October 9 – 13, 1993
Marina was neither on the verge of hysterics nor anywhere near it. She flipped through the invoices and receipts, summed up: no payments had ever gone through «Proma Impex’s» settlement account, the money had all been run through «Interbik.» We could start by filing a zero balance for Proma for the third quarter. We’d start recording entries from October – that is, from this week.
Zhorik and I understood nothing. Bugged out our eyes like Vadik, shook our heads, asked her to repeat it.
Marina explained that if you pulled all the Interbik receipt orders and invoices out of the folder, as if they’d never existed, it would turn out that «Proma Impex» had never conducted any activity at all. You could start from zero. Whereas if you did it by the book – ran every past payment through the till and processed the receiving and dispatch of goods properly – then, first, restoring the books would take a great deal of time; second, you’d have to pay taxes; third, the balance was due in a week, we wouldn’t make it.
Zhorik ruled: no time for that, taxes are for fools, we file a zero balance, and Monday we register a shell company and that’s that. «Proma Impex» stays the clean outfit and files zero balances going forward. Vadim would set up a front cooperative on Monday. We’d call him right now and have him come to the Terem.
Zhorik and I drove to Kalyazinsky. Outside the Terem we ran into Vadim, arrived on the Bucephalus.
On Saturdays Vadik usually lay low recovering from clubbing, but today he was a model of the attentive motorist. He parked precisely in the center of the four-meter gap between «the Wide One» and «the Lean One.»
Before long the car enthusiasts arrived at the restaurant and, carefully opening and closing the doors with their wrists, made for the restroom. A couple of minutes later Vasilich perched himself at the bar, with Zhora and Vadim sitting down beside him.
Having ordered «the usual» from the waitress, we opened our planners in unison and wrote down our tasks.
Vadik was assigned the registration of a limited partnership with the cunning name «Promimpex» – that’s one. The partnership had to be registered to homeless people – that’s two. Get a hard-currency account at «Vatrobank» – that’s three… After the salads we moved on to shared business.
Zhorik began with a preamble: Chicha had grown tired of sitting in the same room as the petty dealers. He complains: instead of warmth – the green of glass, instead of fire – smoke. The former bandit, now a sybarite, had persuaded Nastya to carry out a major refurbishment of the premises and to set up a cigar room with a fireplace and sofas in the basement, and a billiard club on the second floor. He promised a limitless budget for the project. So Yura would not be trading in booze much longer.
The preamble finished. On to raising issues and solving them on the spot. Zhorik said it flat: bulls in prison camps solve problems as they arise, but we’ve got to solve ours a month ahead of time. Better yet – six months before the problem even shows up. So, straight off the bat: Vadik starts banking operations on Nauchny Proyezd Monday. As for cash collection – how to move money from Kalyazinsky to VychMekh – simple. We hand the cash over to the Terem’s till. They’ll sort it out. Next, Metallsnab. Petrovich had passed on two phone numbers, for which he’d pocket two hundred dollars a month. We needed to buy a mini PBX…
The list of tasks that landed on me filled three whole pages…
