Snatch

by Gregory Mcdonald

  Colonel Turnbull sighed, pointedly.

  “There is this tennis camp in California, called The All-Stars’, modestly enough, friends had recommended to Christina. She arranged to attend for ten days.”

  “Were the Embassy’s intelligence staff notified of her plans?”

  “…Yes.” Poor Mustafa.

  “And no security arrangements were made for her?”

  “None in particular, I believe. Embassy car to the airport, first-class flight, a hired limousine and driver meeting her in San Francisco—”

  Colonel Turnbull shook his head.

  “And your son, Toby?”

  “Well…in fact, we haven’t been able to see much of Toby lately. He attends boarding school in New Hampshire—”

  “Eustace Academy.”

  “That’s right. We thought we’d have some time this last summer, either at the beginning or the end of it, but Resolution 1176R has prevented our even taking a weekend. Toby was at that sailing camp on the Cape. Of course, we did take him to Gstaad for a few days with His Majesty last winter.”

  “Mr. Ambassador, I’m not looking for diplomatic phrasing. I’m looking for facts.”

  “All I’m trying to say is that my wife’s desire—you might say, demand—to have some play days with our son, Toby, was entirely normal and correct.”

  “You’re trying to excuse yourself for sending your wife and child off, at this point, with absolutely no security.”

  The Ambassador said, “I suppose I am.”

  “Give me your son’s travel schedule.”

  “Yesterday afternoon he was driven by school staff to the airport in Boston and put aboard a plane for New York. Mrs. Brown met him at the airport and brought him to the Residence in the Embassy car.”

  “He spent overnight here at the Residence?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see him?”

  The Ambassador swallowed hard. “I had a meeting with the French delegation about the Resolution that went on until one thirty in the morning. I was at my desk at the Embassy at seven fifteen in the morning.”

  “Mr. Ambassador, how many months has it been since you’ve actually seen your son?”

  “I looked in upon him the other night when he was asleep.”

  “He was put aboard Brandt Airlines Flight 203 to San Francisco today?”

  “Yes. It was a through flight.”

  “Who saw him off?”

  “Mrs. Brown, our housekeeper. She took him to the airport in the Embassy car and turned him over to airlines personnel.”

  “‘Turned him over?’”

  “Yes. You know how the airlines do these things. Putting a child alone on an airplane is rather like sending off a package. They get name tags stuck on them and packets full of names and addresses. It’s all quite safe.”

  “Usually,” said Colonel Turnbull. “Usually.”

  “My wife was to meet him at the San Francisco airport at about four o’clock. She was there in plenty of time, but…no Toby.”

  The Ambassador paused a moment. He knew his voice was about to crack.

  Finally, he said, “My wife immediately appealed to airlines’ personnel for help in locating Toby. Here’s a fact for you, Colonel Turnbull: the airlines manager in San Francisco told Christina that Toby’s reservation had been canceled. In New York, the night before.”

  “What?” The Ambassador thought he’d let Turnbull put his mind around that hard fact himself. “What did you say?”

  “Toby’s reservation was canceled. And not by my office.”

  “Then Toby is still in New York?”

  The Ambassador raised his hands. “Toby could be anywhere.”

  “Who made the travel arrangements for your son?”

  “The Embassy. Overseen by my secretary, Sylvia Menninges.”

  “Did the Embassy Intelligence Section know about your son’s travel plans?”

  “Of course.”

  “Who else knew?” asked Colonel Turnbull.

  “The travel agency—”

  “What travel agency?”

  “We always use the Mideast Airlines office here in New York for any family or Embassy traveling. We’re obliged to. They make all the arrangements.”

  “So, doubtlessly, there were Embassy stickers all over the tickets….”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Therefore an unknown number of airlines personnel also knew that the Ambassador’s eight-year-old son was skittering off to Fantazyland?”

  The Ambassador’s eyes ran along the top shelf of books across the room. “Skittering.” Colonel Turnbull made it all seem very irresponsible.

