I nodded, shoving those nasty tentacles aside. I forced a smile.
“Madge wants me to get married. She probably also told you that I can cook and have the wiles of Mata Hari.”
“Cooking was mentioned,” Chuck admitted. “But it went deeper than that. She said you are one of the few people she trusts with her dogs. This is a high sign of respect.”
“That’s true. But Madge would think a two-headed cannibal was a good person if her dogs liked them.”
Chuck shook his head at me, but I am not comfortable accepting compliments and probably never will be. My grandma used to say that praise to the face was open disgrace. She had lived in Maine, but would have done well in McIntyre’s Gulch.
“Respect is good, but tolerance for one another’s faults is absolutely critical in a place this small. We have to rely on each other for skills we don’t have, so we tend to be grateful for our neighbors, warts and all. Dependence can be a stronger bond even than friendship, you know.”
Chuck nodded.
“I can see that. It’s the same in police work.”
I nodded.
“So, I am going to give you a chance to demonstrate some of that intelligence your neighbors credit you with. Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on with the plane? Maybe I can help. My job isn’t just about chasing bad guys, you know. It is also about protecting honest citizens.”
And there was the rub.
“Excuse me,” I said, my eyes flicking over to the bar and not liking what I was seeing. “I had better check on our food.”
I got to my feet and headed for the bar. As I feared, Whisky Jack was whining to Big John about getting his money. Our town drunk was the exception to the rule and he was never satisfied. I think that it was this soul-deep dissatisfaction that drove him to drink as much as memories of the war.
“Slan leat. Big John, might I have a moment?” My voice was sharp enough to cut across Whisky Jack’s grumbles.
“Sure, Butterscotch. Let’s step into my office. It’s more private, eh.”
I waited for the door to close and when I spoke, it was in a low voice that couldn’t be overheard even by someone with an ear to the keyhole.
“The Mountie says that the pilot was Russian mafia and that he knows that things are missing from the plane. He’s thinking drugs. The FBI is looking for the pilot too.”
“Drugs.” Big John looked unhappy. “And the FBI.” The FBI was supposed to work inside the borders of the USA, but they had strong ties to Canada and would have no trouble getting cooperation over the border.
“The only thing worse for us would be terrorists. Let’s give back the bonds and things. And the jewels. We don’t know how to fence them and we would probably get caught if we tried. We can pack up a duffel, drop it in the forest near the plane, and let the Mountie discover it when I take him hiking. Then he has found a nice accidental death and recovered some of the stolen property with a reasonable doubt that the rest was lost in the crash. Case closed and he goes home happy and writes a report. He doesn’t investigate everyone in town looking for drug dealers. He doesn’t bring in more Mounties.”
Big John frowned.
“We keep the money and the gold that we can melt?”
“Yes—but we put the gun in the bag too. It was probably used in a dozen crimes and they can match it with ballistics. It would be bad for any of us to get caught with it.”
“I might be agreeable, but we would have to have another meeting.”
I groaned.
“Can we do that while he’s here?”
“Maybe. You better get back out there, eh? Don’t want Whisky Jack talking to the Mountie. That man is going to be trouble.”
No, we didn’t want the two of them talking, though I wondered if John was referring to the Mountie or to Whisky Jack when he spoke of trouble.
I returned to our table. The venison burgers had arrived along with a lot of side dishes we hadn’t ordered.
Chuck smiled at my astonishment.
“A bribe, do you think? Or an effort to keep me preoccupied?”
“Nonsense, just small-town friendliness. I always order french fries, onion rings and, um, brown gunk on… chips?”
“Nachos, I think.”
“Oh. Yes, I always have those.”
“Any luck convincing the mayor to see reason?” Chuck asked, opening the ketchup bottle.
“I live in hope. Perhaps you should try prayer,” I said, opening my hamburger and extracting the slices of turnip. I don’t know why the Flowers puts it on the burgers. No one likes turnip, raw or grilled, and it isn’t like it actually fakes us into thinking we have ripe tomato.
“And you wouldn’t dream of confiding in me on your own?”
