“THEY’RE TEARING UP the street again,” Fred Brenner said disgustedly. “I’ll drop you at the corner here.” Karp shrugged and opened the door. The clanging explosions of air drills rattled down Centre Street from its junction with Canal and reverberated between the Courthouse and the Federal Building across Foley Square. “You sure you can make it by yourself?” the big detective asked solicitously. Karp shot him a sour grin. At Denton’s insistence, Brenner had been continuously with Karp since he and Marlene had returned to the city the previous night. He’d even set up a folding cot in Karp’s pristine living room.
“I think so,” Karp said. “By the way, I go to the can around two-thirty, and I like soft paper. Be there.” Brenner laughed and pulled away in a screeching U-turn down Canal.
Karp walked past the Courthouse to Pearl and stopped in at Sam’s. The little luncheonette was thick with the smell of bitter coffee, toast, and grease, the air almost like a food itself. He unbuttoned his coat and ordered a coffee with two bagels to go from Gus, the current Sam, a squat person with a striking resemblance to Yassir Arafat. Karp was about to leave with his order when V.T. and Guma came in, with a smiling Dirty Warren in tow. V.T. and Warren were their usual impeccable selves; Guma, unshaven and uncombed, looked like a man just arisen from bed.
Gus scowled when he spotted Warren and began to shake his head. “Hey, uh-uh—”
“It’s cool, Gus,” Guma said. “He’ll be good.”
“No shoutin’.”
“Right. Just a little quiet breakfast. We’ll sit back by the john. Hi, Butch, come on back. We’re just putting the finishing touches on you know what.”
“Sure. Hey, V.T., sorry we had to run. We had a great time.”
“Glad to hear it. You have any problems getting home?”
“You could say that,” Karp replied. When they were seated, he related the story of the encounter with the white van. “So you’re a hunted man,” said V.T. when he had finished. “That’s pretty exciting. Can I have your Yankee jacket if they get you?”
“You ought to get out of town, Butch. Until they catch those assholes,” Guma said.
“Yeah, but I can’t right now. The trial’s in a few weeks, and I got to watch the store or Bloom will let them cop to mopery. Of course, if I had something solid on Bloom, that’d be a different story. Like those tapes—”
“Oh, no, we went through that already.”
“Guma, I’m risking my life here, and you won’t risk … I don’t know what.”
“My balls? No thanks.”
“What are you guys talking about?” V.T. asked. Karp told him. “Goom, I can’t believe my ears. Passing up the match of the century? Klepp and Guma, my God! Alert the networks!”
“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Newbury,” said Guma, starting in on his prune danish and black coffee. The others were silent, except for Dirty Warren’s random muttering of curses under his breath. Finally Guma slammed his cup down in the saucer. “OK, goddammit! I’m not promising anything, but I will try. One try, that’s all. If I draw a blank, or I get any shit from that bitch, that’s all she wrote. You understand?”
“Perfectly,” Karp said. “Nobody could ask for more. Right, Warren?”
“Right, Mr. Karp. You jerk-off motherfucking dickhead.”
Outside the luncheonette, Karp paused to fix his collar and button his coat. The wind blowing up Pearl Street was making the crowd hunch over and the perpetual steam plumes from the manholes jitter in wispy rags. He spotted the big guy almost at once. He didn’t seem to be taking any trouble about hiding himself. He climbed down from a large van that was parked across the street, a blue Dodge this time, parked tight so that Karp couldn’t read the plates.
Another swarthy guy. He leaned against the front of his van, his dark eyes studying Karp calmly. He was about six-two and broad across the chest and shoulders, a weightlifter type, and wore a navy blue track suit with running shoes and a tan down vest.
Ruiz’s second string looked a lot more impressive than the first, Karp thought. Or maybe this was the first team. As he began to walk down Pearl toward Centre, the weightlifter followed. He was not interested in losing the big man. On the contrary, what he wanted was a conversation with this dude in the company of the Chief of Detectives.
Arriving at his office, Karp threw himself into his chair, still with his coat on, and called Denton. “They got another boy on me.”
“You said you were coming over here this morning.”
“I got work to do, Bill. I’ll be over afterward, maybe five-thirty. I’ll bring that Flanagan stuff over, too.”
