Aristocratic Thieves

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 35: Russians and Their Antiques in Charleston

  The two cars pulled into the June’s driveway about 7pm. Roger and the four Russkies bailed out of the van, practically sick from fermenting in container ship bilge smells for two hours. Gwen came up to them and said, “How’s it going guys?” but smiles were in short supply. Gwen took the four commandos into the backyard and told them to strip. They were only too glad to oblige. While they were doing this she got out the garden hose, and handed it to Jinny. She also handed Jinny a large plastic garbage bag and pointed to the growing pile of dark blue Coast Guard uniforms. Roger took hold of the dufflebag, and went into the house to calm the dog.

  In a few minutes three Russian men and one Russian woman entered the Junes house in their underwear. Gwen took Plouriva into the master bath and put her into the shower. Roger took the three guys into a guest room, and pointed to the bathroom. He said there were towels in the closet. At this point Jinny looked at PeterPater, and PeterPater looked at Jinny and then at Roger. After a minute of this, PeterPater went into the bathroom together. Jinny and Roger got out of there. Roger went to the refrigerator and took out eggs, cheese, and cold cuts, and from the freezer took out two packages of homefries. Jinny got with the program, cracking and beating two dozen eggs in a large bowl. Roger dumped the homefries into a giant skillet on top of olive oil. Then he got out the sourdough bread and arranged that with the cheeses and cold cuts on a huge platter. Gwen came into the kitchen to see Jinny standing at the counter in his underwear, beating the eggs. She looked at Roger, who went back to his potatoes. She took the sandwich platter into the dining room, came back to the kitchen and got six bottles of Samuel Adams out of the fridge and six tall beer glasses from the cabinet. Jinny had learned Gwen’s rule that drinking beer out of the bottle is a crudity worthy of capital punishment. He thought that was crazy, but at the same time he was into learning manners.

  Roger handed the spatula to Jinny and went back to the guestroom with three sets of his clothes, which he dumped on the bed. He got out of there again before the guys came out of the bath. Plouriva came into the kitchen, Jinny handed her the spatula and headed for the guestroom. He asked Roger if the guys, “were done?” Roger said, “Yeah,” hoping Jinny would barge in maybe a little too early. Ha Ha. Soon Peter and Pater came into the kitchen dressed in Roger’s clothes. Gwen motioned them into the dining room and told them to pour the beers. She emphasized the word pour, hoping they would understand she meant into glasses and not directly into their mouths. The eggs and the potatoes were ready and were carried into the dining room at the same time Jinny appeared, clean and dressed. The six members of the team sat down together, filling six of the twelve chairs that surrounded the 1794 Loudin solid walnut dining table. Gwen was relieved to see the beer in the glasses. Everybody looked hungry. Roger stood up, raised his glass, and said, “Antiques, French wine, great food, ocean front property, and warm weather.” He sat down and they fell to.

  All twenty-four eggs and two packages of potatoes and several sandwiches disappeared. So did twelve beers. When this was done the dog was admitted into the house, where it carefully inspected the three newcomers. The cat stayed under the bed. When Gwen made to get up, Jinny quickly sat her back down and motioned to Peter and Pater to follow him into the kitchen, loaded with dishes from the table. Sounds of dishwashing commenced, which pleased Gwen and Roger no end. They led Plouriva into the living room, and fifteen minutes later the Russian men joined them.

  Roger took the lead. “Did you clean your fingerprints off the guns and accessory belts you left at the Coast Guard station?”

  Gwen looked at him like, “What are we, amateurs?"

  He interpreted this as a Yes and said, “Ok.” He said, “We need to dump the uniforms pronto, and take the rental back.” Jinny raised his hand. Done. Gwen then said Jinny and Plouriva could have the south room and the guys could have the third floor room. Done. Roger looked at Jinny and asked, “Why the hell are Constantine and Henric and the wives coming tomorrow. Don’t we have enough to do without them showing up?” Jinny just shrugged his shoulders, but got up and went into the hallway and came back with the dufflebag, which he opened and from which he dumped the contents on the floor. They all looked, and they all decided the sight of money spoke louder than words. Roger asked, “How much?” and again Jinny shrugged his shoulders. Gwen got up and thumbed through the stacks.

  She said, “All hundreds, used.” She fanned one stack slowly, trying to gauge the number of bills. She did the arithmetic quickly, and then counted the number of stacks. More arithmetic, at which point the look on her face changed to a smile. She said, “Somewhere over five million.” They would learn the next day the count was over six million.

  Roger said, “Ok, so what’s up with them coming and what’s up with the money?”

