Geistmann

by Singer, Ron

  After one of the agents had given him a drink of water and a warm cloth with which to wash his face, Robinson, still on the floor, tried to gather his wits. Meanwhile, Scott Peters was frantically punching numbers into his cell, while he simultaneously tried to establish communication with someone via a little radio.

  “The bastards don’t answer,” he said, and kept trying.

  Neugeborn helped Robinson to his feet and, then, when he wobbled, onto the guest chair. “How many, John?” he asked. “And who?”

  “Fedoruk was the only one I saw.” Then, Robinson’s light bulb went on. “And Weatherbee. He was waiting for them in a car downstairs. Fedoruk called him ‘The Bee,’ ‘L’Abeille.’ He said. ‘The bee is waiting in the car.’ ”

  Peters gave up. “Let’s just go,” he said. “We’ll catch the bastards ourselves,” and he ran for the door.

  “Any idea which way, John?” Neugeborn asked, helping him to his feet. Peters froze.

  “Not really.” Robinson pushed aside more cobwebs. ‘”But I’d guess, either Transniester or the Romanian border.” With Neugeborn supporting him by an elbow, they all slowly exited the cell. He could hear Peters and the other agents pounding up the iron steps ahead of them.

  Episode 21

  Friday, April 11, 2008, 11:30 a.m. (Chisinau time)

  They were off, screeching west on Str. P. Halippi, all three of them singing away:

  We three kings of Orient are,

  Bearing gifts we traverse afar,

  Field and fountain, moor and mountain,

  Following yonder star…

  Weatherbee reached down between his legs and silently passed a paper bag back to Geistmann. Inside were a big black sausage, two rolls, a large bottle of water, and a small bottle of sparkling red wine, the label of which indicated that it came from the excellent Cricova cellars. Weatherbee had even thought to open and re-cork the bottle. For a few minutes, as the car left the city and began to speed past budding trees, fields and vineyards, Geistmann slowly ate and drank, doing so with great relish. At one point, they encountered an old herder with a fat, woolly tan flock. Luckily, man and flock had already safely crossed the road and started down a sloping dirt path between two planted fields. The man looked back, open-mouthed.

  It was a beautiful spring day, sunny and brisk, about fifteen degrees Celsius. It would be seventy-five kilometers to the Romanian border at Ugheni. Then across to Iasi, where, Geistmann guessed, they would change into civilian clothes and take the train to Bucharest. There, undoubtedly, they would split up and attempt to disappear into the EuroRail labyrinth.

  “With any luck,” Weatherbee said, in English now, ”we’ll be on the train before Scott Peters even gets a call back from Ugheni. Three-hundred lei well spent!”

  “What makes you so sure they won’t just take the money and betray us?” asked doubting Piet.

  Weatherbee laughed. “I gave it to them in a package marked “VITYAZ, Group A.

  And I used their official stamp to seal the package. I got the stamp from a new source, an excellent man in Prague. In case you’ve forgotten what ‘Group A’ is, my friends, it’s the Anti-Terror Unit of the Russian FSB, or Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, the Federal Security Service. We must remember to give the border guards the official salute as we drive past.”

  “Right,” said still doubting Piet. “Three VITYAZ agents in Moldovan police uniforms.”

  “Stop worrying, Peter,” Weatherbee reproved him genially. “Nowadays, everyone wears fake uniforms.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Geistmann had not forgotten about “Team Alpha.” The first time, Weatherbee had warned him not to linger in Tiraspol, because these dangerous people might apprehend him. Even back then, of course, he had not been one to run from a threat. He had lingered, they had not appeared, and he had never regretted having lingered. He also noted that Arnold had not lost the habit of switching into English when he wanted to boast. This habit went all the way back to the lycee’ days, when he had been Piet’s, and his own, History teacher. “Archie, Jughead, and Weatherbee,” they had styled themselves. Archie Andrews, Armande Amrouche. With Arnold and Piet, the names derived from physical resemblance, in Piet’s case, faint; in Arnold’s, striking. In fact, Geistmann had always wondered if Weatherbee was not his teacher’s real name. If he had really cared, of course, he could easily have extracted the truth of this matter.

