The Deceit of Riches

by Val M Karren

  At once I recognized that this land for the Noviy Monastir as Mr. P. was calling it, was very close to if not the same parcel of land that Del and his company were trying to receive permission to build on.

  I chose my questions carefully now as I did not want to appear to know too much already. “When will the construction start? It looks like you are ready to start any day.”

  “We are waiting for the approval from the city council and the governor and this takes a long time now because there is a question about selling land for private use, for business,” he remarked astutely.

  “We’ve come back to the privatization process again,” I pointed out

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Mr. P. shrugged his shoulders. “We are waiting to know if we can lease the land or purchase it to own it.”

  “How long will this take?” I kept my questions short to not give insight into my insider knowledge.

  “We expect to have a decision at the end of May, before the summer holidays. We would then start building maybe one year from now. One can’t start construction in Russia in the autumn. The ground will freeze too soon and you can’t lay a good foundation that won’t sink in the spring. We have these problems all over Siberia with buildings that sink in the spring. Each year they sink another few centimeters,” he was sounding more and more educated and knowledgeable.

  “This is, of course, a huge project. Do you have partners or investors?” I knew I should not have asked this question as soon as it left my mouth.

  “Yes, we have investors who are ready to help with the hotel building once the land is secure,” he answered without giving details.

  “Are you financing that land purchase yourself with the help of a bank?” What was I asking?

  “No, no banks. Banks are criminals too. They will find a way to rob me of my land if I borrow the money from them,” he answered with the enthusiasm in his voice evaporating quickly.

  “Well, your car imports and your electronics imports for Russian prices certainly have not been able to create profits enough to purchase this much land. You don’t have any foreign investors who will help secure the financing?" For some reason, I could not stop asking these questions, I knew I was on thin ice now, but the adrenaline of the hunt had gone to my heart already. I almost had him in my net.

  Mr. P. replied gruffly to my impertinent questioning, ’No, I don’t believe in foreign money. They will have too much control over Russia if we keep borrowing from them. I have some money my father left to me that I will use to pay for the land.”

  With that comment Mr. P. began to roll up the technical drawings, briskly without care, and slid them back into the plastic tubes and put them away behind his desk from where he had retrieved them. As he walked back towards me at the couches he did not sit down again, to signal that the interview was over. Getting the hint, I quickly gathered up my notebook and pen and put them in my book bag and stood up to meet Mr. P.’s eyes. He did not extend his hand for a farewell handshake as I extended mine. He kept his hands in the pockets of his slacks.

  “I am sorry, but the interview must now be over. I am very busy and must get back to my work. Tatyana will show you out.”

  18. Shark Tank

  It was the end of April and the evenings were becoming longer with daylight and twilight lasting until almost nine o’clock in the evening. Gone were the days of thick coats and double layers. I was so happy to hear my babushka say that shapkas after mid-April were not to be worn any longer. Evidently, it was bad for men’s hairlines if they wore their fur hats in warm weather. She was full of those types of traditional wives’ tales and I added this one to a list of them that I was keeping. The last snow showers had been in the second week of April but they were just passing flurries on a few cold, wet days when the wind and clouds came from the north. The wind was now blowing warm air up the river valley, making the days and evenings as pleasant as any I could remember.

  As I strolled up Minin Street to Frunze Street to meet with Del and Els that Friday evening I was deep in thought about what to do with the information that I gleaned from my discussions with Mr. P. He may have been an uneducated, maybe even dishonest businessman but there was nothing that I could pinpoint from what I had learned about him that indicated that he was hurting the everyday Ivan Ivanovich on the street. In fact, he made a strong case for his ends justifying his means. Even if had been getting his car parts off the back of somebody’s truck, at the least he had been providing a service that benefited other entrepreneurs in the city, helping others make a living by being able to fix their cars quickly. Perhaps Mr. P. was the wrong example on which to base my model of how the little shark becomes the big shark. He seemed rather adamant that those types of charlatans were only destroying Russia and looking out for themselves. Igor Ivanovich seemed to be, on the surface anyhow, building an enterprise that not only made him rich and influential but that helped move the local economy along in a very unsure time. During this period of economic chaos in Russia it was impossible for anybody to work completely within the law, and as Del rightly pointed out, the laws were changing every two or three months. What was perhaps illegal when it started was the catalyst for showing law makers that the laws had to change. I hoped that Del would be able to help me pick apart this new information and make some sense of it.

  When the elevator doors opened on what I expected to be the fifth floor and the Sannings' apartment door, I had to double check that I had punched the right button. Perhaps I had mistakenly pressed 3 instead of 5? I punched the 5 again to see if the elevator would close and take me higher, but it didn’t. I stood for a moment puzzled. I stepped back into the elevator and selected 0 to take me back to the ground floor. Perhaps I had entered the building through the wrong stairwell. Most Russian apartment buildings have multiple entrances on the ground floor along the length of the buildings, each entrance representing a stairwell or elevator shaft. I poked my head outside the ground floor entrance to check that there wasn’t one more door to the left as the Sanning’s apartment was on the fifth floor of the last stairwell from the street. As I looked left all I saw was a wall of cinder blocks about two and a half meters tall. On the other side of that low wall was Upper Embankment street. I was in the right place. I rode the elevator again up to the fifth floor and deliberately knocked a measured three times on a newly installed, rust-colored steel security door. The knock echoed on the landing and up and down the stairwell. I waited.

