Aristocratic Thieves

  Chapter 24 – The Dangerous Plan

  Blistov went to bed at 4am. His sleep was deep and satisfying because his subconscious understood what his conscious mind had achieved – the kernel of the plan for the theft. When he awoke at 11am he found a note from Plouriva saying she was going to work and would meet him at the apartment at 3pm. So he spent the intervening hours outside, walking the streets, shopping for food, and most of all looking for some decent coffee. He knew he couldn’t pull off the mission without decent coffee. Back at the apartment, he relaxed.

  When Plouriva arrived, Jinny was primed and ready for more serious work. He asked her if she’d had a hard day. She said no, she’d done zero work because her mind was on Jinny and the job. Jinny was pleased to hear this, and he asked her what she needed now. She said sex. Jinny was very pleased to hear this, and they took care of that item pronto. A half hour later, Jinny gave Plouriva a shoulder massage, led her to the shower, and told her that coffee would be ready when she finished. Plouriva looked at him, wondered what was going on. She had fond memories of Jinny from their previous life together, but caring behaviors of this kind were not among them. She wondered what was in the water they drank in Charleston.

  Jinny seated her at the kitchen table and poured some freshly brewed coffee. It smelled great, and they both savored the rich, motivating beverage. Plouriva asked him where he got it, and he answered with a smile rather than with words. She accepted this communication for what it was worth. After the first cup and before the second and third cups, Jinny got out the plans and drawings of the Hermitage grounds and warehouse buildings, and spread them on the table and on the counters. They covered all the horizontal surfaces in the small kitchen, and half the floor. Then he told her his basic plan for stealing the objects. He didn’t know what objects they were going to steal; they still had to figure that out, but he knew there was stuff in these warehouses that would meet Roger’s criteria. There was no doubt about that. So he didn’t care exactly what items eventually they would go after. The real challenge had been HOW to steal them, and this was the challenge he had met late the night before when he went into his creative thinking mode.

  He picked up a large drawing sheet that showed an architect’s rendering of one of the warehouse buildings, and put it square on the kitchen table. The drawing was made of vellum, and was dated 1891. It showed both a sectional drawing of the structure and an elevation drawing. He pointed to them and said to Plouriva, “There’s no basement. There’s no perimeter foundation. The building was built on piling footers, and the floor is three feet above ground level. There’s space under the flooring.” With that he smiled at Plouriva, as if those statements were enough for her to understand his idea. And, they were. She understood at once. She said, “So we get the stuff into the crawl space below the flooring, and then get it out and away later.” Jinny nodded and sat back in his chair. Plouriva nodded and sat back in her chair. She looked again at the drawing, picked up several more drawings from the counters and floor, set them on top of the first drawing, looked at them, and then looked again at Jinny. She smiled and smiled and smiled.

  It was a testament to her judgment that she didn’t leap into a harrowing discussion of details: what objects, how to cut through the floor, how long they could keep the stuff in the crawlspace before someone discovered it, how and when to get the stuff out of the crawlspaces, how to get it out of the Hermitage complex, and how to get it to the Saint Petersburg port. All those questions about the smaller challenges leaped into her mind, but she didn’t voice them. She realized the magnitude of Jinny’s accomplishment, and she wanted to give him his due. So instead of addressing all those annoying details that would have to be worked out, she asked, “How'd you think of this?”

  He didn’t try to explain the mental processes that occurred the night before at 3am because he wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, just that it had. And he wasn’t sure he could explain if he did understand. He skipped all that, but did explain about the kickass American actor Steve McQueen, and the kickass movie The Great Escape, and the German prisoner of war camp during WWII, with the British and American POWs. He described the scene with McQueen driving the German BMW motorcycle all over the fields and jumping it over fences, and how absolutely cool that was. Plouriva recognized Jinny’s male boyishness here, and didn’t interfere with it. He had earned it. He described how the barracks were built above ground, and how the prisoners decided they would use this architectural feature to execute their plan, which hinged on the idea of a hundred prisoners going out at the same time – their great escape. He saw the same thing with the Hermitage operation. Get all the objects into the crawlspaces of the various warehouses, and then get them out of the complex all together, all at one time – their great theft.

  Plouriva sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. She tried to imagine the movie with the prison camp and the barracks and the nasty German guards and the brave American and British soldiers. She thought Russian soldiers during WWII were very brave also, but as she was about to participate in a major theft of Russian state property, and obviously would not be living and working at the Hermitage after the theft, she figured she better start thinking about how great all the Americans on the planet were, since it was among them that she and Jinny would be living from then on out. Providing, of course, they didn’t get caught. She chose not to think about where she and Jinny would be living if they did get caught. She knew it would not be where the February ocean breezes blew with a gentle warmth. With her eyes still closed she thought about Jinny and his idea. Yes, it was doable. Yes, they could succeed. Yes, it was dangerous and the risk was great. And yes, the risk was worth it. She bonded with his idea.

  Plouriva opened her eyes, smiled at Jinny, got up and stepped behind his chair and put her hands on his shoulders. She massaged his shoulders, and then his neck, and then his forehead. It was her symbolic gesture acknowledging his mental achievement. She sat down, picking up first one drawing, and then another. She studied a site plan that showed the entire Hermitage complex, and then studied a map of the city. Jinny said and did nothing. He understood, intuitively, that Plouriva now was taking over the planning operation. He was like a great physicist that had pondered on the nature of atomic particles, and somehow had grasped a basic attribute of their nature that explained their behavior under certain conditions. And the physicist had jotted down some mathematical formula that represented this attribute and this behavior, and handed the piece of paper to another physicist whose job it was to conduct real-world experiments that would prove the hypothesis. Jinny sat motionless and wordless, like he had months before on the June’s sofa in Charleston, after he had explained to them the details of his proposal.

  It was 6pm. Plouriva got up, removed the drawings from the table and threw them on the floor, went to the refrigerator, got cold cuts and cheeses, removed the drawings from the counters and threw them on the floor, and proceeded to make four large sandwiches. Two of these she set on the table before Jinny, along with a bottle of vodka and a glass. The other two sandwiches she took into the bedroom. She returned to the kitchen, gathered up all the drawing and maps from the floor, and took them into the bedroom. She appeared in the doorway, saluted Jinny, and disappeared back into the bedroom, closing the door.

  The door opened at 8pm and Plouriva asked Jinny to make her another coffee, which he did. The door opened the next time at 10pm, and Plouriva appeared in the living room. She was pleased to find Jinny sitting on sofa, watching the Saint Petersburg nightly news, totally crocked from the vodka. She sat down beside him, poured herself a stiff one, and knocked it back. Her only words to him the rest of the night were, “Babe, we can do it.”