September 4, 1993
Saturday
– Time to become capitalists, fat-faced and pot-bellied. We’re not scrawny cash-strapped bums anymore! – Zhorik declared at the Saturday beer session. – Filed the papers for the voucher auction. No one else is going to be there but us. You and the director get forty percent each, twenty for the workforce to suck on.
Phew. A weight lifted off my chest. We’d buy out the factory, pay off the depositors, and set up our own business.
– Remember this, – Zhorik went on. – The transformer plant is in Khryakino. Fifty versts down the Gorky highway. We’ll ship the transformers off to Latvia as scrap non-ferrous metal. The rest of the equipment goes there too. In place of it, Moiseich will bring in sewing machines, overlockers, and whatever else. Verochka promised to get the sewing running. Need to clear the site for workshops and a warehouse. Especially since there’s rail access. Can unload railcars there.
– What railcars?
– With the booze.
I didn’t understand a thing. Saturday used to be for nailing down next week’s tasks, but today it was drifting off into some dreamy distance.
Zhorik caught my look and explained he’d arranged with the Poles not for a one-off contract, but for revolving deliveries. Now our business was simple and clear. The alcohol contract ran through the end of the year. Vadik turned our cash into non-cash for Anton. Fima converted the non-cash rubles on the veterans’ fund’s account into dollars and sent them to the Poles. Two weeks later we’d get the shipment with no customs hassle. With Anton’s boundless exemptions, we shouldn’t be running trucks, we should be running whole trains, a couple a week. It’s a big country.
– What exemptions? – I clarified.
– Veterans’ exemptions. Anton’s an Afghan war invalid, a shell-shocked idiot, and he can’t do anything except knock people’s brains out. The state doesn’t want to be responsible for him. Veterans’ pensions, medical care, and housing cost a fortune, and the state doesn’t have it. So they gave morons like Anton the chance to earn money on zero customs duties. Sure, they could go around bashing heads instead. But like Anton himself said, that’s yesterday’s news. Better to run trucks with no customs payments and pocket some money. And if you don’t give them that right, they’ll start ripping heads off out of sheer boredom. What would you choose, as a civilian pencil-pusher?
– Let him run it past customs.
– That’s exactly my thinking. I’ll pop over to Anton’s. Need to hash out the details, lock in the arrangements, and get it on paper.
Zhorik grabbed the printouts and was gone.
I went back to my office, sat there thinking, remembering the trip out to Anton’s. Some serious exemptions granted to that veteran. Enough to afford a mansion in Khamovniki, an apartment on Povarskaya, houses outside Moscow, foreign cars, the whole works.
