the UN that isn't the real bone, it's a fake, so the bone was brought to New York to authenticate it."

  John said, "How you supposed to do that? You can't put an eight-hundred-year-old bone on a lineup, get a positive ID."

  "They turn it over to the scientists," Tiny explained. "They can do these tests, tell you is it a human bone, the right bone from the left leg, is it that old, did it have gangrene, all that stuff."

  "So Grijk's people are screwed," John said, and Grijk nodded sadly.

  "Unless," Tiny said, "we can switch bones before the tests get finished, and they just got started. We would've been ahead of them completely if it hadn't been for this little delay about money, but that's okay, that's nothing for you to worry about."

  "You're right," John said.

  "Meantime," Tiny went on, "Tsergovia's telling the UN the other guys're fulla shit, that's a fake bone, and when the scientists prove it's a fake bone Tsergovia will come out with the real one. The archbishop will get mad at Votskojek--mmmmm."

  "Sorry," said Grijk.

  "Keep trying," Tiny urged him, and told the others, "The arch bishop'll get mad at Votskojek for blasphemy with the relic, and the commission will recommend that Tsergovia inher
its the seat, and the good guys win."

  "I'm not sure about that last part," John said, "but never mind, I get the idea. So where's the bone now, in some lab somewhere?"

  "Oh, no," Tiny said. "Both countries got these UN missions, only they're what they call observer missions now, until they get a seat, and Votskojek's got tight--very good, Grijk--got tight security on the bone by keeping it in their mission and only letting the scientists study it inside there."

  "And where is this mission?" John asked.

  "On a boat in the East River," Tiny said.

  "A boat," John said, while the others looked troubled. "So we row out to it, is that the idea?"

  "Naw, it's tied up to a dock in the East Twenties," Tiny said, "where there used to be a ferry across to Long Island City a long, long time ago. The city owns the dock and the old ferry building there, and the Votskojeks rent it from the city for like nothing a year."

  "That sounds like New York," John agreed.

  "You got to remember," Tiny said, "both of these countries are poor.

  Their principal export is rock."

  J.C. had promised herself to remain silent, since this wasn't her meeting, it was theirs, but this news was too compelling. "Rock?" she blurted out; as a businesswoman, one whose mail-order businesses could be thought of as a kind of export, she wanted to know how you made money out of exporting rock.

  No one seemed to object to her horning in like this. The guys, in fact, seemed just as interested in the answer as she was and paid as close attention when Tiny said, "Gauntries with more regular land, like dirt-type land, they use Tsergovian and Votskojek rock when they're making new roads."

  "Tsergovian rock much better," Grijk announced. "Dests prove."

  "No argument," Tiny said. "Anyway," he told the others, "the point is, these countries are poor, so they don't go in for UN missions in fancy town houses in the East Sixties and all this stuff. You know, they had to float a loan just to hire you guys."

  "Which raises a question, Tiny," John said. "You did explain to Grijk about expenses, didn't you?"

  "Absolutely," Tiny said. "Subway fare, stuff like that, you take care of yourself. A real expense, like a bribe or a vehicle or a weapon, Tsergovia pays."

  "In front."

  "He knows that, Dortmunder," Tiny said.

  "No limousines," Grijk said, raising an admonitory finger.

  "They know that, Grijk," Tiny said.

  Andy said, "If they're so poor, how come they got a yacht?"

  "Did I say yacht?" Tiny asked. "I said boat, am I right?"

  "So the first thing we better do," John said, "is go look at this boat."

  "I'll take you over there and show you," Tiny offered, "whenever you say." 'What about now?"

  "Good," said Tiny.

  Andy said, "Grijk, you coming with us?"

  Grijk said, "Andy, you must led John teach you how pronounce Grijk. And I don'd go, because if dehr guards would see me, dey would shood me."

  Andy raised an eyebrow at John. "A fun crowd."

  And that was the end of the meeting. Everybody stood up and all the men shook hands with Grijk, and Grijk assured them their praises would be sung forever in the schoolrooms of Tsergovia, even if anonymously, and then J.C. said, "Nice to see you fellas again," and the fellas said it was great to see her again, and then they all trooped out and away down the hall toward the elevator, and at last J.C. was alone. She went to the kitchen and poured out her one-of-the-guys beer and filled a different glass with a nice Pinot Grigio and went back to the living room to kick off her satin shoes and sit in her morris chair, which seemed larger and lower than before, and to think about countries.

  A cacophony of countries, a mob, a milling throng, a legion of nations.

  Who would have guessed there were so many mother and father lands? You could hide in a crowd like that.

  And do what? 'Dortmunder looked at that Votskojek boat over there and was not impressed. On the way across and downtown, in a Honda Accord Stan had borrowed for the occasion, Tiny had told them the boat had originally been a tramp freighter on the Black Sea or the Bosporus or one of those places and had just barely made it across the Atlantic last winter, and Dortmunder could well believe that.

  Much smaller than a Caribbean cruise liner, and a lot dirtier, too, the ship was a tall black hulk held by heavy, thick, hairy ropes around metal stanchions on both sides of the old ferry slip. If it weren't for the few lights on inside the vessel, defining circles and rectangles of dim yellow light, it would look mostly like a barge piled with scrap iron.

