All-Star Pride

by Sigmund Brouwer

  I had the aisle seat. It was stuffy in the train, so Nathan, in the window seat beside me, had no trouble sleeping. But despite the heat, I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking too hard about the events of the previous few days. What was Chandler’s game? How was he linked to Boris, the eyepatch man? What was Nadia’s involvement? How could I get out of all this?

  We passed colorful wooden houses, and I had plenty of time to watch people as they worked in their gardens and fields. Even with the distractions of scenery, I kept returning to my questions until the conductor interrupted my thoughts.

  He set a small tray in my lap. The tray held a cup of oily tea, some cream and sugar. We had learned conductors often added to their income by running a small concession business on the train. This tea, however, was a surprise to me.

  “I didn’t order this,” I said.

  He said something in Russian. I didn’t know if he was disagreeing with me, talking about the weather or insulting me.

  “Not mine,” I said, slowly and loudly. I gave my head a shake. As if talking slower and louder made it easier for him to understand English.

  The conductor wore a black jacket, almost as ragged and dark as his bushy eyebrows. He lifted those eyebrows as he shrugged at me. Then he turned and left me with the tea.

  Oh well, I thought, whoever actually ordered this will eventually chase down the conductor. In the meantime, what am I going to do with black Russian tea?

  I looked over at Nathan to see if he could be suckered into trying it. He was still asleep.

  I decided to dump the tea. When I lifted the cup, I saw a folded piece of paper on the tray beneath it. In neatly printed letters there was a single word: help.

  I set the cup back on the tray and opened the note. More neat printing: Goreela, we must talk. Go ahead to the first-class section. Walk through slowly. Nadia.

  I thought about it. I decided nothing could go wrong here on a train. For lack of anywhere else to put the cup of tea, I carried it with me.

  To reach first class, I had to leave this train car and cross through a rattling, bouncing walkway into the next car. I discovered first class was not rows of seats like our car. Instead of the aisle running down the center, it hugged the left side of the car. Door after door ran down the right side of the aisle. All of them closed. Private sleeping compartments?

  As Nadia had instructed, I walked through slowly.

  Coming my way was a middle-aged man in a brown suit. It would be a tight squeeze getting past him. He waited as I walked forward. When I reached him, he turned sideways and pressed against the windows of the train to let me past. Except as I brushed by he slammed me hard, pushing me against the door to my right. It popped open and I almost fell, catching my balance a couple of steps into the sleeping compartment. Half of the hot tea sloshed over my hand.

  The brown-suited man quickly moved into the compartment toward me. Without thinking, I flung the remaining tea into his face and drew my hand back to punch him.

  Someone grabbed my arm from behind me.

  “Settle down, boy,” a voice said with a Texas twang. “You’re with friends.”

  The guy in the brown suit sputtered and cursed as he looked down in disbelief at the dark tea stains on his chest. At least, I guessed it was cursing. He spoke Russian.

  The guy behind me didn’t let go of my arm.

  “You’re a big one, son,” his drawl continued. “The only way I could stop you is by shooting you, and I’d hate to have to do that.”

  I relaxed. The unseen man behind me let go of my arm.

  Mr. Brown Suit dropped his fast-paced Russian to mere mumbles and vainly brushed at the tea stains.

  “Go on, son,” the drawl said, “take a load off your feet. Sit down.”

  I remained standing. The man with the drawl moved around me and locked the sleeping compartment door. Finally he turned to face me.

  “Boy, we can be friendly here. Trust me.”

  He spoke to Mr. Brown Suit. “And Ivan, rest your mouth. All the talk in the world won’t get rid of the mess on your suit. Serves you right for being careless, anyway.”

  I snuck a quick glance around the sleeping compartment. On one side, a low couch. On the other, two bunk beds. In between, hardly enough room for the three of us to stand without bumping into each other. One thing was missing, though.

  “Where’s Nadia?” I asked.

  “She agreed with me that it wouldn’t do her any good to be seen with us,” the man with the drawl said. He stuck out his hand. “By the way, my name is Clint Bowes.”

