Mad, Mad Marjorie Chapter XII: Chapter XII: It Just Does Not Stop, or Kings, Queens, but no Ace in the Hole
Andreas’ scenic tour to oblivion began with an escort to Marjorie’s own car, a polite sitting-in on the part of Andreas, and then a reminder to put on his seatbelt. (Safety first.) Then came in speedy succession came a jaunt down the streets and lanes of Summerfield, then a 90° turn to the right down one of the little community’s assorted service alleys and a pause before a cyclone-fence gate on rollers. At this impedition to the expedition, Marjorie tapped on her pirated security remote and the gate rolled with a few bumps and shakes, allowing her car to bumble through.
Now in the wilds of the outside world, Marjorie drove Andreas a short distance around a semicircular gravel road to a bleak, flat, weedy field hedged about with blackberries and overgrown with tarweed stinking like, well, tar.
She braked the car and Andreas stepped out into the bracing air of this post-apocalyptic weed patch, where his gaze met a drab cube of a structure with a peaked panel roof and an aluminum door.
He looked to Marjorie for an explanation, but with her bear repellant now at the ready, she simply gestured towards this cube and they made the short stroll to its locked door, on which in not-to-be-missed white letters hung the spray-painted legend: “A Thing Lives in the Basement.”
The trek from the upper world of light into the penetralia below Summerfield was an easy one: a winding metal staircase, a corridor as straight as a fuselage, and a second door, this one without the grade-Z horror-film graffito. Being the dark queen of this cavernous realm, Marjorie opened the door with neither key nor knock, then gave Andreas a nod of her head and a shake of the bear spray to have him march on in. Like a bedraggled sway-back pulling along the florid chariot of a Rubensesque nymph in a mural in a Palatinate pleasure-dome, Andreas did as directed. The Rubensesque nymph brought up the rear and closed the door with a quiet that could have passed as daintiness. (Andreas himself suspected paranoia.)
Within this chamber sat Geoffrey. From his seat he raised his head and he struck Andreas as being utterly at his ease, the master taking his rest beneath a canopy of dusty lavender wisteria, a cooling julep in hand, although he was as dry as a Methodist women’s convention c. 1927.
He smiled in welcome. “Andi.And where are our young Marco and Michael?”
Marjorie said, “In the witness protection program, if they know what’s good for them. But let’s not dilly-dally, Fritz. Drag that chair next to him.” 'That chair’ was Marjorie’s easy chair and it was not a chore for Andreas to pull it next to Geoffrey’s own seat. “, unless you want to lose some soft tissue right off the bat, you’ll sit.”Andreas cooperatively sat while Marjorie, holding her bear spray at the ready in one hand, burrowed the other into her shoulder bag to produce a handy plastic canister of zip-ties. She tossed them at Andreas. “The ankles, as tight as you can. And none of your Hitler Youth rope tricks.”
To the wheezing of the machinery about them, Andreas secured his lower joints, after which Marjorie shuffled around behind him and bound behind his back his hands.
While awaiting what might come next, Geoffrey leaned to his companion of many years and whispered, “Milosh.”
Andreas nodded with crystalline comprehension, then muttered something to him in turn. Marjorie raised her head in suspicion at these little noises, but to divert her, Andreas told Geoffrey in a louder tone, “You seem quite calm and with peace at the world, mein Herr.”
“This is because I am utterly unboozed.”
“When we are once more at liberty, you should continue your soberhood.”
“When we are once more at liberty, I will think about it. That reminds me: Do we still have some of that ’58 Cointreau? A sidecar does sound good right now.”
Marjorie offered, “How about a freight car? And as I recall, you did play dumb about the identity of my Russian.”
“He’s not Russian,” said Geoffrey.
“Serbian und Ukrainian,” said Andreas.
“He no doubt speaks Russian as his lingua franca. And at the time, I quite honestly did not recollect who the old monster was.”
“Then your mind is going,” snipped Marjorie. With that, she stuck her bear repellent into a deep pocket, backed away a few steps, and held up both hands like a director visualizing a potential shot. "What do I have here now?”
Geoffrey suggested, “Usually the villain says, ’What do we have here now?’”
Marjorie trained her gaze at him like a ballistic installation gunning for a Japanese destroyer, but choosing at the last second to take her version of the high road, informed her capons, “You” (she waggled one finger at Andreas) “are my insurance policy. You” (indicating Geoffrey with the same digit, not wanting to waste a good finger) “are human junk mail. Any last words?”Neither ventured any memorable epigrams. "All right, then.”
So, Marjorie pulled out her iThing and set to tapping briskly over its greasy, fingerprinted screen.But before pressing that last number and delivering the news that an international package was awaiting pick-up, Geoffrey piped up with, “Don’t you want to know what all of this is about?”
Marjorie looked at him like a librarian but without the half-glasses. "Will it take long? I have a date with a south-bound to the highlands of Venezuela once you two are blotted out of all human memory.”
“I assure you,” said Geoffrey, “we will not be lost long the mists of time. Besides, if this Milosh double-crosses you and you’re hauled off to peel potatoes on an icebreaker in the White Sea until the end of your days, I think you’d want to know that that it was all for a good reason.”
