CHAPTER XIV “THE FRANKFURT ROBBING. THE PERFECT CRIME”
Everyone had arrived. We were standing on the porch and Stefan rang the doorbell. A few minutes later, Vanessa opened the door for us.
Vanessa: My dears, back. Tired?
Stefan: Yeah, not really. We’ve been messing around with the Toyota Prado at the dealership all day. We still need to get the third row of seats and a new battery today. We’re really hungry, so the three of us went into the kitchen.
Stefan: Helen? Suzanne?
Vanessa: Yes, they’re watching a movie in the cinema. Are you buying tickets?
Stefan: No, we’ll eat first, what’s on the menu?
Vanessa: While you were gone. Helen and I ordered takeout. A large pizza. Beef with boiled vegetables. Apples. Bananas. Grapes and a huge set of rolls, which consisted of: Philadelphia with eel; sake-tobiko maki; Godzilla baked with eel;
igayaki; California; Akita; daikon, etc. On a large tray in the center of the table, this entire endless and huge set of rolls was beautifully laid out.
Red: This table is set very, very well. Vanessa, our dear girl, huge gratitude and appreciation for this selfless act of female mercy, thank you very much!
Stefan: That’s great! You don’t need to cook anything!
Vanessa: Once you’ve eaten, come straight to our cinema. Don’t forget to buy tickets at the box office. At that moment, Vanessa left and Stefan and I were left alone in the kitchen.
Stefan: Everything is going well…
Red: Well, my friend and comrade, let’s get started!
Stefan got out some plates and put them on the kitchen table. The beef with vegetables was just right, and for dessert there were sushi rolls of your choice. At the very end of our meal, two large cups of coffee from the coffee machine that stood next to us were waiting for us. We didn’t even have to get up from the table. The full “Comfort” package was all packed.
Stefan: Red, let’s go to the cinema and we still have time until 11:00 PM to watch the film “Heat”, which told us about the robbery of an American bank.
Red: They won’t let us control the DVD player or give us the remote control for the home theater.
Stefan: Let’s try to take the remote control for the home theater from our women by force.
We left the kitchen. We walked straight down the hall. Stefan opened the door to the cinema… Some kind of women’s series was on, which vaguely resembled the film “Titanic”. Pain and suffering. The actors were somehow depressive and sad. At that moment, Vanessa pressed pause.
Vanessa: Here they are, our heroes, back…
Helen: Don’t be silent. Get in already! Did you manage to pick up the auto parts from the Japanese store? Tell me how it all happened… I demand a full report!
Red: Thank you for the rolls and sushi. Everything was delicious! Stefan and I started laughing…
Helen: Beef with vegetables?
Red: Beef with vegetables was the most divine and fantastic dish or miracle of the day, darling… We spent the whole day messing around in the mud on the trading floor… Stefan interrupted me…
Stefan: We arrived at the Japanese auto parts store at 2:00 PM. Karl collected all 37 items from our list. New R-18 wheels; the entire front suspension; brake discs; pads, etc. We completely loaded the trunk of the “PEUGEOT 3008”. Everything fit. All seven boxes. We took it all to the trading floor. We prepared the box. We took a ride in a Mercedes-Benz AMG GT. Baby, it was space…
We still have to transport the third row of seats and a new battery for the Toyota Prado. We’ll leave again at 11:00 PM and be back in a couple of hours.
Suzanne: How long will it take to repair the Toyota Prado?
Stefan: Three or four days. Maybe they’ll do it faster…
Suzanne: So, that means we’re heading to France next week?
Stefan: Yes, most likely at the end of next week!
Suzanne: I’ll have to get a few weeks’ vacation at work! I want a vacation! I want a vacation!
Vanessa: Picked up on what Suzanne said. I want a vacation! I want a vacation! I want a vacation!
Suzanne: France! To see Paris and die… Yes, girls, that’s my dream!
Red: America is with us. It’s Victory!