  Slowly, suspiciously, I stuck out my hand and shook his.

  Clint Bowes was tall and snake skinny. His hair was greased back, dark brown with strands of gray. His nose was like a popsicle stick turned sideways and stuck into his face. He wore a dark-gray suit, but instead of dress shoes he had on shiny, buffed cowboy boots.

  “I’m from the U.S. Customs office,” Clint said, a lazy smile across his face as he spoke. “Ivan, my partner here, is from the equivalent government bureau in Russia. He speaks English but prefers not to.”

  For a greeting, Ivan frowned at me.

  Tall as Clint was, he had to reach above his shoulders to place a hand on my shoulders. He tried to press me downward onto the couch behind us. When he failed to get me moving, he shrugged.

  “Suit yourself. Ivan and I want to be comfortable.”

  They sat side by side on the lower bunk bed. Feeling stupid, I finally lowered myself onto the couch opposite them.

  “Let’s cut right to the chase,” Clint said. “You’re mixed up in something you shouldn’t be. Fact is, until Nadia told us about the fight with Boris, we figured you to be part of their team.”

  “Do you have ID?” I asked.

  “Huh?” Clint’s eyebrows dipped as he squinted at me. “Oh. Identification. You still back on that? Try to keep up with me, boy.”

  He dug into his suit pocket and pulled out a badge. “Look at it good, boy. See on the front it says U.S. Customs? On the back you’ll see my photo. If that isn’t good enough for you, I’ll leave you a number you can call. Folks at the Moscow bureau will confirm it for you.”

  “How do I know you’re with Nadia?”

  “You are as slow as you are big. Think back to the note, son. Did she address it to Timothy? Or Hog, as I understand most folks address you? No, boy, she wrote it to Goreela. I had a devil of a time with that, until she told me it was your name. I didn’t have the heart to correct her,” he said with a laugh.

  I thought everything through. Only Nadia would call me Gorilla.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll listen to what you’ve got to say.”

  Now his eyebrows danced upward as he gave me a look of mock surprise. “Well, you are considerate, aren’t you, boy? Especially facing five years in a penitentiary for what you’ve already done since you’ve arrived in Russia. And if you’re lucky, you can do those five years back home, instead of in some concentration camp in Siberia.”

  He grinned at me. “Yup. Siberia. That got your attention, didn’t it, boy?”

  “I already said I’d listen.” I wasn’t going to let him push me around.

  The train bounced us from side to side as we rounded a bend. I placed a hand on each side of me, gripping the edge of the couch to keep my balance. I waited for him to continue.

  “In a nutshell,” Clint Bowes said, “you’re smack in the middle of a pipeline that has been moving millions of dollars worth of irreplaceable art out of Russia.”

  chapter fifteen

  I hadn’t kept up on international art news.

  Clint Bowes made up for it, though. Over the next ten minutes he explained— with occasional surly interruptions and corrections from Ivan—that two major events had happened, both in Russia.

  In St. Petersburg, the Hermitage Museum had unveiled a treasure trove of Impressionist paintings—a style popular in the 1880s. The paintings had been hidden since being stolen during the Second World War by Nazi war cri
minals.

  And Moscow’s greatest museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, had just opened after ten years of renovation. Back in public view were 100,000 pieces of art that covered nine centuries of Russian history.

  During the entire time he spoke, Clint Bowes kept his eyes glued to mine. I wondered if he was admiring the stitch pattern made by the Russian doctor across my cheekbone, or if he was searching for any sign that I knew any of this or understood where his conversation would lead.

  “What it means, boy,” he told me, “is there have been plenty of chances for the occasional piece of art to disappear. Take St. Petersburg. Sure, they’ve unveiled all this long-lost art. But was there a list of it in the first place? No sirree. Pretty easy to help yourself without a checklist to keep you honest.”