“I’m worried about you, not the evidence. Why don’t I send Fred?”
“For what? To sit in my office and read comics? Chief, nobody is going to pop me in the goddamn courthouse. No, I’ll tell you what you can do. Let’s follow this guy and see who he works for. Maybe he’ll lead us to Ruiz.”
“I was going to suggest that, too. What’s he look like?”
As it turned out, the plainclothes detectives dispatched by Denton could find no trace of the weightlifter in the blue track suit. All they could do was to circulate his description to security and put out a bulletin for the guy.
Karp thus went through his hectic day with the back of his neck tickling. He found himself studying the faces in the crowded courtrooms, seeking the guilty look, the quick turning away of somebody who had been watching him. Of course, he found nothing—or rather, he found too much. Looking for suspicious people in the New York criminal courts was like looking for communists in the Supreme Soviet.
By three, he was irritable and nervous and wishing he drank liquor. Marlene had gone off somewhere; “out of the building” was all she’d told the secretary. Karp arranged and filed the ragged cardboard portfolio of case papers he had dragged around with him all day, the high point of which was the presentation of a homicide case to the grand jury. It was a simple case. A woman had left her abusive husband, and he had found her and shot her five times. Karp had no trouble getting an indictment. As far as he knew, the CIA was not interested in the affair, nor were the Vatican, the FBI, the KGB, or the Elders of Zion. It was his kind of case.
Marlene had to visit the fourteenth-floor ladies room three times before she found Rhoda Klepp. She sidled up next to Rhoda’s sink and began to comb her perfectly combed hair. For this occasion she was wearing the most debauched costume she felt she could get away with in the office, a size-three lavender sweater dress that buttoned down the front, with the top six and the bottom four unbuttoned. You could count her rib bones.
She sighed loudly. “God, I’m beat,” she exclaimed. “What a weekend.”
Rhoda glanced over and did a double take. It wasn’t that Marlene looked slutty, it was just that she had shaved the line between low-class lawyer and high-class whore to near transparency. “Oh? Where did you go?” she asked casually.
“Up to V.T. Newbury’s place. What a scene! That woman he hangs out with is too much. You’ve heard of Annabelle Partland? I wouldn’t call her a porn queen exactly, more of a classy erotica sort of thing, but she’s into some incredibly kinky scenes. I mean internationally—the Velvet Underground, the Hellfire Club and all that West End stuff in London, and of course that thing that was in all the papers, with those Greek millionaires in Juan Les Pins? You remember, with the corrupt little girls?”
“You’re putting me on, right?”
“No, really,” Marlene laughed, “I mean, my dear, I’m no blushing virgin, but this was a bit much for even me. She showed us a film some guy had made, starring her and a couple of dudes, one of whom is now a big TV star, but I’m not supposed to say who. We were positively writhing by the time it was finished. After that it was every girl for herself and no holes barred.”
Marlene hesitated before using this last line: its grotesque vulgarity might spill the beans. But no, she observed, Rhoda was now looking at her without her usual supercilious air, and her vixen face exhibited instead that mixed expression of disgust and fascination of a rubbernecker at a fatal automobile crash.
“Hey, swinging,” Rhoda observed, too flatly. Her brain was reeling. It was simply not possible that Marlene Ciampi, whom she had patronized as being hopelessly naive, could have attained this level of sophistication. Not to mention that Marlene was apparently a delicious source of gossip and scandal of which Rhoda had been completely unaware. It could not be tolerated.
“Um, who was there?”
“Just me and V.T. and Annabelle. And Butch, of course. Naturally, it didn’t get really weird until Guma showed up. Now, there’s a hunk!”
“Guma? You think Guma is a—a hunk?” Rhoda asked incredulously, wrinkling her nose.
“Yeah, well, I guess you got to get to, ah, know him, if you get what I mean.”
“You’re joking.”
Marlene fixed her with a level stare and did her best Joan Crawford. “Darling, you have absolutely no idea. You know, Rhoda, as you get older and more experienced, you’ll find you have certain needs, needs that can’t be satisfied by some pretty boy. The man is a master. What an imagination! Not to mention the equipment!”
“The e-e-quipment?” Rhoda stammered.
“Giganteroso. And indefatigable.”
