Оливер Блик - Protocol for a Kidnapping

“We’ll take care of the cost of the meeting room,” Gordon Lehmann said when the conference was over. It was something that he thought I might be worrying about. It wasn’t but I thanked him anyway and asked him to join us for lunch. He shook his head and said that he should get back to the embassy.

“What’s that address?” I said.

“Kneza Milosa fifty,” he said and spelled it for me. “The phone’s 645–655. Extension seventeen.”

While I was writing it down on the back of my airline ticket he said, “Were you ever in PR, Phil?”

I told him no, that I’d never had the pleasure, that I’d always worked for newspapers, and mentioned the name of the one that I’d worked for in New York and he said he remembered my column and then asked, “Do you think it would be helpful if I got some actual newspaper experience? I came right to State from school.”

It would take more than that, I thought, but said, “I don’t think it’s really necessary, Gordon.” And then, because he very much seemed to need something more, I added, “You’re doing a hell of a fine job here.” It was a lie, but since I had been lying all morning, to almost anyone who would listen, one more couldn’t hurt anything and it might even keep him from brooding the rest of the afternoon away.

They really should try as hard to keep sensitive people out of public relations as they do to keep embezzlers out of banks. But my line or two of praise was all that Lehmann’s ego needed, at least till suppertime, and he headed happily back to the embassy to compose a brilliant aide-mémoire or two on the conference.

At my elbow, Arrie Tonzi said, “You’re full of nifties, aren’t you?”

“Why?”

“In just one morning I get to watch you put the slam on Bartak, handle the press conference like you’d scripted it, and then find time to administer to the tortured sensibilities of our press attaché, poor wretch.”

“He’s all right,” I said.

“He’s miserable and you know it. That’s why you spread the word balm on. Either you’re schizy, St. Ives, or beneath that grim exterior beats a bleeding heart.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said. “Let’s eat.”

We were joined at lunch by Wisdom and Knight who had been sitting at the rear of the press conference. When I asked what they thought of it, Wisdom said that it had been highly informative, but my jokes were old. Knight said he had found it entertaining and amusing, but noticed that I lacked stage presence and offered to teach me a few simple but useful gestures.

“Anything else?” I said.

“What’s on for later, after our naps?” Wisdom asked.

“We go calling on the Nobel poet and his granddaughter.”

“Have you got anything to tell them yet,” Knight asked, “such as how or when or where?”

“Not yet.”

“This is just a get-acquainted session?” Wisdom said.

“That’s right.”

“What if they don’t like me?”

“Eat your caviar,” I said. “It’s fresh from the Danube.”

It took Arrie Tonzi five phone calls to get all the permissions that were needed for us to make an appointment with Anton Pernik.

“He doesn’t have a phone,” she said when she came back from making the last call, “but someone in Bartak’s office will send him a telegram. The appointment’s for four o’clock. You want me to go along?”

“I think so,” I said, “if it’s convenient for you.”

“I’d like to meet him.”

At fifteen minutes to four we were heading south on Marshal Tito Avenue which seemed to be about twice as wide as Pennsylvania Avenue but handled less than a tenth as much traffic. We followed the avenue for a mile or so and then turned left. After that I was lost. The driver made three or four more turns, moving deeper into what seemed to be a district devoted to six- and seven-storied flats that wore their depressing sameness like shabby uniforms.

We pulled up before one that seemed no different from the scores of others we had passed except for the two men in dark suits who lounged inside the entrance and who might as well have carried signs advertising that they were plainclothes cops.

Arrie had a chat with them and showed them her credentials and then introduced us as they smiled and spoke politely, but insisted on looking at our passports. One of them accompanied us into the building and up two flights of stairs where he greeted two more plainsclothesmen, who were just as friendly, but who didn’t insist on examining our passports. We followed the cop who’d escorted us from below down the hall. He knocked on an apartment door politely. While we waited we smiled at each other as strangers do whose language difference bars them from talking about the weather which was a little warmer than it had been the day before.

When the door opened I completely understood why Amfred Killingsworth had told the U.S. Department of State to go to hell. Although beauty and loveliness are totally inadequate words, she had the kind that could make kings abdicate, presidents abscond, and prime ministers turn to treason.

There was the wildness of the Balkans about her, and the sadness too, and they blended into an almost impossible loveliness that promised to share some wickedly delightful secret. The sea was in her eyes, the somber, chill gray-blue of the winter Adriatic. But if you looked more deeply there was also the laughing promise of next summer’s golden warmth. Her hair, long, thick, black, and begging for a touch, fell almost to her waist. It carelessly framed a pale oval face that had two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and a chin, and if you had lived an absolutely blameless, sinless life, the reward of just one long close look at that perfect symmetry would have made it worth all the bother.

Although the plainclothes guard must have seen her every day, he was still struck dumb. First to recover was Wisdom who swallowed and said, “My name’s Park Tyler Wisdom and I’ve come to take you away from all this.”

She looked at Park and smiled, which made her look only more lovely than before. “You are not Mr. St. Ives?” she said.

“I am,” I said. “I’m St. Ives. I’m Philip St. Ives.” I probably would have gone on babbling my name for the rest of the day if Knight’s elbow hadn’t found my kidney. I recovered enough to introduce him and Arrie Tonzi who whispered to me, “She’s simply stunning.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I said.

“I am Gordana Panić,” she said. “My grandfather is expecting you. Please do come in.”

We followed her down a short entry hall that led to a sitting room that was furnished with dark, solid pieces that looked as if they were accustomed to far more space. The walls contained framed photographs of men alone and in groups and from the way they combed their hair and the style of their collars, I assumed that most of them had been dead for some time.

Gordana Panić saw to it that each of us was seated comfortably. She continued to stand by a large, leather-covered chair that was near a door. She stood with unconscious, perfect poise, her long slender hands clasped loosely in front of her. The dress she wore was something blue and white, I think. I remember that it was neither too close nor too loose nor too long nor too short and that it revealed the outlines of her soft breasts and slender waist and remarkable hips and thighs that tapered into long, bare, perfectly formed legs. I couldn’t tell about her feet because she wore shoes, ugly black ones, and I decided to buy her new ones, probably in Paris, even if I had to kill Park Tyler Wisdom III to do it.

When the old man came into the room, she helped him into the big, leather-covered chair. “This is my grandfather, Anton Pernik,” she said. “If you speak slowly and loudly, he can understand you.” She bent down and said something in Serbo-Croatian to the old man and he shook his head grumpily.