Chapter 26 – The Last Step in Russia
Plouriva got a call from Constantine Rodstra saying they wanted to meet again, and this time they wanted to meet the Junes. Plouriva said ok, and set it up for the next day. Constantine gave her an address, and the four couples met at 4pm. The address turned out to be the Rodstra’s main residence on the outskirts of the city. To say it was nice was to say that Russian caviar was just ok with French champagne. This place was big. The Junes were impressed, and so was Jinny. The Gromstovs were there too, but they seemed less impressed, which was a good sign to the team.
The fact that two Russian quasi-crime-based couples were meeting with a third Russian couple one half of which was in the country illegally, and an American couple, didn’t seem to faze any of the six Russians, so the Junes relaxed and went with the flow. They had accustomed themselves to living in a bubble of risk. Slevov Rodstra brought out a tray on which sat three bottles of wine and eight glasses. The first bottle was a Hungarian Riesling from a vineyard only a three hour drive from Vienna, just across the AustrianHungarian border. This vineyard was next to a Hungarian national park which had as one of its missions the perpetuation of a breed of dog called the Komondor. This shepherd-type dog is a national symbol of Hungary. The second bottle of wine was a cabernet franc from the Loire Valley in France. While cabernet franc is a common component of French Bordeaux blends, it’s only in the Loire that this grape can be made satisfactorily into a stand-alone wine. The third wine was, lo-and-behold, a California Central Coast zinfandel. When Roger saw the Hungarian wine, he was intrigued because he loved German Rieslings, and hoped this might be just as good. When he saw the French wine he was intrigued, because very few Americans know just how good Loire Valley cab franc can be. When he saw the zinfandel, he was astonished. How in God’s name did a bottle of that get to Saint Petersburg?
Constantine opened all three bottles and decanted the two reds. He poured the white wine into eight glasses, and offered a toast – to warm February breezes. Roger tasted, and found the slightly sweet and slightly chilled wine to be delicious. It took only a few minutes for that bottle to disappear, and for Constantine to pour the French wine. Gwen liked this better, and made a note to get some Loire cab franc when she returned to Charleston. Jinny and Plouriva didn’t have a lot of reference points to compare these wines to, but they drank them both with great pleasure and in great earnest. Whether it was the wine, or just good luck, the eight people seemed to hit it off.
It was interesting how the personalities of the Gromstovs and Rodstras changed in this new environment. Previously the Rodstras had remained closed and restrained, while the Gromstovs had been open and demonstrative. Here, in their home, the Rodstras quickly became loquacious and welcoming, while the Gromstovs seemed to hold back. Jinny and Plouriva acted as if they’d been happily married for years. Roger focused on the wine with Henric, while Gwen lit up in conversation with Slevov. Both the Rodstras and the Gromstovs spoke some English, and Roger wondered where that had come from. English was everywhere in western Europe, but not so wide-spread in eastern Europe, and certainly not in Russia, and he made a note to explore that later. Slevov brought out some goat cheese, and crackers apparently made out of highly compressed sawdust. However, the cheese went well with the cab franc, so Gwen was mollified.
At the end of the second bottle of wine and the beginning of the third, Constantine got down to business. His wife and the Gromstovs obviously had elected him as spokesperson, and he asked pointed and intelligent questions. What exactly were the June’s offering in this Charleston package? What were these houses on the water, and who owned them? What were the people like who lived nearby? What was life like in Charleston during the daytime, and at nighttime? Henric said he and Helstof had looked at Charleston websites. What, exactly, was shrimp and grits, and did one eat this in the morning or in the evening? How big were houses on The Battery, and how much did they cost? Where did the French Huguenots live who liked the old Russian czar, and did they like Russians now? Were there a lot of polizie in Charleston? Henric asked if it was easy to transfer money to and from Charleston banks, and if the government monitored these transactions? He wanted to know if there were any nice boats in Charleston, and he wanted to make sure the rivers did not freeze up in the winter, like the one in Saint Petersburg did. He didn’t think they would if it was supposed to be warm in February. It would be nice to drive a boat around and maybe drink a little vodka, and fish.
