I
didn’t even remember what I came here to run away from
I
had been sitting almost all day watching the shadows as they moved across the
square, then start to fall and stretch out. The heat of the day gave no
sign of abating in the faded light.
Surrounded by thick old stone towers and walkways. They bathed in
the sun and cheerfully radiated the heat they had gathered in the daylight.
The place felt like it had been sitting there doing that for a long time
and meant to keep doing it. Possibly, forever. Time in that old place did not follow the
rules. When a place is thousands of years old, trifles like hours and
days make no sense.
Forty-eight yards left of me sat the two Russians. They sipped their coffee and tried to look as though
they were not waiting for something. We
had not looked at each other. I
knew them both. Boris, the larger one, weighed 20 stone – even at that
weight, he could run 2 miles flat out barely breaking a sweat. Like a lot
of big guys, he was a man of gentle disposition. Viktor, his boss, was half
the man Boris was. Viktor, had never once shown any kind emotion at
all. If Viktor had the strength of Boris, he could have made real trouble
in the world. I guess god protects the dumb animals. Or a helpless
world.
I finished off the last of my latte, they made some damn good creamy latte.
I set my cup upside down on the saucer. That was the signal.
I had promised myself as I did every time that this would be the last time,
that I would never do something like this again. I knew that was a lie
when I said it – it is a bad idea to lie to yourself.
Boris
stood up and straightened his jacket, a totally pointless effort. After
fiddling and tugging, he still looked like, sausage in a sports
coat. Yeah, just keep working that, you Russian slab. I sat up just a little in my
chair; watched Boris walk away about 15 yards, then disappear between two
buildings. So far so good, everything was as planned. But
what in this world goes off as planned?
I
was sweating. Boris had been gone maybe 2 minutes, it seemed longer.
Like I said, in that place, time just breaks down. Viktor sat as well,
looking in my general direction, but not at me.
He looked his part. Viktor
looked evil, but we are not evil guys. Sometimes we get good people out
of a tight spot, if the money is right. Most times we get good money out
of a tight spot, if the people are right. On the menu this
evening, diamonds – to my mind, the most universally liquid form of
currency on the planet -- don’t leave home without them. Finally, after 4
minutes Boris reappeared around the corner. His gun hand was in his jacket his
other hand hung free.
No bag. No merchandise.
I know Boris – he is a “right hand:
gun; left hand: items” kind of guy. Guys like Boris are
mechanical – they pee at the same hour every day; they chew their food 34
times. They put their socks and
shoes on in the same order each time. One second, then two seconds passed and a girl
– maybe 13 years old – walked into view behind Boris. She looked very
small next to him. She had dark hair and darker eyes.
I thought. Was there some change in the
plan?
In my business you stay calm. Still in my head, the alarm bells were
ringing out the “Holy What the Fuck” chorus.
In 3-part harmony. But I did, stay calm. I was watching
Boris. I saw his dropped hand fly apart – I mean I saw his pinky and
forefinger come loose and turn to mist: as sound bounced around the square.
The shot spun him to his left he staggered sideways in front of the
girl. A second shot struck Boris in the back of the neck and he fell
forward. No doubt, saving the kid’s life.
I
was on my feet, without thinking. I didn’t hear the direction of the shot – too
many echoes. A quick scan showed no
open windows, but my ass was in the open where it oughtn’t naught to be.
Behind me was the shortest route to cover but I was not under fire at the
moment. In front of me, twice the distance away, was the reason I was
there, lying under 300 pounds of dead Russian. So, god-bless
rock-n-roll I started to run. Viktor stood facing me and drew down.
I ran full speed, pointing my weapon, focused and ready. Running hard,
my finger just tightening to fire. Viktor
rose and aimed at me and another shot cracked in the air and he fell right into my
path blood leaking from a hole in his head. I grabbed at him as he fell, hoping to drag
him and use him as a shield, but I was going too fast Viktor fell dead to the
ground six feet from the place Boris had died. I just dove. into the
alcove where Boris lay. The girl looked fine considering that her feet
were pinned under a very dead Boris. I rolled my friend away and she
freed her self. She picked up Boris’s gun and handed it to me with out a
word. No emotion on her face. My heart was pounding in my ears and she
look like she was sitting in the library at school.
I pulled us both a few feet further into the cover of the buildings. She looked right at me and said, “ I have zee
items you seek”. Snapping off well-rehearsed words through a
thick accent. No smile, no break.
I tried hard not to laugh. I am a huge Rocky & Bullwinkle fan.
I couldn’t stop it and the more she turned her head in that quizzical – “vas
that not right?” way - the harder it was to stop.
