Protocol for a Kidnapping

11

It was my second press conference within five days and it was pointless to argue about which of them had been the better farce. The one about the rats in New York probably had contained more substance while the one in Belgrade seemed to have more style, perhaps because of the international press corps. There weren’t three paragraphs of hard news in either of them.

But the one at the Metropol hotel did serve to help establish my bona fides as a private citizen who was what he said he was: an industrious, hardworking go-between and not what the press wished that I was: a tool — unwitting or otherwise — of the CIA or the State Department or something equally flamboyant.

They asked me some questions and I told them some lies when I had to and the truth when there was no point in lying. We traded a few remarks and, upon request, I gave them a couple of brief, overly lurid accounts of two other kidnappings that I’d been called in on. The Italians like those. Or perhaps they just liked Arrie Tonzi’s translation which she rendered in a melodramatic tone accompanied by appropriate gestures.

“We’ll take care of the cost of the meeting room,” Gordon Lehmann said when the conference was over. It was something that he thought I might be worrying about. It wasn’t but I thanked him anyway and asked him to join us for lunch. He shook his head and said that he should get back to the embassy.

“What’s that address?” I said.

“Kneza Milosa fifty,” he said and spelled it for me. “The phone’s 645–655. Extension seventeen.”

While I was writing it down on the back of my airline ticket he said, “Were you ever in PR, Phil?”

I told him no, that I’d never had the pleasure, that I’d always worked for newspapers, and mentioned the name of the one that I’d worked for in New York and he said he remembered my column and then asked, “Do you think it would be helpful if I got some actual newspaper experience? I came right to State from school.”

It would take more than that, I thought, but said, “I don’t think it’s really necessary, Gordon.” And then, because he very much seemed to need something more, I added, “You’re doing a hell of a fine job here.” It was a lie, but since I had been lying all morning, to almost anyone who would listen, one more couldn’t hurt anything and it might even keep him from brooding the rest of the afternoon away.

They really should try as hard to keep sensitive people out of public relations as they do to keep embezzlers out of banks. But my line or two of praise was all that Lehmann’s ego needed, at least till suppertime, and he headed happily back to the embassy to compose a brilliant aide-mémoire or two on the conference.

At my elbow, Arrie Tonzi said, “You’re full of nifties, aren’t you?”

“Why?”

“In just one morning I get to watch you put the slam on Bartak, handle the press conference like you’d scripted it, and then find time to administer to the tortured sensibilities of our press attaché, poor wretch.”

“He’s all right,” I said.

“He’s miserable and you know it. That’s why you spread the word balm on. Either you’re schizy, St. Ives, or beneath that grim exterior beats a bleeding heart.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said. “Let’s eat.”

We were joined at lunch by Wisdom and Knight who had been sitting at the rear of the press conference. When I asked what they thought of it, Wisdom said that it had been highly informative, but my jokes were old. Knight said he had found it entertaining and amusing, but noticed that I lacked stage presence and offered to teach me a few simple but useful gestures.

“Anything else?” I said.

“What’s on for later, after our naps?” Wisdom asked.

“We go calling on the Nobel poet and his granddaughter.”

“Have you got anything to tell them yet,” Knight asked, “such as how or when or where?”

“Not yet.”

“This is just a get-acquainted session?” Wisdom said.

“That’s right.”

“What if they don’t like me?”

“Eat your caviar,” I said. “It’s fresh from the Danube.”

It took Arrie Tonzi five phone calls to get all the permissions that were needed for us to make an appointment with Anton Pernik.

“He doesn’t have a phone,” she said when she came back from making the last call, “but someone in Bartak’s office will send him a telegram. The appointment’s for four o’clock. You want me to go along?”

“I think so,” I said, “if it’s convenient for you.”

“I’d like to meet him.”

At fifteen minutes to four we were heading south on Marshal Tito Avenue which seemed to be about twice as wide as Pennsylvania Avenue but handled less than a tenth as much traffic. We followed the avenue for a mile or so and then turned left. After that I was lost. The driver made three or four more turns, moving deeper into what seemed to be a district devoted to six- and seven-storied flats that wore their depressing sameness like shabby uniforms.

We pulled up before one that seemed no different from the scores of others we had passed except for the two men in dark suits who lounged inside the entrance and who might as well have carried signs advertising that they were plainclothes cops.