Roger looked first at Constantine, and then at Henric, and then at Jinny and finally at Gwen. He didn’t know where to start to answer all these questions, and he sensed there were lots more in the minds of Slevov and Helstof. He began to answer, but Gwen sensed he needed help. Jinny watched Roger while he sipped the cab franc. Plouriva ate some cheese and sawdust crackers, and wished there was some vodka on the table. Roger talked about the housing market in Charleston, and how it was a great time to buy real estate if someone had the money, because the market was way down. He thought about saying how a house on The Battery recently had sold for $7M, when just three years ago it was listed at $12M, but he didn’t know how to convert dollars to rubles. He asked Jinny. Jinny said, just say it in dollars, which he did. Henric immediately understood the amount. Roger said the houses on Sullivan’s Island were only about $2M now when they had been $4M only three years ago. Henric asked if there were any $7M houses on Sullivan’s Island? When he asked this question, Roger, Gwen, and Jinny all looked at each other, and smiled inwardly. Plouriva was left out of this loop because she didn’t know how much $7M was.
Roger didn’t know if there was anyone in Charleston, much less a bona fide Huguenot, that knew or cared about Czar Brettany Prentikof. He squirmed a little in the late eighteenth century chair he was sitting in, which was the signal for Gwen to take over. Jinny was watching all this because he thought something was coming. He knew Gwen would insert herself into the conversation and assert her personality, and he wondered if this was going to be a good thing or a bad thing for the team and their mission. He was apprehensive because he knew that not all men in Russia were as progressively tolerant of assertive women as he was. It was possible that either Constantine or Henric, or both, would find Gwen to be offensively pushy, and not at all attractive, except in the sexual sense. In that sense, all three billion heterosexual males on the planet would find Gwen to be attractive.
Gwen did not take over the conversation immediately, letting Roger squirm a little. She stood up, took hold of Slevov’s arm, and asked her if she would show her the kitchen. Slevov led her away, wondering what was up. Jinny wondered too, because it meant Roger would have to continue to answer questions from the two Russian gentlemen, but Jinny knew Gwen had something cooking, so he relaxed.
In the kitchen, Gwen made friends with Slevov. Gwen could get friendly with a pit bull if she wanted to. It’s a cardinal mistake to think women only use their femininity to influence men. Certainly that’s what they do most of the time, but there are instances and circumstances in which a woman wants or needs something from another woman, and brings feminine persuasive charms to bear on this need or want. Gwen sensed Slevov was a woman of power, and she sensed Slevov could help make their mission a success. She figured if she could get cozy with Slevov, then Slevov might influence her husband to help them, and that’s what happened in the Rodstra kitchen. Gwen turned the juice onto Slevov the way Deneuve had turned the juice onto Gwen. Things happened in the back seat of the big Mercedes as it rolled through the landscape of Bordeaux, Deneuve co-opting Gwen into friendship, and Gwen now did the same thing with Slevov. She leaned against a counter top and engaged Slevov, using Deneuvian tactics.
Deneuve had influenced the men and the boys in the Bordeaux vineyard in some strange way, and Gwen had watched and learned from that. Now, she put that lesson to use. When the two women re-entered the large living room, they were friends. They had bon
ded, and now what Gwen wanted, Slevov wanted.
By this time the three bottles of Austrian, French, and American wine were long gone. Gwen and Slevov assessed how things were going. Helstof and Roger were talking about guns. What’s up with that, Gwen wondered? Jinny, Constantine, and Henric were talking about sports, Jinny telling them how in America there were really violent sports to watch on TV, like cage fighting, in which the fighters actually try to seriously hurt each other. Constantine and Henric knew there was similar, sanctioned fighting in Russia, but they were surprised that in the States it was shown on TV. This interested them. Helstof asked Roger if a lot of women owned guns in the US, and he said no, just those who needed them. Evidently someone in the crowd (Jinny) had told the other Russians that guns were part of the “Charleston package.” Gwen wasn’t sure it was such a good idea to bring a focus on this part of the package, but what could she do. And it wasn’t as if she objected to it, on principle. The two women sat down and listened to the conversation. Soccer, boating in Charleston harbor, eating shrimp and grits, the temperature in February (neither Roger nor Jinny could convert Fahrenheit to Celsius in their heads, so they just made it up and hoped it was close, Jinny saying you could walk around your house naked in February if you wanted, which seemed to impress the others, especially Plouriva, who looked at Jinny with barely concealed desire), banking and funds transfer procedures, real estate laws, and American aristocracy, all were topics. The Russians never had heard of any food (shrimp and grits) native to any country that commonly was eaten at any time of the day, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, which intrigued them. Jinny’s explanation of grits was pathetic. Where he’d gotten these ideas, Gwen couldn’t fathom. She used this topic as the excuse to insert herself and Slevov into the conversation.
