No matter how long Gennady and Borys looked at the engine, fiddled with it or cursed it, it was dead. Dead and cold.
Gennady poked a stubby finger at the grimy innards of the Zhiguli sedan and stated the obvious: "We can't fix this. We need parts, and they'll cost..." He looked skyward, thinking hard, "...more money than we have."
Borys cursed and kicked a clump of filthy ice with the toe of his boot. Cursing had, thus far, been the extent of his contribution to the task of diagnosing and repairing the car. Borys was good at cursing, for sure. Cursing and driving, that is. Borys knew Kyiv inside out and could snake in and out of traffic, cut through courtyards and weave down sidewalks better than any other taxi driver in the city. But he needed a car to do it in, and right now that was a problem. He and Gennady had worked the decrepit Zhiguli to death, driving in shifts. That car had fed their families. But they hadn't invested much in the car in return. At their rates, passengers put up with sagging seats and threadbare upholstery. The windshield was badly cracked, though serviceable, and the front passenger-side window was covered with a plastic bag, but it was a ride, wasn't it?
The engine was a problem, though, and with no money for parts, it was likely to remain a problem until the men could get their hands on enough cash to get it running again.
Gennady lowered the hood almost respectfully, as a doctor would pull the sheet over the face of a patient for whom there had been no cure. And then the men did as many mourners do: they reluctantly turned their backs on the departed and stomped off into the winter night in search of a drink.
"Can you borrow the money?" asked Borys.
"No," Gennady replied. "You?"
Borys answered that with a forlorn look.
Though the two newly unemployed cab drivers hadn't thought that the pepper vodka would inspire an answer to their financial quandary - after all, drinking was its own reward - Gennady's eyes lit up as a thought struck home.
"I have a customer - an American," he began. "Not a regular, really, but I've picked him up near his home several times and taken him to work."
"He'll lend us the money?" Borys said.
"Not a loan, no," Gennady said. "He'll give us the money, though. And not just enough to fix the Zhugali. Enough for two cars. Mercedes, maybe."
"Give?" Borys stammered. "Mercedes? Who is he, Ded Moroz?"
"Well, there's a catch," said Gennady, lowering his head conspiratorially. "We would have to kidnap him. His firm will pay us to return him unharmed."
"What! Are you crazy? I need a car, not a prison cell."
"There's little risk. The foreigners expect this kind of thing," Gennady said matter-of-factly. "In Mexico, kidnapping is so common that nobody even reports it. His firm will pay and be happy that we aren't greedy."
"No, no, no," said Borys, shaking his head unhappily. Then, "How would it be done?"
***
Just when he was about to go bust, Alan "Red" Keefe had hit the jackpot.
Six months ago, he'd been stumbling toward the precipice of his career at the same time that Summit First International Consultants had started to cull its older, more expensive staff. As a senior management consultant, Red knew that he and his vintage MBA were about to be shuffled out the door, and a shiver went up his spine when the call had come on a Friday afternoon that Jeffrey Owens, the CEO, wanted to see him. Red had looked out the window and figuratively kissed his view of the Chicago skyline farewell. He figured that he was about to be given his walking papers, then and there.
Red felt a familiar heavy sensation seeping into his lungs, and he fumbled in his desk drawer for an inhaler. After a couple deep breaths, he put a nitroglycerin tablet under his tongue for good measure, to fend of a possible heart attack.
Owens had opened their meeting with what sounded to Red like a professional eulogy: Long, dedicated service ... senior staff ... valuable asset ... "but we're experiencing a global paradigm shift," (Owens actually said this), "and we need to reallocate our human asset distribution in order to remain optimally competitive."
"We only have one possible task that we could assign you. It's a USAID-funded project in some Godforsaken Eastern European backwater where I don't think they use vowels - the Ukraine. We need someone who speaks the lingo to help develop entrepreneurial spirit. You don't happen to speak Russian do you?"
"Da," Red said. It was meant as a joke, but Owens' eyes widened and then he broke into a wide grin.
"Really? That's fabulous, really super. We had no idea," he said. "Then you're off. Rich Jennings down in HR will get you set up."
As Red turned to leave the office, Owens had effused, "I know you'll do us proud, Fred. Just super."
This was not the time or the place, Red reasoned, to explain that he didn't really know Russian, or that his name wasn't Fred.
