To Kill the Duke

by Sam Moffie

  Boris had Natasha and Dmitri killed and buried together. Remembering Dmitri’s fondness for anal sex made Boris bury Natasha face down first in the coffin, while Dmitri was put face down on top of her.

  “It was the least I could do,” Boris, later said to Mr. Zavert.

  And Mr. Zavert started using Boris’ maggot torture as his ultimate form of mayhem for those from whom he needed to extract information.

  It worked every time.

  As Boris thought back to the killing of Dmitri and Natasha, he mused about a conversation he had had with his boss Mr. Zavert about killing everyone who might think they knew something about Stalin’s last night on earth.

  “How do I determine if somebody is thinking about anything… let alone the events that lead to comrade Stalin’s death? Mr. Zavert, I am a spy, not a mind reader,” Boris had said to his boss.

  “Then hire a mind reader, comrade,” Mr. Zavert ordered from behind his dark glasses, which looked ever darker to Gila.

  “Are those new glasses you are wearing Mr. Zavert?”

  “What glasses?” Mr. Zavert shot back.

  “I think I can now close the book on this project, as I don’t think anyone else has any motivation to think,” Boris predicted.

  “Because we killed them all!” Mr. Zavert shouted. “Remember: Dead people don’t talk.”

  Another project Boris was given had to deal with finding out (and eliminating) who was behind the massive black-market influx of toilet paper into Moscow.

  “Now this will be a satisfying project, comrade,” Boris said to Mr. Zavert.

  “Nothing should or will be more important than your fulfillment of comrade Stalin’s request to kill John Wayne,” scolded Mr. Zavert.

  Boris Gila bowed and apologized for his remark.

  “Don’t ever say you’re sorry. Just show me that you learn from your mistakes, comrade,” Mr. Zavert told his subordinate.

  But Gila wasn’t sorry. He felt that the effort being put into trying to kill John Wayne was a waste of valuable time, energy and resources. He wanted Aleksandra and Viznapu back in Russia, where they could wreak havoc on all the bad guys who were ripping off fellow Russians. Boris knew he was going to be judged on the results and the return on the investment of sending Alexei and Ivan to Hollywood. So far, the results were mixed.

  “Better mixed than nothing,” Mr. Zavert had said, as he waved off Boris six months earlier, when the two had a meeting about the successful take down of the black market on toilet paper in Moscow.

  How the captain and the projectionist would be of great help to me back in Russia, Gila sighed to himself after his boss had dismissed him.

  “Do you have any idea how much money you saved us by breaking up that black market on toilet paper, comrade?” Mr. Zavert asked Boris.

  “I didn’t study economics, comrade,” Boris replied. “I studied cooking.”

  “Right. You studied home economics,” Mr. Zavert said with a hearty laugh. “You saved us and your fellow citizens a bundle. Believe me, I know. Everyone now has more rubles for other things.”

  “Other things?” Boris questioned.

  “It takes more than toilet paper to run a country,” Mr. Zavert replied in a tone that told Boris to accept Mr. Zavert’s congratulations on the black-market break-up and get back to work on killing the Duke.

  Now, Boris looked at the mountains of paperwork and leaned back in his chair. Thinking about Dmitri, Natasha, Mr. Zavert and the toilet paper made him think about his two favorite men — Alexei and Ivan.

  He chuckled. Not because of the three people he had killed, and surely not about his boss. It was the toilet paper or rather the toilet paper from America that they had sent him. First they had sent a pun. The pun was this: ‘When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.’ This was a prearranged code that they shared. It meant that a package was coming. Of course, Boris hoped the package had to do with killing John Wayne.

  “Boy was I wrong!” Boris exclaimed as he opened the package in the safety of his apartment.

  The package contained three rolls of toilet paper.