“Umm, you mean you and, ah, Guma—”
“Did I ever! Oh, he spent most of the evening in a threesome with this pro he brought and Annabelle, but I got my licks in. So to speak.” Marlene started to titter involuntarily and managed to turn it into a dirty laugh. It sounded utterly phony to her own ears, but Rhoda didn’t seem to notice. In fact, as Marlene had correctly judged, Rhoda was hooked. Although she was a habitual petty liar herself, and shrewd enough in detecting the little inconsistencies and fibs of office life, a piece of malarkey as enormous as what Marlene was handing out was quite outside her experience.
“Hmm, but Marlene,” said Rhoda, her mouth dry, “I thought you and Karp were an item.”
“Oh, we are, we are, but what has that got to do with it? Oh, you mean fidelity. Going steady? Like in junior high? Seriously, I mean, it is 1976. We are capable of some sophistication. He has his—how can I put it—his interests, and I have mine.” Marlene finished her face and picked up her bag to go. “By the way, you might consider giving that a fling yourself. Of course, he’s picky. God knows, with his reputation in certain circles he could have any woman in town.”
“Who, Karp?”
Marlene laughed hysterically. “Karp? How silly! No, Guma! On the other hand, he might be a little too piquant for somebody your age. I don’t know. I mean, he had this bag of implements he brought back from Thailand. Annabelle volunteered, of course. I thought the poor woman was going to have a seizure—” She glanced at her watch. “My God, I’m due in Part Thirty-three two minutes ago. See you.”
Marlene ran down the hall and into the stairwell. There she commenced to laugh so hard that she had difficulty negotiating the stairs. Her nose ran, her eyes teared; she gasped and wheezed. Later, going about her grim business in court, an image kept jumping into her mind bringing to her face a loony grin unsuitable to the venue: Rhoda Klepp, naked and wet, flopping around on a sandy beach like a landed salmon—in her mouth, firmly hooked, a cylindrical pale lure carved into the shape of an equally nude Guma, cigar and all.
Guma stood in the men’s washroom, his hair oil, comb, cologne, and deodorant arranged on the edge of the basin while he ran an electric razor over his blue jowls. As he did so, he was smoking the first El Producto cigar of the day, a habit he had pursued since the age of sixteen. It slowed down the shave, especially around the mouth, but he didn’t mind. He did his best thinking at such moments, and at this particular moment he was thinking about Rhoda Klepp and about his approach. He reviewed his standard repertoire: Little Boy, Tough Guy With Heart of Gold, Noble But Injured and in Search of the Right Woman. He doubted any of these would work. Although the personality of the woman was hardly ever a factor in his romantic life, in the case of Rhoda Klepp he had to make an exception. His heart was not in the chase, and where the heart would not go, it was unlikely that the more operational units of anatomy would follow.
He now began to consider how he could weasel out of his deal with Karp. Suddenly he smiled. After all, he had promised only to try. He put down his razor and patted cologne liberally on his face and neck. An elderly court clerk came in to the men’s room and stepped up to a urinal. Glancing at Guma, he said, “Hey, Ray, who’s the lucky girl?”
“Rhoda Klepp,” Guma said. The clerk laughed so hard he had to stop peeing.
An hour later, Rhoda Klepp was talking to her secretary in Wharton’s outer office. When she was done, she turned to go back to her own office. That’s when she saw Guma leaning casually against a wall near a potted palm. He was chewing gum. She gave him what she thought was a cool and sophisticated look. At the same time she was unpleasantly conscious of the flush that was running up her cheeks. He strolled over to her. In a neutral voice he said, “Hey, Rhoda. Wanna fuck?”
“Sure,” she said, surprising the hell out of both of them.
By five, the only item left in Karp’s portfolio was the sealed envelope with the Q and A from Flanagan. He told Connie he was walking over to Police Plaza to deliver something to Chief Denton and that if Marlene called, he would meet her in her office around six. He left the building by the Baxter Street exit. They were still tearing up the pavement, and the sounds of the drills echoed like gunfire through the narrow, walled-in streets. He examined the road and the sidewalk carefully. No blue van, and in any case, with traffic clogged as it was, it would be impossible for a vehicle to follow him on foot. No weightlifter either. Of course, there could be others on his tail. A short, wiry man wearing a brown parka crossed the street toward him. The man scowled and muttered something in an unfamiliar language, then moved on. A threat, or a guy who just remembered he had to pick up the dry cleaning? Karp fought down his paranoia. Taking a deep breath, he started walking toward police headquarters three blocks away, his hand on the envelope deep in his coat pocket.
