One Damn Thing After Another

by Dan Latus

  ‘So he’s shaved it off?’ Leon said, shrugging. ‘A master of disguise!’

  I was annoyed with myself for not seeing through such a simple deception. Then again, Martha hadn’t recognized him, either.

  ‘Don’t let it trouble you, Frank. But don’t be deceived, either. Bobrik is a very cunning guy, and he’s relentless. Now let’s wait to hear what he thinks about Cayman.’

  Martha joined us then. We all got coffee and retired to a small conference room to consider gold mines.

  Leon was in relaxed mode. I sensed that he felt all was not lost, after all. In fact, things might even be moving slightly his way. Or perhaps he just felt better to be hitting back at last, instead of being perpetually on the receiving end.

  ‘Remind me about Svoboda, Martha,’ he said lightly. ‘If I had forgotten I owned it, it can’t be terribly valuable.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong, Leon,’ Martha said quietly. ‘The stats are really quite impressive. The mine was started in 2001. Currently, annual production averages 38,000 tonnes of ore mined and stockpiled, and over 30,000 ounces of actual gold.’

  Leon whistled. ‘That much?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Martha affirmed.

  If Leon was mildly surprised, I was … well, gob-smacked wouldn’t be putting it too strongly. Forget about hotels and financial consultancies, Leon, I felt like saying. Forget about political online newsletters, too. Gold mines are where it’s at!

  ‘And this mine is in Siberia?’ I asked.

  Martha shook her head. ‘The Far East, beyond Siberia. It’s in the Amur Oblast of the Far Eastern Federal District, or region.’

  She consulted her papers and added, ‘The projected life of the mine is another forty years, but it might well go beyond that.’

  ‘If the deposit is bigger than we initially thought,’ Leon said thoughtfully, ‘which is often the case.’

  Martha agreed.

  ‘Quite a valuable asset, then, Leon,’ I suggested breezily. ‘When he hears it, Bobrik should find your offer interesting.’

  ‘Let’s hope so, Frank,’ he said with a smile.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  WE DIDN’T HAVE TOO long to wait. Bobrik – as I now believed him to be – called late that night, just before midnight.

  ‘Doy?’

  I readied myself to deal with an angry tirade.

  ‘That’s me. How can I help you?’

  ‘By setting up a meeting with Podolsky.’

  ‘I can do that.’ No mention of Cayman. No screaming down the phone. Just a calm, quiet voice. That suited me. ‘Where and when?’

  I had discussed this with Leon. He was prepared to let Bobrik choose the venue again, but this time there would be a proviso.

  ‘Not here. Prague,’ Bobrik said without hesitation. ‘I want my lawyer present.’

  ‘Can you give us three days to get there and sort out the paperwork?’

  ‘Three days, yes.’

  ‘Good. Now we have a condition to propose.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The meeting should be somewhere like a big hotel, and we want it to be arranged and managed by a third party we both trust who can guarantee security.’

  ‘There’s no need for all that. Podolsky and me know each other well.’

  ‘Exactly. We don’t want a repeat of the Montenegro fiasco. We want the meeting to be organized by either Blatko or Vorodin, Russian gentlemen resident in Prague who you both know.’

  He chuckled. ‘What is this?’

  ‘They are people with an interest in the meeting being peaceful – no bloodshed, in other words. You can choose which one you want to do it, and we will ask them to make the arrangements.’

  I held my breath and waited for him to explode with rage. It didn’t happen.

  ‘Both,’ he said after a short pause. ‘Approach them both.’

  ‘We’ll do that,’ I assured him, but by then he had already ended the call.

  I switched the phone off and turned to give Leon a smile and a thumbs-up. Leon nodded and walked out of the room.

  It was already the next day. We would have another day here, and a day spent in moving to Prague and setting the meeting up. Then there would be the meeting, the negotiation – or whatever the hell everyone wanted to call it.

