Gwenny June

  Chapter 27 – No Rest for the Weary

  Everyone hoped Stirg had gotten the message and would go away. Half the team thought that would happen, and the other half said it was a pipedream. Guess which half was right? Gwen, Slev, and Helstof realized they had to have a team meeting now that the big boys were back in town. With half the team thinking Stirg was not going away, the prudent thing to do was call a strategy session. Anna was back at the Sullivan’s house, which meant she was siding with the team. Or at least meeting halfway between them and her grandfather.

  Peter and Pater had leased a large vacant building next to the Charleston Music Hall on John Street. Some seventy years ago they had been a single large theater, but at some point it had been divided into two smaller theaters. Their space was about 8000 square feet on two levels. It was spacious, but needed fixing because it had been vacant for twenty-five years. Peter and Pater didn’t face the hurdles that most startup arts groups did, because they had funding up the yang. They got as much as they asked for from Henric, and they got supplemental from their partners, Selgey and Bartholomew Landkirk.

  One afternoon over coffee, the Ps and the Landkirks asked Henric for $100,000 to rehabilitate the old stage and the theater chairs. He replied he couldn’t get it to them till the day after tomorrow, was that all right? Peter and Pater looked at each other. Well, ok. Selgey, a former principal ballerina with the New York City Ballet, was very quick on the uptake and spoke up, “Peter, remember that our $150,000 is paying for the fire code work and the dressing rooms, but we still need new lighting and sound systems, and the curtains and the lobby repairs. How much was that part, again?”

  Peter followed her drift and said, “That will cost another $125,000, and the City has refused to help with that, I don’t understand why. The Mayor promised.”

  They looked at Henric. “Ok,” he said. Not bad fund raising for a coffee break.

  The Ps called Gwen and told her the good news about the money and the work that would be done with it, and she was thrilled. After hanging up the phone, Gwen had an idea, and called them back. She told them the team had to get together soon, and suggested they do so at The Hall. She said it could be the first event in the new space. How about a catered, informal dinner there? On stage. Neat. The Ps said yes, of course.

  Gwen made this happen a few days later. Roger filled up a cooler with red and white wines, and McCrady’s Restaurant put together a nice picnic basket type dinner, cold, but definitely gourmet. Gwen’s idea was to hold the business meeting first, in case there was bad news, and then move on to the fun part, the onstage dinner. She invited the extended family team, which included the Gromstovs, the Rodstras, Little Jinny and Guignard, the Ps, Gale, Richard Adams, Selgey, Bart, and Anna.

  The afternoon of the meeting, Gwen invited Gale and Richard to her house for coffee. She had to do something very important. She had to sit them down and tell them of the serious nature of things that were happening, and she wondered why she and Roger were involving them in these affairs. The Junes had told Gale and Richard about the Hermitage caper; now they were inviting them to a strategy meeting. Why? The only answer Gwen came up with was, she had an intuition to do so. Simple as that. So Gwen went with it, as she usually did. Regarding Richard, it may have had something to do with the fact that he now was involved, intimately, with Slev and Helstof and Anna. But what about Gale? Intuition.

  That afternoon Gwen told Gale and Richard about Stirg, who he was and what he wanted from them. She was stern with them in her description, but she could see it didn’t really register with them. They just weren’t used to dealing with Nazi hunters. But Gwen did impress upon them the need for confidentiality. She knew this was not part of Gale’s psychological makeup, but she thought she got through to her at a level where Gwen could trust her. Gale the fashionista; Gale the mouth; Gale the hot one. Richard was a different creature. He didn’t walk around armed, the way Roger and Gwen did. He was quiet and particular and level-headed. While he understood the deal here, and was interested, Gwen wondered about his limits.

  After this tête-à-tête, Gwen knew she had to have another one, with Anna, before the team meeting. Anna was the lynch pin, so Gwen had to know Anna’s current mental configuration and tensile strength. She called Sullivan’s and got Slev. She told Slev she wanted to talk to Anna before tonight’s meeting, and Slev said she would send Anna to Gwen’s house right away. Gwen called Roger up from the wine cellar, and they sat in the downstairs study. Gwen said, “Anna’s coming over. We need to know where she stands, now that she saw her grandfather. She needs to be part of the strategy session this evening at The Hall. Any suggestions?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “This shouldn’t be an all or nothing commitment on her part. It’s not fair to ask her side with us, against him. I’m one of the ones that thinks Stirg is going to come after us again, and we can’t have that. We defend. That’s the primary goal. But the secondary goal is to take Anna into the fold, because Catherine told us to. Or suggested it. She thinks Anna is special, and it would be good for Anna to be with us, and for us to be with Anna. I know you agree with Catherine. So that’s good enough for me. How to do that is the tricky part. That’s what we’ll talk about tonight. How to do it. How to influence Anna, our way, and yet allow her to have her relationship with her grandfather, who I think still is our enemy. That’s a tall order, but I think we can do it. Well, I think you can do it.” He smiled at his wife, got up, and went back to looking at wine bottles in the cellar.

  Anna walked into the study and said, “Hi.” There had been no doorbell chimes, no sound of doors opening, no dog growling, no indication of Anna’s entry into the house. Anna read Gwen’s thoughts and said, “Just playing around. This is the first time back in your house since, since the big night. I hope you don’t mind me coming in, not knocking.” She sat down in one of the big leather chairs.

  Gwen smiled at the kid’s game. Pretty slick.

  “You’re invited to our meeting tonight, our meeting and our dinner. Slev told you that, but did she tell you the purpose of the meeting?” Anna shook her head, no. “It’s to figure out how to deal with your grandfather. Constantine and Henric are back in town, and they weren’t around when we had our discussion with your grandfather, at his house. So that’s what we’re doing tonight.” She let Anna think on that for a minute. “I’m glad you came back to the Sullivan’s house after your meeting with your grandfather. We’re all glad of that. What happened with him? How are you? You don’t have to tell me, that’s your private stuff. But it may help us tonight to figure out what we are going to do. Half of us think your grandfather is going to come after us again, about the Hermitage heist, and the other half think we scared him off with our visit to his place.”

  Anna said, “I told him I wasn’t going to act against any of you again. And I told him I loved him. I didn’t talk a lot about it, or do a lot of explaining or anything. I just told him the basics. This is the first time we’ve had a serious disagreement. Can you believe that? I’m twenty-seven, and I’ve never had a real problem with him. He’s really been my father, we’ve always gotten along, so this is weird for both of us.” Anna was remarkably calm and assured. Gwen sent out vibes of psychological support, but didn’t say anything. “He asked me if I still felt things about Russia, and I said, yes, of course. I said I also have new feelings about you and Catherine and Slev and Richard.” Gwen smiled inwardly with the mention of Richard. “So that’s the hard part for him, dealing with my new feelings, which he can’t share, while dealing with his feelings for the Russian stuff. Those haven’t gone away. He’s getting old, and thinking more and more about his younger days, the times when his environment made him what he became. Russia, just after the war, and him a boy. To some extent, that’s him now.”

  Gwen was thrilled at the accuracy of Anna’s assessment of her grandfather and of the situat
ion. She had it right. Her new feelings that her grandfather can’t share, in conflict with his feelings that are of marginal concern to her. It now was the team’s challenge to manage this situation, and that would start tonight.