The old police headquarters, on Centre, was a baroque domed pile easily confused with a church. It had obviously been designed, at least in part, to overawe the proletariat with the greatness of the law, or failing that, to hold off an attack in force. The new building was a triangular modern structure that looked like the world headquarters of an insurance company. It was on a street that had been renamed Avenue of the Finest. Hype is cheap.
Karp wasn’t carrying any bombs or weapons, so they let him in and he took the elevator up to the fourteenth floor, where the superchiefs have their offices. He introduced himself to Denton’s secretary and said he’d like to see the chief for a minute. Her eyes widened in surprise. “You’re Roger Karp? But you’re supposed to be in Bellevue.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The chief just rushed out of here about ten minutes ago. Somebody called from Bellevue Emergency and said they had a Roger Karp who’d just been shot on the street and was asking for Chief Denton.”
Karp’s belly knotted. “OK, there’s some kind of scam going on,” he said carefully, trying to control his breathing. “When the chief calls back, tell him I was here and that I’ll call him later this evening, OK?”
She looked concerned. “Mr. Karp, is there some kind of trouble? Maybe you should stay here. I could call his driver and get the message to him right now.”
Karp merely shook his head. He was holding an envelope containing evidence that somebody high up in the NYPD had tried to destroy a case against a cop killer. Given the phony call from Bellevue, the last thing he wanted was his whereabouts broadcast over police radio.
He left the building and began trotting back to the courthouse. He was not at all surprised when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the weightlifter step out of a doorway and follow him at the same slow trot, like two joggers on the path around the reservoir in Central Park.
The courthouse was closing down when he arrived. The weightlifter did not follow him, but continued trotting past the entrance as if on a more important errand. Karp walked up the fire stairs to the second floor, to one of the vast depositories of court records that occupied almost all of the courthouse’s first three floors. The room was dim and empty. He went to a file cabinet, pulled open a drawer, and yanked out a file at random. People v. Dodd, 1947, a routine burglary. He stuck the envelope in the file and returned it to its place. He knew where it was, but for anyone else it was now as lost as it would have been at the bottom of the Mindanao Trench.
In the main lobby, by the guard’s desk and its metal-detecting frames, Karp made some small talk with the guards, then made a show of checking his wristwatch. “Hey, it’s five-forty,” he said. “Got to run. Good night.”
I’ve established the time of death, he thought, make it a little easier for whoever picks up the case. Walking out onto the wide sidewalk facing Collect Pond Park, he heard a shout and spun around. The weightlifter was running toward him, his mouth open. As Karp started back for the entrance, he heard the pneumatic drills clanging up the street, and a part of his mind wondered why they had started again. Something popped like a firecracker next to him, and he felt a hard jolt in his upper arm.
Then, without quite understanding how, he was lying with his cheek on the cold pavement. His ears were filled with the sound of the drills. His shoulder and side hurt, his nose stung and dripped. Some huge weight was resting on his back. He tried to push off against it, but the pain grew unbearably when he did so.
He opened his eyes and saw gray concrete through a blur of tears. Something hot hit the back of his neck, skittered across his face, and bounced, tinkling, onto the sidewalk. He blinked the tears away. There was a squat brass cylinder lying a few inches from his eye. Dozens more littered the pavement, and as he watched, others fell from above. The deafening racket continued, and he could smell a sharp firecracker stench.
He at last made the connection: somebody was firing an automatic weapon about four inches from his left ear. He heaved upward and tried to roll. He might as well have been under an Oldsmobile. He heard the roar of a large engine and the squeal of tires, and saw the bottom half of a white van tear off down the street. The side was open and a man was lying in the doorway, his arm hanging down, the hand smacking against the roadway. The hand was bright red.
Then someone lifted him off the ground. He was being carried over someone’s shoulder. He saw the pavement swiftly moving beneath. His arm flopped down and he was engulfed in agony. A wave of nausea rose from his gut, and he lost his struggle to remain conscious.