  Jinny simply answered that Slevov and Helstof were excited about the deal, and they didn’t want to wait around, so they were coming. Jinny joked that the money was, “Just pocket money,” and it may not have been so much a joke as reality. With this staring them in the face, all six little brains started operating in fantasy mode. If five mil is pocket money, then what amount was serious money for Henric and Constantine and their wives? Roger cut off the fantasizing pretty quickly and got back to the two immediate problems: the 4am arrival of the next wave of Russians, to be followed shortly by the arrival of the nine containers. Gwen reminded everyone about the cats. The division of labor was obvious to Roger. Gwen was the social organizer and he was the stolen goods organizer. So he suggested to his wife that she take Plouriva, Peter, and Pater into the dining room and deal with Henric and Constantine, and he and Jinny would figure out what to do with the containers (and the cats). Roger asked, with a certain rather pointed tone to his voice, exactly how the cats had come into the picture and who they belonged to.

  For the first time Pater spoke up, and said, “The cats belong to the ship’s cook.”

  Roger waited for the follow up, thinking he probably wasn’t going to like it very much. He gestured, “And?”

  Peter said, “It was part of the deal. We could get out of the container after three days rather than eight days if we take the cats and keep them until the cook gets off the ship the next time it comes to Charleston. That’s when the cook quits being a cook and starts being a rich Charlestonian living on Sullivan’s Island.”

  Pater said, “I volunteered to keep the cats for him. Russian blues are incredible cats, very smart, and they were the cats of the czars, like Czar Brettany Prentikof, and so they should be very happy in Charleston.”

  Roger stared at Pater for a moment trying to follow this logic, but gave up and looked at Gwen, who looked down at the dog sleeping at her feet. So Roger looked at Jinny, and said, “Fill in the missing pieces, here.”

  When Jinny looked up at the ceiling and didn’t answer right away, Roger had second thoughts about his question, so he said, “Ok, forget that, we’ll talk about it later. Right now we gotta deal with the arrival of the people and the containers.” So Gwen took her staff into the dining room and Roger and Jinny got to work on the container issue. Roger figured this was a three beer problem, and got two more beers from the fridge. This brought up the question in Roger’s mind about whether they make beer in Russia. Jinny said no, they steal as much beer as they need from the Czech Republic, which makes great beer. Roger didn’t pursue that topic any further.

  Jinny and Roger figured out they needed a much bigger warehouse than the one Roger had rented before they left on the trip overseas. Jinny told Roger that instead of receiving the container paperwork digitally via email, Henric and Constantine would have it with them, so they would get the paperwork the next day that authorized the goods in the containers as having been approved for export by Russian customs and property management divisions. Roger said, “What about the ninth container, the one you and the
others, theoretically, would have arrived in at the Charleston Ports Authority terminal?”

  Jinny added, “And the cats.” Jinny said he really didn’t know about the ninth container, he didn’t really know what Henric and Constantine’s plan was.

  Roger took a long pull on his beer, and said, “Are you telling me you didn’t know how you were going to be smuggled past the Department of Homeland Security, into the United States of America?”

  Jinny said, “No, I just figured Henric and Constantine would make it happen somehow, and they did, didn’t they?”

  Roger thought this through, which didn’t take long given the lack of normal logic. He gave up, and said, “So what do we do about the ninth container?” Jinny shrugged. Roger decided the only option was to treat the ninth container like the other eight containers. He hoped the paperwork he would get tomorrow from Henric and Constantine would include it. This paperwork said these were goods legitimately being exported to the United States. DHS could inspect the eight containers if they wanted, and all would be ok. But, if they inspected the ninth container they would find two Russian blue cats. What then? They would have to deal with that on the fly. Roger had made arrangements with a trucking company to pick up nine containers and take them to the warehouse. They would stick with that plan. The Russians would arrive early tomorrow, and the containers would arrive early the next day after the short trip from Savannah.

  Plouriva, Peter, and Pater went to bed. Gwen met the Russians at the airport at 4am in a big car, and took them to the Charleston Place Hotel, where she installed them in suites. She got the paperwork and gave it to Roger, who took it to the ports terminal the next day and presented it to DHS. They opened one of the eight containers on the manifest paperwork, scanned the remaining eight containers for radioactivity, and processed them onto the trucks and out of the terminal. The cats kept quiet. Roger and Jinny found a larger warehouse in the same complex as the original warehouse, and shifted their lease to it. The laborers showed up on schedule, and the goods were moved from the containers into the warehouse. Pater opened the ninth container, and two Russian blue cats, one boy and one girl, jumped into his arms. They stunk of fish, but Pater was happy.

  So the result of all this was that four Russian people and two Russian cats were living in the June’s home, and four other Russian quasi-gangsters (well, two Russian quasi-gangsters, and their wives) were living at the Charleston Place Hotel. The incriminating evidence had been destroyed and the smelly van had been returned to the rental company and eight giant containers of Class C artifacts stolen from the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg now resided in a warehouse in Charleston. And six million dollars in cash was stashed under Constantine’s bed at the hotel.

  What’s next?