Оливер Блик - Protocol for a Kidnapping

“In this cupboard,” Gordana said, opening a closet.

Knight rummaged through it and took out a hat, a coat, and a scarf. “Did he have any gloves?” he said.

Gordana produced a pair from the drawer of a bureau and handed them to Knight. He put the hat on first, wearing it low over his eyes. He slipped into the topcoat which was too short for him until he stooped to compensate for its lack of length. He wrapped the scarf around his neck and most of his chin.

“Glasses,” he said. “He wore glasses.”

Gordana looked around the room. “I put them someplace,” she said. “Someplace safe.” She opened and closed drawers until she found them in what seemed to be her sewing box. “Here,” she said, handing them to Knight.

“Is this your best mirror?” he said, pointing to the one above the bureau. She nodded and Knight took articles from the pocket of his own topcoat which he had folded on a chair. “That coat cost me two hundred and twenty-five bucks, skipper,” he said to me. “It goes on the expense account if I have to leave it here.”

“One double-breasted, foreign intrigue trench coat,” I said. “Duly entered.”

Knight removed Pernik’s clothing and started opening his packages as Gordana and I watched. “All I could get hold of was powder and pancake makeup and an eyebrow pencil,” he said. “But if it’s only a quick glance, it may do.”

“What about your hair?” I said.

“I’ll have to shave off my sideburns,” he said. “There’s no time for dye and I couldn’t find any in that hotel shop anyway. The hat and the scarf’ll cover most of my hair. I can use powder in the eyebrows.” He turned to Gordana. “Your grandfather have a razor?”

She nodded. “It is the old-fashioned kind with a straight blade.”

“Don’t you have one?” he said.

She shook her head. “I do not find use for one.”

I could attest to that but I didn’t. “Use the straightedge,” I said.

“Where is it?” Knight asked.

“In the bath,” she said. “Come, I’ll show you.”

While they were gone I stared at the old man who looked no deader than he had looked at half past five that afternoon when his nude granddaughter and her new lover had come calling.

Knight came back into the bedroom looking almost naked without his sideburns. Gordana followed him. “She watched,” he said. “She likes to watch men shave.”

“Cut yourself?” I said.

“Only a nick.”

He turned to the mirror over the bureau and started applying the pancake makeup and the powder. “It’s more a question of mimicry than it is of makeup,” he said. “I just want to create an old man’s face — any old man. But my movements — my walk and my gestures — will provide the real misdirection. If they recognize them as familiar, they won’t look at the face too much. The familiar clothing will help too.”

He worked on his face for fifteen minutes, rubbing here, patting there, and drawing lines with the eyebrow pencil. Then he put on the hat, an old, almost shapeless felt, and pulled it down low over his forehead. He wrapped the long, blue woolen scarf around his neck and chin, making it ride high up on the back of his collar. He shrugged into the coat and adjusted the glasses so that they rode halfway down his nose. He looked up at the ceiling, as if trying to remember something, and then with a dip and shrug he started to walk across the room in a slow, shuffling, sliding gait that drew a gasp from Gordana.

“It is exactly how he walked!” she said.

Knight walked back toward us. “He walked on the outside of his feet,” he said. “A lot of old men do.” He peered at Gordana over his glasses, using a stooped, slouching posture. “How do you like it, my dear?” he asked in a deep voice that was an almost perfect replica of Pernik’s — accent, inflection and all.

She glanced at her dead grandfather quickly. “You do not look as he looked, but you sound and walk as he did. It is fantastic.”

“It’ll be fantastic,” Knight said, “if they ask me to say something in Serbo-Croatian.” He slumped back into his old man’s posture and shuffled out of the room. Gordana turned to me.

“I am... I am sorry about Stepinac,” she said. “I did not mean to seem so stupid earlier, but it was a shock and I do not need any more shocks. I have had enough. How did he die?”

“It was an accident,” I said.

She shook her head. “I did not love him, but he was nice to me. I am sorry that he is dead. That is not much, is it, to be only sorry?”

“You can’t do anything else,” I said. “Do you want anything here?” I gestured at the room and the bed where the old man lay.

She shook her head. “I want nothing from here. Nothing.” She walked over and put her hand on her grandfather’s forehead. “He is cold,” she said and turned back to me. “Were we terrible this afternoon? If we were terrible, I will forget it.”

“I don’t know what we were,” I said.

“I will forget only part of it then,” she said. “I will forget only the terrible part. The rest I will remember. Will you?”

“I’ll remember it all,” I said.

She nodded, looked at her grandfather once more, and said something to him in Serbo-Croatian.

“What did you say?” I asked her.

She smiled faintly. “I said, ‘Good-bye, Grandfather.’”

The plainclothesman who had looked at our passports wanted to talk. Arrie went first down the stairs followed by Gordana and Knight, moving slowly and carefully in his old man’s gait. Arrie chattered away in Serbo-Croatian and when the guard looked up at Knight, Gordana moved in close to the policeman, smiling and murmuring something that caused him to look at her carefully.

As Knight went past the talkative guard, Gordana put her hand on the man’s shoulder and he reached up and gave it a small squeeze. The other guard turned his attention toward his colleague’s flirtation.

Knight moved slowly to the entrance door. Gordana caught up with him and took his arm, as a dutiful granddaughter should. Arrie and I followed and we were almost at the door when the talkative guard called something. I couldn’t understand what he said, but I did catch the name Pernik.

“What’s he want?” I said to Arrie as Knight stopped and turned slowly. The guard approached him.

“He wants some papers that Bartak gave you for Pernik and Gordana,” Arrie said. I stepped into the guard’s path and made a show of taking the thick brown envelope from my pocket and handing it over. The man examined its contents and kept two forms. Arrie asked him what they were and he told her with a bored shrug. “They’re the forms necessary for Pernik to leave his house,” she said.

The plainclothesman handed me back the envelope, waved casually at Knight who gave him an old man’s wave in return, and we left the apartment. I hurried to catch up with Knight “Keep up your imitation,” I told him. “Somebody might be watching this place.” He nodded and shuffled on down the street until we were around the corner where the Mercedes was parked. I put Knight and Gordana in the backseat next to Tavro. Arrie sat between Wisdom and me in the front

“Where to?” Wisdom said, starting the engine.

“I’ll give you directions,” I said.

As we started, Tavro said, “I demand to be told who these people are and what it is that you’re planning, Mr. St. Ives.”

I kept looking at a map of Belgrade as I said to Wisdom, “I thought you were going to tell him a story.”

“I did,” he said, “but he wasn’t much interested. Which way?”

“The next left,” I said.

“I repeat my request Mr. St. Ives,” Tavro said in a cold tone.