They came and got me again.
This third session was a lot like the first two. Except there was more pain. The Bulgarians got into playing a game with my arm. Sort of “what’s the most scream I can produce with the least effort.”
They put me back. The pail had still not been emptied. This time when I used it, it overflowed.
They came for me again.
This time it was not the Bulgarians, it was a soldier—a Czech—who opened the door. It was all different. He was in a rush and agitated. “Mach schnell! Mach schnell!” he cried in a hoarse whisper. I did the best I could, and stumbling, trying to keep my shoulder straight, I followed him, through the basement, up a shallow wooden staircase. He shoved the cellar doors open and pushed me up and through them. “Mach schnell! Mach schnell!” I was blinking in the daylight. It was noisy. And there I saw the strangest sight I have ever seen in my life.
I only knew what happened from what they told me. Afterward. Everyone happy and satisfied and smug. When it had already become a story.
“You cannot abandon him,” Jaroslav said.
“Heck no,” Chip Sheen said. “We have to go in after him. He’s a fellow American.”
“Yes,” Jaroslav said with admiration, “that is the American way.”
“By God,” Lime said, the idea taking him slowly, “maybe we should.”
“All right!” Chip said.
“Ja, good,” Jaroslav said, nodding, reaching for a beer.
“You know, in all my years in this business we’ve never gone back in to get an agent. The thing in Iran—but that was so fucked up I’d rather forget it. The thinking in the Company is, Don’t do it. Wait a couple of years and we’ll come up with a trade. But goddammit, I’m fed up and I don’t want to take it anymore. Let’s Go Get Him!”
They didn’t cheer the decision, but eyes lit up, looks of determination were exchanged, and beer glasses were raised.
“The dirty quarter dozen,” Sheen said.
The planning began. The action followed.
The key was Vlad. They had to lure him out of the way.
“His weakness was the woman,” Lime said.
“Women make men weak,” Chip Sheen said. “Even when they’re wives.”
“Der frau is der Trojan Horse,” Jaroslav said.
“It was like something out of a World War Two movie. You know—when the GI tells the girl he’s a photographer from Life Magazine,” Lime said. “Well, I put on my best suit, shined the silver top on my cane, got some cards printed up. Then I told her I was from Wilhelmina Modeling Agency in New York City. The agency that represents Paulina. ‘Little lady,’ I said, ‘you have a future. How soon can you get to the Big Apple?’ Before she could engage her brain, I said, ‘I’m leaving in the morning. If you’re interested, come by the hotel.’ I put my room number on the card. ‘If not,’ I said, ‘I have been charmed to meet you and I wish you luck and not too many troubles in the coming economic upheavals.’”
“Then I come up to her,” Jaroslav said. “You know Czech people are very nice and trusting—except for politics, of course.” I could see it. There was something warm, honest, and believable about him. “She tells me about the man from Wilhelmina. ‘Could this be real?’ she asks. ‘How fortunate that I am a lawyer,’ I said. ‘I will make sure that this offer is legitimate. That it is not idle chat designed to lure guileless and unworldly girls to hotel rooms where foreigners will abuse their Czech virtue.’ Such as it was. ‘Should I listen to this man?’ she asks me. I said to her: ‘When opportunity is knocking, let the postman in.’”
“Scene Two,” Lime said. “The Virgin, the Hotel Room, the Contract. I actually had a contract ready for her. Thank God she couldn’t read English. So she didn’t know she was signing a sublease on an apartment in Washington.”
Someone put down a plate of sliced sausage and cheese and a variety of good Austrian breads. In the West they have more than one bread per country. They have fresh vegetables in winter. There were sliced tomatoes and scallions. I stacked a high and greedy sandwich and started washing it down with weisbier.
“Thank God that the copy machine has come to Marienbad. This is the miracle,” Jaroslav said. “Without it we could not have manufactured the false documents.”
“He just wants credit, and he should have it,” Lime said. “He was the one found the Xerox machine …”
“It was a Canon copier,” Jaroslav said.