Still, “out of there” was the order of the right-damn-now. Fifty feet
from us was the end of the little row of buildings sheltering us. After
that, was a street, an open crowded street. I figured these people, who
ever they were, couldn’t be crazy enough to drop a little kid on a busy
street. I couldn’t quite figure
out what had pissed these guys off, but they were pissed. I was pretty
sure by then that I was not the one that made them like that, after all, I was
still breathing.
“We can’t stay here.” I told her.
I
got to my feet and moved fast as close to cover as I could find. Then it
struck me – “she is a kid, asshole” – she doesn’t know how to play
this. I looked back and there she was, right behind me back to the
wall, eyes alert looking at me as if to ask what the hold up was. “ I
have zee items you seek.” She said again, staring dead at me. Looking
back on it, I should have known what she was saying. At that moment, I
just wanted some shade.
20 minutes later, we were in the worn lobby of a small hotel I know of that
took walk-in boarders and never asked many questions. I got two rooms on
the second floor across from each other. At least I could watch her
door.
When she held her hand out for her key, she grinned and looked up at me.
Smiled at me in a child’s version of being subtle.
“Ve
don’t need separate rooms.” She said. She pushed towards me a fraction
of an inch.
“Don’t
even try that shit on me, Honey”. I said. Putting my shoulder between
us.
She
looked put out. Then she smiled, even relaxed maybe, a little.
It
was my turn to smile. “Lets go upstairs,
wash a little and I will knock on your door in 10 minutes. I will need
some answers – more than, ‘you have zee items I seek’.”
Her
turn to smile, nervous like her big scene was about to come on stage. I got a nod. She understood me.
Frankly the whole thing was beginning to spell out “BAD PLAN” in letters
100-feet tall.
So we walked to our rooms. I watched her close her door and backed to my
door. I spent 10 minutes with one eye on the peephole. I was not
really afraid of her running – more of her being noticed by competitors.
Someone had trusted this kid with a good deal of money. That meant they
either had something big on her or had promiced something big for
her. That is the way the world was. Still is. Everyone
is a businessperson and she seemed more than equal to the task.
Whatever passed for childhood was long the stuff of memory, for this one.
As
I watched her door I began to ask myself questions. I had been ready to
transport a case, a small overnight bag at most, not a person. What
kind of fucked up god puts me in charge of a person? A kid, no less,
though I was starting to take the term more and more lightly. Thinking
back, she picked up Boris’s gun as her first thought and, come to think of it,
picked it up correctly. She could have seen that on T.V. Odder
still she then turned the gun around and handed it to me correctly. Not
her first gun?
Maybe.
BAD
PLAN. The letters grew larger.
Nine and one-half minutes were up
and I could not take one more second of the squeal the broken fan in my room
made. I opened my door. I stepped into the still sweltering
hallway. I would have to speak to someone in management about my
fan. I knocked on her door 5 times like I told her and she opened
it. We traded the heat of the hotel for the heat of a small café
downstairs. I had been drinking latte all day. I was hungry.
We ordered. I anticipated roast lamb. Kids must be kids the world
over, she ordered a burger. Truthfully I hated the food there and couldn’t
wait to be back home.
I
said, “So tell me.”
She
said her name was Nika. She was 14 – lost one parent to AID's when she was 5
and the other to drugs when she was 7. Lived in the street for a year before being
picked up by one of the many gangs running through the countryside, as a mule
to carry items inside her. I mean who was going to check a little
girl. So they used them. Sad story – not my problem – so far, not
my problem.
“I
go with da jewels,” she flatly said.
It
took a second for my brain to process. I started sweating.
“I am go with them and seeing of how
I am 13…”
I
was now being vaguely threatened by a miniature Russian cartoon character
Did she just suddenly lose a year on me for effect?
“You will find yourself in uncomfortable position if you try to take them from
me.”
All I could think at that
moment was that a flying squirrel was going to come save my sorry ass.
I am not a fan of flying, but at that
moment. I had no idea how I was going to move us 5000 miles. She
let me chew on it for a bit, let me sweat. I was at the point to thinking
she could probably fit in the overhead bin – problem solved.
“There
is a ship, there have been made arrangement”. She said.
I
had the heavy feeling I was being played – very disconcerting. In fact,
I was about to lose everything. So I asked her why, if she had a way to
leave, did she need me? I saw for the very first time a small crack in
her – it happened, and was gone so fast, I might have imagined it.
“Boris” she said, “He insisted it be done siz vay.”
I was still trying to figure it out.
“He
wanted to make sure you to get paid.” Any hint of emotion was gone, wiped
away.
Ship turned out to be a bit of a stretch.
Floating cargo container- was closer. I have had
worse. Four walls ceiling and a floor all steel. Two cots and no
window. It would do.
