Chapter 20 – The Discussion
The living room was really big and really nice. The décor of the sun room had been very coastal and water-oriented, but the living room had a different feel. It was old school European. There were no throw pillows with palmetto trees on them, no light blue fabrics with white trim, and no watercolor paintings of sail boats.
The paintings here were oil, with thick layers of varnish on the top that made them shine in any light. And they were realistic works, nothing abstract. The upholstery of the plush sofas was velvet in burgundy and dark green. Nothing here was done in lemon yellow. Leather chairs, of course, very soft, and Stirg liked clocks. There were four of them in the room, including a beautiful grandfather clock that dominated one wall.
When Roger and Jinny came off the boat they brought lightweight pants and shirts for the women, Jinny saying he thought this was unnecessary for the interrogation, that the continued use of the bikinis would be more effective, but he was overruled. The women put these on there in the living room. Stirg seemed to agree with Jinny, and didn’t hide his disappointment. “Ladies, not on my account.”
When Stirg and Nev were seated in two of the leather chairs, Jinny tied Nev’s feet together with a cord he cut from a window drape. That was enough. He wasn’t going anywhere. Jinny looked at Gwen about tying Stirg, but she shook her head, no. Roger did a quick search of the room for hidden weapons, looking in table drawers, the bookcases, and under the sofas and chairs. Before Stirg and Nev sat down, he checked in the cushions of the chairs. Slev and Helstof learned about security.
Roger said, “Mr. Stirg, my wife wants to know if we can call you Pmirhs? Maybe not right off the bat, but we figure by the end of the day we’re all going to be pretty intimate with each other. We’ll understand if you want to keep this formal, but we thought we’d ask.”
He said, “Stirg, please.”
“Ok. Stirg it is. Another preliminary, before the torture begins,” Roger smiled at his joke, “Do you want Nev to stay? We can tape him up and put him in a closet if that would suit you better.”
Stirg shook his head. Evidently Nev was family, and could hear all the dirty laundry.
Roger said, “We were minding our own business here in quaint little Charleston, and you sent an agent into our home in the middle of the night. Thank goodness we own a smart dog that told us about it, and so we were able to, ah, intercede in that agent’s mission. We didn’t appreciate that, which is why we’re here now, in your house. Looks like our dog did a better job than Nev. We’d like to know why you did what you did.”
Stirg stretched his legs out in front of the big chair and settled his butt deeper into the cushion. He thought for a while, which gave the team time to look around the beautiful room. A billionaire’s digs. “Where’s Anna?” he asked.
There were three schools of thought among the June team about how they would answer that question. One school advocated a no response. Foment uncertainty in Stirg, and make him uneasy. The second school held the opposite perspective: tell Stirg they had co-opted Anna and she now was on their side. Tell him she even had changed her name. The third school of thought, championed by none other than Little Jinny Blistov, said they should tell Stirg that Anna was out in the garden, and he would be with her soon if he didn’t tell them what he was up to.
They had decided on the second approach, even though it was going to be hard to tell Stirg just how they had co-opted Anna, because they didn’t really know themselves. When The Deneuve is around, stuff happens. Now, it was happening when Gwen was around, stuff beyond rationality. It was all about intuition. When a person with a heightened sense of intuition is part of the mix, things happen differently than normal. Anna had come over to their side because, while she sat duct taped to a chair, Catherine and Gwen had sat close to her. They talked with her, and smiled at her and looked into her eyes, and it came down to a matter of influence. Anna had decided she wanted to be with them, and maybe be like them, rather than be the way she was up to that point in time. Nothing magical really, just a powerful, gentle influence. It was going to be hard to explain this to a guy like Stirg, or at least they thought it would be.
Roger said, “Anna’s ok. She’s with us.” He let that sink in. “We even gave the Walther back to her. After we had taken it away from her at first, of course.” He let that sink in. “She’s not coming back to you right away, Stirg, but who knows what the future holds.”
