“That’s his address.”
“Hhhmmmmm, twelve Oldegrav, Suponevo. That’s a well to do suburb of Moscow.”
“Well then, Mikhail, it seems my researcher is right on the target.”
“I need to know something, Tim, how did you first find out we were building a resort city?”
“My sources are confidential, Mikhail, you know that.”
“Volitov?” Russo’s smug smile without words said it all. The spy turned economist thought it funny how quickly the Russians caught onto capitalism. He was certain that Tim had paid for the story and he always paid good money for a good lead. The National Inquirer could not be far behind.
The brand new Porsche pulled up to Twelve Oldegrav, a palatial estate. The eight-foot high cement wall that was covered with ivy provided the residence with exclusive privacy. Arriving at the entrance where two wrought iron gates gave someone near the premises their only view onto the property, the Porsche came to a stop. Looking at the security system that he was going to have to deal with, Mikhail realized that Russo’s researcher sized up this Czar guy just right. This was exactly the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that Mikhail wanted to see.
Approaching the speaker, Mikhail rolled the window down. Looking for a button to push, he heard a voice.
“Mikhail Debenov?”
“That’s me.”
“Where do you have your condo?”
“Santa Monica.”
“I mean the other condo?”
“Maui.”
“And what is the price that you asked your broker to buy twenty thousand shares of Woodland Industrial for?” Mikhail looked at Allison, stunned about how much this person knew about his life. Was one of Russia’s top entrepreneurs a defector from the KGB?
“Two and a quarter.”
The gates began to open and Mikhail slid the window back up. Passing through the gate, Mikhail and Allison started getting a better sense of how large the property was when they saw the front wall disappear from their view with no house in sight. They couldn’t even see any sidewalls. When they finally planted their eyes on the residence, the house was not a humble home but a two story stone structure with enormous oak doors that radiated the reflection of the sun off their several coats of varnish. Mikhail pulled the Porsche up to the front, parked it and stepped out, as did Allison. The cellular phone rang and Allison grabbed it.
“Hello.”
“Is Mikhail there?”
“Mirnie! Yeah just a minute.” Allison handed the cellular phone to Mikhail.
“Dad!”
“I have a bad problem, Mikhail, you have to help me.”
“What is it?”
“Well I have the condo rented for next week and these two guys don’t want to leave.”
“What kind of tans they have, Mirnie?”
“They could get lost in black bean soup.”
“Tell them that if they’re not out of there by tomorrow night, I’ll never loan it to them again.”
“How’s everything going?”
“Good, but Russia ain’t Hawaii. Take care, I’ll call you this weekend, Dad.”
The doors opened and stepping out was Berrenstyishav Czar, a small man in his mid thirties. The enormous amount of dark brown hair that he wore in a pompadour seemed disproportionate to his head, in Allison’s opinion, an opinion that wasn’t spoken but was conveyed by her eyes. Mikhail never bothered making detailed assessments of people but instead categorized them as weird, straight, trying to screw me. This man, a man whose knowledge Mikhail felt was vital to the national interests of mother Russia, had been sized up in Mikhail’s mind as someone weird who would screw his mother. Mikhail knew that if the guy would screw his own mother that he didn’t have a snowball’s chance. He knew that he would have to be sharp, that he would have to be operating on eight cylinders.
“Mikhail Debenov, I am Berrenstyishav Czar, let me shake your hand. Yalantov told me all about you.” Shaking hands with the host, Mikhail found the man approaching it with vigor as if he were doing an aerobic workout.
“This is my...”
“Yes, yes, yes, this is Allison Romanoff, your girlfriend. Yalantov told me about her too. Beautiful! Beautiful! Great tan, get it in the Caribbean or Hawaii?” Before Allison could answer, she found Berrenstyishav again speaking as if his life consisted of run on sentences.
“Come in, come in.” He led his guests into his fabulously decorated home with its antiques and Persian carpets. Seeing the great treasures of artwork, the antiques and the rugs, Mikhail quickly tried to remember if he saw his host’s name on the printout that Guska and Boltran had furnished him. No, a name like Berrenstyishav Czar certainly would have stuck out and Mikhail already knew that he was going to have trouble pronouncing it. One of the house servants entered and Berrenstyishav looked at his guests.
“Some wine, maybe?”
“Yes, that sounds just right.”
“A Chardonnay maybe?” asked the host, finally revealing that he did not know everything about his guests.
“Yes, yes that sounds fine.”
“From France, Spain, Portugal, California?”
Finding herself flabbergasted by the number of choices, Allison turned to her boyfriend for some assistance.
“Yes, a Chardonnay from the Sonoma Valley, vintage nineteen sixty-seven.” Without missing a beat, the host turned to the servant. “You heard the man.” The servant moved quickly to retrieve the sought after wine.
“Just how many bottles of wine do you have Berrhiv...Berrenstays...”
“You were having trouble with my name, yes?"
“Yes, I am.”
“Okay, my last name is Czar, you know that, am I correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then just call me B. Czar. It’s easy, B. Czar. Nothing to it.” The jovial manner in which B. Czar offered up the alternative way to approach him only confirmed to Mikhail that B. Czar was B. Czar.
