Gold Digger

by Aleksandr Voinov

  “Ruslan, maybe we should just keep Cybele and go through banks. There have to be banks out there that would lend us the money. Do we absolutely need to raise more cash? Can’t we do this on our own?”

  “Having a senior partner is not a bad thing.”

  Nikolai didn’t have the heart to tell him that the senior partner might turn out to be a giant shark who’d swallow them in one gory, horrible bite. “Just maybe talk to some bankers? The other shareholders? Maybe raise some capital from them?”

  “It’s a bad time to ask anybody for money right now.”

  Well, a Russian bank had been interested, but Ruslan didn’t like them very much. Too much entanglement with the Kremlin, which he found problematic for a gold exploration company focused on post-Soviet states. Maybe the Saudis might be interested, but no, Ruslan was adamant about getting the money from what he called “a trustworthy, transparent source.”

  “Okay. I’ll see what I can do here, but don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work out.” At least he could prepare him for the inevitable.

  “You’ll do fine. Anything else?”

  “I’ll be off to Wellington after this to meet my father.” Nikolai flinched as though he’d bitten into something nasty. Only, he’s not my father.

  “Well, just drop me a call. I’ll send you the new report. Maybe you can show LeBeau the new results?”

  God, he hated that gently hopeful tone in Ruslan’s voice. “Will do. Thanks. Don’t work too hard; Cybele still needs you, okay?”

  “Getting too old for all-nighters, Nikolai.”

  “Well, I won’t be there to carry you from your desk to the field bed.”

  “Point taken. Will go to bed before it’s light outside.”

  “Wow. Progress.”

  Ruslan chuckled. “Okay, the PDF is sent. Let me know if it got stuck.”

  Nikolai refreshed his inbox, and there it was. “No. It opens fine. Right, I’d better get ready. I’ll call you tomorrow for an update, or when I hit the ground in Palmerston North.” He ended the call and stood again to knot his tie correctly, then took the briefcase.

  Tamás was waiting down at reception, and within a few minutes, they were picked up by a driver who took them outside the city. This was going to be at LeBeau’s own house, so Nikolai steeled himself for extravagant displays of wealth.

  He wasn’t disappointed. The house was a vast, one-level bungalow with several outlying buildings and two wings, all in white with modern architecture, glass, water sculptures, and manicured gardens.

  LeBeau greeted them with his wife, and Henri showed up shortly after. Drinks were served in a large room with an open fireplace looking out over a vast garden you could have played golf in, and Nikolai struggled to keep the small talk going.

  LeBeau was too intense a man to be thrown off the scent about anything for long, but Nikolai gathered that the business part of the evening would happen after dinner. So they talked about the global economy in general, Armenia and Georgia in particular, and Cybele’s history, as well as how awesome a company LeBeau Mining was. Nikolai had never doubted that—they were Ruslan’s favored option, after all.

  “Did you know that Henri here ran the commercialization of the Saturn prospect?” LeBeau said as a maid gathered their plates.

  Nikolai glanced over at Henri, who was deliberately folding his cloth napkin. “I’m not aware of the Saturn prospect.”

  “It wasn’t outer space, though it looked like it for a while. We bought a small explorer in northern Malawi five years ago. I ran the integration into LeBeau and drove the drilling and production. It was one of our best investments in the last two decades.” Henri looked pointedly at his uncle.

  “Really? That’s impressive.” And you told me your official CV as the guy who makes stuff happen was all bullshit?

  “Not just a pretty face,” Henri said with a fair dash of irony.

  Nikolai smiled, but kept his attention on the elder LeBeau. “Tell me you’re not aiming for what I think you’re aiming for.”

  LeBeau leaned forward. “You’re a quick thinker, Nikolai.”

  “Cybele is looking for a partner, not a master. We’ll take a senior partner, obviously, because we’re small, but we’ll keep control of this project.”

  “Is that what Polunin thinks?”