  He shook his head at how easy it would be to steal the art. “And look at the Tretyakov Gallery. Workmen in and out for ten years. Shoot, for two of those years, what with the money shortages and political mess here in Russia, nobody did anything on it. It just sat there, empty of people. Plenty of opportunities to juggle lists and sneak out canvas paintings, wouldn’t you say? Who’s going to notice a few missing out of a hundred thousand?”

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with me,” I said. And I didn’t. All I’d seen around Chandler was the packet he slipped into the white Mercedes at the black market in Moscow. He hadn’t taken anything in return.

  “I’ll give you the ABCs, boy, and I hope it sinks in. See, this art is worthless until you get a buyer outside of Russia. The States. Europe. Japan. And boy, no one pays for art they don’t get placed into their grubby hands.”

  He watched my face some more. “Don’t you get it? Someone has to smuggle money into Russia to pay for the art. And it can’t be money in checks. It’s got to be cold, untraceable cash. American dollars. Not worthless rubles. And in case you didn’t know it, boy, it’s a federal offense to carry more than ten thousand dollars in U.S. currency.”

  He took a breath. “Not only that. Someone has to smuggle the art out to the buyers once it’s paid for. That’s where your friends come in.”

  “Can’t be,” I said. “This is a legitimate hockey tour. It will be a television special and—”

  “Boy, you got potatoes growing between your ears. We know you went for a little midnight walk with your friend Chandler Harris. We saw Harris give a small package to a known Moscow art dealer. We’re figuring the package held thousand-dollar bills, boy. Hundreds of them.”

  “Hundreds of thousands?” Chandler Harris had been carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars? No wonder he’d been able to spare me the meager thousand. “But how could you know?”

  “Nadia. She’s our inside spy.”

  This was all too much for me. I wanted to be somewhere simple and safe. Like on the ice with guys trying to give me enough stitches to make my face look like it had been run over by a sewing machine.

  “I’m trying to lay it out plain for you, boy. Nadia’s been the interpreter for this all-star team each year since it started coming over. It wasn’t until recently that we realized she’s been part of this pipeline of smuggled art. We began to have her followed. Which led us to you and your friend in Moscow’s black-market area. It don’t take a rocket scientist to figure some of the art is leaving the country with your hockey team. Our question is how. Which is why Nadia is helping us nab the head honcho. We made her the same offer we’re going to make you, and I’ll get to that shortly. She’s working for them—but as what you might call a double agent. She’s really reporting back to us.”

  That explained her strange actions toward me.

  “As I’ve said, Ivan here is my Russian counterpart,” Bowes said. “You’d be surprised how closely we work together on these things. We told Nadia to go ahead as if everything was normal and to keep us informed. We want to catch them in the act. It gives us the best chance of recovering the art.”

  The train’s clacking began to slow. We were approaching one of the small towns between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

  Clint Bowes looked at his watch. “This is our stop. We don’t have much time, boy. I’ll tell the rest as quick as I can. Pay attention and try to keep up.”

  Bowes took another deep breath. He lost some of his drawl as he quickened the pace of his words. “In Moscow, Chandler Harris delivered half the money. A down payment. While your team has been in St. Petersburg, the dealer has been putting together the art shipment. Tonight or tomorrow night, Harris is making the final payment, and at the same time he’ll take delivery of the art. You with me, boy?”

  I hated being called boy. I hated it when people thought I was stupid just because I was big. I nodded anyway.

  “Your job, boy, is to find out two things: how the artwork is going to be smuggled back, and where Harris got the money. It won’t do us much good to nail Harris without getting the one who sent him.”

  “My job?” I hadn’t spoken for so long, my words came out as a croak.

  “Yes, your job,” he said, “unless you want to be sending your folks postcards from Siberia. That’s the offer I told you I’d explain. Help us and you buy your freedom. Nadia thought it was a plenty good deal. Course, she’s heard plenty on how bad Siberia can be.”

  “I don’t know about this.”

  “We’ve got people watching you guys all the time. If something happens, you should be safe.”

  Should be safe?

