“The Penniless Pensioner: Misaligned Maligned But Marvellous”:Chapter 46: Touchdown in Romania Clouded with Poop Gas: An Angry Gun Barrell Never Sleeps

I left India via New Delhi on TAROM Airlines to Bucharest. They call that flight the “Delhi Belly” as so many passengers have the trots from Indian food the airplane cabin reeks of poop!

Part of the “plan” had me darkening my skin with a couple of weeks in the Bombay sun to bleach the Welsh side of me out. Then I grew a scraggly beard and dressed “like an Indian”. If Cyclops and his Russian hoodlums were looking for Ginevra’s fiancée I did not want to foot that bill. Don Lupara’s local Romanian mafia in a desperate turf battle with the Russians had advised him Cyclops’ had reduced his security as some 7 months had lapsed since he had fled Naples. He obviously forgot the Neapolitan adage, “An angry gun barrel never sleeps.”

Using a false Indian passport I passed easily through customs and immigration at the Bucharest Airport. I took a taxi and checked in at the Westin Hotel. As I had told you I had at one point been working as a CIA operative in the old Communist Eastern Europe which included a stint in Romania canvassing the possibility of a student led uprising to topple the Ceausescu leadership or “butchership” if you wish. Ceausescu was a nasty bastard and his wife Elena was the Doctor Mengele for Romanian children. Both were shot in the head in 1989 when the communist regime was overthrown.

I planned two days in the capital city of Bucharest and then off to Constanta on the Black Sea to host a reception for local restaurateurs and liquor distributors who would tank up on Indian whisky and curried shrimp and pakoras. What a crazy bunch of people but in a happy way. Once the whisky was open it began to be consumed in great quantities. The Romanians, once deprived of any reason of gaiety seemed to want to compensate for the horrific Ceausescu days and let their hair hang down. I can’t say I was flooded with orders but you gotta start somewhere! Constanta was a dreadful place full of Ceausescu socialist architecture and sterility.

I flew back to Bucharest for another reception of potential buyers, a near attack by gypsies and an encounter with the most beautiful woman in Romania.