They hurtled down the brown tracks traced in the thick snow on the M8 from Moscow to Yaroslav, passing the row of snow ploughs ranged across the highway and convoys of heavy grim trucks. Some would have said that it was an improvement on earlier times, Arrowsmith was not so sure huddled on the back seat as the car slide around one of the hulking ploughs, he would have preferred the comfort of his room back at the Palace.
“Are we safe at this speed?” Arrowsmith asked, “I mean the tyres...road holding!”
“Da.”
“Are you sure?” Arrowsmith asked after a moment of silence.
“Niet,” Koskinen smiled shrugging his shoulders.
Arrowsmith let out a nervous laugh. There was nothing else to do but sit back and leave things to Sacha, their driver, and to fate.
The day had started badly with the minibus breaking down only three or four kilometres from the hotel in the heavy morning Moscow traffic. By the greatest of chance they were just five hundred meters from Koskinen’s apartment and after a hopeless effort on the starter they abandoned the minibus, making their way to the apartment on foot, leaving the driver to make arrangements for another vehicle.
They were heading for Azotphos, a huge fertiliser complex. During the Soviet period that type of factory was known as a ‘combinat’. It currently employed seven thousand people, less than half of that in the eighties. It produced nitrogen and phosphate fertilisers, almost two million tons a year.
It had been privatised in 1993; share certificates had been distributed to the combinat workers, one of the first real transfers of ownership from the state to the people in the history of Russia. They were non-negotiable, there was no market for such shares, thus there were in a sense worthless. When the top management offered to buy them for cash, the workers eagerly sold them for a few soon to be worthless roubles. The result was a handful of individuals in the top management had gained total control of the combinat and in doing so became rich while the workers became poorer than ever.
In the past the fertilisers had been distributed according to an annual plan decreed by the Ministry of Planning, without need of a sales or marketing organisation by the combinat, as a consequence, in the post-Soviet economy, the management was forced to learn the rules of market economy from zero; setting prices, seeking customers and making profits. A difficult task under the best of circumstances for a bunch of inexperienced ex-communists, not to mind a country going to hell on a roller-coaster
However, they did learn and they learnt quickly, setting up a Swiss company, which they nominated as their official agent and who collected the customer’s payments for goods delivered to export markets. Setting prices was easy - check international prices in the American Weekly Chemical News, deduct ten percent - that was the selling price, whatever the real costs.
Profits making was even easier; all the monies from foreign sales were diverted into offshore accounts, as a result the newly privatised combinat ran with a catastrophic deficit at the state bank, which became insignificant with the successive devaluations of the rouble. Their profits were not simply profits, but one hundred percent profits, all salted away in offshore bank accounts far away from predatory politicians and the risk of holding reserves in almost worthless roubles, the value of which fell vertiginously every day. It was fabulous, over two hundred million solid American dollars a year directly into the bank accounts of the new capitalists.
Mika wanted them to supply the fertilisers for Cuba. It was not easy; they sold all they produced, whether the quality was good or bad. The only requirement was payment against documents along side ship in Ventspils, with a down payment of twenty percent deposited and confirmed in their account in Switzerland.
Mika had good friends at Azotphos; they were willing to trust him at his word. He simply wanted to know whether Ortega had approached them and what he had asked for.
They were not the only sellers, there were several ex-combinats of the same style capable of fulfilling the order, but in any case his friends at Azotphos would know who was in the market for one hundred thousand tons of fertiliser at around 350 dollars a ton, and who could deliver the fertiliser on schedule. Thirty five million dollars was a good contract, with financing backed by the Berd and the Swedish bank.
In the distance a figure waved them down at what appeared to be a police checkpoint. Antonov stopped and then stepped out of the car, he followed a pink-cheeked police officer to a cabin on the side of the road, Koskinen followed him. After a few moments Arrowsmith decided to join them to stretch his legs, it took less than a couple of seconds to abandon the idea, the bitter cold wind bit into his pampered western body and he quickly scrambled back into the warmth of the car.
“What’s the problem?” he asked Koskinen when he returned with the Sacha.
“They are just checking on the computer to see if the car is not stolen.”
