Doing Lunch

by Doing Lunch Free(Lit)

“Thanks,” responded Boltran to the appreciative doorman.

  “What floor?” asked Guska.

  “Sir, there are only two floors.”

  “So how come they need an elevator?” came Guska’s second question.

  “You can’t honestly expect people so wealthy to walk upstairs, do you?”

  Guska’s blank expression told Boltran that Guska really did not comprehend the vast differences between the two cultures. The doorman merely looked at Guska, thinking about why this idiot was not the doorman instead of him. Maintaining a steady pace, the two would be kidnappers made their way down the corridor and followed the doorman’s directions to the letter. Before they reached Mikhail’s apartment, the door opened.

  “Guska? Boltran?”

  “Yes, it is we, the trade liaisons that the premier told you about,” responded Boltran, answering for the two. He had suggested to Guska that because of the fact that he had limited knowledge of the culture, that he would be the one doing all the talking.

  “Come in.” The two entered and found the interior of the condominium beyond anything they could have thought. Mikhail really was the spy that came in from the cold, and he did it in style.

  “I’m Mikhail Debenov.”

  “I’m Guska and this is Boltran.”

  “Drink?”

  “We’d really like to get going.”

  “Get going?” asked Mikhail, never having expected to be going anywhere. He had intended this evening to be one of solitude with a book since he was supposed to pick up Allison the next morning at eight. He hated it when Allison saw him with bags under his eyes, nothing that might give her the impression that he had become a party animal while she returned to Dallas, Texas to visit her uncle.

  “Yes, there is something we want you to look at.”

  “You’re not planning on looking at a piece of land at night?”

  “No, Mikhail. There is a warehouse near the East shore that we are interested in. We would like you to see the inside to see if it is laid out the way we would like it.”

  Mikhail knew the warehouse Boltran was talking about right off the bat. It was alone and isolated from most everything else. When sugar was a large export commodity from the islands, the warehouse was used for storage of tools and equipment but now stood there corroding into rust. It had not been used during the years and the owner had been trying to sell it for that long. Besides it being isolated, the roads leading to it were dilapidated. Wondering what they could want it for, he decided not to ask since he believed it was their business.

  “Okay, just let me get a sweater.” Mikhail gathered something lightweight to take with him for some comfort from the evening’s breezes. Closing the door to his condominium, it never dawned on him that he would not be returning to it within a few hours. Making their way out of the plush building, they were all given the customary “Good evening, sir” from the doorman. Guska, his anxiety showing although Mikhail did not quite know how to interpret it, moved very rapidly toward the sleek looking black luxury sedan in pursuit of Boltran, who led him there.

  “Oh these 735’s are beauties. This is gorgeous.” Mikhail admired the car whose excellent paint job shined in the night from the moon’s glow.

  “Thank you.” Guska, who was already seated behind the steering wheel, automatically unlocked the other doors. Boltran opened a door to the back.

  “I’ll ride in back,” offered Mikhail.

  “Oh no, it’ll be easier for you to give directions from the passenger’s seat.” Mikhail saw the logic of Boltran’s words. With everyone tied up with their seat belts, Guska took the show on the road. Mikhail, a car aficionado, filled Guska’s ear with details of the machine that was taking them to the other side of the island. Getting himself so involved with his knowledge, he paid no attention whatsoever to Boltran in the backseat. With the situation being perfect as Boltran saw it, he removed a small bottle of ether and poured some onto a small cloth. Before Mikhail could tell Guska about the wonderful suspension in the 735, he was fast asleep.

  Reaching the East side of Maui in about fifteen minutes, they drove right past the warehouse that they used to get Mikhail into their lure with. Having hit the accelerator several times, Guska realized that what Mikhail had said about it’s zero to sixty time was correct. This guy really knew his cars.

  Reaching the coastline just several minutes further, they came to a stop where there was a rowboat waiting. Quickly, they dragged Mikhail’s limp body into the rowboat and climbed in after him. With Guska giving the small wooden vessel a shove to get it into the water, he jumped in but not without getting wet from wading in the water to get it started. Flailing at the oars as hard as they could, Guska and Boltran began working the muscles that they probably hadn’t used in years and would probably never use again. Guska knew he would not use them again if it were going to hurt this bad.

  “Beautiful night.”

  “Shut up and row, Guska.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to get nasty, I’m rowing, I’m rowing.”

  “And just keep it up.”

  “I just thought that this moon shining on the ocean was pretty nice.”

  “A shining moon is the last thing we need. If the Coast Guard’s around, they could use it for a flashlight.” Guska looked up at the moon and then out at the ocean where the reflection of the moon’s rays were laid out before them. Suddenly, Guska was rowing harder as if he discovered some newfound muscles.

  With a hundred and ten percent effort, they were able to get the rowboat a little bit more than a mile from the shoreline when they could hear the sound of a motor. While they were expecting to meet someone, there was no way to differentiate if the engine belonged to friend or foe. They had to hope for the best. Boltran looked at his compass, which read west, due west. He knew they had gone in the direction they had planned to just because of the road he was on. During Boltran’s training to become a spy, he had to study the English language. He excelled at the reading of numerals.