  He read my mind. “Boy, this is a game involving millions, when people in this country will kill for hundreds. This is not like playing a game of hide-and-seek.”

  Clint Bowes reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a business card. “In the meantime, as soon as you find out what they’ve done with the art, call me here. Don’t say anything about it over the phone. We’ll arrange a place to meet.”

  “If I do this,” I said, “how do I—”

  “Not if. When.”

  “How do I know what I’m looking for?”

  “As near as we can tell, they’ve got some miniature canvases. Think of a painting no larger than a sheet of typing paper.” He paused. “Boy, don’t be looking for the frames. Frames are useless. It’s the canvas that’s worth millions. You can expect a painting will roll up hardly thicker than the inside of a roll of toilet paper.”

  He forced his business card into my hand. This was all happening so fast I didn’t know what to say. Nor did I have the chance.

  Smoothly and quickly, they stood together, unlocked the compartment door and stepped outside. From the aisle, Clint Bowes stuck his head back into the compartment.

  “Boy, you do understand you need to stick close to Harris now? If you lose him, you might just lose your freedom.”

  They disappeared.

  Great choices. I could try to help the government people and risk my life. Or I could stay out of this and risk my freedom. And if I lost my freedom, I’d lose my hockey career.

  All of a sudden I saw too clearly how high the price was on the thousand dollars I’d accepted from Chandler Harris.

  chapter sixteen

  In Moscow we checked in at the same hotel where we’d stayed earlier. When I got to my room, I found Nathan Elrod unpacking his suitcase on the narrow bed beside mine.

  He looked at me and shrugged. “Harris is back to rooming with Hutton.”

  “Hutton?” Paul Hutton was nearly the biggest forward in the league. I was one of the few guys bigger.

  “Yeah. Chandler was probably tired of looking at those ugly stitches across your mug. And if you haven’t noticed, what Chandler wants, Chandler gets.”

  “What you’re telling me is if we learn to score goals by the buckets, we’ll get the same kind of treatment?” I was doing my best not to show any concern. How did I have a hope of watching Harris from this hotel room? And was this switch an accident, or had Harris changed his mind about taking me along on his next night excursion?

  Before I could say anything further, there was a knock on the door. Because my
mind was on Chandler Harris, I fully expected it to be him.

  Nathan opened the door to see Nadia standing in the hallway.

  “May I speak with Goreela?” she said quietly.

  “Wrong room,” Nathan told her.

  I was already moving past him. “It’s for me.”

  “Goreela?” Nathan asked.

  “Long story, Nate,” I explained. “Tell you later.”

  “We can go for a walk?” Nadia asked.

  “Sure,” I told her.

  She looked at Nathan. “Please. Will you tell no one I was here?”

  Nathan probably caught the nervousness in Nadia’s voice. He pulled me aside and spoke in a low voice.

  “Big guy, I’m worried. You haven’t been yourself. It’s like...” He struggled for words. “Like you forgot hockey is supposed to be fun. What’s going on, anyway?”

  “Too much,” I said. “It’s about some money I need to return.”

  Nathan looked me directly in the eyes. “Remember those long road-trip talks we had back when we played for the Blazers? Stay true to what you believe, bud. If I can help—”

  I shook my head. No sense getting him into my trouble. It was nice, though, knowing the help was there. And nice, too, the reminder I needed to be able to live with my conscience.

  “He won’t be long,” Nadia broke in, her voice urgent. “But I need to speak with him.”

  Nathan nodded.

  I followed Nadia down the hallway, feeling like a moose trying to keep pace with a ballerina.

  At the end of the hallway, she opened the exit door to the same stairs we had taken on a night that seemed very long ago. Without speaking, she led me up to the roof again.

  The evening was just beginning to darken, and the Moscow skyline formed box edges against a cloud-covered sun.

  “I will talk quickly,” she said. “The less I am seen with you, the safer it is for both of us. Those government men. They spoke with you on the train?”

  I nodded.

  “They are worse than rats.” She spit onto the graveled tar of the hotel roof. “I do not trust them at all.”