Protocol for a Kidnapping

8

After we got through customs I started looking around for something young and about six feet tall in a nicely tailored dark suit whose center vent might be a full fourteen inches but whose lapels wouldn’t be wide enough to cause any stir at the embassy’s annual Fourth of July tea and fireworks do.

I was looking for something male with a slightly superior, world-weary expression who couldn’t quite hide his irritation at having been assigned to meet us at the airport, and who could rattle off instructions to the baggage handlers in fluent Serbo-Croatian which he’d picked up in six weeks or so because he had a sponge for a brain and languages came just ever so easy for him.

That’s what I was looking for out of prejudice or propaganda or both, so when I got jabbed in the ribs and turned I wasn’t prepared for a mop-haired blonde, about five-one in a brown dress that barely covered the V where her legs joined together, and who wore a saucy, go to hell grin, and who dragged a long, suede coat, and who wanted to know if I, for Christ sake, was Philip St. Ives.

“I’m St. Ives.”

She frowned at a slip of paper she held. “Where the hell are the other two, Mr. Costly and Mr. Expensive?” She thrust the paper at me. “That’s what it says, Jack; I didn’t make it up.”

I wondered if Coors had chuckled over his little joke.

“They couldn’t come,” I said. “Instead, I brought Mr. Wisdom, who’s the solid-looking gentleman on your left, and Mr. Knight, the handsome devil on your right.”

She grinned and stuck out her small hand and gave me a firm grip and then did the same thing to Wisdom and Knight. “I’m Arrie Tonzi,” she said, “and I’m your official embassy escort and if you don’t like girls, then you’ll have to see somebody about it tomorrow, because you’re stuck with me this afternoon.”

“I think you’re beautiful, Miss Tonzi,” Wisdom said and smiled mournfully.

“I think the State Department has been most thoughtful,” Knight said, giving her his best smile.

“You’re right,” she said to me, “he is goddamned handsome.”

“He’s an actor feller,” I said. “Sneaky.”

“Hey! I know you!” she said to Knight.

“I’d rather have money than fame,” Wisdom said to no one in particular.

She put her face up close to Knight’s and stared at it. Then she snapped her fingers with a loud pop. In his face. “You did the lonesome fireman in all those deodorant commercials about two years ago.”

“Yes,” Knight said. “We’d fallen upon hard times.”

“If it weren’t for his residuals, he’d be a pauper,” Wisdom told the girl. “I, on the other hand, am rich beyond your wildest dreams and am I not fair of countenance?”

“Who’re you,” she said, “Wisdom or Knight? I’m no good at names.”

“I’m Wisdom,” he said. “Knight’s the prettied-up, married one over there.”

“Did your wife come?” she said to Knight.

“She couldn’t make it.”

“Good,” she said and turned to me, dragging her long coat over the floor. “What are you, St. Ives, the tour leader?”

“Something like that.”

“You do this for a living?”

“What?”

“Ransom ambassadors.”

“It’s my first ambassador,” I said. “I started out West, first ransoming sheep, then worked up to horses, and finally to people. But this is my first ambassador and I hope you don’t mind if I’m just a little nervous.”

She widened her stance, put her fists on her hips, and looked up at me. “I would say you’re putting me on, but I can’t stand the phrase. You are bullshitting me, aren’t you?”

Wisdom sidled up behind her and whispered hoarsely into her ear. “Look at his pallor, doll. The guy’s no more’n a week out of Dannemora.”

“Who is he?” she demanded of me.

“Mr. Wisdom provides our comic relief,” I said seriously. “He’s young and brash and fun-loving. Mr. Knight, a wiser, older head, will shortly pull out a briar pipe and suck on it to demonstrate his sadly gentle disapproval of Mr. Wisdom’s exuberance. I serve as the levelheaded balance, equally tolerant of youth’s foolish foibles and middle age’s dull despair.”

“I think you’re also the chief bullshitter,” she said.

Knight gestured with his pipe and leered at her. “You holding, baby?”

“Jesus,” she said. “One actor and two nuts. I’m attached to the press attaché and he assigned me to stick with you and guide you around and see that you don’t get lost and order your meals and wipe your noses and buy presents for your wives.”

“The actor there’s the only one who’s married, ma’am,” Wisdom said. “I’m a single man myself and Mr. St. Ives here’s become sort of a rakehell since his divorce.”

“Oh, Jesus,” she said. “I wish I were Catholic so I could pray.” She looked up at me. “I’m also your translator if any of you ever shut up long enough to need one.”

“Okay,” I said. “What’s our hotel?”

“I booked you in at the Metropol,” she said.

“Je Metropol hotel jedan dobar hotel?” Wisdom asked her quickly.

She turned on him. “I thought none of you spoke the language.”

Wisdom smiled and patted her rounded butt. “Don’t worry, love,” he said, winking. “It’s the only phrase I know.”

“You do speak it, Arrie?” I said.

“My father was a Hungarian who got us out in fifty-six,” she said. “My mother’s a Yugoslav. A Serb. We speak everything. We have to.”

“How long have you been with the State Department?” Knight asked her.

“Four years,” she said. “Hell, it’s almost five now. I was in Prague for two and I’ve been here nearly two. Have you got all of your luggage or have you lost half of it?”

