Geistmann

by Singer, Ron

  “It’s our waitress, the deaf one,” he said, trying not to shout.

  “Got it.”

  In the background, right before the transmission ended, he thought he heard a toilet flush. He saw Rocker’s back appear in the picture window directly in front of him, still clutching his radio. For a second, he seemed to tug at the waist of his pants. Then, legs wide apart, looking like a movie Indian scout, he went bounding down the little loop trail. Robinson may have imagined it, but Rocker’s clothes looked askew.

  “Laughing all the way. Ho ho!”

  As he slid down the steep, snow-dappled trail that began in the woods half a mile below the bottom of the loop, Geistmann was singing merrily, out of tune and out of season, both by intention. He had an odd way of descending, which was to slide sideways as if he were a beginning skier. His attire was also odd. Inspired, in part, by two films he liked, “Men in Black” and “Blues Brothers,” he wore a black suit with a white button-down shirt and narrow black tie. He also wore bright green ear plugs and a gray straw Fedora. In deference to the uneven terrain, his sunglasses were in the breast pocket of the suit jacket. He was carrying the black attache’ case, but also wearing what looked like a large black rectangular backpack. Even his shoes were apparently inappropriate: black leather-soled Oxfords more suitable for an office –without the heels, however, which he had cut off. Although the mirror shine of these shoes was now smudged with snow and mud, they slid down the steep trail perfectly. Back and forth, back and forth, “making spirits bright.” A robin on a low branch cocked his head at Geistmann, establishing eye contact.

  “What is that?” the bird seemed to ask.

  “I know, I know,” Geistmann replied, “I’m not in very good voice today, am I? And I’m not dressed at all appropriately. Oh, dear, I’m so upset. You see, I just did something very nasty, and it’s put me out of key. And, in a very few moments, I’m going to do something else nasty. No need to rub it in, though, Old Cock!” And he made a leaping feint toward the bird, which went skiddoo through the budding, snowy branches, his beautiful pale orange breast in full display.

  A few minutes later, Geistmann arrived at a rock slab. He put down the attache’ case and wriggled out of the pack. From the case, he took his BlackBerry and a water bottle, which he drained, then put back in the case. For a few moments, he stretched, breathing in the clean, cold air and admiring the view. Then, he turned in the direction of the Lodge, blew a kiss up the slope, and punched several numbers into his BlackBerry. From above and behind him to the left came two loud pops, each producing a plume of black smoke.

  Replacing the device in the attache’ case and shrugging the pack back on, he took a last deep breath. With the little hat jammed onto his head, still clutching the case in his right hand, he took a few loping steps across the rock face and leapt out into space. As he did so, he used his left hand to yank a strap on the backpack. Instantaneously, a hang glider began to open. On it was a large image of an eagle with a snake in its beak.

  As the glider deployed, he waved the Fedora back over his shoulder, a farewell to his trackers, among whom, he knew, there was not a single marksman. Anyway, by now, they were probably squabbling over how many of them should run back to the Lodge to deal with the new explosions. And why were none of the dogs barking? As he very well knew, all four of these lovely, well-trained animals were enjoying a well-earned mid-day siesta inside a circle with a fifty-yard radius, the center of which was the bottom of the loop trail. As for their handler, he, too, was sprawled right in their midst, enjoying his own drugged slumber, like a drunken English lord after the exertions of the hunt.

  Catching a thermal and still clutching the hat, Geistmann sailed down toward a fallow field a mile from the county seat, Luray, where, two minutes later, he landed in a running crouch. He detached the glider and left it where it fell. Putting the hat back on his head, dropping the ear plugs into a jacket pocket, and swinging his case, he jogged into town directly onto Main Street, where he slowed to a saunter.

  What a lovely day! As the weather report had predicted, the clouds were now lifting. The air felt mild, much milder than at the Lodge. What was that folk belief they had around here? Every thousand feet you descended, spring was a week more advanced. He had just glided a week ahead in the calendar. Down here, in a sense, it was already April Fools’ Day!

  The car, an old red Toyota banger, was sitting in the sun right where he had left it, a hundred yards beyond the Page County complex, the centerpiece of which was the old courthouse, designed, as he knew, by the same architects Jefferson had employed. Geistmann had left the car in a meter-less zone with a “No Overnight Parking” sign. As anticipated, it had been ticketed, but not towed.

  Taking a ball point pen from the attache’ case and leaning on the hood, he –-Jeffrey Thomaston, the registered owner—filled in the information on the back of the ticket, and put it and $35 in cash into the postage-paid envelope. As Mr. Thomaston walked back to the mailbox he had seen in front of the courthouse, a uniformed policeman suddenly appeared from around the corner of the building. Geistmann smiled ruefully at him, holding up the envelope. The policeman smiled back.

  “Sorry, friend,” he shrugged, “someone’s got to pay for my lunch.”

  Geistmann shrugged back, grinned, and winked at him, then dropped the envelope in the mailbox. He tipped his hat and returned to the car. With the policeman still watching, he got in, rolled down both front windows, and slowly drove to the corner, where, putting his turn signal on, he made a left. Two minutes later, at 44 miles per hour, he was on his way east on State Route 211, rolling past fields that had been bloodily contested during The War Between the States. As prescient as ever, Jefferson had predicted that two things might ultimately sink his beloved new Republic: racial conflict and debt.

