December 30, 1994
Friday
9:00 p.m.
The party at the Terem had reached its peak. The guys were scattered across the restaurant: they’d taken over the billiards room and the fireplace lounge, staked out spots at the bar next to a few hard-currency strangers.
Zhorik swept his eyes over the room and headed for the restroom. Halfway there, he let out a yell:
«You old goat! What are you doing here?! How?!»
He made a beeline for a table where a polished-looking European sat with a flashy lady. The foreigner recognized Zhora. Got up, hugged him, kissed him, the two of them trading questions, answers, clarifications...
Zhora dragged the European over to our table and sat him down opposite. The imposing fellow of about fifty looked like the actors Shirvindt and Derzhavin at once. His aristocratic manner gave away a foreign bird of high flight.
«Roma, meet an old friend, Mr. Kalkin. Or is it Herr Kalkin?»
The foreigner smiled and, in flawless Russian with a slight burr, said:
– More like Heer. I have a house in Rotterdam. Wait a second, I’ll be right back.
Kalkin went over to his companion and whispered a couple of words into her ear. The lady’s eyes flashed and she moved over to the bar. Kalkin came back:
– Sent the putana packing. We parted merrily, why be downhearted?
«We’ll meet again another day, in a joyful, jesting way,» Zhorik rhymed. «So what have you been up to?»
«Small-scale wholesale. Took in a pensioner, a former deputy minister. He’s on the books as a consultant. I drive around the regions, place orders. The pensioner knows every director there is. You know how it goes, the plants are struggling.»
«Hm, interesting, I’ve got an idea about maybe working together. We’ve got money to burn, but no system. No clue where to put it,» Zhora rattled off, exhaled to the side, and threw back a shot of vodka. He froze for a couple of seconds, letting the alcohol settle through his insides, and finally concluded:
«Went down smooth.»
Kalkin, waiting out the gulp from Zhora’s depths, smirked:
«You don’t need to invest anything. Only optimists and fools invest in this country... usually both at once.»
– I don’t follow, – Zhorik lowered his head, never before noted for patriotism, but now playing Pushkin, who despised the Fatherland from head to foot.
«Taxes and shakedowns will wear you down,» the foreigner said, flaunting his Russian. «My scheme’s simple: I lend the plant money, to be repaid by processing raw materials, and I run the receivables around the former republics. It’s such a tangle in there, nobody can figure out who’s making what margin where.»
Zhora ruffled the top of his head. Kalkin continued:
«You buy raw materials in Russia and process them at a captive plant, against the loan you already issued. Then you ship it to Riga, load it onto a barge, and send it off to Europe. That’s how it works in real life. But for the tax inspectors, you draw up a Kazakh firm that bought up your raw materials. You draw up a Kyrgyz firm the Kazakhs send the raw materials to for processing. You draw up an Armenian firm the Kyrgyz hand the processed product over to for sale. And as the final flourish, you draw up a Belarusian firm that buys up the whole mess from the Armenians and ships it to the Latvians. And you already know the rest: what’s there to squeeze out of a Latvian? Nothing but a shrug and a prayer. If you set the scheme up right and grease the right wheels for tax breaks, your tax rate comes out to minus forty percent — meaning the state ends up owing you. But I never got greedy, I worked it at break-even.»