  “All of us do. We haven’t put in years of our lives to simply hand over the keys and walk away. We’ve built this from the first license—hell, from looking at the promising stone formations in our Armenia project—to now. We’ve grown the company, drilled fifty kilometers, nailed the resources down, got backers in, signed licenses, and all the other hard work, and we won’t just walk away. I won’t.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said you don’t have to,” LeBeau snapped. “You’re clearly a smart, passionate young man. When Henri replaces Polunin, he can use you.”

  “Use me?” Nikolai nearly choked on an angry breath. “Polunin will never hand his company over. It’s his baby. He’s in her DNA. There’s no way he’s going to give Cybele up.” And there’s no fucking way I’ll give him up.

  “He’s an oil man with no track record of turning an explorer into a miner.”

  “Is that all? It’s hardly rocket surgery. You start drilling, the gold is in there—we know where it is and we’re sitting right on top of it—and producing it hardly requires CEO-level experience. Nothing that can’t be hired in.”

  “He does not have a track record, and that’s my last word,” LeBeau snarled, flat hand slapping the table surface.

  Nikolai stood and noticed that, with a careful delay, Tamás stood too. “Mr. LeBeau, I have the strongest respect for you and LBM. You are our preferred option, by far. Your Malawi project sounds like just the experience we need. But we’re a small company, and we owe Ruslan our loyalty for all the things he’s done.”

  “He won’t walk away empty-handed,” Henri tried.

  “So you’re backing this?” Nikolai asked.

  Henri withered away. “We’re not going to steal his company. He can stay on the board as a senior consultant. But Cybele will need a new CEO, and if we own most of it, we’ll appoint one. And it’s likely going to be me.”

  “Henri, you know what?” Henri looked up, and he looked pained and uncomfortable, but that did nothing to alleviate Nikolai’s rush of anger. “Fuck you. Seriously, fuck you. If you think I’m betraying somebody who’s been nothing but good to me, or that I’d support such a plan, then you really sold your fucking soul for that MBA.”

  “There’s no reason to get crass here,” LeBeau snapped.

  “What I said to him?” Nikolai stared at LeBeau Senior and pointed at Henri. “Same to you, but twice. Thanks for the meal. We’re going now.”

  “What just happened?” Tamás asked as they trudged down the long, long private street that led up to the house. They might be walking for an hour before they made it to anywhere near civilization.

  Nikolai rubbed a hand over his face, then turned back to the house. “I swear, if he comes after me in that ridiculous car, I’ll punch him out.”

  Tamás almost audibly shut up before he could say anything, and Nikolai hated being so angry. It so rarely happened that when it did, he almost frightened himself. Truth was, he didn’t know what he was capable of in that state, and he really, really didn’t want to find out. He didn’t want to end up killing somebody, so that “gentle giant, protective brother” thing was what he focused on. He forced himself to be always calm and reasonable, and normally that wasn’t hard. But anybody attacking his friends had it coming.

  He breathed deeply, tried to make the anger go away, but knew full well that he was on the verge of turning back and punching whichever LeBeau showed his face first.

  “I’m sorry. Shit, and I knew he’d try that!”

  “You knew they’d want to get rid of Ruslan?”

  “Not the details. But I did talk to Henri when we met. Maybe he
tried to warn me.”

  Tamás frowned. “Why would he do that?”

  Why. Why. Nikolai pulled his phone out. No reception meant no taxi. “Fuck! Sorry for the late-evening walk.”

  Tamás shrugged and looked around, but didn’t say anything much. Nikolai kept his eyes on the dark road in front of them. “I’ll talk to Ruslan about this. I think we might end up needing a white knight.”

  “White knight?”

  “It’s a stock trading expression. Somebody friendly who buys us before LBM can. Makes Cybele sound like a damsel in distress, which is so fucking weird.” Nikolai shook his head. “I think it’s time to unleash some bankers. Seriously. This is a fucking pile of shit. And I’ll make Ruslan listen to me this time round. All this bullshit is just distracting us from any real work, and there’s plenty of that.”

  “Car,” Tamás said.

