Chapter 18
Monday 21th November, 1988
Harry de Groot
Parting Sorrows
Nodding at the Sarg, I headed to a small room on the third floor where we keep a collection of clothing for covert operations. I selected a blue overall, a carpentry belt, hardhat and a toolbox with a concealed camera and recording equipment, as my mobile phone didn’t have a roving bug.
Soon I was out on the highway and heading toward Rose Bay. I still didn’t have my usual car back from the de-snakers, so I had to use whatever car was available; which meant that, I was at the wheel of a Holden Camira, a lemon-of-a-car, which rattled and squeaked, with a transmission which was inclined to grind, and a steering which meandered about more than a bit. This car was going to stand out like dog’s balls, when I got to the marina.
I easily managed to find a park, as the day was blowy and the water choppy: not the best day for boat travel. I grabbed the small, tool box and headed out into the eye-watering wind toward, ‘Ad Astra’, the Ruslen yacht. But how one earth was I to get on there? The Sarg could have shared a few ideas with me, at least.
I hoped nobody was watching me, as I stood loitering about and staring at the white grandeur of the yacht in front of me.
‘Hey mate you here to fix the little problem with the interior woodwork’. A man with a deep voice and very bushy, red beard, yelled out, as he suddenly emerged like a nightmare, on the deck above me.
‘Not fix mate’, I yelled back, as the wind tried to steal my words. ‘I’m just here to measure and work out what materials will be needed…..it’s a tricky business matching up the right materials.’ I was ad-libbing, just pulling words out of my arse, and hoping that I was not overdoing it, as I had no idea what problem the yacht had with its interior woodwork; and my handy man skills were basic, at the very least.
‘Good-o, I’ll put the gangway down for you, in just a tick’
I waited, with the wind buffeting me with rolling punches; but soon enough, I was lumbering up some steep stairs and standing on the polished wooden deck of Ruslen’s luxury yacht.
‘Follow me mate and I’ll let you into the guest cabin, where all the drama went down’.
‘I don’t know the details on the drama mate’, I said casually, as I followed the bloke, who didn’t tell me his name, down some stairs and along a fairly wide corridor.
He turned around and lifted one eyebrow and gave a barking laugh, something like you would expect from a seal. ‘The young heir’, he said this in a way that was dripping with sarcasm, ‘found out that his woman likes the ….er……company of other woman….so to speak’.
‘Not one of his other women?’ I said, wiggling my eyebrows suggestively.
‘Too right! I couldn’t blame the fiancé, though. Tabra was a really good sort……And I mean ‘was’. Nobody has seen her since the night when The Heir caught them together in this room’. He pushed the door of the cabin open, and I looked in, and saw a great rough hole in the polished timber wall of the cabin.
‘We get paid really well to be quiet about what goes on with this lot, but sometimes, I swear, I am tempted to squeal to the cops and blow this whole caper apart.’ He said this, as he stood blocking the doorway, looking very troubled.
He walked in, and I followed, and he continued to stare strangely at the wrecked cabin wall; suddenly, his face took on an even more troubled and disturbed cast, and he muttered, ‘If I had known about this stuff, I would never have taken this job…..I didn’t ask for it…I only wanted to make him proud….my.. dad that is…..though it was too late for that’.
I really didn’t know what this bloke was talking about, but as he began to talk, I managed to press the record button on the tool box; I also thought I better try to look like I knew what I was doing; so I took a tape measure from one of my many pockets and a note book from the fake top section of my tool box, and as the verbal diarrhea flowed, I pretended to measure and make notes about the repair of the timber panel.
‘Me, I’m new to this security guard business, and already, I want to get out of it. Not only because it’s a damned lonely sort of life, which makes you start talking to yourself, but because……well, in this job anyway, your conscience gets confused, like you don’t know what’s right and wrong after a while.’ He said this, with his frown growing deeper and his eyes looking kind of dead.
‘So what do you reckon happened to young Tabra?’ I said, casually, as if I knew all the players in the drama, intimately.
He didn’t say anything for a long stretched out moment, and then, he said simply. I heard that she was ‘tied to an anchor and thrown overboard, out at sea’.
At these words, I felt an ice-cold sliver, trickle down my spine, and I thought about Dana who was inside the Ruslen house at this moment.
‘What about the fiancé?’ I muttered, as I scribbled in my note book again.
‘I watched her as she walked onto the yacht that day and I watched her when the old girl -his mother, came and took her away in a wheelchair. I don’t know the details…The Heir though… it was him. Mrs Ruslen and June Roze….the fiancé, are relatives, you know, and in business together….those people always stick together’. He pronounced bitterly.
‘You seem to know more than me’, I said, with a dry laugh, which sounded nervous to my own ears.
