Autumn 1996
In the fall of ninety-six, the holding got reorganized. Yura was appointed president and handed the job of dealing with the locals. Ida and Yasha were given the titles of senior vice presidents and new business cards, with no real change in their fate. For me, they created the post of Chairman of the Supervisory Board. To make chairing and supervising easier, Yasha suggested putting a useful girl named Sveta on staff as Advisor to the Chairman of the Supervisory Board. A bit cockeyed in the head, but with a battle-hardened general for a father, very effective at solving problems, and — according to unconfirmed rumors — having settled a couple of matters in our favor through serious people. Might as well put the general’s little darling on the payroll...
I met the powerful father in the parking lot. I pulled Vasilich aside and asked him point-blank what Yasha was up to. Vasilich shrugged. Confirmed that Yasha had never once seen him in his official capacity. Concluded: if there was a vacancy for a scatterbrained girl with extensive, useless connections, why not hire her. Under her father’s eye, she wouldn’t act up — either she’d do a proper job, or get fired if she started twisting her ass around. He clapped me on the shoulder: «You’ve got a lousy security chief — can’t even sort out his own staff.»
He was right about that. Yasha was a specialist in other matters, sure, but this one he’d missed. I hadn’t figured out who Kazbek Volkov was either. Never suspected that a battle-hardened intelligence general had been hired by Proma as a driver on a monthly salary of twelve grand — a source of pure joy for Vasilich and for us both.
After Zhora took off for Europe, Vasilich was listed as a free agent attached to the Balmung, now sporting diplomatic plates. He’d drive out somewhere on a pager message from Zhorik, drive off elsewhere for no particular reason, disappear for a couple of weeks. Why would he need a title?
A man of grand flight!
Last year, Vasilich had connected me with some friends — retirees holding low-profile posts in government structures. Once a month I’d meet the old men out hunting or fishing, location didn’t matter, as long as it was thousands of kilometers from Moscow and nowhere near any electronic devices. The retirees guarded their confidentiality with near-paranoid care. We’d wander the woods with unloaded rifles, discussing trivial matters, criticizing the weather forecast, sharing tips on productive fishing spots, and, along the way, taking in my question — something like: «The governor of Nizhnemukhinsk is throwing spanners in the works, even though he’s always been our lapdog.»
A month later, out fishing, another retiree, after discussing lures, would drop off to the side: «Your lapdog got bought out by the Rassvet Holding.» A month after that, out in our stands, I’d ask the gloomy shooter next to me a question prepared by Yasha and Ida, who’d sniffed out everything there was to sniff, permissible or not:
«What’s the play in Nizhnemukhinsk? We’re ready to send a billion to the governor’s campaign fund, but in exchange we want to put Rassvet on all fours. The lawyers are working on a narrative. The prosecutor’s on the take and champing at the bit to charge in. There’s an angle for pressuring the governor through his wife — she’s got her fingers in every construction contract like a woman possessed. Plenty of people are unhappy. They’ll back us.»
The gloomy shooter would either mumble: «H-hm, not sure...» or flatly forbid it: «That, absolutely not!»
Translated into plain speech, «H-hm, not sure» meant: «Look at the idiots they’ve been hiring off the classifieds. Think for yourselves. What do you think your brains are for?»
The flat prohibition, «Not that!», sounded like an invitation: «That, and only that! But if it goes sideways, I had nothing to do with it. The recordings of this conversation will confirm that.»
I’d memorize the answers and relay them to Yasha, Ida, and Yurik.
A sense of purpose crept into the holding’s development. Without arguing, we shed the plants that interested people in the federal corridors. We ran auctions through Ida and sold off enterprises the upper class wanted — usually to some offshore company whose owner sat somewhere high up. Ida would roll her eyes and stare at the ceiling. What lay behind that ceiling, Ida never said. Except, maybe: better grill your shashlik at the right dacha and appropriate property worth a hundred times more than Proma’s assets.
We didn’t reach for the upper spheres. What we didn’t need, we sold for more than it cost us; what we did need, we fought for.
A third of the plants remained. We reorganized the holding around a single production cycle. Proma pivoted into household chemicals: packaging powders and liquids, molding plastic, wrapping everything in cheerful packaging and handing it off to kiosk vendors for resale. Chain stores were closed to us — those belonged to imports, and at six thousand rubles to the dollar, only Proma’s own Trade House, which had switched to Chinese equivalents, could compete there. If you didn’t like Proma’s factory prices, we offered you the Chinese knockoff instead. Then you could decide what you wanted: sturdy, plow-reliable domestic goods, or Chinese junk at half the price.
Life settled into a routine. Not for long.
A different trouble bore down.
Pinochet’s bank was mired in retail and couldn’t finance equipment purchases. On a tip from the generals, I started building relationships with a couple of fat-cat banks, then half a dozen more... I bounced from official meetings to unofficial ones, tried to make sense of what «overnight» meant, threw numbers at Yurik, and after dozens of meetings would settle on a loan decision... A month later I’d redo it... Two months later I’d be scrambling again...
One item in the routine never changed. Sundays I slept in at the Khryakino estate and drank wine — decent wine, actually.
For Catholic Christmas and Orthodox New Year, I flew to New York. I spent a day with lawyers and took possession of a property in Miami that had belonged to the son of the Verkhnetarakansk governor. We’d successfully offloaded the plant in Verkhnetarakansk just beforehand.
My last evening in New York turned out free. The assistant assigned to fill my free time dragged me off to MoMA. I gasped! What a shame, what beauty those Soviet-childhood reproductions had been ruining all along! The bright colors of Starry Night burned themselves into my memory. The address of the seized house — Hollywood, Broward County, Florida — burned in even deeper! A mansion on the ocean, with palm trees, a pool, a pier, and a yacht, exactly like I’d dreamed my whole life before all this.
Have to fly down there in the summer and enjoy it. That Hollywood felt like the right one.
