from Russia, with Icepicks . . .

. . . and that was the story, basically.
But as ever, there was a postscript. And isn't there always? Even the fucking dead won't quit ragging your arse, yeah, the dead, but at least they don't force you to go out drinking with them, that's one positive. Anyhow, like I said, the postscript, well, you know she arrived on an Aeroflot jet, alive too. Not too many people could say that, she was always blessed up in the air, it was on the ground she had serious problems. Probably at sea too, she'd have been a Titanic on the sea, going down on her maiden voyage and all that while the band played Sweet Little Rock N Roller or whatever the hell it was when that Irish built chunk o'shit vanished. I digress however, as I'm apt to do when I'm trying to cobble together something barely resembling a story using beer coasters on a sodden bar top. I always fucking lose the ones with the most important bits on . . . so, I'd gone to meet her. That was all arranged by Seamus (who hadn't had a hand in building the Titanic), and Oleg (who had probably had a hand in positioning that iceberg), I'd met Seamus on a Brittania airways flight. He was on his way to some attol in the deepest Pacific, where his runaway bride had shacked up with a Vietnam Vet. He'd asked me, in Singapore while we drank warm beer at overinflated prices, whether I'd wanted to tag along too. Like fuck. That's what I told him. I had my own problems, lots of them, more problems than Captain E. J. Smith had ever had. That fucker went down with the ship, wise decision, if he hadn't have, they'd have keel-hauled his sorry arse for incompetence anyhow.
Oleg was a different tale. A cold war one. I'd first met him in Helsinki, at the icebar, he was slugging back 80% proof shots like they were Gatorade. Him and some fly boy Norwegian called Olaf. I could never tell those commies apart, not that either were commies. Oleg, he was ex-KGB, but on-the-run. The Reds had his whole family under house arrest in Tallin, his three wives and eight kids. Dumb commies. Olaf, he'd just got a job on Aeroflot, he'd been grounded for two-years having flown some jet into an Andean mountain on account of bad weather and getting a BJ from a Panamanian stewardess while he was supposed to have been watching out for bad weather. Anyhow, I was there on other business, unconnected with weather, or whether or not. We ended up drinking shots for shots on the pool table until Olaf lost vision in his right eye and fell through the hotel window. Ugly scene. Oleg and me decamped for Sweden, we had a common friend there who sold hosiery. No harm in that. Which was when we borrowed the free bikes bars in Sweden give you to stop you drink driving, and rode them straight across an arterial highway because we were smashed, and consequently spent a comfortable night as guests of the Kalmar constabulary. They are good types, lugubrious, serve a decent breakfast though a tad too heavy on salted fish for my taste.

Oleg was running some way dodgy Russian bride scam. I was interested. Both in a Russian bride, and the scam involving them. Back then I knew a few hundred pasty English types who'd kill for that kind of action, and in fact, some already had and were doing life in Dutch prisons. The Dutch might be liberal on drug use, but they draw the line at crazy English men hacking up their native females on cobbled back streets.
Svetlana was her name. Oleg showed me her mug shot, lifted straight off the Interpol database. She looked like my kind of woman, desperate in other words. Then he asked me if I fancied doing him an all expenses paid favour. Stalin used to ask the same thing of lots of fools who were never seen nor heard of again. Okay, I told him, what's the catch? I was only half listening to the catch, my eyes had wandered off to pastures nubile. Airport bars are full of nubile pastures to visually graze. On my flight to Copenhagen, the Kroner dropped. What? Daytona Beach? Wasn't that in fucking Florida? It had all seemed seamlessly straightforward when orated in the rustic brogue of an ex-KGB flunky.
Had I mentioned anything about my ban? No, probably not, there wasn't a checkpoint on the whole of the US that'd allow me legal entry – oh, yeah, a get out card. Nice work if you can get it. I faxed Oleg this pertinent detail from a hookah bar in downtown Copenhagen, a city that was never a swinging joint. Then I relaxed. Two days later a woman in a biscuit coloured uniform thrust an envelope into my hand. I had had run ins with summons servers before but when I dropped it in the hotel lobby, she picked it up and followed me halfway down street with it. When I studied it properly, I realized it was a telegram. Not another bloody funeral - good people were dropping faster than mice dropped faeces. I opened it. Oh, I had to go to the nearest Western Union office to collect my fee.
Interesting.

The lady in there was dubious about my claim. I sat there patiently, aware as I was, of the Danish fetish for triplication. Finally, I left with a giant wad of cash. I didn't feel nervous, no one ever got mugged in Copenhagen, sodomized yes, but mugged no. That crazy Russian, sorry, ex-Russian who was always an Estonian, even when Estonia was little more than a backwater suburb of Moscow, had actually wired me the money and faxed me an explicit list of instructions in regard of the delightfully svelte and non-English speaking Svetlana. I was to meet her at Stockholm harbor, where the Baltic ferry docked. Without me there to iron out any messy immigration formalities, Svetlana would be containered straight back to the gulag. She was six feet two apparently, too. That was a lot of woman in any language.
I met the ferry, diligent was my middle name before it got changed to dickwad after the correct period of common useage. No Svetlana. Well, easy come, easy go.
That was when we found out about her fear of water. There isn't much in Russia anyhow so I presumed it was normal, but, she'd have to acclimatize to it if she had even the faintest hope of assimilating in a paddling pool playground like Daytona Beach. Fuck yes. New instructions arrive via the desk jockey at the Hotel Skipo. The plane, yes, no problem, but the plane to Heathrow, who's crazy fucking idea was that? Didn't that idiot realize I was in Stockholm?

