Gennady Filshin felt his life slip further away from science and reason and deeper into criminality and superstition with every passing kilometer.
He had been set up by Michael Usher…by an American. How fitting then, that his gang was using an American brand name to flee from the Czech police, he thought, as he rolled up the side of a stolen Slovakian Pepsi-Cola truck.
While his gang unloaded crates of bottled cola and hid them behind the wild rose hedge alongside the road, Filshin scanned the Prague Metro for news of the kidnapping. It was on the last page. One woman was killed and a man taken hostage. The article called it a bungled drug heist at the Old Town pharmacy and included a large security camera picture of Popov.
Popov saw what Filshin was looking at and snatched it out of his hands. “Hey, look at this.” he crowed. “Popov is famous, like movie bandido, like Sundance Kid.” He showed the others the photo of himself in his scarf and sunglasses.
“Help me get Pawlowski into the truck,” Mario said, as he ripped the paper out of his hands and returned it to Filshin.
Popov and Mario pulled the gagged Pawlowski out of the van and taped his arms and legs together. When Filshin threw his own raincoat into the truck for Pawlowski to lie on, Popov snarled he disapproval but he contented himself with flicking a cigarette butt at Filshin’s feet.
Filshin grew braver. He ordered Bogosian to throw in his down vest for Pawlowski to use as a pillow. They paid less for damaged goods, he told his gang. Though this being his first and, he sincerely hoped, his last kidnapping, he had no idea if it was true.
“What? No robe and slippers?” Popov growled. He slid the section shut, jamming the lock with a crowbar. The Czech-Polish borders inspections were gone, but trucks were sometimes stopped by mobile customs units.
Filshin cursed Michael Usher to Hell once again and got into the truck cab missing his America baby with a stab in his gut that earned him a vulture-like look from Popov, who was driving. The tattoo-fingered ex-con had spent the journey across the Czech Republic questioning Filshin’s every move, trying to turn the Filshin Gang into the Popov Gang.
If Filshin could have convinced himself Popov would let Pawlowski live when it was over, he would gladly have abandoned the whole mess in his lap.
The rest of the Filshin Gang sensed their leader’s ineptitude, but were more afraid of Popov’s violence than of Filshin’s mismanagement on that mad, mad ride east.
Filshin heard the grumbles. He knew the mutiny would follow.
Keeping Pawlowski alive now required significant amounts of cash. Popov and Mario were already squawking that he hadn’t paid them enough. Caspar wouldn’t be far behind. Usher’s money was gone. Filshin was now drawing cash advances on his own credit cards. If he kept doing that Natasha would never be able to repay the bank.
He picked up the coffee-stained issue of the The Economist lying crumpled on the front seat and found a bio of Pawlowski. He was amazed to read that the Polish government minister owned a considerable stake in several eastern European hotels and casinos. His mood brightened. Pawlowski’s business interests were probably too small to impress Michael Usher, but the article hinted at a number of activities where the talents of a Popov or other Filshin gang member could be useful. Could he convince his gang that letting Pawlowski go might pay more than ransoming him?
The truck wheels rolled all through that long dark night, while Filshin tried to puzzle a way out of his dilemma.
Pawlowski would be angry about the kidnapping and the knocked-out teeth, but what if Filshin told him the alternative, that Usher wanted him dead? Would he listen to Filshin’s proposal?
And the members of the Filshin Gang? Could he sell them on the employment opportunities under a real criminal overlord? Maybe.
Then, as soon as Natasha’s father was safe at his sister-in-law’s in Canada, Filshin would find a new job. It wouldn’t be easy. Usher was sure to interfere, but he would find something.
The truck rattled back and forth along steep switchbacks through sinister black conifers that stretched up into the dark night sky like a prison stockade. Smuggling, planting toxic waste, kidnapping…where would it end?
Filshin imagined a descent into hell beginning with a boat ride behind a hooded ferryman; a bony index finger waggling at anyone who dared to interrupt the still sounds of the ferryman’s pole dipping into the water with self-pitying protests of not belonging in hell.
The banality of hell surprised him. The grinding of gears. An ex-con ferryman missing two fingers and still managing to fill the truck cab with the stink of Russian cigarettes. The whining about the job not paying enough. The rattling of cola bottles. The dead forest killed by emissions from coal-burning power plants and factories closing in on him.
Dawn on the mountaintop plateau was cold and unforgiving. Pale grey, silvery light revealed row upon row of dead black spruce trees. A giant mountain face razor-stubbled by naked tree trunks. Skeletal black branches wove lace shrouds over green ferns and wildflowers that dared to resurrect life on the forest floor.
The road curved and started down. Popov slammed on the brakes and downshifted. The truck lurched and groaned, refusing to slow. Popov swore, spat his cigarette out the window, and battled with brakes and gears.
Staying in control of the Filshin Gang was like trying to slow a runaway truck.
Mario had plans, big plans that couldn’t wait. Popov squashed them; no contact with Meitner until they had Pawlowski stowed someplace secure, he told Mario.
Filshin wondered if Popov had a place in mind, but was afraid to ask. Gang leaders were supposed to know these things.
Caspar noticed they were low on cash when Filshin opened his wallet to pay for gas. We should pop a Polish bank, he whined to Popov.
One crime was leading to another. Filshin felt his life sliding into a downward spiral. A runaway truck barreling downhill.
Popov rescued him from Caspar too. Rob a bank for a few measly złotys? Don’t be stupid, man. We’re going to get euros, real euros for Pawlowski. Why risk a dumb heist? We can’t get greedy. We’ve got to stick together.