He awoke lying on his back in a dark, shaking, rumbling space. The pain was gone. Instead he felt a comfortable warmth and his face seemed covered with soft flannel. He had spent enough time in orthopedic hospitals to know the feeling. Somebody had given him a shot of morphine. People were moving around him in the darkness. They were talking softly in a foreign language, a guttural, rolling language that was oddly familiar. His mouth was bone dry and when he finally forced a few words out, he croaked.
“What’s going on? What’s—what—”
“Relax, you’re all right now,” said a woman’s voice in accented English.
He tried to sit up, but there was something across his chest holding him down. “What the hell is going on? Who are you?”
Suddenly there was light. Karp blinked and saw that he was in a van, tied to a stretcher. Somebody had just turned on the dome light. Kneeling over him, looking concerned, was a familiar face.
“Leventhal?” he asked in amazement. “The Stereo King?”
“Yes, Mr. Karp, it’s me.”
“But what the hell … what are you, working for the Cubans?”
Leventhal shook his head, then said something in the foreign language. Karp tried to gather his thoughts, but the dope was making his mind slow. The language, what was it? He couldn’t control his mouth. It felt two feet wide. “Crosse? Kwats? Yugo-Yugoslob? Woo?”
The Stereo King reached up and flicked off the dome light. Karp closed his eyes and drifted in and out of drugged sleep for a while. The voices murmured around him. What was that language? It wasn’t Serbo-Croat. He remembered the interviews with the hijackers in the FBI office. It wasn’t German either. Karp’s grandparents had spoken both German and Yiddish. Recalling his grandparents was what did it. Grandparents. Funerals. Shul. The voices in the darkness were speaking Hebrew.
“Goddy?” Marlene Ciampi said, “we got problems and I need your help.” She was amazed at how calm she was. She was also amazed that when Bill Denton had called and told her that Karp had been snatched in front of the courthouse in a hail of lead, she had not told him about her Yugoslavian connection. Which was why she was on the phone with G.F.S. Taylor.
“Why, my dear, whatever is the matter?” he asked.
“Somebody just tried to machine gun Butch Karp in front of the courthouse.”
“Good God! New York gets more Balkan every day. Renko and Peter will feel quite at home soon. You said ‘tried,’ so I presume he’s not dead.”
“No, I don’t think so. But … there was blood on the sidewalk where he was lying.”
“And where were the police?”
“Well, the detective who witnessed the thing was waiting for Karp at the wrong entrance. By the time he heard the shots and ran around the building, the whole thing was over. It couldn’t have lasted more than a minute.”
“I see. And how can I help?”
“Well, there were two groups, see. One tried to whack him out and the other saved him but kidnapped him. It’d be good to know which is which. But I’d lay odds that one of them is Ruiz’s Cubans and the other is—”
“Beg pardon. Ruiz?”
“Oh crap, I’m sorry, Goddy, just some other thugs in this case, a bunch of guys who used to work for the CIA and are doing free-lance evil.”
“Um-hmmm. The CIA, you say. How interesting.”
“Why?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing. Just thought of something. Now, who did you say the other gang was?”
“That I don’t know. I’d sort of like your opinion on whether they could be Yugos. Maybe Croats.”
There was a long pause on the line. “We’d better talk, and not by phone. Why don’t you come to my place? Half an hour.”
And he hung up before she could say anything more.
In fact, they did not talk much in any case. When Marlene arrived at Taylor’s apartment and they were seated in the stuffy parlor, the old man simply gave her a slip of paper with an address written on it.
“Marlene, do you recall the last time we saw Renko, you asked me whether I had any idea of why Karavitch would become active after all these years, and I said I would try to set up a meeting with a man named Dushan, who might know more about it?”
“Yeah, I do.” She held up the paper. “This is him?”
“Right. I think it’s time for you to see him. And, Marlene, these are very serious, very dangerous people you are going to meet. Not like Renko. But I think that if Croatians are involved in this shooting match today, Dushan will know. More important, he might tell you, provided he thinks he can get something from you in return.” As he said this, his expression was so grave that Marlene had to grin. “Wow, real spies,” she exclaimed, “this is a first for me. Do I have to eat the paper?”
He returned the smile, but faintly. “I’m serious, my dear. If you get into trouble, I’m not sure I have the resources to extricate you. And I’m not sure you have anything to bargain with.”