  He said, “My wife and son were taking a vacation. This was not an official trip.”

  The fat man flopped his hand impatiently.

  “Who’s this Mrs. Brown?”

  “Our housekeeper.”

  “How long has she been with you?”

  “Almost nine years. Since just before Toby was born, when we were stationed in London. She’s sort of doubled as a nurse.”

  “Is she the woman who opened the door to me?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Is she a British citizen?”

  “I think she’s taken the opportunity to become an American citizen.”

  “I see. What other household staff is there?”

  “Two drivers—”

  “You mean, chauffeurs.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they both Americans?”

  “No. One is a Jamaican. The other is an American. From Brooklyn.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “There’s the cook.”

  “American?”

  The Ambassador shook his head. “French. The houseman, who doubles as my valet—Pav—is a loyal subject. I’ve known him since we were boys.”

  The Colonel was shaking his head sadly.

  “Are there complete intelligence dossiers on each of these people?”

  “I trust so. You’d have to ask Major Mustafa.”

  “I will. Please ask this Mrs. Brown to come in. I want to question her.”

  As Ambassador Teodoro Rinaldi walked across the library to summon Mrs. Brown, he felt his legs hard with tension and already heavy from exhaustion.

  Five

  “Mrs. Brown, are you an American citizen?”

  “I am, sir. Naturalized.”

  She sat on the edge of the library chair facing Colonel Turnbull, glancing nervously sideways at Ambassador Rinaldi.

  “Toby,” Colonel Turnbull said. “You picked him up at the airport yesterday at what time?”

  “Oh, my God!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Toby!” As she looked at the Ambassador, her sky-blue eyes seemed to shatter like glass. “Something’s happened to Toby!”

  “Mrs. Brown—” the Ambassador began.

  “If you please, Ambassador,” Colonel Turnbull said sternly.

  “I do please,” said the Ambassador firmly. “Mrs. Brown has been a member of this family since before Toby was born.”

  “I’d rather she had no information before I question her!”

  Mrs. Brown, frightened eyes brimming with tears, was taking short gasps of air. “Toby?”

  The Ambassador turned to the little, gray-haired woman in the big leather chair. “Mrs. Brown, I’m sure all this is just a false alarm…we’re just being extra cautious. Toby seems to be missing….”

  “Missing?”

  The Ambassador could only guess at what she was imagining.

  “This is Colonel Turnbull, sent here by His Majesty to help us.”

  She looked untrustingly at the Colonel. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

  The Ambassador smiled. “Neither have I, Mrs. Brown. Neither have I.”

  “Call the police,” she blurted. “Call the New York police. Call the F.B.I.”

  “We can’t do that. The Colonel is here to help us. If you’d just tell him everything you know…”

  Mrs. Brown found a ha
ndkerchief in her pocket and brought it to her face. She would be a good soldier. She would rise to the demand. She always had.

  Colonel Turnbull said, “Mrs. Brown, what time did you pick Toby up at the airport yesterday?”

  “Does Mrs. Rinaldi know?” she asked the Ambassador with renewed sharpness. “I mean, that Toby is lost?”

  “Yes.”

  To her hands in her lap, to herself, she muttered, “Poor Christina.”

  “What time did you pick Toby up at the airport yesterday?”

  “Five thirty.”

  “Was he on the Eastern Airlines shuttle flight from Boston?”

  “Of course not. American Airlines. First class.”

  “Arriving in New York at five thirty?”

  “The plane was due at five ten. It arrived a little before five thirty. At LaGuardia Airport.”

  “Where, precisely, in the airport did you meet Toby?”

  “At the security gate. I had to wait outside. Only ticketed passengers are allowed through the security gate, the sign said.”

  Colonel Turnbull’s eyes flickered at her. A sensible woman: one who obeyed signs. He said, “Was Toby alone when you found him?”

