Collective Mind (19 page)

“The
light-blond locks those pretty little Swedish girls left on my sleeping bag!”

“No
Bikie, I rather feel bad for you, my dear friend!! What sort of pain in the
neck do you have to be to make girls’ hair come off?

“No
way, they tore it out in that surge of passion I made them feel. But don’t be
upset I promised to be your mentor in handling women. I think that after a couple
of years’ intensive training, I’ll let you move on to practicing – tender
kisses.”

“You
can kiss my ass…tenderly. And record your advice and talk lines for me, the
ones that trimmed the Swedish girls’ hair so sweetly. If they lose their hair
like that, I’ll just hold the Dictaphone up to my face and use it to shave
with.”

***

Afterwards
they walked round the sunny little streets of the town with full stomachs and
in an excellent mood.

The
superb resort town, fit to rival Cote d’Azur, really lifted their spirits.
Every step brought into view hosts of bars, little restaurants, cafes and other
pleasant establishments.

Bikie
stuck the bandana on his head, slipped on a pair of mirror sunglasses and put
on long black shorts. Isaac dressed even more lightly: his entire outfit
consisted of a tank top, flip-flops and shorts. There was no shower in the van,
but they could walk to the beach and take a dip.

Having
returned to the van, Isaac and Bikie started the engine and drove to the cigar
shop. It turned out to be in the outskirts of the town, although previously it
had been on an upmarket shopping street. There was an upside to that – unlike
in the center, here there were convenient observation sites where they could
easily park. The shop window displayed hookahs, wine bottles and all sorts of
bits and pieces including a cigar box and a humidor.

Driven
by the thrill of the chase, Isaac suggested going in, but Bikie objected.

“How
could you be so careless? We obviously don’t fit the part of rich smokers or
their couriers.”

“Cool
it! Half the store window is filled with cheap garbage. It’s a long time since
they sold anything but cigars. Come on.”

Getting
into the shop turned out to be impossible. A note stuck to inside of the glass
said that the shop would open in half an hour. How long ago it had been put up
was not clear, and the disappointed friends went back to the van. It was stuffy
inside so Bikie parked the van under some trees to cool down.

Bikie
took out his laptop and fiddled with it, trying to find a Wi-Fi connection.
Isaac watched the entrance of the little store, waiting for the owner or a shop
assistant to show up. Long after the lunch siesta crowds flooded down the
street, there was not a soul around, just the baking sunlight and hot asphalt
frazzling the air. Bikie started the engine to give it at least a small blast
of coolness from the air conditioning. The two friends didn’t feel like
talking; you might have thought they have been overcome by holiday-resort
lethargy, but they were really trying to focus. It felt like at any moment Link
would come to the shop and everything would work out just fine.

Eventually
an elderly Italian came up to the store opened the door and took the note off
the glass. Five minutes later the friends were already inside, just an ordinary
little shop, nothing remarkable. Bikie asked about the internet, and a
secondhand mini-router was unearthed from among the masses of odds and ends on
the shelves. While the shop assistant checked to see that it was still working,
Isaac pointed out to Bikie a fridge with a glass door, with neat rows of cigars
inside, in boxes and loose. Bikie smiled contentedly. The cigars were found,
all right – the only thing left was to wait for the buyer.

After
they spent several hours in the van and not a single customer entered the shop
their excitement evaporated. They noticed a policeman coming in their
direction. He walked up to the van, peered inside vigilantly, knocked on the
window on the driver’s side, and when Bikie opened it, asked an unambiguous
question:

“What
are you doing here, boys?”

“We’re
tourists,” Bikie replied brightly, keeping his grip on the laptop. “First day
on the island. We still haven’t figured out where to stay, so we’re sitting
here arguing and looking at the sites of the hotels nearby.”

“Move
on, guys, will you,” said the policeman, in a genial mood. “We’ve had a
complaint from the old woman in the house opposite. She says some strange
characters got out of a van and then mysteriously went back, and now they’re sitting
there with the engine running and making a stink, and are obviously plotting
something. I understand everything, but she’s an old lady, why upset her?”

“OK
chief,” Bikie responded. “Already gone.”

