Aristocratic Thieves

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 22 – Off and Running

  After some affection time, and then a long alcohol and stress induced nap, Jinny awoke with a hangover. He didn’t mind because he thought he might have scored the team’s first clients. Plouriva thought so too. Jinny took a shower, brewed some tea using six bags, and told Plouriva he had to meet the Junes that evening at the Corinthia to tell them about this first client contact. The Junes had not expected to see Jinny on the evening of the first day in Saint Petersburg. They knew he had two very difficult tasks: come up with the Russians who would want to spend winters in Charleston, and steal a bunch of artwork from Russia’s greatest museum. They had figured it would take Jinny several days to set this in motion. So they were surprised when the room phone rang and Jinny said, “I’m here.” They told him to come up.

  Jinny and Plouriva entered the hotel room and flopped down on the beds. Both had slightly formed smiles on their faces, which the Junes took to mean something good. Plouriva asked the Junes what they had done. “Slept and drunk some bad coffee,” was the reply. The Junes had not yet ventured out. Gwen asked what she and Jinny had done, and they looked at each other with unveiled affection. Gwen got the message. Plouriva was a very expressive person, and blurted out the success they had had with the Rodstras and the Gromstovs. Jinny let her have her rein. Plouriva described the two couples, how they had drunk a bottle of French wine together, how Jinny masterfully described Charleston and what the Russians could do there and why they should go there for the winter. The memories of this description excited Plouriva; she veritably bubbled, a description not often applied to Russian women. Jinny sat quietly with a look of satisfaction on his face.

  The Junes were amazed and pleased. They figured Plouriva had a hand in this, but they had learned earlier that Jinny possessed a formidable array of knowledge, skills, and abilities. If they sensed he did not, they would not have entered into this project with him. Roger began questioning them about the prospective clients. Were they smart? Were they cultured? Are they connected to the Russian mob? What do they look like? How did they dress? And, of course, how much money did they appear to have, and how willing were they to part with it? Roger looked first at Jinny and then at Plouriva, and asked, “Can we trust them?”

  Gwen looked at her husband and said “Give them a break. They can’t know all that from just one meeting.”

  Roger said, “Yes, dear,” and then again asked Jinny, “Can we trust them?” Jinny didn’t answer right away. He laid back on the bed with his feet on the floor. He still had a hangover, but he was ok with that, because he had earned it in the line of duty. Roger looked at Plouriva, and silently asked the same question.

  Plouriva took hold of Jinny hand. He nodded to her, and she said, “Yes, I think we can trust them. My connections recommended them. I was told a little about them, and a little about what they’re looking for. Gromstov was in oil. Before he was in oil he was KGB when Putin was the boss there. When Putin went on to bigger things, Gromstov found himself installed at LUKOIL. LUKOIL is BIG, and that means large sums of money were available for the taking.

  “Rodstra was involved with computers. Big computers, the kind that crunch numbers that simulate the detonation of nuclear weapons. Very few of these computers come from IBM or Dell or Intel. These come from China by way of Bulgaria. They don’t have colorful little brand name stickers on them. They kind of look like they’ve been assembled in someone’s garage out of spare automobile parts. But inside, they have the horsepower, and the Chinese don’t give these away. They sell them for very large sums of money, and Rodstra got his share of that. Gromstov and Rodstra didn’t know each other, and were not aware that it was Gromstov’s oil money that bought Rodstra’s computers.”

  If things went the way Jinny and Plouriva hoped they would, maybe Gromstov and Rodstra would discover this strange connection one day while talking and sipping a Chateau Palmer together, sitting on the fourth floor deck of one of their houses overlooking the Sullivan’s Island beach. Even more strange would be the possibility of them watching a container ship pass by the island as it entered Charleston harbor, carrying antiques pilfered by the team from the Hermitage that were destined to end up in the Russian’s homes away from home.

  That was all Plouriva had to say about the backgrounds of the two Russian couples. A determination about trustworthiness would have to come from more time spent with them, and the all-important final intuition scans by Roger, Gwen, Jinny, and Plouriva. This entire operation was high risk, and they would have to live with that, but so far, so good. Roger and Gwen looked at each other, and smiled. Then they smiled at Plouriva and Jinny, and the smiles said, “good job.” Gwen’s vivaciousness appeared, and she said, “Drinks are on us, let’s have dinner.”

  Roger had to nix this idea because he knew an issue would come up. The issue was Plouriva, and her being seen in public with the three “Americans.” Was it ok to associate, or not? They talked it over, and decided it was not ok. From here on out, Plouriva would have to stay away from the Junes and from the hotel. Jinny could meet with Plouriva at the apartment. The team had no reason to think they would come under any suspicion, but why take unnecessary risks. They would continue with the process of Jinny and Plouriva dealing with the Russians and the antiques, and Jinny would meet with the Junes in public when the need arose. The confidence of the team was up after this initial success, and Roger and Gwen embraced Plouriva before she left the hotel room alone.

  Over dinner in the hotel dining room, the three remaining teammates did not talk shop. They talked art. That, supposedly, was what they were doing in Saint Petersburg. They talked about the Hermitage. Jinny told them about the museum itself, and how it was arranged. Or at least how it was when he worked there years ago. He said nothing ever changed at the Hermitage, and that was part of its character and identity. He said he was sure there were wastebaskets somewhere that hadn’t been emptied in a hundred years. Jinny gave them information about treasures great and small, and how to move methodically from room to room to get a feel for the types of artifacts and objects that had come to reside in this immense palace. The objective for the Junes was to understand the quality of material in the main building, and by doing so to comprehend, with Jinny’s help, the quality and types of material in the warehouses. The Junes had taken a day of rest to acclimatize themselves to the city. Tomorrow, they told Jinny, they would make their first visit to the museum.