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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 great that we are all gathered here today» and the all-season «Sunny Afternoon» by The Kinks – after all, we are the lucky ones from Department Foreign Trade! We were overwhelmed with pride – we are a part of this holiday and our holding, and each of us received not only moral satisfaction, but also champagne with a small bag of money as a New Year’s gift from Santa Claus.

Chapter nine. John Hunter’s Lessons

I remember, somewhere in the mid-seventies, I read with great interest the book «The Hunter» by the Scottish writer John Hunter. The writer was able to vividly describe his adventures in Africa in the late XIX – early XX century in the exotic role of a hunter of large animals – lions, buffaloes, rhinos, elephants and leopards. Later, our well-aimed and courageous shooter became a safari guide for rich people looking for thrills in the wild and hunting big animals. If his client could not shoot or missed, then Hunter could not be mistaken, because this mistake could well cost the lives of himself and his companions. He was and will forever remain the record holder for the number of predators killed, and in whose courage, firmness of character, physical condition and common sense there is no doubt. Although not every reader likes such a craft, but Mr. Hunter expressed a universal truth for any activity, which he established on the basis of his experience.

In any activity, he writes, there are three stages. At the first stage, a person does not know how to do anything, but learns some kind of craft and achieves the first successes. At the second stage, having gained some experience, he often already considers himself an expert who has learned all the secrets of his profession. But this is a delusion, and it is at this stage that he makes serious, and sometimes fatal mistakes. At the third stage, when a person has experienced the second stage, there is a sense of reality, an objective assessment of their skills and possible obstacles, and at this stage the specialist is most effective. Hunter himself almost died at the second stage, overestimating his abilities and getting lost in the center of Africa, and only a miracle saved him – after two days of wandering in the endless impenetrable forests, he stumbled upon a power line support, and a day later he went to a small town.

– I hugged a metal pole and fell to my knees – I cried because I realized that I was saved now, – he wrote.

In the activities of the oil department, everything happened according to the classic Hunter scheme. Two large transactions, which were written about earlier, ended successfully. Our intentions and decisions were balanced – we, the seller and the buyer, two companies, the parties to the contract, insured each other against failures. Planning for further sales began in 1994, and then, instead of the previous cohesive work of the Holding and a thorough inspection of buyers, something absurd began. Each of the managers, believing in his competence, began to sell petroleum products himself, without having sufficient knowledge for that. This concerned both the quality of the goods, and the knowledge of INCOTERMS – the basic concepts and conditions of international trade, and the reliability of potential counterparties. There was a kind of competition, who will sell more and more expensive. The network of intermediaries selling the same as our department was expanding. And the sale of serious volumes and the transaction itself is an intimate matter, here the number of participants can spoil a sweet wedding night: this is not only my opinion, but, obviously, there were others. It is possible that someone’s pride was infringed here – he can, but why not me? And off it went…

The first bell rang back in December 1993. While I was working on fuel oil, Viktor Vasilyevich personally sold two thousand tons of diesel fuel to a St. Petersburg buyer. As it turned out, neither he nor the buyer had a deep knowledge of the specifics, and as a result of the contract, summer diesel fuel was shipped, which was prohibited from receiving at this time of year in St. Petersburg. Realizing this too late, the buyer diverted the entire train to Chechnya, where, according to him, he «disappeared», and was called to negotiations, and in fact to disassembly, to the Holding. Khazir Daudovich, after listening to all this, retorted:

– In Chechnya, my fuel cannot be lost, – and sentenced the buyer – a brave young officer of one of the special services – to compensation for losses.

– We will have to sell the apartment… – the debtor declared in his heart. To finish with this story, I will briefly tell you how events unfolded further. Having suffered, the officer wrote a statement to the prosecutor’s office about extortion, and thereby made the second wrong step. The prosecutor’s office tried in vain to reach the defendant, who was rarely on the spot and often abroad. Having felt the situation, the businessman realized the mistake, withdrew the application and then worked with our company on special conditions – repelled debts.

In the last days of December, Gorchakov calls me from the refinery and nervously asks where to apply for a license? I mean, to which country – Latvia, Belarus or somewhere else. I had no answer, the question was not discussed and hung in the air, at the management level (of course, with our participation), was not discussed and was not resolved.

– And where are Khazir and Oleg?!

– I don’t know…

And I shouldn’t have known. Actually, it was not uncommon for our leaders to mysteriously disappear when they were really needed – just like this time. I remember there was a conversation with Oleg Borisovich about the purchase price of diesel fuel for Latvia, the idea of the price from Konechim was about one hundred and sixty dollars per ton, but reliable. This option was rejected, and nothing new was invented. After the New Year holidays, an instruction was received from the bosses – prepare a contract for diesel fuel for Belarus, we will give the details of the supplier’s company later. And look for buyers in the same place.