  Geistmann knew he still had half an hour in which to cover the sixteen miles to Sperryville. After that, by two p.m., the roadblocks, which were already up on all of the park roads, would also be in place on Route 211.

  After the radio transmission, Robinson waited. The second man, who was presumably, like John Rocker, an officer in the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP), was still stationed at the entrance of the dining room. With arms crossed, he was talking on his invisible radio and maintaining a conspicuously calm demeanor. Beside him, the hostess wore her fixed smile. The room was so quiet that Robinson could hear the click of her nails on the leatherette cover of her menu. It occurred to him to declare himself to the VICAP agent, but what would be the point?

  He continued making inferences about what must have happened. Geistmann had waited an extra day, presumably to wrong-foot his pursuers. And, since it said in the brochure that cabins did not open until May 1st, he may have guessed that the target cabin, isolated from the main building, would be empty. That would have suited his “no collateral damage” policy. Had he taken the weather forecast into account? The light snowfall might have influenced his escape plans. Had even the long wait for the food somehow been factored in?

  At this point, Robinson was jolted from his speculations by two more loud explosions, coming from his left. The man in charge did not move, but he spoke into his radio with increased urgency. Thirty seconds later, there were two more, almost simultaneous, and very dramatic, events. First, looking as if they were out for a morning run on the famed FBI training course, four very similar, very fit people, one of them a woman, popped from the top of the loop trail and sprinted off to Robinson’s left, around the back of the Lodge toward the parking lot. They wore identical navy blue track suits with white piping, and matching caps with white letters that flew past too quickly for Robinson to read them. “FBI,” he assumed, “VICAP,” or “USMS” (U.S. Marshall Service).

  Watching the agents fly past the picture windows, Robinson noted that the smoke from the cabin explosion had dissipated. As yet, he saw no drifting smoke from the parking lot, and given the wind direction, he anticipated that none would appear. As he gazed th
rough the window thinking these thoughts, an apparition did appear, in his direct line of vision. Several of the stranded diners gasped, and a few children ran across the room and pressed their hands and noses against the windows. Robinson fumbled his binoculars from the attache’ case on the floor at his side. Halfway down the valley, above the lovely new light green, snow-dappled canopy floated a glider with a huge decal-like image of an eagle clutching a snake in its beak. A man carrying a square case and waving something small was suspended from the glider.

  Thus it was that John Robinson had his first actual sighting of the elusive Mr/Monsieur/Herr Geistmann. Robinson focused the powerful binoculars. Improbably, the arch-criminal was wearing a black suit, carrying an attaché case (just like Robinson’s), and waving a gray Fedora back over his shoulder.

  Robinson added a mental note to the dossier: Geistmann was a movie buff. The outfit: “Men in Black,” and ...what was that other one? And the gesture: “Dr. Strangelove,” from the very end of the film, when Slim Pickens rides the bomb down toward Earth, waving his cowboy hat, just as the world is about to end. Robinson thought Geistmann’s visual humor was better than his verbal. Had he so chosen, however, he might have complemented the eagle-snake image with a piped-in recording of the lyrics that accompanied the famous movie ride:

  We’ll meet again.

  Don’t know where,

  Don’t know when,

  But we’ll meet again.

  Of course, Geistmann probably knew exactly where and when, and from the image Robinson began to form an idea of his own.

  At 1:53 pm, with seven minutes to spare, Geistmann reached Sperryville, where he turned onto a farm lane. He then joined local roads that ultimately took him to I-95 south. Having done all his Virginia map work during the Bethany Beach squat, he now followed a mental map, not even bothering with his GPS. As he drove along at a constant five miles above the shifting limit, the least conspicuous speed, Geistmann thought how American all this driving was –or had been, until the recent, abrupt end of the cheap gas era. Over the next several days, he anticipated, instead of all these short hops, he would be doing some real driving, “out where a friend is a friend.”

  Robinson sat on the bed in his room with his laptop open, waiting for an email from Weatherbee. A moment later, it arrived.

  University of Virginia, Charlottesville, ninety minutes. Use your GPS, the directions are a little tricky. Leave your car in the University parking garage on Emmet Street next to the bookstore, and meet me at the Jefferson statue behind the Rotunda.

  “Got it,” Robinson typed.

  He had no GPS in his car, but he knew how to read a road map, and he had a good one of Virginia. Even so, to be sure, and possibly to save time, he googled Map Quest, marked the route in red on the road map, and, while he packed, memorized it. It occurred to him that, given what had just happened to the Mercedes and the BMW, he should have asked Weatherbee if it would be safe to leave his car in the U. Va. parking garage. Aside from the two luxury vehicles, the only collateral damage from the parking lot blasts had been to the U.S. Marshall stationed at the exit, who had had his hat blown off. Note: Geistmann uses explosives with great precision. Either someone trained him, or he trained himself. Robinson liked his old car, but he did not think he really needed to worry. It would be safe in the parking garage, if only because Geistmann never repeated himself so soon.