Stirg brought his legs back close to the chair and sat up straight, his hands gripping the leather arms of the chair. “What do you mean she’s with you? What does that mean?”
Roger paused in the dialogue, then said, “It means we caught her ass in our house in the middle of the fucking night, with a gun in her hand. We caught her. We took her gun away from her, and we had a little talk with her about things. Mostly my wife talked to her.”
Stirg looked first at Helstof and then at Slevov, and then at Gwen. He said, “This one’s your wife.” He said it contemptuously, something Roger picked up on very clearly, and he didn’t like it much.
“Yeah, she’s the one who got behind her, when your granddaughter was creeping around our house like a rat, and nailed her ass. She’s the one.” Roger smiled grimly. Gwen telegraphed him to calm down, and Roger relaxed a bit, continuing. “You sent her, so you’re responsible. We know something about you, and we know you’re a serious man, with serious motivations. We know you’ve done some good things in a very serious business. So serious that it’s not very likely you did all that and remained squeaky clean. You know that phrase, squeaky clean?”
Stirg ignored Roger’s question and said, “Is Anna all right? Where is she?”
Roger was calm now, understanding the situation. The team had decided to tell Stirg the truth. “I told you, she’s ok. She’s decided to stay with us for a while. She likes us, and wants a change in her life. She’ll contact you later.” Roger paused. Jinny watched Nev, who couldn’t do much with his feet tied together, but….Slev and Helstof watched how Stirg took the news. Roger went on, “This is about you now, not her. You need to tell us why you sent her. What do you want? We don’t even know you, and you’re down on us. We don’t like that. We know you’re a serious man, and we know your rep. We can’t have you out there after us if we think you’re a threat. We’ll dump your ass out in the harbor past Fort Sumter if we think that.” Roger said this in a way that made Gwen, Slev, and Helstof tense up. It made Jinny smile. And both Stirg and Nev picked up on their body language, the room vibrating with intensity. Nev, the Israeli bodyguard, contracted his leg muscles. Jinny shook his head at him. Roger said, “Tell us, what do you want?”
He said, “I want my granddaughter back.”
Roger said, “You don’t own her. She’s doing what she wants. It’s not about her, it’s about you.”
Stirg settled back in the chair, and Nev relaxed. Jinny did not. Stirg said, “You said you know something about me. How old am I?”
“You’re sixty-seven.”
“Yes, I am sixty-seven, and I want to live in a quiet town like Charleston, with my granddaughter nearby, whom I love.” Jinny wanted to mention that Stirg had a local reputation for chasing women his granddaughter’s age around town for non-grand daughterly purposes, but he held his tongue.
“I have a nice house here, and most of my past is in the past. No more running around the world looking for bad guys. You know I used to chase bad guys?”
Roger nodded slightly.
“Ok, so you know about South American. I haven’t been involved in that in a long time, and I’ve tried to forget about that. No more courts at The Hague, no more meetings in Tel Aviv. You know what I do now? I’m like most sixty-seven year old men. I think a lot about my youth.” He looked at Slev and Helstof and Gwen, and smiled, making them feel like they still were in their bikinis. “Well, maybe I am not exactly like most sixty-seve
n year old men.” Everyone got the joke, the picture. “But I don’t think about Germans anymore. I did that for twenty years. Germans, Germans, Germans. You know what I think about now? Russians. I think about the place where I grew up. That was a long time ago, but it means a lot to me now. Most people think about their youth when they get older. You never escape from or forget what you learned when you were young.”
Stirg was nostalgic, but what he said was true.
Nev had been trying to loosen the cord around his ankles, which everyone saw. Still, he had to try. Helstof said, “Nevy, sit there like a good boy, or we take you out in the harbor, and your boss will have to cook his own dinner tonight. Ok?”
