Chapter 14 – What Stirg Wants, Stirg Gets
Gwen always had known her husband was a man of two faces. Occasionally he acted like a dork, as he had done while interrogating Glissy in their kitchen. That was when he spent part of the interrogation time trying to ascertain whether the woman sitting in front of him in her black Italian underwear was wearing perfume or not. Gwen always was tempted to smack him when he acted this way, but usually refrained from doing so. Most of the time, though, Roger possessed a penetrating intelligence, whether it was on display or not. Gwen saw it as her duty to bring this characteristic into Roger’s tangible world as much as possible. Sometimes, like now, Roger brought it to the surface on his own.
His suspicion was that billionaire Charleston lawyer Pmirhs Stirg was interested in their hoard of artifacts stolen from the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, now residing in a climate controlled warehouse just outside town. Roger also was suggesting that Stirg had sent his granddaughter on a mission to invade the June household. These suggestions are what elicited the, “Oh, shit,” exclamation from Gwen. She would rather have the FBI on her ass than Stirg.
Stirg had been a Nazi hunter, after the baddest of the boys. He had gone after them, and had pinched a bunch of them. Some were extradited to Europe for trial and some had become fertilizer for Argentina’s world class Malbec wine vineyards.
If Roger’s thinking was right, Stirg was interested in the June team’s venture to bring wealthy, shady Russians to Charleston, where the Junes and their associates would fleece them of cash, selling them beach houses, world class French wines, and mementos from the homeland in the form of genuine Russian antiques and objets d’art. Gwen said, “Let’s see if I have this right. Ashley Archdale saw the antiques on Kiawah at the party, and because knew the Kiawah home owner was Russian, he figured the antiques were Russian. And he happens to know Stirg because he knows everyone of note in Charleston, and he told him that a lot of Russian antiques recently had turned up here, and maybe the news of our Hermitage heist has gotten out in certain Russian circles, and now Stirg wants some of what we have in the warehouse?”
Roger nodded and prompted her, “And….”
“And Glissy is Stirg’s granddaughter Anna, and he sent her into our house to find out about us?”
Roger nodded, and motioned, “And….”
“And now we have co-opted the granddaughter of a Nazi hunting, hard as fucking nails billionaire, who at age sixty-seven still chases women around like Anthony Quinn did at that age?”
Roger nodded.
Gwen said again, “Oh, shit.”
Roger nodded and said, “And….”
Uncomfortably Gwen thought, ‘There’s more?’ She didn’t make any more conceptual leaps at this point. She was stuck back there at the, “Oh, shit, Stirg is after us,” concept. So she said, “What, what?”
Roger said, “You just said Stirg is sixty-seven years old, right? Who else do we know that is sixty-seven years old?”
Gwen looked at Roger like he was nuts and said, “Sometimes you are so dorky, and now you are weird. Why do you want to make this situation even worse?”
Roger said, “Maybe we can offer to introduce Stirg to Catherine if he agrees to get off our ass.”
Gwen had heard dumb jokes come out of Roger’s mouth before (like the one of Moses and the Fifteen Commandments) but never one so weirdly dumb as to be beyond the pale of decency. If she wasn’t so bent out of shape with Roger’s other idea of Stirg being behind Glissy’s home invasion, she would have beaten him to a pulp, metaphorically speaking. On the other hand, sub-consciously, she was proud of Roger having sussed out the answer to the big question about Glissy. Now they had to figure out what to do.
Gwen said, “From what I know, what Stirg wants, Stirg gets.”
“Yeah, that’s the rumor.”
Gwenny June Page 13