“Okay, B. Czar, how many bottles of wine do you have?”
“At last count sixteen thousand, two hundred and seventy-three.”
“Now what...”
“What you’d like to talk to me about was the black-market.”
“Well that was what...”
“It’s one of the few ways to get things to market around here. Don’t worry, I can help you with everything.”
“The first thing I..."
“Hold on here, I had something that was to be my first thing. There’s something I want to know. You’re building a city near the Caspian Sea, where are you getting the cement?”
“From Germany.”
“And you’re the one that’s supposed to show Russians how to do business. Germany! You must be paying twenty dollars a ton.”
“Twenty-one forty.” B. Czar slapped his head in anguish upon hearing the price.
“You must be nuts, I mean you must really be nuts. Twenty-one forty is ludicrous.”
“You can get it cheaper?”
“Seven and loose change.”
“What’s loose change, a roll of quarters?”
“Seven thirty, seven-forty, something like that?”
“Where?”
“Myanmar.”
“Myanmar! How we going to get the cement from Myanmar to where we’re building the city?”
“You build a railroad track to Bangkok. The track will come in real handy later when we need to import other things from the Pacific Rim. Besides, we could use the track to run a luxury train for the Asian community that want to enjoy the resort.”
Mikhail’s ability to dissect conversation told him that B. Czar had included himself in on this development. The last time he heard that manywe’s was when he heard the recital of the U.S. Constitution in a law class.
“How much you want?”
“Five percent of the action of the hotels and I’ll make a deal for the labor on the tracks to be laid in Asia.”
Everytime B. Czar said something, it rang another bell with Mikhail.
Hearing that the man could make a deal to get the labor in Asia told him just how far reaching his abilities to deal globally were. No wonder he made U.S. News and World Report. If he were a small time dealer he would have been reported in the Uzakistan newsletter.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t, but you have no choice. Remember, I’m your link to the black market.”
“Mikhail, we don’t know what he’s like. It isn’t good to deal with someone you can’t trust.”
“You have a point, Allison.” Just then the servant arrived with the wine, which sat on a tray along with three glasses.
“Listen, Mikhail, you’re building a city, you want to put down a runway for your airport. You are going to have sidewalks, right?”
“Yes, but I figured..."
“Naw, just figure this. You’re going to be using tons and tons of cement. If you get it from me, you save half of what you were going to pay, right?”
“Half! I thought more than sixty-five percent.” The quick math calculations impressed B. Czar, who now found himself on his toes, being perceptive enough to realize that Mikhail was as sharp as a razor.
“There’s transportation costs to the railroad after the thing is constructed and what about the hands that will be looking for a little something in Myanmar?”
“Well I guess things are pretty much the same in every country,” lamented Mikhail. Here he was in Russia trying to get some sleaze ball to help him work through the Russian black market only to find out that the guy also had his hands in the Asian black market. It was a shame that it really was the only way to get things done.
Allison sipped the wine, expressing her delight with her closed eyes and small smile for the Chardonnay.
“Good?”
“The best I’ve ever had.” B. Czar loved having his ego stroked and with as much wealth as he had, his ego received plenty of stroking. Had his ego been a dog, he would be bald from all the stroking. Allison finished her glass of wine, taking bites of a small slice of Brie that she had cut for herself.
“We must go,” advised Allison, who found herself now serving as her boyfriend’s personal secretary. While she enjoyed B. Czar’s wine and cheese, she did not care for him. She always found it difficult dealing with people she did not care for and she knew her feelings showed when she spoke in those kinds of surroundings. She always kept quiet so that hostilities would not break out.
“Go! Where are you going? We haven’t even begun talking about the casinos in the hotels?”
“Nobody said anything about casinos!” snapped Mikhail, irritated that B.Czar, besides wanting a piece of the action, had now made himself Zoning Manager.
“You have to have gambling. The European middle class can’t afford Monte Carlo. Look at Las Vegas, look at how much money that city brings in from a roll of the dice and a spin of the wheel.”
“You look at Las Vegas, it’s growing so fast it can’t keep up with itself.”
“That’s it, that’s the whole point. You’re trying to build a city, you want it to grow.”
Mikhail looked at Allison, and when her eyes opened wide as if to say “Why not?” he knew that B. Czar made his point.
“Gambling sounds good here.”
“It could work. The city will be too far away for the average person in Russia to get to so they won’t be able to spend what little money they have,” commented Allison, adding fuel to the argument in favor of endorsing gambling.
“B. Czar, do you know anything about the place that the Communist party had on the Azov Sea?”
“Do I know anything about the party palace? That place is great. I’ve been there maybe ten, twelve times. Had a great time every time. Place has maybe forty bedrooms, party rooms, living rooms, two projection rooms, eight tennis courts, three swimming pools.”
“Is there room to expand?”
“Tell you what, I’ll take you there, you can see for yourself.”
“You can get us in?” asked Allison, surprised by B. Czar’s revelation.
