The Lost Ballet

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 50 – Stirg Hassles the Mariinsky

  Ironic is not how Stirg would have viewed it if he had known he was staying in the same hotel the Junes had stayed in a year earlier, while their team was pulling the Hermitage heist. He would have thought something like, “WHAT? The fucks stayed here while they were stealing Russia’s heritage? God damn it, get me out of here! Nev, we’re out of here. Not staying in the same place as those rats. Why did you book us into this place? This rat hole. Out. Out! Pack up. I may buy the place and demo it.” No, a simple sense of irony would not be enough to keep Stirg in that place. For Christ sake, maybe he was sleeping in the same room, the same bed, that the fucks had slept in. It was good for him and for Nev that they didn’t know Gwen had booked a suite at the Corinthia Hotel, Nevsky Prospect, 57, Saint Petersburg because the hotel advertised towel warmers in all the suites. Gwen had loved that towel warmer.

  Nevertheless, that was where Stirg had set up his command center, and that was where Gergiev came every morning at 9am, to provide a status report. He started this routine three days after Stirg had shown up in his office, and had left the check for a cool million on his desk. After he and Stirg and Nev had eaten lunch at a nearby restaurant, and after Stirg and Nev had left, Gergiev had walked at a very rapid pace across the park to the bank that had issued the cashier’s check. He asked for the manager, to whom he handed the check and said, “Umm, is this real?”

  The manager recognized it immediately, because it wasn’t every day that someone walked into his bank at 2pm, and walked out of his bank at 3pm, carrying ten cashier’s checks, each worth a million dollars. The manager remembered that quite vividly. Now, only one day later, one of the checks had turned up. “Yes, Mr. Gergiev, sir. The check is good, and we would be very happy to manage this money for you. We have a series of very attractive investments at present, very attractive, indeed.” Gergiev retrieved the check from the manager’s sticky fingers, and held it in his sticky fingers. A wave of elation washed over him, though he managed to keep it hidden. He thought a moment, then said, “Perhaps it would be wise to deposit this into an account. Am I correct in thinking that whoever holds the check in his hand has legal right to the money it represents?”

  “Yes, sir, that is correct. It would indeed be wise not to walk around the city with that in your pocket. Saint Petersburg is a wonderful city, and we love it, but not every single person walking around it is a wonderful person. There are at least a few non-wonderful people who would love to come into possession of that object.”

  Gergiev stopped thinking about his one million dollars, and thought about Stirg walking the wonderful streets of the wonderful city of Saint Petersburg with nine more of the checks in his pocket. He hoped Mr. Stirg’s associate, Mr. Nev, was skilled at his body guarding function. Gergiev noticed that he had started thinking about the money, the check, as his money. It wasn’t really, was it? It was the first payment to be put towards the production. But, hadn’t Mr. Stirg said, “Including, of course, something for your time and effort. Get me?” Hadn’t he said that? Gergiev was positive he had. He remembered the words, exactly: “Including, of course, something for your time and effort. Get me?” Gergiev got a grip on reality and told the bank manager he would put the check into a safe deposit box for the time being, not into an account or into investments. He realized the money would have to go, sooner or later, into the Mariinsky Ballet financial system. He just didn’t want to rush that, right now. Not right now.

  After leaving the bank he walked across the street and sat down on a park bench to think things over. Staring at a large bronze statue of Lenin shooting a Romanov borzoi in the back of the head (and basking in the knowledge of what lay, so crisply, so lovingly, so meaningfully, in his box at the bank) was when a memory flashed into his consciousness. A memory of a staff member mentioning to him a month earlier the rumor that some Americans in a town called Charleston claimed to be in possession of a piece of lost Stravinsky music, and were going to product a ballet based on it. He never had heard of Charleston, or even South Carolina, so Gergiev had tossed this into the arts and culture rumor bag, and forgotten about it. He now made the connection (which electrified him), pulled his cell phone, and dialed the number of his staffer. “Hey. You remember telling me about some people in some American backwater who said they had a lost Stravinsky ballet? Get on the web. See if it’s true. Now. I’m heading back to the office.”

  When he entered her office, she pointed to the computer screen. Showing on it was the June’s webpage, announcing the discovery of the score and the upcoming world premiere production of the ballet. She flipped through a few pages displaying Catherine Deneuve at the City Hall PR event, and the fake provenance of the score. Gergiev sat down, stricken. The woman said, “What’s up, boss?” She never had seen him close to tears.

  He said, “See what you can find out about this. Is it real? Are these people serious? Call up our friends in New York and see if they know about this. Find out where Charleston is, and who’s behind this production. Alleged production. Come to me as soon as you find out anything.” Gergiev went to his office, called up the June website, and went to the provenance page. He read the description twice, and came away believing it. Shit. What was Stirg up to? How did he get the score? Who had legal rights to produce the ballet? Establishing that could take years in the courts. Whose courts: US or Russia? Stirg was wealthy and could afford a long legal battle, but is that what the two sides wanted? Stirg and the Americans. Was this going down the tubes, right now, with that check sitting, resting, waiting for action, in his bank deposit box? Shit.

  An hour later his staffer came to his office and confirmed the worst. The New York ballet people said, yes, the Charleston thing was legit. They wondered that the Mariinsky hadn’t heard about it, considering who the composer was, and it being his lost ballet. Gergiev didn’t have time to take offense at the New Yorker’s sardonicism. He left the office, walked down the street to a bar and ordered a shot of Greek raki. Vodka wasn’t strong enough to alleviate his feeling of impending loss.

  He got over it later in the day, and the next morning he went to the Corinthia. Sitting with Stirg and Nev, he loaded the June webpage on his smart phone and showed them the provenance page. He said, “Their production is under way. They have a convincing provenance. They have the upper hand in this. How did you get the score?”

  Stirg sat back and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he poured another cup of coffee from the sterling silver pot on the service tray, and sipped, looking at Gergiev. When he set the cup down, he looked at Nev, and nodded towards the closet where the personal safe was. Nev opened the safe and removed the envelope. Gergiev saw the butt of a gun in the safe, and then recognized the envelope. That dear, dear envelope. Stirg didn’t play games with the checks this time. He took one out, closed the envelope, and handed it back to Nev, who returned it to the safe. Stirg set the check on the table next to the coffee pot, rotated it so it faced Gergiev, and pushed it to him. He said, “Fuck the Americans. This music is Russian property. Our property. We go forward. Leave them, and their production, to me. Just do your job. I have plans for them.”