It was obvious that our dear women were in a great mood and were already halfway to France. In high spirits! Yes, in their minds they had already set off on this journey and were somewhere far away from us in France. They were absolutely happy just from the idea that we would go to France. Oh, these women! Paris… and France… Moulin Rouge…
Vanessa and Suzanne: They began to pronounce this word very loudly. VACATION! VACATION! VACATION! It was clear that our girls were very tired of the hard life of women (or women’s lot) and they needed a rest in a French boudoir.
At that moment I thought that Stefan and I were going to have a very dangerous adventure this evening, but not to France, and we could easily go on vacation to the German zone for a couple of years, but there were also positive moments. The service station itself was located in the northwest of Frankfurt, somewhere between the suburbs and the city. A very calm and quiet German place.
It was important to avoid meeting the guys from the Frankfurt police, because then we would have to give our own explanations about where Stefan and I got all these stolen auto parts (headlights; multimedia systems; engine control unit; computer control unit, etc.), which were most likely listed by the Frankfurt police as stolen automotive equipment, and the auto parts themselves had long since dropped out of the general register of auto parts in Germany.
At this point, if we objectively assess this situation, Stefan and I could have had problems and troubles with the Frankfurt police.
Perhaps this station was generally unprofitable and was in a state of bankruptcy and could be closed in the near future. After all, they were engaged in criminal business, which meant that complaints were received about them, and vigilant citizens of Germany loved to write denunciations to the police that sooner or later the Frankfurt police would close this whole shop forever in order to stop the illegal turnover of auto parts. Perhaps I was wrong about something, but there was confidence in the future that our business with Stefan would bring us success. You feel it intuitively: “As the cards fall”!
Stefan: Vanessa, we will need to leave again around 23:00. To transport the third row of seats from a Toyota Prado and a new battery to the trading platform. We’ll be back somewhere around 1:00 a.m.
Yesterday we wanted to watch this movie “Heat” starring Robert De Niro as a gangster and Al Pacino as a policeman. We’ll just watch the movie, rest and leave.
Vanessa: I picked up the remote and started looking for…
Stefan: No, not here. Yes, click on the viewing history. This movie should be here somewhere. Scroll further.
Vanessa: I found everything.
We turned off the lights in the cinema. I sat down next to Helen in the second row and hugged her like it was the last time. The screensaver appeared: Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Presents! Movie: Heat! Although the movie lasted more than two hours, we didn’t watch it to the end. After 1.5 hours, we left the cinema and went to the kitchen to have a mug of invigorating black coffee before the road. We sat for a while on the way and at 22:45 we left Vanessa’s townhouse.
First we had to get to Stefan, take two hooded sports jackets, two medical masks that were supposed to hide our faces. Load the third row of seats from a Toyota Prado, a new battery and take it all to the garage at the trading platform. We quickly got to the house where Stefan lived with his mother. Stefan’s parents were divorced. The light was on in the house. Stefan opened the front door with his key. Stefan’s mother was on the second floor at that time.
We walked straight down the hallway and at the end of the hallway on the left side there was a door that led to the garage. We turned on the light. Stefan opened the garage roller shutters with the remote control, which creaked loudly. In the very corner of the garage opposite the door, behind the shelves, the third row of seats from a Toyota Prado was wrapped in plastic, which we quickly pulled out and loaded into the trunk. The new battery was on one of the shelves in a large black bag. Stefan took the black bag off the battery, which was already covered in a thick layer of dust, and put it in the trunk.
We left the garage, Stefan went up the steps to the second floor of the house to find two hooded sports jackets and two medical masks. At that time, I was waiting for him in the PEUGEOT 3008. About ten minutes passed. Stefan’s figure appeared on the porch. He closed the door of the house behind him and quickly walked up to the car. We continued on our way and now we needed to get to the trading floor. Unload everything.
