Aristocratic Thieves
Chapter 18 – Onwards to Saint Petersburg
The four wine-hunters sat for a while in the hotel lobby and consolidated their gains, with Stephan and Roger working out details about which wines might be available on which dates. Then they talked about how to get the wine onto planes headed to Charleston, and how much that might cost. Roger handed Jinny a copy of Robert Parker Jr.’s classic book on the wines of Bordeaux and told him to memorize it. Jinny looked at the 800 pages of small print, and looked back at Roger. He said ok. He didn’t ask about learning the basics of Burgundy. Gwen basked in the charisma of Deneuve, her new friendship, and the lessons in how to influence people. The team rested a bit after their very successful labors.
Roger asked for hotel stationary, and spent twenty minutes writing a thank you letter to Jacques Raconteur. He knew Stephan would provide his boss with the details. With the letter in his briefcase, Stephan headed back to Paris, having tales to tell about this trip through the wine country.
At lunch in the hotel dining room both Roger and Jinny looked at the wine list. Gwen swiped it out of Roger’s hands and wacked him on the head with it. She said the vacation was over, and work was about to begin. She didn’t have to explain their next mission, which was to navigate the waters of Saint Petersburg and its world of antiques. She looked at Blistov, who smiled, sort of, back at her. Gwen’s mannerisms were formidable before. Now, with her newly found techniques “a la D” (that’s a la Deneuve), they were more so. The wine list was gone, and with it any idea Roger and Blistov had of drinking at lunch. A new somberness settled on the three teammates.
Blistov had coasted during this phase of the operation. He had experienced France, its wine culture, and it’s inimitable cultural force. His mind was blown. But, he was a realist and pragmatist, and he knew that now it was time for him to go to work. During the meal he laid out a basic plan to Roger and Gwen. He thought it would take two and half days to make the travel arrangements from Paris to St. Petes. This would consist of a way for him to enter the country with minimal attention from the authorities, either accompanied by Roger and Gwen, or with a way to rendezvous with them in St. Petes. Once they were there, he would begin the difficult task of procuring the Hermitage antiques, and getting them onto container ships bound for the US. He said that while he was doing the heavy lifting regarding the goods, they could spend their days in the Hermitage, looking at the grade A stuff. He mentioned the 1285 rooms bulging with some of the greatest artwork the world has produced, and in an odd way, included a description of the hundred or so bathrooms he so assiduously had cleaned all those years ago. Roger and Gwen thought, “Well, whatever.”
After lunch Jinny disappeared, and Roger and Gwen were left to themselves for the first time during the trip. Gwen led the way out of the hotel and down the street to a café, where she ordered a bottle of white Bordeaux. They enjoyed the afternoon and evening together.
Jinny did not appear at dinner, nor did he appear the next morning at breakfast. They did not see him at lunchtime, and they did not see him at tea time. Roger began to wonder, but Gwen had faith and told him not to worry. At 6pm there was a knock at their hotel room door, and there was the Russian. Jinny bustled inside, a simmering perkiness animating his masonry-like frame. Roger sat at the writing desk in his underwear, Gwen wearing one of Roger’s dress shirts and that’s about all. No problem for Jinny; no problem for Gwen. Roger thought about saying something, but decided to go with the flow. Jinny flopped on the sofa and dumped a folio of papers onto the coffee table. There were maps, brochures, sketches, time-tables, and notes. He began to talk.
He had lots of good news, and a little bad news. Remember Plouriva Roshenska, master grounds keeper of the Hermitage complex, former sometime lover and admirer of Jinny, and the woman with a fleet of trucks at her command? On the second ring she had answered the cell number she had given Jinny a few months before, and she was happy to hear Jinny’s voice. She was happy because she was bored with her job and bored with her house and basically bored with her life. Since talking with Jinny some months back, she had thought long and hard about his proposal. The more she thought about a big change of scene, the more she liked the idea. Twenty some years of doing the same thing; twenty some winters of driving around in a smoke-belching diesel halftrack monster left over from WWII, parked next to and hooked up to her office to provide enough heat to avoid freezing her ass off; twenty some years of working for a succession of patriotic though corrupt party officials; all this had dimmed her view of the good life. Jinny’s proposal of living in the United States was a vision of a new life. It was strange, yes, with great unknowns, but enticingly different. At first she tried to think only of the good possibilities, and tried not to think about the very real risks and dangers of getting involved. She was able to do this for several weeks, but the realities kept creeping in, and so finally she faced them.
