Chapter 15 – The Hermitage Caper Team Has Lunch
Despite it being 10am, Gwen was tempted to open a bottle of wine; no, make that brandy. Instead she got on the phone and called Slevov, her new best friend. Currently Slev was enjoying the early 19th century Russian oriental carpet that covered her Sullivan’s Island dining room floor, which previously had been part of the Hermitage Museum collection. Until, that is, Roger, Gwen, and Slevov’s husband Constantine, stole it, along with a load of other stuff. Slev was living part time on Sullivan’s Island, and she was in residence now.
“What are you doing?” said Gwen.
Slevov said, “Glissy and I are reading to each other from a Pushkin collection.”
Gwen didn’t believe that for a second. She said, “Can you come over. We need to talk. And not about Pushkin. And don’t bring Glissy, either.”
Slev showed up in half an hour and kissed the Junes on each cheek. She asked, “How are the blue cats?”
Gwen said, “Fine, demonstrative as ever.”
“How are you, two?”
“We’re bad,” said Roger.
Slevov raised an eyebrow.
“We think we know who Glissy is. We think we know who sent her into our house the other night.”
Slevov raised her other eyebrow.
Gwen said, “Glissy’s real name is Anna. Anna Stirg.” Gwen waited to see if this meant anything to Slevov. Negative. She went on, “Anna is the granddaughter of a man named Pmirhs Stirg, and we are not among his friends. We may be among his enemies, we’re not quite sure. If we are not actually enemies of his, we are at least persons of interest, and we don’t want to be on his interest list. You don’t want to be on his list, and you are. You and Jinny and Guignard, and Henric and Helstof, and Peter and Pater and Constantine. The whole team is on his list. Do you know what a shit list is, Slev? Well, we’re on it.”
Gwen’s reference to the whole team means hers and Roger’s heist team. Eight Russians and two Americans. Four of the Russians now live permanently in Charleston, and the other four, including Slevov, live part time in Charleston.
Roger went on and told Slev about Stirg. When he was done, Slev said, “Oh, shit.” She had American slang down pretty good. “What does he want?” They shrugged.
“Don’t know exactly. He’s Russian. He’s old school. He knows there are some Russian antiques at Helstofs and Henric’s house. We don’t know what he wants, but if he sent his granddaughter on a mission into our house, he wants something. You’ve had Glissy for a couple of days. What have you learned about her?”
Slevov sat back and got a very interesting look on her face. There was a smile in it, and some devil, and some mystery. She said, “Do you have a glass of wine?”
Gwen had been able to resist an hour earlier when she badly wanted a brandy, but now she cracked. 11am, and she was going to start drinking. Roger knew better than to quibble with these two women, so he got a bottle of Riesling from the wine cooler. When they each had a glass in hand, Gwen and Roger looked steadily at Slevov. She remained mute, sipping the grape juice. They waited, and sipped the grape juice. Slevov asked again, “How are the cats?”
Gwen didn’t answer, but got a stern look on her face. “Knock it off, Slev, what’s up on Sullivan’s. What’s going on with Glissy?”
Roger broke out into a really big smile. He put his glass down on the counter and said something to the effect of, “Ha Ha.” It was a goofy, amused laugh.
Gwen looked at him. Then she looked at Slevov. She didn’t like being behind the awareness eight ball, and she wasn’t for long. A couple more moments of thought and she said, “No! Get out! Yes? No!” She sat back, not knowing how to react. When it became clear, she followed Roger with a big goofy smile. Damn.
Slevov didn’t answer; she just keep the wine glass close to her mouth, with her head bent down slightly, eyes twitching back and forth from the glass to the floor, and away from them. After ten long seconds, she looked first at Gwen and then at Roger. Her eyes told it all. Then her subtle smile, just visible above the glass, confirmed it.
Gwen looked at Roger, and they communicated telegraphically: Slevov and Glissy, granddaughter of Nazi hunting Stirg. Fooling around together in that big house on the beach.
Gwen said, “You were supposed to be finding out about Glissy.”
“I have been,” she answered. “She’s twenty-seven years old hot. You’d like her, I think. Very quiet, but very hot. Roger, she’s too hot for you. Forget it.”