Stirg appreciated the humor, in a grim way. He said, “There’s a lot going on in Russia now. Putin is strong, there’s lots of money there, and we know the future is bright. It’s a messy place, but that’s ok. I don’t mind messy. I don’t want to live there, but I think about my country all the time.” Stirg was talking now, like the team wanted. “I read articles about Russia on the internet every day, and I make a phone call there once in a while, and sometimes I take a little trip somewhere and meet with a Russian friend. That’s what I’m doing in my retirement. I like Charleston. I like walking down Tradd Street. I can walk there, and the narrow street and the architecture of the old houses reminds me of growing up in Saint Petersburg.”
The team could read Stirg. They knew he was doing the cobra thing, slowly swaying back and forth, ready to hit. That was ok. They were here, in his house, for one simple reason: learn what he wanted, and determine if he was a serious threat to them. Learn if he wanted to kill them. They were not going to underestimate him. He was a very serious man. They had to let him lead the discussion. Gwen and Slev knew they would get it out of him. They had time.
Stirg said, “Can I have a glass of water?”
Guignard leaned against a wall, a little blood still matted in her hair and caked on her neck. She held her gun loosely at her side, index finger running down the barrel the way Gwen had taught her. She alternated watching Stirg and Gwen. Even when Gwen was doing nothing, she was interesting to watch.
Gwen said, “Guignard, go into the kitchen and put your head under the faucet. If you splash any blood on the counter, leave it there. Helstof, go with her. When you come back, bring Mr. Stirg a glass of water. Nothing for Nev.”
Roger could see his wife was in one of her seriousfun moods. She was fucking with Nev, who undoubtedly was some kind of commando guy, given to Stirg by the Israeli government for services rendered years ago. Roger wasn’t sure that was such a good idea, shaking a hornet’s nest so to speak, but Gwen was Gwen.
Roger didn’t know Stirg, but he thought Stirg also was in sort of a seriousfun mood, like his wife. Stirg might be pissed that a group of women had invaded his home and were washing their hair in his kitchen sink, but on the other hand, it was possibly he found this amusing. Certainly it hadn’t happened before. No one had gotten the drop on Stirg in many years. Roger didn’t care about Stirg’s feelings one way or the other. He just knew that before they left, one way or the other, they were going to find out what he wanted, and if he was a threat to them.
When Stirg had his glass of water in hand, Roger asked again, “What do you want from us? We’re not leaving till we find that out, and we’re not planning on sleeping here tonight. Can you do that calculation?” From out of nowhere Roger again had gotten a hard edge on him, and everyone noticed. Jinny liked what he saw. Nev didn’t like it at all. The four women watched the transformation with great interest. Roger, Charleston’s aristocratic man about town, had gotten a look on his face that his new friends hadn’t seen before. While Stirg was getting his water, Roger was thinking about a person invading his house. Of course he had thought about it before, but now he was with the person who had ordered that. He had, post-invasion, accepted Glissy because The Deneuve and Gwen told him to. Fine. Glissy was ok. But that didn’t extend to Stirg. Stirg had ordered someone carrying a gun to come into Roger’s house in the middle of the night. Fuck that! Stirg was messing with his wife, and his house guest, and his dog and his cat. Stirg was messing with him. Fuck that! Hence the transformative look on his face. Roger felt his teeth grind together, his lips stuck out because his jaw had tightened. His eyes pinched together in a way that made his handsome face ugly. A stranger in his house, while he and Gwen were in bed. Roger’s field of vision narrowed and his brain constricted its focus. Helstof and Jinny and Guignard and Slev and Nev disappeared. The only people in the room were Stirg and Gwen. His biochemistry changed with an adrenaline rush and his voice changed to a guttural sound. “What do you want Stirg? Tell me now, you fuck? Tell me what you were doing in my house.” This was a viciously ominous threat. Roger didn’t notice Nev stand up. He didn’t notice three guns come up and center on Nev’s chest. The only thing in his world was Stirg’s mouth. The only thing he wanted was for Stirg to speak. His mind started counting: one, two, three, four….
He heard Stirg say, “What’s the American going to do….”
