Teacher spy assassin, p.18
Teacher, Spy, Assassin, page 18
The longer we drove, the more pressing the need to eat became. Our standards plummeted. Yet we could not find one place to stop before driving the 12 hours to Bucharest, nor could we find a store to buy food. We did find two gas stations and filled the car at each.
It was getting dark as we entered Bucharest. We entered a huge brick-paved plaza that could have held four or five soccer fields. There was a café with street-side tables on the edge of the plaza. We had agreed to find the hotel, then eat. I stopped near the curb and called out to the diners in French to ask for directions to our hotel.
A student sitting alone at a table answered that he spoke French. (the Romanian Language was perhaps the closest language to French.) He began to explain how to get there. He stopped speaking and stared with his mouth agape. I turned to see a bus barreling down on the camper. Chris and I began to run and heard the bus smash into the open driver’s-side door where I had been standing. I chased the escaping bus long enough to see the three-digit number written on the rear of the bus, 315.
I returned to the camper. The crash had accordioned the door which seemed to absorb the bulk of the blow. The door window was smashed and the door would not close. Unlocked foreign cars in communist countries in those days were like free auto parts stores. In the morning any part that could be removed would be. There was no way to secure this vehicle overnight.
I asked the young man if he knew where a police station was. He volunteered to get in the car and direct us there. The police station was behind a high metal gate with a buzzer near the door. We buzzed, and the disembodied intercom voice told us to go away. They would not be open for complaints until morning. After serious protestations translated by our young friend, it was clear there was no help available here.
I asked if the young man knew where the US Embassy was.
He did. He would ride with us there, and give directions.
I tried to drive, shift the gears, and stop the now stub of a door from swinging open as we drove. Despite the difficulties, we got there quickly. The parking near the Embassy was hard to find. I needed to park a half-block away. I left Chris to stay with the young man who was helping us, while I approached the embassy. My goal was to put the car inside the embassy gate and sort it out the next day.
The Marine guard called the duty officer who was in the embassy. He came out to assist us. I explained who I was and what had happened.
“I have two children in the Bucharest American School. We have been expecting you.”
He asked if I knew some of his friends who were junior officers in Belgrade. I did. We laughed.
He told me he worked on some projects with a friend of mine, Jim Shultz. He said Shultz had called to ask him to take good care of me while I was in town.
“Can I bring the camper into the embassy grounds to protect it until I can get the door fixed?” I asked.
“Let’s have a look at it,” He replied.
I led him down the street to the camper.
Chris was ashen and stunned when we reached the van. I quickly looked behind me half-expecting another bus barreling down on us.
“The kid,” He said.
“What about him?” I asked.
“Two guys in uniform came here. They beat him with nightsticks until he was unconscious and then dragged him away.”
I now saw the smears of blood on the pavement down the street away from the camper.
“Holy shit!” was all I could muster.
“They do that kind of thing a lot here,” Bruce said, shaking his head.
While Chris and I were muttering, Bruce was examining the door. His father had run an Auto body shop back home. He said,” Not only can you put it in the embassy grounds, but we have two pretty good Romanian mechanics on staff here. I think they can repair it for you before you leave in two days.”
“That would be amazing,” I said. “I was afraid I would have to leave it with god knows what garage, and come back for it to drive it back alone.”
“We take care of our own,” he declared. “Drive this thing up to the gate and the guard will open it to let you in. Pull the car up to the shed on the left side of the building. Get all of the bags that you will need for your stay out of the car. Then just leave it. Tomorrow is Friday, I will have our guys start on the car tomorrow, but if it is needed, I will bring them in on the weekend. I am the Deputy Admin Officer and they work for me. Don’t worry about anything else that you need to leave in the car. It will be safe.
“I will go back to the gate,” He continued. “We have no one to get you to the Hotel. And I am on duty, so I have to stay here. I will call you a cab. It will probably be here when you have put the car next to the shed. Anything else I can do for you?” He asked.
Chris muttered jokingly that he could get us some food.
“Oh, my God, you missed dinner?” Bruce asked.
“More like breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” Chris laughed.
“I will call ahead,” Bruce said. “I’ll get the hotel to start putting something together for you to eat now, so when you get to the hotel, it will be waiting. Pack up, I will get things started on the phone.”
We got back to the gate with the damaged car. The marine guard put our bags by the guard post. I drove the car to the shed. We walked back to the guard post. The cab was waiting. We said goodbye and thanked both the marine guard and Bruce.
“Tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. you both will meet one of our drivers in the hotel lobby. He will take Chris to the school. He will wait for Dr. O’Brien to apologize for having to go out right away, then he will take Dr. O’Brien to the main police station to file an accident form. He will wait with you to translate and help you fill out the forms. Don’t take this personally. Another bus hit a marine guard’s car. It’s because of us boycotting the Olympics,” Bruce said.
“How did they even know I was American?” I asked.
“Oh, they know. There are not that many cars here,” Bruce said.