The main principle was violated here – first step is the buyer, and then the destination country. Having issued a license for the sale of a mythical merchant in Belarus and giving up Latvia, where everything was transparent and reliable, we ourselves, figuratively speaking, threw a noose around our neck. I must admit that I could not find buyers from the Slavic brothers, no matter how hard I tried. It is difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, that is, the demand for diesel fuel, especially when it is not there – Belarus has its own two oil refineries – in Mozyr and Novopolotsk. As a result, at the command from above, the details of the shipment were changed more than once, as I learned later – from some intermediary, and the delivery itself was made without prepayment under unclear guarantees, the fuel was drained at oil depots in Gomel and Rechitsa. This problematic contract also became mine. I tried to sell diesel fuel on the spot to another consumer, but our contractors rudely stopped these attempts and threatened me on the phone, something about the integrity of my head. I immediately called Khazir Daudovich and explained the situation face to face. Ten minutes later, my rude interlocutor from Gomel apologized profoundly and expressed the opinion that I misunderstood him. In general, someone created a problem, and now I have to figure it out: this was within the competence of my salary. But the main disadvantage is that the style of work has been changed, money has been withdrawn from circulation, and precious time and mutual understanding are being lost.

The day after tomorrow I was already in Gomel. As expected, the buyer company consisted of local young guys, and absolutely did not correspond to the level of purchase. Their office consisted of a large room of thirty square meters, a couple of computers, a large TV, and a rented Volga-3102 car with a driver, that’s all the assets. Yes, two young girls in short dresses also came, they asked for money, which means liabilities. An intermediary also came, but I did not contact him because of mutual rejection. I asked the director when he would pay, but he said that they had no money now. To clarify, we went to the Gomel oil depot, to which these businessmen stuck, to the boss. We walked around the offices, I asked around the clerks there, and it became clear that the oil depot had almost paid off with these guys. Having improved the moment, I tete-a-tete in the boss’s office offered to pay us directly, but what he wisely replied:

– You will leave, but I will live here.

As a result, an addendum was born to the contract on the terms of payment, where Belarusians paid us the debt with interest for the delay. With this I returned to St. Petersburg. The counter was turned on.

During my business trip, my colleagues didn’t waste any time. Sergey put on a mysterious look and said that he and Oleg Borisovich had made a mighty contract for diesel fuel in the amount of ten thousand tons with delivery to Moldova. It was incorrect for me to ask questions, but gradually it turned out that everything was cool, the price was between 191 and 192 dollars, payment upon delivery to the Chadyr-Lunga station, and there is a guarantor for payment.

– I’d like to see this guarantor, – I thought.

I don’t know how Khazir Daudovich turned on the green light for this deal, I think he doubted, but he didn’t want to quarrel with Oleg Borisovich, because everything could have turned out well… This mythical profit overshadowed someone’s mind, and someone probably made a subtle calculation on this, but from which side of the transaction and to what extent? It also turned out that the refinery could not ship the goods without paying for transit through Ukraine, problems with the bank began, but they were still shipped. The result is this: we did not receive the promised money, the goods disappeared, and the intermediary disappeared along with the buyer. I don’t know how they dealt with it at the top, but we ended up owing a large sum to the supplier plant, which made further shipments difficult – our business stopped. The recent triumphants have been defeated. About five years later, a smart and personable, handsome middle-aged man named Movladi, a relative of the president, came to my office. In careful conversations (no one introduced us to each other, but I heard about his high reputation), we recalled the past, and I made it clear that I knew about the deal with Moldova and the Chadyr-Lunga station was like a sharp thorn in my memory. He, in turn, shared with me:

– I was there, but I didn’t find anything.

To relieve the tension, I said with a smile:

– I have an alibi – at that time I was in Belarus…

Undoubtedly, he was aware of our major transactions and understood what I mean.

Chapter ten. Needle penetration depth

Do you know what the expression «the inside truth» means? You know, of course, this is the truth, obtained during torture, during which the unfortunate man was driven needles under his nails, and there was no doubt that this was the bloody truth – the ultimate truth, the crystal clear truth. But this chapter is not about torture.