Arrie had a chat with them and showed them her credentials and then introduced us as they smiled and spoke politely, but insisted on looking at our passports. One of them accompanied us into the building and up two flights of stairs where he greeted two more plainsclothesmen, who were just as friendly, but who didn’t insist on examining our passports. We followed the cop who’d escorted us from below down the hall. He knocked on an apartment door politely. While we waited we smiled at each other as strangers do whose language difference bars them from talking about the weather which was a little warmer than it had been the day before.

When the door opened I completely understood why Amfred Killingsworth had told the U.S. Department of State to go to hell. Although beauty and loveliness are totally inadequate words, she had the kind that could make kings abdicate, presidents abscond, and prime ministers turn to treason.

There was the wildness of the Balkans about her, and the sadness too, and they blended into an almost impossible loveliness that promised to share some wickedly delightful secret. The sea was in her eyes, the somber, chill gray-blue of the winter Adriatic. But if you looked more deeply there was also the laughing promise of next summer’s golden warmth. Her hair, long, thick, black, and begging for a touch, fell almost to her waist. It carelessly framed a pale oval face that had two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and a chin, and if you had lived an absolutely blameless, sinless life, the reward of just one long close look at that perfect symmetry would have made it worth all the bother.

Although the plainclothes guard must have seen her every day, he was still struck dumb. First to recover was Wisdom who swallowed and said, “My name’s Park Tyler Wisdom and I’ve come to take you away from all this.”

She looked at Park and smiled, which made her look only more lovely than before. “You are not Mr. St. Ives?” she said.

“I am,” I said. “I’m St. Ives. I’m Philip St. Ives.” I probably would have gone on babbling my name for the rest of the day if Knight’s elbow hadn’t found my kidney. I recovered enough to introduce him and Arrie Tonzi who whispered to me, “She’s simply stunning.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I said.

“I am Gordana Panić,” she said. “My grandfather is expecting you. Please do come in.”

We followed her down a short entry hall that led to a sitting room that was furnished with dark, solid pieces that looked as if they were accustomed to far more space. The walls contained framed photographs of men alone and in groups and from the way they combed their hair and the style of their collars, I assumed that most of them had been dead for some time.

Gordana Panić saw to it that each of us was seated comfortably. She continued to stand by a large, leather-covered chair that was near a door. She stood with unconscious, perfect poise, her long slender hands clasped loosely in front of her. The dress she wore was something blue and white, I think. I remember that it was neither too close nor too loose nor too long nor too short and that it revealed the outlines of her soft breasts and slender waist and remarkable hips and thighs that tapered into long, bare, perfectly formed legs. I couldn’t tell about her feet because she wore shoes, ugly black ones, and I decided to buy her new ones, probably in Paris, even if I had to kill Park Tyler Wisdom III to do it.

When the old man came into the room, she helped him into the big, leather-covered chair. “This is my grandfather, Anton Pernik,” she said. “If you speak slowly and loudly, he can understand you.” She bent down and said something in Serbo-Croatian to the old man and he shook his head grumpily.

The background information on Pernik that Coors had given me said that the old man was seventy-six and he looked it. He sat, leaning slightly forward in the chair, buttoned up to the neck with a gray woolen sweater, his long, bony legs encased in thick brown corduroy trousers.

He looked at each of us, taking his time, as if making individual assessments, and then raked us all with a glance that seemed to give him our collective worth. He grunted and looked up at his granddaughter. “Which is the leader, the handsome one over there?”

“That is Mr. Knight. Mr. St. Ives is at your right.”

“Who is the woman?”

“She is Miss Tonzi of the American embassy.”

“The other man?”

“A colleague of Mr. St. Ives. Mr. Wisdom.”

“Hard names to remember,” he said, turning his bald, pink head toward me. “I’m an old man,” he rumbled in his harsh voice. “Why should anyone risk their lives for me? I didn’t ask for it. They must be fools.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

He pushed his metal-framed glasses up the wide bridge of his long, pink nose. “That ambassador of yours. He has a hard name too.”

“Killingsworth,” I said.

“Yes. Killingsworth. He came to see me many times. Brought things, books mostly. I was grateful. The man talked too much. Talked about himself. Now he has been — uh — stolen. No. It is another word. I can never remember it.”

“Kidnapped,” I said.

“Ah. Kid-napped. That is a good word. English, isn’t it? I mean it’s not American?”

“English first,” I said.

“Well, how is he?”

“Killingsworth?”

