Snatch

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “I can tell you there wasn’t. Only flight we’ve had today, miss, with unclaimed luggage was from Mexico City. And people from the Bureau of Narcotics picked that up.”

  “I see. You’re sure?”

  Looking up over his shoulder, her eyes grew wide. “He’s there! On the escalator!”

  She sprinted. She jumped the first two steps of the escalator.

  “Oh, please,” she said to the people on the escalator as she tried to push through them.

  “We’re all in a hurry, you know,” snapped a man with thick glasses.

  “My son.”

  At the top of the escalator, she looked around the airlines’ reception area.

  A bell rang through the public address system to gain attention for an announcement

  She turned.

  “Toby!”

  His hand was in that of a middle-aged woman who was leading him through glass doors to a parking area.

  “Toby!”

  She ran through the crowd to him.

  Her arm hit the slow-moving automatic door. “Toby, Toby!”

  She spun him around by his shoulders.

  The child looked terrified.

  “Hey!” The middle-aged woman jerked the boy’s hand. “Who are you?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Christina said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  The woman’s pale blue eyes narrowed. “You need help, miss?”

  “I’m sorry,” Christina said. “My son—wasn’t on his plane. I thought…”

  The woman said, “I see. It’s all right, Peter. The lady didn’t mean to frighten you. Peter’s my grandson,” she said to Christina.

  The woman was in pink slacks.

  “Yes. I see. I’m sorry, Peter.”

  “Come on, Peter,” the woman said. “We both missed our naps.”

  They went to the right, along the sidewalk. The boy looked back at Christina.

  “I’m sorry,” Christina said.

  “I’m sorry.” She sobbed. “I’m sorry.”

  Three

  “My son appears to be missing.”

  Ambassador Teodoro Rinaldi had been told His Majesty, the King, was aboard the royal yacht, The Lioness, in the Persian Gulf. Using ship-to-shore, the scrambler system, and trans-world telephone, the Ambassador knew there would be long pauses between their comments to each other and that the King’s well-modulated masculine voice would sound like that of Bugs Bunny. A rather slow Bugs Bunny.

  “Was he abducted?” the King asked.

  “We have no information at this time,” the Ambassador said. “We only know that someone interfered in his affairs. Some third, unknown party canceled an airplane reservation in his name. Our housekeeper brought him to the plane. When the plane landed he was to be met by his mother, but he was not aboard the plane.”

  “Where was he going?”

  “From New York to San Francisco,” the Ambassador said.

  “Why is Christina in San Francisco?” the King asked.

  The Ambassador considered the King’s ability to cut directly to the heart of a matter. He dreaded it.

  “Vacationing. Tennis camp.”

  The answer seemed inconsequential.

  “Why was Toby joining her on the West Coast?”

  “Fantazyland. They were going to Fantazyland.”

  Through his United Nations office window New York had misted. The Ambassador blinked.

  “Teddy,” the King said. “Are things all right between you and Christina?”

  “Yes, sir. She was just run-down and tired. Our efforts have been particularly constant, sustained, lately.”

  He stopped himself. Belatedly, his diplomatic training told him that the question would have been more convincingly answered with a single word. “Yes.” Or “definitely.” Or “absolutely.”

  The King would have realized—as the Ambassador had realized, sitting alone in his office waiting for his call to reach the King—that this was a particularly bad time to have his family away from the protection of the Embassy. He had been unwise—mistaken—in permitting it.

  “Teddy. Do you believe Toby has been kidnapped?”

  The Ambassador cleared his throat. “We know someone has interfered in his plans. At the moment, we do not know where Toby is. At the risk of causing you pain and anxiety needlessly,” the Ambassador said, “I thought it would be best to let you know immediately.”

  “Teddy, I’m very sorry.”

  There was no question in the Ambassador’s mind that the King’s words were sincerely meant.

  The King’s grandfather had been a merchant. Simply that. A businessman.

  A very successful businessman who had gathered unto himself almost every profit-making venture within his reach—banking, agriculture, shipping, oil—as a fat man finishes a bowl of olives put before him, almost not knowing he is doing it. In Italy and Switzerland and Europe at large, Teodoro Rinaldi’s great-grandfather had been his contact man, his representative, his interpreter, his doer.

  During World War I, the merchant bought himself a uniform (delivered from Switzerland by Rinaldi’s great-grandfather) and set out to protect his various business interests in the Persian Gulf. Before the end of World War I, the Allies (persuaded by Rinaldi’s great-grandfather) had decided it was in their best interest to draw a line around the merchant-general’s various business interests and declare it a friendly nation.

  Thus the merchant-general became a King.

  And thus the Rinaldi family, originally Italian, subsequently Swiss, became loyal subjects of the King.

  The present King, sixteen years older than Teodoro Rinaldi, was a brilliant, handsome man, carefully educated, at Oxford, the Sorbonne, the London School of Economics, to rule.

  And Teodoro Rinaldi had been carefully educated, at Harvard College and Georgetown University, to serve his King in the family tradition as foreign representative.

  Like few men in the twentieth century, neither considered that life had offered him an alternative.