  Robinson and Neugeborn reached street level and, walking a little faster, exited the front gate out onto the street, where a busy scene was unfolding. The sparse traffic was blocked by several unmarked black FBI vans and a gaggle of pandas, the flashing lights of which created cinematic authenticity. Suddenly, a dazed-looking Fedoruk, hands cuffed behind his back, appeared from around a corner of the building, his left arm in the grasp of one of the FBI agents. A moment later, he was being pulled to one side by Peters, and to the other by a uniformed Moldovan police official, an older man who, judging from his air of command and the seven or eight rows of braid on his chest, was a Pooh Bah. They were arguing hotly, Peters in English, the official in Moldovan. The colloquy ended when the man’s cell rang. He was apparently ordered to let Peters win the argument, for he released Fedoruk’s arm, and, without another word, walked away in obvious disgust. Peters nodded and whispered to one of his agents, who hustled the prisoner into the back of one of the vans. A moment later, it began swaying from side to side, and muffled screams could be heard. The agent popped back out.

  Romanian border,” he said. “Iasi.”

  “Well done, Nick,” said Peters. “Take him to the Embassy.” Nick ran back to the van with Fedoruk inside. This time, he jumped into the driver’s seat. The motor was running, and he sped north on Str Mateevici.

  “Jenkins,” barked Peters, to a second agent, “Tiraspol. Call, tell them you’re on the way, have them meet you at …” He thought for a moment. “The factory. You go with him, Fred. You remember where the place is, right?” Neugeborn nodded. “John?”

  “I’m all right now, Scott. I’ll stay with you, if that’s okay.”

  With a glance at Robinson, Neugeborn released his arm, then jumped into the second van with Jenkins, who was already at the wheel. They made a U-turn on Str. Ismail and tore off toward the east, barely missing one of the pandas. Peters gestured to a third van.

  “You sure?” he asked. Robinson nodded. Peters helped him into the back, then got into the passenger seat. With another, unnamed agent at the wheel, they sped east on Str. Ismail toward Str. P. Halippi. Turning in his seat, Robinson saw the police official gesticulating and barking orders at his men.

  As they passed through Straseni, the first hamlet west of the city, having taken the sharp edge off his appetite, Geistmann spontaneously began to sing again: “Baa Baa be’be’ noir, As tu du a laine?” [Baa baa, black sheep, have you any wool?] Piet, in his off-key tenor, and Weatherbee, in his on-key tenor, joined in, and they sang the nursery rhyme as a round. As usual, the only problem was knowing when to stop. At the next hamlet, Calarasi, with Geistmann again taking the lead, one by one, they finally subsided. After that, they drove on in silence for ten more minutes until, by Geistmann’s reckoning, they were about twelve kilometers from the border. Piet made eye contact via the rear view mirror.

  “Shall we detour to Vlad Tepes’s place, Armande?” he asked, smirking. He spoke in French, still. “Stop in for a quick tour and a glass of blood?”

  Geistmann did not like this little pleasantry –-not one bit. “After all these years,” he spat, “you, of all people, Pierre, should know better. Vlad Tepes,” he said evenly, “was, as you know, Pierre, grossly misused by his Turkish captors, both as a boy and an adolescent. What he subsequently did to them, in return, as Vlad the Impaler, while … yes, extreme, perhaps, was both understandable and an excellent means of terrorizing the ferocious Ottoman foe.” Geistmann wanted very much to strike Piet hard across the back of his rabbit neck. “As you also know very well, Pierre, he was not ‘Dracu
la,’ and he did not, so far as we know, drink human blood.” That he had twice used the French form of Piet’s name, and that he had spoken in flat, even tones, unambiguously told Piet to drop the joke. At the lycee’, “Pierre” had been the epithet announcing acts of sadistic bullying.

  Halfway to the border, Robinson began to think they would not overtake their quarry. He also realized that he was not even sure he wanted them to. Three on three, when one of the other three was Geistmann? He had thought this through.