The
policeman walked away. They drove the van away a bit, and Isaac nodded in the
direction of the shop. The shopman locked the door and was twirling the handle
of the shutters, covering the display window. The guys could leave without any
qualms of conscience: the first day of surveillance was officially over.

They
stopped a kilometer from the shop, at an empty lot where the van was concealed
from the road by bushes. Bikie came up with an idea – let technology do the
surveillance. In a blink of an eye he had linked up a web camera from his
arsenal to the laptop and fine-tuned the image.

It
was almost dark when the friends got out of the van to stretch their legs, grab
a bite and install the web camera opposite the cigar shop.

When
they reached the site, Isaac noticed an old woman on a chair in front of one of
the houses. She was either dozing or enjoying the long-awaited coolness of the
evening with her eyes blissfully closed. Bikie caught Isaac’s glance and
nodded. They would have to wait. There was a little grocery shop on the ground
floor just behind the woman.

“Clear
enough, life teaches proprietors to be vigilant,” Bikie explained to Isaac. “Or
maybe she’s just feeling bored.”

They
took up a position on a municipal bench, pretending to be tourists resting
after a hike and ate the pizza they got on the way. The old lady couldn’t see
them, but if they turned round and craned their necks, they could see if she
was still on her chair.

It
took quite some time before the woman finally got to her feet, yawned, grabbed
her chair and retreated in to the house.

“I’ll
take the chair inside, so the damn thieves won’t steal it!” said Bikie,
imitating an old woman’s voice so convincingly that Isaac could barely hold a
laugh.

Mindful
of their earlier error, the friends took their time. They waited until the
light came on upstairs, which meant the old woman was in her bedroom, and went
out again, indicating that she had gone to bed. Only then did Isaac and Bikie
get up and stroll gently in the direction of the cigar shop.

Pretending
to take an intense interest in a blossoming bougainvillea, Bikie quickly fixed
the camera on the fence, hardly even slowing his already-slow stride. To look
even more natural, he theatrically sniffed in the air from one of the lush
purple flowers, breathed out noisily and walked on, whistling, beside Isaac.
Isaac teased his friend, saying that today Bikie had indeed revealed his acting
talent.

The
entire next day they observed the shop remotely. There was only one customer in
the morning, an elderly gentleman with a cane and another three in the early
evening.

“Now
that’s what I call a rush of customers!” Isaac quipped acidly. “Bikie, maybe we
need to think of something else?”

“I
already have,” Bikie replied. “I’ve written a little program that responds to
changes in the video image. It will be activated every time someone goes into
the shop. Something like a remote motion-detecting sensor. Then at least we
won’t have to spend the whole day long staring into the monitor. When someone
goes in, the computer will chirp to us. And tomorrow we’ll visit the shop again
and I’ll put another web camera inside. We’ll be able to see whose buying.”

The
third week of surveillance was coming to an end, and the friends were gradually
giving in to despair. The program that observed movement at the shop was working
excellently, with no glitches, but in all this time cigars had only been bought
on eight occasions. The demand for smoking material really was tending towards
zero. They took turns keeping watch, making periodical visits to the port.

Isaac
followed the first customer, who turned out to be a steward from the luxury
yacht Carbonica, obviously not the right lead. Isaac had decided that they
would follow all the customers who bought cigars. The next box was bought by
some local individual with a beautiful villa in the town’s center. On three
occasions cigars were delivered to different yachts, and once to a hotel. On
one occasion Bikie had to drive off in a hurry and follow a young guy on a
scooter to the nearby town of La Maddalena, while Isaac kept watch from the
bench with his computer. And on one occasion they had to drive all the way to
Cagliari, three hundred kilometers round trip, almost seven hours. The damn van
guzzled so much petrol that they had to fill the tank and then hurtle furiously
down the road to catch up with the car carrying the buyer. Thank God, they did.
It turned out Bikie was right when he checked on the car’s license plate number
to find out the address it was registered at. That was where they eventually
arrived. It was all futile. On three occasions the owner of the cigar shop
delivered cigars himself, every time to yachts.

Isaac
saw the fridge with cigars so often that he started dreaming about it. And
Bikie knew the exact number of cigars in it, so he could easily tell how many
cigars one or another customer had bought.

