Don't Ask by Donald E. Westlake

Dortmunder's stomach. Dortmunder carefully looked the other way-- all the other ways--while this alchemy was going on, because he had the feeling it would be considered proper manners for the guest to drink the thing, whatever it turned out to be, and so he didn't want to know what was in it.
    After the kitchen and the glass of medicine--which turned out to be amazingly sweet, with some kind of like Chinese tartness in behind it, but not bad at all, and might even be working to settle his stomach--Hradec led the way up a flight of stairs to his own apartment, of which he seemed to be very proud.
    Well, it was okay. Nice views. Dortmunder didn't want to say anything, but up top here like this you could feel the Pride of Votskojek moving, just a little, swaying back and forth, constantly adjusting itself to the water and the ropes and the little heave and tow going on between the river and the slip. But Dortmunder didn't mention this, nor did Hradec, and the glass of restorativeness actually was making a difference, and they didn't stay up top in the apartment too long, anyway.
    No. Next they called for the elevator again and went down two levels, one lower than where the kitchen was, and this is where you found the embassy offices. And the bone.
    But first, the embassy. There was a big office, which was Hradec's, full of flags and photos and statues and mementos, and with a few round windows showing the Manhattan shoreline northward, with the UN building itself pretty prominent up there, glinting like Paul Bunyan's bathroom mirror in the afternoon sun.
    And then there was a smaller office, with no windows at all, but with two people in it, a man and a woman, the ones who actually did all the work around here, and who spoke English with thick accents, like Grijk.
    Hradec introduced him and, "Diddums?" said the man, frowning.
    "It's Welsh."
    "Oh."
    "If you ever decide to visit our beautiful country, John," Hradec said,
    "one of these very efficient clerks will arrange your visa, your hotels, transportation within the country, exit tax, everything."
    "I thought you said you had guards out front," Dortmunder said, being clever.
    "Oh, you just tell them you're here for a tourist visa," Hradec said.
    "During normal business hours, of course."
    Dortmunder knew when people talked about normal business hours they meant theirs, not his, so he just nodded and told Hradec's workers he'd see them around. The man smiled grimly, the woman smiled shyly, and they got back to work.
    Next was the bone.
    "Now, here's the most amazing thing," Hradec said as they walked down the long central hall away from the embassy offices. "This relic, a saint's bone, is normally kept at the Rivers of Blood Cathedral in our capital city at Novi Glad--a beautiful city, you must see it some time--but through a fantastic sequence of events it has become crucial to our application for membership in the United Nations; too complex a story to go into."
    Dortmunder wondered, Should I ask? Should I be interested? On the other hand, could I bear to hear that story again? "Uh huh," he said.
    Hradec seemed slightly surprised at this lack of curiosity, but on the other hand he also seemed as pleased not to have to tell the story as Dortmunder was not to have to hear it. Thus companionably, they made their way down the hall, and Hradec opened a door, and they entered the laboratory out of the Frankenstein movies.
    No, wrong. The Frankenstein movies were in a castle, and the laboratory there was huge, with a very high stone ceiling like a church, maybe like the Rivers of Blood Cathedral. But this was a low-ceilinged room, an inside cabin--or three cabins, with their partitions removed--filled with metal tables on which all kinds of jars and retorts and metal boxes and Bunsen burners and stacks of instruction booklets and piles of photographs and general junk were spread and jumbled. In front of the tables were high stools. On the windowless walls were blown-up photos of the