I needed a good party to overcome the ordeals of Luanda. I needed to mix some business with pleasure. Following the Soviet Union’s fall and the end of austere communist leisure, the former Soviet nations increasingly offered decadent and glamorous recreational options.
I had to arrange a top-class reception for the Minister of Defence of Uganda and his party when they visited us as part of the inspection of arms. Uganda was one of the main buyers of Ukrainian weapons and we intended to make the envoy feel very welcome. We wanted to show them what Ukrainian cordiality really meant and the perks enjoyed by those who were working with us. It had to be nothing short of completely blowing their minds.
David and I decided to organise our grandest event so far. We invited our business associates and others we wanted to keep happy, including politicians, public officials and military officers with whom maintaining a good relationship was important for business. Splashing money on them wasn’t a waste, but an investment.
The party was planned exclusively for a hundred guests. Not too many and not too few. David rented a renovated sixty-metre long cruise liner on the Dnieper River. It turned out to be an excellent choice on his part because the crew was well trained in hosting such extravagant events and being on a ship ensured that nobody would bother us, and the guests could enjoy the scenery as we sailed down the river.
The menu featured the best food money could buy, with Beluga caviar and pizzas topped with Italian white truffles. The bar was stocked with Cristal and Dom Perignon champagne, as well as premium vodka. The final touch was that David arranged for two renowned chefs to fly in from Paris and Tokyo to cater for our guests.
The entertainment consisted of a hundred models, arranged by Gigo’s cousin, Hardik. He managed a model agency and supplied us with his most beautiful girls. The models were on top of the hundred guests, so the ratio between men and women was one to one. I paid Hardik extra to show my respect and condolences for the recent premature loss of his cousin.
David organised four suites with Thai body massages with happy endings. He personally made sure that the masseuses weren’t lady-boys, but authentic Thai supermodels. He also personally tested their massage skills and confirmed that the end was indeed, extremely happy.
The final piece of entertainment was the drugs. I made sure there was a decent supply of pure cocaine, as I knew that this was the only way to keep Kiev’s police chief entertained. We arranged unlimited amounts of marijuana, pre-rolled into ready-made joints, and different pills in different colours. I was told that the pink ones made you love everyone and the blue ones made you feel that everyone loved you. I cherished late Carlos’s mantra that ecstasy made you feel that you were among the gods, LSD made you feel like a god and cocaine made you feel that you were in charge of the gods. We had enough drugs on the ship to supply all of Amsterdam’s narcotic needs for a month.
Food, tick. Drinks, tick. Sex, tick. Drugs, tick. What else could a man possibly need?
***
The guests were invited to board at four o’clock in the afternoon, with a proposed sailing time of six p.m. We wondered which local politicians would arrive and which would pass on the invite, too embarrassed to be seen at such an event. Based on our experience with the invitees we assumed that until ten or eleven o’clock the behaviour would be more or less civilised. After that the ship would look like Sodom and Gomorrah. And that was exactly how the evening transpired.
I decided I wouldn’t greet the guests personally; David would take care of that. I arrived at the ship at around five o’clock, grabbed a bottle of vodka and a busty blonde and took her to one of the suites. We didn’t speak much. I had nothing to say and she knew what she had to do. After relaxing in her company, and downing a few shots, I went out to mingle with the guests at around seven. The ship was at capacity and everyone seemed to be enjoying the party.
Before going to face the crowd I went to the upper deck balcony to enjoy the views. As the ship started sailing down the river, the scenery was beautiful. We passed the Hydropark, a renowned recreation river island that boasted beaches and countless cheap cafés, pubs, nightclubs and other lowlife entertainment. Spending a night in Hydropark without being poisoned by outdated meat shashlik, stabbed by drunken hooligans or sedated and duped by a prostitute was considered quite an achievement.