Marjorie said, “Once upon a time...”
Geoffrey held forth with, “In that golden summer of 1960, Europe was to young men with money in their pockets, Sam Summerfield and I, the old college chums, were drinking our way across Europe. We were at that age when a fellow could soak himself with medronho or Patxaran and still get up before noon to reach the train station for that next leg through the Auvergne. Or maybe hop on Millie’s yacht to cruise along the Adriatic islands, or …”
Marjorie held up a hand. “Um, excuse me. True Confessions, not National Geographic. Pick up the pace.”
“Thank you for the editorial feedback.I’ll remember later to delete the shoot-out in the ruins of Pompeii.”Begrudgingly taking the blue pencil to his travelogue, he set the scene: “Sam Summerfield and I had been trolling about Rome, crashing at the Bocca dei Leone—”
“This is still 1960?” Marjorie asked.
Geoffrey nodded. "The Olympics had been keeping the city busy, but the watersports were being staged in Naples—”
“So, then you went to Naples,” Marjorie surmised.
“Correct. But since it was more fun to lie on the beach—”
“And drink,” Marjorie contributed.
Geoffrey smiled and went on. "So, I called Tiziana...”
Andreas asked, “The Marchessa di Mariglinao, was she not?”
Geoffrey wrinkled his mouth to one side. "Yes, she had just married the old Marchese...”
“For his money.”
Geoffrey nodded knowingly. “But then he died...”
Now Andreas nodded.
“...and she went through her Buddhist phase, but then dropped out of sight until...”
“1975,” said Andreas.
“And by then she was just a rag doll, poor girl.”
Marjorie cleared her throat with a roughness like an offshore plate digging under a continent. “But in 1960 she was a real looker, right?”
“Indeed. Sam Summerfield even said—”
“Stop using both of his names. He’s not Charlie Brown.”
“Very well. As I was saying: We rang up Tiziana and she came ’round in her Maserati—”
“An A6, ja?” asked Andreas.
Geoffrey sighed, staring into his memories. “Oh, that car. When the old Marchese drove it over the cliff...”
“Und how did three people fit within it?”
“It was a very cozy drive.”
Marjorie tapped her foot. “More, faster,” she said.
Geoffrey complied. “Picture this: The beach, the sun, happy locals, ourselves browning ourselves on the beach, and Tiziana lets out a lusty gasp. ‘Look, look,’ she said, ‘a temple has lost its Greek god.’ And that specimen of classical male beauty of whom she spoke was this man right here.”
Andreas gave a modest bob of the head, but Marjorie said, “That must have been some time ago.”
Geoffrey asked him, “Do you want me to defend your honor?” He shook the head. "Very well.Andi was in Italy for the Olympics. To the rubber-stampers at the airport he was just the assistant trainer to the Norse men’s gymnastics team. But in truth—”
“I was an exemplary trainer,” Andreas insisted with a straightening of the spine in his chair.
“We know,” admitted Geoffrey, “but, come, come, Norway didn’t even win any medals that year.”
“That was not the point.”
“But athletes compete to win medals.”
“That was not the reason that I was in Italy.”
“We’re getting to that. The exemplary trainer Andreas von Bochenrod—”
Marjorie said, “Stackenwalter. I read the name plate next to your front door.”
A touch peeved at having to state the obvious, Geoffrey said, “Andreas is the Heredity Count Erbgraf Alois Humbertus Franz Benedictus Andreas von dem Bochenrod-am-Egle und Amalienhof. His courtesy title is von Bochenrod.”
Andreas clicked his (bound) heels together and bobbed his head a second time.
Marjorie said, “This is about as bad as PBS. Now hurry it up before I get bored and open up the sewage pipes.”
Geoffrey said, “Herr von Bochenrod, when he was not torturing young men into shape on the pommel horse and parallel bars, was like your father an operative.”
Marjorie shuddered melodramatically. “The plot thickens. Finally.”
“He was tasked with foiling the assassination—” Andreas cleared his throat with significance. “My apologies. He was sent to foil a tragic accident planned against—” Andreas gave another cough. Geoffrey looked at him for a hint, but Andreas only sat stoic, leaving him to flounder until he found a more discreet circumlocution. “How about a tragic accident against a certain royal personage who was participating in the games?” Now Andreas nodded. “When Andi was in Rome—”
Marjorie contributed, “He did as the Romans do.”
Andreas leaned to Geoffrey with a low and grumbly, “Warum haben ihre Eltern sie bei der Geburt nicht erstickt?[1] ”
Without offering a translation, Geoffrey went on. “Andreas had been very busy undermining the Soviet team, which led the Japanese to beat them in a few rounds—” He commented to his fellow-sufferer, “And I still think that’s a pretty petty reason for Milosh to hold a grudge. He wasn’t even Russian.”
Andreas said, for the twentieth time in sixty years, “I stole his car and foiled the plans of his masters.”