  “Have you informed anyone else that Toby may have been abducted?” the King asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “I assume we’re both thinking the same thing,” the King said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Resolution 1176R.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’ve had no direct communication from the opposition that they mean to use your son’s life as a weapon against you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You were right to tell me so quickly, Teddy.”

  “Thank you, Your Highness.”

  “It’s conceivable you will have no direct communication. They might trust you to understand implicitly.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sabotage the Resolution or you lose your son.”

  The Ambassador did not answer.

  The King said, “I will have my chief of American Intelligence at the Embassy within the hour.”

  “Mustafa? Do you mean Mustafa?”

  “His name is Turnbull.”

  “I see.” The Ambassador realized he should have known—he should have always realized—that Mustafa, the Embassy’s chief of Intelligence—the nice little man with a mustache, very good at reading economic reports and breaking them down to facts relevant to the King, not very good at directing bodyguards, Embassy servants and staff—was not His Majesty’s actual chief of Intelligence in the United States.

  Before this, the Ambassador had never heard of Turnbull.

  Again, he said, “I see.”

  “He’s English trained,” the King said. “Been in the United States a long time. You may have complete confidence in him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Teddy,” the King said, “we will stand together on this?”

  It was a question.

  Teodoro Rinaldi thought of the King standing over Toby’s bassinet the very night he was born. Putting Toby on a polo pony at the age of three. Reading Uncle Whimsy comics to him during long flights in the royal j
et. Playing with Toby in the snow at Gstaad.

  But he was not Toby’s father.

  The Ambassador to the United Nations said to the King: “Yes.”

  * * *

  “Mr. Ambassador?” Sylvia said. “Mrs. Rinaldi’s on 352.”

  “Thank you.” Since talking with the King, Teodoro Rinaldi had sat back from his desk, hands in his lap, motionless, staring at his wastebasket.

  “Christina? Any luck?”

  “Teddy, I’m scared out of my mind.”

  Her voice was dry, her tone a little higher than natural, her throat tight.

  “Are you still at the airport?”

  “Yes.”

  “What have you done?”

  “Everything I can think of. Searched all over this place. Snack bars. Restaurants. Parking lots. Had Toby paged. Checked with the V.I.P. lounge again. Checked Mr. Swenson. There is no unclaimed luggage from that flight.”

  “Christina, we don’t know any more than we did an hour ago.”

  “Oh.” Her voice sounded crushed. It was clear she hadn’t been daring to ask. “Have you talked to the boss?”

  “The boss” was their name for the King. It came from a ridiculous statement Teddy once made: “I work for a boss like any other boss.” The King was not like any other boss. He was a monarch. A dictator. A man with absolute, life-and-death power over his subjects. A power he had never hesitated to use.

  “Yes,” the Ambassador said. “He sends you his greatest sympathy.”

  “Stuff that,” the wife of the Ambassador said. “What’s he doing for us?”

  “Sending in the troops.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going back to the Residence right now for a meeting with his top intelligence people.”

  “Not Mustafa. Oh, my God. Not that nice, little useless man.”

  “No. Not Mustafa.”

  “What shall I do? Teddy, I just can’t believe Toby is in this airport, or ever was. His reservation was canceled.”

  “I know.”

  “Shall I come home? I think I should.”

  “No. Where does Toby expect you to be?”

  “At the airport.”

  “No. I mean, where does that little packet Mrs. Brown made up for the airlines say you’re staying? What was the contact number she gave for you?”

  “The tennis camp’s. I gave the tennis camp number.”

  “Then I suggest you go back to the tennis camp. Someone—even Toby—might have tried to call you there.”

  Then he realized he was giving her reason for false hope. A hope which would doubtlessly be dashed within the hour when she returned to the camp and learned there had been no calls. Her panic, her fear, would begin again.

  “But, Teddy, this was my last day there. I’m all packed. Toby and I were going to spend the night in a motel on our way to Fantazyland.”

  “Does he or anyone else have the telephone number of that motel? I mean, was it listed in the information packet?”

  “No.”

  “Then return to the tennis camp.”

  “I’ve checked out. My room is gone.”

  “I’m sure they can accommodate you somehow. But, Christina—?”

  “Yes?”

  “For now, tell no one what is going on.”

  She was silent.

  “I mean, don’t tell the police. Don’t tell the people at the tennis camp.”

  “I’ve already told the people at the airlines.”

  “Don’t worry. They won’t be the ones to tell either the police or the press. Bad public relations for them. Unless they hear from you again, they’ll be quick to assume the problem is solved.”

  “All right.”

  “We don’t need more pressure on us at this point.”

  “No,” she said, “we don’t.”

  “I suspect there’ll be someone out there talking to you before midnight, your time. Someone from our Intelligence Section.”

  “I don’t have anything to tell them. Except that I’m scared to death, Teddy.”

  “I know. They should be able to help you. You want a doctor? Sedatives? Anything?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I want Toby.”

  “Believe me, Christina, the best brains in the world will be on this. Immediately. You know the boss.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do. Teddy, there will be no problem about the ransom, will there?”

