Aristocratic Thieves

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 34: The Russians Arrive

  Early the next morning the Junes hopped in the Jag and motored south to Savannah. Savannah is a really nice town, and the Junes go down once a year for the annual spring music festival, which is first rate, but the town is no Charleston. It’s really hard to get good coffee in Savannah, and you don’t want to try the shrimp and grits there. They drove down Bay Street through town, and made the turn at the small sign that said Old Fort James Jackson. This small fortification sits right on the Savannah River and was built about 1810 to protect the town against British or French warships. It’s much smaller than Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, but it’s a reminder of Savannah’s rich history. Constantine had told Gwen during the phone call that they should go to the fort at such and such a time because the container ship with the special container on its deck would come by then, and they would be contacted. He provided no specifics.

  The Junes, being the adaptable couple they are, followed directions. Roger had checked with the Georgia Ports Authority about the arrival time of container ships that day, and sure enough one was due to dock thirty minutes after the time Constantine told them to be at the fort. So there they sat at the appointed time, on the quay outside the 1810 brick walls. They kept watch down river, and soon, in the distance, they saw the superstructure of a ship. They were amazed twice, first by how fast the ship came up the river towards them, accompanied by a tug on either side, and second by how huge the ship was as it got closer. And it got huger and huger and huger. They went inside the fort and climbed to the second level where they stood on top of the casemates and looked over the parapet; wondering just how close the ship was going to come to shore. It looked damn close because it was damn close. It was about 100 feet from shore, and it looked the size of a mountain. As the mountain approached the Junes were startled to see human figures on the bow, looking over the railing on their side. And they were more startled indeed when they recognized Jinny, Plouriva, Peter, and Pater among the figures. The Russians saw them at the same time because they knew Roger and Gwen would be on top of the fort, and they started waving like crazy. And so the Junes waved back, astonished as they were.

  As the ship drew even with the fort, the Russians and the Junes were only 100 feet apart. Little Jinny yelled to Gwen, “Long live America, how’s the dog?” Plouriva turned to Pater and nodded. Pater leaned back from the railing of the ship, and suddenly threw a large object at the fort. It was a plastic container, and it flew over the June’s heads and landed in the middle of the Parade Ground. The ship sailed past and the Russians disappeared. Roger and Gwen went down to the Parade Ground, retrieved the container, and took it outside to the quay, where they sat down again. Inside the screw cap were several papers, which Roger took out and handed to his wife. She read them, looked at Roger, read them again, and handed them to him to read. Her face was a mask of amusement.

  On the first page Roger read the following: “Food on ship not bad, but we want crab cakes, she-crab soup, and grits with crab gravy.” Roger looked at Gwen. “Constantine, Helstof, Henric, Slevov arriving Charleston tomorrow 4am flight from London.” Roger looked at Gwen. “Peter wants Brusschev 10mm.” Roger again looked at Gwen. “Pater wants to know can he catch a marlin from Sullivan’s Island beach?” “Plouriva wants shopping on King Street.”

  On the second page Roger read the following: “Important container arriving your place Charleston tomorrow. Where do you want it?” Roger looked at Gwen. “Pick us up today at Savannah Ports Authority terminal one hour after docking, employee entrance.” “How long drive Savannah to Charleston?” “What is good to eat in Savannah?” “Is there gay restaurant in Savannah?” “Where we put other eight containers?”

  Roger was afraid to look at the third page. Gwen didn’t say anything because she was easier going than Roger. She always tried to go with the flow, except when someone acted in a threatening manner towards her or her husband or some friend. In that circumstance she was hard ass going. She just looked at Roger for a moment and then went on starring across the Savannah River at the industrial site on the other side. Roger read this on the third page: “Ship captain wants house on Sullivan’s, has four kids, wife, and girlfriend. No money. Can we help? Ship cook wants house on Sullivan’s, has one girlfriend, one boyfriend, two cats, no money. Can we help? We have Rodstra and Gromstov money. Did you bring guns? Also have cook’s two cats, Russian blues, smart, boy and girl, ok?”

