Summer 1997
A vacation schedule had taken hold – I take time off from mid-June to mid-July. Proma’s leadership goes on vacation starting August first.
On June fifteenth, I set off for Europe with Liza. Officially, Liza was serving as translator. Turned out no translator was needed in Vienna. We walked around, rode the tram, drank some coffee. In Milan, a translator was absolutely unnecessary. Three days of shopping – dressing Liza up like a hooker – dragged on like a year. I sat on a little couch, forgotten by everyone, and pondered: how could anyone spend days picking out clothes? A year ago I’d outfitted myself for a decade ahead in a single hour.
Well, a girl’s a different animal – a different stream of consciousness: I want something, but exactly what – impossible to put into words. Show me what you’ve got, and I’ll try things on and express myself through withdrawals from my man’s card.
After the shopping, we headed to Genoa, the capital of European merchants... snag! Zhorik was anchored in the roadstead, demanding we set sail immediately, the moment we stepped out at Genova Piazza Principe.
The yacht turned out to be a genuine tub: three cabins and a lounge. Zhora explained that showing off was pointless – the suckers had dried up last year, and it’d be at least five years before new ones showed up! Time to formalize ownership of everything we’d squeezed out. Off to Nice!
The properties were being registered under different jurisdictions. I signed one set of paperwork establishing ownership in Nice. For the second, Liza and I flew to Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. There, Liza’s skills came in fully handy. We knocked around for two days at a classic English country hotel, the spitting image of Fawlty Towers.
We finalized the ownership paperwork and flew to Barcelona, where Zhorik had arrived by yacht.
After that, sheer tedium – we ended up on an island made of beer joints, discos, and a wasted crowd. Zhora and Liza, unlike me, got fired up, diving into the whirl of parties from morning to morning. I trailed along like a tagalong, watching the party animals. Of the week we spent there, what stuck with me were the stunning sunrises, the snow-white beaches of the neighboring island, and an unbelievable exhaustion.
On July fifteenth, as planned, I returned to Moscow. Took back the reins from Roma, Marina, and Kostya.
Good!
No urgent work. I could come into the office, bury myself in reports, and take stock of where and how the holding was moving. Only August gave me the chance to sit and think: where to go, how to develop.
Even so, a question came up – murky and unsettling. The plants had started accepting Government Treasury Bonds as payment, promising income with no fuss at all! Actual cash on Proma’s accounts had dried up. All that was left was GKOs.
This wasn’t a new issue – I’d been tempted to get in myself, but the sales team kept insisting we manufacture cheap gizmos and whistles undercutting imports. Safer that way. You had to believe in yourself and your own strength, not trust your fortune to a state that could screw you over at any moment.
At the peak of my doubts, I went to the Sirena to hash it out with a senior investigator the generals had tipped me off about... ran into Vladlen Georgievich, who’d traded his ministry post for a spot in the Presidential Administration. Vladlen rated the odds of trouble with the GKOs as negligible through New Year’s, then around fifty percent after that, and a year out – whatever the Finance Ministry managed to negotiate.
At the end of the conversation, he showed me, then pocketed, a napkin with a neatly written figure – $10,000, the fee for the consultation. Getting up from the table and heading for the exit, Vladlen tossed off: «For old times’ sake, my advice – stay out of it! Even short-term. Put it into production.»
Well now.
In half an hour, Vladlen had earned more than a month’s pay at Proma. He’d landed well. And me?
What was I supposed to do?
Obvious enough. Get Proma out of GKOs.
I drafted orders banning every arm of the holding from buying GKOs. In September, I handed the matter over to Yurik’s oversight.
By year’s end, the problem had resolved itself. We ordered everyone to dump GKOs within a week of receiving them. Suppliers got paid off in bonds at face value.
In November, I set off on a long-planned business raid: pairing our capabilities with the world’s most advanced ones. A simple route, checked a hundred times over and signed off by Ida: Marl – Mantua – Lyon – Dublin – Wilmington – Midland – Baton Rouge – Portland – Yokkaichi – Ulsan. Brought Liza along as translator on the round-the-world trip.
A useless trip.
Mind-shattering.
I used to think the whole world wanted to partner with the enormous market I represented. But no. Turned out the world wanted to know how I could help some corporation enter the market and then vanish, as if I’d never been there at all. For the first time, I wished Zhorik were around. He’d have had a sharp, weighty answer for that!
