Оливер Блик - Protocol for a Kidnapping

“No, it isn’t,” I said. “If it were simple, there wouldn’t be any question about using your own people. Or even the CIA. Kidnapping American ambassadors still isn’t as popular a pastime as hijacking planes to Cuba, but it’s getting there. I’d even bet that there’s a form memo tucked away in every embassy safe that’s headed, ‘What to Do After the Ambassador’s Kidnapped,’ so you wouldn’t call me in if it were just the simple chore of ransoming the Chicken.”

“The what?”

“The Chicken,” I said. “That’s what they used to call Killingsworth on the paper, because he was. Chicken.”

Coors frowned carefully and it may have been the same frown that he employed when the new African ambassador’s tart of a wife chose the wrong fork in the Benjamin Franklin State Dining Room. “You weren’t exactly our first choice, Mr. St. Ives. You weren’t even our second, and if it weren’t for the time factor, we would—”

“Why don’t you?” I interrupted. “Why not get a bright young Harvard or Yale man from one of those ever so discreet Washington-New York-Paris law firms. You know what I mean. The kind with five or six grand old names strung together that probably got its start sixty years ago when it handled one of those banana revolutions for you and United Fruit down in South America. They don’t charge much. Not more than ten or fifteen times what I do and nobody’s ever complained about their manners.”

Coors hooded his eyes again. “You think you’re an extremely clever person, don’t you?” he said and managed to make person sound like son of a bitch. But there was no venom in his tone despite the reptilian look. There was only a kind of resigned weariness as if his lot in life were to put up with an endless series of jaspers who felt that they were extremely clever sons of bitches.

“I only asked a question,” I said.

“I know you did. You want to know why we picked wonderful you. First of all, you were logical because you’ve had a measure of experience in this kind of business.”

“It’s how I make a living.”

“Secondly, you could become readily available.”

“That only took the threat of a Congressional investigation,” I said. “I liked that. You had to have someone who’d lose if he said no, so whoever remembered me and the African shield fiasco must have gone around chuckling about it all morning.”

“The last, but not least of our considerations, is that you’re an outsider and as such will have a controlled, strictly limited access to others in the department.”

“How’s that an advantage?” I said.

“Security,” Coors said.

“You don’t trust your own kind?”

“Not with this.”

“What about the CIA? There’re days when they don’t talk much. Fridays, I think.”

“It’s our own dirty linen,” Coors said and looked mildly pleased with the cryptic flavor of the worn phrase.

“How dirty?”

“Filthy.”

“What makes you so sure I won’t gossip down at the corner laundromat?” I said, poking a flicker of life into the dying analogy.

“If you did,” Coors said slowly, “you might find yourself in a rather embarrassing position.” He shook his head decisively. “No, you won’t ever talk about our dirty linen, Mr. St. Ives.”

“I’ll ask again. Why?”

The smile that he gave me had a fine chill in it which fully matched the snow and slush outside. “You won’t talk about it,” he said, “because before you’re done, you’ll be wearing it.”

It had all started the day before in one of those cold, drafty halls that you can hire by the hour over on West Thirty-ninth Street and the canvas banner that hung above the platform spelled out CHEAPAR in fat Gothic letters and also portrayed a cuddly-looking rat with mellow blue eyes.

The audience consisted of nearly three-dozen men and women whose common denominator was a warm, misty expression and a prosperous, even rich appearance. I estimated that at least three of them had yet to celebrate their sixty-fifth birthdays.

The audience just escaped being outnumbered by members of the New York press who, as usual, had nothing either warm or misty about their expressions. We had drawn three local television news teams, four radio reporters, three photographers, a brace of wire service men, and accredited representatives from the Times, the Daily News, the Post, and The Village Voice. The Wall Street Journal had failed to show.

Myron Greene, the lawyer, crept into the hall and carefully chose a rear seat just as our chairman pro tem, Henry Knight, broke down and had to be led away sobbing, overcome by his own vivid account of the death screams that escape from the throats of furry little bodies that have just nibbled at poison.

At forty-three, Henry Knight was still much in demand for juvenile leads on and off Broadway, but his finest performance may well have been that Monday afternoon in February as he huddled in the folding metal chair, his handsome, ageless face buried in a handkerchief, his body wracked by uncontrollable sobs. Or laughter. He got a warm round of appreciative, even sympathetic applause from everyone in the audience but Myron Greene, the lawyer, and for a moment I worried lest Knight rise to take his bows.

From the way his wheezes had rasped over the phone earlier that day I could tell that Myron Greene had been either angry or excited. Probably both. His asthma never bothered him when he talked to other clients. But then he could scarcely afford to get angry with six- and seven-hundred-million-dollar conglomerates, and the only excitement they ever supplied came but once or twice a year, if that often, when the Justice Department threatened an antitrust suit or two.

Nodding slightly at Greene, who refused to nod back, I moved quickly to the podium and informed the audience, now even more misty-eyed than ever, that because our temporary chairman’s sensitive nature precluded him from continuing, we would next hear from the founder and executive director of CHEAPAR, Park Tyler Wisdom III, who presumably was made of stronger stuff. That earned another round of applause from the audience, a faint cheer from the press, and an impatient, exasperated glare from Myron Greene.

Wisdom must have been all of thirty then, round of face, merry of eye, and possessed of that beaming confidence which comes from having inherited a seven-million-dollar trust fund from grandma at twenty-two. He had doffed his usual attire of sweat shirt and army surplus trousers in favor of a swallowtail coat, striped pants, a gray double-breasted vest, and a wing collar garnished by a plum-colored cravat. All in all, he looked very much like the slightly overweight second secretary of some pre-World War II Balkan embassy. The faintly tinted pince-nez that he wore did nothing to spoil the effect.

Waving the pince-nez around, Wisdom made a stirring five-minute pitch for contributions and succeeded in securing pledges that totaled nearly $1500. A few wrote checks on the spot. I moved over to him, whispered into his ear, and he beamed once more and held up his arms for attention.

“Mr. Philip St. Ives, our public relations secretary, informs me that CHEAPAR’s volunteer legal counsel has just arrived.” Wisdom pointed to the rear of the hall. “Could we have a nice round of applause for Mr. Myron Greene?” Old necks craned, arthritic hands clapped, and lined faces smiled and bobbed their greetings at Myron Greene who, looking completely miserable, did manage a half wave at the audience and a glare of sheer malevolence at me.

I was Myron Greene’s client chiefly because at thirty-six he still dreamed of becoming a flashy criminal lawyer or a gentleman racing car driver or an international troubleshooter or almost anything other than what he was: an extremely successful corporation attorney with offices on Madison, a home in Darien, and a 475-horsepower Shelby Cobra that he got to drive on weekends if he promised the wife and kids not to go over sixty-five.