I hadn’t come up with an answer to the Mountie’s question when the door to the pub blew open. Caught by the wind, it threw the muscular stranger holding the latch into the room and slammed the door into the wall. The other man behind him entered in a more conventional manner, but his capped head was tucked against the rising wind and the snow that swirled around him.
Strangers in any number are rare and, being paranoid, I felt the small hairs on my neck rise even before they looked up and I saw their unsmiling faces. These were the perfect caricatures of villains. Except that in one I saw a capacity for very real violence. I am sure that color drained from my face, but being winter pale already, perhaps Chuck didn’t notice.
Chuck didn’t like what he saw either and straightened. He reminded me of Max when he saw prey. I half-expected the new arrivals to stalk up to our table, whip out handguns, and demand we hand over the money from the airplane, but instead they looked around the room in an assessing manner and then one approached the bar.
Chuck leaned across the table and took my hand. The grip wasn’t harsh but it wasn’t lover-like either. His voice was low but clear enough for me to hear his words even above the renewing chatter of the other patrons.
“The Russians have arrived—and I don’t mean the Moscow Ballet Company. Now might be a really good time for you to tell me exactly what was in that plane.”
Chapter 9: The Russian Mafia
Grigori Dimitri Smirnoff lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply. It was an off-the-shelf, American cigarette, though it came from a silver, European case. A full-flavored brand, rather than one of those “lights” the Americans tended to smoke. Exhaling lavishly, he tried to blow away his irritation.
In response to a telephone conversation he’d had with a highly placed mole at RCMP Headquarters, Grigori had boarded a private Lear jet left idling on an undisclosed runway in New Jersey. Once airborne, the jet began a nonstop flight to some insignificant suburb of Winnipeg known as McIntyre’s Gulch, Manitoba, Canada.
Canada. In winter.
Grigori was not a happy man. This was true most of the time; this state was just more prominent at the present. Grigori never wanted to fly north before spring. For one thing, he didn’t like snow. It reminded him too much of Siberia, a time in his life he’d rather forget. For another? Well, he didn’t like snow a lot.
The powerful jet Gregori was riding through the stratosphere at seven hundred fifty kilometers per hour purred like a barely restrained beast. He respected the feel of the twin jet engines that vibrated through the armrest of his seat. If nothing else, Grigori Dimitri was all about power. In all other respects, he despised air travel.
Grigori swiveled ever so slightly as he rocked in his premium, business class, leather-clad seat, unable to contain the pent-up anxiety that he’d brought with him from his last phone conversation. He really couldn’t explain his own agitation at times. This being one of them. Perhaps it had simply been too long since he’d killed a man. Perhaps he was anxious about getting their belongings back, as were the five other men sitting in the spacious cabin with him, if they were smart. There could be a great deal of trouble for Grigori if they did not get the merchandise back, and trouble was the only thing he was generous about sharing.
They’d been in flight from New Jersey for several hours now, trying to fly around an approaching storm. Though it was becoming dark, the lights from the ground had grown steadily more scarce until there were no more to be seen. Grigori took this as a good sign, assuming that they had finally entered Canadian airspace. It couldn’t be much longer before they touched down at the town’s airfield and entered the nearest bar so they could have a lager. And they needed to begin preparations to recover the missing items. About the body, he cared nothing at all.
Grigori considered the other men surrounding him in the passenger compartment. He knew that he could drink any or all of them under the table, but which of them could he trust to be there by his side, prepared to do as he was told, when the time came? Alexei and Ivan were the brothers from Kiev, two cousins foisted upon him by his own brother. One a dreamer, the other a lover. Neither would be worth shit in a fight. Not even Sasha was ideal for this task, come to that. Though he was big as an ox, he was as dim as one too, and Grigori doubted he’d be willing to do what it took to win, even if Sasha did bare the impressive moniker the Butcher of Minsk.
Bah, butcher, Grigori mused. In the days of Stalin; now, those were butchers.
Then there was the one who joked all the time, Misha. How Grigori already wanted to wring his neck and shut up his laughter forever.