“Yes. Is he safe? Have they killed him? I have heard that they do sometimes.”

“I haven’t heard from the kidnappers yet,” I said.

“Damned fools, I say. I’m not sure I want to go to America. Sandburg’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I would have liked to have met him, talked to him. That old man Frost, he’s dead, too, I hear.”

“Yes, he’s dead.”

“I think I would have liked Sandburg better. He had more juice. How is my English?”

“It’s fine.”

“I knew it well once, perfectly some said. But we Slavs have an ear, you know,” he said poking his right forefinger at his ear. “French, I know; German, too. I even learned Hungarian and only an idiot would attempt that if he’s past twenty-five. I was. Impossible language. Impossible people.” He seemed to drift off into some private memory for a moment. His granddaughter kept the conversation going.

“Are you acquainted with Mr. Killingsworth, Mr. St. Ives?” she said.

“Yes, I am.”

“He was very kind to my grandfather. They had long talks.”

“I suppose you got to know him well?” I said, deciding that that was as delicate a way to put it as any.

She smiled. “Not very. He was terribly polite, but I suppose most ambassadors are. He did give me a ride to market once in his little car. It was new then and he seemed very proud of it. I understand that it was the one he was driving when they kidnapped him near Sarajevo.”

“You mean you don’t know Mr. Killingsworth well?” I said, proud of the way that I kept the astonishment out of my voice.

“My grandfather does, but I am sure Mr. Killingsworth thinks of me as a child.”

“She is twenty-two,” the old man said, rejoining us from wherever it was that he had been. He started to reminisce then about how it had been when he was twenty-two, but I didn’t listen. I thought instead of Amfred Killingsworth, fifty, millionaire, publisher, and diplomat, who supposedly had turned his back on all of it for the love of a twenty-two-year-old girl who had once shared with him the deep intimacy of a ride to market in his little car which, if I knew Killingsworth, was an $8,000 Porsche.

Having met Gordana Panić, I could understand how any man, millionaire or not, might well toy with the idea of chucking it all, wife, kids, job, house and car, if she promised to join him on the next tramp leaving for Tahiti. Or a shyer man might simply worship her from afar, even if she were his secretary and worked in the next office. But Amfred Killingsworth was no shy dreamer. If he fell in love at fifty, he’d damn well make sure that the girl learned of it shortly after he’d told his lawyers to make all necessary legal arrangements.

So it seemed that either Killingsworth had lied to Coors, or Coors had lied to me, or Gordana Panić was the best liar of the lot.

“Have you seen Artur Bjelo lately?” I said to Gordana.

She shook her head slightly and smiled apologetically. “Is he from Belgrade?” she said. “The name is not at all familiar, but perhaps my grandfather knows him.”

“Who? Who?” the old man rasped.

“Artur Bjelo,” I said, raising my voice.

“No,” he said, wagging his head. “How does he look?”

“He looks something like me,” I said, “except younger. About ten years younger.”

Pernik peered at me through his glasses and again shook his head slowly, so I gave up on that one and tried another. “Your fiancé must be concerned about your leaving for America,” I said. “Does he plan to join you there?” I felt that no one would compliment me on my subtlety that afternoon.

Gordana Panić gave me another wondering smile and then blushed a little. She did it nicely. “I am not engaged, Mr. St. Ives, so there is no fiancé to worry about what I do.”

“That’s wonderful,” Wisdom said.

The old man grinned at Wisdom. “You’re not as handsome as that one,” he said, nodding at Knight, “but at least you have a voice. That one has yet to utter a word. Can he not speak?”

“Yes, sir, I can,” Knight said, turning on all of his considerable charm. “Words, in fact, are my trade, but I have none to describe your granddaughter’s loveliness.”

The old man chuckled again and looked at Gordana.

“She does have beauty, doesn’t she? It’s from her mother’s family, not from mine. But if words are your trade, Mister — uh—”

“Knight.”

“Yes, Knight. Then you must be a writer.”

“An actor,” Knight said.

“Oh,” the old man said and turned back to Wisdom. “What might be your trade, sir?”

Wisdom smiled. “I’m a capitalist.”

“Good,” Pernik said as if he met one every day. “I’m a Royalist and I’m old enough not to care who knows it. But before I’m a Royalist, I’m a Croat, and before I’m a Croat, I’m a Yugoslav. That’s one thing about Tito. He’s a Yugoslav first, even before he’s a Croat. Or, I suspect, even a Bolshevik. But that’s enough of that. Tell me what I can expect in America, young lady.”