  I have to admit I was out of my depth. It would have suited me better if the meeting had been held here, or anywhere else in the UK. When it came to a city like Prague, I had no idea how things worked there. Also, I couldn’t imagine who could provide the kind of security Leon wanted. The G8 organizers, perhaps? Events in Montenegro and since had given me a realistic idea of the scale of the challenge.

  But it was what it was. The decision was not mine. Prague. In three days’ time. Security in some hotel to be provided by two men of whom I had never heard. I just hoped Leon knew what he was doing. I was certain Bobrik did.

  Meanwhile, I kept out of the way. Leon was busy dealing with some of the problems Bobrik had created for him around the world. Martha was even busier preparing information and documentation for the Prague meeting. Olga, I gathered, was keeping the online newspaper up to date. Lenka had disappeared altogether. I gathered she had gone on ahead to Prague, charged with contacting the people who Leon hoped would provide security for the meeting.

  Everyone seemed to have a job to do. Everyone except me. I was at a loose end. I considered returning to Risky Point for some R & R, but reluctantly decided against it. I was afraid I might miss something if I did. Events moved fast in the Podolsky world. And you could say I was caught up in the excitement of it all. Bill Peart would undoubtedly have said something else, something more judgemental – and might well have arrested me. So I had to avoid him, and avoid being visited at home by him.

  What I did do was reflect a lot on what had been happening. The Chesters was finished with, of course. No point spending time thinking about the old house in Northumberland. It was gone, along with its history, its contents and some good men. Perhaps justice would take its course eventually, but that wouldn’t be soon and in any case, wouldn’t help anybody much even if it did.

  Far more significant, and urgent, was the impending negotiation with Bobrik. I wasn’t happy about the meeting being held in Prague, but there was a sense in which the venue was appropriate. It was where Leon and Bobrik both had major interests, and it was where I had first stepped onto their stage. If Messrs Blatko and Vorodin really could guarantee security, perhaps it would turn out to have been a good thing. “If”. I had my doubts.

  Another big question was whether Bobrik would accept what was on offer. Would he take the gold mine and be satisfied, or would he still want that and everything else as well? Could he be persuaded to stop his campaign to destroy the Podolskys?

  At least we had got him to the negotiating table. The Cayman trick had done that. We would start there, and take one step at a time.

  Hopefully, we could avoid another Montenegro-style flare up. But just who the hell were Blatko and Vorodin? How could they possibly guarantee a peaceful negotiation?

  Leon smiled when I put the question to him.

  ‘Blatko and Vorodin are the two biggest Russian criminals in Prague,’ he said succinctly.

  ‘Ah!’ I shook my head in disgust. ‘Why didn’t I guess? Bigger than you and Bobrik?’

  He gave me a hurt look. ‘Frank, Frank! You think of me like that?’

  I just shrugged. How the hell did I know what he really was? I knew about his legal businesses, some of them, but were they all there was? Then there was the small matter of his disregard for the law when it suited him. But he came from a country where that was the norm. So why single him out for criticism?

  ‘Bobrik is a criminal, yes,’ Leon insisted. ‘I am not. I try very hard not to be! But sometimes others make that difficult.’

  I thought of the executions I had witnessed, and decided to keep quiet. I’m not very good at observing legal constraints myself. Half the time, Bill Peart wants to lock me up.

/>   ‘OK, Leon,’ I said wearily. ‘That’s you. What about these two characters who you and Bobrik think can arrange security? Can they? Really?’

  ‘I believe so, yes. After all, it is in their own interests.’

  ‘Both Russians, you said?’

  He nodded.

  Of course. How else would both Leon and Bobrik know them?

  ‘They each have very many business activities, some legal, some less so. And some definitely illegal.’

  ‘Nice guys. What sort of businesses?’

  ‘Oh!’ Leon blew out his cheeks and waved his arms. ‘You know, Frank. The usual things.’

  ‘Drugs? Prostitution? People trafficking?’

  ‘Some, Blatko especially. Vorodin is more of a financial criminal. He finds ways to manipulate stock markets and cash flows, I believe.’

  ‘Maybe he should be in the government.’