  That was it. That was all that was written on the papers that had been thrown to them while standing on the parapet of Old Fort James Jackson, from four Russians illegally entering the United States on board a container ship coming up the Savannah River in broad daylight. That was enough, though, to set Roger’s teeth on edge and his brain spinning. 'What the hell?' he thought, and then said to Gwen, “Cooks, crabs, cats, money, no money, guns, containers, kids, gangsters arriving.” It was good that Roger had Gwen along to calm him down. She took his arm and led him back to the Jag. She looked at her watch and calculated they had about an hour and a half until they were due to pick the crew up at the employee entrance of the container terminal. That was enough time for lunch at a nice restaurant, where they could have a glass of wine and talk things over. They went to the Pink House, and entered the basement door of the pub, rather than the upper floor of the formal dining room. They liked the pub area with its big fireplace. Gwen led Roger to a table, sat him down, threw her pocketbook on a chair, and went over to the bar. She came back with two large glasses of chilled German Riesling, which she loved. One of these she handed to Roger, and motioned to him bottoms up. He drank a large gulp. She sipped and enjoyed the semi-sweet richness of the white wine. When the waiter came over with menus she waved them away and ordered a small porterhouse steak with baked potato for herself and grilled salmon with a salad for Roger.

  With this done, she gave Roger his lead. A few more gulps of wine and he recovered his senses. He said, “Are they crazy?” Gwen realized she had misread her husband’s disposition, and saw that more attitude adjustment was necessary. She got up and went to the bar, from which she returned with a plate of crackers and salty ham, a classic pairing with Riesling. She loaded up a cracker with ham and offered it to Roger, who took it and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. He tried to add a gulp of wine, but Gwen stopped this oddity, and made him wait until he finished chewing his food. She wouldn’t countenance vulgarity at the table. Roger drank some wine, and followed that with more cracker and ham. Then more wine. Then more ham. Five minutes later Roger appeared better. Gwen told him his salmon was coming shortly. She got up and returned with a glass of American pinot noir for Roger (another classic pairing with salmon) and a French merlot for her (American merlot being the joke that it is). She continued administering first aid to her husband, telling him the salmon at the Pink House was fabulous and she was thinking already of ordering a second steak for herself, and maybe he could have a glass of port after his meal even though neither of them ever had drunk port at lunch before. Roger nodded assent at all this, but didn’t speak.

  Their food came, and their food went, and the second glasses of wine went, and Gwen kept making small talk, hoping Roger would feel better. When the next words out of Roger’s mouth were, “What the hell?” and, “Are those people crazy?” which was followed by, “I’m driving back to Charleston, screw em.” Gwen got back to work by calling the waiter over and ordering a large glass of port. Gwen had always despaired at Roger’s swearing, which was one of the few things he did devoid of imagination. She looked at her watch and saw they had thirty minutes before they were due at the terminal. Which meant she had fifteen minutes to placate her partner, devise a game-plan to deal with the Russians, pay the check, and get out to the car. No problem. While Roger drank his port she figured things out. Then she reached into Roger’s front pants pocket and groped for the car keys, which elicited something resemb
ling a giggle from Roger. The wines were working, she noticed with satisfaction. The waiter was tipped, the valet had the car at the restaurant door, and they were off, with Gwen driving.

