When it was 2:23 A.M. in Philadelphia-the time that Officers Hyde and Cubellis reported to Police Radio that they were back in service after the “Disturbance, House” call-it was 8:23 A.M. in the village of Cognac-Boeuf, a small village in the southwest of France, not far from Bordeaux.
Despite the name, no cognac was distilled in the area, and the local farmers raised only enough milk cows for local consumption. Although sheep were still grown in the area, even that business had suffered from the ability of Australian and Argentine sheep growers to produce a higher grade of wool and a better quality of lamb at a lower price.
What once had been a bustling small village was now just a small, out-of-the-way village catering to what small farmers were left and to retirees, both French and from as far away as England, Sweden, and even the United States of America.
The retirees sold their houses or apartments in Hamburg or Copenhagen, and spent the money to buy-at very low prices; nobody but retirees had use for them-ancient farm-houses with a hectare or two of land, spent enough money to make them livable, and then settled down to watching the grass grow.
The Piaf Mill, for example, which sat on a small stream a kilometer from Cognac-Boeuf, had been purchased, with 1.7 hectares of land, six years before by a Swedish woman, Inge Pfarr Stillman, and her husband, Walter, an American, using the money-about $80,000-Inge had gotten from the sale of her apartment in Uppsala, near Stockholm.
It had gradually become believed that Walter Stillman, a burly man who wore a sloppy goatee as white as what was left of his hair, was a retired academic. He was obviously well-educated, and it was thought he was writing a book.
The mill, now converted into a comfortable home, was full of books, and every day the postman on his bicycle delivered yesterday’s International Herald-Tribune from Paris, and once a week, the international editions of Time and News-week.
Most afternoons, Stillman could be found in Le Relais, the better of Cognac-Boeuf’s two eating establishments- neither of which had won even one of Michelin’s stars- often playing chess with Pere Marcel, the parish priest, and drinking the local vin ordinaire.
The people of Cognac-Boeuf-in particular the shopkeepers-had come to call Stillman, respectfully, “M’sieu Le Professeur.”
His name was actually Isaac David Festung, and he was a fugitive from justice, having been convicted of violation of Paragraph 2501(a) of the Criminal Code of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, for having intentionally and knowingly caused the death of Mary Elizabeth Shattuck, a human being, by beating and/or strangling her by the neck until she was dead.
M’sieu Le Professeur’s true identity had come to light two years before when, at sunrise, a dozen members of France’s Gendarmerie Nationale had appeared, pistols drawn at the Piaf Mill’s door. When Madame Stillman opened it to them, the gendarmes had burst in and rushed across the Mill’s ground floor to the stairs, then up the stairs to the loft. There they found-naked under a goose-down comforter in bed-a man who, although he insisted indignantly that he had never even heard of anyone named Isaac Festung, they arrested and placed in handcuffs.
After a brief stop at the constabulary office in Cognac-Boeuf to report the suspect was in custody-there was no telephone in Piaf Mill, and the radios in the gendarmes’ Peugeots were out of range of their headquarters-the man, still denying he had ever even heard of Isaac Festung, was taken in a gendarmerie car to Gradnignan Prison in Bordeaux, fingerprinted, and placed in a cell.
Forty-five minutes after that, a technician of the French Surete, sent from Paris, after comparing “Stillman’s” just-taken prints with a set of prints of one Isaac David Festung, furnished via Interpol by the office of the Philadelphia District Attorney, declared that it was his professional opinion that they matched beyond any reasonable doubt.
When confronted with this announcement, Isaac Festung shrugged his shoulders and said that it was sad but he wasn’t surprised, that it had been inevitable that the American CIA would finally gain control of Interpol and finally be able to silence him.
Madame “Stillman,” meanwhile, back at the Piaf Mill, had gotten dressed and then driven to the telephone office in Cognac-Boeuf. There she had made several telephone calls, and had then come out to repeat more or less what her husband had said in Bordeaux: He was being persecuted by the American FBI and CIA both for being a peace activist and “for what he knew.” What he knew was not specified.
He had fled the United States, they both said, after he was arrested on a preposterous charge of murder. Furious that he had escaped their clutches, the CIA and FBI had arranged for a kangaroo trial in absentia, which had predictably found him guilty and sentenced him to death.
One of the telephone calls Madame Stillman/Mrs. Festung made was to a lawyer in Paris, who promptly called a press conference to make public what outrageous violations of law-and common decency-the barbaric American government was attempting to perpetrate.
The next day, the newspapers of France-and elsewhere in Europe-carried the story, often accompanied by outraged editorials.
For one thing, the European Convention on Human Rights had declared that an accused criminal was entitled to his day in court, which meant that he had the absolute right to be physically present in the courtroom to refute witnesses making, for example, preposterous charges that he had beaten and/or strangled his girlfriend and then stuffed her body into a trunk, which he then stored in a closet in his apartment, until the odor from there had caused his neighbors to call the police, asking them to investigate.
