Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER FIFTY ONE – OUR COMPANY. VISITING KALLE AND THE LAST SCAM
VISITING KALLE
The meeting with Kalle and company took place on another summer. I called Lambert, he did not answer; perhaps he was at a session in Leningrad with his family. But Kalle was a hospitable host. He put me up at his place and assigned Anika’s friend, Ruth, a beautiful, tall and great woman, as a guide. Her main advantages were her cheerful character and good command of Russian. We walked around the city, and each time I learned a lot of new things.
Estonian friends took me to a Finnish sauna, where I had never been before in my life. The sauna belonged to some kind of sports club, which provided us with not just a cell, a thermal chamber to steam, but with a swimming pool, showers and a banquet hall. A table was set in the hall, where we ate and drank in between the heat of the sauna and the coolness of the pool. After a while, when everyone had eaten and discussed something in Estonian, Kalle said,
“The girls want to show you a real national sauna.”
“Great,” I immediately agreed, “What is needed for this?”
“Be completely naked and behave decently.”
Everyone nodded,
“Have you actually seen naked women, I mean up close and from any angle?” asked Kalle, “Sometimes visitors, especially southerners, cannot bear it, when, for example, a woman spreads her legs near their ear…”
“I won’t touch anyone, I won’t even breathe in their direction.”
“This is especially important! Whoever you blow on will get burned.”
“But not let them be offended if I get an erection.”
This word was clear to everyone. The women laughed.
“Don’t worry! Will not occur at temperatures of 120 F or higher. To survive, our ancestors warmed up after hard work in the forest – men and women – all together. This is how a national tradition developed.”
Everything turned out to be true. A group of naked people, excluding Kalle’s wife, Anika, entered the chamber (“Like into a gas chamber,” I thought) and sat down on the shelves. Someone immediately rose higher, just to the level of my ear, and those sitting on the side shelves became visible to me in all foreshortenings. In external and internal ones. As soon as I saw these very internal foreshortenings, inaccessible during an ordinary friendly visit, I began to have an uncontrollable erection. But the hot air stopped this inappropriate activity during the demonstration of national unity and drove my upstart away from the possible burn deep into my own body.
And we also fried meat there. It was already my tradition to advertise Georgian cuisine. We grilled shish kebab right in the fireplace, over coals, and used fencing rapiers as skewers. Imagine a picture – naked people in white terry towels on their hips or sheets, like patricians, eating fried meat from rapiers. Cinematographic? I still remember it…
And I remember an unusual purchase too. In the USSR there were shops in which ordinary people were not allowed. Such stores provided, for example, newlyweds (one month before the wedding) or were departmental – for the military, veterans, ministers. But the population’s favorite shops were the currency shops – for foreigners and those who officially received currency. Such shops included port ones, where sailors shopped for conventional rubles – bons. They could only be purchased from sailors with odds of 1:10.
And so, I once found myself in a port store in Tallinn. It was like entering a foreign store, where most Soviet people had never been. It was just interesting to look at. But I noticed shoes on the shelf. The single pair. Sand-colored, with a wide toe box, on a thick soft sole with an obliquely cut heel so that the foot does not get tired when driving a car. I had never heard of the English manufacturer (either “White John” or “Long John”). They were my size and I immediately fell in love with them. They cost eleven bonds – that is, one hundred and ten ordinary rubles. Five times more expensive than Soviet shoes and two times more expensive than imported ones.
But the only thing that kept me from making an immediate purchase was the lack of coupons. I quietly asked the neighbors at the counter if there were any extra ones to sell. Loud questions could lead to trouble if you ran into a KGB agent. Buying and selling currency was considered a state crime. But fortunately for me, my neighbor turned out to be a naval officer who quietly said,
“I have it at home. Let’s go if you’re not afraid.”
Perhaps it was necessary to be careful and not go to the home of a stranger in a naval uniform to buy currency. You could not imagine what troubles or robbery could await a simpleton on foreign territory. But a desire is stronger than a danger, and I went with him. Luckily for me, the captain turned out to be real, and not a robber or hunter of the internal organs of stupid young people. He sold me the required eleven bons and treated me to whiskey, boxes of which were stacked in his apartment.
