Gwenny June

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 29 - Russian Boys Playing

  When Constantine and Henric heard their wives and the rest of the team had invaded Pmirhs Stirg’s home, in their bikinis, armed, and had assaulted him, both had said to themselves, “Oh, shit.” That’s not the same thing as being scared. They weren’t scared of Stirg; they just had a healthy respect for him. Constantine and Henric didn’t get where they were today by being scared of tough guys. The worlds of Russian oil and supercomputers were rough places, and both of them had come out near the top of those games.

  Still, Stirg had a reputation not only in Israel, but also in Russia. He hadn’t worked in Russia in many years, but he had worked with Russians in his various pursuits as a hands-on international lawyer. He was very hands-on when it came to certain things. Constantine and Henric decided to have a meeting just among themselves, as they hadn’t been part of the Stirg home invasion. They met at one of their favorite places, the national forest outdoor gun range near Awendaw. Each brought two guns: their Russian gun and their practical gun. They owned the Russian guns as a matter of pride and as an homage to their homeland, and they owned their practical guns as a matter of practicality. The Russian guns were heavy and bulky, and it was hard to get ammo. The other guns were new technology: Constantine liked the Glock, same as Gwen, and Henric liked an H&K, just because it was expensive, three times the cost of the Glock. Henric could be a snob about some things.

  They each brought three hundred rounds of ammo, and spent an hour and a half shooting that off. When they were done, they put the Russian guns back in their cases, and put the practical guns in the holsters on their belts. All the years they did oil and computer business around the world they rarely had carried guns. They had staff to do that. But now, after Gwen’s demonstration and admonition at The Hall, they were packing pretty much all the time they were away from home. And sometimes both the Gromstovs and the Rodstras contemplated packing even when they were in their homes. They weren’t scared, just cautious.

  They left their stuff in the trunk of the Mercedes, and walked down the narrow dirt road through the national forest. Normally it would be unwise to leave a Mercedes parked out in the middle of nowhere, as they had, but it would take an abnormally ballsy person to break into a vehicle in the parking lot of a gun range, used by men and women who came armed to the teeth with everything from antique .22 caliber revolvers owned by their grandfathers, to Israeli .50 caliber Desert Eagles and Mach-10 semi-automatic machine guns. It was peaceful and quiet walking down the road, and they talked about the problem.

  “Didn’t we come to Charleston to get away from stress?” said Constantine. “I thought that was the point. That’s what the Junes told us. ‘Charming Charleston’ was what I remember them saying. ‘Charming, quaint, nice, quiet’. If I wanted this, I could have moved to a villa in Corsica and ducked French gangsters.”

  “I remember that. I remember them saying ‘Charming Charleston’. That had a nice ring to it. I remember them talking about horse-drawn carriages. Have you done that, by the way?”

  “No, not going to. Had to eat horsemeat stew once in a while when I was a kid, so, doesn’t appeal.”

  “This Stirg thing doesn’t mean Charleston isn’t charming,” said Henric. “A place can be charming and tense at the same time, can’t it? I never really thought of things in terms of charming until I heard Gwen say that. Coming from her, it sounded really interesting. Different, you know. A different way of looking at things from what I was used to. Helstof likes that word, charming.”

  “Yeah, but just about everything Gwen says sounds good. It’s the way she says stuff, not what she says. She’s got that southern accent that makes her sound like she’s ready to go to bed with you, every minute of the day. She talks about cleaning shrimp, and it’s sexy. So you got to watch out for her that way. Slev calls what Gwen does, Deneuvian magic. She says it’s when you’re around a person, and that person is all you pay attention to. And the person can make you do stuff. I’ve noticed that recently about Gwen. When I’m around her, like the other night at The Hall, she’s all I watch and listen to. You notice that?”

  “Yeah. And, not to put too fine a point on it, and I say this respectfully, but Slev is starting that stuff too. Maybe you’re too close to her, but the rest of us see it. Jinny mentioned it to me; he said it very respectfully, I want to make that clear.”

  Constantine mused for a while, then said, “Yeah, I’ve noticed something different about her. Something nice.”

  Henric said, “You think a guy could do Deneuvian stuff?”

  Constantine stopped walking and looked at Henric. “Good question. I never thought of that.” He looked up at a pine tree and watched a Red-cockaded woodpecker spiral around the trunk, looking for bugs. “How about Hitler? He could influence people.”

  Henric watched the woodpecker, too, thinking. Then he looked at Constantine and said, “Not the same thing.” They started walking again. “What are we going to do about Stirg?”