  Boris couldn’t believe the difference in the quality of the toilet paper from America. He wondered if everything in America was that much better than everything in Russia. Then, he suddenly felt guilty for such thinking and he scolded himself. He decided to go for a walk in the neighborhood to clear his head. He used to love to take walks before he had been elevated to his current position. Back then, he had the time. Now, he had to make the time to enjoy the simple things, like taking a walk around his neighborhood.

  “Who said being in charge was fun?” Mr. Zavert once lectured him, when Boris had complained.

  The walk was marvelous… making him forget about memos, maggots, maiming, murders, etc. His head felt good and clear. He was thinking about how lucky he was, when he came across a line of people — a very long line of people that snaked around the streets and buildings for blocks.

  “What’s this for?” he asked the last person in the line; a little old woman whose face had more wrinkles than Russia had cold winters.

  “Toilet paper. Today is Friday. Friday is toilet paper day in Moscow, young man.”

  “Sorry, comrade,” Boris replied embarrassed beyond belief.

  And then, like the Russian winter hit Bonaparte, doing a good deed hit Boris. Give this woman your American toilet paper. “Wait here comrade, I’ll be right back.”

  “Where would I go?” she said with a shrug. “The Czar’s winter palace?” she added with just the right touch of sarcasm.

  Boris ran back to his apartment. He gathered up the American toilet paper and put it in an old shoe box that he had kept empty for storage purposes that never materialized. He sprinted back to the old woman. Incredibly, the woman hadn’t moved one step closer to her destination, nor had anyone come up behind her. Her last-in-line status was not in jeopardy.

  “Comrade, this is for you,” Boris said as he opened the top of the shoebox and showed the old woman the American toilet paper.

  “So soft,” she purred, as she held onto one roll after putting the other two in her big bag.

  A real ‘toughski shitski’ moment for me he thought as he smiled at her happiness.

  It was a toughski shitski moment for Boris, because he was giving up such a luxury!

  “And I can leave this line!” she shouted out loud into the air. “I am no longer last in line.” She brought her head down to thank the man who had just given her the gift of toilet paper. He was gone as quickly as he had appeared.

  She left the line and began her long walk home. Boris followed her from the shadows, just to make sure that no one who might have seen the exchange would try to take the rolls from her. He noticed she was smiling and that made him feel really good.

  Boris’ happy thoughts of giving the little old lady his American toilet paper were jolted back into reality when his secretary came bursting through his office doors.

  “Comrade Gila, a message with a pun has just come over the wire!” she yelled out.

  Boris leaped to his feet and ran to the wire machine hoping it was the pun.

  It had been Ivan’s idea to communicate by puns between Hollywood and Moscow. Mr. Zavert loved the idea.

  “No American spy will ever crack the code, because American government at all levels has no imagination,” Mr. Zavert said.

  “And no sense of humor, either,” Boris added.

  “True, comrade. Any democracy that has a committee to meet in public to investigate its own people is devoid of humor. Furthermore, the government takes Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy seriously.”

  Boris took a deep breath and read what had just been received. It read: ‘At first I hated my haircut. Now, it’s growing on me.’

  “Damn it,” Boris muttered to himself. The pun he had just read translated to nothing more than many other puns had — plans are in the making and we are close.

  Boris fired off the reply pun: ‘Amenities, the Gree
k goddess of luxury.’ This really meant that the two of them were running out of the luxury of time, money and patience.

  How Boris longed for the pun that would tell him that Alexei and Ivan had killed John Wayne: ‘Time flies like an arrow, and fruit flies love bananas.’

  Boris decided to show Mr. Zavert the pun he had received, instead of writing him a memo. He hoped that Mr. Zavert would see that this plan to kill John Wayne was too difficult to pull off and scrap the entire plan.

  Mr. Zavert read the pun and wiped his dark glasses with a cloth without taking them off his face. “I suppose you want me to recall our agents.”

  “Yes,” Boris stammered.

  “Your honesty is refreshing, comrade Gila. Your impatience is not. You have been a success at everything I have given you. This will be your greatest success. Trust me like I trust the plot to kill Wayne and your ability to carry it out. Alexei and Ivan are the perfect men to get this done. It’s a great plan, made greater because it was Stalin’s last wish,” Mr. Zavert noted.