“But you made a fine friend of Takashi Ono. And through Ono we met Jiro and Mishima. And you did not steal his car. They awarded it to you for a successful mission. The spoils of battle, and in my book far, far better than those opium balls the Americans gave out during the war.”
Marjorie snapped, “Is this a deathbed confession or an OSS reunion? I keep thinking that Diana Paradise and Colonel Steve Trevor will show up. Come on,” and she started humming the theme song to Wonder Woman.
Geoffrey picked up the pace. “But when word came through Sam Summerfield that Milosh—”
Andreas said, “Dragan Bogdanovič.”
“That was before he changed his name to Milosh Milenko—”
Suddenly blooming with interest, Marjorie asked, “The devil has a last name?”
“One he chose down the road. He’s been on the lam for, oh, gracious, almost sixty years, I’d suppose.”
“Well, I knew that,” Marjorie said in an assuring tone.
“I’m sure you did. At that time, he was probably Dragan Bogdanovič. A Serbian refugee who grew up in the Ukraine, thus the Milenko. If we’re done with the introductions…?”
Marjorie salaamed with one hand.
“Milosh—” resumed Geoffrey.
“Or Dragan Bogdanovič,” said Marjorie.
“Or Dragan Bogdanovič, had landed in Brindisi and was moving up the coast to Bari for a sharp left to Andria and Conosa di Puglia—”
Andreas interjected, “If he had taken the SS7 to Taranto, he could have cut over to Battaglia and Salerno—”
“But then he would have been caught in the summer traffic around the Parco regionale di Gallipoli Cognato Piccole Dolomiti Lucane.” Geoffrey continued. “At that point Andreas, who is very knowledgeable about the best route to take, had to abandon Rome and race to Naples if he was going to make the kill.”
Andreas said, “After that moment, the Reds began to gather many medals in gymnastics.”
“Because you were not there to hinder their Marxist trickery.”
“Certainly it was not a case of superior training. Only the Norse had superior training.”
“And sometimes the Japanese.”
Like a bidder at an auction trying to put a price on the truth, Marjorie lifted her hand. “I’m still a little unclear why Russian spies in flashy sports cars are driving through a vintage travel brochure.”
“This was 1960,” said Geoffrey. “No one had forgotten the civil war in Greece—” At this a dullard look of stupefaction overshadowed Marjorie’s face, but Geoffrey went on. “The Reds had been on the losing side, but were gearing up for round two and thought that killing off the Crown Prince Constantine would be a nice destabilizing move.”
Marjorie suggested, “A kind of replay of Sarajevo?”
The codgers were momentarily taken aback.
“Or whatever is was that started the War of 1812.”
“Very similar,” Geoffrey said with indulgence. “But back to the Balkans. Governments were moved by economics, but the fighters on the ground...”He nodded toward Andreas as one example. “And Sam Summerfield, of course. They were moved by...” He wove a bit of intonational flourish into the last word to make of it a scrap of brocade. “...ideals.”
But after a mandatory and reverent silence, Andreas admitted, “Or because of boredom.”
Geoffrey suggested, “I think you were too busy to be bored.”
“Sometimes people are busy because they are bored.”
“So, you want to devastate my ideal of you as being Siegfried battling against the dark and false—”
“In consideration of your lineage, ‘paladin’ is a better choice among words.”
“Or ‘a very parfit gentil knight.’ And while we’re at it,” Geoffrey added, never loth to ignore a chance at cultural commentary, “does anyone actually read Chaucer anymore?” Andreas shrugged weakly and Geoffrey jumped back into the fray. “So, just because they weren’t showing a Marlene Dietrich double-feature in the Kulturhaus—”
Andreas sighed. “I merely say, mein Herr, that some people seek adventure when their lives seem banal.”
“—or maybe because the ground was too muddy to harrow the turnip field—”
“I simply speak objectively and with fairness about the psychological motivations of certain persons.”
“—or, scandal of scandals, because you were tired of moving some pile of rubble from one spot to another in Munich?”
“Frankfurt. You know, I speak not of necessity pertaining to myself, if I have not shown that to you over the previous fifty-nine years.”
“And now,” Geoffrey prophesied to Marjorie, “now comes the Road to Bratislava saga, whether to kill their last mule for food or keep riding it because they had boiled their shoes to make soup.”
“There are times when one must do unsavory acts for survival.”
At this point Marjorie let out, “All right, already. But now I want to know what happened to the donkey.”
“Mule,” said Andreas with a stiffening of the voice. “Frieda bore her burdens with great strength.”
“Not as much I have listening to this foreign film festival. So, Milosh didn’t get a shot in at Prince Charming, he’s been sulking for the last sixty years, and Hans here gets a nice car. And that is why I’m at risk of a slow, painful death?”
“As are we,” Geoffrey said, trying to sound surprised at her lack of sympathy.
“Your life expectancy is low on my list of concerns,” and producing her iThing, waggled it in the air at them. “Speed-dial, see? You deserve whatever Mr. Milosh will be dishing out, for making me sit through all that.”
And she commenced to call Milosh once again.
[1] “Why didn’t her parents smother her at birth?”
