The Ongoing Diary of Casey Neal

Perhaps You Can Stay Longer Next time

(March 2020)

The Russians were nothing if not prompt.  Well, except they were also adamant that DK was not coming along.

DK was not happy about this, but he’ll live.

Me, I’m not too sure about.

I think about Don-o and our last big adventure as I sit next to a guy who doesn’t really look all that different, I guess, from a normal guy.  He’s got on dark shoes, dark pants, and a polo shirt covered by a polyester jacket that carries the emblem of a soccer team. He wears a pair of sunglasses that have variable tint to them, darker on top.  His hair is dark, but thinning.  He’s maybe 35, but you can tell he’s probably going to be bald by the time he’s 40.  But looks don’t override knowledge, and the fact that I know he belongs to the Russians makes him sinister in my book.

I sat there next to him with my little overnight duffle, listening to a satellite station play classical techno-pop.

I remembered the last time I ran into sinister.

I remembered Pat Riley and Cueball.

I remembered Percy Nor.

They were all still in jail as best as I know, but this guy and the two guys in the front seat give me the same vibe, only deeper.

“What’s it like in Russia today?” I finally asked.

“What you mean?” the man beside me said.

I shrugged.  “I studied Russian history in school,” I said, finding irony in the idea of using my college degree for something vaguely useful at this point in my life.

“You have been to Russia?”

“Yes, but only for two weeks once when I was in school. We toured Moscow.  Did the Kremlin and all the other things I suppose student tourists do.”

“You hear that,” the man beside me said in a louder voice to ensure he was heard over the radio.  “Our man has been to Moscow.”

All of them grinned.

“I’m sure things have changed a lot since then.”

“Nothing ever change in Russia.”

I smiled.

“You think I joke?”

“Who am I to say?”

“Men come, men go. Politicians. Socialist, Democratist, Republic. All same. All suck fat from the people.”

I wanted to ask how things went in the gang they worked for, but my brain worked before my mouth, and instead I just replied with. “I understand that.”

“Things no change.”

I wasn’t surprised at all to find we were going to fly somewhere, but I admit to being a bit shocked to see we were heading to the public international airport.

They rolled into a hangar, where I grabbed my bag and was escorted to a small jet with the passenger door propped open and the stairway extended. The place smelled like jet fuel, and a bit of a chill breeze blew across the tarmac. A minute later I was aboard, accompanied by a new guard consisting of a female and two males, all three of whom seemed perhaps a shade out of shape.

Not that I had any plans to go all superhero at this point.

In for a nickel, in for a pound, as my Mom always said.

#

Several hours later, we landed in Irkutsk, which is a mid-sized city in south-central Russian that lies just to the north of Mongolia. So, yeah, you got it right in one.

They flew me to Siberia.

I could go into a long discussion about how Siberia as the West knows it and Siberia as it shows on the map are two different things, but that’s not really the point is it?  The bottom line was that it was March, there was a crap-ton of snow on the ground, and it was cold.  And, while I had packed for two days, I had inconveniently left my parka in the US.

They ran me to another car, though, a vehicle that smelled like boiled cabbage and ran on diesel fuel.  It was also the first car that actually felt like it would in a spy movie–dark and shiny with tinted power windows that seemed like they would be permanently in the “up” position.  Maybe twenty minutes later I found myself driven to the campus of what I could tell was the Irkutsk State Technical University, and then escorted to the office of what I would call the Grand Dictator, though others might call it the Dean’s Office.

Two men followed me into the office and took positions at each side of the door as it closed.  I got the opinion that they would be my closest buddies for as long as I was in town.

“Good afternoon,” said Aleksander Ivanov, whose title would actually translate to Director of Academics.  Ivanov looked like an academic administrator.  Slick and professional on the whole, with just enough frump to his hair and just enough wear to his jacket that he might be able to relate to the faculty.  He stood, and shook my hand with both of his.

“It is very good to see you,” he said.

“The pleasure is mine,” I replied.

“I understand you have been to Russia before?”

I smiled, realizing I should have kept my mouth shut.

“Da, though the time was long ago and very short.”

“Perhaps you can stay longer next time.”

The man’s assistant brought in some very bitter tea and biscuits, which actually was all pretty good.  Better yet, her appearance kept me from dwelling on any ominous intent that might have been included in the Director’s last comment. I chewed instead. The biscuits tasted very much of graham cracker, only softer.

“Mr. Ivanov,” I said. “Let me apologize for being direct and blunt, but I’ve been pulled out of my life and stuck on a plane for the last six hours.  And I’ve been escorted here to your office in these gentlemen’s shiny black car.  It’s all been very hush-hush, which is exciting in its own way.  But can we get to the point?  What am I here for?”

“Yes, I see.” Ivanov said, sitting up slightly.  “I am sure you are tired. So let me, so you say, get to the point.  The point is that we’ve recently had a retirement in our staff.” I didn’t miss the way his voice waivered over the word retirement. “As is usually the case when we have faculty retire, we were going over the man’s notes when we found something that we’ve come to understand might be useful to you and your inspector friend’s investigation.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Here, in Irkutsk?”

“As difficult as that might be to believe, yes, I think that is true–though I admit that at present we don’t know how it might help.”

“What is it?”

He reached into his trouser pocket and extracted a key, which he then used to unlock a desk drawer.  From the drawer he drew a three-ring binder with a cover of flexible blue plastic.  I took it from him as he offered it.  The binder was heavier and more bulky than it looked because it bent in unpredictable ways as I clutched one corner.

I opened the cover.

It’s been a long time since I attempted to read Russian text, and while I could pick out words here and there, I can’t say as I was getting lots of meaning.  But that’s okay, because probably a third of the material in these notes were equation and technical doodles, and another third were drawings and graphs and other kinds of scrawled models.

“The professor taught the physical sciences mostly, chemistry and bio-engineering and that lot.  Mostly.”

“Mostly?” I said, paging to the second sheet.

I saw Ivanov shrug in my peripheral vision.

I turned more pages.  Equations, graphs, system diagrams of some sort.  Interesting enough, I suppose.  But …

“I don’t understand,” I said to him.  “What does this have to do with baseball in Japan?”

He merely motioned me to continue.

The binder must have had 200 loose-leaf pages to it, and I paged along.  Certainly the Director did not think my weakish achievement of a degree in Russian History from a school in Duluth, Minnesota meant I was qualified to understand any of this at all.

Maybe it was page 50.

Or maybe 60.

Dunno.

But when I turned the fateful page I couldn’t help but see the information he wanted me to see.  It was a name and an address.

Charlie Cooper.

Coatesville Area High School.

USA.

It was underlined three times, and had a circle drawn around it.

“Holy crap,” I said.

“Da,” Ivanov said, smiling.  “Holy crap.”