Off I went on a twin-engined 24-seater, then up there I sat, circling the home counties waiting for a landing slot about eight-miles from a terminal. No shuttle. Long walk. Over to Aeroflot, where of course, there was the usual security and scrutiny. I sat around there for a few hours, watching the boards. Svetlana's flight, AF411, had been delayed due to fog in Gdansk. What the fuck were they doing flying via Poland anyhow.
It arrived about seven hours behind schedule. There was no argy bargy at the counters. I watched a troupe of ashen faces pass by me, then I saw Svetlana, right at the back, giggling with the Egyptian pilot. Typical. I utilized sign language to direct her to immigration, where, somehow, I had to gain her entry and argue my way through the messy procedures that accompany legal entry to the United Kingdom of Great Britain. What a joke. Luckily, I caught ahold of the immigration personnel post shift change. Celebrity Squares indeed. The guy Svetlana came face-to-face with, had obviously just been fed and watered. He looked her up, and then down, deliberately, I could tell that a strip search was buzzing around his frontal lobes someplace, which is when I stepped in. I explained to him, what was occurring, he listened in a disinterested manner. Transit visa yes, full responsibility, yes, leaving – certainly, funds – no problemo, accommodation – sorted. Sign here, sign there, dot this, cross that, suck this, fuck that. The usual streamlined formula.
I had to pay attention now, you'd be a prick to let a woman like this loose in a country like this. I held on tight. She had icy hands, hands like my granddad had had after he'd layed in the chapel of rest for five days. No sooner were we off the tube, looking for a iron horse west, than Svetlana started pointing to her own crotch. Look, I told her, this is England okay? You can't point at your genetalia over here, these are decent people with a sense of decency. She carried on, pointing, then putting that pointing finger to her own nose and pulling a disgusted face and then offering the pointing finger to me to smell. I declined. People were starting to look at us from over the tops of newspapers and from behind mugs of tea. I didn't like it. Have you pissed yourself? I inquired.
She pulled a queer face.
I pulled one back.
She pointed at my crotch.
I pulled a queer face.
She pulled one back.
We were going noplace fast. Neither was the train alongside us. I accompanied her to the restrooms, waited outside, five minutes later she re-appeared, looked at me very sharply, then slapped a pair of scrunched up panties into my hand. As they unfurled, a stinking rotten odour began to fill the air in my immediate vicinity, a stench only barely masked by the slightly more appalling stench emanating from the craphouses. I immediately threw what had once been pristine Soviet made and issued undergarments, into the overflowing English trash can. They sat proudly on top, opening up like a blooming rose. I did not stop to consider that those might have been the only pair of panties she had, or indeed, owned. Why would I?


London is not the kind of town where lingerie comes cheap. Good news that we were leaving, I didn't fancy rifling through synthetic undies over in Brixton, not unless they were being worn by a limbo dancer at the time. We sat on the train looking at mile-upon-mile of dreary English backyards: limp sodden laundry hanging dirtier than it had been before washing, beaten up kid's toys, beaten up kids, football paraphernalia, sullen looking housewives, the whole mish mash of suburban English life, I wondered what Svetlana made of such squalor, whether she thought that this Western way wasn't anywhere near as glamorous as they'd led her to believe in the Gulag. She had nice hands, a nice complexion, crystalline eyes, pale lips, and a very pungent aroma. I shuffled closer to the window, two weeks seemed an awfully long prognosis, could anyone harness a bitch like this for two weeks? Small wonder they'd let her go.

Yes, Bristol, a swell dump. A university town, cheap beds, music, booze and women. Jewel of the South West. We shacked-up in a nondescript bedsit on a two-week lease. She needed underwear, badly, and then she needed food, too much damned food. After three days I had to go find a fax, aint no kinkos in Bristol, kinkies, yes, kinkos, no. I scribbled an angry message to Tallin, it simply read: more cash or I turn her loose.
Two-days later, I got a reply, it read: no more cash. You turn her loose, we hunt you down.
These damn swine, my options were sparce, getting sparcer. She was putting on weight. I noticed as she got undressed for bed each night. A little more than an inch to pinch here and there. Too much western food, too many fries, pies, hot dogs, roast pork sandwiches, toasted cheese sandwiches, pizzas with the lot plus some to go. For each pound she gained, I lost one in kind. I put it down to stress, and poor diet. For each dollar she cost me from the slush fund, the nearer I got to destitution, false identities and an Interpol file. There had to be an answer someplace, there is always an answer. I went to sit outside of St Barnaby's church, St Barnaby was the patron saint of non-English speaking brides to be. He was next to useless, no, he was useless. No help from above . . . oh, wait up, above, yeah, malnutrition or not, something upstairs was still functioning, running on a longlife cell, yes, I rummaged around in the pockets of the faux leather coat I'd been wearing since that pool game in Helsinki, hadn't I transferred all the crap I'd had in my parka into this piece of oilskin taken fairly and squarely off the back of a rogue trader from Minsk? Ah ha! Yup, here it was, Singapore airlines, a great way to fly, and on the back . . . come on Barnaby put some fucking effort in, and on the back . . . I closed my eyes, flipped the napkin over, opened them, oh lord praise to you, Seamus's phone number in Dublin. Yes Dublin, where the girl's are so pretty, indeed, beautiful in fact, but I digress, what if I dragged the now not so svelte Svetlana across the Irish sea, jayzus, that was more than halfway to the new world and by christ that indy car driver from Florida could just come over to Shannon his goodself and collect her, if he still wanted her that was.