It didn’t take us long. In 30 minutes we were already driving along the road that led to the trading floor. It was just unclear who was on duty at the office on night shift today. We drove up to the box where my uncle usually worked, but the box was already closed. Hans, a strong German, who was about 60 years old, approached us. Hans was about two meters tall (210-215 cm) and weighed 130-140 kilograms. In army boots size 47. Long gray hair and a black pointed beard were not very frightening. Yes, there was something frightening and repulsive about him…
Hans never took off his old grey raincoat, which was covered in oily and black stains from fuel oil. Various tools were always sticking out of the pockets of the raincoat, and at night Hans looked like a real ghost. Especially when a strong wind blew and blew his grey hair in different directions.
Red: Hans, we said hello and shook hands. Hans, do you have the key to the box? We need to unload the battery and the extra row of seats from the car.
Hans: He handed me the key to the box and began to watch Stefan and me. Help?
Red: I turned and looked Hans in the eyes and was about to say. No, you are a really weird man… Maybe Hans was wondering what else we had in the trunk… Okay. I pulled the third row of seats closer to me from the trunk and wanted to carefully lift it up, but Hans got ahead of me. He lifted the entire extra row of seats with one hand and carried it into the box. Here he is, a real German worker of the highest qualification. The guy was really strong by nature. I had nothing left to carry except the battery. Stefan was standing behind us and you could see how he was bursting with laughter. I took the battery to the box.
Red: Hans, thank you. We shook hands with Hans again. Said goodbye. Got into the “PEUGEOT 3008” with Stefan and drove away.
We needed to get to the northwest of Frankfurt. There were practically no cars on the roads. Only sometimes there were sections on the road where there was a lot of traffic, but still not as much as during the day. Stefan drove calmly and we were in no hurry. We stopped at a cafe to buy a couple more cups of black coffee to go. We almost arrived, it was about 00:00, we had 4-5 kilometers to go to our place. We stopped on the side of the road to finish our coffee. Once again with Stefan we went over our entire scheme and our entire plan. Escape routes. Stefan explained that there were a couple of abandoned houses nearby where no one lived and they could hide there for a while if the situation developed critically badly. Our moral and volitional qualities were on the rise and we were completely ready for our task.
We decided to leave the “PEUGEOT 3008” two blocks from the service station so as not to expose the car. For some time we sat in the car, a little numb or more frozen in our thoughts. Stefan interrupted our silence: “Everyone, let’s go.”
We got out of the car. I opened the trunk and took out a sledgehammer wrapped in a rag. I put the sledgehammer handle behind the belt of my jeans and hid the sledgehammer hammer under a black sports jacket, handed Stefan a screwdriver and an iron hammer. The medical mask was in the right pocket of the jacket. Everything was in its place.
We slowly walked along the dark street. The street lights that night were not very bright. Maybe there was not enough voltage. It was somehow deserted around. We met several homeless people. Next to the house, on a mattress, lay a couple of drug addicts who were in a state of strong drug intoxication.
The area in front of the bus station was not badly lit. The bus station itself was a rectangular building. A video camera could be seen above the central entrance. Several more video cameras were mounted high almost under the roof at the corners of the building itself.
Stefan and I decided to go around the bus station from the other side and see the location of the video cameras on the other side of the building. Stefan, with two index fingers, showed that we should go exactly here. It was from this side of the building, where the illumination was significantly lower than at the main entrance, which was logical. It was possible to pass under the cameras unnoticed only in one place. There were no other options.
We came as close as possible to the bus station and put on medical masks, and when there were about 30-40 meters left, we switched to running mode. Everything went according to plan. We moved quickly, pressed against the wall, towards the central entrance. Two, sneaking shadows. The most important thing was not to get into the angle of the video cameras. Stefan approached the door and leaned his ear against it. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened the central door. We entered. We closed the door behind us and plunged into darkness. Stefan took out a flashlight and turned it on. The beam of blue light penetrated the pitch darkness around us well. We found ourselves in a small room that looked like a customer room. There was a cooler with a pack of plastic cups. There was a TV panel hanging in the corner, and a video camera hanging in the opposite corner, but it was a fake video camera. It was obvious that they were saving money on the security of the bus station. There was something like a bar counter by the wall. Perhaps the manager was sitting behind it and meeting customers.