Nope, the only man he needed either standing by his side or lying beneath his feet in the end was Anatoli, the leader of this worthless pack of rabble and the man currently piloting the plane. Anatoli had steel and wit. He was definitely the one to keep in check, and on a short leash. He was a good weapon, but one that could be turned on Grigori, who could have flown the plane himself except that it suited his dignity to make someone else do it.
As for Anatoli, aware of his boss’s impatience, he was keeping track of Gregori in return. After all, though the pay was good, the man had a bad reputation. And ever since they’d met, Gregori had done all he could to try to live down to that bad reputation. Anatoli both despised and feared the man—a crude form of respect favored and therefore cultivated by Grigori.
“Anatoli, what time do we arrive?” Gregori demanded.
“Within minutes, Comrade Colonel,” Anatoli replied, intentionally showing deference in his decision to dredge up an old title.
“And the condition of the airfield?”
“Frozen.”
“Frozen?”
“You see, it’s not exactly an airfield, Comrade Colonel.” Anatoli hesitated, and then relayed the bad news. “It’s more of a small lake.”
“You’re landing this jet on a lake?”
“Yes. It should bear the weight until mid spring.”
Surely we’ll be out before then, Anatoli thought; but then, he had never received a time table from the man so obviously in charge of the mission. He was simply ordered to pack for the cold and be ready at the airport. Anatoli held his breath, waiting for the next verbal barb to strike from the colonel in the rear of the plane. Instead, Gregori directed his ire to one of the pair of brothers, the kids—Anatoli could never tell them apart.
“You know that our colonel is a homicidal maniac?” Misha asked in a low, conspiratorial tone.
“I’ve heard rumors,” Anatoli confided with a nod of his head.
“Oh? So, you’ve heard rumors, have you? And have you heard the one about the colonel who worked in the basement of KGB prisons at Lubyanka?”
“We’ve all heard rumors and stories, but I’ve seen no evidence,” Anatoli countered. “Anyway, no one could be as bad as the man in the stories I’ve been told. Not even Sasha.”
“Bah, Sasha! The Butcher of Minsk,” Misha mocked. “Just because no one takes the time to find out that he was a butcher in Minsk. That’s why when we went looking for the famed Butcher of Minsk, everyone in Minsk directed us to Sasha, the sausage stuffer. The poor man. I think he’s sometimes overwhelmed by the burden of his own misbegotten bad reputation.”
“Believe me, Sasha has lived up to his reputation, deserved or not, since joining the organization,” Anatoli countered defensively.
“He tries, but his heart just isn’t in it,” admitted Misha. “Hey, speaking of heart, what’s up with you and the heavenly young woman I saw you with at the club last weekend?”
“Oh, that,” Anatoli responded offhandedly. “That was nothing at all.”
Admittedly, to Anatoli—a young, virile man with needs—the encounter with the heavenly young woman last weekend had meant much more to him than nothing, but not a great deal more. It was simply Anatoli taking advantage of his good looks combined with the ready availability of beautiful Russian women in the city. The outcome was inevitable, if not enduring.
Misha worried about Anatoli. They had been together on so many missions that he could no longer keep count. Typically, Anatoli was the mission leader. It made Misha uneasy that this new man, this Gregori Dimitri Smirnoff, was calling the shots this time. Things were changing and it might be time to begin thinking about other career opportunities. Misha laughed a lot, but he wasn’t stupid and didn’t trust easily. So far, this Grigori had done nothing to present himself as being trustworthy. Besides, Grigori was frustratingly unwilling to admit that Misha was funny. There was something wrong with him. One should never trust a man who didn’t have a sense of humor.
“Airfield ahead,” Misha mentioned casually. “Are we really landing on a lake?”
The outer perimeter of the low frequency airfield identifier beacon had finally been encountered. Anatoli calibrated the altitude of the airfield with that of his plane and directed the craft toward the beacon. Soaring into southern Manitoba, he kept his eyes out in the gloom and sleet for any red end of an airfield marker. He saw none.
Meanwhile, the two young brothers were still enduring the wrath of the devil.
“You, Alexei,” Gregori guessed, pointing to one of the brothers.
