July 18, 1995
Tuesday
11:00 a.m.
The next morning, Yasha and Zhorik arrived at my office, energetic and fragrant. Yakov reported he’d manage without the Cro-Magnons.
— Without who? — I asked.
— Without the primates in Adidas tracksuits. I won’t be dealing with them.
— Chicha’s athletes?
— Yeah, yeah — I don’t need cutlets.
— Athletes, — Zhora corrected.
— What’s the difference? — Yasha winced. — Athletes, cutlets, troglodytes. I’ll handle it myself.
— Go ahead. Just make sure there’s a result.
— Consider it handled.
His military bearing was hard to miss. At Proma, meetings used to drag on for hours. This time, in ten minutes, we’d worked out Yasha’s budget along with the duties and authority tied to the official side of the job. We didn’t touch the unofficial side — I because I didn’t want to, Zhorik because that particular topic needed a different room, one that was soundproof, unbugged, and a hundred miles from Moscow.
We allocated a budget of ten thousand dollars a month with two notations for Marina. The first, official: Veterans’ Aid Fund. The second, unofficial: cash in an envelope.
Next we sorted out my security. Yasha suggested we not be cheap and hire a professional instead of an ape from Chicha’s menagerie. He had an agency in mind, staffed by retired comrades-in-arms.
Zhorik noted it was a sound idea, but it clashed with Proma’s street-code principles: «Don’t trust, don’t fear, don’t ask.» We wouldn’t turn to anyone — we’d pull a little trick instead and register our own private security company. Security was needed constantly — for Roma, for Pinochet, for the plant. They wouldn’t be sitting around idle.
A week later, I had Seryozha escorting me — an unremarkable employee of the private security firm «Proma Security,» who looked like a filing clerk or a scribe, but on closer inspection was a wiry, sharp master of sport in combat sambo, which he in fact was. My movements stopped drawing attention from bystanders, unlike the days when the six-and-a-half-foot, gorilla-shaped Karabas trailed my every step.
Things at the holding improved. Whenever some outside force showed up to hinder our growth, Zhora would sigh: «Nobody can help us here — maybe Clint Eastwood.»
The next day, three or four more «filing clerks» would join Seryozha, and within two or three months, the problem would dissolve. How, exactly — I never asked.