“Whatever,” Lime said. “Some strategically placed white tape, the rental price and the address disappear, and as long as you didn’t know English it could’ve been a contract for anything. Then you should’ve seen Jaroslav, like a real lawyer fighting over a real contract—clause by fucking clause. We promised to pick up her airfare to the States. First Class.”
“Is not good enough,” Jaroslav says. “First-class girls go Concorde.”
“Anyway, she’s ready to leave with me in the morning,” Lime said.
“Meantime, I found the soldier,” Chip Sheen said. “I was watching the road from the house. The first time I saw this guy, I knew. Weak chin, shifty eyes, dandruff. And tall. If anyone would sell out his country, he was the one. Now I admit it was Jaroslav made the approach. Crude approach if you ask me. Not good tradecraft.”
“I said, ‘Hey, buddy.’ Jaroslav said, ‘How would you like to make a hundred United States dollars? Cash. Hard currency. Maybe even five hundred.’ ‘American dollars?’ the guy says. ‘American dollars,’ I said, and flashed him a hundred-dollar bill. He wants to see it. I let him. He fondles it, he strokes it. He tastes it. ‘Who do I have to kill?’ he says.”
This was the guard who’d let me out of my cell when the time came.
In the morning Nadia left the house, passport in her pocketbook, ready to ride with Lime to Munich to catch a flight to the Big Apple. She didn’t tell Vlad anything. “But I insisted that there be no loose ends, that she had to call and say good-bye,” Lime said. “She was afraid, naturellement. So I said she could tell him she was going to Vienna. As long as she called. Because, old boy, that was the point.”
“I have seen him,” Jaroslav said, “where I am waiting. He comes out of the estate so very fast. With the Bulgarians one hundred fifty kilometers per hour. On that little country road.”
“Bingo!” Lime said. “We got the head man out. Now we go in.”
“Now, you must know,” Jaroslav said, and the others were silent because this was his big moment, “what I have been in addition doing. I have gone to the office of the local prosecutor. I have been the lawyer from the Big City. I have needed some forms. He is very nice because nobody knows who is important anymore. Also, here in Czechoslovakia …” He paused. He poured another round for all of us, pacing himself, savoring his role. “… it is still assumed that if you asked for something you are permitted it. Nobody would dare ask what they are not permitted. We do not yet know that we are free. So I get many papers from him.
“I made up court order for your release. Then I am signing it. I make up a name. A good strong name. Also subpoenas. Never has this been done. To serve legal papers on the Army. This is impossible in Czechoslovakia. It is so crazy that they think maybe it is correct. Maybe I have the right to do this. They do not know—maybe the power of Vlad Kapek is over. Just that I am there, that I dare to be there, with papers, means that Vlad’s time is done. The guard at the gate is not sure what to do. So he calls another guard. I give him a subpoena. This he is more frightened of than a poison snake.
“Soon all the guards are there. All paralyzed. Wondering what to do. Except the guard to whom I have give the bribe.”
That guard was leading me out of the cellar. There was a coughing roar or a roaring cough and the sound of half a Polski Fiat filled the sky. Coming over the wall in a wide-winged wobble, looking like Rube Goldberg with delusions of being Batman, came Chip Sheen in an ultralight.
An ultralight is the world’s smallest heavier-than-air aircraft; A triangle with wheels sits
below a pair of wings that look like they’ve been stolen from the Museum of Natural History’s model of a pterodactyl. This triangle has a seat in the middle and a two-stroke engine mounted on the back, a motor that in less adventurous times would power a lawn mower, but here it has a propeller. The person in the seat steers this thing with a crossbar attached to the wings. He very much hopes that there is not too much wind. They were quite popular in Czechoslovakia, but too many people used them to fly over the Iron Curtain and they were banned.
Yapping almost as loudly as the engine and dangling in a basket were two maddened Pekingese. Careening around the orchard, Chip lowered the basket toward the ground. The two Dobies came around the corner from the gate at top speed. The Alsatians followed a moment later.