“Tomorrow we’ll go to sea for a long time. There is no need for money, but whiskey and rum are desperately needed.”
We parted as friends – in childhood I was also a captain, but whiskey, then and now, to the joy of the owner, still did not appreciate.
I drove back with a sinking heart that someone had already bought the shoes. But luckily, they were waiting for me. I still remember them with kind words.
THE LAST SCAM
I would never have known anything about this story if I had not ended up in the editorial office of a republican newspaper on a certain day, if my classmate with an exacerbation of ulcerative colitis had not gotten in the hospital, and if one of Secretaries of the Georgian Communist Party had not stuck in a set up scam.
One day I brought humorous stories and jokes about student life from the wall newspaper to the editorial office. Some people from the Ministry of Higher Education really liked them, and I was invited to the editorial office. There is nothing special to tell out here, except for the phone call that came during my conversation with the head of the literature department.
Apparently, someone very influential called, because the chief of the department stood up and continued to talk standing,
“The exhibition will begin in a week. Preparations are underway at the art museum. All safety measures are taken. The French side is actively involved in this.”
He paused, listening to his interlocutor, and then answered with surprise on his face,
“Millions of dollars. Every single picture.”
This ended the conversation, the manager sat down, wiped his wet forehead with a handkerchief and said to me,
“Forget what you heard here, young man. Random words can bring predictable troubles to those who repeat them anywhere. Let’s better select more good humor for publication, do you agree to this compromise?”
I realized that I had unexpectedly witnessed something important, since I was offered a compromise. Of course, I wasn’t going to chat about it, but since the exhibition will be French, I really wanted to be Poirot.
First of all, I went to the Art Museum to inquire about upcoming exhibitions. But I didn’t have to ask. Posters for an exhibition of French Impressionism opening in a week were plastered on the advertising columns, walls and doors of the museum. Inside the museum, only the side halls were open; the main enfilade was closed. Preparations for the upcoming event were underway there. Everything I heard in the editorial office was of no value. Why did the head of the department advise me to keep my mouth shut?
Obviously, the main secret was his interlocutor on the other end of the line. A person who was interested in the price of impressionist paintings. And although I did not know his name, I promised not to talk about the call, that is, in fact, about the caller. This seemed suspicious to me. Whom of known to me people would think of being interested in buying a painting? That’s just funny. But suddenly it dawned on me. What if, not by buying, but by selling? So… theft and sale!
I just whistled. But a search in this direction was impossible. I had no connections either in the criminal world or in the criminal investigation department. And what kind of connections can help if the equation is full of unknowns!
This story seems completely unrelated to the first. That’s how it was in the beginning. I just promised Aunt Sveta, Boris’s mother, to introduce her to the surgeon, our distant relative, who operated on Boris. A classmate underwent surgery on his intestines, and he lay in intensive care, shrouded in oxygen tubes and systems of solutions with antibiotics.
“Dear doctor,” said Aunt Sveta, handing the surgeon an envelope with money, “This is my only son, and I will not spare anything to save him. Please write to me what foreign antibiotics are needed, and I will buy them from the Cup at any price.”
Now we need to make an explanation. A famous seller of foreign medicines worked in the city under the nickname of “The Cup” (like a cup of tea). His prices seamed unimaginable, and everyone knew about this illegal business, but the prosecutor’s office and the police believed that everyone walked under God and preferred not to touch the famous businessman. How do you know if tomorrow you yourself will need him and his goods? Moreover, The Cup was plying his trade directly opposite the district police station, which may have been covered and protected him.
And it occurred to me that such a seller could be the buyer of the painting for millions of dollars. But the hypothesis was very flimsy. You never know who else could have millions of dollars. The main thing is who could want to buy the painting, and even more important in the puzzle – who could go and rob the museum? This is not a robbing an apartment. There are security, electronics, and French specialists. I just couldn’t believe that someone from the city would be able to break through such security. What if he was not from the city? Or not even from the country? Say, a foreign guest invited for the work?