  ‘I think so, yes,’ Leon said, taking me seriously for a moment. ‘But here, not Russia. In Russia it is too difficult. There is too much competition,’ he added with the old familiar grin.

  I was growing tired of all this. In fact, I was tired full stop. I had been on the go for a long time. So had Leon, of course, but he was more used to this life than I was.

  ‘OK, Leon. Priorities. What can these two characters do to help us?’

  ‘It is simple, Frank. They are well-established in Prague. They like it there, as do I. It is in their interests to stop the Russian business community drawing attention to itself, and forcing the authorities to take action against us all.’

  ‘But what will they actually do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, spreading his arms in a gesture of helplessness. ‘But I do know they will come up with something between them. Bobrik knows that, too. We can trust them.’

  Trust them? I shook my head and went to look for Martha.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I FOUND MARTHA IN the room she had requisitioned, where she was busy with screen, phone and even paper files.

  ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Hi, Frank. I’m OK, thanks. Busy.’

  ‘I can see that. I’ve brought you a cup of coffee. Take a couple of minutes off to drink it.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Take it,’ I instructed. ‘Everyone else has coffee breaks.’

  She smiled. ‘Thanks, Frank.’

  ‘How are you doing with … Svoboda, is it?’

  ‘OK. I’m getting there. There’s a lot to do, though. The lawyers are not used to working this fast.’

  ‘Even the ones that work for Leon?’

  ‘Even them. But we want our proposal to be properly backed up with title deeds, etcetera. So they must get on with it.’

  I sat down and sipped my coffee. ‘Where, exactly, is the gold mine? You did tell me. But remind me.’

  ‘The Russian Far East.’

  ‘Beyond Siberia, you said?’

  She nodded. ‘That’s right. But it’s handy for the Trans-Siberian Railway. It’s actually in the Amur Oblast, if you know where that is.’

  ‘Very vaguely. Not that I’ve been.’

  ‘No more have I. Even Leon hasn’t been for a few years. Anyway, it’s in the south, on the border with China.’

  ‘And it’s just been left to its own devices, to get on with producing gold?’

  ‘Exactly. That was the safest way, given that the State had found ways of confiscating Leon’s other mines.’

  I shook my head. Business couldn’t be easy in a country where the writ of law didn’t run very deep, and in any case was applied differentially. No wonder Leon wasn’t always too bothered about observing it himself. He’d learned the hard way.

  ‘How big is it?’

  ‘The mine? Oh, it’s not one of the big ones. Polyus has the biggest. Their new Natalka mine produced 500,000 ounces in its first year, and will soon be up to 1.5 million ounces. In total, it has 60,000,000 ounces of reserves. But that’s State-owned. Any deposit with more than fifty tonnes of ore is claimed by the State.

  ‘Svoboda is nothing like that. Total proven reserves are about three million ounces, and it produced 36,000 ounces last year.’

  I did some quick mental arithmetic. Given that the current price of gold was not far short of $1,200 per ounce, the outcome was pretty impressive, small mine or not.

  ‘So last year, Svoboda produced gold worth about $43,000,000?’

  Martha screwed her face up in concentration. ‘Something like that. Turnover, of course. Not profit. And you have to remember the price of gold is lower right now than it was a few years ago. At 2011 prices, that output was worth more like $65,000,000.’

  ‘No wonder Bobrik is interested! He could soon replace the money Olga emptied out of his Cayman accounts.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I’m surprised Leon wants rid of it.’

  She grimaced. ‘In an ideal world…. But Russia is not ideal for investors without friends in Moscow.’

  ‘And especially not for political opponents?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ she said with a shrug. ‘There’s no way Leon can do business in Russia. It’s a pure fluke that he still owns this mine.’

  I wondered if Bobrik could do better. He must think he could. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be prepared to talk about it.

  The other explanation, of course, was that he was desperate after Olga had cleaned him out in Cayman. One way or another, it looked like being a tricky negotiation in Prague.

  ‘Is Bobrik really going to stick by the rules?’ I wondered.