We quickly walked forward and found ourselves at the second door, which led to a technical room, where they most likely carried out complex technical repairs on cars after accidents. Almost nothing was visible. Stefan picked up the key and opened the second door. We entered. Stefan practically silently closed the second door behind us with the key. For some time we moved along the wall, and then suddenly turned 90 degrees and found ourselves in a long corridor. This was the correct path, which was depicted on the diagram that Stefan drew, and which I studied for a long time. The corridor ended and we found ourselves in front of another closed door, which just led to the ground floor. Stefan picked up the key and opened this last door. Everything was going strictly according to our plan. We entered. Stefan locked the door behind us with the key. Next to the door there was a cabinet with shelves, which was filled with some boxes, empty metal paint cans, on the shelf below there were several buckets filled with sand. We moved this cabinet to the door and blocked the door with it, so that if someone tried to enter after us, this cabinet would fall or create additional noise that we would hear.
We went down the stairs that led to the ground floor (basement). Here it was, the fateful door, for which there was no key. I turned on the timer on my watch for 5 minutes. In 5 minutes we had to knock down this door, and if that didn’t work, then we had to quietly leave this station and never come back here again.
Down here on the ground floor it was like hell. It was terribly dark and visibility was practically zero. The air was filled with the smell of flammable materials and fuel oil. Stefan’s blue flashlight beam solemnly illuminated the plastic door for us. I took out and pulled a sledgehammer from my belt and with the fingers of my left hand showed Stefan the place next to the lock where I would hit with the sledgehammer so that he would shine exactly in this place.
The work began to boil. It seemed to me that someone said: “MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU!” I swung the sledgehammer so that the blow would have maximum amplitude. The heavy “VIKING HAMMER” crashed into the keyhole of the plastic door with its sharp cone. There was a crack. I needed to speed up. I delivered blow after blow, another blow and another powerful blow to the area of the keyhole. It was visible how cracks began to spread across the plastic door in different directions. I delivered exactly ten blows and handed the sledgehammer to Stefan. Stefan approached the matter even more effectively and brought the sledgehammer closer to his back. With the first blow he hit the door handle, which was torn off and flew off to the side. A series of powerful blows from Stefan’s powerful and sinewy hands followed. Seven, eight and another powerful blow and then the plastic door received critical damage and the keyhole was torn off along with a piece of the plastic door, which flew to the side. In the place where the keyhole had been just a few minutes ago, there was now a huge gaping hole. Stefan opened the door and we walked inside along a long corridor to the very end, where car wheels and empty boxes stood in several rows. I put the handle of the sledgehammer back into my belt, and in my right hand I held a flashlight, which I used to illuminate Stefan. Stefan moved the wheels aside, and then removed the boxes. On the concrete floor in a row stood four aluminum kickers, which Stefan had told me about, each aluminum kicker was about 1.5 meters long. A real thieves’ cache of capitalist profiteers, which was well hidden from prying eyes. “NOTHING PERSONAL, IT’S JUST BUSINESS”! The main capitalist rule was stated.
Stefan and I climbed the stairs to the first floor, the cabinet with shelves, which we blocked the door with, was still in place. Stefan and I approached the hatch, which was in the ceiling. Stefan, put two aluminum kickers next to me.
Stefan: Red, give me a lift.
I sat down on the cards and leaned both hands on the wall. Stefan deftly stood on my shoulders with both feet. At that moment, I stood up and straightened up completely, Stefan was able to reach the folding ladder, which was fixed just below the base of the hatch itself, the hatch that led to the roof. Such a simple figure of two people turned out. Stefan, lowered the ladder to the very floor and climbed the ladder a few steps higher and opened the hatch that led to the roof. I handed him all four aluminum kickers in turn and climbed the rungs of the ladder to the roof myself. Stefan returned the ladder to its original position so that no one could climb up to the roof after us and closed the hatch. Now there was only one small thing left to do. It was necessary to make a truth-jump from the roof and understand one fundamental thing: “Did man descend from apes after all? Or did apes descend from man?”