This sounded very convincing to me, but I could not test this hypothesis. This would require some pretty good connections in the KGB. But weren’t the exhibition brought by foreigners? Yes, sure. So… the robber must already be among them. Unless, of course, all this was just my fantasy.
In the evening, I went to my best friend, Sasha, to chat about this and that and… unexpectedly I received an additional piece of the mosaic that made up my story.
My friend was a very strong preference player. He was not interested in playing just like the rest of us, for a penny or even ten kopecks a whist (a point). Quite quickly he found himself a company of rich people, businessmen, and directors of enterprises who played for big. They played on the night from Saturday to Sunday, and the next day they slept out before work. Every time, returning from the game, Sasha told interesting stories from the life of the “underground kings.” This time there was a story about a very “tall” player. Not in terms of game class, but in terms of position in society. He was a member of the republic’s party elite. But even at the same time, nothing human was alien to him, and he managed to lose, not in preference, but in poker, two million… dollars. It was a common card scam – he was dealt a very rare combination of cards, and his opponent was dealt an even rarer one. The townspeople and workers of fields didn’t give a damn about this gossip, but richer people were interested, inflamed… In a word, “like Poirot” I concluded that I knew the customer, the object, and the buyer. All that remained was to wait for the development of events.
I reasoned like this: robbing an exhibition before it ends is bad manners; if the robber is French, he will do it elegantly after the end of the exhibition. But is it worth waiting until the last day and running into immediate overnight dismantling and packing work? Of course no! This means a day earlier, on the night before the last day of the exhibition. And what do you think came to my mind? To walk past the Museum of Art at midnight, to sit on a bench in a small park on the square in front of the museum near the monument to Pushkin. Of course, I wasn’t going to sit on the bench all night, but I could stand it for an hour or two – summer nights in the city are very warm.
Near the exit from the museum, I noticed two cars with their headlights off, but both with passengers. The first was a black Mercedes with four men in suits and ties. Their faces were illuminated by a neon advertisement for the Fruit and Juice Cooperative, causing them to alternately turn white, red and purple. Of course, I didn’t know anyone. In the other car, a white “Volga”, I obviously didn’t know the driver, the young guy in the cap, but I had once already met the passenger in my life. It was the black-haired giant Vakhtang, nicknamed Bloody, who was involved in many raids, robberies and even murders, as rumor attributed to him. But the most interesting thing for me was that I suspected him of my former neighbor Shivali Orbeliani, whom I helped with math at school.
“I wonder what he’s doing here,” I thought.
However, the answer was found quickly,
“He considers himself the king of the night city and does not want to miss out on rich booty or a share in it.”
It looks like I was right. At twelve fifteen, the door of the museum opened slightly, and a thin man with a leather tube in which rolls of drawings are carried came out, looking around. A giant I knew came out of the “Volga” to meet him. I don’t know how they talked to each other, but Vakhtang extended his hand to the tube, the “Frenchman” pulled out a pistol and immediately took a bullet in his chest.
Before I had time to think that it was not for nothing that Vakhtang was called the Bloody, the dry clicks of a short machine gun burst sounded from the Mercedes, and the body of the robber collapsed next to his victim. A man jumped out of the limousine and rushed to the leather tube, but at that moment the doors of the museum swung open, and security poured out, including our policemen and French guards, of course, in civilian clothes.
The man from the Mercedes instantly turned around and took refuge in the car. The headlights flashed, the engine roared, and the art lovers disappeared around the corner. The “Volga” with its orphaned driver drove away in the other direction.
There was no point in staying longer. Even though Pushkin and the bushes covered my presence at the crime scene, I could have run into troubles. I moved in the direction opposite to the museum and my house. The small detour allowed me to catch my breath and calm down. Still, it’s not every day that you witness a double murder, even if in your thoughts you imagine yourself as Inspector Poirot.
There were no announcements or investigations. The next morning, the city was gossiping about the tragic death of a young woman who had fallen from a bridge into the river in a white “Volga.” The townspeople did not learn the details of the night. The stories about the giant bandit gradually faded away, the memory of Vakhtang the Bloody was erased, and the old noble family of Orbeliani ended with the boy Shivali, whom I knew in my childhood and youth.
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