Оливер Блик - Protocol for a Kidnapping

Ahead of us the Italian used a flashlight to pick his way through the trees. Sometimes its beam illuminated large gray boulders. The path, if that’s what it was, led steeply upward and the horses snorted and shuddered and blew their frosty breath into the icy air. I wondered how cold it was. I knew it was well below freezing and my wet feet were growing numb. I wore gloves and the tweed topcoat, but except for that, I was dressed to spend an evening in some cozy bar, not on top of an animal who moved as if his feet had piles.

The path narrowed and occasionally the branch of a pine, a fir, or some other coniferous brand would belt me across the face, leaving a bitter taste of resined snow. Ahead of me I could make out the dim outline of Gordana as she jogged and weaved in her saddle.

The path or trail became even steeper in grade and I had to lean forward as my pony took small, jarring jumps to get from one level to the next. He seemed to know what he was doing so I held on to the saddle and let him do it. My right coat sleeve occasionally brushed against an outcropping of rock. I poked my left hand out, but it felt nothing. Just space. Ahead the flashlight beam bobbed and jittered in the blackness.

I was straining to keep my eyes on Gordana’s outline when her horse stumbled and she fell from the saddle with a long shrill scream. I slid off my horse into almost two feet of snow and floundered toward the sound. I could see almost nothing. My left foot slipped and I felt myself falling before an arm grabbed me around the neck and pulled me back over the sharp edge of some rock that dug into my back. It was the Italian. He flashed his light into my face and said, “Was that you that screamed?”

“The girl,” I said.

He aimed his flashlight down and I could see that we were on a narrow ledge, not more than seven feet wide that cropped out from the side of almost vertical rock cliff.

“If she went over, she’s gone,” the Italian said in a no-nonsense tone.

He flashed his light down over the edge of the trail and nine feet below us we saw Gordana crouched on a narrow ledge, clinging to the side of the rock with hands that seemed able to find something to hold to when there was nothing in sight. Her face was turned up toward us, her mouth a black, round O of despair.

“Don’t move, kid,” the Italian said to her softly. “Call the big guy, the good-looking one,” he said to me. I yelled for Knight.

“She’s not bad, is she?” the Italian said. “In fact, she’s a beauty.” He could have been commenting on a dozen daisies.

Knight knelt down beside us. “See her down there?” the Italian said, shining his light on Gordana.

“Uh,” Knight said.

“Well, you take a leg and I take a leg and we lower St. Ives down so that he can grab her and then we pull them both back up. How’s that?”

“Succinct,” Knight said. “You ready?” he asked me.

“Did I ever tell you about me and heights?” I said. “I don’t function well.”

“You got a better idea?” the Italian said.

“None.”

“Get the other American,” the Italian said. I yelled for Wisdom this time and when he got there the Italian handed him the flashlight. “Keep it right on her,” he said. Wisdom lay on his belly in the snow and shined the light on Gordana whose mouth was now opening and closing silently as if she were gasping great gulps of air.

The Italian took my right leg and Knight took my left one. I felt myself being lowered over the side. I didn’t see anything because I had my eyes closed. I didn’t open them until I heard someone yelling my name.

“Goddamn it, St. Ives, grab her hands!” Wisdom yelled.

I looked down. Gordana had released her hold on the side of her cliff and was stretching her hands up to me. I tried for them and our fingers brushed, but we missed.

“Please,” she cried, “please.”

I tried again, stretching as far as I could, but again our fingertips just brushed and this time she lost what balance she had and started to fall and then she screamed and somehow I lunged and caught her left wrist with my right hand. I held on until I got my left hand around her wrist. I had her then, but I knew it wouldn’t last long because her wrist was wet and it was beginning to slip through my hands.

“Pull, damn you,” I yelled and I began to feel them lifting us slowly, but not fast enough because all I now had was her hand and it was beginning to go. “Faster,” I screamed and they tried and her nails dug into my palms as she fought against dying.

There wasn’t anything I could do. I looked into her face which was full of mute pleading that begged me not to let her go, but all I had were her fingers now and they began to slip away. And then someone landed on my back, his legs locked around my waist. It was the Italian and he grabbed Gordana’s wrist just as her fingers slipped from my grasp. Using his legs to climb with, he worked his way up over my hips dragging Gordana after him. I could hear Knight and Wisdom swear as they pulled on my legs which now supported both Gordana and the Italian. Then I was hanging only by one leg as someone grabbed the Italian and pulled him up. I closed my eyes again.

“Who’s got me?” I called.

“I have, I think,” Wisdom said.

“Could you sort of pull me up, if it’s not too much bother?”

“Wait a second.”

“Stick your other leg up,” Knight said.

“I thought it was,” I said and felt hands on my right ankle. They began to pull.

“How’s the view?” Wisdom said.

“Vertiginous,” I said, proud that I could think of the word, and then I was over the edge and lying in the snow next to Gordana. Her face was turned toward me and she was crying.

“Thank you, Philip,” she said softly. “Thank you so much.”

“I almost dropped you,” I said.

“You were very brave.”

I smiled a little and tried to remember if anyone had ever told me that before.

We had stopped. My pony jerked his head and snorted again. The flashlight bobbed its way back toward me and the Italian caught the bridle of my pony.

“This is it,” he said.

“What?”

“You walk from here.”

I slid down from the horse into a couple of feet of snow. My feet were numb.

“I don’t see a hell of a lot,” I said.

The Italian shined his flashlight ahead and it revealed a large gray boulder. “You go around that rock and up about fifty feet and you’re there.”

“The castle?”

He sighed as if he were sick of the whole mess. I was ready to agree with him. “It’s not a castle. It’s just part of what’s left of a castle, one of the main halls. They turned it into a kind of a hunting lodge and there’re a lot of rooms upstairs that they taught the kids in when it was a school. We just used the main hall.”

“Where’s Killingsworth?” I said.

“By the fire.”

“Just sitting there?”

“You can untie him.”

“What about the horses?”

“What about them?”

“I was wondering how we’d get back.”

The Italian shined his light in my face. Then he flicked it off. I was blinded — or might as well have been. “How you get back is your problem,” he said.

“My problem is making sure that you don’t get back too soon. The horses go with us.” He said something then in Serbo-Croatian and he got a guttural answer from a voice I hadn’t heard before.

“This is my partner,” the Italian said. “You don’t have to see what he looks like, do you?”

“I’ll just imagine something,” I said.

“Okay. You get the women off and I’ll get the rest of them.”

I waded through the snow to Gordana’s pony. “We walk from here,” I said and reached up and helped her down. She seemed weak. “Just stand here by your horse.”