  In ten minutes she drove through the security checkpoint and headed towards the ports authority terminal. In another minute she pulled up to what she hoped was the employee entrance. She left Roger in the car listening to The WHO, and went inside. She asked a guy about people coming off the ship, and he pointed to a door that said CUSTOMS over it. She went through and was in a room that had signs on the walls indicating this was the jurisdiction of “The United States Department of Homeland Security.” Gwen sure hoped Jinny knew what he was doing. There was one DHS staffer in the room, sitting behind a long table, next to a scanning machine, a woman reading Guns and Ammo magazine. She looked at Gwen, and went back to reading. Gwen was glad for the two glasses of wine she’d had at the Pink House, and was cognizant of the calming effect they were having on her nerves. She found a plastic chair and sat down. Ten minutes later she heard a loud clomping noise from outside the room. It was an echoing type sound made by people walking down a long, elevated, metal gangway: clomp, squeal, squeak, clomp. Those sounds stopped, new footstep sounds started, and the door in the far wall of the room banged open. In came a man in uniform: dark blue with white trim, fatigue style pants stuffed into the tops of high black boots, baseball cap, heavy black belt loaded with ammo clips, handcuffs, a telescoping aluminum baton, and a holster filled with a Beretta nine millimeter handgun. The man carried an M16 assault rifle slung over his shoulder and a small duffle bag in one hand. He smelled bad, a combination of oil, sewage, and sweat. On the front of the baseball cap Gwen read the letters USCG. On the front of his shirt, in the pocket area, she read CGSTT. If she had been behind the man she could have read on his back in large white letters Coast Guard Special Tactical Team. Gwen assimilated all this, then assimilated the fact that the man in the uniform of the United States Coast Guard Special Tactical Team was Little Jinny Blistov. Again she assimilated the fact that he smelled really bad.

  Following behind Jinny, also in full combat uniform, carrying Berettas and M16s and smelling bad, were Plouriva, Peter, Pater. The only one of them who spoke was Plouriva, who said in loud and remarkably accent free English, “Fucking shit detail fucking sucks.” She didn’t address this to anyone in particular, not to the DHS staffer or to Gwen or to the other three Russians. She addressed it to the world at large and seemed really, really pissed off. The four commandos totally ignored Gwen and simply walked out the door into the parking lot. When they were gone the DHS woman looked at Gwen and said, “The Coasties hate inspecting container ships because they have to go into the bilges in the bottom of the ships where no one has cleaned anything for twenty years. The Coasties are wimps.” And she went back to her magazine. Gwen followed them out the door and saw the four uniforms walking away from her across the huge parking lot and around the side of the terminal building.

  Gwen got in the Jag and looked at Roger. She turned down the stereo even though she really liked the song The WHO were playing and asked Roger if he had noticed the four Coast Guard guys who just came out of the building. He said, “Three guys, one girl, and yes, I saw they are our Russian friends. How’d they do that?” Gwen was pleased to see that two glasses of wine, one glass of port, and twenty minutes of The WHO had restored Roger to his usual states of awareness and reasonableness. She didn’t answer, but fired up the Jag engine and headed in the same direction as the illegal aliens. She found them just around the side of the terminal building, leaning against the walls in the shade.

  She pulled up near them and looked around. There were a couple of cars in the vast parking lot, and lots of activity in the distance near the dock, where she could see the container ship at mooring. The giant praying mantis type cranes already were at work unloading the first of the containers. But there was no one near this side of the terminal, so she and Roger got out of the car. Jinny unslung the M16 from around his shoulder and leaned it against the wall of the terminal building. He dropped a medium sized duffle bag on the ground, removed his CG cap, walked over to Roger, and extended his hand along with a big Blistov smile. Roger shook his hand, after which Jinn turned to Gwen and put his arms around her in a very un-toughguy-like hug. Gwen was not exactly surprised, and found it interesting that she did not find the hug repulsive. She found the smell repulsive, but not the hug. This was progress considering her initial impressions of Jinny way back in the fancy French restaurant in Charleston some eight months earlier. At that point she was ready to shoot Jinny on four counts: 1. he was munchkin short, 2. he was wearing the world’s ugliest sneakers, 3. his beard extended around to the back of his neck below his ears, and 4. he was threatening her husband. Gwen didn’t need all four reasons to shoot Jinny, but they added up to a load of animosity against him. Now she found herself thinking of Jinny in positive, even chummy terms.

  She and Roger then turned their attention to the others, with some welcoming smiles. All six team members looked at each other until Gwen said, “Ok, we’ll get the story later. Right now we gotta get outta here.” Gwen executed the plan she had developed in the fifteen minutes she had before she and Roger left the Pink House. Of course, the plan needed some revision in light of the fact that she didn’t know the Russians would be showing up disguised as members of the United States Coast Guard Special Tactical Team, each armed with M16 assault rifles and Berretta nine mil semi-auto handguns. Roger watched his wife with great interest, knowing she was going to perform some kind of semi-miracle. Jinny also watched with the same level of interest, and the same level of absolute confidence in Gwen. The other three Russians didn’t know Gwen as well, and their nerves were twitching and oscillating just a bit.