  ‘Leon thinks he will. He believes even Bobrik won’t dare go up against the men organizing the meeting. If he does, he can say goodbye to everything he has in the Czech Republic, and certain other countries as well. Bobrik may be big, but he wouldn’t be able to stand up against the combined forces of Blatko and Vorodin.’

  ‘They sound like the Mafia!’ I suggested with a chuckle.

  Martha didn’t smile at all. ‘That’s exactly what they are, Frank. And in their world, strange as it sounds, trust is everything. Break that trust, and you might as well spend your remaining time on Earth organizing your own funeral.’

  ‘Their version of trust, of course.’

  She nodded. ‘Exactly. Now kindly piss off, Frank, and let me do my job!’

  I kissed the top of her head and left her to get on with it.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  PEOPLE BEDDED DOWN AROUND the building for what remained of the night. From somewhere, sleeping bags and quilts were found and distributed, as if it wasn’t such an uncommon experience for the staff of the IT centre.

  ‘We do a lot of work at night,’ Martha confided, as if she was one of them.

  ‘Not me,’ I said shortly, grabbing a sleeping bag. ‘I’m at my best in daylight.’

  She grinned, announced that she still had things to do and took off. I found a quiet corner and got my head down. I thought I might add something for sleep deprivation when I finally gave Leon my bill for expenses.

  The next morning, soon after eight, Leon, Martha and I headed out to the Durham Tees Valley International Airport not far away at Middleton St. George, halfway between Stockton and Darlington. Leon’s executive jet was waiting there for us.

  ‘I’m surprised the pilot could find his way here,’ I remarked as we headed across some pretty bland open country cloaked in mist.

  ‘Oh, he’s used to picking me up in out of the way places,’ Leon said.

  I smiled. I could imagine that. Working for Leon would never be easy. There would be plenty of smaller and poorer airports than this one to be visited.

  Martha moved up front with the driver, which gave Leon and me in the back seat a chance to talk.

  ‘Tell me more about the men who are guaranteeing security for the meeting,’ I invited.

  ‘You think it should be you looking after security?’ he asked with a smile.

  ‘No way! I have no leverage in Prague.’

  ‘Well, they do,
fortunately. Even Bobrik knows that, which is why he agreed so readily. I have told you about them. What more do you want to know?’

  ‘More detail. Who they are. What they are. How come they have such influence.’

  Leon paused, probably to sanitize the character reference he was about to give them.

  ‘Vorodin is a financial genius. He finds ways to bribe and corrupt government ministers and officials. He launders money for the criminal community and deals with stolen art treasures, and so on. And he buys and sells things in ways that are illegal in any civilized country in the world.’

  ‘Nice guy! And he’s based in Prague?’

  ‘In the Czech Republic, yes. Where he actually lives I don’t know, but that country is where his business is based.’

  ‘What about the other one – Blatko?’

  Leon gave a heavy sigh. ‘He is different. He is involved in drug smuggling, arms trading and people trafficking, as you wondered. Prague is a natural transhipment point between east and west Europe. So it suits him, too, to be based in Prague.’

  It was something to think about. Why was Prague so much more congenial than, say, Moscow? Freer politically, perhaps? The rule of law, instead of the rule of one man and his cronies? Who could tell?

  ‘And you know them both, Leon? What does that make you – and me, for associating with you?’

  ‘I don’t know them well personally, but I know who they are and I have met them. As I told you, the Podolsky businesses are legal. What my compatriots do is their business,’ he added stiffly.

  I decided not to push him any further. It was going to be a long enough day, even without the two of us falling out.

  ‘We’re here!’ Martha called over her shoulder.

  Indeed we were. And Leon’s plane was here, too, and all ready to go.

  Formalities were pretty minimal and we took off within a few minutes of arriving at the small and quiet terminal.

  ‘Two hours,’ Leon said with satisfaction. ‘We will be there in two hours.’

  I nodded. Leon gave up his seat to Martha and went forward to talk to the pilot.

  ‘How are you doing?’ I asked her.

  She smiled and said, ‘OK. I think I’m on top of things now.’