August 30–September 3, 1993
The fax arrived Monday around lunchtime. I got loaded down with the headache of wiring money and drawing up paperwork. Zhorik called hourly from Gdansk, scrambling Marina’s and my brains with instructions, corrections, and the rest.
He informed us he’d taken eight truckloads of «Spumante» champagne, «Bols» and «Cin&Cin» liqueurs, «Popov» vodka, and some unnaturally sweet wines with pretty labels on trial. Then warned he’d be delayed a week to personally oversee the shipping, and buried the bookkeeping in faxes of supply contracts to forward to Anton. The veterans’ fund was listed as the Moscow consignee.
So that’s what we did.
After two hours of hashing things out with Anton’s accountant Fima, we sent Zhora the fund’s details for drawing up invoices and other paperwork. On the side, Marina and I spent two days hammering out a joint-activity agreement with the veterans’ fund. Oleg Semyonovich printed up payment orders and, after every fresh call from Zhora, reprinted new ones with changes to the «payment amount.»
On Wednesday a hundred and ninety thousand dollars went off to Poland. There wasn’t enough in the accounts, so we topped it up with cash.
By the time Zhorik came back on Friday, I was fried. A ton of paperwork had piled up. People kept bringing money to the till, the money got hauled to Vadim, converted to non-cash, sent to the veterans’ fund’s account. The ten thousand dollars Zhorik had left for emergencies ran out Friday morning — paid the staff’s salaries with it. Wrote myself a hundred bucks.
The safe was empty, looking like the fridge in a dorm room: bare, but proud.
I gave Zhorik the report. He paced the office like a tiger in a cage, tore through the papers tracking the money movements. Asked how much cash had gone to Vadim.
– Forty-two grand.
– Bug-Eyes is up to something. He told me thirty-seven. Gotta promise him an introduction to Karabas.
He sighed and took off. I went to give orders for the Friday booze-up. Fund traditions were kept alive.