There was a convenient ledge on the roof near the cornice. I stood on it with my feet and looked down 4-5 meters. I turned 180 degrees and knelt down. I leaned both hands on the roof cornice. My legs hung in the air. A few more physical efforts and my fingers grabbed the very edge of the cornice and I hung in the air. I leaned both feet against the wall. I pushed off and jumped down onto the asphalt. I landed successfully with both feet on the asphalt. The sneakers cushioned the impact well. Still, at the very end I lost my balance and stuck my hands into the asphalt, getting several minor scratches on my palms. All four limbs of my body did the job perfectly. I stood up and came closer to the wall of the bus station. I gave Stefan a sign, waved both hands that everything was okay. Stefan, in turn, threw all four aluminum kickers and the VIKING HAMMER off the roof. Stefan, very quickly did the same thing that I did, jumping from the ledge, but more plastically and flexibly. He hung on one hand. Pushed off with his legs and jumped off the roof. At the bottom, I decided to insure Stefan and caught him with my hands and we fell on the asphalt together. No big deal, there will be a couple of bruises. The wounds will heal before the wedding!
We took the aluminum pencil cases by the handles and ran at full speed like professional athletes. All the time at full speed. We looked more like musicians who had returned from a tour and were running somewhere. Hurrying to a new performance. The lights of houses flashed before our eyes. On the way, we met several more passers-by who were walking far from us. Several homeless people lit a fire and warmed themselves by a large iron barrel and did not pay any attention to us. We ran 1.5 kilometers in 3 or 4 minutes. It was a world record. When a person experiences extreme stress, the body mobilizes all its forces to the maximum. Sometimes we ourselves do not know what we are capable of.
That’s it! Our stop! “PEUGEOT 3008”! Stefan very quickly opened the trunk, and I unfolded the tarpaulin. We put all four aluminum kickstands in the trunk. “VIKING HAMMER”, a screwdriver and an iron hammer were placed between the back row of seats. We took off our sports jackets and threw them on top of the tarpaulin. We quickly got into the “PEUGEOT 3008”. Stefan pressed the gas pedal to the floor and we drove off. Flying. Stefan drove at 100-120 kilometers per hour. After a few minutes, he calmed down. Came to a state of equilibrium. Slowed down. We slowly and calmly rolled along the streets of Frankfurt and it felt like we were under the protection of the old German city and nothing threatened us. The most important thing was not to break the traffic rules and not to attract unnecessary attention to yourself. There were almost no cars on the roads of Frankfurt, and people on the streets. I looked at the time 01:15 at night. What one of the German rules said: “Iron discipline and order.” Strictly adhere to your plan and you will succeed!
We slowly rolled along the streets of Frankfurt for some time and were silent … Here is our street. Stefan turned left and you could see the lights of the townhouse, Vanessa. We parked the “PEUGEOT 3008”. Calm and confident in the future, we went up the porch and I pressed the doorbell. A minute passed and another minute, Helen opened the door for us. We entered the house.
Helen: Did you manage to do everything?
Red: Yes, my dear!
At that moment, I hugged her tightly and lifted her off the floor. We did a 360-degree turn in the air and I squeezed her even tighter in mine and kissed her. Helen looked at me with surprise and mystery, but said nothing and went into the cinema. Stefan and I went into the kitchen. Stefan opened the refrigerator. In the door of which stood a chilled bottle of table white wine. I needed a doping to relieve stress.
Stefan took out a bottle of white wine and put it on the table, and from the drawer of the table he pulled out a corkscrew and handed it to me. We filled our glasses with white wine. There was a ringing sound. We drank to the bottom. The warmth of the wine and the home hearth played their role. We relaxed in the warmth and comfort of the home Hearth Stone. I poured us another hundred grams of wine and we went to the cinema. To our dear and beloved women, to continue watching the TV series “Titanic”!
To be continued…