Attending To Business

Irving and I were in the gym working out. The wound in my thigh had almost completely healed, enough that I could at least practice the martial art I most favoured, Tai Chi Chuan. This method employs the whole body to use as a way of transferring all the kinetic energy of the attacker on to the target. One blow can rapture organs and can maim or even kill, depending on just who the attacker is. If just an infantile mugger or thief, maiming will suffice. Not so, however, if killing you is the attacker's main objective.

Live by the sword, die by the sword. An epitaph for Bin Laden there.

Thinking of old Osama, I momentarily lost focus, and wound up flat on my back.

"You all right?" asked a concerned Irving. "You were supposed to --"

"I know what I was supposed to do!" I snapped, upset at my loss of concentration.

At this point, Svetlana Marinskaya entered, and felt a comment was necessary. "Losing it a bit, aren't we?"

"Shut up. Why are you down here?"

"There's someone at the gate. Ukrainian chap, name of Bohdan. Kind of cute. Says he has a meeting with you."

"He does," I replied, getting to my feet. "Sugar beet stuff. Sounds like a wheel may have come off. Tell Ahmad to let him in. I'll have a quick shower and change. Meet him in the study."

Svetalana left, and Irving and I headed for the showers.

"I don't trust that woman," muttered Irving. "She's too....competent."

"So are we, O king of Mossad," I replied. "So are we."

I showered and changed, and trundled down to the study, where I found Svetalana and Bohdan babbling away to each other in Russian. I noticed that Svetlana had changed clothes as well, from a nondecript housecoat to a short denim skirt and tight sweater. My God, I thought, the woman was hunting.

And from what I could see, succeeding. (I was not, sticking to jeans and a T-shirt displaying the words 'My England Includes Calais'. In any event, it never ceased to surprise me how vulnerable men were to a female body that emphasized its prime assets. Just ask Arnold or Domenic.

Bohdan looked up, went a bit red (so he should have) and said in Russian "I have just met Miss Marinskaya. We were talking."

I can see that," I replied in English. It was noteworthy that Bohdan and I always conversed in English, and it was a mark of just how rattled he was that he had addressed me in Russian. "You are also early. The Sugar Beet Board doesn't meet until this afternoon."

"Yes, I know. I wanted to discuss a problem with you."

"Oh," said Svetlana, "perhaps I go should." (Her English left something to be desired).

"No, stay," I said. "This might be instructive."

Bohdan, tearing his eyes away from Svetlana, got right to the point. Apparently the arrangement for the extensive sugar beet farm in Ukraine was coming under question. Now this arrangement involving land lease and use had been made with the fair Yuliya Tymoshenko, she of that awful braid. But Yuliya had lost the election and was now in opposition. Given that opposition leaders in fragile democracies are often thrown into prison, Yulya was not at this point in time worried so much about sugar beets as she was in staying out of jail.

"And," Bohdan continued, "the new guy, Viktor Yanukovych, wants to alter the arrangement. Indeed, wants to take the whole enterprise over. It being a money maker and all."

"I'll bet he does," I said, thinking that this could be really problematical. Legal stuff in Ukraine was subject not so much to the law as to who might be interpreting that law.

"I might of help be in this case," put in Svetalana.

"How so?" I asked, switching to Russian. If Svetlana was going to put a strategy on the table, I wanted to be able to understand it.

"Viktor has some nasty skeletons in his closet. There are rumours of a relationship with a thirteen year old girl."

"Rumours are just that," said Bohdan. "I have heard this as well."

"Well said, my Ukrainian friend," said Svetlana. "But these rumours are accompanied with a few photographs."

"No shit!" I exclaimed.

Svetlana continued. "Yes. And were I to whisper this into Viktor's tinted ear, I think your problem with the sugar beets would go away. It's one way to repay you for your hospitality. Of course, I would need some funds to arrange airfare to Kiev --"

Bohdan jumped in at this point, looking at me. "We can arrange that I think. She could perhaps accompany me back to Kiev after the board meeting."

I nodded agreement, amazed at how things turn out some times. Bohdan and Svetlana. Interesting. Recalls Malraux: "In literature as in love, we are often astonished at the choices of others."

Enough. Or too much.