“We didn’t bring much since we’re not staying long.”

“The car’s outside. When do you want to start tomorrow, early?”

“What’s early?”

“Eight — eight thirty.”

“It’s the middle of the goddamned night,” the actor stated and then looked around for someone to contradict him. Nobody did.

“Nine,” she said. “They speak English at the Metropol so you can manage breakfast by yourselves. The only thing I have you scheduled for in the morning is the Ministry of Interior. You’re to meet a Mr. Bartak there at eleven.”

“What’s it about?”

“I thought you knew,” she said, “I don’t. They haven’t told me a goddamned thing because everybody’s got their bowels in an uproar about old grab-ass being kidnapped.”

“Still at it, huh?” I said.

“He never misses a chance and the younger the better.”

“All right,” I said. “We see Mr. Bartak and then what?”

“Then lunch. After that, you go calling on a Nobel poet. Anton Pernik.”

“Does he speak English?”

“I don’t know if he does, but his granddaughter does. If you want me to translate for you, I will.”

I said, “We’ll see,” and then we pushed through the entrance to the airport and waited for the black embassy four-door Ford sedan which seems the standard U.S. conveyance for those who are greeted at foreign airports by the assistant to the press attaché. If you rank slightly higher up the protocol scale, you get a big new Mercury, also black.

It was my first trip to Belgrade so I couldn’t compare it to what it had looked like before the Germans flattened it in 1941, or what it had looked like five or ten years ago when the building boom was on, or even 1500 years ago when the Huns sacked and razed it or when the Crusaders wandered through it in the eleventh century or when it was captured by the Turks in 1521. But on the twelve-mile trip into the city it looked new and fairly clean with lots of glass and concrete apartment buildings. In fact, it looked very much like Bonn and Barcelona and Birmingham (either England or Alabama) and I wished that it didn’t, but most cities look very much alike today.

Arrie Tonzi sat up front with the embassy driver and pointed out a few sights, but she really didn’t have her heart in it. When we pulled up at the Metropol, I asked her to join us in a drink, but she shook her head no and said that she had to get back to the embassy.

“Change your mind about the drink,” Wisdom urged.

She smiled and shook her head. “Some other time,” she said.

“It is Miss Tonzi, isn’t it?” he said.

“Miss Tonzi, twenty-six, a maiden lady of uncertain prospects.”

“If only you’d forget your pride and let me help you!” Wisdom said or cried, I guess, with an appropriate gesture.

“He is sort of cute, if a little pudgy,” she said to Knight.

Knight put his hands on her shoulders and stared down at her. “There’s something wrong with his glands, but here in Belgrade there’s a doctor who may be able to help. Still, over the years there have been many doctors, and if this treatment fails, well—”

“Jesus,” she said to me. “Does it go on like this all the time?”

“Only when they’ve got an audience.”

“You can check in and get up to your rooms by yourselves, can’t you?”

“I think we can manage.”

“It’s going to be fun, I can tell.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said.

Arrie Tonzi had a pretty little face with a mouth that kept going in and out of an uncertain smile, eyes that were too large one moment and squinted up into smiling arcs the next, a fair complexion that probably tanned well in summer, and a good enough figure which you could see most of if you peeped, and she didn’t seem to care much if you did. I suppose she was one of the first volunteers in the no-bra movement. She stood now in what seemed to be her favorite stance, her legs planted a little widely apart, her fists on her hips, trying to make her 102 or 103 pounds look tough and aggressive and not missing the desired effect by more than a couple of miles. She wanted to say something and she wasn’t quite sure how she should say it but she was damned sure going to say it anyhow.

“Is what you’re going to do going to be dangerous? I mean getting the ambassador back?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so. If it were going to be dangerous, they probably would have sent somebody else.”

“Well—” She stopped and then started over again. “Well, I mean, if it is going to be dangerous and you need some help, well, what I mean is you can — oh, hell, I know it sounds corny, but goddamn it, St. Ives, you can call on me.”

“Thanks, Arrie. I appreciate that. I really do.”

She looked at me carefully. “Like shit you do,” she said and turned and walked back to the embassy car.

We made it up to our rooms without any trouble and I was lying down, testing the bed, when the phone rang. There was no one I wanted to talk to, not Knight or Wisdom or Arrie Tonzi or Artur Bjelo or Anton Pernik or Amfred Killingsworth, especially not Amfred Killingsworth, but I picked up the phone on its third double ring and answered it anyway.

“Mr. St. Ives?” It was a man’s voice, accented, a little muffled.

“Yes,” I said.

“Jovan Tavro here.”

“All right,” I said. “You name it, where and when?”

“Good,” he said. “You are quick — no nonsense. I like that.”

“Fine,” I said. “Name it.”

“The Café Nemoguće,” he said. “It’s near the Central Station. Nemoguće means ‘impossible’ in English. That is funny, is it not?” and he laughed harshly to let me know that he at least thought so.

“Very,” I said. “What time?”

“Ten o’clock.”

“Any recognition?”

“Order some plejescavitsa,” he said. “An American eating plejescavitsa should be recognizable enough.”

“I can’t even pronounce it,” I said, but he had already hung up.