She was pleased to see the course the conversation had taken during the hour she and Slevov had spent in the kitchen. On the downside, she knew Jinny and Plouriva had not solved the last step required to make their Russian venture a success. The last step was….getting the goods out of the country. Gwen’s Deneuvian relationship with Slevov, coupled with her own nature, led her to a bold move. Gwen whispered into Slevov’s ear, who got up and went into the kitchen. She returned with a bottle of vodka and eight small glasses, and the look on Gwen’s face stopped the conversation. The others watched as Gwen nodded to Slevov, who filled the glasses. Gwen set the eight glasses together, touching, like a herd of elephants protecting against a predator. Gwen took a glass and knocked back the drink in one swallow. She didn’t offer a hint of a grimace. Slevov was next. Then Gwen handed a glass to Plouriva. Then she handed a glass to Helstof, Constantine, Henric, and to Jinny. With the last glass, she got up, stood next to Roger, kissed him on the mouth, and handed him his drink. Roger knew something really good was coming. He drank the vodka, put his glass down on the table, and waited. Jinny hardly could contain himself; in fact he couldn’t contain himself, and grinned, almost like a fool.
With the gesture of the toast complete, Gwen got on with her plan, hatched back in the kitchen at the end of the hour she had spent bonding with Slevov. By the end of that hour she knew she could trust her, and by extension Gwen figured she could trust her husband, Constantine. She couldn’t extend this trust to the Gromstovs, but, she was a risk-taker, so she closed her eyes for a moment, transported herself back to the Mercedes flowing through the countryside of France, touching shoulders with Catherine Deneuve, letting affinity flow from Deneuve into herself. She called on this, and opened her eyes. She looked at Constantine, and then at Henric. She looked back at Constantine, and then again at Henric, entering the two men. Roger watched. Jinny watched. Plouriva watched. Helstof understood what was happening intuitively, but could not follow it rationally. Jinny understood completely, because he had seen this happen back in France. He was a bit of an old hand at this stuff now, and continued grinning. He loved this woman.
Gwen began talking about the Charleston package. She exposed their strategy to the Russians. She told them the truth, how they wanted to sell the Russians expensive houses, French wine, and antiques to put in their new vacation houses. She told them she could make their time spent in Charleston during the winter months interesting, with fancy dinners, meeting interesting Americans, walking their borzoi dogs on the beach, helping them with business matters, and taking them to the nearby outdoor gun range on Forest Service land, to shoot at targets with Russian, American, and Austrian handguns.
She told Constantine and Henric they had all those amenities lined up nice and neat, with one exception. The two Russian heavy-weights didn’t ask, “And what is that?” They just waited, entranced by the Deneuvian vibes. Gwen said, “We need help with the Russian antiques, with the works of art. We have them, here, in Saint Petersburg. We need to get them to Charleston.”
Gwen’s team had not anticipated this move, going to the Rodstras and Gromstovs with the truth. Constantine and Henric and Helstof and Slevov all looked at each other, trying to understand the implications. The Americans seemed to be saying they had, or were going to procure, Russian heritage objects, and take them to the States, and then sell them to visiting Russians. Was that right? Was that what the Americans were saying was part of the Charleston package?
Constantine coolly filled his and Henric’s glasses with more vodka. They both knocked this back and returned their gaze to the Americans. They looked at each other, then at their wives, and at Plouriva and Jinny. Henric thought he had been pretty clever with his manipulations of LUKOIL proceeds. Constantine thought he had been deviously successful in his dealings with the Chinese computer companies. Both of them now examined the Americans and their proposed procurement of Russian antiquities, and they needed to stretch their legs and their minds over this, so they got up and went into the next room. The others sat back and relaxed.
In ten minutes the men came back and sat down. Henric spoke. “We are Russians, and we love our country, except in winter, when we hate our country. We understand the Charleston package, and we like what we hear. Do you?” he asked, looking at Slevov and Helstof. They nodded affirmatively. Henric continued, “It seems you want to steal some Russian furniture and stuff, and we have no problem with that, under one condition: the stuff has to come to us, in Charleston. We are Russians, and we like Russian things, and it would be nice to have Russian things in our American houses in America. But, you can’t steal the Russian stuff and sell it to other people. That is the deal.”
Now it was Roger, Gwen, Jinny, and Plouriva’s turn to get up and go into the next room for ten minutes of conference. In the living room, Roger had mentioned his plan included the provision of selling the Russian objects on the Charleston antiques market. The four teammates were coming to understand who they were dealing with now, these Rodstras and the Gromstovs. They all looked at Plouriva and smiled, tacitly acknowledging what a good job she had done in picking these as the first Russians to approach with the Charleston package. The team had gotten very lucky, finding people with serious money, ready for new pastures, and with the unusual combination of being cultured and shady.