  The sound of the engine got closer and closer until suddenly a motor could no longer be heard. The silence of the ocean this far out where it did not have the beach to crash against was frightening, even to a hard-bitten spy. Boltran knew that if it were not who he had planned to meet, he and Guska were at their enemies mercy.

  “Boltran!” came the voice that brought relief to the spy.

  “Yes. We will be right there.” Guska looked at Boltran with the dumbest of smiles, something like a child who had just gotten caught at something they should not have been doing and had no answer for.

  “Row. They can’t be but forty or fifty feet away.” Guska rowed and found it took just a few strokes before the sight of the cabin cruiser was before them. A few more strokes and they were right next to the boat. Lifting Mikhail up, two men from the cruiser leaned over and dragged him into the boat.

  The submarine was very tight but by today’s costs, would still cost an arm and a leg. It was the cost of arms that drove Communism out of the Soviet Union and caused that republic to break into separate states. Now with the establishment of the separate states, it became obvious to everyone in the world what a difficult time communism would have. The leaders of these states did not want to share anything; they fought over every issue and every inch of ground.

  Medansky, while having the largest quarters on the ship, still found the accommodations smaller than his walk-in closet back in Moscow. He had a very distorted view of reality since most people didn’t have walk in closets that had several hundred square feet of space, living or otherwise.

  He was wide-awake since he had been drinking coffee continuously for the last few days. With the uncomfortable bed and the agony knowing that this mission should have been accomplished three days ago, Medansky failed to sleep a wink during the entire time that the submarine awaited the arrival of Mikhail. Now with the mission almost completed, he had to stay awake. Finishing the cup of coffee in his hand, the portly intelligence chief decided to make his way int
o the command room after having looked at his watch.

  The command room found Admiral Chevoskov standing near the small table where he kept his charts for easy viewing. The well-trimmed white beard and the athletic physique of the man said a great deal about him. With it being so warm inside the ship, the admiral, while in the company of Medansky, chose to work in his white tee shirt and work pants. He felt no need for formality under these conditions.

  “When do you plan to surface, admiral?”

  “I would say about another hundred miles?”

  “I thought we were stopped to avoid detection?”

  “We are.”

  “Then why are we moving?”

  “We have accomplished our mission.”

  “Our mission, admiral, was to retrieve the live body of Mikhail Debenov.”

  “We have completed our mission, sir. He is asleep in the bunk that we prepared for him.”

  Medansky’s eyes gave off more light than the moon ever did off of Maui. Quickly grabbing the admiral’s hand, Medansky shook it with such energy that even the decorated officer felt he had one cup of coffee too many.

  “Thank you, admiral, thank you.” Leaving the control room with more motion than he could ever generate around the house, Admiral Chevoskov could only watch in amazement.

  Rising to his feet, the feeling of being lethargic being at an extreme, Mikhail looked around for a mirror. Feeling as awful as he did, he just had to see if he looked as bad as he felt. He sank to a low when Medansky entered. While never having met his old boss, he knew him from the chain of command pictures, which was something that Mikhail always wondered about. If the KGB was a spy organization, why would you want anyone to know what your position was in the organization, shouldn’t it be a secret?

  “Mikhail!”

  “Medansky?”

  “Yes, how did you know me? Have we met?”

  “No, now what is going on here?”

  “You are a spy and you do not know you were being kidnapped?”

  “Why?”

  “It is simple. Alexi thought he could lead Russia to a free market economy. He expected you to be the one that showed the way. Do you not remember this submarine, we smuggled many of your secrets out on it?”

  “Yeah, but I was never the secret.”

  The feeling that the ether that was wearing off on Mikhail did not create half the havoc that his mind was now playing with his body. Going back to mother Russia was not what Mikhail had in mind for his next vacation.

  “You look terrible, Mikhail. They must have used the low grade ether on you. We are a very poor country.”

  “Thanks,” was the sarcastic response from Mikhail, which Medansky picked up on.

  “You should go back to sleep, you look tired. We will be in Moscow in a few days.”

  “I want to look around this place.”

  “Go wherever you want, Mikhail, go wherever you want. You should be able to go from stem to stern in about three minutes.”

  “That’s crazy. The submarines in Disneyland are bigger!”

  The caustic smile flashed by Medansky showed Mikhail the hard bite of the KGB leader. Medansky exited with a smile, feeling that he got the best of his former employee. Mikhail decided that maybe right about now Medansky’s advice about the sleep was the right thing; maybe it was the only thing to do. Dropping back into the bunker, Mikhail attempted to carry out his game plan.

  The airport in Maui was small. Actually, it was more like a landing strip that the allies built hurriedly in places like Burma during World War II. People did not mind though because they came to see Maui, not it’s airport.

  Waiting out front, Allison couldn’t believe herself. Looking at her watch one more time, she confirmed that she had been waiting there over an hour. She was more like a man in this regard in that she was impatient. She had called Mikhail several times on the cellular, but there was no answer. She figured that he had left the house to meet her and now just hoped that nothing more serious than a blowout occurred. These moments of anxiety about Mikhail’s whereabouts made Allison realize just how much she loved him. She often worried that maybe he had car trouble, maybe got called away on business, but she never conceived that he had been kidnapped.

