Killingsworth quickly got his new bride with child and then left for a three-year assignment in Europe as roving correspondent. He especially liked to cover the tulip festival in Holland. When he came back to Chicago, he again took over the editorial page and that’s where he stayed until one night in early 1957 when old man Singleton wandered down to the city room and found the managing editor drunk. He wasn’t as drunk as usual, but Singleton couldn’t tell the difference, so he fired him. When he was through with that, he turned to three reporters and a rewrite man and fired them for, as he later put it, “just standing around gawking.”
The next day Singleton named his son-in-law managing editor and three days later Killingsworth hired me to replace one of the fired reporters. He’d said, “I like the cut of your jib, St. Ives; welcome aboard,” and thus acquired himself a lifelong enemy.
There was no reason to tell Hamilton Coors any of this as we sat in the third-floor State Department office that seemed to belong to no one in particular. I was watching it snow; Coors was watching me watch. Neither of us had said anything for twenty or thirty seconds.
“Tell me more about the dirty linen,” I said finally.
“Killingsworth’s a fool, of course,” Coors said without rancor, but not without a trace of sadness.
“How do the Yugoslavs rate him?”
“Unofficially, they’ve asked that he be recalled.”
“Are their complaints general or specific?” I said. “Or both?”
Coors’s eyes left me and wandered around the room, but there wasn’t much to see, so they finally settled on the flag. “Do you remember Alexander Rankovic?”
“Just the name,” I said. “He was once something or other in the Yugoslav government.”
“Vice-president,” Coors said, “until five or six years ago when Tito kicked him out.”
“I remember now, but I don’t remember why.”
“Rankovic wasn’t only vice-president, he was also head of the UDBA, its secret police.”
“Well, they did give him something to do.”
Coors frowned and said, “Mmmm,” to let me know that he didn’t regard my remark as substantive. “There were charges and even countercharges for a while,” he said, “but the real blowup came when Tito claimed to have found a hidden microphone in his own house.”
“That could well cause a rift.”
From behind closed lips Coors gave his opinion of my remark with another “Mmmm,” and then said, “Rankovic was charged, stripped of his public office, and finally forced into obscurity. He was never tried publicly.”
“Then what?”
“Rankovic had a confidential assistant who’d been with him since the war. His name is Jovan Tavro. What Rankovic knew as head of the secret police, Tavro also knew. A few weeks ago, Tavro started to meet secretly with Killingsworth.”
“Who never could keep anything to himself.”
“He didn’t tell us.”
“Who did.”
“The Yugoslavs. It upset them so much that they became, well, insistent about Killingsworth’s recall.”
“But he got kidnapped before you could fetch him home.”
Coors hooded his eyes again and once more set them wandering around the room in search of something to light on. He had to settle for the flag again. “Not exactly,” he said finally.
“What do you mean not exactly?”
“We recalled him immediately.”
“And?”
“Killingsworth refused to leave,” he said in a voice so low that he almost mumbled it, as though hoping that I wouldn’t bother to listen.
“Amfred Woodrow Killingsworth,” I said, “Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary as well as Dunce Designate. Let me guess why he refused to leave. He’s in the thick of a monarchist plot to restore Peter to the throne?”
“No,” Coors said.
“It’s worse?”
He paused for a long time as though he were silently trying out some phrases to determine how bad they would sound when he finally had to say them. “Jovan Tavro was in possession of information that could be extremely valuable to whoever possessed it.”
“And Killingsworth’s now got it.”
Coors said nothing. It was, I suppose, a diplomatic silence.
“So Killingsworth is blackmailing you.” Coors blinked his eyes at that.
“Either you keep him on as ambassador, or he’ll spread Tavro’s information all over page one of the Chicago Post under a copyrighted by-line.”
Coors sighed. “You left out his syndicated news service.
“And you’ve left out something,” I said.
“Oh?”
“You’ve left out why Killingsworth really doesn’t want to come home.”
“That,” Coors said.
“That,” I said.
For the first time a really pained expression appeared on his dour face. It was a look that could have been caused by either acute embarrassment or a sudden migraine attack. They both hurt. He gently massaged his temples with the tips of his fingers, looking at the top of his desk.
“He won’t come back,” he said to the desk top, spacing each word carefully, “because he says he’s in love.”
Well, it can happen at fifty as easily as at fifteen, but it wasn’t at all what I’d expected so I got up and walked across the room to where the picture of the flag hung. I counted the stars and there were still fifty of them. Then I counted the stripes and felt relieved when there were only thirteen. But since it was a State Department flag, I counted them again to be sure.
“He’s in love with a slinky Eurasian from the Hanoi embassy,” I said to the flag.
Coors’s voice seemed tired when he spoke. “We could handle that,” he said. “Who does he think he’s in love with other than the face he shaves every morning?”
“With Anton Pernik’s granddaughter.”
“She must be either pretty or sexy, because she couldn’t be smart. Not if she’s fooling around with Killingsworth.”
“She keeps house for Pernik — looks after him,” Coors said.
I sat down again and looked at Coors who once more was giving his fingernails a close inspection. First the right hand, then the left.
“How old’s the girl?” I said.
“Twenty-two.”
“You don’t need me. You need some agony column writer. Someone like Ann Landers. When do you let the press in on the kidnapping?”
“This afternoon,” Coors said.
“What do the Yugoslavs say?”
“They’ve agreed to free Pernik.”
“What if you don’t?” I said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t hand over the million and Pernik.”
Coors merely shrugged and looked somewhere else. At the flag probably.
“What does that mean?” I said. “That they’d kill Killingsworth?”
“They could threaten to,” he said.
“But you’d figure it for a bluff?”
“I’m sure it would be.”
“Call it then,” I said. “You can’t possibly lose.”
Coors’s large eyes deserted the flag and darted quickly around the room as if in desperate search of some less hallowed place to light. But finally they gave up and once more settled on the flag. It may have given him reassurance or even a sense of purpose. He seemed to need one. “We can’t do that,” he said and there was only finality in his tone.
“Why not?”
“Because,” he said and chewed on his lower lip before continuing. “Because we are the kidnappers.”
5
I was halfway to the door before Coors spoke again and when he did, it stopped me in midstride. It was only one word, but nobody had used it yet and probably wouldn’t again because they thought it cost too much. Coors said, “Please.”