‘Yeah, well, I don’t have much to do most of the time, except talk when I get the chance,’ he remarked darkly.
He was silent for a minute or two and I thought that he looked a bit disoriented, like he wasn’t sure why he was here.
‘Of course, there’s a whole crew who collect the scoby snacks from labs around Asia occasionally. And they used to slip the heir’s fiancé into and out of the country….sometimes, just collecting swimwear. I had it from one bloke that the fiancé had been mixed up with some mafia types, and so, she was trying to stay off the radar. That’s what I was told…….Philip…I mean Mr Ruslen, he didn’t know about any of this dirty stuff, I mean…….I didn’t know either and I want to get out of it….but I’m scared…..not only for my life….’ He trailed off, lost in thought.
I couldn’t really stretch this measuring and writing notes out any longer, so I put my notebook away, but I thought that I would just throw in one more question. ‘I don’t understand the motivation behind this swimwear company’, I remarked, as casually as I could.
‘Ah, well, the captain of this here yacht says that, the Ruslen’s believe that the Soviet Union is about to fall. They want to be ready to move into that massive market with a legitimate front business. That is swim wear. Supposedly, the old girl…..Mrs Ruslen, that is, was a famous athlete once and she thinks that she can use her niece’s beauty, combine it with her connections and reputation, and they can expand their empire, taking advantage of the chaos, the criminals and the new rich people, who are bound to rise out of the ashes of fallen empire.’
‘Crikey!’ I exclaimed. ‘All I want from life is my own joint, a bit of love, and a secure job; this lot seems to be intent on worldwide domination. Anyway, look, I’ve got the measurements and info I needed, so I’ll be off.’
The red bearded man didn’t say anything for a moment, he just moved back into blocking the doorway and looking a bit crazed. I was waiting, just looking at the big fella and noticing that his clothing was a bit unkempt and in disarray. I felt my heart speed up, and I began to feel paranoid, and I began to wonder if he was on drugs, or if he was suddenly suspicious of me, and my motivations. Maybe he was going to challenge me and he was one big bloke.
Slowly he turned toward me, and said, in a slow motion, drawling way, ‘Sorry mate if I spooked you; it’s just that I’ve been spending days and nights alone on this boat and it’s getting to me. I can’t even leave for long because someone has to be here all the time……I’ve been eating cereal for every meal and I don’t even bother to shut the bathroom door anymore…… it’s too quiet…….I need to hear the TV and I smoke too much dope. I think
I’m going loony tunes’. He said this as he pulled at his red beard in a strange manner; he didn’t move from his place in front of the door, though.
Doing a bit of fast thinking, I said ‘Why don’t you look for another job?…Look, I could ask around a bit ’, I added, as he still hadn’t budged.
‘You’re not serious! With all the stuff that I know about these people…I’d soon find myself wearing concrete shoes down at the bottom of the ocean, or shot by Mrs Ruslen herself……like she did to her son-in-law, Gary’.
‘What? How was Gary Nobbs her son-in-law?’ I spluttered.
‘Sofia Nobbs, Gary’s wife, is Mrs Ruslen’s daughter . Everybody knows this. She got pregnant with her not long after landing in America, to some Shanghai-Russian, mafia bloke. They got married when little Sofia was about a year old, and soon enough, Mrs Ruslen was pregnant again, with Peter. But the mafia man was gunned down and not long after this, she meets Phillip Ruslen; Sofia, for some reason had to stay out of the way. Mrs Ruslen managed to smuggle in her son Peter, though. I don’t know who brought Sofia up, but she’s a sharp-witted one, that one. And devious.’
‘Betcha Gaza didn’t know what he was getting himself into’, I said, as though scandalised, by the deception.
‘Me too, mate. Me too. But he was pussy struck, and then, it was too late’.
Red Beard looked so mournful and down-in-the-mouth that I was beginning to feel sorry for him. Then he jumped, kind of like a cat on hot cement. ‘What’s that noise’, he said, as his eyes rolled madly like a fearful horse, showing only the whites.
I stood very still and listened, but down here I couldn’t even hear the sound of the maverick wind out on the bay. All I could hear were various creaks and groans of the yacht, making it feel like we were inside a live thing. But I could hear nothing else.’
Then with great anguish, he said, ‘It’s that voice again, saying that I’m stupid and evil and worthless’. He started to cry, tears leaked from his eyes and he bent over and kind of hugged himself. He grabbed his head and started to press it hard, hurting himself. ‘Stop talking, stop talking, he cried’.
‘They are telling me you have to die’, he cried in anguish. And then, I really did feel genuinely sorry for this man in pain, just before his hand hit me, and for a brief moment, until darkness hit, I felt sorry for me, also.