  From behind the doors, I heard the faint voice of Del asking in Russian, “Who is there?”

  “It’s the plumber, I’ve come to fix the sink,” I replied in a put-on Brooklyn accent to make fun of the whole situation.

  I rolled my eyes as I waited for Fort Sanning to open its doors. I half expected to see Del holding a double-barreled shotgun and chewing on a stubby cigar in the side of his mouth, wearing a cowboy hat and a patch over one eye. It all seemed very overdone. As I heard the bolt of the steel door finally release, I pulled the door toward me. Stepping out of its way and peering around the edge I said, “Open sesame?”

  “Very funny, plumber man. Come on in,” he bellowed. Del was in a good mood.

  Without a coat, scarf and shapka to hang up I walked straight into the living room through the dark hallway but bumped my left arm on something protruding from the wall. That hadn’t been there that last time I had visited the apartment.

  “That’s new, isn’t it? I said as I stopped to inspect it and rub my arm that had bumped it. “What is it?” I asked as I stepped through the doorway into the living room. Els was in the kitchen off to the left.

  “It’s a panic button,” Del said matter-of-factly, “It is an alarm that sets off bells and lights here in the apartment, the landing…and in the police station.”

  “Wow, you’ve got a burglar alarm wired to the police station? How far away is it from here?” I was puzzled.

  “Minin Square, just a few minutes away, but we also have a police car stationed downstairs at night for the
time being as well in case it happens again,” he said distractedly.

  “In case what happens again? Del, what happened?” I began to get a very worried feeling in my gut and waited for him to explain what was going on.

  “A few nights ago, a group of three of four thugs forced their way into the apartment just before Els and I were going to bed,” he said as if telling me a bedtime story.

  “What!? Are you alright? I looked around the door into the kitchen to see if Els had been beaten up. Seeing she was fine I looked Del up and down. Maybe I had missed a cast or a bandage on his arm or leg…

  “Yes kid, we’re fine. They didn’t hurt us, they just smashed the place up a bit and that’s all.” Del seemed to want to brush it off. “It’s nothing we haven’t seen before in Moscow.”

  “Did they take anything?” I looked around and saw only the usual bookcases, television and whatnot. Nothing even seemed out of place.

  “No, it wasn’t a robbery. They didn’t even ask for our money or passports or anything,” Del replied while he laid out silverware on the table. He just didn’t seem too concerned about it.

  “Okay, then, what am I missing and should I be concerned?” I was desperate to learn about what had happened.

  Del stopped setting the table and stood pensively against the refrigerator. “You know, it was really amateurish the way it all went down, don’t you think as well Els?”

  “They certainly weren’t professionals,” was her input, and she continued adding vegetables to the cowboy stew.

  “And how often have the two of you been attacked by professionals?" I asked sarcastically with a flip of my hand and arm into the air.

  “What would you say, Honey? Three or four times? Del looked with a longing glance to his wife.

  “This makes it four times now, Sweetheart.” She looked up from the soup and batted her eye lashes.

  “You two are a real pair, you know that?” I laughed and took a seat at my usual seat at the table. “So if they didn’t beat you up, and they didn’t steal anything from you…just knocked over some chairs…” I asked hoping to get more details.

  “And a table!” Els added putting her knife into the air, her back still to me so as to be heard and seen.

  “And a table,” I continued, “why did they even break in?”

  “Pure intimidation, my friend, pure intimidation!” was Del’s almost enthusiastic conclusion.

  “Did they give you some sort of ultimatum to get out of town or something like that?” I interrogated further.

  Del now took a chair and leaned towards me over the table. “No, they didn’t demand a thing. In fact, they just yelled and hollered in Russian at us about how they could break our legs or bash in our skulls if they wanted to. Isn’t that right, Love?”

  “You know I don’t speak a word of this language, Blue-Eyes,” and then Els turned to me and said very matter of fact, “…but it’s true, they seemed very threatening and intimidating, but they didn’t lay a hand on us,” was Els’ theatrical reply.

  “The two of you are absolutely nuts!” I laughed. “So that panic button is because you’re not worried they might come back? And that steel door is because…”

  “Those, my friend, are a gift from the chief of police! He insisted.” Del put on a voice to mock his high connections in the city.

  “And the squad car downstairs I guess was his idea as well?" I challenged.

  “Yep, he wants to make sure that we are safe and snug,” Els said as she sat to wait for the stew to simmer.

  Del did away with the acting and said in a serious tone, “Look, kid, whenever you do business in Russia, it’s never what it seems. The goons that broke in here were wannabes. They couldn’t have intimidated an old lady. They were scripted. They were obviously told not to hurt us but show us that we are vulnerable. They didn’t even try to steal anything, didn’t even ask if I had money in the house, which I don’t. We didn’t say anything. They did their thing and then they left and smashed a lamp and a glass or two on their way out. I almost laughed out loud at them.”