As astonishing an outrage as that was, the Americans had the incredibly barbaric arrogance to sentence the man illegally tried to an illegal sentence, that of being put to death by electrocution.
The death penalty was not permitted under French law. Extradition of someone sentenced to death, even in a trial at which he was present when a jury of his peers had found him guilty, was absolutely forbidden.
Many of the editorials demanded both that Mr. Festung be immediately set free and that the French government make, in the strongest possible language, their outrage known to the United States government.
The government of France wasn’t willing to go that far, possibly because the United States government suggested that if it did, the United States government would no longer honor requests of France passed to them via Interpol.
The matter would be decided, the French government announced, as soon as humanly possible, in a French court. France being France, that took six months, during which Mr. Festung remained confined in Gradnignan Prison in Bordeaux.
Mrs. Festung visited him frequently, sometimes daily, while they waited for the wheels of French judicial bureaucracy to grind inexorably.
The United States government then contracted for the services of a French law firm to represent it at the appeal hearing. There was a legal counsel, with a large support staff- more than forty people, it was said-attached to the United States Embassy in Paris, but it turned out that before he had become the legal counsel of the United States, he-and most of the members of his staff-had been special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and were not allowed to practice law, even in the United States.
This revelation produced a plethora of editorials in the French press, on the theme that it was a gross violation of French sovereignty to have American secret policemen operating under diplomatic cover on the sacred soil of La Belle France. What was next, some editorials demanded, the CIA operating in France?
When the case-actually the appeal-was finally heard, the French lawyers representing the United States very politely made the following points:
1. Trials in absentia are permitted under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the immediate jurisdiction, when the accused has not shown up as promised after being released on bail, and his whereabouts are unknown and undeterminable.
2. In the case of Mr. Festung, there was no sentence of death by electrocution. At the time of his trial, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had n
o provision in its laws to execute anyone, by electrocution or any other means. Mr. Festung had been sentenced to life imprisonment.
3. The government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on learning that Mr. Festung had been located in France, and understanding the French distaste for trials in absentia, had passed special legislation applying specifically to Mr. Festung, guaranteeing his right to a new trial if he should wish one.
4. Inasmuch as Mr. Festung had entered France illegally, on a false passport, in a false name, he was not entitled, under French law, to the protection of French law, and furthermore, French law stated that someone apprehended in France who had entered the country illegally would be immediately deported.
The three-judge bank of appeals justices considered the case for almost three-quarters of an hour before deciding to deny the request of the United States government for the extradition of Isaac David Festung, now known as Walter Stillman, resident of Cognac-Boeuf.
Isaac David Festung was free to go.
A cheering crowd greeted the Festungs both outside the court building and when they returned to their home in Cognac-Boeuf.
The United States ambassador to the French Republic decided to appeal the decision of the Court of Appeals. It was whispered that he did so somewhat reluctantly, and only at the insistence of the secretary of state personally. The story went that the secretary had been approached by the Hon. Carl Feldman, the senior senator from the state of Pennsylvania, at the urging of the Hon. Eileen McNamara Solomon, the Philadelphia district attorney.
The story whispered about went on to say that Mrs. Solomon had told Senator Feldman that she could see no way to keep out of the newspapers the fact that Senator Feldman had been this slimy sonofabitch’s lawyer and had gotten him released on $40,000 bail-a ridiculous figure for someone facing a Murder Two charge-which he had then jumped, and offered the suggestion that if the senator hoped to get reelected, it might well behoove him to also get it into the papers that, having recognized the error of his ways, he was doing everything in his power to have the murdering sonofabitch extradited.
Neither Senator Feldman nor District Attorney Solomon would comment on this story, but it was soon announced by the French Ministry of Justice that what the Court of Appeals had really meant to say when it had released Mr. Festung was that he was to be released only to Cognac-Boeuf, and there he would be under the surveillance of the Gendarmerie National, pending the results of the appeal of the U.S. Embassy of their decision to the Supreme Court of France.
When Isaac Festung woke in his bed at just about the time Officers Cubellis and Hyde were reporting themselves back in service in Philadelphia-and six months after the Ministry of Justice’s announcement-he was not at all worried about what the French Supreme Court would decide best served the interests of justice.
Not only had his lawyers told him he had nothing to be worried about, but based on his own analysis of the situation- by which he meant his analysis of France and the French mentality, intellectual and political-he did not see much- indeed, any-cause for concern.
The French, Fort Festung had concluded, had an identity problem, and an enormous capacity for self-deception. At the same time, they professed France to be a world power equal to any. They knew this wasn’t true.
They were about as important in the world, Fort Festung had concluded, as the Italians, perhaps even less important. The difference was, the Italians knew what they were, and acted accordingly, and the French refused to admit what they were, and acted accordingly.
The most important factor in the equation was that the French really hated America and Americans. The Italians were grateful that the Americans had run the Germans, and the native fascists, out of Italy in the Second World War, and grateful again for the American relief effort after the war, and for American help in keeping the Communists from taking any real power in Italy.