“Oh, I think I do. I’ve got Karavitch and his friends for starters, which I bet was the reason this guy agreed to meet me in the first place.”
Taylor looked uneasy. “Well, yes, of course. But still, do be careful.”
“Sure, Goddy, I know. Hey, Ms. Caution, that’s me. Don’t worry so much, you’re starting to look like my mother.” Marlene stood up and hoisted her shoulder bag. “OK, I’m going now—”
“Marlene, perhaps we should call in the police—”
“Shit, Goddy! That’s the last thing we need. All we’re after is a little information. Denton’s got enough to do. Besides, if I sit still, I’ll go crazy. No, now I’m really going, and Goddy … ?”
“Yes?”
“Whatever they do to me, I’ll never betray you—”
“Get out of here, you lunatic!” Taylor cried, grinning now.
“Except hairy spiders. If they bring out the hairy spiders, you’re finished, sorry.”
The address was an old, anonymous ten-story building in the far east Thirties. The door to suite 503 was marked “KOR IMPORTS” in dull gold letters. Inside, Marlene found a tiny reception area containing a tan vinyl couch, a coffee table spread with copies of People magazine and a two-day-old Post. There was a tourist poster on the wall: blue sea, rocky shore, JUGOSLAVIE in white letters. Marlene went up to the little sliding window, behind which sat a hard-faced blond woman reading a magazine. “I’m Marlene Ciampi,” she said. “I’m here to see Mr. Dushan.”
The woman looked at Marlene unsmilingly, put down her magazine, and punched a button on her intercom. She said a few words in a Slavic tongue, waited a second, and hung up. She indicated a door at the far end of the reception area with a twist of her head, and returned to her magazine.
The inner office was lit only by a small gooseneck lamp on the desk in the center of the room, the bulb of which was pushed down to within a few inches of the desktop. There was a man seated behind the desk. Marlene could see that he was large, but nothing beyond that; his head was a dark lump.
“Mr. Dushan?” she asked, more loudly than she had intended.
“Yes. Please have a seat.” The voice was deep, his English only slightly accented. “Forgive the illumination. I think it would be convenient if you did not see my face at present.”
Marlene arranged herself on a straight chair before the desk. “Oh? Would I know you? Are you famous?”
Dushan ignored this and said, “How can we help you, Miss Ciampi?”
Marlene took a deep breath and said, “A friend of mine, an assistant district attorney of New York County, was kidnapped this afternoon. Somebody tried to shoot him, and another group of people picked him up and drove off with him. Someone suggested that you had knowledge of … certain groups that might be involved. So …”
She trailed off. Talking to a stranger in the dark like this in circumlocutions was more disconcerting than she would have believed possible. It was like going to confession. She began to feel irrationally guilty and let out a nervous giggle.
“Something is amusing?”
“No, I was thinking of confession. Telling things to someone you don’t really know in the dark. Waiting to get bawled out.”
A low chuckle. “Yes, and then forgiven. You are a Catholic, then?”
“Terminally lapsed, I’m afraid. But, uh, about Karp—”
“Yes, Mr. Karp. As to that, perhaps I can help you, and perhaps not. Perhaps we can help each other.”
“Like how?”
“Something will emerge. As in the confessional. So. Let us begin by exchanging what we know of this situation. Mr. Karp is engaged in prosecuting a Croatian terrorist cell for the murder of a policeman. Someone tries to shoot him, and someone else rescues him from this shooting and spirits him away. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Croatian terrorists are involved. Which is, of course, why Colonel Taylor sent you to me. Tell me, how much do you know about Djordje Karavitch?”
“What’s to know? He helped kill a friend of mine. And I heard what he did in the war from … some friends. He’s a dirtball. Why do you ask?”
“A dirtball? What an interesting expression! No, Karavitch is a fascinating man. I say this although I am his enemy. A brilliant scholar, a brave fighter, a great patriot, a leader of men. But another of the millions driven insane by the events of this hideous century. It is true that many of the ustashi were gutter people—dirtballs, as you say—but Karavitch somehow stood above them even though he drenched himself in blood.”
“You mean in that village? Krushak?”