  “I didn’t ‘find’ him. He wasn’t lost.” Her eyes were wet. “At that point, anyway. He came walkin’ down the corridor like the darlin’ little man he is, grinnin’ at me, his suitcase bangin’ against his knee every step.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “No, sir. There was a stewardess with him. From off the plane. They were quite chummy. She even bent and kissed him goodbye.”

  “The stewardess left you immediately?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then what did you and Toby do?”

  “We went straight to the car.”

  “You didn’t have to stop for baggage?”

  “Toby had his bag. Didn’t I already say that? The poor lad didn’t have all that much to carry.”

  “Where was the car?”

  “It was in the taxi area. Double parked. DPL license plates, you know. Max didn’t even open the trunk. He took Toby’s bag in the front seat and we jumped in the back.”

  “Max?”

  “Our driver,” the Ambassador said. “One of our drivers.”

  “Mrs. Brown, while waiting at the airport, and after picking up Toby, going through the airport with him, were you aware of anyone watching you or following you?”

  “Good heavens, no, sir. Then again, I’m not one to see evil lurking behind every bush.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be working for an embassy,” muttered the Colonel. “At least, not this Embassy.”

  “Of course, goin’ through the airport with Toby, some people looked at him and smiled. People do that with Toby. He’s such a beguilin’ child.”

  Mrs. Brown blew her nose.

  “Mrs. Brown,” the Ambassador said gently.

  Colonel Turnbull rolled on his hams. “What did you and Toby talk about?”

  “You mean in the car?”

  “At the airport, in the car, at the Residence….”

  “Well. First he told me about the stewardess. How he found out so much about her in an hour’s flight, I’ll never know.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Ms. Gunn.”

  “One N or two N’s?”

  “How would I know?”

  “What did he say about her?”

  “He said she wasn’t too shabby.”

  “‘Wasn’t too shabby?’ What does that mean?”

  “I think it means that he thought her beautiful.”

  “Oh.”

  “Her father was a doctor in Mississippi. She had a boyfriend in Atlanta, Georgia. The plane was going there next, and she would have dinner with him. His name was Jim.”

  “Did you understand from this that Ms. Gunn, the stewardess, was going back to the airplane and continuing her flight to Atlanta, Georgia, last night?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you have any idea what Toby told her about himself?”

  Mrs. Brown’s eyebrows creased. “No, sir. Not at all.”

  “What else did Toby talk about?”

  “He congratulated me on bein’ pasteurized, the darlin’.”

  “‘Pasteurized’?”

  Mrs. Brown smiled. “He called me a ‘pasteurized United States citizen.’”

  “I still don’t get it,” Colonel Turnbull said. “Mrs. Brown, will you please speak English?”

  Quietly, the Ambassador said, “Pasteurized: naturalized.”

  “I had been writin’ him about my becoming a naturalized United States citizen,” Mrs. Brown said. “So he congratulated me on becomin’ pasteurized.”

  Colonel Turnbull shook his head. “What else did you and Toby talk about?”

  “The trip to Fantazyland with his mother. He kept askin’ me what I really thought it was like.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I’d never had the pleasure of bein’ there.”

  “How much time did you spend with Toby last night, Mrs. Brown?”

  “Well, we had supper together, in the kitchen, I went in on him while he was tubbin’, and then talked with him for a while before he went to sleep.”

  “Mrs. Brown, was he in your opinion a well child?”

  “‘Well?’” Her eyes popped wide. “You never saw a handsomer, healthier child. Eight years old and not a speck of baby fat on him. His skin and his eyes and his hair just shine with health.”

  “Did he seem worried about anything? School? Work? Sports?”

  “At supper he told me about his teachers and all his courses, and that he was the fastest runner in his class, beat everybody at the hundred-yard dash and made a record for his age running around the quadrangle in under three minutes. A very happy child, Colonel Turnbull.”

  “Neither you nor he left the Residence once you came home from the airport and you did come straight here, no stops?”