The French were privately shamed that the Americans had twice been responsible for chasing the Boche from French soil. American aid to France after the war had made France resentful, not grateful, and France had been relieved when the Americans took a whipping in what had been French Indochina. It would have been almost too much for the French to bear if the Yankees had beaten the Vietnamese into submission after they had failed.
Dien Bien Phu was just one more name on a very long list of battles that the proud French Army had lost, something one would never suspect watching them strut down the Champs Elysees on Bastille Day with flags flying.
Fort saw proof of his theory in French automobiles. Most of them, he thought, in addition to being notoriously unreliable, were spectacularly ugly. And they had yellow headlights. No other country in Europe put yellow headlights on their cars. So far as Fort could tell, the only advantage of the yellow headlights was that they immediately identified a car as having been made in France.
They couldn’t even sell French cars in the United States. They didn’t meet American safety standards. Automobiles made, for example, in Korea did. And that was not even getting into the comparisons that could be made between Peugeots and Citroens and the Mercedes-Benzes and Porsches made by the hated Boche on the other side of the Rhine and which were highly regarded around the world.
There were, when he had time to think about it, literally hundreds of other proofs of France’s general inferiority and the French unwillingness-perhaps inability-to accept it.
What this all added up to was that when a Frenchman found himself in a position where he could tell the United States to go fuck itself, he could count on hearty cheers from the great majority of his countrymen.
The issue, in other words, no longer had anything to do with what happened in Philadelphia so many years ago, or with Fort Festung.
It had become a question of the French Republic proving its sovereignty and independence before the world. France, the world’s center of culture and civilization, was not about to bow to the will of the goddamned uncultured, uncivilized, and despicable United States of America.
Vive La France!
In the meantime, living in Cognac-Boeuf wasn’t at all bad. He admitted he missed the excitement of Philadelphia, and obviously, he could never go back there. But with this business all out in the open, when the Supreme Court issued its decision, he would be able to travel all over France, which meant Paris.
And in the meantime, Fort Festung thought, as he got out of bed and put on a loosely fitting shirt and baggy cotton trousers, and slipped his sockless feet into thong sandals, life here in Cognac-Boeuf wasn’t at all bad.
He could, for example, get on his bicycle, ride into Cognac-Boeuf, take a table at La Relais, have rolls fresh from the oven, locally made butter, coffee, and a hooker of cognac placed before him, and consume them while he explained to the locals what the stories in Time and the Trib really meant.
And that was exactly what Isaac David Festung did, while Officers Hyde and Cubellis remained on patrol in Philadelphia, maintaining as well as they could peace and domestic tranquillity in the City of Brotherly Love.
When Captain Henry C. Quaire walked into Homicide a few minutes after eight the same morning, he saw Sergeant Matthew M. Payne sitting on a chair outside the chief of Homicide’s office. Sergeant Payne rose when he saw Captain Quaire.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” Quaire said, smiling, and then waved his hand toward the door of his office. “Come on in.”
Matt Payne followed him into the office.
“One of your major responsibilities, Sergeant,” Quaire said, pointing to his coffee machine, “is to make sure that one of your subordinates makes sure that machine is tended and ready for service by the time I walk in here.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt said.
Quaire poured an Emerald Society cup full, and turned to Payne.
“Help yourself, Matt, and then pull up a chair.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
Privately, Henry Quaire was not overjoyed at the assignment of Sergeant Payne to Homicide. For one thing, he’d
had nothing to do with it. Almost traditionally, the chief of Homicide had been able to select his men, and there were a number of sergeants-three, in particular, who wanted the assignment-whom Quaire considered to be far better qualified to be a sergeant in Homicide than Sergeant Payne.
But the commissioner had had his off-the-wall idea of giving the top five guys on the sergeant’s list their choice of assignment, so Payne’s assignment was a done deal, and there was no way he could fight it.
Not that he really wanted to, he decided. For one thing, he was off the hook about picking one of the other sergeants. If he had had to make a choice between them, two of them would not have gotten the assignment, and they-and their rabbis- would have been disappointed, and their rabbis probably pissed.
Now they could be pissed at the commissioner.
And it wasn’t as if Payne was an absolute incompetent getting shoved down his throat. He was, in fact, a pretty good cop, who would probably do a good job in Homicide before moving onward and upward in the police hierarchy. Like his rabbi, Inspector Peter Wohl, he was one of those people who seemed predestined for ever-greater responsibility and the rank that went with it.
Nor was there going to be, so far as Quaire sensed, much-if any-resentment from the Homicide guys about having a brand-new sergeant with just over five years on the job as a Homicide supervisor.
For one thing, Payne was close to the two most respected people in Homicide, Lieutenant Jason Washington and Detective Tony Harris. Washington had no problem with Payne’s assignment, and when Quaire had asked Tony Harris, Harris had been almost enthusiastic.
“I’ve worked with him, Captain,” Harris said. “He’s smart as hell. And this place can use a little class. Unless I’m wrong, he’s going to be dynamite on the witness stand.”
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