States of America.
The retirees sold their houses or apartments in Hamburg or Copenhagen, and spent the money to buy-at very low prices; nobody but retirees had use for them-ancient farm-houses with a hectare or two of land, spent enough money to make them livable, and then settled down to watching the grass grow.
The Piaf Mill, for example, which sat on a small stream a kilometer from Cognac-Boeuf, had been purchased, with 1.7 hectares of land, six years before by a Swedish woman, Inge Pfarr Stillman, and her husband, Walter, an American, using the money-about $80,000-Inge had gotten from the sale of her apartment in Uppsala, near Stockholm.
It had gradually become believed that Walter Stillman, a burly man who wore a sloppy goatee as white as what was left of his hair, was a retired academic. He was obviously well-educated, and it was thought he was writing a book.
The mill, now converted into a comfortable home, was full of books, and every day the postman on his bicycle delivered yesterday’s International Herald-Tribune from Paris, and once a week, the international editions of Time and News-week.
Most afternoons, Stillman could be found in Le Relais, the better of Cognac-Boeuf’s two eating establishments- neither of which had won even one of Michelin’s stars- often playing chess with Pere Marcel, the parish priest, and drinking the local vin ordinaire.
The people of Cognac-Boeuf-in particular the shopkeepers-had come to call Stillman, respectfully, “M’sieu Le Professeur.”
His name was actually Isaac David Festung, and he was a fugitive from justice, having been convicted of violation of Paragraph 2501(a) of the Criminal Code of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, for having intentionally and knowingly caused the death of Mary Elizabeth Shattuck, a human being, by beating and/or strangling her by the neck until she was dead.
M’sieu Le Professeur’s true identity had come to light two years before when, at sunrise, a dozen members of France’s Gendarmerie Nationale had appeared, pistols drawn at the Piaf Mill’s door. When Madame Stillman opened it to them, the gendarmes had burst in and rushed across the Mill’s ground floor to the stairs, then up the stairs to the loft. There they found-naked under a goose-down comforter in bed-a man who, although he insisted indignantly that he had never even heard of anyone named Isaac Festung, they arrested and placed in handcuffs.
After a brief stop at the constabulary office in Cognac-Boeuf to report the suspect was in custody-there was no telephone in Piaf Mill, and the radios in the gendarmes’ Peugeots were out of range of their headquarters-the man, still denying he had ever even heard of Isaac Festung, was taken in a gendarmerie car to Gradnignan Prison in Bordeaux, fingerprinted, and placed in a cell.
Forty-five minutes after that, a technician of the French Surete, sent from Paris, after comparing “Stillman’s” just-taken prints with a set of prints of one Isaac David Festung, furnished via Interpol by the office of the Philadelphia District Attorney, declared that it was his professional opinion that they matched beyond any reasonable doubt.
When confronted with this announcement, Isaac Festung shrugged his shoulders and said that it was sad but he wasn’t surprised, that it had been inevitable that the American CIA would finally gain control of Interpol and finally be able to silence him.
Madame “Stillman,” meanwhile, back at the Piaf Mill, had gotten dressed and then driven to the telephone office in Cognac-Boeuf. There she had made several telephone calls, and had then come out to repeat more or less what her husband had said in Bordeaux: He was being persecuted by the American FBI and CIA both for being a peace activist and “for what he knew.” What he knew was not specified.
He had fled the United States, they both said, after he was arrested on a preposterous charge of murder. Furious that he had escaped their clutches, the CIA and FBI had arranged for a kangaroo trial in absentia, which had predictably found him guilty and sentenced him to death.
One of the telephone calls Madame Stillman/Mrs. Festung made was to a lawyer in Paris, who promptly called a press conference to make public what outrageous violations of law-and common decency-the barbaric American government was attempting to perpetrate.
The next day, the newspapers of France-and elsewhere in Europe-carried the story, often accompanied by outraged editorials.
For one thing, the European Convention on Human Rights had declared that an accused criminal was entitled to his day in court, which meant that he had the absolute right to be physically present in the courtroom to refute witnesses making, for example, preposterous charges that he had beaten and/or strangled his girlfriend and then stuffed her body into a trunk, which he then stored in a closet in his apartment, until the odor from there had caused his neighbors to call the police, asking them to investigate.
As astonishing an outrage as that was, the Americans had the incredibly barbaric arrogance to sentence the man illegally tried to an illegal sentence, that of being put to death by electrocution.
The death penalty was not permitted under French law. Extradition of someone sentenced to death, even in a trial at which he was present when a jury of his peers had found him guilty, was absolutely forbidden.
Many of the editorials demanded both that Mr. Festung be immediately set free and that the French government make, in the strongest possible language, their outrage known to the United States government.
The government of France wasn’t willing to go that far, possibly because the United States government suggested that if it did, the United States government would no longer honor requests of France passed to them via Interpol.
The matter would be decided, the French government announced, as soon as humanly possible, in a French court. France being France, that took six months, during which Mr. Festung remained confined in Gradnignan Prison in Bordeaux.
Mrs. Festung visited him frequently, sometimes daily, while they waited for the wheels of French judicial bureaucracy to grind inexorably.
The United States government then contracted for the services of a French law firm to represent it at the appeal hearing. There was a legal counsel, with a large support staff- more than forty people, it was said-attached to the United States Embassy in Paris, but it turned out that before he had become the legal counsel of the United States, he-and most of the members of his staff-had been special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and were not allowed to practice law, even in the United States.
This revelation produced a plethora of editorials in the French press, on the theme that it was a gross violation of French sovereignty to have American secret policemen operating under diplomatic cover on the sacred soil of La Belle France. What was next, some editorials demanded, the CIA operating in France?
When the case-actually the appeal-was finally heard, the French lawyers representing the United States very politely made the following points:
1. Trials in absentia are permitted under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the immediate jurisdiction, when the accused has not shown up as promised after being released on bail, and his whereabouts are unknown and undeterminable.
2. In the case of Mr. Festung, there was no sentence of death by electrocution. At the time of his trial, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had no provision in its laws to execute anyone, by electrocution or any other means. Mr. Festung had been sentenced to life imprisonment.
3. The government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on learning that Mr. Festung had been located in France, and understanding the French distaste for trials in absentia, had passed special legislation applying specifically to Mr. Festung, guaranteeing his right to a new trial if he should wish one.
4. Inasmuch as Mr. Festung had entered France illegally, on a false passport, in a false name, he was not entitled, under French law, to the protection of French law, and furthermore, French law stated that someone apprehended in France who had entered the country illegally would be immediately deported.
The three-judge bank of appeals justices considered the case for almost three-quarters of an hour before deciding to deny the request of the United States government for the extradition of Isaac David Festung, now known as Walter Stillman, resident of Cognac-Boeuf.
Isaac David Festung was free to go.
A cheering crowd greeted the Festungs both outside the court building and when they returned to their home in Cognac-Boeuf.
The United States ambassador to the French Republic decided to appeal the decision of the Court of Appeals.
