Оливер Блик - Protocol for a Kidnapping

“What did he say?” I said.

“That we are almost there.”

A new blue or black Mercedes sedan was parked at a corner and the taxi drew up behind it. I paid the driver and we got out. Wisdom left the driver’s seat of the new Mercedes and walked back toward us. He held his hands out as if apologizing and when he got closer he said, “We couldn’t help it, Phil. We tried but we honest to God couldn’t help it.”

“Help what?” I said.

The rear door of the new Mercedes opened.

“Help what?” I said again.

“Me,” Arrie Tonzi said as she stood by the car’s open door, smiling prettily at Jovan Tavro.

The wind whipped around the corner, billowing out the long skirt of Arrie’s brown suede coat. It picked up the strands of her blond hair and played with them for a moment before replacing them in a careless coiffure that she brushed out of her eyes with the gloved fingers of her left hand. The look she gave me was one of begging defiance, if there is such a thing. I glared at her and turned to Wisdom. “Get him in the car,” I said, indicating Jovan Tavro who huddled into his dark overcoat. “The backseat.”

“Who is the woman?” Tavro demanded.

“Just get in the car,” I said and walked over to Arrie. I closed the door of the Mercedes, took her by the elbow, and led her unprotestingly to the shelter of an apartment building entrance.

“Wisdom says he couldn’t help bringing you,” I said. “Why not?”

She tried for her go to hell grin, but failed to manage it. “I threatened that I’d tell Lehmann.”

“The embassy’s press guy?”

She nodded.

“Tell him what?”

“That the exchange is on and that he can release it to the press.”

I shook my head. “It took more than that.”

She looked away and then looked back again. “I went up to your room and you weren’t there. Henry and Park were, so I figured it out.”

“Just like that?” I said.

“We got some new information today.”

“Who’s we?”

She made a small gesture. “My boss.”

“What kind of information?”

“That something’s gone wrong with the exchange.”

“What?”

“That’s all we got, Phil, I swear it.”

“That still doesn’t explain how you got Wisdom and Knight to bring you along.”

She looked away again. “I told them that I’d learned something and that if I didn’t get it to you, it would blow everything.”

“They believed you?”

“I had to prove to them who I work for.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Okay. What else?”

“I don’t know what my boss learned or heard, but he did hear something and he’s having it checked out. It’s about the kidnapping. If they find out what they suspect, they’re going to move in whether State likes it or not.”

“And that’s your hot information?”

“I’ve got another item.”

“What?”

“Somebody else is mixed up in the kidnapping.”

“Who?”

She looked at me steadily this time. “Jovan Tavro,” she said. “The man who’s in the back of your car.”

I took her by the elbow again and we moved back to the car. If the CIA was edging its way in, then Arrie Tonzi was its one link to me — unless she was lying about everything. Or they could have manufactured the story and then told her to peddle it around, just to see who’d buy. But if the CIA had somehow connected Jovan Tavro with the kidnapping, then they knew something that Hamilton Coors very much hadn’t wanted them to know. No matter how I shook the puzzle, it refused to give a clear picture — except that I was stuck with Arrie Tonzi who, I decided, would have to earn her keep.

I knocked on the window of the Mercedes’ front door. Henry Knight rolled it down. “You have what you need?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go,” I said. “Park, you stay with our guest.”

“I insist on being told what is happening,” Tavro said from the backseat.

“What’ll I tell him?” Wisdom said.

“A story.”

“What about Arrie?” he asked.

“She goes with me and Knight. If we need any translating, she can tend to it.”

Knight got out of the car. “You happy?” he said to Arrie.

“I’m here anyway,” she said.

“Let’s go,” I said. We walked around the corner toward the building that contained the Pernik apartment. Through a glass door that led to the vestibule I could see two plainclothesmen seated in chairs. Both were nodding. I knocked on the door and one of the men stirred and looked around. I beckoned to him and he rose reluctantly. I turned to Arrie. “Tell him that we want to see Anton Pernik,” I said.

She nodded. The man opened the door and Arrie began talking to him in Serbo-Croatian. He shook his head at first, but then I heard her mention Bartak’s name and he began to look less surly. Finally, he held the door open and we went through.

“He wants to see our passports,” she said.

Knight and I handed ours to her and she handed them to the plainclothesman along with her own. He glanced at them and then tucked them away in his pocket. He said something to Arrie and she turned to me.

“He says that he’ll keep them until we come down,” she said.

I shook my head. “Not all of us are coming down,” I said. “Think of something to get them back.”

She shook her head in bewilderment “What?”

“You’re the CIA agent, honey,” Knight said, bowing slightly to the plainclothesman, “come up with something brilliant.”

Arrie turned back to the plainclothesman and, holding out her hand, said something. The plainclothesman’s eyebrows went up, he laughed and winked, and then brought out the passports and handed them to Arrie. She thanked him and then handed them to us.

“What did you tell him?” I said as we started up the stairs.

“That you and I might be spending the night and possibly wouldn’t see him again before he went off duty.”

“Well, if it wasn’t brilliant, it was quick,” I said.

Apparently, the two policemen downstairs were the only ones on duty at night. None was guarding the door to the Pernik flat. I knocked and the door was opened immediately by Gordana Panić.

“Has anyone tried to see him?” I said.

She shook her head. “No one.”

“What about Stepinac?” I said.

She ducked her head like a child caught in its first lie. “He came to see me, not my grandfather.”

“But you told him that the old man was dead.”

“I had to,” she said. “It was the only way.”

“Well, Stepinac’s dead,” I said, not trying to ease her shock, if there was to be any.

She repeated the word. “Dead?”

“Like your grandfather.”

She gestured vaguely around the room. “But he was here and we talked and he had some brandy and—” She ended it there and looked at Arrie and then at Knight. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“I’ll need some of his clothes,” Knight said. “His overcoat and hat and gloves and a scarf, if he had one.”

“Whose?” she said.

“Your grandfather’s,” I said. “Knight’s going to impersonate him while we go past the guards downstairs.”

“Pernik is dead?” Arrie said to me.

“That’s right,” I said.

“When did he—”

I interrupted her. “I haven’t got time to give you a running explanation and you don’t deserve one. Just pick up what you can as we go along.”

“The clothes. I need his clothes,” Knight was saying to Gordana.

“They’re back here,” she said, moving toward the bedroom where the dead man lay. Knight followed her and I followed Knight. All three of us filed into the bedroom where the old man still lay clutching his rosary. “Good Christ,” Knight said.