  “Scott?” Peters took his ear away from the phone and swiveled. Robinson smiled. “How’s it going?”

  Peters looked surprised by the inconsequential question. He grunted. “Mauro’s on his way over. He’ll liaise with the locals, and they’ll go over the prison cell. Unless someone else has been bribed.” He had already remarked on the likely reason that none of his phone calls, either to Ugheni or the other crossing, at Sculeni, had been answered or returned.” He sounded a little tired.

  “I think I’ve figured something out,” Robinson said. “When they get to Bucharest, they won’t try to fly, they know we’ll be expecting that. They could continue on by car, but that would be slow, it would give us another chance to catch them.”

  “Train?”

  “Yes, that’s what I would do. But fast, no waiting in the station. Here’s an idea of how we can catch at least one of them.”

  Peters seemed re-energized. Robinson made three guesses, the first of which was Paris. For each guess, he explained his reasoning. But, in case he was wrong, they kept hurtling toward the border.

  Sunday, April 1 -Tuesday, April 15, 2008. Paris.

  Weatherbee seemed astonished when Scott Peters, John Robinson, and Fred Neugeborn were all waiting for him at the Gare de l’est where, ignoring his protestations, they took him into custody. It seemed to Robinson that Weatherbee glared at him with special malice.

  He had been lazy and careless, or perhaps just tired, making the two-day trip by the most direct route: Iasi to Bucharest, to Budapest, to Munich, and on to Paris. He had not even bothered wearing a disguise, apparently relying on the anonymity of the same dark suit and rich tie favored by half the businessmen in the EU and its satellites. His old lawyer’s briefcase contained a welter of currency and documents, many of the latter bearing the official letterheads of security agencies in the rich world.

  As they were arresting him, they only spoke to him once, when he attempted to fall back on his ur-excuse, that “Warfield will vouch for me. He knows where I’ve been. As I told you, he …” He avoided eye contact with any of his three captors and looked particularly furious, in a small dog sort of way.

  “That one’s dead, Arnold,” Neugeborn interrupted. “Warfield says he hasn’t heard from you in over a year, ever since he told you not to bother him again about Geistmann unless you caught him. He says you invented the toilet memo. He’s not amused.”

  So Weatherbee never got to pursue his plans, which it took surprisingly little persuasion to draw out of him. While he was crossing Europe in the trains, he had been sniffing around among the secure Interpol and FBI web material to see if he could safely turn up in Lyons, where he would repeat his alibi for the six days since he had gone offline: “Piet’s defection, crushing… need for some R & R… brief breakdown… a few days on the Spanish Riviera.” On the way to Lyons, he planned to say, he had stopped in Paris for some culinary indulgence. That part was probably true, but what he would not have told his Interpol colleagues was that he had also intended to visit a tanning salon in Paris, perhaps the ultra chichi one on Rue de Tivoli, to support the Riviera alibi. Robinson had guessed Paris for a general reason: a pleasure stop on the way to Lyons.

  It took more time and a somewhat uglier form of persuasion to determine that L’Abeille did not appear to know the current whereabouts of Piet Dkystra or Armande Amrouche. But first, when things were still on a civilized footing, he did answer one question: “Why did you hire John?”

  The gist of his long rant, during which he did not make eye contact with his interrogators, was that the plan had been to put the heat on Geistmann, to try to make him stop taking absurd risks, risks which, since they were trying to cover for him, “risked our exposure.” It was made clear to Geistmann that Robinson would be able to identify him any time Dykstra and Weatherbee decided to set him on the Toularelle trail. “And if, as I came to hope, ” he concluded dispassionately, avoiding eye contact, “he killed Robinson, we would either kill Armande, ourselves, or let the F.B.I. do it.“

  “Well done, John,” asked Fred Neugeborn. “So: where to now? Back to the Library, or do you want to come after the others with us?” They were in a lovely bistro on Rue Monsieur le Prince in the 6th arrondissement. It was three in the afternoon, the place was nearly empty, and having just finished dessert, they were lingering over their spiked espressos. Robinson had just concluded a muddled account of what had taken place in the cell. Scott Peters was back at headquarters, huddling with the Surete’ and coordinating the receptions for Geistmann and Piet.