I made plans in haste and chaste. Always wise. When everything else has been eliminated, what remains, no matter how preposterous, must be the solution. Elementary. And thanks Edgar A. Poe. Off we went, after a hurried fax to my ex-KGB puppet masters outlining the change of plans and the reasons behind the change of plans. I didn't expect a reply.

Seamus met us at the ferry, Svetlana was green, like Erin, like the sea, like a bile duct. Too fucking bad, that's why Q-uells were invented. We drove fast, down windy country lanes and through 18th century villages. All very quaint indeed. We found out that Svetlana had motion sickness in cars too. More bad news, especially for her waiting indy car beau I guessed. We got into the warm embrace of the fair city several hours later, sneaking in under cover of dark like republican hitmen. Four days to go. Tick tock. Seamus had had more bad luck than the whole west coast of Ireland. His tattered ancestry was a litany of leprachaun abuse, sodomy, bestiality and root vegetable rooting. He fair stunk of debauchery and ale. The brewery was close, too close for comfort, I could smell it hanging in the air like imminent ruination; barley.
Aye aye aye aye aye. Russian roulette on the black stuff with a little people bandit. A mess yes, but there was always a tiny glint of salvation – Ireland had been all but built on that glint.
I waited on the fax. Seamus waited on the facts. Svetlana waited on the fat. Patience was a virtue, look at that band on the Titanic playing Sailing for the umpteenth time. I kept going down to McKrinkles office supplies. They had a fax machine there. Good people, salt of the earth, the peat in the bog and all that blarney stone bullcrap. If that stone had been nearby, I'd have gone hung upside down with my torso dangling over a four-hundred foot drop into the Atlantic and kissed the damned thing myself, to be sure I would.
Word came, it was angry, McKrinkle wasn't a circumspect type, kept hovering by the Garda hotphone nervously. I was to be at Shannon by this time on that day and wait for flight TWA626 to arrive. Ha ha, sweet news, all's swell that ends well. To the hops my bogus friends, to the hops . . .


postscript to the postscript:

. . . I'd thought of everything, bar the inevitable. I wasn't thinking about that as I was in the bar, studying Morag the barkeep's daughter. While I was studying her, the inevitable happened. That filthy rat Seamus, sowed his oats in foreign fields. I knew they were at it went I got back to the cottage. Then I definitely knew they were at it when I flung open the guest bedroom door and saw Svetlana spread in a position Nadia Comaneci would have been proud of. It was a perfect ten, no doubt, probably on the floor and the pummel horse. Soiled goods. I checked the many faxes. Nothing about pre-useage or secondhand merchandise. I took Svetlana to the airport, we sat there for seven or eight hours, I forget which. The plane landed. Svetlana was whisked away into the transit lounge, dosvedanya.
I hadn't any time to lose. I took a standby to Bombay. Goa was cheap, Ranjid in the curry shop had said. I needed cheap. All was going well. Then I heard the pilot, Olaf, say something about fuel gauges, pelicans and fellatio. What the fuck? The man next to me, a brusque rusky with a hedgerow across his eyes, told me we were being diverted to St Petersburg. Ha, of all the bograt luck. Fuck you St Christophe, probably a rusky too. I found out, in interrogation, that St Nicholas the III was the unofficial patron saint of emergency landings. Well, good for him. I was allowed to leave, in fact, they insisted, took me in a Skoda to the aerodrome, all very James Bondish indeed. The aircraft looked like a Skoda with wings. Where the fuck is this piece of shit going to? I asked nervously. The three men laughed, it was a hearty fuck you kind of laugh. Siberia. They answered. The Russians do have a sense of humour. In fact, I took a low altitude flight to Ireland. How nice, home again. I caught a cab to Seamus's house. It was dark, milk still on the doorstep. I drank it.
I slept at the bus station, took a bus to the ferry the next day, pleaded for deportation.

postscript to the postscript to the postscript:

I received a fax a few weeks later, it had been sent by airmail. I opened it up. No words, just a deftly sketched drawing of an icepick . . . someone had an artistic bent and a malicious streak.