The party was just warming up, so I decided to finally join the action inside the main hall. I took a deep breath and went inside. The lower deck was full of round tables where dinner was served. Each table had a mix of male guests and female models, eating, chatting and laughing. Still behaving like gentlemen at these early hours, they were using their best charms on the ladies as if courtship was required to win them over. What a waste of energy! They were all prepaid to be won.
The middle deck had a dance floor and a bar. It wasn’t filled yet since it was still early. To maintain the show of wealth we had hired a DJ from Ibiza to keep the party going until the last dancer collapsed. In a separate, smaller hall a live band was playing Ukrainian and Russian hit singles, gangster chansons and music for slow dances. I knew that some of the more elderly crowd would become nostalgic and melancholic once they were drunk, so it seemed like a good idea.
The upper deck had sofas and comfort zones around long tables on which piles of joints were ready-rolled. This area was designed to host the after party and give everyone a chance to relax and chill out. When the party moved to this stage, people could cool down and watch the sunrise over the city’s buildings or wherever the hell we would be sailing. It would be fabulous.
When I went to the lower deck, the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Vitaly Vasko, who was appointed to his position thanks to my influence, was the first one to raise a toast. Undoubtedly, Vitaly was charismatic and knew how to speak and hypnotise the audience. Personally, I thought that he was full of bullshit. Some people made entire careers on nothing but bullshit and Vitaly wasn’t an exception.
He warmly greeted the delegates from Uganda, which pleased me as this was a bona fide government official greeting my African guests with respect, and so reinforcing their sense of importance. He finished his toast with a na zdorovya - to your health in Russian. The audience answered with a roaring na zdorovya and everyone emptied their drinks.
The second man to make a toast was Mike, an American guy who controlled the local grey drug market. His company basically sold without a prescription, medicine that wasn’t manufactured by any well-known pharmaceutical company. He probably infringed several international patents, but as long as he was paying someone off, he would be safe to carry on with his business. Half-jokingly, I thought that if our animal vaccination went wrong, I could rebrand the vaccine for humans, picking any ailment that it supposedly treated, using Mike’s network for its distribution.
I met Mike when he arrived in Kiev a couple of years before, following a Ukrainian girl who he thought had fallen for him, but she dumped him almost immediately when she discovered he wasn’t filthy rich. Once he saw that there were thousands of pretty women in Kiev, he got over her quickly. I supplied Mike with his first capital and now he wanted to show his gratitude and loyalty. Speaking in Russian with a funny American accent, Mike wished me all the best. He was done in less than a minute to the relief of everyone. Na zdorovya and empty the drink.
After Mike, the order of the toasts became random. After a dozen na zdorovyas everything became a bit blurry. The deck was swinging around and not only because of the current.
Before I completely lost the ability to speak, it was time to take the party to the next level. I walked to the low stage and gently rapped my glass with a spoon to get everyone’s attention.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for blessing us with your presence. We hold this party in your honour to thank each and every one of you for being true friends and partners. Nothing is better than being among friends like you,” I said, while thinking that half of these gentlemen friends would sell me and their mother without a second thought an
d that all the ladies were hookers.
“I hope that you enjoyed the dinner. You’re all welcome to come with me to the dance floor where we can really start the party. Na zdorovya!”
I raised my glass, everyone stood up, emptied their drinks, and we all went swaying to the middle deck. I walked over to the African contingent and personally escorted them to the disco.
The Ugandans seemed a bit shocked as we entered the dance floor, but soon got into the party’s spirit. They were drinking and dancing, each with two girls on their arms. People started dancing on the tables and on the bar. People in their sixties were dancing with girls as if they were young students again.
I had been drinking constantly for a few hours and was starting to feel drunk, so I sneaked off to my suite and snorted two thick lines of cocaine to get my senses back together and to be able to continue drinking. The evening was still far from over and I had to function properly. Now, I had a fresher eye on the surroundings. The party was becoming unbridled, which meant that I could put all official stuff aside and start enjoying the debauchery.