  “Yes comrade. I’m just afraid that others might be bitching about how long it is taking,” Boris said weakly.

  “People who bitch disgust me, especially men,” Mr. Zavert said as he waved off Boris, who slowly walked back to his office, with the big thoughts of Mr. Zavert echoing in his mind.

  I really hope those two guys are as close as their pun says they are, he thought as he arrived in his office and started to stare once again at the paperwork that awaited him.

  It was March of 1953 when Alexei and Ivan had received their orders to kill John Wayne. The two men took almost two years before they got their first attempt off the ground. It would be many more years before John Wayne felt threatened.

  Their first attempt to kill John Wayne only happened after they had become semi-successful movie producers themselves, and had received a tip about John Wayne’s penchant for playing practical jokes. This was something they had learned about Wayne in their studies before leaving Russia for Hollywood. Alexei and Ivan took this tip seriously. They also knew they had to make it in the movie business to get close enough to Wayne.

  “After all, Moscow gave us the money… a lot of money,” Alexei had told Ivan when the two decided to become producers.

  They named their company Seven Zeros Productions, because they thought that the number 1,000,000 had seven zeros in it, instead of seven digits. They both thought it was clever until their phones rang. Their secretary would answer ‘Seven Zeros, may I help you?’ And it appeared that everyone who was on the other end would reply ‘is that how many losers are working there?’

  In America, a zero was a loser. But being practical and careful with their fellow Russian’s money, they kept the name.

  “Do you think we should change the name to Seven Digits Productions?” Ivan asked Alexei.

  “No. All our stationary, envelopes, business cards and legal papers have the name on it already. Why throw away money?” Alexei told Ivan.

  “How come the Americans focus on our company name and not on our accents?” Ivan once asked Alexei.

  “Because they’re Americans,” Alexei replied. “They have very strange priorities.”

  “They trust everyone way too much,” Ivan said.

  “They think we’re Eastern European immigrants with money,” Alexei said.

  “Everyone is an immigrant in this country,” Ivan said.

  “But we have money,” and that is what Americans truly crave.

  And money, a lot of money, is what they spent on their offices at 33 Lancaster Terrace, in Hollywood.

  Lancaster Terrace wasn’t the best known address in Hollywood, but it had a lot of charm and many talented neighboring professionals that came in handy to two upstarts in the movie business.

  “It’s a long way from my apartment,” Ivan said to Alexei.

  “Toughski shitski,” joked Alexei.

  It had been a former real estate developer’s office. The place had been left in immaculate shape and the owner of the building threw in some extra parking spaces, because Ivan and Alexei paid six months’ rent up front.

  There were, however, two problems.

  First off, the walls had no pictures. Alexei and Ivan decided that this wasn’t really a problem. They decided to hang tapestries over all the walls, so when people left their offices, they would remember them for their uniqueness. They spent a lot of the Russian people’s money on finding tapestries that would ‘wow’ visitors.

  “These tapestries would keep the entire old government office building where I once worked, warm in the dead of a bad winter,” Ivan remarked quietly to Alexei after the decorator had finished having the tapestries hung.

  “Just like being back in mother Russia,” Alexei whispered to Ivan. “Almost,” he added with a laugh.

  The second problem was also a potential third problem, because the main office had a small side bedroom.

  “Who gets to be the big shot?” They both said at the same time after they had signed the lease and given the down payment of six months’ rent to the landlord.

  Being men who had always followed orders, neither one was comfortable in bossing the other around. Neither Boris nor Mr. Zavert had put one in charge of the other. Everyone assumed that they would work together as a team, and each one’s skills would determine who might be in charge at a given time. But this was supposed to be a movie production company in Hollywood. The epitome of capitalism. There had to be a ‘big shot’ or their cover would not be taken seriously… they wouldn’t be taken seriously.