  Indeed. Headlights up front. Nikolai pulled a bit to the side, aware that in the darkness, a drunk or otherwise occupied driver might not see them in time, despite the headlights. He pushed Tamás to the side along with him, but the car had already slowed. It was a taxi.

  The driver rolled down the window. “For Krasnorada?” he asked.

  “That’s me.”

  The driver waved them inside. “Had a call to pick you up.”

  Henri?

  “Thanks. That’s perfect.” Make it sound less confused and less random, like they’d expected it. “Just get us back to the Drake Hotel.”

  “I’ll leave talking to Ruslan to you, Nikolai. You have the full story,” Tamás said while they were keeping an eye on the departures board.

  “Yeah, thanks.” He was widely considered Ruslan’s best friend among the “Attis boys.” Maybe because they both came from oil or maybe because they were both technically Russians, though Nikolai had grown up in Hungary and never served in the army and didn’t intend to ever tell Ruslan that. He had a vague idea that Ruslan wouldn’t look kindly on a man whose mother had bought him out of the draft thanks to a corrupt official. He’d never expected that to turn into a stigma with other Russians—he despised the idea of military service in theory and on principle. There was no romance in it, and he’d seen what it had done to his father.

  Your father was a pilot who crashed in Afghanistan and died.

  Well, to Vadim, then.

  There were things he’d kept even from Ruslan, and the man knew more about him than pretty much everybody.

  “There’s your gate, Tamás—have a good flight.”

  Tamás hugged him tight for a moment, gave him a shoulder-slap, then got his sports bag with his clothes and rushed off toward his gate. Nikolai settled in a corner of the terminal and waited for the San Francisco flight to come up, playing idly with his phone until he was bored with Tetris. He had avoided listening to the messages in his voicemail. Unknown caller. Could really only be Henri, maybe to check whether he’d gotten back to the hotel all right. He wasn’t ready to think about it, or Henri, or what that damned takeover meant for his friends and his own life or when it would happen.

  He dialed Ruslan’s number. “Hi Ruslan. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything, but LBM’s going to screw us.”

  “What happened?”

  “They were interested, but they wanted to use their votes to get you replaced by the junior. Henri LeBeau. Said he’d done something similar in Mali.”

  “Malawi. The Saturn prospect.”

  “Okay, you’re up to date.”

  “No, but I did research on this Henri.”

  “Well, he’d have been your successor. They were going to put you in as a senior adviser and Henri would have taken over Cybele.”

  “And what did you tell them?”

  “I told them both to go fuck themselves. Which wasn’t really my place. I should have waited for your call on that. I mean, it’s your baby. I should have respected that, too.” He rubbed his forehead, itchy with nervousness and residual anger. “But I was just so angry about the whole thing.”

  “Why angry? Anything that made it personal?”

  Well, I fucked the junior and then he turned around and stabbed me in the back. “No. Yes. I went out to dinner with Henri and he seemed like a nice guy.”

  “You bond in the very old-fashioned way, Kolya.”

  I’m not sure anal sex counts as old-fashioned there. Nikolai suppressed a grimace. Ruslan was the only guy on the planet who used the affectionate diminutive of his name, which oddly only cemented their bond. “I like to know who and what I’m dealing with. Why is everybody in the world out to screw each other?”

  Screw? Interesting world choice.

  “I mean, shit. If you’d been here, things would have gone totally differently. They’d have seen what a genius you are.”

  “Yes, maybe you’re right. What do you suggest now?”

  “We need to get a white knight in. They’ll buy us, Ruslan, whether we want to or not. I don’t think the silverback is going to live down that I told him to go fuck himself. Personally, I wouldn’t. Anybody said that to me in my own house, I’d make them regret it. So, I fucked up.”

  “You keep saying that.” Ruslan sounded amused, despite everything, and despite what Cybele meant to him. “I can try talking to some people who approached us earlier, but LBM was our first choice. It doesn’t matter now. Maybe we do have to throw some corporate finance people at the problem.”

  “Which is expensive.”

  “We’re sitting on a big pile of gold. We’ll be fine. So, you’re off to meet your father?”

