Chapter 74 – Thoughts of Sabotage
Two days after Stirg arrived back in Charleston, three days after the Saint Petersburg opening night, and four days before the Charleston opening night, Gwen called a full team meeting at The Hall. She had debated reading to the team, including the Mariinsky dancers, some of the reviews of the Russian production, and decided against it. She didn’t want to embarrass the junior Russian dancers, and she figured her Russian dancers would read them on their own, anyway. What she did do was to talk about the world premiere.
“Three days ago the Mariinsky Ballet Company did the first production of Stravinsky’s 1914 score. So they get credit for the world premiere. Too bad, as that was one of our goals, but that’s way it goes sometimes in a competition like this. I’m sure some of you have seen reviews of the production, and you can form your own judgments about those. What I want us to do is focus on Saturday night. Our premiere, our production, our team. It’s going to be very beautiful, and it’s going to mark new territory for ballet. We have great music, we have great dancers,” and she waved her arms out to the theater seats, “we have great choreography, and we have someone who is going to play the music like no one has done before. Our performance will make its mark in ballet history. Thank you, all of you, and let’s work hard until opening day.”
With the pep talk over, that is what they did. Back to work.
Gwen found Roger looking at the final designs for the costumes. He still couldn’t believe the guys were going on stage with the Mona Lisa’s smile covering their peckers, but evidently they were. Gwen took him by the hand and asked if they could talk. She led him up the aisle and out of the building, commencing a stroll around the block. “The Russian show wasn’t a total success. Most of the reviews said the music was great and the dancing was bad. I wonder how Stirg took it? He wanted it to be great, a Russian triumph, and it wasn’t.”
Roger said, “Stirg doesn’t know much about ballet, so maybe it was ok for him. He wouldn’t know good dancing from bad; good choreography, from bad. Maybe he was satisfied with the whole thing.”
“He might not be able to tell good dancing from bad, but other people told him, I’m sure. And he knows it was us that caused the bad dancing. That’s what we wanted to do to him, and we succeeded. He stole the score from us; we stole the dancers from him. Now, if I was him, I’d want some revenge.”
“You’re a bad girl, Gwenny. A bad girl.”
Coming from Roger, that was a compliment. “I would suggest we watch things closely for the next few days, see if he’s going to try something. Something that would mess up our production, the way we messed up his. Any ideas what that might be?”
Roger shifted into analysis mode. “I’d knock out the power the day of the performance. Can’t dance in the dark.”
“Can we bring in emergency generators? Put them out in the alley?”
“Yeah. Costly, but easy.” He offered another scenario. “He could blow up the building. That would mess us up.”
“That would be a little drastic, even for an ex-Nazi hunter.”
“He could kidnap the dancers. Have Nev stash ‘em in a warehouse somewhere for the weekend.”
“That really would be kidnapping, and everyone would know who did it. Ours was just sort of kidnapping, right? And we had them all on a plane, collected in one small place. He would have to grab them from the stage, and that would be like rounding up steers for market. Not easy.”
They came around the corner and were back at the doors to The Hall, where they sat down on the steps. Gwen said, “What else?”
“If I was Stirg, I’d phone in a bomb threat just before curtain time. That would screw us.”
Gwen thought about this, and said, “So we contact the Mayor and have him order the cops and the fire department to stand by. Worst case scenario, they search the theater, find nothing, and the show goes on. Delayed, but not cancelled.”
Roger nodded, staring off into space. Gwen knew that look. She said, “You wouldn’t do any of that, would you? Cut the power, blow up the building, steal the dancers, call in a bomb threat. Would you, dear?”
He shook his head, no. She waited a minute, then asked him. What would you do?
He looked her in the eyes, seriously, and said, “I’d steal The Whosey.”