  Their nearest vantage point to view the scene of the crime-to-he was the FDR Drive, the elevated highway running--crawling, really--up the eastern shore of Manhattan Island. This time of night, traffic on the Drive was moderate--if hurtling taxicabs, drunken commuters, and illegal aliens fleeing petty crimes could ever be called moderate--so Stan had merely stopped the borrowed Honda in the farthest right lane (there is no shoulder, no verge, no space to pull over on the FDR Drive) and everybody got out.

  Stan opened the hood and stood in front of the car and from time to time glowered at the inoffensive little engine in there as though it had failed him in some way. Meantime, not very satisfactorily, they cased the joint.

  Hell of a joint. The boat was tucked into that old ferry slip beyond a blocky brick three-story building that had been empty and unsafe and unused for years. On the boat's rounded black stern, seen beyond the building, Pride of Votskojek was faintly visible in dirty white letters.

  Access. A potholed blacktop road came out from under the FDR, pointing toward the ferry building, but before getting even halfway there it ran into an eight-foot-high chain-link fence with rolls of razor wire across the top. The metal support poles of this fence were sunk into concrete right in the roadway, making it absolutely clear that no more cars or other vehicles were ever going to be invited through there ever again.

  This side of the fence, to the right of the truncated road, a small parking area was illuminated by one floodlight; it contained five beat-up old cars parked with their noses to the fence, two of them with red-white blue diplomat plates visible at the rear. Near the cars, a narrow chain-link door was inset in the chain-link fence and was guarded by two short, squat guys in uniforms with side arms.

  Beyond the fence, if it were possible to get beyond the fence, hulked the ferry building, as dark and dense as a Mayan temple, its boarded-up top-floor windows at the same height as the FDR Drive, so that from where they were standing they would be able to look right in, if the boards weren't there and the lights were on inside (and there were lights inside to be on), and if they cared, which they didn't. It was about twenty yards from where they now stood to the facade of the dead ferry building, not too far to bloop a little forward pass on a trap play, but far too far to stretch a plank over in case you had this idea, for instance, to crawl along, one end to the other, above the fence.

  The top two stories of the building stood on two fat legs, which were the ground floor and between which used to be access (for cars? horse-drawn wagons? how long ago was this eminently sensible technology abandoned?) to the ferries. Beyond the building --best seen from just north of it on the FDR, where they were stopped, Stan giving the finger to the occasional wise-guy honker --was the slip where ferries used to dock for loading and unloading vehicles and foot passengers (eminently sensible) and where the Pride of Votskojek now wallowed, round rusty stern toward the building, blunt prow nodding stupidly at the river.

  "The guards," Kelp said, "those armed guards down there, can see the parking lot. From the corner there, where they're stationed, they can see the whole fence. Those guards, those armed guards right there, could see us if they looked up, and they could see all along the FDR here. And those look to me like walkie talkies they got on their belts there, next to the guns. So what I think, I think if we go and put a bunch of sleeping pills in some hamburger meat and throw it over the fence, it won't work."

  "I knew they w
ere gonna get me on a boat," Dortmunder said. Not too long ago, he'd been involved in an involved little caper upstate involving a reservoir, which most of the time had been on top of him. His attitude toward boats and large bodies of water remained negative.

  "Well, Dortmunder," Tiny said, leaning on the crumbling low wall of the FDR, "it does kinda play like that. A boat. At least to get a better look at the thing. By daylight."

  "Nighttime, right now," Dortmunder pointed out, "is the best conditions we can hope for. And right now, our best conditions include armed guards, bright lights, chain-link fence, and razor wire. And that's just to get to the pier. We don't know what fun there is when you're trying to get on the boat."

  "My guess," Kelp said, "is more lights and more armed guards, but probably no more razor wire. Just a guess."

  "And thank you for it," Dortmunder said. Turning to Tiny, he said, "So this is an expense for your cousin."

  "A boat, you mean," Tiny said.

  "We shouldn't hang around here too much longer," Stan mentioned.

  "Give me a minute here, Stan," Dortmunder said, and to Tiny he said, "A safe boat. No leaks, no running out of gas, no bad stuff."

  "Naturally," Tiny said.

  "There's nothing naturally about it," Dortmunder said.

  Tiny spread his hands. "But he doesn't have to buy this boat, right?

  Just rent it."

  "From a renter," Dortmunder said, "that's never lost a boat."

  Kelp said, "Also, it should look like a boat that you'd see out there.

  One that would fit in."

  "Sure," Tiny said.

  "That doesn't sink," Dortmunder said. "That doesn't even get wet inside."

  "You got it, Dortmunder," Tiny promised him.

  "What I want," Dortmunder said, "is a boat you could grow cactus in." we are a very poor country," Grijk said.

  "We know that," Tiny told him. "The guys know it, and I know it." And, he might have added, anybody who walked into the place would know it.

  The Tsergovian mission to the United Nations was not on a former tramp steamer in the East River. It hadn't occurred to the Tsergovians, frankly, to come up with the kind of cute and clever way to avoid high New York rents that the Votskojeks had; another reason, if another reason were needed, for the Tsergovian nose to be out of joint.