“That was your idea,” Chip said. He felt good about himself for sharing the credit. “But I knew you were being sarcastic and I wasn’t sure about just using the urine from bitches in heat so I brought whole dogs. Small ones, of course.”
Mad with terror, the Pekingese, who were indeed in heat, jumped out of the basket even before Chip had released the rope.
“Come on, come on,” Chip yelled to me. “Jump aboard! You have to run alongside, and get on while I’m still rolling.”
As it turned out, only two of the guard dogs were males. The other two went along, as dogs will, just because the first two were running. But once the males caught up with the Pekingese—which didn’t take long—and tried to mount them, the female guard dogs saw the males with their pink wet erections and realized that all the fuss was just about chasing bitches. Then they turned around and started chasing me. They were big, they were fast, and they had a great many teeth.
Chip Sheen pulled out an automatic. He had nine shots, but with the ultralight bumping along on the ground and firing one-handed, it would have been remarkable if he shot even one of the dogs and managed to miss me. But he got them both. The Doberman first. The bullet took one of her forelegs right off and she went flopping stomach down onto the dirt. Five shots later he caught the Alsatian in the side. It knocked her over and she whined and whined, blood flowing out of her, scrambling in the dirt and dying.
I struggled onto the ultralight. It bounced, and bounced, and bounced. I was going to need a lot of physical therapy. Then we were airborne.
That was how I dreamed the rescue would be.
The sensation of bouncing came from the throbbing in my shoulder. Shoulder is too short a word for it. It went from forearm to my neck, across the left side of my chest, down my back as well.
It was Nadia who came to the door.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “When I saw it was you, I knew I had to do something.”
“But why?” I asked. Stupid question. Who cared why? What if she suddenly realized that there was no good reason.
“You stirred something in me,” she said. “Here. Take this.” It was a gun. “You don’t have to be afraid to kill them. They would kill you. You will be doing a lot of people a favor anyway. I hear them. I must run.”
I think I was awake when I dreamed that, which would make it a delirium or a hallucination.
Jaroslav and Lime did come for me. Finally. They appeared at the door with several men unknown to me. Jaroslav was smiling broadly.
“Kapek has been arrested,” Lime said. “It took a while for the new regime to catch up with him. He had destroyed the file on himself. But they got around to him. They just took him away.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“Jesus, it stinks,” Lime said.
“We will get you a doctor,” Jaroslav said.
But I woke up in my cell again.
The guard came to the door.
“I know where the disc is,” I said.
He gestured me to silence. Then he threw a uniform like his own on the floor. “Schnell,” he whispered.
I stripped slowly and painfully. He was frustrated and furious watching me. “Schnell,” he said again. The uniform stank of whoever had worn it before. Though not so bad as I probably smelled and certainly not so bad as the bucket.
As soon as I was dressed he led me out of the cell, through the basement, up the cellar steps, exiting directly into the orchard without going into the house. It was dark outside. I don’t know where the dogs were or whether the odor of my uniform was familiar to them and they were disinterested. We walked a quarter mile, perhaps a half.
“I need food,” I whispered. I had a full load of adrenaline running but it wasn’t enough. It was making me dizzy and I was trembling.
He looked at me full of incomprehension. It made me angry not to be understood. I gesticulated. Eating is a simple thing to mime. He looked at me in disgust but fished in his pocket and came up with half a grubby Czech chocolate bar. The wall ended. It was replaced by both an electrified fence and barbed wire. The electric wire carried a very light voltage and wasn’t really dangerous. The barbed wire was the lethal modern type they use in Manhattan to separate the thieving class from the possessing class. Then we reached a spot where the wires went into the trees and underbrush. There were people waiting on the other side. The guard led me to a spot where I saw that I could cross.
Jaroslav came forward out of the darkness. Followed by my mother. My mother wanted to call out, Jaroslav gestured her to silence.
