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.”