We heartily thanked Bruce. We got in the cab and went to our hotel. The person at the reception desk could not have been kinder. As if things could not get weirder, when we got on the elevator at 9:30 p.m., Olympic Gymnast Nadia Comaneci was there. She rode it to her floor, the door closed and we burst out laughing.
As we got off, we had barely pulled it together. How is it possible as we get on the elevator with the most famous gymnast in the world?” I sputtered.
“My god she was tiny,” Chris managed to spit out, through peals of laughter.
I turned the key in the door and entered our room which was “Holiday Inn” nice. Clean neat and modest; twin beds, a desk, and a couch with a coffee table. I opened the bath and there was a potty, sink, and a shower.
It was what was in the middle of the room that captured our attention. There was a stainless-steel rolling cart with big domed covers over what we hoped was food. We threw our bags on the bed.
I lifted one of the covers to reveal a bounty of cold cuts, and cheeses, Chris grabbed at the second one. There were bread and crackers and pickles. The removal of the third cover revealed cookies and cakes and baklava. There was a stack of small plates on the second shelf with open bottles of red and white wine, and two glasses. There were also grapes and oranges.
As hungry as we were, it seemed like way too much food.
It wasn’t.
About an hour later after rolling the now mostly empty cart into the hall, the image in my head was a memory of a small kitten I had rescued as a boy who ate a whole can of cat food when we found him. He slept, still purring, with a stomach visibly distended from the food. That was me tonight.
My alarm woke us the next morning. We showered and dressed, after unpacking. Neither one of us could stop chuckling about riding up the elevator with Nadia Comaneci. Just what are the odds?
“I know she is Romanian, but…” Chris said getting out of the shower. “And after the day we had that’s all we can think about.”
We got downstairs in time for our driver who arrived on time and entered the hotel holding a sign reading “Doctors O’Brien/Kelly.”
His name was Anton. I told him I would have to stay at the conference for about a half-hour before I could go with him to the police station. He said he would be with me that day until the matter was resolved.
When we got to the school most of the teachers had arrived. All of mine were already present. There was a fresh breakfast buffet. Although when we went to bed the previous night, Chris and I swore we would never eat again, the food was good and went down easily.
Justin Parker, the Romanian school head entered the room. I introduced him to Chris. I briefly explained my problem and that I would be at the police station for some or all of the morning. I explained the nub of the problem to the teachers. I introduced Chris and took my leave as they were heading toward a large classroom to listen to Dr. Kelly.
I put two cups of coffee in Styrofoam cups with cream and sugar and took them, together with a pastry, to the car. I presented the coffee and the pastry to a grateful driver and got in the embassy’s Ford sedan which was the largest vehicle on the road, by far.
The Police station was an imposing building. Romanian buildings were either prewar and predominantly Beaux-Art in style, or a drab style that we called Soviet Gothic. These grey, unadorned poorly built, and primitive buildings littered Eastern European countries. The Police station had been a grand mansion before the war.
We entered a large foyer/lobby. Anton translated the signs aloud to me in English and directed me to room 137 which was where to report motor vehicle accidents. The room was too large and looked a bit like a motor vehicle bureau in a small town back home. There was a chest-high barrier between us and the bank of clerks on the other side. The half-wall was topped with wrought iron scrollwork. There was no apparent way through the barrier and there was only one window. Around the perimeter of the “customer” side of the room, there was a low shelf and people were filling out forms there. We joined the very long line that led to the only service window. Behind it stood a diminutive old clerk who was emboldened by his structural separation from the people in the room. For some in the room, this seemed to have an “Oz” quality to it.
The clerk pulled a worn painted wooden sign into place across the only window. Anton told me that it read, ‘coffee break.’
I was seething. I could see them behind the barrier laughing and drinking their coffee. Anton told me that the clerk who stood in the window was loudly mocking the people in line, some of whom were sporting recent bodily injuries. The people in the line assumed their rightful role, as humble supplicants, and waited with long-practiced patience.
After a pause that went by very slowly, the clerk returned, removed the ‘coffee break’ sign, and resumed his haughtiness. We waited for the two people ahead of us to be given additional forms. When our turn came, I explained what happened and that I sought action against the bus driver. Anton translated, but seemed a bit timid to do so.
The clerk began to fidget like a frightened rodent. He nervously began to look to the left and right as if seeking an escape route. In the end, He reached down to a pile of forms and pulled out a form. The form seemed to build his confidence. He thrust it at us. I asked Anton to find out if it should be filled out in Romanian or English. “English,” the clerk said, while speaking Romanian, “It must be filled out in the language of the complainant.”
We took the form to a vacant section of the writing shelf. I had a pen, as I usually do. Anton translated the form’s questions and I wrote the accident report including the number of the bus that struck me.
We got back in line. After more than thirty minutes we got to the front of the line. The clerk picked up the form.
“What language is this written in?”
“English,” Anton said.
“You fool!” The clerk spat, “I need it in Romanian. We don’t have people who can read this.”
As he bent down to get a clean form. I snatched the form I had already completed and put it in my pocket.
“Hey, where is that incorrectly completed form?” He asked indignantly.
Anton did not want to reply so, he translated as I said, “You must have taken it with you when you got the new form.”