Both she and Jinny would be sent to a gulag if they got caught. And that was after they were tortured and executed. But she had no children to worry about, and she was damn tough minded. She ran a big operation at the Hermitage, keeping a staff of dozens on the straight and narrow, responsible for state treasures and resources, preserving Russian cultural landscapes. It was a demanding job, with authority and power. She loved the place, really, and liked some of her colleagues, and knew she was contributing to her society. She also was lonely.…and cold. And so she thought long and hard about Blistov, and the United States, and some place called Charleston that had people called Huguenots in it, warm Februarys, Mays that were not still frigid, and beaches. Not that she knew what people actually did on beaches, but she was willing to find out. So now, several months after Jinny first contacted her and described his dangerous plan to her, she didn’t mince words. She said, “Jinny, I’m in.”
Hearing her say this you might have thought Jinny would be pleased. Not exactly, the reason being that when he heard her say this, he knew for certain there was no turning back. The game was on, and it was a very dangerous game indeed. But he was cool, and committed, and thought, 'OK'. He said this to Plouriva on the phone, and they began to talk details after Plouriva assured Jinny her phone was secure. That was very important. She had the knowledge and capabilities to make that happen. At least she thought she did, and sure hoped she did. If she was wrong….
That’s what Jinny told Roger and Gwen. He said he now was certain of some important things. First, Plouriva was a committed team member, and they could trust her. Second, he could get into the country, to Saint Petersburg, and could operate there. Third, Plouriva still had access to the warehouses where the grade C stuff was kept.
That was Jinny’s good news. The not-so-good news was that that was as far as his planning had gotten so far. He and Plouriva still had no idea how to get the antiques out of St Petes and onto a container ship. In other words, he still didn’t know how to smuggle them out of Russia. Another thing he hadn’t quite worked out was which wealthy Russians he was going to persuade to head to Charleston, with large quantities of funds in their pockets.
Blistov sat back on the sofa and stopped talking. He divided his time 7525% looking at Roger in his underwear and Gwen in Roger’s dress shirt. But his look was composed and collected, as it had been those months before when he first proposed the mission, sitting in the June’s Charleston living room. Speaking of which, he missed Roger’s dog. At that time, Roger basically had relied on Gwen’s sense of trust, and Gwen basically had relied on her intuition to gauge her trust in Jinny. Now, sitting in the hotel room in Bordeaux, bound for Saint Petersburg, with this new and important information at hand, they again had to gauge their trust in this strange Russian man. And they had to do it sitting in their underwear. How weird was that?
Roger did the same thing he did before. He looked at his wife, and waited. He didn’t wait empty-minded; his mind was spinning. But he knew the decision was going to be Gwen’s
. Gwen also did what she had done before. She looked straight at Jinny, cleared her mind of thoughts, and let her intuition run free. So here you had Jinny sitting perfectly still on the sofa (trying desperately to keep his gaze above Gwen’s waist), you had Roger sitting perfectly still at the writing desk, looking at his wife (and not worrying too much where his gaze fell), and you had Gwen sitting perfectly still, absorbing Jinny’s essence, not thinking, just intuiting. This state of affairs lasted for two long minutes. All three were dead calm. All three were entirely relaxed, and all three were eminently aware of the seriousness of the moment.
At the end of the two minutes Gwen stood up and moved over to the sofa in front of Jinny, utterly unabashed. She bent down so her face was at the level of his face and said, “We’re gonna have a good time over there in your home town, Jinny, but if you fuck this up, it’ll be the last thing you ever do.” She raised her hand to his face and squeezed his cheek between the third knuckle of her index finger and her thumb, in the old fashioned gesture of affection. With that, she looked over at her husband and smiled a big glorious smile that said, “Onwards to St. Petes, dear one.”