Filshin admired Popov’s management skills even as they led him deeper into the underworld and into debt. It had to stop.
He noticed that the bank in Lublin used the same ATM machines as his own bank in Ohio. Natasha had often complained about installers who forgot or were too lazy to change the default administrator password. She had shown him how it worked in the manual. There was a way to get cash, but he couldn’t use his own bank cards. Reluctantly, he sent Caspar out to lift a few wallets and a cell phone.
Inside a Lublin bank ATM cubicle, Filshin opened the ATM’s administrator page, changed a few entries and inserted the first stolen card. Presto! Abracadabra! Just like in a fairytale! The machine spit out twenty 50-euro notes instead of the twenty tens it should have. They hit four more banks, but it was a one-day-only kind of magic. The banks would catch on when the first machine ran out of cash. By the next morning passwords would be added across Poland.
Still, the Filshin Gang cleared a cool 5000 euros with no guns and nothing messier than a little pick pocketing. The stunt earned Filshin respect from his whole gang, even Popov.
Bogosian had an idea where they could stash Pawlowski while they waited for the ransom. The Baltic Sea sailing season had ended early. Ships were in dry dock for routine maintenance and repainting, but in Russia there was never enough money to repaint all the ships or overhaul all the engines. A few ships were always tied up empty while their crews found work to hold them over the winter. An empty ship offered everything they needed. A place to hide. Provisions. Isolation.
A sailor friend from his navy days lived in Minsk. Career officer, Black Sea Fleet, sailing out of Odessa. Ukrainian. Sailors knew where the empty ships were, Bogosian assured the Gang.
The friend picked Bogosian up for dinner and vodka in a shiny new Mercedes.
The rest of the gang waited with the Pepsi-Cola truck and the white van in the
parking lot of a Walmart garden center halfway between Vilnius and Minsk.
Filshin watched a farm couple plow the field opposite the superstore. The tractor stopped and the farmer’s wife jumped down. She placed the ladder into what must have been a deep hole and disappeared. How strange. Minutes later she resurfaced carrying a heavy bucket, took a funnel and poured the bucket into the tractor fuel tank. Filshin stopped wondering. For decades Soviet aircraft flying over eastern Europe dumped excess fuel without any regard for the environment. Fields near former military bases were drenched in it.
While Filshin wondered what spinach grown in fuel-drenched fields tasted like and if it was sold at the local Walmart, Bogosian and his friend were trading stories about how the Soviet Union crumbled. Like the rickety Lada Bogosian used to drive around Odessa. They laughed. The friend gave him a list of dry docked ships without a crew aboard, but he also told a story that stuck with Bogosian.
During the summer a gang of Ossetian teenagers used the basement of the uninhabited Russian House of Soviets in Kaliningrad as a base for their cigarette smuggling operations. When winter came, they left to wait tables in Spain, peddle drugs in Amsterdam, or hawk newspapers in London. Some even headed back to high school after making a contribution to parental finances.
Abandoned unfinished in the 1970’s, Kaliningrad Oblast’s House of Soviets, or parliament building, was built on the ruins of an 800-year-old German castle. Russian history buffs had marched in the streets to save the castle, but communist party hacks ignored them. Explosives took down the ruins left by the 1944 British firebombing of the city. Then with typical Soviet bureaucratic inefficiency, a survey was misplaced. No one noticed that the basement was sinking until the House of Soviets was almost complete. Tons of concrete had shifted the quicksand under the old castle basements. Structurally unsound ceilings, floors, even stairwells, could give way without warning. Local police deemed it too dangerous for regular patrols. Local civilians called it the ‘Kaliningrad Monster’ and thought it was haunted.
Filshin silently blessed the energy of teenagers when they found the opening the Ossetians had chipped through the stone under a staircase.
They walked through the basement and found not a single room, but several medieval cellars and passages that had survived the demolition. Electrified decades before by long-dead Germans, bare light bulbs hung suspended from round, barrel-vaulted, brick ceilings. An extension cord powered a small stove for cooking and heating, and the underground siege tunnel used to bring water and food into the castle during the Middle Ages now led not to the open countryside, but to the basement of a rundown apartment complex two blocks away. Perfect.
Filshin assigned Bogosian to keep watch over Pawlowski while he went to contact Meitner, the company which the Economist said he owned. Popov showed his disapproval by blowing stinking cigarette smoke into his face, but Filshin pointed out that except for Turks, Armenians got along with everyone…Georgians in the Commonwealth of Independent States, Californians in LA, Israelis in Jerusalem, wherever history took their Armenian forefathers. If one of the Ossetian cigarette smugglers came back, or worse, if the Russian police appeared, it would be good to have Bogosian there to smooth things over.
What if Meitner managers didn’t speak English. They must, Filshin told himself. Most business people spoke at least a little BSE, the Bad Simple English which had become the de facto language of global business. Meitner executives wouldn’t be any different. But what if negotiations drifted into German? Filshin wondered if he should use Mario to contact Meitner. Mario had learned German during summers selling ice cream in his uncle’s Mannheim café. No. Filshin couldn’t follow when Mario rattled away in rapid fire German. The situation could get out of control. Caspar didn’t speak much German, but he understood it well, thanks to a great-grandmother who spoke it at home even after the Soviet NKVD resettled her family in Kazakhstan in the 1930s. When the time came, Filshin would take Caspar along.
15 Berlin