“Good. Go and start the engine.”
The boy went. I shelled out some Yugoslav currency.
Bilic explained that the car would have to leave the village by way of the lane in the rear, on higher ground than the street, which the mud made impassable, and conducted us through the house and out the back door. If he had more family than Jubé, it kept out of sight. The grounds back of the house were neat, with thick grass and flowerbeds. A walk of flat stones took us to a stone building, and as we approached, a car backed out of it to the right, with Jubé at the wheel. I stared at it in astonishment. It was a 1953 Ford sedan. Then I remembered an item of the briefing Wolfe had given me on Yugoslavia: we had lent them, through the World Bank, a total of fifty-eight million bucks. How Bilic had managed to promote a Ford for himself out of it was to some extent my business, since I paid income tax, but I decided to table it. As we climbed in, Wolfe asked Bilic to inform his son that the trip had been fully paid for — two thousand dinars — and Bilic did so.
The road was level most of the way to Titograd, across the valley and up the Moracha River, but it took us more than an hour to cover the twenty-three kilometers — fourteen miles to you — chiefly on account of mud. I started in the back seat with Wolfe, but after the springs had hit in a couple of chuckholes I moved up front with Jubé. On the smooth stretches Wolfe posted me some on Titograd — but, since Jubé might have got some English at the university, he was Toné Stara telling his American-born son. As Podgorica, it had long been the commercial capital of Montenegro. Its name had been changed to Titograd in 1950. Its population was around twelve thousand. It had a fine old Turkish bridge across the Moracha. A tributary of the Moracha separated the old Turkish town, which had been inhabited by Albanians thirty years ago and probably still was, from the new Montenegrin town, which had been built in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Twisted around in the front seat, I tried to deduce from Jubé’s profile whether he knew more English than I did Serbo-Croat, but there was no sign one way or the other.
The commercial capital of Montenegro was a letdown. I hadn’t expected a burg of twelve thousand to be one of the world’s wonders, and Wolfe had told me that, under the Communists, Montenegro was still a backwater — but hadn’t they changed the name to Titograd, and wasn’t Tito the Number One? So, as we jolted and bumped over holes in the pavement and I took in the old gray two-story buildings that didn’t even have thatched roofs to give them a tone, I felt cheated. I decided that if and when I became a dictator I would damn well clean a town up and widen some of its streets and have a little painting done before I changed its name to Goodwingrad. I had just made that decision when the car rolled to the curb and stopped in front of a stone edifice a lot bigger and some dirtier than most of those we had been passing.
Wolfe said something with an edge on his voice. Jubé turned in the seat to face him and made a little speech. For me the words were just a noise, but I didn’t like his tone or his expression, so I slipped my hand inside my jacket to scratch myself in the neighborhood of my left armpit, bringing my fingers in contact with the butt of the Marley.
“No trouble, Alex,” Wolfe assured me. “As you know, I asked him to leave us at the north end of the square, but he is being thoughtful. He says it is required that on arriving at a place travelers must have their identification papers inspected, and he thought it would be more convenient for us if he brought us here, to the local headquarters of the national police. Will you bring the knapsacks?”
He opened the door and was climbing out. Since the only papers we had with us were engraved dollars and dinars, I had a suspicion that his foot condition had affected his central nervous system and paralyzed his brain, but I was helpless. I couldn’t even stop a passer-by and ask the way to the nearest hospital, and I had never felt so useless and so goddam silly as, with a knapsack under each arm, I followed Jubé and Wolfe across to the entrance and into the stone edifice. Inside, Jubé led us along a dim and dingy corridor, up a flight of stairs, and into a room where two men were perched on stools behind a counter. The men greeted him by name, not with an visible enthusiasm.
“Here are two travelers,” Jubé said, “who wish to show their papers. I just drove them from Rijeka. I can’t tell you how they got to Rijeka. The big fat one says his name is Toné Stara, and the other is his son Alex.”