Gregori found it odd that even though the two brothers looked nothing alike, he could never tell them apart. They were merged with a common biosphere, disappearing into the ambient white noise of life. He wasn’t sure that he was actually addressing Alexei at this moment since he knew that both brothers were too timid to correct him if he got their names wrong.
“Are you the one who loaded the equipment onto the plane?”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel. Me and my brother, Ivan.”
So, he had guessed correctly after all.
“I’m going to read the equipment list that I distributed earlier. I want you to say ‘da’ if you packed it, and ‘nyet’ if you didn’t.”
This sent the two brothers scrambling to their briefcases for documentation. Meanwhile, Gregori started his list.
“First aid kit.”
“Da,” Ivan called over his shoulder as he rifled through a large duffel bag, sending clothes and other personal items raining to the floor.
As Sasha sat and watched this awkward exchange, his stomach roiled from the almost perpetual gas that he had from living up to his bad reputation. Sasha wanted to go back to being a butcher. Most of the time, he really didn’t understand what people expected of him. Mostly, he just stood around and occupied space. He often cried at night when he was alone.
“Would you listen to that asshole back there,” Misha leaned over to murmur in Anatoli’s ear.
“You’d better watch your words,” Anatoli warned. “He already doesn’t like you. If he catches you talking about him you’re done for.”
Misha displayed a mock “terrified” face by opening his mouth wide and placing his palms on his cheeks. He looked eerily like the boy in the Home Alone movies. As usual, Misha’s antics made Anatoli chuckle under his breath and shake his head. Misha started laughing too.
That’s when Anatoli first saw the flashing red runway landing light, positioned twenty meters from the end of the runway. As he made his approach and lowered his landing gear, Anatoli eventually saw the runway itself, or more accurately the lake, stretched out before his dim landing
lights. It was snowing hard, nearly horizontally, but not so hard that a man wouldn’t be willing to walk quite a distance in search of the warmth and comfort of a fine saloon. Surely even this place would have one.
“Fasten your seatbelts, everyone,” Anatoli ordered back over his shoulder.
Grigori ceased haranguing one of the two brothers for his poor record keeping skills, swiveled forward, and buckled his belt. The two brothers stuffed their personal belongings back into their duffels and dove into the nearest pair of seats before buckling up. Sasha remained belted in his pair of seats. Misha refused to take his foot off the dashboard and assume a more crash-like position.
Anatoli eased the wheel on the control yoke forward as they descended. He sensed the ground before he saw it. He felt it soon after he saw it.
The wheels touched down with a rough-sounding crunch and the plane, along with everything inside it, bounced several times before final touchdown. The steel of the craft groaned in response to the stresses being placed upon it. Alexei and Ivan’s duffels and undergarments flew from the rear of the plane to the front, colliding with the wall beside the cockpit door. Once touchdown had been achieved, the plane rumbled across the snowcapped ice, which quickly brought the jet to a stop. Everyone in the flight cabin was pressed forward against their seatbelts by the rapid deceleration.
Sasha farted loudly, no longer able to contain the crippling gas that had hounded him ever since he boarded the plane back in Jersey. That was when he’d first seen that Grigori Dimitri was the leader of his team. In Sasha’s mind, Grigori was a true butcher. Sasha reached into his pocket to retrieve several antacid tablets and quickly chewed them down. There was no comment on his odiferous offense; possibly because everyone was too concerned for their lives during the crash landing.
Everyone reacted professionally in the wake of the near disastrous landing. Anatoli, still captain of the craft, called to ask if anyone was hurt. After taking a quick look around the passenger cabin, Grigori reported back that no, no one was hurt. Sasha farted again as he adjusted himself back into his seat so that he could find his seatbelt buried amidst mighty hillocks of fat. The brothers uncinched themselves from their seats so that they could chase their stray underwear down the aisle of the plane. In the cockpit, Misha was lucky he hadn’t broken the leg he kept on the dashboard the entire time the plane rattled down the runway. He, at first, looked mentally jarred by the landing before his face lit up with a broad smile and he started to laugh in sheer relief that he was still alive.
Due North Page 7