Island Operation (Part VIII)

But returning to my dark interests, it was thanks to the precisely planned action that well before six already four of the six packages from that day had made their way to Nowobogacky. 

Despite the goods being of the best quality, Nowobogacky checked everything scrupulously and counted it. Then he paid me out in five hundreds twenty four thousand. Even though this was scarcely a fourth of the needed sum, I felt that now everything should be easy riding. 

When he asked when I would bring more, I said tomorrow morning. Then of course came the pool and the hour long swim. At the pool someone always asked me what about the army, and I told them that no summons had come yet, and almost everyone sympathetically answered that definitely nothing good would come of this.

The next morning the telephone awoke us. At the beginning I couldn’t orient myself who it was, but when he began to address me as his benefactor, I immediately remembered the previous day’s good work. 

The advocate, declaring without interruption his sincere gratitude, informed me that the wonderful shoes which saved his day were ready to pick up at the hotel concierge. It was only necessary to say that they were from the patron of the Hares. He apologized profusely that he could not return them any other way. 

He also wanted to inform us that as soon as the court case he was involved in was finished he would invite us to dinner, but that he would telephone again first. Around nine I left Bronco at home, asking him to go to the bridge by himself, because at one thirty he will have to recover the first take. 

I made my way to the station to pick up the two packages deposited yesterday by Bronco, take them to Nowobogacky’s establishment, eventually collect twelve thousand, and later, if time allowed, have coffee at Bławat’s, because just after twelve awaited me almost four hours of hard and precise work at Vania’s. 

But before this I decided also to visit a certain publication.

There were two newspapers in town. From an ideological standpoint they were both declared mouthpieces of the regime. They represented mainly Soviet interests and went about explaining the supreme role of the party. 

However, despite being one hundred percent committed to the case of communism, one of them, who knows why, had the opinion of a newspaper apparently more liberal. 

Maybe this opinion came from this, that in addition to the fascinating information from the fronts of building socialism in the country, of building communism in the Soyuz and of the total battle with Anglo-American imperialism, the newspaper held something like an about town section, where in addition to local gossip most often from the sphere of interconnected Stachanowieces, advisers and frontrunners of labor, they printed, with certain deliberate omissions, obituaries and even various other announcements. 

Because in this rag they often ran my illustrations, and beyond that two of my colleagues from the club worked there, I did not walk in blindly. 

The fruit of my short visit was that the next day there would appear an announcement saying the following: “Buying an automobile. Best to telephone from 9 to 11 in the evening” – with my telephone number. 

As for a car, mainly because of my plans for swift escape, I had not the least intention of owning one. However I very much needed some decent and working vehicle to peacefully deliver the cork to Nowobogacky. 

I could not have the two of us me and Bronco constantly running around town and the station storage with suspicious looking, always identical, large packages. I knew that the exploits would last another some ten days, and maybe even two weeks, and without normal transportation this work would be very uncomfortable, tiring, dangerous—wildly risky. 

I thought it through precisely and decided to do it this way: if I were to get some offer, during the conversation about purchase I would suggest that I pay a fifty percent advance, but that I needed to have the vehicle for some four or five hours, because twelve kilometers from here I had a trusted mechanic, with whom I had arranged to have the car inspected. 

If after this inspection I decided to buy, I would pay the second fifty percent, and if not, then I return the automobile and take back the advance. My club colleague who worked there made a dozen or so copies of this kind of a contract for eventual signature. 

He worked there in layout, a guy holding the very strange name of Ewaryst Elimer. 

The two packages from the station I took to Nowobogacky, and I told Bławat that I was finalizing the matter and waiting only for the summons to the commission on the EXTRA term, in any case the money I really almost had already.