Arrie Tonzi grinned at him. “Too much of this and too little of that.”

“That could be any country,” he said, “which is reassuring. I don’t wish to die in a country that is too different from my own.”

“You are not to talk that way,” Gordana said.

The old man shrugged. “Then if we cannot talk of death, and politics leads to argument, let’s talk of what this young man wants us to do.” He nodded at me.

“We haven’t heard from the kidnappers yet,” I said, “so I don’t know when or where the exchange will take place. I suggest that you take with you only what you can carry. Perhaps the American embassy will see about forwarding your other possessions.”

“Souvenirs mostly,” Pernik said. “Not worth saving yet too precious to throw away. That’s what souvenirs are.

“How much notice will we have, Mr. St. Ives?” Gordana asked.

“I don’t know; possibly only a day or two, perhaps less, so I suggest that you have your bags packed. I already have the papers that will allow you to cross the border.”

“Which border?” Pernik asked.

“Either into Italy or Austria. You will be accompanied by Mr. Knight and Mr. Wisdom.”

He nodded and muttered, “Good.”

“They will not harm Mr. Killingsworth, will they?” Gordana asked.

“What bothers me,” the old man interrupted, thumping the arm of his chair, “is who these idiots could be. I can understand them asking for a million dollars. That’s simple economics. You kidnap an ambassador and make sure that the ransom is in good hard currency. But who’d want an old, forgotten poet?” He brightened. “But perhaps it’s not me. Perhaps it’s Gordana whom they want.” He turned toward his granddaughter and smiled. “If I did not know that you were already spoken for, Gordana, I might think you had a secret lover.”

She blushed again and smiled, a little shyly.

“Spoken for?” I said.

“Since she was sixteen,” the old man said, nodding happily.

“I thought she wasn’t engaged.”

“To the Church, Mr. St. Ives,” he said proudly. “She’s to be the bride of Him who is greater than us all.”

“We were not to speak of it,” Gordana said, even more shyly than before.

“She’s just been waiting for me to die,” he said, “before entering the sisterhood. Now she will do it in America.”

“What a waste,” Wisdom muttered.

Gordana said something to Pernik in Serbo-Croatian and the old man nodded vigorously. “My granddaughter reminds me that we have forgotten our hospitality. You will join us in a glass of brandy,” he said. There was no question in his tone.

After the plum brandy was served, Gordana looked at me curiously and then once again spoke rapidly to her grandfather in Serbo-Croatian. The old man pulled his glasses down his nose and gazed at me over the rims. Then he pushed them back into place and gave me another hard stare.

“Forgive my rudeness, Mr. St. Ives, but Gordana just brought something to my attention.” He took another sip of his brandy and stared at me some more, this time nodding his head affirmatively. “You remember asking if we knew a man called — uh—”

“Bjelo,” his granddaughter said.

“Yes, if we knew a Bjelo who looked something like you. I know no one by that name but there was a young man who resembles you strongly whom we did once see quite often. Almost daily, in fact.”

“The resemblance is really remarkable,” Gordana said. “Except for the eyes. You have much kinder eyes.”

“Who was he?” I said.

“His name was Stepinac. Arso Stepinac. He was about ten years younger than you, Mt. St. Ives. The fellow became quite boring with all of his questions.”

“Questions?” I said.

“Yes,” the old man said. “That was his job, to ask me questions.”

“About what?”

Pernik made a broad gesture. “About life and love, of course, what else does one question a poet about, even a forgotten poet?”

“He asked my grandfather about politics and about his old friends,” Gordana said. “The questioning went on almost daily for several weeks.”

“When was this?” I said.

“A month or so ago,” the old man said. “I haven’t been questioned like that in years. And then one day, without any notice, Stepinac came no longer.”

“Did you ever find out who he was or who he was with?” I said.

Pernik looked at me curiously. “Find out? There was nothing to find out. He told me. It was the first thing he told me. I don’t answer just anyone’s questions, not day after day.”

I sighed. “All right,” I said. “Who was he?”

“Stepinac was younger than you, all right,” the old man said, “but I don’t know about the eyes. His seemed — well — steadier. Who was he? There’s no secret. He was Arso Stepinac and he said he was an official or something with the UDBA, the State Security Police. I never did learn why he was questioning me.”