I didn’t know many serious companies that, as a result of adverse events, were able to return to the previous level. As an example, we can cite the fall and collapse of the Baltic Financial and Industrial Group, a powerful oil trader and concern in the North-West of Russia. As a result of the actions of competitors, its organizer and ideologist Pavel Kapysh was killed by a grenade launcher shot in his armored car on the University Embankment in St. Petersburg, and the security service could not prevent this tragedy. Our Holding was also attacked by criminal elements, the leadership kept the powder dry, successfully fought and defended our independence. The blows of fate, terrible blows, we felt in the future, but today we overcame the financial crisis, and new divisions were thrown into battle, namely the legal department and the Vice president for Trade, Mr. Amir. One day he called me and asked me to submit a draft contract. I specified which one was Russian or export, he chose the first option. Then, in the presence of a lawyer, I was asked a number of clarifying questions, which were answered. Where the delivery is, what we deliver is a mystery to me (I have already written about the competitive syndrome in our organization). The lawyer developed the contract, the vice-president approved it and submitted it to the president for consideration.

Three hours later, my intercom phone rang with the president:

– Come in. What contract did you transfer?

Explained: what they asked for, he gave.

– The contract is no good, give me an export option. And check the final edition!

– But there’s a lawyer there, – I ventured.

– A lawyer should also be taught!

That’s it! An engineer teaches a lawyer how to draw up a contract! However, I didn’t have to teach, guess why. Soon they were left without a legal department, however, as well as an insurance and travel company. Marina and Vsevolod Valentinovich still held on, but it was clear that this would not last long – the structure of the «Holding» was truncated in the process of optimization and reasonable cost savings.

One, two – and I drew a contract for ten thousand tons of oil bitumen for delivery to Ukraine, the Lutsk roofing material Plant. The technology of making roofing material is quite simple – cardboard, in fact paper, is impregnated with this bitumen and at a certain temperature, a well-known roofing material is obtained. It is clear that the plant has no money, deferred payment. In this case, the functions in the department were ordered to be divided: I am engaged in the shipments of the refinery – they know me there and do not give these contacts to others of ours, technical issues are also for me, and Sergei Nikolaevich is sent to native Ukraine to establish working relations at the plant – something he stayed in the office too long… He returned five days later with fascinating stories about visiting the restaurant, but I didn’t hear anything sensible – apparently, he thought it was wrong to share information with me. Shipments from the plant began, and in the first batch received, Lutsk found a violation of the standard for the most important parameter – the viscosity of bitumen. I figured out that the viscosity of bitumen is determined by the depth of penetration of the needle. The question arose – either we stop the shipment, or we solve quality issues by lowering the price or increasing the payment period, if this is not critical for the technology. We went the second way and offered the plant to specify the tank numbers, the weight of the cargo and the amount of deviation from GOST. And here is a letter on the letterhead of the LRZ plant with signatures and seals on my desk: a deviation of the limit parameters was detected in six railway cars…

The writer O. Henry in one novel has an example of a meaningless question: what is a policeman for? And why is there a smart boss and a computer, let me ask? Also a meaningless question! And in order, I will answer you that you can miraculously make sixty out of six cars on paper, and ask for a discount in the price from the manufacturer of this bitumen in the amount of fifty percent, and the most amazing thing is that the refinery agreed with this. In fact, these cars with bitumen stood on the tracks for a long time, the director of the LRZ even saw them with his own eyes, but he could not buy them. And if I could, why would we exist then, because our company took the risks of non-payment, and for the refinery, in theory, it is not permissible.

Day after day, week after week, and there is still no money for bitumen, despite our requests and demands. But suddenly a miracle happened: a familiar supplier from roofing material contacted Sergey and said in an agitated voice that some people had called the director of the plant, threatened on behalf of the Holding and advised the director to «say goodbye to his family». For debts, you have to understand. Of course, the sane Sergey Nikolaevich, as a former employee of the internal affairs bodies, brushed aside all these fabrications and said that he did not know anything about it, and there could be no such thing, we are not the mafia… We exchanged meaningful glances. Soon the payment slowly began to creep, but apparently not very significant in order to calm down some evil forces. After a while, we were informed that the director’s summer cottage had accidentally burned down. Then the director quit, something with health that did not allow him to live long in retirement.

The responsible persons at the roofing material plant stirred in fright, began to look for money and offer barter – in fact, the roofing material itself. This is what Sergey did, but without much success, our long-time partner in fuel oil, Andrey, joined him to help. He himself was originally from Ukraine and had useful contacts. But in general, the situation was difficult, the debt remained significant. In April, two representatives of the plant came to us to negotiate with our management – I would not like to be in their place. The result: Khazir Daudovich at the meeting abruptly stated that Muzychenko had «failed» the contract with Lutsk (by the way, I have never heard him call Sergei by his first name). Sergey hung on a thread, he was suspended from exports and left only deliveries to Russia. Viktor Vasilyevich, the head of the department, was assigned to deal with petroleum oils and reassigned to Vice-President Amir, effectively removing him from large-tonnage petroleum products – fuel oil and diesel fuel. As Gorchakov told me, a talented organizer and a successful performer of this plan:

– We have defeated the Ukrainian mafia!

Including me.