  “Do you feel tired?”

  Henric stopped walking again and said, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you and I are top dogs in Saint Petersburg. Or were until recently. We both had to work hard to get there, and we had to do stuff to get there. We had lots of energy. Ambition energy. We were in fights all the time. Now we’re coming to this place a lot, and Helstof and Slev like it here. They stay more than we do. We’re phasing out of our work. So I’m asking if that means we’re tired of the work? Of making money? Of duking it out with the competition? Are we over the hill?”

  Henric didn’t answer immediately, and they walked on down the road. A noise appeared ahead, and a Forest Service light green colored pickup truck came towards them. As it passed, it coated them in a thin layer of dust. They didn’t seem to mind, deep in thought. They waved. “I guess I am tired of all that,” Henric said. “There’s other stuff to do in the world. Other people than the ones I know over there. I don’t feel tired tired, like not having energy, but I’m ready for a change.”

  “You sure you’re not tired tired?” asked Constantine.

  Henric shook his head, yes.

  “Well I’m not tired tired either, and I guess I’m with you on the change thing. I’m not interested in Russian business anymore. I am tired of that. I thought about skiing.”

  “What, cross-country skiing, like through the Siberian forest?”

  “No, the fun stuff, like Switzerland.”

  “You’re fifty-two years old. You’ll break both your legs and be in the hospital for a month. If you want fun, get a girlfriend.”

  Constantine smiled at that but didn’t say anything.

  “What’s this got to do with Stirg? He’s the problem. You notice where we are today? At a gun range. You notice our wives are carrying guns? They didn’t carry guns in Saint Petersburg, and now they’re doing that in quaint, charming, genteel Charleston. You’ve noticed that, right?”

  “He’s what I’m thinking about,” said Constantine. “If we’re not tired tired, and we don’t want to do Russian business anymore, and skiing in Switzerland is out for health reasons, and girlfriends are problematic, what are we gonna do?”

  Henric walked on ten steps and stopped, looking at Constantine. “You want to fuck with Stirg? For the fun of it?” The look on his face was a mixture of inquisitiveness and wonder.

  “Just a thought,” said Constantine. “We gotta do something.”

  At this point they turned around and walked back to their car, not talking much. As they approached the turn off to the gun range parking lot, they saw three guys standing near the Mercedes. A pickup truck with wide knobby tires was there, painted a burnt orange color. The three guys carried tote bags and cardboard boxes for targets, and one had a rifle case. There were lots of tattoos. As the Russians walked up to their car, the three guys nodded.

  “Nice car,” one said. “How come
you bought a white one?”

  Constantine said, “I have a black one too. I like variety.”

  Henric nodded towards the pickup and said, “Nice truck. How come you bought an orange one?”

  One guy turned towards it for a second, then said, “To make my wife mad. She don’t like orange.”

  Henric thought about that, then nodded.

  One of the other guys asked, “What were you boys doing down the road there. Nothing funny, I hope.” He smiled a little, and his friends smiled a little. The smiling wasn’t goofy or overstated, but there was a crooked edge to it.

  “Bird-watching,” said Constantine, who was starting to get the picture. Neither he nor Henric got the oblique reference to homosexuality, but they definitely understood that these three guys were messing with them. That sort of thing comes across very quickly, even with few words spoken. There’s a universal language to it that is the same in every culture. “There’s a woodpecker down the road there, looking for bugs. Black and white and red. Nice colors.”

  “Y’all weren’t sucking on some wood down there, were ya now? Or do ya do that in the back seat of that car? Big back seat for that.”

  Henric and Constantine still didn’t get the wood reference, but they were getting the message, in a general sense. Here they were, not far from charming Charleston, out for a mornings recreation and a little chat, and these three guys were looking for trouble. Just like a Saint Petersburg neighborhood encounter, or a Saint Petersburg dock encounter. Like a number of encounters that both Constantine and Henric had had, growing up. Just like home.

  During the walk down the dirt road back to the parking lot, both Constantine and Henric had thought about the question: “You want to fuck with Stirg? For the fun of it?” Neither had reached a conclusion. It was, after all, a pointed question that deserved due deliberation. It wasn’t a question to treat lightly. But it had influenced the mood of both men, and even had triggered just the very smallest amount of biological activity in them, a chemical action, something to do with adrenaline or testosterone or one of the uppity things. Both Henric and Constantine were feeling a bit edgy from the prospect of engaging with a person like Pmirhs Stirg, and here were these three guys, looking at them in a decidedly intense way.