  Gwen closed her eyes and let her mind wander. It flew through scenario after scenario, scene after scene, all at light speed, her rationality cleaving problem atoms into their component parts. When this function was complete, she closed down her rational mind and opened her intuitive mind. This new function took hold of the cleaved atomic pieces and recompiled them into new combinations, this part with that, that part with this, here a part there a part, all of this happening intuitively rather than rationally. The nuclear-powered light bulb went on, and she opened her eyes. She figured her eyes had been closed for about ten minutes, and maybe the four Russians thought that a bit weird. In reality her eyes had been closed for about twenty seconds, and both Roger and Jinny knew something great was happening. The other three did think Gwen was a bit weird, but they didn’t say anything.

  Gwen said, “Wait here.” She turned and walked around the terminal building to the far side and went back into the DHS office. When she was in there the first time, she didn’t say anything to the staffer on duty, and the staffer didn’t ask her what she was doing there. Now Gwen walked up to the woman and said, “Where’s the shuttle?”

  The woman asked, “What shuttle?”

  Gwen said, “The shuttle to the Coast Guard base. I was told that when I meet the team coming off the ship, there would be a shuttle to take us to the base for debriefing.”

  The woman asked, “Who are you?”

  Gwen, looking the woman straight in the eye, and bringing to bear on her a Deneuvian imperiousness, said simply, “I’m the debriefer.”

  The look intimidated the bag-checking DHS woman, who said, “I can call the base and ask.” Gwen nodded, went and sat down on a chair, and stared at the woman from there. The woman picked up the phone, called, spoke for a minute, put the phone down, and said, “They’ll send over the shuttle now.”

  Gwen stood up, said, “Thanks,” and walked out.

  Outside and back with the group, Gwen asked Jinny, “How exactly were you supposed to get out of here after you got off the ship?” Jinny said the ship’s captain told them he would get them off the ship disguised as a Coast Guard inspection team, but after that t
hey would have to figure out how to get out of the Dept. of Homeland Security terminal complex themselves. “And how,” Gwen asked, “were you planning to get out of the terminal complex?”

  Jinny smiled a little embarrassed smile and said, “Ah, um, you. That’s why we contacted you and Roger ahead of time at the fort.”

  “What do you mean ahead of time? One hour ahead of time, that’s your idea of having a plan for illegal entry into the United States?”

  Jinny didn’t answer, he just stood looking at Gwen impassively, a hint of sheepishness oozing out from somewhere.

  Gwen quickly realized that grilling Jinny on this point would be counterproductive, and let it slide.

  She told the team the plan. The problem was getting out of the terminal compound. This was not a problem for civilians, but four heavily armed Coast Guard commandos can’t exactly walk out past the DHS checkpoint and continue down a public street past the local Starbucks. The Coast Guard was sending a shuttle to pick them up. She would get on the shuttle with the four in uniform and go to the Coast Guard base. “Roger," she said, “you go back into the city and find a rental car place. Rent a big car. Come to the base and look for us. Call me on my cell if you don’t see us right away.” To Jinny and the others she said, “When we get inside the base, we’ll go into the main office building. We’ll look like we know what we’re doing, and we’ll find a place to ditch the guns. Then we’ll go into the commissary, look around for a while, and buy some stuff. Then we’ll just walk out the main gate. Roger will find us.” With the end of these instructions she looked at each person in turn, waiting for questions. There were none, so she nodded to Roger to take off.