My mother gave Jaroslav a wad of money. He gave it to the guard. Some words were exchanged in Czech. Then the guard stepped back and shoved me forward. Jaroslav held the wire up and I crouched down and stepped through.
“Are you all right?” my mother said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Come,” Jaroslav said.
“What did I cost?” I asked.
“Five thousand dollars,” my mother said, very annoyed. Close to tears in fact.
“Where are Lime and Chip Sheen?”
“Gone,” Jaroslav said. “Quiet, we go to car.”
The car was a hundred yards away. I got in the passenger seat, my mother got in the back. Jaroslav drove.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
“He had your phone number from your things, at the hotel,” my mother said. “He called for Marie Laure. But I answered. He said that you were in trouble. He was very difficult to understand. Very difficult. He said that he found a way to get you out. But it would cost five thousand dollars.”
“My English is so small,” Jaroslav said. “I am making apology.”
“I cashed all my traveler’s checks, then got a cash advance on my VISA card. I didn’t know if I should trust him. I said I wouldn’t pay until I saw you.”
“Thank you, Mom.”
“I wish …” she said.
“You wish what, Mom?”
“I wish you had finished law school.”
“Thanks for coming to get me, Mother. I love you. It’s good to know I can depend on you. I’ll pay you back. But don’t mention law school again. That’s a long time ago.”
“After all, it was Yale,” she said.
“I’ll get you back the $5,000.”
“It’s not the money,” she said.
“I know that,” I said.
“You’re too old to be doing things like this. You have a wife and baby now. You should not need your mother to help you. Also I’m very frightened and I don’t like feeling frightened.”
“Do you happen to have aspirin?” I said.
“I have Tylenol,” my mother said.
“Jaroslav,” I said, “I have to thank you.”
“No mention of it,” he said.
“How come you stayed when they left?”
“I am very upset when they are gone. When they abandon you,” he said. “When I became a human asset for American intelligence, that was not the America I imagined.”
MOTHERS AND OTHER STRANGERS
I EXPECTED TO BE treated like a wounded lion. To lie around, look handsome and impressive, yet hurt and vulnerable, be fed and cared for and pampered by my harem of females, each one intent
on pleasing the king of beasts.
This was not the case.
When I was six and did something that frightened my mother, she got angry with me. As she did when I was fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty. And she did so now.
Anita—my ski bum—was angry because receipts at the Laundromat were down, she hadn’t made what she had anticipated, and probably could not afford her return ticket to Australia.
Geneviève, Marie Laure’s mother, was mad because receipts at the Laundromat were down and Marie Laure was dipping into savings. She pointed out that if there had been a wedding there would have been wedding gifts—lingerie to kitchen ware—and she would never have to buy a thing again. If she had been married she could have come home and there would have been baby showers—bassinettes to booties—and she would never have to buy a baby thing.
Marie Laure was angry at me because her mother and my mother were angry at me. This put her in the uncomfortable position of having to agree with them or defend me. Actually, she didn’t mind agreeing with my mother. It was agreeing with her own that she found difficult. She wasn’t relying solely on secondhand reasons—she had her own reasons to be annoyed with me. For leaving her alone to deal with the mothers, for not calling from Marienbad, for getting hurt when I should be invulnerable, and because Glenda, the woman that I was living with when we met, had called. Twice. Marie Laure was annoyed that all I wanted was hot baths, straight aspirin, sleep, and to be waited on. Also, she was angry with me because I dared to resent her being angry at me and got angry with her. Clearly we had evolved from being merely lovers to having a real relationship.
Anna Geneviève was not angry. But she didn’t seem to recognize me, which was worse.
And they were all of them angry—excluding Anna Geneviève—because I had not solved the mystery of the missing disc, scored the money, cut a deal, and legitimized myself to become a citizen with a country and a real passport.
To hell with them all. I sulked in my bed. I soaked in the tub.
The doctor said I was an idiot, but that after a week of total inertia I could begin physical therapy combined with massage.
Foreign Exchange (The Tony Cassella Mysteries) Page 27