A Deal to Die For

by Albert Able

  Igor thought for a moment. “Well from now on there is going to be a small difference in the routine.” He looked into the dispatcher’s eyes. “Whatever they paid you we will double it; that is if you throw in your lot with us. Oh, and the driver gets a proper cut this time, right?”

  The dispatcher nodded agreement.

  “The difference now,” Igor continued in a conversational tone “will be that in future the returns are going to be much smaller and that means that eventually you will be challenged by your Muscovite friends and all you have to do is simply say that the plant seems to be using much more fuel these days. Simple, yes?”

  For the next three months everything went according to plan, with much of the diesel oil being delivered to the hungry towns and villages close to the tanker’s weekly route.

  The bartering produced an abundance of fresh food and home comforts for Igor’s team. Even the KGB men were seduced by the luxury of fresh steaks - and of course, the excellent Vodka.

  Then Igor received an urgent message from the dispatcher that he needed to see him.

  “You’ve been good to me Igor,” the driver said quietly, “so I must warn you there was something about the way the dispatcher spoke to me. He seemed, well, unsure of himself, I don’t know quite...?”

  Sensing trouble, Igor agreed to the meeting. “So you think I may need a little extra muscle, eh?” He winked at the driver.

  The nervous driver ran his fingers through his hair. “All I know is that they’re very dangerous people, so please be careful.”

  “I appreciate your concern.” Igor patted the man’s arm comfortingly; his gentle manner camouflaged the sometimes hard and calculating side of his character.

  With the provision of so many improvements in their living standards at the camp, Igor’s relationship with the KGB officer and his men had changed completely. So when he learned of Igor’s need for assistance the KGB Commander decided to go in person.

  “It will be interesting to see just who these Muscovite crooks are,” he said with interest.

  With Igor sitting beside the driver in the tanker, followed by the military truck and the same two men who had accompanied him on their last visit, there was no sign of the dispatcher, as the little convoy rumbled to a halt at the depot.

  The KGB men followed in their own vehicle and remained out of sight.

  Igor cautiously stepped from the cab of the tanker and walked towards the ram-shackle hut. He was about five metres away when the door swung back and a squat, round-faced man stepped out to face Igor.

  Wearing a long glossy leather coat, which appeared to be a couple of sizes too big for him, he held a cigarette in one hand and a large handgun seemed to dangle from the other.

  “Stop right there,” the squat man commanded sternly. The gun, however, remained pointing at the ground.

  Igor had anticipated that he would be challenged but the sight of the short tubby man made him smile inwardly. It was, he imagined, just like something out one of those old Hollywood gangster movies.

  Igor laughed, pointing at the gun and smiling convincingly.

  “Good lord man, be careful with that! I’m not armed or dangerous.”

  Clearly unsure of himself, the squat man looked back into the shadow of the doorway.

  “What do you want me to do boss?” he grunted out of the corner of his mouth.

  In his peripheral vision Igor saw two other armed men had moved across to the military truck and were standing, their weapons pointing at his men seated inside.

  “Look, I’m not armed. I came in answer to your invitation, why all the firepower? If you have something to discuss, let’s discuss it?” Igor faced the squat man and raised his hands in surrender.

  A taller man appeared at the door. “Are you the man who is trying to muscle in on our business?” he asked abruptly.

  “Are we going to stand around out here to discuss it, where we may be seen at any moment?” Igor replied, ignoring the question.

  The taller man looked about, then waved Igor forward. “In here,” he instructed.

  Igor lowered his hands and stepped into the hut, the dispatcher was tied to a chair his head lolling to one side.

  “Your friend here told us everything.” The taller man nodded towards the unconscious dispatcher, then looked sharply at Igor and snapped: “We do not allow others to interfere with our business and...”

  The double tone blast of a car’s horn stopped him in mid sentence.

  “Go and see what that’s all about,” the taller man ordered.

  The squat man opened the shack door and looked out. A black Mercedes saloon had appeared outside the hut. A smartly uniformed chauffeur stood holding the rear door open as a KGB officer emerged.

  The squat man lurched back out of sight. “KGB!” he hissed.

  “What, out here?” The tall man exclaimed in disbelief, just as the door of the shack opened.

  For a moment nothing happened; then a large uniformed man appeared in the doorway.

  “Excuse me, I wonder if you can help us?” He asked politely, adjusting his eyes to the relative gloom of the interior of the hut. “We are looking for...” He paused as his eyes fell on the man still tied to the chair. “What’s going on here?” he said with renewed authority.

  The squat man started to pull out his pistol; Igor dived at him knocking him sideways. The weapon clattered to the floor. Igor reacted quickly. He picked up the pistol and stood back, covering the man who elected to stay on the floor, the terrified spectra of complete confusion on his face.

  At the same moment the KGB officer’s hand appeared from his coat holding a heavy revolver. He smiled thinly at the unarmed man on the floor. The revolver exploded in his hand and the squat man’s head jerked back, blood already seeping from a wound to the side of his head.