“Ah, so you know about Krushak?” There was surprise in the man’s voice. “Very good. But there were many such places, very many. In one little town, for example, in the wine region, a group of ustashi slashed the throats of the entire population over a wine vat. Over four hundred men, women, and children. They wished to see how much Serbian blood the vat would hold.”
“And Karavitch was there?”
“Who knows? He might have been, certainly. Karavitch worked directly for Andrija Artukovic, the Croatian Minister of Police, who was responsible for organizing the murder of four hundred thousand Serbs and Jews. So, then, here is a man hunted throughout Europe, a fascist murderer; we are searching for him, the Soviets, the Allies—I ask you, how could such a man escape?”
“I don’t know. Somebody must have helped him.”
“Yes, somebody did. At the end of the war the Catholic Church established an organization called Intermarium, the purpose of which was to help Catholic activists escape from Soviet-occupied territory. They did not, of course, ask any questions about what these good Catholics were doing during the war, whether they were murdering Serbs or Jews, for example. One of their agents, a priest named Dragonovic, specialized in helping Croatian fascists, including the ustashi, helping them escape. A ratline, as they call it. We know that Dragonovic and Intermarium provided fake transit papers to a man calling himself Karavitch for a journey from Hungary to Trieste in early 1946.
“Now, you understand that in Yugoslavia in 1946 we had more important things to do than to hunt down every fascist trying to leave the country. The nation was a ruin. We had lost ten per cent of our population. But Karavitch we wanted. So we sent people to Trieste, where we knew he was staying. And he was gone. Not just gone from Trieste, gone from the Intermarium ratline. He vanished.”
“Where did he go? Do you know?”
A long pause. Marlene was dying for a cigarette, but was afraid to make a light. The pleasant voice continued. “We think he was hired by your army’s counterintelligence corps to run a network of agents in the Balkans. In 1948 the network closed down and Karavitch entered the United States, where he has been living peacefully ever after. It is a not uncommon story.”
“So why tell it? What does this have to do with Karp?”
“I tell it to impress upon you the importance we attach to Djordje Karavitch, and to convince you that it is in the interests of justice that he be returned to Yugoslavia to face his punishment. As for your Mr. Karp, we have reason to believe that he is being held by elements of a Croat terrorist organization. This organization will attempt to negotiate an exchange—Karp for Karavitch and his group. We would like to be present when this exchange takes place.”
“Uh-huh. And how are you going to arrange that?”
“That is where you come in, Miss Ciampi. You see, the police have hidden Karavitch, as I’m sure you’re aware. I’m also sure that you know where they are hiding him. It would not be difficult, I think, for you to alert us when and where the exchange is to be made.”
“Wait a minute there,” she said sharply. “You’re talking about a hostage situation. There’ll be police brass in charge, and SWAT teams and, Christ, you’ll never get within a mile of the place.”
A chuckle rose from the gloom. “No, no, it will not be that way at all. It will be very simple, which is why they have taken Mr. Karp. Surely you can see this. It is, after all, Karp who has responsibility for the prisoners. He can order them moved anywhere he chooses, just by making a phone call.”
“Karp wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh, I think eventually he will. If I were you, I would pray that he does not make any trouble for them. These are extremely unpleasant people, Miss Ciampi.”
She chewed her lip and tried to order her thoughts. She fought the feeling that all this foreign-intrigue crap was over her head. It was a deal, just a deal with a bunch of scumbags. And she knew how to deal.
“Yeah, right. But tell me, I’m a little slow here. What’s your end?”
“Pardon?”
“Your end. What do you bring to the deal? I mean, you tipped me off, thanks a lot, but why don’t I go to the cops right now? Why do I stooge for you so you can grab Karavitch?”
Another of those low chuckles. “Ah, yes, I was getting to that. Of course, we have a man with these people.”
“A man … ?”
“Don’t you think that we have infiltrated all these traitorous little groups? This is Balkan politics, Miss Ciampi. We have been happily betraying each other for six hundred years. Yes, one of our people is with Karp at this very moment. My end, as you put it, is to make sure that when Karp has done what they want him to do, he does not get a bullet in the head. Now, do we have a deal?”
She was about to say, “How do I know I can trust you?” like they do in the movies on such occasions, but decided the question was not worth asking, since she knew the obligatory answer. She felt stiff and tired. “I’ll await your call, Miss Ciampi,” said the voice. Marlene stood up and stretched. “You forgot to say, ‘Do not talk to the police,’” she said, but even as she said it, she sensed that the man had slipped away in the darkness.