Meanwhile
the money Wolanski had given them was running out. The island of Sardinia had
proved to be far from cheap. Eventually they decided to sell the van since
living in it had become unbearable, it was so hot and constantly burning petrol
by using the air conditioner was getting too expensive. They made a serious
loss on the sale of the van, but they didn’t really have any options. They
moved into a budget hotel three hundred meters from the cigar shop and hired a
cheap scooter for operational movements around the island.

Their
frustration and despair would have overflowed long ago, but after the van,
living in a cheap little hotel seemed almost like heaven. The relaxing
atmosphere of the cozy Italian island also helped keep their dark forebodings
at bay. Their evening walks immediately after the cigar shop closed would beat
any psychiatrist treating an onslaught of a depression. Every morning and every
evening Isaac jogged five kilometers to the sports ground where he worked out
for an hour and then ran back. A little more of that and he would have to buy
new clothes again.

Days
were exhausting, but evenings after the shop closed was when they could walk to
the port or take a swim, and that inspired them with hope for the next day. The
backdrop of luxury yachts and laid-back people had a calming effect on them.
Now and again Bikie picked up another female tourist, while Isaac and Michelle
exchanged phone calls and messages more and more often. He lied to her, saying
that Bikie and he were already in Palermo, fearing that Michelle might decide
to come to Sardinia. She probably had loads of friends here. He really did not
want her to know that Bikie and he were living in a two-star hotel with a
communal shower and a kitchen in the corridor. After Wolanski’s villa, his room
seemed like the ultimate slum.

After
all, the womanizer Bikie had been right. After Isaac’s promising start with
Michelle, the involuntary separation only enflamed their mutual feelings. This
was especially true with Michelle, who was accustomed to men being willing to
drop everything for her sake. The mysterious Isaac had gone zooming off on his
own business for nearly a month which made him all the more interesting in her
eyes. And what sort of business he had was a mystery too, but he obviously
didn’t look like a criminal or a scam artist. No matter how hard she tried to
find out where he was and what he was doing, she got nowhere. Nothing but
excuses and evasive explanations.

Isaac
was not glad to be stuck on the damned island either. From what the doctors
said, Vicky was improving, but there was still no question of recovery without
surgical intervention. He wanted to see Michelle really badly but then he would
have had to tell her everything and he couldn’t. It would be bad for the cause,
and there was no point in putting the girl to unnecessary risk.

Isaac
phoned Vicky’s hospital too having to explain every time that he was her
brother, gradually returning him to that role for real, so he decided that his
temporary lust for her was a result of stress and purely brotherly concern.
Apart from everything else, getting to know Michelle has been very timely in
that way too.

***

The
fourth week was coming to an end without any developments. After supper they
felt drowsy, and it was time to get back to the hotel. Every time they put this
moment off as long as possible since the bench on the street was way better
than their room.

“Oh,
it’s time to get up,” Bikie moaned. “Get up or get it up? My smartphone always
used to confuse the two meanings, automatically switching to ‘get it up’. The
software developers were obviously guys with a lewd sense of humor.”

As
always Bikie had the urge to talk about women.

“It
would be good to get it up and in right now. The last one I had was really
wild, well you don’t remember, of course… but anyway, she doesn’t count. As for
an all night stand there were just the two Swedish girls, and a really long
time ago a girl from the bar who was really boozed up and took a mighty effort
to entice me.

“In
the morning she was shivering really badly, all uptight and striding around
like a tiger in a cage. Really jumpy. She had told her boyfriend she was going
to her girlfriend’s place, but she really wanted to get back at him for cheating
on her. She didn’t want to break off with him completely but didn’t want to let
him get away with it either. I just happened to be available. It was the first
time she had done it, cheated that is, and she had to put away a whole lot of
drink to go through with her plan. So I can’t say it was absolutely super. I
could see her thoughts weren’t on me at all, I was a just a suitable candidate
tall with heavy tattoos. The sex was only so-so. I was tired, she was drunk.
She was kind of stiff, and a big part of her was against doing it, but another
part was demanding revenge. The two of us never even kissed, which I was glad
about at first, because she reeked ferociously of booze, and then it started
annoying me. But I controlled myself and didn’t even try. Yuck! I remember now
she stank of anisette. A horrible smell!