  Although everyone in the shack was deafened by the confined discharge of the KGB officer’s gun, Igor shouted angrily. “What did you do that for? I have his gun!”

  The glowering KGB officer whose gun was still raised ignored Igor and was obviously ready to kill the unarmed taller man, but Igor, recognising the KGB man’s killing rage, lunged at him.

  “No!” he shouted, just managing to push the man’s gun aside as he fired again, so that the bullet buried itself harmlessly in the floor.

  The KGB man recovered quickly and stood like a bull ready to charge but Igor pushed himself between him and the tall, unarmed man.

  “I think we’ve done enough,” he said calmly, holding up his hand.

  The KGB officer stood for a moment, his expression glazed, and then, exhaling noisily, lowered his head and appeared to relax.

  Outside the shack the two gunmen holding Igor’s men captive in the truck, distracted by the arrival of the KGB limousine and the subsequent gunfire, made it easy for Igor’s men to overpower them and found themselves pushed roughly inside the shack, where they were made to kneel with their hands on their heads.

  Looking down at the men Igor smiled, trying to bring some calm to the situation.

  “Looks like a clean sweep, lads.”

  Then, looking with concern at the unconscious man on the floor, he observed: “This one needs immediate attention.”

  He knelt and examined the wounded man more closely, and then addressed them: “Right you two can go.”

  He looked across at the captured kneeling men: “Providing you take this one with you and take him straight to hospital, agreed?”

  The look of relief on their faces was clear.

  “Go on then!” Igor urged the hesitant men.

  They were clearly suspicious that they may be attacked from behind as they departed and stood up cautiously, then hastily half-carried, half-dragged the bleeding unconscious man out of the shack.

  Igor had always been tro
ubled by the dreadful actions perpetrated by the regular Afghan Commando with whom he had made the deal to stand back and turn a blind eye to their unspeakable atrocities. Now he could have let it all happen again, but suddenly he knew that this was the moment he could start to make amends, if only for his conscience sake.

  And so, in that brief moment of silence he had chosen to hold back his men from what could easily have been a massacre.

  He looked up at the defiant KGB officer and then at his disappointed men. He reasoned: “They’re just pawns in a game.” Pausing, he added: “Just trying to make a living like the rest of us in this mixed up world.”

  Igor justified his action and then he looked back at the tall man from Moscow.

  No one spoke or moved; they all seemed to be waiting for someone else to decide. Then Igor changed the mood: “Now this one may be different.”

  He rubbed his chin and held the taller man in his gaze as he decided how to handle the situation.

  “Yes, you can go as well,” Igor finally pronounced, “because they’ll need your car to get that man to hospital in time. But I also want you to advise your masters that others are in control of this business now. Is that clear?” Igor pointed to the stern faced KGB man standing silently to one side. “And I may not always be able to keep some of them in check?”

  The tall man had clearly believed that he had been about to die, nodded agreement, his mouth too dry to speak.

  “OK, boys. We can go now. I don’t expect we’ll have any more trouble here now, will we?”

  Igor Pulaski glared at the tall man from Moscow, who to his credit proudly squared his shoulders and walked erect, his heart pounding in his chest, certain that he was about to be shot on his way back to car. So it was with an enormous sigh of relief that he joined the others and drove away in silence.

  As the car moved away, someone shouted. “Tell them Pulaski’s Dogs are running things now!”

  Inside the shack, the dispatcher had regained consciousness and quietly thanked Igor for saving his life. “I’m truly ashamed to have given in to those thugs but when they threatened to cut off my dick with my own secateurs,” he indicated the vicious garden implement lying on the scruffy table, “I’m afraid I caved in.”

  Igor reached over, picked up the secateurs, scrutinising them closely. He flipped open the release catch and snapped them a couple of times, his face winced in mock agony.

  “Quite frankly I don’t blame you, my friend.” Igor looked down at the wretched man and gingerly replaced the ugly cutters on the table.

  “If I were you though, I’d keep them out of sight in future, just in case!”

  ***

  The collapse of Russia’s totalitarian Communist State and the termination of much of their vast nuclear weapon programme signalled the regeneration of its industrial economy.

  All of this had an immediate and, what seemed at the time, a disastrous effect on Igor Pulaski and his men’s future as their role at the camp was being taken over by regular army troops, accompanied by a discreet team of United Nations weapon inspectors.

  There would be no fat redundancy package for Igor or his team, just a notice to quit and return to their homes.

  Captain Igor Pulaski addressed his men for the last time. “I am sorry, boys, but we have to start again. The new Russia will be in a mess for a while but I am absolutely sure she will be great again and we will all prosper. It is only a question of time. As for the present, however, all I know is that we are all several months behind with our pay cheques and I can’t say whether or if we will ever receive them. But there is still a bit of cash left in our ‘special product’ pot,” Igor cocked his head and winked, “so I am dividing it equally among you all.”

  Some of the men cheered.

  Igor raised his hand. “I just want to thank you for the privilege of serving with you all.” He paused for a moment.

  There were several shouts of “It was our pleasure to be a ‘Pulaski Dog’” and “Good luck to you, Comrade.”

