Оливер Блик - Protocol for a Kidnapping

Arrie was already down from hers. “What’s going on?” she said.

“We walk the rest of the way,” I said. “It’s not far.”

“Who was the man who came by?” she said.

“The Italian’s partner,” I said. “Did you get a good look at him?”

“No,” she said. “Should I’ve?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I could hear the rest of them talking as they dismounted. Then the Italian came up to us and took the reins of Arrie’s horse. He handed me the flashlight. “We got another one,” he said.

I started to shine the flashlight around but he forced it down. “You don’t really wanta get a look at him, do you?” the Italian said.

“I don’t give a damn about him. I just want to see if you’ve collected them all.”

“They’re right behind me,” he said.

I raised my voice. “All right. We have to walk about fifty feet. I’ll go first. Then the women. Knight, you come last. Okay?”

“Fine,” Knight said. “I’m freezing.”

“Everybody is,” I said.

“There’re some tins of stuff to eat up there and there should be enough wood to last you till morning,” the Italian said.

“When we walk back,” I said.

“I need the edge,” he said. “You object?”

“Would it do any good?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t object.”

I shined the light in the Italian’s face. He slapped his hand over his eyes. “Christ,” he said.

“Wait here until I take a look around that boulder,” I said. “I just want to make sure that there’s really something up there.”

I waded through the snow and went around the boulder. The beam of the flashlight didn’t carry far, but the trail widened through the trees and up ahead there was a large dark mass of something. It could have been a castle or a silent herd of elephants. I turned and made my way back.

“There’s something up there,” I said.

“It’s what I said it was,” the Italian said, his voice edged with exasperation. “You just go around that boulder and on about fifty feet and there’s a big wooden door. It’s not locked. You go through that and you’re home. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” he said and led the two horses around me down the trail. He didn’t bother to say good-bye.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We rounded the boulder and waded through the snow for fifty feet until we came to a wall built of wide blocks of gray stone. I shined the flashlight over it and the wall curved slightly. I shined it up and the wall seemed to go up forever. The wooden door that the Italian had promised was there and it was large enough to drive a school bus through. I tugged at the door, but nothing happened. I pushed and it opened easily. I went through followed by Arrie and Gordana, then Wisdom, Tavro, and Knight.

The flashlight revealed an immense bare room with no windows. The walls were coated with a thick gray plaster that looked as if it had been slapped on by hand and smoothed with a stiff brush. A flight of stone stairs with no railing curved up. A dim flickering light came from the top of the stairs. I started up them.

“Look at St. Ives,” Wisdom whispered hoarsely, “not a nerve in his body.”

“You could follow a man like that through hell itself,” Knight said in a deep, reverent voice that almost had me wishing that he wasn’t such a good actor.

At the top of the stairs was another large wooden door built of thick planks that was half open. I pushed it all the way open. Across from me, not more than forty feet or so, was a fireplace — the kind that you could walk into and give the steer a couple of turns if it needed it. It made the five-foot logs that burned in it look like a campfire. I glanced up and the ceiling was there all right, not more than twenty-five feet away. The floor was made of slate slabs. I guessed the room itself to be almost sixty feet long and to my right was another stone staircase without railings that ran up the wall and ended at a landing. To my left were tall narrow windows that reached almost from floor to ceiling. They were leaded, but some of the panes were broken. In front of the fireplace was a rough wooden table with benches on either side. Next to the table was an ordinary straight-backed wooden chair. A man sat in it with his hands tied to its arms. He stared at me and I stared back at Amfred Killingsworth, United States Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

I nodded at Killingsworth who only continued to stare at me as I turned and called down the stairs. “Come on up, there’s nobody here but the ambassador.” It wasn’t a bad line.

I walked across the room. “Hello, Killingsworth,” I said.

His mouth worked a little before the words came out. I was sure that there would be plenty of them. “You’re Phil... Phil St. — uh—”

“Ives,” I said. “St. Ives.”

“You used to work for me.”

“Until you fired me.”

“Did I?” he said.

“In Chicago.”

“I remember now.”

I examined the ropes that bound him to the chair. “I’ll get you out of these as soon as I get something to cut them with. They been treating you all right?”

“It’s been a terrible ordeal,” he said and I knew that he was feeling fine.

“Rough, huh?”

Before he could answer the rest of them trooped into the room and headed for the fireplace with only a glance at Killingsworth. If his eyes had popped when they saw me, they bulged at the sight of Tavro and Gordana. Tavro nodded vaguely at Killingsworth as he warmed his hands before the fire. Gordana tried to smile at him but she seemed too worn and cold. I moved over to Arrie.

“Have you got that safety razor?” I said. She nodded and fished around in her large bag with numb hands. She held it out to me. I removed the blade, went back to Killingsworth, and sliced through the ropes that bound his arms and feet. He massaged his hands and then said, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand what all these people are doing here — what you’re doing here. Where’re those two men — those two that kidnapped me? They did kidnap me, didn’t they? This hasn’t been somebody’s idea of a wretched joke?”

“No joke,” I said. “I’ll tell you about it after I get warmed up.”

Killingsworth rose and said in a stern voice, “I think you’d better tell me about it now, St. Ives.”

“Fuck off, Killingsworth,” I said, “I’ll tell you about it when I’m goddamned good and ready.”

I turned my back on him and walked over to the fire. They were all crowded around it, their hands and feet extended to the blaze. Arrie and Cordana had their shoes off. I looked around for something and finally found a large iron pot. I picked it up and walked across the room, down the stairs, and through the door that led outside. I dipped up a large pot of snow and took it back upstairs.

“Here,” I said to the two women, “rub your feet with this. You could have frostbite.”

“Well, by God, if any man alive could get us through it,” Wisdom said, “I knew St. Ives could.”

“What’s your name, young man?” Killingsworth said, putting his hand on Wisdom’s shoulder.

Wisdom popped to attention in his bare feet. “Wisdom, sir. I’m one of the St. Ives Irregulars. He brought us through hell, sir.”

“Jesus,” I said and tugged off my soaked shoes.

“At the pass, Mr. Ambassador,” Knight said in a rich voice full of respect and wonder. “Well, back at the pass I thought for a moment that we were all done for. If it hadn’t been for Colonel St. Ives, sir, well you could have written finis to this expedition.”

“What are they talking about?” Tavro asked me in a hoarse whisper.