“Most of it is tommyrot, of course,” said G.F.S. Taylor, putting down his second beer of the evening.
“Like what?” she asked.
“Well, to start, that business about wanting Karavitch for war crimes.”
“Don’t they?”
“Marlene, the Yugoslavs want to forget the war. There was a bloodbath of sorts in Croatia right afterward, and then they sensibly decided not to pursue the issue. Their goal was to knit the various minorities together again. Dragging the odd Croat against the wall, fascist or no, would not have helped that end. Look, Karavitch was a small fish compared to Artukovic, and he got away. Hell, even Pavelic, the bastard who ran Croatia for the Nazis, got away. The Yugoslavs didn’t send special teams after them. No, it won’t wash, dear.”
“But Peter Gregorievitch hasn’t forgotten.”
“Peter is a maniac. A lovely man, but an absolute nutter, at least on this issue. A bit of old Balkan there, you might say, blood for blood, forever. If Yugoslavia is going to survive they’ll have to put that sort of thing behind them.” His one eye stared into space for a while and he sipped at his beer.
At length Marlene said, “So you think that business about what’s-his-face, the Catholic underground, was bullshit too?”
“God, no. Monsignor Krunoslav Dragonovic ran an escape service for hundreds of Croats after the war, on Church money, and CIA money too. There was a warm, chummy relationship back then between the Agency and anybody with a claim to an anticommunist past. Christ, they hired half the SS! By the way, do you know where Dragonovic is now? In Zagreb, enjoying a comfortable retirement. Has been since ’67. I see you’re surprised, but I always rather suspected the old crock was playing both ends against the middle. Get the bad Croats out, but slip a few good Red Croats in amongst them, as a little favor to KOS.”
He noticed her frown. “KOS. Yugoslav military counterintelligence. I rather think you just met their New York chief.”
“Dushan, huh? That’s not his real name, of course.”
“Needless to say. Rather fanciful nom de guerre for a good communist, incidentally. It’s the surname of the last tsar of the Serbian Empire. Very strange people these.”
“Yeah, you could say that. So what’s his angle? Why does he want Karavitch? More important, can he do what he says? Does he have a guy with Karp now?”
Taylor waited a long time before answering, examining the dregs in his glass and pulling on the yellow ends of his mustache.
“His angle. I have no way of knowing for certain, mind you, but it must have something to do with Karavitch’s current activities. It’s quite possible that Karavitch never entirely severed his connections with U.S. intelligence. As for whether he can help Karp … well, let me say that any Croat organization potent enough to pull off a kidnapping in broad daylight under fire is likely to have been infiltrated by Dushan’s people. I notice you didn’t think to ask him why, if he really had someone on the inside, his man didn’t ring him up the minute Karp had arranged for the switch.”
“Yeah, shit, that was dumb. So why does he need me?”
“Why, indeed? But the real question is whether any Croats have him, and there I would say that I rather doubt it. Most of the Croat nationalist organizations in New York are talking shops. I don’t know of one offhand that could pull it off. I’m guessing, mind you, but I think Dushan’s bluffing.”
“But, Goddy, what should I do? I need a plan.”
“Perhaps it’s early for a plan. I’d say play along for the time being. Keep in contact. Wait. I’m sure you realize that among the people who would not like to see Karavitch go to prison in America, Mr. Dushan ranks fairly high. If you pretend to play his game, perhaps he will not think to try another, one you know nothing about. But the only real ’layer for the immediate moment is your Mr. Karp. Nothing can happen until he arranges for the switch. Another beer?”
They drank for a while in silence while the SoHo bar filled up with local people. Marlene scanned the faces. One of them could be Dushan and she’d never know it. The thought gave her the willies.
“Goddy,” she said, “why didn’t Dushan want me to see his face?”
Taylor shrugged. “Probably thinks the less people who know him in his unofficial capacity the better. A cautious man, and every right to be.”
“But what’s his official capacity? Is he really in the import-export business?”
“No, he uses that office as a convenience.”
“So what does he do?”
Taylor told her.
She grinned wolfishly. “Got the plan,” she said.