  Igor raised his hands again to calm the well-meaning men. “I wish I could do more but it will help a bit until everything gets sorted out, but now you must get back to your families and start a new life. I wish you all well.”

  The gathering slowly broke up as each man came to terms with his own personal dilemma.

  Igor Pulaski, Yuri and Ramon, the two men who had helped him operate the ‘fuel distribution’ business, loaded their belongings and as much equipment as they could pack into the military truck. As they were about to leave, to their surprise the tanker rumbled into camp.

  “I think a modest bonus has just fallen into our hands.” Igor grinned as he climbed up beside the driver.

  “Good morning Igor.” The driver greeted him. “I guessed that you might need one final load?”

  “You, my friend, are a living miracle!” Igor shook the out stretched hand. “I don’t know what your plans are, but are we heading for St Petersburg?”

  “Nice idea, Igor, but I have to stay with my family. So I suggest that you drop me near to my depot and I will report the tanker stolen.”

  The driver smiled at Igor. “It is a fairly common event in these uncertain times, is it not?”

  Igor nodded understanding and jumped down from the tanker.

  The driver gave a casual salute, put the tanker into gear and slipped away without any further ceremony. Igor and his friends followed in the battered old military truck.

  For the next twelve months Igor and his colleagues lived by selling the fuel from the tanker until it ran out; thereafter they were obliged to live on their wits, ducking and diving around the murky dock area of St Petersburg. They engaged in any kind of trade, much of it illegal, they cared little, just so long as they made enough to keep their stomachs full.

  The old military truck had proved to be particularly useful and had not attracted any attention from the authorities as they distributed their illicit goods around the area, particularly as Igor had always insisted that the truck be driven by one of their wives or girlfriends at the time.

  “The vehicle always looks so much more legitimate with a smartly dressed female driver at the wheel,” Igor easily persuaded them.

  It was the success of this simple technique that gave Igor the inspiration to develop a legitimate nationwide transport organisation and to quit the constant nightmare of crime.

  “To make this business work we need to have an edge and to make our service that little bit extra special,” Igor encouraged his colleagues.

  Their chance came when they were asked if they could legitimately transport a load of imported furniture to Moscow. Alas, their battered old truck with its leaky canopy ensured that it was not at all suitable and had it not been for Yuri’s outlandish suggestion, they would almost certainly have missed out on what was to prove to be the first link to their new enterprise.

  “How about buying a new truck?” Yuri suggested, cocking his head to one side inviting a response.

  “For a start,” he continued without allowing any time for a response, “the old tanker’s still a runner, so I bet we could tart her up enough to part-ex her for something suitable?”

  Ramon chipped in, adding enthusiastically: “You’re right, and I’m sure old Serge at the garage could conjure up some acceptable paperwork for it!” “Why didn’t I think of that?” Igor grinned with excitement as the seeds of his future empire started its first stage of germination.

  Within twenty-four hours they had cleaned up the tanker, removed any sign of its previous ownership and changed the colours without being too obvious.

  Old Serge did indeed produce the required papers and also introduced them to a man from Sweden who was interested in a trade. Within three days the deal was completed and Igor and his friends found themselves the proud owners of not one, but two, large covered Volvo
lorries.

  They were far from new but infinitely better than the old military truck and comfortably allowed them to complete that first delivery of furniture. Furthermore, the contract had not only been completed on time but to the customer’s surprised satisfaction and at a very competitive rate. Consequently that contract was followed by more deliveries for the same furniture company, soon to be followed by a growing number of others as news of the efficient and competitive service from ‘Pulaski Transport’ quickly spread.

  Still looking for that elusive edge, Igor decided to follow their philosophy of using female drivers and two of the women who had so cheerfully driven crates of stolen vodka and other goods for them were now formally employed by the fledgling organisation.

  The new drivers were not only smartly uniformed but were also made entirely responsible for the welfare of their vehicle; ensuring that they were always fully serviced and cleaned before setting out on any journey.

  It was from that moment that they agreed to abandon all their other activities and go legitimate.

  Initially, the immaculately attired drivers suffered petty mockery from the drivers of other trucking companies, not because they were female, which is common enough in Russia, but because of their smartly turned out uniforms and brightly painted lorries. Unsurprisingly, they were soon to be christened ‘Pulaski’s Dames’.

  The scoffing dried up, however, when it was discovered that due to the unique performance related bonus scheme devised by Igor, ‘Pulaski’s Dames’ earned double the average national wage earned by most other truck drivers.

  During the next twelve months, Igor added an extra six large trans-continental lorries to the fleet. Three years on and they were the biggest single privately owned and operated trucking business in Russia.

  Captain Igor Pulaski was a Hero of Russia and just as his ‘Pulaski Dogs’ had established an almost mythical status, his ‘Pulaski Dames’ were now enjoying a similar reputation. So when they suddenly suffered a number of local hijackings, Igor was incensed and as always took instant decisive action by enlisting the support of several articles in the national newspaper and via local radio interviews.