Оливер Блик - Protocol for a Kidnapping

“I saw some old friends of yours yesterday,” I said.

He remained seated in a chair by the writing desk and looked at me casually, as if I’d dropped by to borrow a cup of brown sugar. “Pernik,” he said.

“And his granddaughter. I can see now why you wrote her all those letters. Congratulations. She’s lovely.”

He stood up and crossed to a window and looked out of it, his back to me. The two he had sent to fetch me were still in the room, the one with the gun by the door, the other one in a chair near the bath. The gun was no longer in sight.

“I am not engaged to Gordana Panić, Mr. St. Ives, and my name is not Artur Bjelo.”

“Is it Arso Stepinac?”

He turned and nodded slightly. “When it suits me, it is.”

“Why the brush at the Frankfurt airport?”

“Brush?”

“You know. The me no speaka the English routine.”

“That should be obvious,” he said. “I wanted to avoid being seen with you.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t think that matters. Not to you.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll try another one. Who attempted to run you down in New York?”

He smiled and it was the familiar boyish grin, but I was sure he would smile just that same way when he was sixty, if he lived that long, but it wouldn’t mean anything then either. “I’ve wondered about that,” he said. “It may have been that someone mistook me for you, Mr. St. Ives. You’ve probably remarked our resemblance. Curious, isn’t it?”

It was also curious that his English was better than it had been when I first met him.

“And you think that someone was after me?”

He shrugged. “It must be.”

I decided to try a pre-prebreakfast cigarette and fumbled in my pockets for it without success. “You have a cigarette?” I said to Stepinac, but before he had a chance to say no the man with the gun was at my elbow offering me one of his, along with a light.

I looked at him. “You speak English after all,” I said.

He smiled slightly. “A little. Your friend is very nice, yes?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you know Miss Tonzi well?” Stepinac asked.

“Is that supposed to be a remark or a question?”

“Yes,” he said and nodded apologetically. “I did not put it too well considering the circumstances. What I meant to ask is, did your Mr. Coors brief you on Miss Tonzi? Your instructions did come from Coors, we know that.”

“Who’s we?”

“Really, Mr. St. Ives, we seem to do nothing other than supply questions as answers to each other’s questions.”

“I’m sorry as hell,” I said, “but that’s how I answer questions at three o’clock in the morning after I’m rousted out of bed at the point of a gun by somebody I know nothing about except that he tells an awful lot of lies. But I’ll answer one of your questions, the one about Arrie Tonzi. The answer’s no, no one briefed me about her, no one called Coors or anything else, and if you think you’re going to add to my day by telling me that she’s a top U.S. agent, what the hell else do you think I expected to be saddled with on a deal like this? If she is an agent, I don’t care which outfit she’s with — State, CIA or what have you. I don’t even know if she’s tops; she may be just mediocre, but you’d know more about that than I do and you’d certainly care a hell of a lot more.”

After I’d finished, Stepanic looked a bit discomfited, but he overcame it with his ever ready smile, remarking, “She’s CIA, but very junior.”

“What kind of a cop are you? I said.

“You’re certain that I am one?”

“We’re back to questions to questions,” I said. “Of course I’m sure. Nobody but a cop would try that jilted lover routine that you tried on me in New York. I’ll admit that your poet act’s not bad.”

“Well, we can only try, can’t we, Mr. St. Ives? That’s why we’re seeing each other this morning. Again I’m going to try to convince you to delay the exchange of Anton Pernik and his granddaughter for your ambassador.”

“For how long?” I said.

“Five days. No more.”

“What happens then?”

“That is not your concern.”

“It’s out of my hands.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sure you do. I’m in a sellers’ market and when the kidnappers offer I have to buy or it may not be offered again. If I stall, they may grow suspicious, and if they grow suspicious, Ambassador Killingsworth might never be heard from again. And if that happened, I’d have nobody to blame but you, but you’d have what you wanted because the exchange of Pernik and his granddaughter would be delayed not for five days, but forever.”

“You have a very suspicious mind.”

I nodded. “That’s right, I do, and that’s because most of my business associates are either policemen or thieves. It would make anyone suspicious, just like you make me suspicious. Guess what I did when you left my hotel in New York?”

“You called the delegation at the United Nations to see if an Artur Bjelo was employed there. They said no, of course.”

“Anton Pernik says that you’re a cop and that you’re with the UDBA. What if I called them and asked if they happen to have an Arso Stepinac on the payroll?”

Stepinac smiled at the suggestion. “I would strongly advise you not to do that, Mr. St. Ives.”

“All right,” I said. “I won’t. What’s next, the threat?”

“I’m sorry?”

“It seems logical enough. Since I’ve refused to stall the kidnapping exchange, you make a threat, preferably a dire one.”

Stepinac turned and walked over to the window again and looked out at the weather. “I think you’re forgetting something,” he said.

“What?”

“Money.”

“You’re right,” I said, “I did forget that. It’s not like me.”

“Are you very expensive, Mr. St. Ives?”

“I don’t think you can afford me.”

“I could offer you ten thousand pounds.”

“Don’t.”

“It would not interest you?”

“Ten thousand pounds always interests me,” I said. “But what I have to do to earn it doesn’t.”

“You really have to do nothing.”

That’s what a broker in Cleveland had said to me once. I’d been called in to buy back a half-million dollars’ worth of stolen negotiable securities for the bargain basement price of $100,000. It had gone smoothly and as the broker was counting out the securities on his desk, he’d said, “Insurance is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?” Before I could agree with him he’d gone on to say, “If something had gone wrong and the thieves hadn’t shown up, I would have been fully covered.” He’d counted out $50,000 worth of securities and pushed them toward me. Then he’d looked at me, much as Stepinac was looking at me now, trying to gauge whether he’d placed too low a price on whatever it was he was trying to buy, my integrity, I suppose, perhaps my conscience, or maybe just my silent acquiescence, which, in the broker’s opinion, wasn’t worth more than $50,000 because, after all, as he’d said, “You don’t really have to do anything.”

He had been right, of course, and so was Stepinac. I didn’t have to kill anyone or steal anything. All I had to do was lie a little, and that was painless, especially for me, and after I was through lying I would be richer by $50,000 or £10,000 or whatever my going rate was and none would be the wiser.

“You hesitate, Mr. St. Ives,” Stepinac said. “Is my offer too low?”

I sighed and looked around for an ashtray. “No,” I said, “it’s just that my price is too high.”

Stepinac nodded and said, “Your answer has some interesting overtones and it’s too bad that we don’t have more time to explore them. We Serbs are partial to such discussions. In fact, you may have noticed, even in your short time here, that we enjoy any kind of a discussion, regardless of topic.”