  “You play the role, Ivan. You deserve it,” Alexei said.

  “No comrade. You are better at the tougher things in our business. It’s my pleasure to be your subordinate,” Ivan responded.

  “It will be better if the tough guy is working for you, Ivan,” Alexei said. “Besides you’re a better talker than I am. This business seems to be heavy on the talking and light on the actual work.”

  “What is that, a new recipe for Boris?” Ivan joked, as they both broke into a laugh.

  “That bedroom off the main office should remind you of the time in the projection room in Stalin’s bedroom. Just don’t repeat history comrade,” Alexei warned his partner.

  “What is the most important part of a boss’ job?” Ivan asked Alexei.

  “Turn a profit?” Alexei guessed.

  “Final say,” Ivan said.

  “Mr. Zavert has the final say.” “Remember that, comrade.”

  And so the two would-be movie makers of Seven Zeros Production went into action.

  But before they could actually go about the business of trying to make a movie and find out how they could, or where they could, kill Wayne, they had to pull off a very delicate feat.

  “If we were not spies,” this could have been our first movie,” Ivan said to his partner.

  “I read somewhere on the train from New York City to Los Angeles that ‘truth is stranger than fiction,’” Alexei said. “But I think how we smuggled the former Trotsky Number Seven out of Russia would make for a better film.”

  Both Alexei and Ivan had decided to steal Trotsky Number Seven out of the country and set him up with a new life in America. Alexei had tracked him down while he was supposed to be learning about the movie business and eliminating his accent. With Boris and the others consumed with chasing down Dmitri and any others who might have remembered too much about Joe Stalin’s last night on earth, Alexei was able to find Trotsky Number Seven in between classes on ‘Identifying a Bona-Fide Screenplay’ and learning to annunciate the vowels of the English language.

  Trotsky Number Seven was hiding in a cave in the Ural Mountains, where many Nazi refugees had hidden during World War II.

  “Where else would he go?” Ivan later told Alexei. “After all, he is Jewish and the Jews all fled the Nazis and hid in many places for long periods during the last war. I arranged his transport on a Greek freighter with a man whom I met through comrade Gila, when Boris was trying to teach me t
he joys of Greek cuisine. By the way, how are your classes coming?”

  “I’m doing better at losing my Russian accent than learning about movie making,” Alexei said.

  “We’ll be okay. Remember I have been in film school and worked as a projectionist for most of my adult life. My one teacher on financing a film said I have had a head start in the movie business, because I started at the bottom,” Ivan said.

  “So Trotsky Number Seven will be in America when we arrive?” Alexei asked.

  “Right.”

  “Then what?”

  “He stays in America with us,” Ivan said.

  And Alexei agreed.

  Getting Trotsky Number Seven turned out to be the easy part.

  “What do we do with him?” Ivan asked Alexei.

  “We probably should have put more thought into this before we pulled it off,” Alexei said. “I guess we keep him in Hollywood and put him to work for us. After all, we will be running a production company.”

  “Toughski shitski. We’re in America, we can do whatever we want,” replied Ivan.

  “First he needs a new name,” Alexei said.

  “Agreed,” Ivan said as he grabbed a phone book.

  “You’re making a call for a name?” Alexei asked his partner.

  Ivan playfully conked the phone book on Alexei’s head. “In here will be his new name,” Ivan said as he pointed at Trotsky Number Seven.

  Ivan opened the phone book and started tossing out names — “How about Bryan Ladd?”

  “People will think he’s Alan Ladd’s brother,” Alexei said.

  Trotsky Number Seven shook his head to the name Bryan Ladd.

  Ivan rifled his fingers through some more pages. He looked down at the columns of names and fixed his eyes on Charles Odum. “Charles Odum sound okay?” he asked his two companions.

  “Everyone will make fun of that name,” Alexei said with a wave of his hand.

  “How do you mean?” Ivan asked.

  “Hey Charles, how much did you ‘owe em to get that last name?” Alexei said.