  No, he’s dead. “Yes, looks like it. Keeping my head down, I guess. At least I’ll be safe from LBM’s hired killers. My old man was Spetsnaz.”

  “Haha. Good luck. If you want to vanish from the face of the earth, New Zealand is a good place to begin. Safe travels!”

  “Thanks.” Nikolai ended the call and leaned back, closing his eyes for a long moment. Just why was he feeling so miserable? Ruslan would take care of it, and he’d owe him again, and what was it about Ruslan that made him think the man actually, honestly, really cared about him? But he’d thought that Henri liked him, too. And there was no competition between a friend and a fuck.

  Wow. Henri. Can of worms. Despite that fuck-up, despite that nasty last scene in that ostentatious house, there was also this other guy, who laughed and joked and liked stupid cars. The banter. Yeah, that had been easy. The sex, pretty damn fantastic.

  And that was the problem.

  Nikolai picked up his bag and straightened. Vadim wasn’t in the small crowd waiting in Palmerston North Airport. Admittedly, New Zealand didn’t really do crowds. Just as Nikolai was about to fish out his phone, Vadim pushed through the doors. He stuck out because he was so tall and still wide-shouldered, never mind perfectly dressed. Nikolai, worn down by more than twenty hours on three different planes, was too exhausted to do more than stare, bleary-eyed, at the man he’d always thought was his father.

  “Nikolai.” He came over and paused, as if momentarily unsure whether to take his baggage off him, or offer his hand or a hug. He settled on a hug and then took the baggage. “How are you? Bad flight?”

  “No no, it was good. Just, you know, if I believed in Hell, it would be sitting in a plane and never arriving.”

  Vadim laughed and put a hand on his shoulder, guiding him gently. Nikolai was so dazed from the flip-flopped time zone that he had almost no will of his own left. “Hop into the car,” Vadim said, steering him to a shiny new 4x4—the contrast couldn’t have been bigger to—

  Fuck Henri.

  He climbed into the car while Vadim threw his suitcase into the back. When he sat down next to Nikolai, Nikolai just regarded him, the gray hair, the lined face, the big shoulders and very respectable biceps beneath his shirt. He looked like a supremely active, healthy, happy, sixty-year-old. Sixty-something. “You’re looking good.”

  “Home? You look like something spat you out.”

  Nikolai yawned. “I slept a bit on the plane. What day is it?
I’m not completely sure.”

  “Our booking starts today, but we can drive there in the evening, if you prefer to sleep.”

  “Home, then.”

  Vadim started the car and drove off, and Nikolai glanced at all the large, handsome houses as they drifted past. Everything felt all right in laidback Palmy. It always seemed remote enough to be peaceful, which was probably why his father had chosen to stay here. Then they left the small town and were out in the green Manawatu Plains. Down into a valley, across a river, and there it was, what Vadim called “home.”

  “I can just crash on the couch,” Nikolai said when they were inside, desperate to close his itching eyes.

  “We do have a guest room.” Vadim regarded him with crossed arms. “Though, no. We moved some furniture in there. We’re redecorating the office.”

  “I’ve slept in much worse places.”

  “Just go upstairs, use our bed. It has fresh sheets and is the quietest room in the house.”

  Nikolai smiled and shook his head. “As long as you’ve . . . removed all the sex toys.”

  Vadim gave him a quizzical look. “Don’t open any drawers.”

  “God, no. I never do. Anywhere.” Nikolai paused and noticed Vadim’s unease. And now he felt like a dirtbag. Talking about sex with his father—not his father—was something he never thought he’d do, even if it was just sex in very general terms. He hated that haunted look in Vadim’s eyes. Was he at peace with being gay? Was he at peace with the idea that Nikolai knew he had sex? What was that weird silence between them? “I . . . uh. That was Too Much Information, right?”

  Vadim waved him off, but what would have looked like an easy, throwaway gesture for anybody else became a grave and serious thing with Vadim. “Go to bed. You’re exhausted.”

  “Okay. What are you going to do?”

  “Fix something to eat and call somebody.”