  Spotting a friend of hers, Dorothy Wiggins, who was an assistant manager at the plush Maui Gardens hotel, Allison chased her down.

  “Allison.”

  “Dorothy, could you give me a ride to the condo?”

  “Sure, but where’s Mikhail?”

  “I don’t know, he was suppose to pick me up an hour ago. Maybe something happened to the car.”

  “Come on, my car’s parked over there.” Dorothy grabbed one of Allison’s suitcases and the two made their way toward the car.

  Standing over an orange golf ball, trying to get his concentration on his target, Alexi acted like he was alone in his office. His stroke was nice and smooth and the ball rolled right in the middle of the ball return.

  “Okay, Alexi, now what’s the idea of kidnapping me back here to Moscow? I already told you I had other things to do.”

  “I need you, Mikhail.”

  “Look, Alexi, I know Russia is going through some tough times. Call it growing pains.”

  Alexi always prided himself on his ability to accurately assess someone. In the few weeks that he had spent with Mikhail since becoming premier, he felt that he had assessed him right on the money. He was now about to find out if it was just ego or that he really did have a knack. He directed his eyes straight into those of his nephew’s, his eyebrows lowered. Alexi now had Mikhail’s full attention.

  “I said I needed you,” was the soft yet firm monotone that made its point. Knowing just what Alexi had implied to him in just those few words, Mikhail reacted by hugging his uncle.

  “It is you that really needs me?”

  “Yes.”

  “We must talk. Sit down, Alexi.” The premier just wanted to get Mikhail to listen, really listen, and now he knew he had. Moving into his chair, putter in hand, he looked across the desk at Mikhail.

  “What kind of jeopardy are you in?"

  “I do not know how bad it is, but I was set up.”

  “Set up?”

  “Yes. The communists believe that a free market will fail. It is they that connived to get enough support for me as premier. They expect that I will fail and they will again rise to power. How else do you think a professor from the university suddenly became a premier?”

  “You mean a man as smart as you didn’t realize that he was being set up?”

  “Of course I knew! I just told you I knew!” With the irritation in Alexi’s response showing that he felt he was being talked to as if he were a child, Mikhail knew that he would have to phrase his sentences more carefully. “I love my people. I love Russia. I had wanted to save it from itself.”

  "It is a hopeless cause, uncle. These people do not understand self-motivation. It’s like someone who needs someone to tell them what to do with their life. These people need the state to tell them what to do.”

  “There are many Russian immigrants who have done well in America.”

  “Please, we have enough. What will happen to you if the country fails?”

  “I do not know. Mikhail, don’t help for me, help the people to help themselves.” The young law student found the dilemma a difficult one. Just the thought of living there and giving up Maui made Mikhail regret he had ever been born. He knew if he decided on helping Alexi out that the first thing he would have to do was build a golf course somewhere in Russia, something weatherproof. It could be the first dome-covered course.

  “Mikhail, let us get something to eat.” Mikhail was glad that Alexi changed the subject. If he was going to stay, he wanted to make certain that he had given it enough thought and on an empty stomach that could be difficult. Besides, he always made his business decisions during a business lunch so there was no reason for this one to be any different. Moving toward the window of Alexi’s office, Mikhail
stared at the snow drifting onto the city streets. The way the few pedestrians that were on the streets were bundled in heavy coats with gloves and hats and scarves was a sure sign that the temperatures were in the deep frost range.

  “I’ll tell you something, Alexi, if football every came to Russia, name the Moscow team the Packers. These tundra conditions are just perfect for them.”

  “Are they not the team where the fans wear those crazy hats, the cheese...”

  “You got it, Alexi, they are called the cheeseheads. If they played in Los Angeles with all the drive by shootings, they’d be called the Swiss cheese heads.”

  CHAPTER 5

  MAKING A COMMITMENT

  The place was a mess and Allison was doing everything she could to keep it that way. She had notified the police the night before about Mikhail missing, but they refused to take a missing persons report. It turned out that they had criteria for doing so and this required the person who was missing to be missing for a minimum of three days. It was like the airlines with their cheap flights, leave on a Saturday and return on a Monday or Tuesday. Allison really could care less what day as long as he returned.

  Half out of her mind because she missed him and worried about foul play, she found her fingernails getting shorter. If this was a prank that Mikhail was pulling, Allison was going to make him pay with a lifetime of manicures. The other half was pissed because she couldn’t get any help. Her frantic search of the condominium in the hopes of possibly finding a clue that would tell her where Mikhail was and what might have happened to him turned up nothing. She had called Mirnov right after she discovered that Mikhail’s Porsche was still in the subterranean garage, but he was out of town with Annette.

  Looking through the kitchen cupboard again for probably about the fourth time, she was caught off guard when the telephone rang, sending its loud ring through the empty condo and down Allison’s back. The sudden sound frightened Allison just enough for her to knock several cups and saucers off of the shelves. As they cracked on the floor, Allison smiled; she had wanted a new set of dishes so this gave her the excuse. Climbing down from the step stool, she grabbed the receiver of the cordless phone.