“Sure, no one is using it right now and I have connections, as if you haven’t noticed.” Mikhail found B. Czar’s conduct a contradiction to everything he ever knew about Russia. When he left Russia, it was a closed society that the only ones allowed near anything involving the communists were those high up in the communist party. Now here was this man, a hustler, a manipulator, who had access to almost anything he wanted.
“Okay,” advised Mikhail.
“Good. I will pick you up at your hotel Thursday at eight in the morning. Is that fine by you?” Mikhail looked at his girlfriend to find out if the suggestion was acceptable.
“I could try and reschedule the appointments we have that day.”
“Let’s try that, Allison, we have to see this place.”
“We have to get going, Mikhail,” reminded Allison, a greater sense of urgency in her voice this time than the first time she reminded him.
“Where must you get to, maybe I could give you a shortcut?”
“We’re headed back to Moscow. We are meeting with the people who run Aeroflot. We are planning to make that a public company.”
“Well when you’re over there, tell them to change the menu. That airline proves that the communists know nothing about business. The concept of communism was that the people would share. Who in their right mind would want to share that food?” B. Czar’s comment was one that Allison and Mikhail were sure to take to heart when they started making suggestions on how to improve the airline. This suggestion was important to them since they figured that they would be frequenting the airline.
“We are in business now, we will do lunch sometime.”
“Sure, B. Czar,” confirmed Mikhail as he and Allison exited.
The premier’s residence had every light in the house on and to anyone passing by it was obvious that something was going on. However, being the premier’s house, only a select few were invited in to witness the event.
The large living room was filled with members of Orlina’s aerobics class and their husbands. The moment that Mikhail and Allison entered Alexi’s house, they could see that the class and diet had been a success. Allison was even willing to go so far as to bet Mikhail a hot fudge sundae that none of the women that were with Orlina now wore more than a size ten dress. She knew Mikhail agreed with her when he refused to take up the proposition. This was a man that loved his hot fudge.
The chairs were arranged in the shape of a horseshoe, three rows deep. The American woman and semi-American man found themselves seats in the back just as Mitchev came out dressed in a tuxedo. Alexi, at the piano, began playing.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce my mom, a size nine.” Alexi’s playing of “The 1912 Overture” intensified as Orlina made her appearance in the smallest sized dress that she had adorned since her second year of high school. The size nine, red dress was something she had hoped to fit into before the summer and she met her goal. It was not just the size nine, but the red color that was important to Orlina. She hated wearing a bright color when she was large, but in the smaller sizes she felt great in it. The round of applause, and seeing her friends stand and smile, made Orlina feel that the effort was all worth it.
“Thank you, thank you, thank all of you.” Stooping down, Orlina hugged Mitchev, who smiled with delight at the attention. Allison, a lover of humanity, soaked up the moment, seeing someone feel good about themselves especially in Russia. Maybe that’s what the people of this country needed, Allison pondered. She knew that her living in an environment where the sun shined most of the year had made a big difference in the way she looked at life.
The handshakes and hugs were abundant with a much smaller Orlina being the cause of it all. Mikhail knew that his uncle was proud of Orlina, proud of her for setting a goal and then reaching it. The diet cola was flowing to celebrate the moment, along with the non-fat cookies that Mikhail had flown in just for the occasion. The postage cost him more than the
purchase price of two twenty-nine a box. This, he thought, could not go on forever. There was no doubt in his mind that a bakery that produced non-fat cookies would be going up in the near future in the Moscow area.
Having used the snacks to divert attention, Orlina spoke with her well-wishers as Mikhail dug into a box of the cookies he had Alexi set aside for him.
“Mikhail!” exclaimed Orlina as she threw her arms around him.
“You look wonderful, Orlina, you look like a million rubles.”
“Thank you, Mikhail, thank you!” The adulation that had been heaped upon Orlina was something that she never had dreamed of. It was as if a whole new world had opened up to her. She was basking in the attention.
“Your husband said you had something you wanted to talk to us about?” asked Allison, still pleasantly surprised at Orlina’s appearance.
“Yes, yes. I have something very important to ask you. I would like you to help me and my friends open a gym. Could you do that? Could you, please?”
Mikhail, bringing a smile to his lips as he turned toward his love, spouted out, “She’s got the fever! She’s got the fever!”
“This isn’t baseball, Mikhail. What fever are you talking about?”
“The free enterprise fever.” Turning back to face his aunt, Mikhail hugged her, yelling out, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” With Mikhail’s immediate blessing for her business venture, Orlina could not understand why Alexi kept telling her that getting a bank loan was hell. It certainly did not seem that way to her if Mikhail was the mortgage lender.
“What are you looking to do?”
“Nothing big, Mikhail. Some weights, some treadmills, bicycles, you know.”
“You got it, Orlina, you got it. Where do you ladies want to open this place up?”
“In Moscow, maybe not far from Red Square.”
“Perfect idea. It could symbolize Russia’s new kind of muscle,” suggested Allison, who hugged Orlina in this moment of joy. Now if Mikhail and she could get Russia into the same great shape that Orlina was in, everything would be just fine, thought Allison.
CHAPTER 8
FINDING OUT EVEN MORE
Doing Lunch Page 18