  “What’s that all about then?” I was puzzled.

  “It’s so that the police can put a tail on me and watch everywhere I go. They create a threat, make a show of how they are protecting me and insist that they send a squad car with me everywhere I go. Somebody is trying again to muscle in on the project and they think that if they know where I go in the daytime that they’ll be able to eventually push me out and take over with my contacts. The goons in Moscow were much better at this than the provincial boys,” he said leaning back in his chair.

  “Misha told me that you were being protected by the mayor, why has this changed all the sudden?” I spoke out of turn.

  “Hmmm…he shouldn’t have told you that,” Del scowled. “Listen, things here are always changing. You can’t ever get too comfortable. It’s like I told you earlier, you need to be ready to walk away at any given moment. When it gets too dangerous, we will do the same. Don’t ever trust anybody in business here, not even the mayor or the chief of police. Everybody has their price.”

  “Am I in danger?” I asked directly.

  “I don’t believe so. If it gets so far that I have any suspicions I will let you know and we will stop the project,” he assured me.

  “OK, agreed,” I nodded in agreement, but felt an uneasy feeling come over me, making a knot in my stomach

  “So, let’s eat!” Del said as he dished out potatoes and gravy.

  After dinner, we sat in the living room and went over the notes of my interview with Mr. P. Del had obviously seen these types of characters in the past, up close and personal from the sounds of it so I was counting on him being able to help me see this character in the full light of day.

  With my notebook resting on the arm of the couch, my pen behind my ear and another in the corner of mouth to chew on, I started. “I have the impression that I have chosen the wrong man to prove my model of how illegal money influences government policies…in the new Russia.”

  “What makes you think he’s legit?” Del never minced his words. He knew how to go right to the core of the question.

  “Well, it’s not a matter of him being honest and moral, I saw the drugs and girls going around that club. I’m not trying to be the vice squad here. It’s obvious a number of his current activities are obviously illegal, everybody thinks he runs the local protection rackets, but he seems to be against the idea of making himself richer at the cost of Russia’s future. He’s not out to rob the people or the land itself and move his wealth out of our Russia. He’s set to keep it all right here, create jobs, he says,” It sounded to myself that I was advocating for Mr. P. I was a bit taken back by it.

  “How did he get his start?” Del looked pensive, looking through me.

  “He was a young man distributing car parts to taxi garages and mechanics in 1989 and then it grew into importing cars from Germany,” I explained.

  “Stolen car parts and stolen cars?” again Del went to the heart of the matter.

  “He says he paid for them but admitted that he wasn’t paying full value as nobody then knew how to price anything in those years,” I apologized.

  “You mean the car parts?” Del pushed.

  “Yes, that’s correct. He didn’t say anything specifically about the imported cars from Germany.”

  I was flipping through my first page of notes to perhaps jar my memory. I chewed hungrily on the pen in my mouth.

  “I can assure you that he was part of a wider gang that was stealing cars in East and West Germany in the 1990s. They would put them in chop shops protected by the Red Army garrisons. The cars would be disassembled and smuggled through Poland as parts and reassembled in Russia in garages. The goons would then pay off the local traffic cops to get them Russian license plates and sell them for a huge profit here in Russia, and all over Eastern Europe. The Russians are very ingenious and industrious that way,” Del was painting a grandiose picture for me.

  �
�He told me about crossing the border from Finland and paying off the border and customs controllers. He said he had a license for importing, so it sounds half legal. What was his quote… ‘It was all lawful, but they still had the guns, and so we had to help take care of them,’ or something like that.” I looked up puzzled from my notes.

  “I wasn’t aware of any smuggling going on at the Finnish border. The Finns have always been above board. They tried really hard to stay out of that mess.” Del mumbled.

  I moved the discussion along, “Well, anyhow, after a while their Russian car parts business got found out and the flow stopped from the local factory, but eventually he said they got it back because the factory director couldn’t penetrate his market and that his customers wouldn’t buy from the factory manager.”

  “Kid, you what that means right?” Del sat up in his chair like a prairie dog had just heard a hawk in the sky.

  “I can only think that to mean that he sent his thugs around to the garages and told them that if they ordered their parts from anyplace else the place would be burned down, fingers broken and the like,” I guessed.

  “That’s exactly what that means,” he was almost sitting on the edge of his chair. “Oh yes, you’ve got a live one on the line, my friend.”

  “Del,” I lowered my voice, “there is something else. You’re not going to like it.”

  “C’mon boy out with it, what is there not to like?” he was getting really excited.

  “Well. I asked him further what plans he has to grow his current businesses. We talked about him buying up retails stores for electronics and food, groceries and about the new supply chains he is building etcetera, etcetera, but then the topic of his night club came up, you know the one in the old church aways up the road here?" I was pointing out toward the river, motioning eastward, waiting for Del to start to piece things together himself.