Anton dutifully translated. The clerk rooted about on the shelf below him trying and failing to find the ‘misplaced’ form and sent us away with a new form to fill out in Romanian.
We returned to our writing shelf. I was pissed. By now Anton knew the story well enough to fill the form out with very little help. He read it back to me, I made only a few small edits. We rejoined the line. When, at last, we got to the window, the same clerk put up a sign that the staff was taking a lunch break. We waited. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” I thought. We stood at the front of the line for an hour. I was impatient and angry.
The clerk returned. He removed the sign with great ceremony. “May I help you?” he said as if he had never seen us before. I handed him the form written in Romanian. “This is in Romanian.” He snarled. “How do we know that this foreigner even knows what it says?”
A faint victorious smile began to spread across his cruel face.
“Aha!” I roared and slapped the earlier English version that I had snatched on the counter next to the Romanian version.
He seemed perplexed. His gambit had failed. And we were still here.
“I want to see someone in charge,” I demanded.
The clerk was now about to have a bad day.
I demanded to see the person in charge again.
He scoffed.
I said, “I am not leaving until l talk to someone in charge.”
“This may not be a good idea,” Anton said to me in English.
“I don’t care.”
“I cannot get you out of jail,” he added.
An endless parade of officials tried, through my very busy translator, to discourage my persistence. Clearly, they did not know who they were dealing with. My fellow petitioners in the line seemed to enjoy the fracas.
After a long time, a side door that I had not noticed, opened. A large and robust man in his fifties spoke to me through the opened door. It was clear he was the boss of bosses. He wore a grey uniform covered in gold braid and medals. His hat brim was littered with gold. He motioned for me to follow him. I reached for Anton.
He said in clear English, “That will not be necessary.”
I left Anton and followed him down a short hallway to his office. I sat opposite the desk. He listened patiently to my litany of complaints. He did not respond. I think he had heard this story before. He said, “You have been found guilty of hitting the bus with your door. You willfully backed up at a reckless speed and smashed into the bus causing damage and crushing your door in the bargain. The fine for this act is 5 leu.”
“What?” I exploded “I am innocent. The bus struck me. Any fool…”
“Let me ask you a few simple questions,” He interrupted “In what country is your car insurance company located?”
“Germany,” I replied not knowing where this was going.
“Will they pay for your repairs whether you are innocent or guilty?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Good,” he said, “Then is settled because if I found you innocent, I would pay, and my children would pay for the rest of our lives. That will be 5 leu, please.”
Five leu was about 75 cents. I paid the fine. I muttered that I was sorry he had to live this way. and left the room.
As I moved to the door, he said, “You will have no further problems in Bucharest, and I am sorry about your car.”
I gathered up Anton and went back to the school.
I thanked Anton profusely. I offered him a substantial tip, but he refused saying, “I am ashamed of my government’s actions and I deserve no money for exposing these aching problems. Helping you to solve these problems was unworthy of a tip. It was, instead my honor.”
I shook his hand and said a warm goodbye.
I entered the school. It enrolled only about 65 students. Romania was not an important nation on the world stage. Few diplomats and businessmen were stationed here. Like in Belgrade, the school was in a Villa. But this one was smaller and there were no outbuildings.
I could hear Chris Kelley’s well-polished presentation in a classroom down the hall. I found the room. As I tried to slip into the back of the classroom, I tripped over a student chair. All eyes turned to the back of the room. Chris said, “There he is. Welcome back. We knew you would be a while, but…”
I looked at my watch. It was from 2:00 p.m. I realized I was starved.
“We were just getting ready to summarize and wrap up, but there is not a person in this room who does not wonder what happened to you. So, could you bring us up to date with your adventures,” Chris added.
“Then you can get a bite to eat, and we can finish. First of all are you, all right?”
I looked at Justin, the school director, to see if this interruption was OK. He was murmuring with the others for me to proceed.
I gave the short version. I touched on Anton’s kindness and the officiousness and disturbing tactics of the clerk. The teachers looked on with sympathy. They understood why I paid the fine. We all lived in Eastern Europe and the kind of things that happened to me today was at the edge of everyone’s experience, sadly.
Justin called for a break. My staff joined the other teachers in the room offering me words of encouragement. Someone brought me coffee and an ample stack of cookies. Soon they were being called back for the wrap-up session. Justin stayed with me to help me find the saved lunch plate. He used the phone extension in the break room to dial the embassy for me to check on the camper. He got Bruce and handed me the phone.
“Hey, my friend, Anton brought me up to date. So, we don’t need to waste time catching up on traffic court. Congratulations, you didn’t get a life sentence. I guess you did about as well as you could. I’ve got good news. The door is rebuilt. They cut some glass for the window, hammered the door and door frame back into shape with the help of a come-along. They built you a new hinge and seat and faired the whole mess out. It closes and locks. The window works great. You would never know it happened. They will have it ready for you tomorrow at 3:00 pm. They will come at 5:00 a.m. to apply the primer it will have two coats of paint on it before your meeting ends tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. I’ll be with them when you come to get it.”