The young HR guy, Jennings, had never traveled outside Illinois and was in awe of the mission that Red had accepted. He was eager to see that Red got every nickel of the travel allowance, salary, benefits and per diem that he was due under the generous government contract. After all, Jennings reasoned, he was probably sending this old gent to his death in the dangerous and backward place, where he'd be the only expat in a small office with a single Ukrainian assistant.
Red was blissfully unaware of the danger that Jennings imagined he faced. Had he known, he'd have had a panic attack, or anxiety-induced asthma, or some other malady dredged up from the medical encyclopedia of his neuroses-nourished imagination. As it was, he was merely grateful to have saved his job.
Getting set up in Kiev was a snap. In no time, the local USAID office had helped him find an office, an apartment and a bilingual assistant. Within weeks, Red was settling into a routine that included work, making the rounds of the various watering holes frequented by expats, and visits to pharmacies in search of new and wonderful cures for his various conditions. He had, he was certain, developed the symptoms of radiation sickness within hours of being reminded that Chernobyl was just a few kilometers distant. He gulped handfuls of iodine pills to keep certain, horrible death at bay.
***
The snatch was remarkably easy: Borys stood outside the entrance to Red's building and waited for him to emerge, at which time he signaled Gennady to pull up in a borrowed Volga. After Red had negotiated a fare and climbed in, Borys walked up to the car and asked to share the ride. Red amiably agreed, and before he knew what was happening, they were off to Gennady's dacha near the village of Vasylkov.
Red objected after the car sped past his office and headed out of town, but Gennady explained the situation to him.
"We are taking you for a small holiday," he said in halting English. "Don't worry, be happy. We will not hurt you. But your firm must pay us to return you."
"You're kidnapping me?" Red asked, incredulous. This was not something that the embassy's regional security officer had warned him about. AIDS and credit card fraud, sure. But he was certain that kidnapping hadn't been on the list.
"Kidnap? No. We take you, your firm pays us, we take you home," Gennady explained.
"That's called kidnapping," Red said. His head began to spin and he could feel his lungs slowly filling with mucus. His medications were split up between his home and office; his pockets were empty.
Borys, who knew no English, silently sat in the seat next to Red, looking miserable.
After an hour's drive, they pulled up in front of the dacha, a two-room building set on a sparsely wooded lot. A garden plot separated the house from a storage shed and a small outhouse. Inside, Borys started a fire and brought a couple of bags from the car, loading them into the refrigerator.
"Please be comfortable," Gennady told his guest. "Relax. I have work to do, but I will be back in a few hours."
Red sneezed four times in succession. "Budte zdorovy," his captors chorused.
After Gennady had departed in the Volga, Red and Borys sat warily looking at each other. Borys rattled off a few sentences in Ukrainian that Red didn't understand, then Red returned the favor in English. Both men stared at each other, nervous and uncomfortable. A scruffy brown cat emerged from the other room and eyed both men suspiciously.
"Allergic to cats," Red said slowly, pointing at the animal, then his nose. "Allergy." To punctuate his point, he loosed three more loud sneezes.
"Budte zdorovy," answered Borys, who snatched up the cat and put it outside. Returning, he rummaged through cupboards, finally emerging with a chessboard, which he placed on the table between them. Then he extracted two bottles of cold Slavutych from the refrigerator.
"Shakhmatay?" he asked, looking at Red and motioning toward the board and a cardboard box containing the game pieces.
Red hadn't played chess for years, and he had never been a serious fan of the game, but there was nothing else to do, and his captor was at least trying to be genial.
The first several games went swiftly, with the Ukrainian handily outmaneuvering his American captive. Though Red gradually began to pick up on the strategy and put more thought into the game, he was still rather easy prey for Borys. Through it all, Red endured frequent prolonged sneezing attacks that had intensified into spasms of coughing. Being kidnapped was the least of his problems, Red thought between attacks: He was being held hostage to a panoply of dusts, pollens and molds in the house, the humidity and temperature, the cat dander, and God-knows-what would come from use of the outhouse. And he was without his medications.
"I am going to die," Red said, feeling not the least bit melodramatic.
***
Gennady called Red's office from a public telephone in Kyiv that afternoon and was forced to leave a voice mail message, as Red's assistant had taken an extended lunch break in her boss' unexplained absence.
"We have Alan Keefe as our guest," the voice on the message intoned in Ukrainian when Iryna, Red's assistant, listened several hours later. "We will release him in exchange for $150,000 in U.S. currency. No militsiya and no hryvnia! He is unharmed. Wait for further instructions."