The party moved into its next stage. The music changed from pop and American rock to the thrum of house and trance. It was interrupted from time to time by old Russian gangster songs heard from the adjacent dancing hall, as some drunken guests demanded an increase in the volume. At least, they didn’t want to sing themselves, otherwise it would have been a total cacophony, like a drunken Russian karaoke.
Vitaly lurched towards me on very unsteady legs.
“Hey, Misha, very nice party. The girls are fabulous. What’s with those drugs, though? I was told you have a whole deck full of drugs. This isn’t right, you know. I don’t like this shit. I personally don’t care if someone does, but if the word leaks out that I took part in a drug festival, I’m dead.”
Being drunk, he had lost much of his eloquence, but was still able to state clearly what he meant.
“Don’t worry, Vitaly, I hate this stuff too,” I lied reassuringly and covered it up with more lies. “The chief of police is here to verify that no credible source talks and that we have only legal surrogates served. I insisted on that. If some prostitute would mouth off, who would believe her, right?”
Vitaly smiled drunkenly, hugged me and staggered off to the direction of the Russian music hall.
People were dancing everywhere. As dawn was approaching, it was time for me to go to the upper deck to chill out. Up there, people were making out on the sofas, sometimes in trios. Everyone was drunk, drugged up or both. The entire hall was filled with sweet marijuana smoke which gave me a rush just by being there. People were smiling widely with fully dilated pupils. Some had their eyes closed, some were chatting and laughing. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the entertainment. I didn’t think that my hospitality services were required anymore, so I decided to go out to the balcony to watch the sunrise peacefully.
When I headed outside, a gorgeous blonde stood in my way, holding two glasses of vodka in her hands. She was so beautiful with long flowing hair, legs that went on forever, and luscious full breasts. Her emerald green eyes hypnotised me. She must’ve been Aurora, the goddess of the dawn. I must’ve been ridiculously high, as I felt like Satyr, a lover of wine and women.
Oh, I was so fucking high that I felt that someone put my brain in a jar full of hot water. Anything I looked at seemed to be breathing and moving, full of life. I was hallucinating. I wasn’t sure whether this woman was really beautiful or I thought that she was the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever seen in my life because I was so fucked up.
“Please, allow me to raise a toast with the most handsome man in this fine party,” she said.
“I wish the complements were true,” I answered. “I won’t refuse another drink with such a beautiful lady. It’s amazing that now the women hit on the men in Kiev. What next? You’re going to pay for dinner?”
The blonde smiled.
“You don’t remember me, do you? You did hit on me a year ago at a party that Hardik organised.”
She was right; I didn’t remember her. But, I really liked her. She wasn’t taking herself too seriously, she wasn’t taking me too seriously, and she had confidence and some chutzpah. She smelled really nice and fresh too.
At this stage I was on the verge of spinning out. I was becoming more drunk and fucked up with every passing minute. Along with the vodka, marijuana and cocaine, I had also swallowed a few pills over the course of the evening. From past experience I knew that I probably had another thirty minutes before I passed out, although losing a sense of time I wasn’t sure whether these thirty minutes would take ten minutes or an hour.
Hardly able to speak, I asked her, “Why don’t you come with me to my suite? The view there is fantastic.”
“Oh, you’re sweet, but I won’t come with you to your room tonight since you won’t respect me in the morning. But call me tomorrow and I’ll let you invite me to dinner. Men still do pay for dinner, right?”
She slipped a note with her number into my shirt pocket, kissed me softly on my cheek, turned and walked away. I felt my cheek where she kissed me and gazed at her perfect ass. It was spectacular. I was chemically in love.
The last thing that I remembered from that night, before waking up alone in bed at noon the next day with a heavy hangover, was that she told me, “By the way, my name is Masha. Remember me.”
I’ve never forgotten her. And she was real, not a phantom devised by my intoxicated imagination.