  “I think I’ll take a pass, thanks. I’ve had enough cops-and-robbers, for now at least. I’ll lick my wounds, try to cling to the shreds of my dignity.”

  Neugeborn seemed about to protest, but he just smiled. “Terrifying, wasn’t he?”

  Robinson’s eyes grew big. “I’ll say!! What will happen to Fedoruk?”

  “No jail time. He’ll deal with us, tell us everything he knows, and we’ll keep him on as an underpaid private contractor, which is basically what he’s been all along. Fedoruk is a smart guy. We still have him by the you-know-whats.”

  “Good, I like him.”

  “You should. He had explicit instructions to kill you. I like him, too.”

  There was an awkward pause, during which they sipped their drinks. Then, Robinson blurted out the question he had wanted a real answer to all along. He had already been told what Weatherbee had said to the interrogators.

  “Why did Weatherbee hire me, Fred? I don’t believe that nonsense about scaring Geistmann. What was the real reason?”

  Neugeborn shook his head. “Don’t think I haven’t wondered about that one. We all have, and talked about it, too.” He looked at Robinson for several seconds. “The mind of Arnold is mysterious to man.”

  “But what did you guys think?” Neugeborn smiled sheepishly. “Come on, Fred, I’m a big boy, tell me.”

  “We didn’t think anything, we had no idea. Oh, and we didn’t take you seriously, John. As Scott put it, ‘Who the fuck is that?’ But the joke was on us: you turned out to be the one who contributed the most to rolling up Weatherbee and, possibly, the others. I guess you could say Arnold’s plan, whatever it was, backfired.” He shrugged. “Besides, from the get-go, we all liked you. There’s been a consensus that you’re a righteous guy, John –-for a civilian.”

  “Thanks,” Robinson said, ignoring the backhander.

  Neugeborn glanced at his cell. “So what’s next? We can probably keep you on the payroll another month or two, if you want to take a vacation or something, sort of a reward for all your help.”

  “Thanks,” he replied matter-of-factly. He had already thought this through. “I accept. Since I don’t really have to be back at the Library until next semester –I have tenure, you know— I think I’d like to do some more traveling. Moldova has given me an appetite for Eastern Europe. I think I’d like to spend –really spend-- a month or two in Yerevan. There’s an Armenian poet who interests me. A Soviet-era feminist named …”

  “…Shushanik Kurghinian.”

  “I’m impressed. Have you read her?”

  “Yes, the new book, I Want to Live.

  And when proudly, dressed in rags,

  I arrive full of longing to visit you,

  kneel to me, cling to my bosom,

  plead for my womanly love… “

  Fred Neugeborn was full of surprises. Robinson had one more important question, but he did not ask it: how badly had Peters, had the F.B.I., reall
y wanted to catch Geistmann? Maybe, Orville Johnson and Nelson Billings had been tax evaders.

  Episode 22

  Saturday, April 19. Berlin.

  Robinson’s guess about Piet-Marcus Dykstra was, “He’ll hole up in one of the German university towns.” Dykstra would want to fade into an anonymous milieu where he could enjoy easy access to attractive young bed partners while he brought himself up to speed on the newest technology.

  Again, it proved easy. The local police and a contingent from the FBI led by Scott Peters met him at Ostbahnhof, Berlin, where he arrived via Budapest. Piet had treated himself to an eight-day junket on the luxurious Danube Express. To have been so careless, he, too, must have been very tired. As he descended from the sleek white and blue train, his tall, rail-thin form was wrapped in a pea-green three-piece suit that showed his new paunch to great disadvantage. The suit was accessorized with a thick silver watch chain and, as further camouflage, a bowler hat. This London-Bavarian hybrid, with its tow head and pencil physique, may have made his fellow-passengers think he was some sort of Polish, Hungarian, or Slovakian Croesus, or perhaps even a businessman/gangster from one of the Baltic states.