  The question startled him. Ransom. Christina thought Toby had been kidnapped for ransom. An American girl. He had married a young American woman. For nine years she had been the wife of the Ambassador, but she had never really known what that had meant. Constant social engagements. Boring dinners. Quiet talks. Anger at him for staying up late. Not taking vacations. Being nice to people neither of them could stand. Toby had been kidnapped and she had presumed immediately he had been kidnapped for ransom.

  It was highly unlikely she was correct.

  “Of course not,” he answered. “No problem.”

  “Even if it’s millions and millions?”

  “The boss will provide.”

  “I mean, he wouldn’t stand back on some damned royal principle, would he?”

  She stressed “royal” sardonically. Christina did not think well of the two thousand, five hundred years of fictitious royal lineage the merchant-general-king’s descendants had created for themselves. Another example of Christina’s inability to understand the nature of power.

  “Ransom will be no problem,” Teddy said. He was certain the problem of ransom would never arise. Toby was kidnapped for reasons far greater than money.

  “Christina? Go back to the tennis camp. We have the number there. I’m sure someone will come to you before midnight. Again, I repeat: tell no one about Toby.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You’ll just have to take this by yourself.”

  “I understand.”

  “Trust no one.”

  “Okay.” There was annoyance in her voice.

  “Christina, believe me. The longer we keep this quiet, the greater the chance Toby has of surviving.”

  “Oh, Teddy.”

  “Sorry, Christina. I had to say that.”

  Four

  “Ambassador Rinaldi, let me get one or two things straight.” Turnbull sat forward in the library chair, right forearm resting on his thigh, head angled aggressively toward the Ambassador.

  “Your son was traveling alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your wife is also traveling alone, on the West Coast?”

  “Yes.”

  The Ambassador stared at His Majesty’s chief of Intelligence in the United States. What should he say? That his wife and son were distinctly American in attitudes and found traveling with bodyguards cumbersome and embarrassing? That they all felt that bodyguards only increased the danger to them by drawing attention to them? That they had learned from experience that whatever arrangements the Embassy’s Intelligence chief, the benighted Mustafa, made for them would just collapse anyway, causing a great confusion and greater complications?

  The Ambassador said, “Let me make this straight to you, Mr. Turnbull—”

  “Colonel Turnbull.”

  Teddy Rinaldi decided to ignore the title, for the moment.

  “I am the highest-ranking representative of our nation in this country. I will not accept criticism, personal or professional, from you.”

  “Admit it, now, Ambassador Rinaldi. You made a mistake.”

  The Ambassador shrugged. How could he admit that his young American wife finally had rebelled against the tight strictures of Embassy life? Had insisted, reasonably, on getting away by herself for a while? Had insisted upon having a few happy days alone with her son, “play days,” she called them, to take Toby to Fantazyland? How could he admit that he felt that if he hadn’t agreed…he might have lost both his wife and his son? Immediately, the King had perceived all this: “Are things all right between you and Christina?”

  “I
might have made a more prudent decision,” the Ambassador said slowly. “Fantazyland is not perceived as a threatening place.”

  He had let himself into the Residence—a fourteen-room condominium ten minutes’ walk from the United Nations—with his own key and immediately found himself tripping over most of the Residence’s carpets rolled up in the foyer. Mrs. Brown appeared, clucking about the carpets, and told him someone was waiting for him in the library.

  The Ambassador had closed the library door behind him.

  “You’ve gotten us into one fine mess.” Turnbull scratched through his close-cropped, iron-gray hair vigorously enough to change the direction of whatever thoughts lay below the scalp. “Question is: how do I get us out of it?”

  “We’re talking about my son, Colonel.”

  “We’re talking about Resolution 1176R,” Turnbull snapped. “Mr. Ambassador.”

  “You know about Resolution 1176R?”

  “Who do you think has done all the work on it?”

  Calmly, the Ambassador said, “I think I have.”

  Colonel Turnbull glanced at him contemptuously. The Ambassador had observed before that intelligence people were like crows: in announcing the portents of rain they think they are generating a storm.

  “Tell me everything you know about this,” Turnbull said, sitting back in his chair.

  “First, Colonel Turnbull, tell me if you have sent someone to be with my wife.”

  “I’m going out myself,” Turnbull snorted. “Now I want to know two things: what arrangements were made for your son, and who knew about them?”

  “Would you like a drink, Colonel?”

  “I would not.”

  “I thought it might be easier…”

  Muscles in his jaw flexing, notebook in his lap, pen in hand, Colonel Turnbull waited, saying nothing.

  Teddy Rinaldi shrugged and began speaking in a calm, reasonable tone. “As I’ve said, Colonel, the pressures on my wife have been intense and long sustained. Very long. There has been a constant routine of meetings, lunches, cocktail receptions, dinners, day after day, including weekends, month after month, in our effort to educate other delegates and their governments regarding Resolution 1176R and attract their support and their votes—”

  “You’ve been doin’ your job, man. Get on with it.”

  “My wife was very tired…” The Ambassador hesitated. “…Becoming a little nervous, irritable. You must remember that Christina is born and bred American.”