Roger looked hurt, so Slevov added, “If I wasn’t there, she’d be too hot for Richard, too, so don’t feel bad.” She looked at Gwen mischievously. “Now Gwenny, Gwenny could handle her alone, I bet.” And the smiles cascaded towards Gwen.
Roger said, “What do you mean Richard? Richard who?”
For the twentieth time in the last year Gwen thought, “These Russians are full of surprises.”
Gwen took a big gulp of Riesling and said, “Ok, let’s hear it.”
“What do you want?” Slev said. “I never said I was taking her home to interrogate her. I took her home because you weren’t going to let her sleep in your house. She had to sleep somewhere, right? So….”
“Wait. You took her home, this possible assassin who entered our house with a gun in her hand. And now you mention Richard. And you imply fun and games with both. Is that the story? Are you talking three-way?”
“Umm, not exactly three-way, dear. I didn’t steal Richard from Helstof.”
Gwen looked at Roger, who looked back, awe-stricken. He mouthed the word four-way, and when he was done his mouth remained in the open position. Then it was his turn to say, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
“Slev, are you saying you installed a possible assassin, and a business partner of the same sex, and a person the business partner is having an affair with, in your bed, in the places formerly occupied by your husband?”
Slevov sniffed an aristocratic sniff and said, “Nothing so crass, my dear. We enjoyed our time together in the fourth floor guestroom. Maybe better to call it a playroom, now, eh?” She followed the sniff with a half-smile, very devastating to Roger. He was in full fantasy mode: big airy room looking out over Charleston harbor, seagulls calling, breeze blowing one direction through the open French doors, OPIUM blowing the other way from the bed, Champagne on the table, TWO babes horizontal, space between them. HIS space.
Gwen was getting tired of seeing this goofy look on his face, and it had happened more and more since getting involved with the Russians. She had to get a grip. “Ok, ok, we’ll discuss the fun and games later, after we have a lot more to drink. But before that, we have to think about the other Stirg, the badass Stirg. Slev, are you serious, you got nothing out of her in two days? Nothing about who she is or what she was doing in our house?”
“My dear, we got lots out of her in the last two days, but not what you want."
Roger didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry.
Gwen had to regroup. These two were in fantasyland, and she was in Stirg_the_Nazi_hunter_is_out_to_get_us_land. She reached forward and took the wine glass out of Slevov’s hand, and then took the wine glass out of Roger’s hand, and set them both on the table. “Listen. We gotta figure out what Stirg wants. She had a gun, remember, a Walther. That is not a toy. It was 3:45am, remember. Middle of the night. Dressed in black. Like an assassin.” She looked at the two of them, and could see they were not making the required transition to Stirg_the_Nazi_hunter_is_out_to_get_us_land.
She got up, got a cell phone, and dialed a number. “Jinny, get your ass over here now, with Guignard….I don’t care if it gets stone fucking cold, you can reheat it later, get over here.” End button. Dial button. “Peter,” much more cordially than with Jinny, “can you and Pater come over for a glass of wine. Yes, Riesling, of course. Great, see you.” End button. Dial button. “Helstof, dear,
I understand you’re over at Slevov’s house. Can you tear yourself away and come over here? Yes, Slev’s here now. We have a situation. Ah, no, better that Richard stays there. Right. Yes, we can get together with Richard later. Ah, no, not Glissy either. Yes, she can come later with Richard.”
Five team members were on their way, plus Slev made six. The other two, the big, heavy hitting guys, the husbands, were back in Saint Petersburg. The team would do without them. Or rather, Gwen hoped the team would do without them. “Get up, you two, and bring the glasses. We’ll fix lunch while we wait for the others. Can you two function well enough to make some sandwiches? Jesus.”
By 12:30pm the entire team was at the June’s house and sitting at the dining room table. Jinny was eyeing the platter of sandwiches with one eye and the bottles of Riesling in the buckets with the other. Gwen was eyeing him, knowing he was a backslider when it came to the southern manners she had taught him, especially when he had been away from her gaze and her influence for any length of time. He saw her eyeing him eyeing the food and wine, and said to himself, “Oh, shit. Manners. Miss Gwen. Ok.”