  Something else, however, was making him feel very unsafe. In the palm of his hand was a small green and yellow rubber frog that had been sitting on the pillow of the made-up bed when the VICAP man, presumably on instructions, had allowed him to return to his room to await Weatherbee’s email. Next to the frog was a crumpled printout of a color photograph of a smiling Robinson, sitting behind the desk in his own office. The picture looked as if it had escaped from a wastebasket. In blood-red magic marker, a neat red circle had been drawn around his head, with a diagonal line through it.

  Certain that there was no point worrying about finger prints, he held the photo in his left hand while he bounced the frog on his right palm once or twice. Since his hands were trembling, the frog tumbled onto the bed. Weatherbee had sent him to Virginia just in time to witness the main event and to receive this direct personal threat. He put the frog and photo into his attache’ case. In the flurry of getting ready to travel to Virginia, he realized, he had forgotten to tell Weatherbee about the “G” on his desk. From what he knew of Geistmann, he was terrified that he might be planning to invoke some crazy “three strikes, you’re out” rule.

  END OF PART ONE.

  Chapter 7

  GEISTMANN, Chapter Seven.

  PART TWO

  Tuesday, March 25th. Richmond and Charlottesville, Virginia.

  It was three-thirty p.m. Weatherbee scanned the large, bright, airy seminar room, which was on the second floor of a nondescript modern building. The open windows faced north toward the lawn of the campus’ central ground, with the famed Rotunda at the top. He made eye contact with Peter.

  Nine people, all men, were seated around a large, polished, oblong mahogany table. At each man’s elbow were two sharpened pencils with erasers, one of Weatherbee’s trademark yellow legal pads, and a medium-sized bottle of water. Several of the participants also had open laptops in front of them. Peter sat directly opposite his boss; Robinson, as directed, was on Weatherbee’s right.

  The Coordinator cleared his throat. “Since everyone is here, let’s get started. This is the new consultant, John Robinson.” Robinson received several neutral nods, to which he responded in kind. There was not a single “Hi” or “Welcome Aboard.”

  The big oval table was like a mouth missing half its teeth. Glancing at the placards in front of the six strangers, Robinson did a fast inventory. Conspicuous by their absence were the NYPD, New York and Virginia State Police, and the Surete’ de Quebec, not to mention the western Europeans: Scotland Yard, the French Surete’, and their Italian, Spanish and other counterparts.

  Who was at the table? A single rep from theU.S. Marshall Service (USMS); two from eastern European groups (Eurasian Organized Crime Working Group and Southeast European Cooperative Initiative); and, finally, the largest contingent, an FBI threesome comprising two from the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP) and one from the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). Weatherbee was, presumably, letting the big dogs eat.

  “Special Agent Peters,” Weatherbee said to the VICAP man directly to his left, “suppose you start by explaining John Rocker’s absence. Everyone must be wondering.”

  Scott Peters, a big, bony man in his forties whose jaw muscles worked as he spoke, flexed his folded hands, making them even redder and whiter. He spoke in a clipped baritone, southern New England dialect.

  “Agent Rocker,” he said, “fucked up ten ways to Sunday. He ate drugged food served by a stranger who turned out to be the Subject, so he was shitting his guts when he was supposed to be directing the Apprehension. Not just that. Although he’d been in charge of reconnaissance for the entire Lodge, including the perimeter, he had neglected to inform us of the possibility that Subject would bypass the Loop Trail, where all of our agents were positioned. And when he failed to maintain radio contact, because he lost his signal in the crapper, we sent the dogs and their handler right into Geist... Subject’s trap. He shot them all with sleepy darts from up in a tree. And by the time the antidote to Rocker’s laxative kicked in, the second pair of bombs was about to go off.

  “Rocker had also been responsible for surveilling the parking lot. We don’t know how he missed the bomb –bombs—attached to the undersides of the cars. Our dog handler (when he woke up) swore that Rocker had never told him to check the lot. We don’t understand that, either.”

  “Where is Rocker now?” Weatherbee asked.

  “At the Academy, Quantico, awaiting further orders, temporarily confined to barracks. Personally, I hope he winds up on litter patrol in a bear-infested area in Yellowstone, without a sidearm.”

  To Robinson
’s ears, the laughter that followed was a mixture of schadenfreude and professional embarrassment. Peters did not join in. He sat grim-faced, hands still tightly folded. Weatherbee let the joke run its course, then made some noises about the need for professionalism at all times. So Rocker was to be the designated scapegoat.

  But no one else had done very well, either. How closely had Weatherbee directed this “Apprehension”? Robinson thought of the semi-competents he knew in the University administration, many of them shockingly inattentive to anything but bean counting.

  How had the parking lot bombs gone undetected? Geistmann must have put them there after Rocker had finished checking. Robinson imagined Rocker going from car to car sometime in the middle of last night with one of those lighted vehicle-inspection mirrors on a stick, while a grinning, invisible Geistmann watched from the bushes, waiting for him to leave. The same thing might have happened with the vacant cabin. Where else had Rocker looked? Had he been told specifically to anticipate the possibility of explosives?