The two Americans and the two Russians returned to the others, and Roger said, fine, it was a deal, all the goods would go to Russians in America. But he mentioned that so far there only were the two Rodstras and the two Gromstovs, letting that statement float in the air. Constantine waved this concern away as inconsequential, and Henric sniffed it away. The four teammates took this to mean there were more Russians of the same persuasion that could be brought into the fold. Could these other Russians be trusted? The risk-taking continued.
Henric asked what the teammates needed. He was in business mode, confident and aggressive. Plouriva said they needed a way to get five or six large rooms full of small “furniture” out of Saint Petersburg, to a port, and onto a container ship. Constantine and Henric lapsed into speaking Russian, so the Junes sat back and relaxed. Jinny reached fo
r the vodka bottle, but Gwen stopped him with a subtle look. She didn’t want him losing any control at this point in the negotiations, not that he was contributing much. Slevov and Helstof got up and went into the kitchen, and soon the smell of sautéing onions and garlic wafted into the meeting room. The two Russian men had it figured out in about fifteen minutes, and Roger wondered if all Russian business was conducted like this. The reality was no, not all business was this easy, except maybe when you had sumo-style guys like Constantine and Henric involved. Constantine, again speaking English, laid out the new plan.
His primary business was computers. Big computers. Big computers come in big boxes. They come all the way from China in big boxes, and over the last five years Russia had bought a lot of these machines. Constantine had seen these arrive in Moscow on numerous occasions, because he insisted on personally welcoming this very valuable equipment into the country. Most of these supercomputers stayed in or around Moscow, but some were shipped to other Russian cities or to remote and secret installations. He had seen the empty crates after the equipment had been removed, and he said he could have some of these crates brought to Saint Petersburg. The computing units themselves were only the size of large cars, but the amount of ancillary equipment needed to serve the computers was enormous: mass storage units, power provision units, cabling units, security units, etc. The fans required to keep these beasts from overheating were similar to those used in stadium air-conditioning systems. So there were plenty of really big wooden crates lying around.
This seemed to solve part of the problem of getting the stuff out of the warehouses and out of the Hermitage compound, but what about getting it out of the country and to Charleston. Henric had the juice to ship oil equipment where and when he wanted, because the important Russian military-industrial complex operations were not subject to the petty requirements of law. Security, yes, but not law. Henric said things could happen with these crates. Jinny had told Plouriva that Charleston was one of America’s largest and busiest shipping container ports, and Plouriva had told the Russians. Henric said the crates could be on a ship heading somewhere westward, with just two weeks' notice. The ship may make twenty port calls in fifteen countries, but eventually it, and the crates, would end up in Charleston.
The conversation stopped. These two Russian men just had conspired to steal Russian heritage materials and smuggle them out of the country, and they acted as if they had agreed to sell and buy a used car. To Jinny, this was not exactly surprising, not that he ever had been involved in something of this magnitude, but certainly he knew how business in general was conducted. He was enjoying all of this, seeing how the plan he had conceived was taking form. Plouriva was relieved to see that her part (stealing the stuff from the warehouses) was not the end of the road, and that the next step had been figured out. Roger and Gwen were shocked, but they were adept at covering this up. They sat placidly, listening, amazed. Like so much that had happened in the formation and execution of this caper, this last Russian step fell like manna from the sky, but they were not people to question good fortune. They believe people make their own luck.
As the conversation lapsed, Slevov and Helstof returned. They carried heavy trays of dishes, and led the way to the large and ornately decorated dining room. They set these on the table, and Slevov then brought out from the pantry refrigerator two bottles of champagne. Roger noted with utter astonishment that the bottles were Selosse. In America these would have to be bought through a special broker, or at auction, not at a retail store, and he was amazed to see them here. Gwen wondered how Slevov and Helstof knew the deal was done, and that they needed to supply a symbolic congratulatory toast. They had been in the kitchen, preparing food. Gwen wondered about Russian mystical communication. When the dishes were uncovered, Roger and Gwen saw a main dish composed of onions, garlic, potatoes (of course), beef, and tomato paste. The garlic smelled great, but Gwen knew that it had been sautéed in corn oil. What a waste of good garlic. Gwen saw she would have plenty to do in the acculturation department with her new friend Slevov. In any case the food was decent and the champagne was great. Selosse always is great. The six Russians and the two Americans ate and drank together, comrades now in an international conspiracy scheme that would lead, hopefully, to good times for some and good money for others.
Aristocratic Thieves Page 26