Though Iryna had read about kidnappings, the event was practically unheard-of in Ukraine. She picked up the telephone and put through the first of several calls to the company's headquarters in Chicago. It was difficult to find anyone who knew Red or that the company had someone working in Ukraine. Finally, she was put through to Rich Jennings in the Human Resources department. He remembered Red, and was horrified to hear of the kidnapping. Jennings hastily arranged a meeting between himself, CEO Jeffrey Owens and Seth Armstrong, the company's in-house legal counsel.
Jennings repeated what Red's assistant had told him, then gloomily added, "The Russian Mafia is terribly violent, from what I've read. They've probably already killed him."
"Do we bargain with kidnappers?" Owens asked.
"If we do, it's on our dime," the lawyer replied. "The USAID contract doesn't reimburse for ransom. And they could consider ransom a form of bribery. That would open us up to a breach-of-contract action."
"That settles it, then," Owens declared. "We do not negotiate with terrorists."
"And Rich," he said, turning to the young HR executive. "Fred is absent from the office at a critical time without requesting leave. Terminate him for cause."
***
Gennady called Red's office the following afternoon. The young woman who answered the phone sounded like she'd been up all night.
"Alan Keefe is well," he said. "When can you have the money ready?"
"Look," the assistant said, "You have really caused a mess here, understand? They aren't going to pay anything. Not a kopeck!"
"They've fired him and he is ordered to return to the U.S. immediately ... and," she sobbed, "they've fired me, too. They are losing their contract. It's all ruined."
"What! No money? What are you talking about!" Gennady demanded. "They should be happy that we didn't ask for $1 million."
"Ask what you will, they aren't paying," she said. "And please give Mr. Keefe a message from me: There is $200 in petty cash, and I'm taking it as severance pay. He is crazy to put me through this."
She hung up.
Gennady stood and looked at the phone for a long time, thinking. This had gone terribly wrong. He should have been figuring out how to arrange to pick up the cash, and of ordering a new car. Instead, he was faced with failure. No money, no car and he was stuck with a sickly American hostage. What would they do with him? Killing was out of the question - they were taxi drivers, not killers. Besides, Borys seemed to like the fellow, since he could beat him at chess. Borys never beat anyone at chess.
***
Gennady and Borys were miserable. They sat at the table in the dacha, talking and drinking. Four days into the kidnapping, it was apparent that success was determined to elude them. Red, who had been trying to sleep on a cot in the corner of the room got up, helped himself to a beer and joined the men at the table.
"Look, Gennady," he said, "Is there a problem? Maybe I can help."
The kidnappers looked their hostage over. With his watery eyes, a nose red and raw from sneezing and a voice hoarse from coughing, he hardly looked like their salvation. Besides, he was their victim. What possible motive did he have to help? On the other hand, Gennady thought, at this point, he had little to lose. In halting English, he told the story, beginning with the comatose Zhugali.
When Gennady was finished, Red said, "I have an idea." Then, looking at Borys, Red said, "Shakhmatay."
"I am," Red told his captors with a certainty that neither grasped, "a professional management consultant, and what you have is essentially a business finance problem."
***
The next morning, the three men drove to Red's office in Kyiv. Seated around his desk, Red began making phone calls - first to Iryna, then to his company's home office in Chicago.
"Big misunderstanding," Red assured his boss. "I was doing a simulation with some businessmen from Vasylkov, outside Kyiv. There was some bad translation, mixed with an out-of-town trip and a local holiday - but everything's fine. I'll smooth things over with the USAID mission as well."
Borys and Hennady drank tea and watched Red generate what seemed like reams of paper from the computer's printer. He had started by asking Hennady for records from their taxi business, but there were none, of course.
"You told me that $500 was enough to get the Zhiguli running again." he said to Gennady. "Iryna is going to give you $750. There's $500 for you, Gennady, for a two-day seminar in Vasylkov on Case Studies in Ukraine's Micro-Finance Environment, housing and food included. And there's $250 more for Borys, as a strategic consultant, for teaching me the parallels between chess and business. Tell him his fee comes to about 15 hryvnia per game," Red said, grinning.
Iryna handed Gennady an envelope containing the cash.
Borys looked at the money as well, then shook his head seriously and said something to Red in Ukrainian. Gennady, thought for a moment before translating the remark.
"Borys says you still owe us Hr 70," Gennady said. "He reminds that we are, after all, taxi drivers, and the round trip to Vasylkov is not free."
B. Micto is the pseudonym of a Kyiv writer. He thanks another pseudonymous author, O. Henry, for "The Ransom of Red Chief," which inspired this story.
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