Gwen let everyone eat and drink in peace. The team hadn’t been together like this for several months, so she knew they needed a little bonding time, and the wine helped facilitate this enormously. Silently she transmitted to Roger two things: don’t drink too much, and you have the lead on this. Do your duty. Then she went back to watching that Jinny didn’t drink too much either, the souse. The bit about letting everyone eat and drink in peace didn’t extend to him. She put him under her gaze.
At 1:30pm the giant Italian espresso machine in the kitchen made a series of hissing noises, and everyone had strong coffee in front of them. Roger looked at the six Russian people and the two Russian blue cats, sitting on the sideboard looking at them, and began. “We are the core team. Richard and Gale know about Glissy, but we kept them away from this meeting because they don’t deserve to have their asses on the line, like ours are.” This ominous prologue got the attention of everyone. “And Glissy isn’t here because she’s part of the problem.” Roger’s use of the word problem further got their attention. Peter shifted his weight in the chair. Guignard looked at Jinny. “And here’s the problem. We think we know who Glissy is. Her real name is Anna Stirg, and she’s the granddaughter of Pmirhs Stirg.” Roger looked around for recognition of that name. None, so he went on. “The grandfather is a Russian Jewish billionaire who lives here in Charleston. He’s sixty-seven years old, she’s his only living relative, and he is devoted to her. They’ve lived in Charleston for ten years. Stirg is a very accomplished man, a very tough man, and in certain fields, a very prominent man. Before he retired, and among other endeavors, he hunted Nazis in Argentina.” Roger paused. “Yeah, a Nazi hunter. And he caught his share. And he dealt with them. And now, he wants something from us.”
Roger let this sink in. Gwen was happy to see that the sex fantasy generated dorkiness that had occupied him earlier was gone. He was leading. He had gotten the attention of the group.
Jinny was the first to ask a question, as usual. “Gwen and Catherine said Glissy was ok. We can trust her. Now she’s our enemy?” Slev smiled at this, but said nothing.
“We don’t think she’s our enemy, but we don’t know about her grandfather. No one has figured out what their relationship is now, because no one has asked Glissy those questions.” Roger spoke the last two words with an emphasis that puzzled everyone but Gwen and Slev. “And we don’t know what Stirg wants.”
Helstof asked, “What’s Stirg going to say when he finds out we renamed his granddaughter?”
Gwen hadn’t thought of that issue. She was focused on what Stirg wants in the way of the Hermitage goods. Great, now the team has insulted the guy by replacing her given name Anna, with their name, Glissy.
Pater said, “Maybe he’s not really mad at us.”
Guignard said, “Maybe Glissy did this on her own, not for her grandfather. Maybe it’s her that wants something.”
Roger badly wanted to tell what Glissy had been getting the last few days, but he held his tongue.
Peter said, “Maybe Stirg is working for the Russian police. Maybe they told him to find out about us, and he gave the job to Anna, er, Glissy.”
That was enough unpleasant suggestions on the table, and everyone sat, thinking. Jinny was thinking too, but also wanting the last sandwich that was on the platter. Roger was thinking about the Stirg problem, but also thinking about Glissy and Slevov. Peter and Pater thought their lives were going to be easier in America, and now this. Helstof was thinking about Nazis, but also about Richard and Glissy.
Mentally, Gwen ran through a bunch of scenarios at light speed, twenty of them, and came to a decision. There were too many maybes floating around. She had to kill most of these so they could home in on understanding the core problem, and there was only one way. Well, there were several ways, but only one appealed to Gwen. And that was the adventurous one. She was that type of girl. She said, “Ok, lots of important points here, and they tell us we don’t know squat. What we do know is that Stirg is a dangerous man, and we can’t just sit around wondering about him.”
Jinny knew what was coming, and he liked it, because he was an adventurous type of guy.
Gwen said, “I don’t want to sit around waiting for him to send the next person.” She looked around the table. She saw basic understanding, and mostly confident faces. So she went on, “I think we go on the offensive. Two can play his game. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going into his house.”