July 19, 1993
Monday
10:00 AM
On Monday, dressed to the nines in a bright blue jacket, Zhorik stood at the office door assigning staff, rattling off remarks:
— Right, Marina Igorevna, key’s at reception. Your office is number four. Take it boldly, entirely yours. Right, Oleg Semyonovich. Your office is five. No key for it, already handed out. Kostik’s in there, waiting for you. Right, my precious girls, sit tight on the couch for now. Sweet berries get their special time!
The workforce of twelve hired employees settled into their posts. The young ones, Nastya, Polina, Ksenia, and Gleb, took cubicles in the main operations hall. Assigned there too was an elegant, older blonde, Natalya Appolinarievna, their supervisor. Unlike the girls and the boy, who got cubicles behind partitions, Natalya was given an office with a window overlooking the whole floor, with a view onto the cubicles, the reception desk, and the front door. I checked it out myself, tilted the blinds back and forth, envied Natalya, just like in some American movie about the police, or the newsroom of some big paper, about lucky people in Los Angeles, that one, whatever it’s called…
Without recalling the movie’s title, I followed Zhora into the tech department. Everything there had settled in geometrically simple. Seryoga the programmer had taken the second office, marked on the plan as the closet. The third, the investment department’s office, turned out to be unoccupied. In the fourth, a miniature brunette, a meter and a half tall, two poods of weight, was arranging her personal belongings across the desk and the shelves of two cabinets. Turned out to be a lot of stuff, looked like she’d hauled it from VychMekh in five separate trips.
Zhorik introduced us to each other: me as Roman Viktorovich, Acting General Director, the brunette as Marina Igorevna, Acting Chief Accountant. Then added that Marina had put in five years as VychMekh’s deputy chief accountant. Knew the job cold, had the tax authorities handled. Her father, by the way, was a hero and just an all-around wonderful man.
Marina looked embarrassed, and nothing about her appearance said accountant at all. A youthful-looking woman whose true age you could only guess by peering closely at the web of wrinkles around her eyes and the corners of her mouth, and at her hands. From three meters back, she could pass for a girl. Truly: a small dog stays a puppy right up to old age. Zhorik cut short the flight of that mischievous thought:
— Let’s work the way it’s done at Scientific Symmetry. We call each other by first names. Roman, Marina, Georgy. Full name and patronymic only in front of oversight bodies, cops, tax people, that sort. You know, for a bit of gravitas.
We nodded in agreement. Then Georgy and I moved on to the next office, number five. There, seated at desks in two rows, were Konstantin, Andrei, Oleg Semyonovich, and Yelena Petrovna. A grim-looking old man, who introduced himself as Vsevolod Gavrilovich, the very same Seva from Anton, whom Zhorik had spent the whole week courting, was dispatched to VychMekh’s checkpoint to get a permanent institute pass sorted out.
A separate office was waiting for Vsevolod Gavrilovich there, separate in every sense, on the second floor of the institute building in the opposite corner, a good ten minutes’ walk.
Turned out, per the lease agreement, we’d been given an extra room for conducting research, and Gavrilych was tasked, day and night, with operations of the type «investment,» «banking,» and «marketing.» That’s how Zhora explained it to those present. Those present were duly impressed by Seva’s importance and watched him depart with something like reverence. We didn’t go on to the sixth, seventh, or remaining offices. No point. The employee list had run out.
Zhorik and I walked back through the office, dropped by Marina’s. Zhorik explained that the company’s bookkeeping would rest on her and on Oleg Semyonovich, who’d taken the position of financial manager. Documents were being processed provisionally under the company «Interbik,» whose leadership we’d introduce later. The actual director and chief accountant were currently in America. Acting in the absent director’s place was Roman Viktorovich Peskov, or just Roma. Marina, in turn, was appointed Acting Chief Accountant and given full authority over Andrei and Kostik, whom Zhora appointed to the positions of senior accountant and economist.
Last, we moved on to office number seven, the cash office, fitted out with a bulletproof window, a full-length mirror, and a door with a video intercom. «Even the Central Bank doesn’t have this!» Zhorik bragged. Rapped a fist against the window, kicked the wall with his boot, explained that the wall was armored too, and no scoundrels would ever break into the cash office.
We went back to accounting. Zhorik looked over everyone present and gave the order:
— March to the conference room!
