Оливер Блик - Protocol for a Kidnapping

“That’s what I said.”

“You never mentioned his name.”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t”

“Why?”

“I didn’t think it was any of your business.”

I cut myself, just below the earlobe where it bleeds forever. I swore and Arrie came over to the basin. “Here,” she said and patted a piece of Kleenex over the cut. I sliced off another swath of whiskers. She watched me.

“What’s your boss’s name?” I said, working now on the ones that grow just below the nose.

“It’s still none of your business.”

“I can guess.”

“Go ahead.”

“Gordon Lehmann, the insecure press attaché.”

She laughed. “Gordon! He’s a fuckhead.”

“But he’s your boss.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Don’t press it so hard,” I said. “You said your boss was moving in on the kidnapping. Well, Gordon Lehmann sure as hell moved last night.”

“How?” she said.

I rinsed out the razor and handed it to her. “Put it in your purse.”

“How?” she said again.

“Gordon Lehmann identified my dead body.”

She bit her lower lip and squeezed her eyes closed as if trying to think. Then she opened them wide. “I told you he’s a fuckhead.”

“He’s also CIA.”

She sighed. “Yes,” she said, “the fuckhead’s also CIA.”

Maybe it was because it was Saturday, but except for the new buildings around its main square, which imposed a measure of decorum, Titovo Uzice reminded me of some brawling, wide open western town where the nearest law is over in the next county and likely to stay there.

We were looking for a gasoline station and the main street was jammed with men who reeled in and out of tiny grog shops. Women in a bastardization of native dress lined up at shops accompanied, often as not, by a squealing pig and a squawling child. Arrie, Wisdom, and I wandered into one dim place that featured four bearded cutthroats seated at a rough table, hacking away at lumps of meat and chunks of bread with their eight-inch pocket knives, and no doubt plotting the city’s next crime wave. When they learned that we were Americans instead of Germans, they ordered a round of drinks. I couldn’t identify what it was, but it burned all the way down and in revenge I bought a double round for them. The filling station, they said, was near the market, across the square, and around a corner.

We threaded our way through the sidewalk drunks and then fought the car through the human traffic. The men were taller than most Yugoslavs, but the women seemed dumpier. Nearly everyone pulled, carried, or wore some kind of livestock — pigs, chickens, or lambs which they draped around their necks. The market stalls, another bastion of free enterprise, offered on-the-job training in bitter haggling and a refresher course in sharp dealing, its practices and methods. Horses, sometimes hitched to high-wheeled carts, added to the general merriment.

“It hasn’t changed a great deal,” Tavro said. “It is still very much like it was before the war.”

“The snow didn’t seem to bother them,” I said.

“Some who live thirty kilometers away were up at three or four o’clock so that they could make it to market,” he said. “It is the custom.”

Wisdom drove into the new-looking, eight-pump gasoline station which offered something called Jugo-petrol. While we waited for the attendant to fill the Mercedes’ tank I switched on the radio and caught what seemed to be a news program. Arrie gave a running translation and her voice cracked a little when she said, “The man was identified by the press attaché of the American embassy as being Philip St. Ives of New York City. Authorities are conducting a wide search for the driver of the hit-and-run automobile.”

“You’re dead,” Knight said.

“I know.”

“How does it feel?”

“Premature.”

The news of my death provided a conversational topic all the way to Visegrad where we crossed the Drina River over the bridge about which they’ve sung songs, recited epics, and even written a novel. The trip through the Zlatibor Mountains down to the valley of the Drina had been a series of memorable skids, fine views, and outstanding profanities by Wisdom who fought the Mercedes through the icy hairpins and switchbacks of the road that turned and twisted back upon itself like a piece of wet string. The view of Bosnia to the north and Montenegro to the south was spectacular in spots, awesome in others.

“We fought through here,” Tavro said in a somber tone and I decided that he was essentially a man without humor. “It is a harsh land.”

The bridge at Visegrad with its four and a half arches on one side and five and a half on the other rested on massive pillars built of stone which was the color of honey and we slowed down at its center, like a carload of Kansas tourists, to read the inscription which according to Arrie’s rapid translation said, “Bridge built by Mehmed Pasa Sikolovic in 1571. Destroyed or damaged by Germans in 1943 and rebuilt between 1949 and 1952. And that makes it four hundred years old.”

“You’re in Carstairs country again, Park,” Knight said.

“How so?”

“We’ve just left Serbia and we’re now in the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.”

“Ah,” Wisdom said. “The Gothic Carstairs.”

“Absolutely.”

“This,” Wisdom said, “is where Carstairs always flings his long, black cloak over his lean frame, thrusts the brace of finely wrought pistols through his belt, and plunges out into the bitter Herzegovinian night, his footsteps echoing hollowly on the worn steps of the ancient castle.”

Sarajevo lies halfway between Trieste and Istanbul although it’s difficult to get there from either place. We arrived just before dusk, having averaged a nifty thirty-two kilometers an hour since leaving Titovo Uzice at eleven. We came down through the narrow gorge that leads into the city which stretches along the banks of the Miljacka River just in time to glimpse a minaret or two.

“Which way?” Park said.

“Drive around,” I said, “we haven’t got anything better to do until nine.”

We drove around for half an hour, slowing down for a look at the fairly new bus station and the Mosque of Gazi Husref Bey which Tavro said was the finest in Sarajevo. It had a flattened dome that sat on an octagonal drum which rested on a square mass. I preferred the Bascarsija Mosque near the market better with its minaret that shot up toward the sky.

“I like minarets,” Wisdom said. “It’s like they’re always giving somebody the finger.”

“When you find a place to park this thing,” I said, “we’ll leave it.”

Wisdom found a spot about a block from the mosque and backed the car into it. “What do I do with the keys?” he said.

“Mail them.”

“Putnik’s going to be a little upset.”

“Did you give them a deposit?”

“No.”

“They they’ll be happy to get them back.”

“I am very hungry,” Gordana said. “Also I must go to the toilet.”

“Knight, do you want to be tour leader?” I said.

“You’re doing fine,” he said. “I’ve got some film here that I’d like to get developed.”

“And I’m hungry, too,” Arrie said.

“It isn’t going just quite the way I expected it to go, ladies and gentlemen, but if you’ll bear with me for a while, I’ll try to see to it that your bladders are emptied and your stomachs are filled.”

It was dark now, but the streetlights were on here and there, which gave some illumination to the narrow lanes of the old section called Bascarsija that I herded my charges through like a mean shepherd with five ewes that were about to lamb. If I’d wanted to buy a copper Turkish coffee pot, I could have struck several magnificent bargains. The rug merchants were out in force and there were places to have your fez ironed. Some of the men were down from the hills with their heads wrapped in red and striped turbans. A few wore braided belts and gusseted britches under their long sheepskin-lined coats. Others wore suits that looked as if they came from the state cooperative store while still others, a sinister lot, I thought, wandered about in blue, chalk-striped double-breasted suits that could have been new in 1930 or 1970.