suggesting that I become Baron Munchausen and undermine the reputation of the firm. But sometime it’s been tougher:
– Call London and tell them that we will have twenty thousand tons of something soon…
The Englishman, stunned by the news, asks me a hundred questions in his native language, to which I have no answer – both in fact and because of the limited vocabulary. What should I do?
– Be patient, Cossack, you will be ataman!
But I also have a personal limit, my own border, which I cannot cross. Once we signed a contract with Gazprom, and the boss asked me to sign a contract on the terms of deferred payment. This meant that it was good for our company, but for me it was a personal responsibility worth millions of non-Russian rubles. I had a choice – to accept the offer and agree, show loyalty, and then suffer for a long time, bearing the burden of moral responsibility (there were examples), or refuse and have a loss of perspective and trust of the leadership, but sleep peacefully. I chose the latter, had a tough one-on-one conversation and disappointed the president with my «no» and «I can’t». But I did not overstep himself, my experience and my beliefs. But I did not become rich either – I say for those to whom I seemed a proud hero in the description of my actions. I think a more accurate term is Don Juan’s definition of «controlled stupidity,» which Carlos Castaneda wrote about.
And here is the first trump card in favor of our selectivity and strength. Actually, many of our compatriots could find out about our valiant team on December thirtieth, 1993 at ten p.m, after watching an hour-long program called «Evening Concert» on the channel «Russia». As the notorious Fantomas used to say:
– Even a great man is nothing without the press.
Following this principle, the financial association «Holding» announced its existence to the whole country: this is evidence of the high ambitions of his leadership, inherent in truly powerful structures.
Chapter eight. Melpomene in our service
When a person has a specific case, he is passionate and responsible for the result, he does not have time for trifles, distraction from the process is annoying. It is difficult to push into yourself something extraneous, unrelated to the work being done, it is like a creator in the process of composing a symphony to answer a telephone survey. This is not his purpose, not his nature. I practically turned into a person sitting at my desk, solving urgent tasks throughout the working day with a lunch break. Sergey Nikolaevich always responded to my requests, but he was less loaded, and for this reason, as well as due to his sanguine nature and penchant for self-promotion, he communicated with other departments and was the first to find out all the news of our floor – who was fired, who was hired, in which country the leadership is staying this time and what is the name of the new secretary Amir. By the way, oh-h-h-pretty. In the women’s issue, we were in solidarity – we appreciated female beauty and a good attitude towards us, we did not suffer from jealousy and greed. Sergey, for a reason almost unknown to me, sometimes called us «foster brothers», probably because of Tanya, our mutual friend.
And here is fantastic news from Sergey: a television program is being prepared about our financial association, famous personalities are involved, who – oh, a miracle! – they are literally located behind our wall, the creative troops landed in the next office! Among the creators are an experienced film director Sergeyeva, a popular St. Petersburg composer and singer Igor Azarov and, attention, an actress, singer and TV presenter – the incomparable Anna Samokhina! That’s cool!
Where is the wind blowing from? Here it is necessary to make a really lyrical digression. Our vice-president Oleg Borisovich has two brothers – Mikhail and Evgeny. Bright personalities – Evgeny, a top manager of Holding-Invest, a master of sports of international class, tall and powerful, practically did not appear in our department. There were legends about him from the mouth of his older brother:
– Evgeny at the wedding in a police cap and a traffic policeman’s baton blocked traffic in St. Petersburg for the wedding motorcade of Oleg and his bride. – Or:
– Evgeny hit a bailiff in a hotel in Moscow so hard that he drove several meters across the floor.
The eldest, Mikhail Borisovich, immediately inspired the sympathy of others with his friendliness and creative abilities. A gambler by nature, he wrote poetry and, thanks to his irrepressible positive aura, was on close terms with people of creative professions. Lyudmila Gurchenko sang in our office, I listened with interest to his stories about Irina Ponarovskaya, the guys from the Adam’s Apple TV show often came. In general, it has always been a pleasure for me to deal with him – creative or business. By the way, he traded me a magnificent Hungarian sheepskin coat for four hundred dollars. I am not a slave to things, but I have never seen such things again, and in the subway passengers at that difficult time looked at me like an alien. Mikhail Borisovich was very dynamic, easily rebuilt from one type of business to another, but the scale of his activities for objective reasons was not comparable to ours.
One day, at the moment of another delay in the urgent study of a letter of credit from a western bank, dear Mikhail came to me «to talk.» After a couple of minutes of polite communication, I pointed to a thick folder of documents lying on the table and asked quietly:
– How much do you think this folder costs? – Mikhail Borisovich visually appreciated the black cardboard with metal corners and assumed, inflating the price out of respect for me:
– One hundred thousand dollars!
– Five million, – I also rounded up the amount a little. Turning a little pale, Mikhail said:
– I never thought that Oleg was doing such things.
This was the best characteristic of the significance of our work. On the other hand, a high degree of secrecy was maintained between the brothers – how wonderful, gentlemen counterintelligence officers! After this incident, he did not come to us again, but we happily greeted each other in the corridor.
Employees of other departments stopped coming to us at all – apparently, such a command came from above. I was disconnected from other matters, and my habitat is my own room and the head of the department, a reception room with two secretaries, and the offices of the president and his deputy. It was in the reception room that I met Anna Samokhina – she came with some question to the assistant, and I was just finishing a conversation with her. As polite people, we greeted each other, our eyes met for a second, and I went out into the corridor. But Sergey was often behind the wall – apparently, he was attracted by the magic power of art and its representatives, he even invited the director to come to us, cordially offering the services of himself and our car – this is more interesting than boring numbers and pieces of paper. It is curious that Anna Samokhina quickly figured out the situation in our business community and rather flatteringly nicknamed the brothers Oleg, Evgeny and Mikhail «the Kennedy brothers» – obviously, not only because of the quantitative coincidence.
As a result, somewhere around the New Year of 1993, a restaurant was rented, where, according to the script, a gala evening and a presentation of the Holding were held. The presenters at this musical festival were Anna Samokhina and Igor Azarov, whose song «Full Moon power» became the name of this action. The whole color of our company was present at the shooting, including the head of our department Viktor Vasilyevich and his wife. The President and his two vice-presidents pronounced health resorts in pauses between musical numbers, but we can say the opposite, that is, the songs sounded in pauses between health resorts. Sergei and I were not invited, and for him it was a serious blow to his reputation, especially after advertising his own image to the creators of this film. But on the evening of the thirtieth of December, sitting at a party among friends over a glass of cognac, we were able to see our bosses on the TV screen «Russia» and hear about our company, like many citizens of our vast country. Guitar songs were also played this evening – «How