And if a certain government had this information, I thought, and used it discreetly and wisely, it could help determine who would, or would not, head the pecking order in Yugoslavia once its uncontested leader was no longer Josip Broz Tito. Of course, things would fell apart if this same information were to be prematurely spread across the front page of a large American newspaper that just happened to be owned by the U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia. If that danger threatened, you just might do something to prevent it. You might even kidnap your own ambassador.
I suddenly realized that Jones was looking at me expectantly. “I said do you want another drink?” he said.
“No thanks.”
“I’ll get word to Tavro.”
I rose. “Any idea of where I can get a cab?”
He shook his head. “Not much chance around here and I haven’t got a phone. I’ll walk you to the bus.”
I smiled and said good-bye to Mrs. Jones as her husband slipped into a heavy gray overcoat. He said something to her in Serbo-Croatian and she nodded and smiled at me and said, “Good-bye.” It may have been the only English she knew.
“You ever think of going back to the States?” I said as we walked down the narrow street.
“Not much,” Jones said. “She has her family here and I don’t have anyone but a brother, so it doesn’t make much sense. But it was rough at first.”
“How do you mean?”
“They didn’t know what to make of me. They must have had me followed for two years. There was a hell of a mess about work permits and so on. I’m just lucky that I own half a farm in Nebraska or we might have starved. My brother sent me my share. Finally, Tavro got Rankovic to put a stop to it. They just think I’m the nutty American now.”
“You like it here, huh?”
He smiled at me. It was a curious smile, tinged with a kind of sad pride. “I like my wife and you can’t beat the fishing,” he said. “But it wasn’t all my idea.”
We crossed the street and turned left. “Whose was it?”
“You can catch the bus here,” he said. “It’ll take you to the Trg Republike and you can catch a cab or walk from there.”
“Whose idea was it?” I said again.
He looked at me and then cleared his throat magnificently in true Yugoslav fashion and spat in the gutter. “Washington’s,” he said. “I’m supposed to be a sleeper. You know what a sleeper is?”
I told him that I did and he nodded. “Yeah, I thought that you might. Well, that was twenty-three years ago and I was young then. But I’m older now and since I haven’t heard a word in all that time you might just tell them something for me if you ever get the chance when you’re back in Washington.”
“What?”
“Tell them not to wake me up.” He nodded brusquely, turned, and walked off down the street.
15
At five o’clock that afternoon I was knocking on the door of Anton Pernik’s apartment under the expectant gaze of one of the plainclothes guards who was far more interested in getting a look at Gordana Panić than he was in me.
He gave her his best smile when she opened the door, but she didn’t smile back. She looked at me for a long moment and said, “Come in, Mr. St. Ives. You’re just in time.”
I followed her into the sitting room. She turned to survey it and then pointed at the large chair where her grandfather had held forth when I’d been there the first time.
“Sit there,” she said, “it’s comfortable. I’ll get us some brandy.”
She disappeared through a door and I looked around the room and it seemed much the same. The pictures of the men with their high collars and their slicked-back hair were still on the walls. The books were still behind the glass doors of their cases.
If anything had changed, it was Gordana. She had on a different dress, a dark red one that was shorter than the one she’d worn previously; but anyone can wear a new dress. Not everyone can wear a new mood that is so pronounced that it manifests a noticeably different personality.
When she came back with the brandy I said, “How is your grandfather?”
She didn’t answer until she served the drinks and was sitting in a straight-backed chair next to mine, the same one she had sat in during my other visit. I had to turn slightly to see her. She looked at me over the rim of her glass. “He’s been detained,” she said.
“Will he be back soon?” I said.
“No,” she said, “not soon.”
“I’ve heard from the kidnappers,” I said.
“Yes,” she said and drained her brandy. Her answer wasn’t quite what I expected.
“They want to exchange Killingsworth tomorrow night. In a place near Sarajevo.”
“I think I would like another brandy,” she said. “Would you care for one?”
“Why not?” I said and watched her move across the room. There seemed to be a difference in the way she walked, but it could have been the shorter dress. Maybe it was the brandy. I looked around the room again and I knew how it had changed. Nothing had been added, but something had been taken away. All the religious artifacts — the crosses, the paintings of Jesus and Mary, a carved ivory representation of the crucifixion, agonizing in its detail, and a number of other religious oils were gone, leaving pale outlines of where they had hung against the darker wallpaper.
When Gordana came back with the brandy, I said, “I see you’ve moved some things around. Are you thinking of taking them with you?”
She looked around the room, sipped her brandy, and nodded vaguely, “I moved them,” she said, adding, “to a more appropriate room.” Once more she looked at me over the rim of her glass. “Are you a religious person, Mr. St. Ives?”
“Not terribly,” I said. “Hardly at all, in fact.”
“Are you an atheist like Tito?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“But you are not a Catholic?”
“No.”
“If someone asked what your nationality was, what would you say?”
I looked at her. She had finished her second glass of brandy and she was smiling at me. It was a mischievous smile, but the look in her eyes was more than that. It was wicked.
“I’d say. American, I guess. Or United States citizen.
“But you have fifty states. Would you not say New Yorker or California-uh-an? Is that right?”
“That’s right, but I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t even say Ohioan, although that’s where I was born.”
“If you asked anyone in this country what they were, they would say Serb or Croat or Slovene or Montenegrin. I think Gospodin Tito is our only true Yugoslav, but then he’s only half Croat. His mother was a Slovene.”
“What would you call yourself?” I said.
“I would call myself Gospodjica Gordana,” she said, rising. She twirled and her red skirt twirled with her, giving me a fine full view of what I was sure were the world’s most beautiful legs. “Citizen Gordana,” she said, holding her glass aloft, “citizen of the world.”
“Nice,” I said, referring to her legs, but indicating the plum brandy.
“Would you like some more?”
“What are we celebrating?” I said.
She put her glass down and grasped the two arms of my chair and leaned forward until her face was close to mine. Very close. A quick glance down assured me that she, too, had joined the no-bra league. I had a hard time deciding where to rest my eyes, but finally decided on her face which was lovely and interesting and, after all, very close to mine. It would have been impolite not to.
“We are celebrating, Gospodin St. Ives, me!”