In a flash of movement Roger launched himself from his chair, crossing the ten feet separating him from Stirg in a micro-second. His mind was consumed with one thought: Gwen, his beloved. Three seconds after the word do came out of Stirg’s mouth, Roger’s right hand, holding his Beretta, came down in a sweeping arc across Stirg’s head. The heavy blow traveled from Stirg’s left ear, across his temple, to his nose. His head snapped sideways and down, then recoiled backwards. The only sound from Stirg was a kind of crack. The only sound from Roger was a sharp exhalation of breadth, the way martial arts guys do after striking a blow. Roger crouched next to the chair, instinctively waiting to see the result of the attack. Waiting to see if another blow was necessary. It was not.
Slowly Stirg’s head settled against the back of his chair. He was not unconscious, but his body automatically had gone into dormancy mode. Roger stood up and stepped back. Nev wanted to move but couldn’t. His hands clenched, and Jinny said to him, “Don’t try it.”
Gwen said, “Mercy.”
Everyone stood where they were and waited. Jinny watched Nev, but everyone else watched Stirg. Ten seconds passed, fifteen, twenty. Stirg didn’t bleed. His eyes opened and he looked at the ceiling, his breathing even and regular. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, which licked his bottom lip. When his tongue retracted into his mouth, he strained his neck muscles, ordering them to move his head to the upright position. At first the muscles failed, but then they performed. As his head came forward in slow motion the muscles failed to stop the forward movement of his head, and overcooked the vertical. He then consciously had to command the muscles to reverse the movement, and this time they achieved a vertical alignment. His eyes came into focus and they looked at Roger’s right hand. His mind re-enacted the movement of the blow, and his eyes shut. When no sensation of pain occurred, they opened again, Stirg awake and alert. Again his head moved backwards to rest on the back of the chair, but his eyes stayed open.
Jinny stepped forward and said to Nev, “Sit down.”
Gwen moved next to Roger and looked down at Stirg. She didn’t say anything, but she thought, “Ok, Roger, ok.”
Helstof stepped forward and took the glass from the table. She returned with it refilled with water, and a hand towel filled with ice. She put the glass down on the table, and stuck the towel in Stirg’s hand, which she raised to the side of his head. He got the idea, and kept it there. She said, “He’s ugly enough without a big knot on the side of his face,” and went back to her position. Gwen smiled at her husband, and then pushed him away from the chair he had been sitting in. She sat down.
Everyone at-eased, including Nev, everyone except Jinny. He stayed at loose attention, acting like his turn with violence would be next. He looked over at Roger and said, “Yeah, baby.”
Stirg was now fully
alert and looking at Gwen. She said, “Did you hear what she said? Keep the ice on your face if you don’t want a great big knot on it.” He kept the icepack against the side of his head with one hand while he checked his teeth with the other. Apparently they all still were in their previous location. He contorted his mouth a few times, and then said, “So it’s like that, huh. Ok.”
Gwen spoke. “We didn’t plan on that, but seems my husband didn’t like something about your attitude. Had to be done though; you weren’t taking us seriously, so we had to make an adjustment to your world view. I thought Roger was very judicious. I considered knocking out most of your teeth with the butt of my gun, but that would’ve created the obvious problem of you then not being able to talk, and that would’ve pissed us off more than we are now, and then our judiciousness would have taken a powder, and probably we would’ve ended up taking you and Nev on a little harbor cruise out past Fort Sumter tonight. Better this way. Now you still can talk. Take your time, Stirg. When you’re ready, we’ll listen to you tell us what you want from us. In the meantime, we’re gonna take a look around this cool house of yours. Jinny, you stay with our hosts. Don’t screw with them unless they give you reason to. If they do, the good news is that the core of this house is the Navy’s concrete cube, two feet thick, so I doubt anyone will hear the shots. C’mon,” and she motioned to the others. They started up the wide, marble staircase.
Gwenny June Page 19
