Read Protocol for a Kidnapping for Free Online

lies. Tavro did go to Killingsworth. He thought Killingsworth might help him, but Killingsworth instead used the information he got from him to pressure us. When love comes late in life to some men, it often affects their judgment. It’s affected Killingsworth’s.”
    “So he was kidnapped,” I said.
    “Only because we couldn’t trust him. Would you?”
    “Not far,” I said.
    Coors’s palms were back on the desk again, but they no longer tried to press through it. “By using the Pernik girl and her grandfather as bait we get Killingsworth back to the States and that problem is resolved—no doubt a little melodramatically, but melodrama is often no small part of diplomacy.” He paused and seemed to think about what he had just said and for a moment I half expected him to jot it down.
    “That still leaves us Tavro,” I said. “Why didn’t you get him out?”
    Coors gave me a thin, almost bitter little smile. “Some forget, I’m afraid, that the Department of State is a large and cumbersome bureaucracy, perhaps only slightly less wieldy than that of our friends in the Pentagon across the river. In such a bureaucracy nothing gets done until it is too late—or virtually too late. If it is actually too late, then obviously nothing should be done and the bureaucracy sighs its collective relief and returns to its beloved routine.”
    Coors paused to give me another small, wintry smile. “In Tavro’s case, we are only virtually too late, and through a process of pain with which I won’t bore you, a course of action has been decided upon. In a bureaucracy such as State, I’m sure you realize, there is nothing more difficult than reaching a decision, unless it is reversing that decision once it has been reached.”
    “And the decision is to get Tavro out?” I said.
    “That’s correct.”
    “How?”
    Coors shook his head sorrowfully, as if the star of the spelling bee had just stumbled over Cincinnati. “The decision is not how, Mr. St. Ives, but who.”
    “Me?”
    “Indeed. You.”
    “How deep am I in?”
    Coors looked at his watch, as if it would tell him. “Too deep to get out.”
    “Because I now know about Killingsworth?”
    “That’s mostly it.”
    “What other pressure points have you got besides the Congressional investigation threat—just in case I still say no?”
    “Four others.”
    “As good?”
    “Better. Much better.”
    I nodded and looked out at the snow. It seemed to be coming down even harder than before and somehow that seemed only normal. “So I’m to work it out any way I can,” I said.
    “You’re to draw upon your extensive experience which, you’ve given me to understand, has been mostly with thieves. There’s no reason that you shouldn’t feel quite at home with us.”
    “I’ll need some help,” I said.
    Coors didn’t like that and he shook his head to prove it “You can’t bring any outsiders into this. I thought I made that plain. They’d never stand for it upstairs.”
    “They’ll have to stand for it,” I said. “I’ll let you explain why.”
    “Thank you,” he said and drummed the fingers of his left hand on the desk. “Well, I suppose you needn’t tell them anything vitally important.”
    “Such as the truth?”
    “Yes,” he said. “There’s that.”
    “I’ll tell them as little as possible.”
    “How many?”
    “Two.”
    “Who are they?”
    “Let’s just use their code names,” I said. “One’s called Expensive, the other one’s Costly.”
    “Your fee’s already been negotiated.”
    “Negotiations have just been reopened.”
    “Three percent of a million is thirty thousand dollars,” Coors said. “That’s a great deal of money for what may not be more than a long weekend.”
    “I usually get ten percent and I haven’t punched a time clock since Chicago.”
    “Impossible.”
    “I’ll settle for five percent since the million is mythical anyhow. That’s my last offer.”
    “Four,” he said.
    “In