  “We made no stops, and neither of us left the Residence last night, or this morning, for that matter, until it was time for the car to take us to the airport.”

  “Was it the same driver who took you?” The Colonel looked at his notes. “This man you identified earlier as Max?”

  “Yes. It’s usually Max on duty during the daytime.”

  “Do you know this Max person well, Mrs. Brown?”

  “As I say, Colonel, he’s usually the driver on duty during the days. So he’s usually the one who takes me shopping. He comes to the kitchen for coffee if he has to wait for the Ambassador or Mrs. Rinaldi, or soup and sandwich if he’s ferrying people in and out for a luncheon party.”

  “You’re a widow, Mrs. Brown?”

  “That has nothing to do with Max. Max lives in Brooklyn with his wife of twenty-six years and the three of his five children who still live at home.”

  “Was there a Mr. Brown?”

  “Of course there was.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was run over by a bus. Twelve years ago. On the Kingsland Road. A good man, you may be sure, but not one noted for his sobriety.”

  “All right, now. Mrs. Brown.” The Colonel’s tone gentled. “I want you to tell me about taking Toby to the airport earlier today. Everything you can think of. Especially whether—at any point—you noticed anyone watching you and Toby. Whether you remember seeing any person—no matter what he or she looked like—more than once.”

  “It went as smooth as canned applesauce,” Mrs. Brown said. “Max was waiting for us downstairs with the car. We went directly to the airport. I can hardly be expected to know if anyone was following us in a car. Wait a minute.” Mrs. Brown frowned. “There was a funny vehicle that was in the lane next to us for a long time. Pulled up beside us at two or three red lights. Toby and I got a good look at it and laughed about it. It was a yellow van, with blue and red bugs painted all over it.”

  “Bugs?”

  “The slogan written on the side was, Get the bug
s out. Call Whatsis Termite Company.”

  “I see. Do you remember the name of the termite company?”

  “No. I’d say it was a French name. Or Italian,” she said hesitantly.

  “This truck stayed with you a long time?”

  “Two or three miles. But not ‘with us.’ More beside us. In the next lane.”

  “Did it go all the way to the airport with you?”

  “No. I wouldn’t say so.”

  “Did the driver of that truck show any curiosity regarding you and Toby? Did he look at you?”

  “Of course. People are always curious about people riding in the back of a limousine. But the funny thing about that truck was that it had wiggly antennas just over the windscreen….”

  “You mean, radio antennae?”

  “No,” Mrs. Brown said decisively. “Bug antennas. Like bugs have. They wiggled as the truck moved along. Most comical, they were. Toby had never seen such a truck, no more’n I had.”

  “All right, Mrs. Brown. At the airport, what did you do?”

  “Went to the Brandt Airlines ticket counter, waited only a few minutes. I did change queues. First queue I got into there was a man at the counter makin’ a perfect nuisance of himself, something about his refusing to pay overweight charges on his luggage, a lot of camera equipment, I understood him to be talkin’ about, so I went to the next queue and the man there was very friendly, smiled at Toby and with a straight face asked if he wanted to sit in the Smoking or the Non-Smoking section. Toby, being Toby, said he wanted to sit in the Pizza section.

  “I told the airline’s representative Toby was traveling alone, and I tried to show the man our ticket, I mean, Toby’s ticket, and the packet of information the airlines people had given us, but after a minute or two talking to Toby the man said, ‘Seeing you have a special person here, we’re going to let you both go right through security down to the waiting area for Gate 18.’ He said someone would meet us there and check us through so I could meet the stewardess or steward who would be on the plane with Toby, and I said—”

  “Wait a minute, Mrs. Brown.” Colonel Turnbull held up his hand. “Are you saying that the man at the airline’s counter did not look at Toby’s ticket?”

  “No. He didn’t. He understood this was a child traveling cross-country alone and special arrangements had been made for him.”