I
ran laps the perimeter of the top deck every morning of the trip. The
second morning Nika was dressed and waiting before I woke. If she
insisted on intruding on my private run time she would have to hear my “theory
of breath”. And so will you dear reader. In a nutshell -an
appropriate receptacle. Your body
responds to breath and it’s rhythm. Every smoker knows this. When
Catholic grandmothers and Buddhist monks tell you saying the rosary or chanting
brings them ease it is not the words they say alone but the cyclical nature
their breathing takes on as they repeat the lines over and over. The longer they chant the more time they
spent with their breathing slow and eve, and the better they feel. If you
can get your breath to cycle you can do all things better. Run with ease
or live with ease. Stay in your breath. Try and make your in-breath
blend into your out-breath. Make that transition between in and out as
soft and seamless as you can.
To my utter shock she ran the next day with me also. Everyday. She asked me if I liked being
a thief and a murderer. I was half a sentence into my
well rehearsed job description when she cut me off.
"You kill people and take sings zat do not belong to you, for money.
She said flatly.
Jesus didn't this
girl see any shades of gray? She had in 48 hours ingratiated herself with
the crew. After one morning run she lead me to a beer a cold beer. A cold beer, at sea. Amazing.
I was faintly aware she was a minor but after a run a good morning beer
buzz is a fine thing at any age for a smuggler. For a little kid she was
an impressive belcher.
Five months later, I was back in New
York. Nika was, wherever the hell she had gotten off to after we
disembarked. I was waiting. In my work, you don’t send a friendly
“8-months late” in your payment note. You either blow their fucking
house up, or you wait. I
always chose the latter, whenever possible.
Knock-knock – Fed-Ex. A
package at my door. "Sign here". "Thank you very
much". I set the box on my kitchen table. No ticking, no
leaking, no oders. Sent from someplace in Virginia.
Inside
were the jewels and two photos of Nika and Boris together. One of her,
much younger, one taken just before the day Boris died. The letter from
Boris began “Here are the items you seek.” Russians make everything sound
underhanded.
I read on that when he was recruited, he was already married. They needed a
cover story so he was taken to the hospital one night. A story went out
that he had AIDs. It would ostracize the family and deter potential
visitors. The official records show he promptly died. So
his transition from citizen to Russian thug was achieved. As he moved up through the ranks of the
organization, as it were, he kept tabs on his daughter. He watched his
wife’s descent into despair and drugs. He
saw the effect it was having on his daughter, but could not really move to
overtly help her, for fear of outing himself and the entire mob. Blood in – blood out, was a real thing – like with
all soldiers.
He rigged this whole thing for her, thinking that if she carried the stones,
they would keep her safe. Even in his world, killing a kid was just not
something done by professionals. Still, Boris had to take the extra step
of sending the jewels to me. He didn’t want her to die in the street or
in the world he knew. As his punishment, he died right in front of
her, right on top of her. Someplace a therapist is sitting there,
looking at an empty couch. Will I be on it or will she be on it? The
guy died for his kid in front of her. He kind of died for me too, and in
front of me. His original scheme would have worked. I
know Nika would have gotten the package across, but he spared her that experience
and sent the stones to me so I could get paid. That exposed him.
Tomorrow I will take the jewels to my guy. I will
have my money in 24 hours. I have been kind of replaying all the crazy
moments of the trip. Boris, hand on his gun, but not drawn.
Why? Because he thought taking it out would draw extra fire, no good
for the kid. He had to know what was going to happen. That shot on
Viktor was close enough to hit me. I could hear the bullet and that kind
of bugs me now because I hate those guys that sit in bars and talk about
hearing bullets whizzing by – I mean so what! You’re sitting here, aren’t
you? How bad could it have been? Man, just crossing the ocean and I have all
the parenting experience I ever want. Amazing to me that more don’t end
up serial killers. But they are all we got. Like it or not when you
strip it all down, they will run the show. We should take care of them
better.
I sat back in my chair and looked at the light play on the jewels.
They were lovely, still, just rocks. Carbon cooled down fast enough and
under enough pressure to become what it is now and not a hunk of worthless graphite,
which is a perfectly acceptable end for carbon. One we devalue, one we
cherish. The numbers were just made up and suddenly worth a fortune
all because of trust or lack of trust. It made less and less sense to me.
So much wealth in the world shared equally could make life good for so many.
I closed my eyes and thought about the direction my life was taking.
It struck me that this was never really set up to move stones. It
was to move her. To a better place.
I thought of that and about Boris, going fast like that, protecting his child.
I thought that was a lucky break if you’re going to have to go.
“Once I have this cash, I swear I will never do something like this again.”
all images through google images
Copyright 2012 JVWilder