  The shuttle came in twenty minutes and they got on. The driver seemed unconcerned either about the guns or about a civilian without guns. In fifteen minutes they entered the Coast Guard base, and got out of the bus. Gwen looked around, saw a large building with a sign over the doorway that said Section Commander, and headed for it. On the walk over she looked at the four Russians, and saw they were calm. She just said, “Keep quiet and do what I say.” Inside she assessed the layout: large hallway, radio dispatch office on the right, stairway straight ahead at the end of the hallway, conference room first door on the left, break room with vending machines second door on the left, restroom signs past the radio room. She turned left and went into the conference room, motioning the others to follow. She closed the conference room door and said, “Put the 16s in the corner. If anyone opens the door I don’t want this to seem like too weird of a conference. We’ll wait here for a few minutes.” Which they did. Everyone was calm, even Peter and Pater. After eight minutes Gwen told Jinny to go down to the restrooms and see what they were like. “Look for a janitor’s closet, or some empty room. We need to lose the guns.” This he did, returning to say that beyond the restroom, which was small, was another conference room with cabinets along one wall. The cabinets were empty. Gwen waited another five minutes, during which all she said was, “Y’all really need a bath,” and then, “Let’s go.” They picked up their M16s and the duffle bag and walked out into the hallway. Jinny led the way to the second conference room door. He looked at Gwen, who checked the hallway, and nodded them in. They closed the door, stripped off their gun and accessory belts, and stuffed them into the cabinets along with the rifles. Jinny made to leave the conference room immediately, but Gwen held them in. They waited a full five minutes during which time Peter and Pater began to sweat. But they smiled at each other, which was a good sign. Gwen didn’t say it this time but she thought, “Y’all really need a bath, bad.” She nodded at the dufflebag Jinny was holding and motioned to the cabinets. He shook his head and said, “Money.” She didn’t question this, but led the way outside into the hallway and then out of the building. She marched them straight down the sidewalk to the perimeter fence and out the main gate, past the sentry. They turned down the public street and kept marching. After a few blocks Gwen took out her cell phone and called Roger. “We’re ready for pickup, dear. Where are you?” He replied he had the car, and was about fifteen minutes from the base. “Ok," she said. “Be ready for one thing, hon, these guys really stink.”

  Twelve minutes later they made the rendezvous, and the six team members were together in the van. Now that the immediate danger was past, the big question for Gwen became who would get to drive the nice comfortable Jag with the stereo and The WHO CDs on the two hour drive home, and who would get to drive the van with the four stinking Coast Guard “commandos” on the two hour drive? One thing Gwen knew for sure was that none of the Russians were getting into the Jag. They never would get the smell out of it. Gwen knew Roger was asking himself the same question. It had not taken long for him to comprehend the enormity of the problem. The ship captain had told the Russians that to make a real impression of them being an inspection team, they had to get off the ship smelling like twenty year old bilge water. So he had taken them down into the bowels of the container ship and made them slosh around in the hideous gunk for a while.

  It took Roger only a minute to conclude that he was driving the van to Charleston. After all, his wife just had succeeded in smuggling four Russians into the country, and he realized she deserved a little consideration for the next two hours. He told her he would drive the van, and when she gave him one of her great big perfectly sexy Deneuvian smiles that portended good things at home, he knew he’d made the right decision.

  On the long drive home, Gwen, Roger, and Jinny thought long and hard about the next challenge. They knew first, that four more Russians were arriving at 4am the next morning, and they had to figure out what to do with them? And they knew second, that nine giant shipping containers also were arriving sometime soon. Gwen knew Jinny had money with him, and figured it was the money mentioned on the note that flew from the deck of the ship onto the Parade Ground of Old Fort James Jackson. What Gwen didn’t know was that the dufflebag contained a little over six million dollars in American hundred dollar bills. Thinking back on the notes, Gwen also remembered something about cats. She called Roger and asked him about the cats. Roger said, “Hold on,” and asked Jinny, “Gwen wants to know where the cats are.” Jinny said they still were in the container. The container that had started out as the Russian’s home for eight days, before they found out the ship was crewed by Russians, and the captain was cool, and they were able to get out of the container after only three days. All of the human stuff had been taken out of the container and thrown overboard, but the cats were put back in the container just before they arrived in Savannah. They had put lots of fresh fish in there to for them to eat, it was ok.

  Roger relayed this to Gwen, and with that, the first four Russians landed in Charleston.