15 Family
Tel Aviv, 2013
Masha didn’t stop yelling at the household staff. She thought that they were taking too much time for preparing lunch. It showed that she was nervous. And she was also angry and upset with Misha’s close friends. They mentioned an option to appoint a legal guardian for Misha. How did they dare? It meant they didn’t believe in Misha’s recovery anymore.
It had been five days of nerve wracking uncertainty since the operation. Although the doctors told her that Misha wasn’t in immediate risk anymore, being stable and in a coma wasn’t much different than being dead. On the contrary, the coma made it difficult for everyone because of the uncertainty. It was neither here nor there. Nobody knew whether he was going to ever wake up and if he did wake up whether he was going to be the same person. The extent of the damage to his brain was unknown. There was no closure.
“Misha’s going to be just fine,” she tried to persuade herself. “I’m going to have my husband back.”
Misha and Masha could live almost anywhere in the world. They had houses in Kiev, London, Geneva and Tel Aviv. When Dima, their eldest son, was three years old, and Erica, their daughter, was born, Misha decided that the best place for them was Tel Aviv. It was important for him that the children would study in Hebrew and grow up among Jews in Israel. He didn’t want them to experience anti-Semitism as he did when he was a kid.
The children grew up bilingual. They spoke Russian at home and Hebrew at school. They also learned English as a foreign language. Misha always said that languages were an asset for life.
Masha reminisced how she first saw Misha. It was in a private party in 1996. Misha was standing there, handsome and smelling of money. Masha walked up to him, planning to make a move. But he was drunk. Two other tall, beautiful girls were chatting with him, giggling and being very physical, touching him nonstop. She decided to back off. Masha knew her true value; she wasn’t desperate. There would be another time, if that was destined to happen.
One year later another opportunity presented itself. It was in a party on a ship on the Dnieper River. She didn’t believe that it was sixteen years ago. She had heard about Misha and came to the party to basically hit on him. He was a rising star in the business arena in Ukraine. He kept a low profile and didn’t flash his wealth like the other young oligarchs. But Hardik, the model agency’s owner who organised the party a year earlier, had told her that Misha was surely in the top ten. They were arrogant. He was modest. They dressed like clowns, flashed their mo
ney and behaved obnoxiously. He was elegant, charming and had a good sense of humour.
All night she kept a close eye on him from a safe distance, waiting for the time to strike. When Misha sneaked out from the crowd, she struck. It was perfect. He was drunk, alone and probably horny since he was looking at her as if she was a beauty queen. She made sure that she was looking her best and started a conversation as casually as she could master when you actually try to hit on someone. The rest, as they say, was history.
He called her the next day and took her to a dinner in a romantic restaurant. They sat on its terrace overlooking the city, talking and laughing. They then went to a night walk in the garden of Saint Sophia Cathedral. The garden is closed at night, but as Misha said, “This is a matter of finance.” He was a perfect gentleman.
He swept Masha off her feet. She fell in love with him and with everything that he could offer her: security, stability, and anything that money could buy. She believed that he was loyal to her. Above all, he treated her with respect. He never hit her and never raised his voice, although she knew that he could be very different with others. She loved this about him above everything else. Perhaps even more than his money.
She wasn’t a naive little girl. She knew that to get really rich in Ukraine unorthodox business practices were sometimes required, but she wasn’t that curious about the specifics. Like an ostrich she buried her head deep in the sand. What you don’t know cannot hurt you. He was her chance to fulfil all her dreams, and she wasn’t going to risk it by asking too many questions. He didn’t say much and she didn’t ask.
Misha prepared Masha to the contingency that someday, someone could attempt to hurt him. She didn’t know why and she didn’t want to know - ignorance is bliss. Misha welcomed her discretion.
“Just promise me that you aren’t a professional hit-man,” she pleaded jokingly.
Rise of an Oligarch: The Way It Is: Book One Page 16