The motorway gave way to a normal two lane road, there were few trucks and even fewer cars, the snow covered road became almost white and the car shook and vibrated as it continued at an unrelenting pace over the hard compacted uneven snow.
They stopped in a small tree lined town, it was dominated by an Orthodox church with four green onion shaped domes and a bell tower. Timeless Russian houses stood on each side of the road, most were built in wood though some were in brick or stucco faced, brightly painted in red, green and yellow pastel shades, their snow covered gardens were surrounded by low uneven wooden fences. Elegant low buildings that had probably not changed since Czarist times, lined the streets in the town centre.
Just before leaving the town Koskinen pointed to a small oddly modern style building with an aluminium facade, Arrowsmith could decipher on the writing the sign in Cyrillic, it said Magasin. Inside the small supermarket a row of babushkas seated side by side shouted in unison to Arrowsmith to close entrance door he had left open to the wind and the whirling powdery snow. The shelves were empty and the accumulated grim and dust told him that they had not sold out their stock recently, at the back Arrowsmith saw a shelf lined with Vodka bottles – all empty!
Mika bought a kilo of biscuits, they returned to the car to eat their lunch, Finlandia vodka and sweet biscuits from the ‘Magasin’.
A few kilometres further from the village they stopped and urinated in the snowdrift on the side of the road, laughing as Arrowsmith told Sacha his eyes resembled the ‘piss holes in the snow’ after his drinking session the previous evening.
The swirls of fine powdered snow rose from the surface of the wide and almost empty road. The skyline was punctuated by the pylons of the electricity grid and the orange flames that rose from tall metal chimneys in a nearby refinery.
A hodge podge of worn out chairs lined the waiting room, the wall partitions were in cheap bare planks of unvarnished wood as was the floor, if there had been a varnish it had long disappeared. Koskinen, with a stream of lecherous comments, observed the coming and going of female staff from an adjoining room, as Arrowsmith looked at a sad sack of potatoes standing in the corner of the waiting room through the vague blurry haze from the vodka and whisky that Koskinen had pressed on him in the car that he now regretted.
Mikalov was not in his office and his secretary with a disdainful gesture relegated Koskinen and the others to an anti-chamber. Antonov in his style of ex-KGB officer turned in circles in the narrow corridor.
Mikalov arrived agitated but smiling, he was a bundle of energy in a sea of despair.
“My friends how are you, I am so sorry to keep you waiting, we are overloaded with work.”
After a long discussion on the state of the Russian economy he invited them to lunch. The dinning room was set up for feast, an extraordinary display of food and drink. The dinner service sparkled under crystal chandeliers and the wine glasses were pure kitsch, decorated with an extravagant excess of gilt.
After the formalities they settled down to the subject of their visit. Azotphos had received a demand from Ortega’s organisation. Their enquiry had been declined, not di
rectly, but by a dissuasively high price and long delivery date.
“We have had difficulty with your friend,” he said alluding to Ortega, “he is unreliable, as are his banks.”
“I see,” said Koskinen introspectively.
“We are open to dealing with you, hopefully through the Swedish bank, that is not an obligation but it would help with the delivery.”
Koskinen understood it was an unavoidable condition.
“But don’t forget Ortega has powerful friends.” Mikalov added as a warning.
The local hotel must have been at one time modern, its large entrance hall and sweeping stairway bore witness to that, but that was the past, it had been transformed into misery with its foul toilets and the pervading smell of powerful bleach polluted the hall reaching through into the vast bar.
“We have no beer.”
“No beer?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
A long discussion ensued in Russian. Then there was silence.
“What did they say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing.”
“Yes nothing, the manager does not order beer.”
There was a further silence.
“But many customers ask for beer.”
They were waiting for the over night train to St Petersburg. The hotel bar was the only half civilised place to wait after Mikalov had been obliged to leave them. Ordering beer or soft drinks was a hopeless situation and they resigned themselves to another bout of vodka.
The next morning they descended from the worse than drab Bolshevik style train in St Petersburg, Arrowsmith waited in the black slush whilst Koskinen searched for the driver. A line of women stood under the falling snow proffering bottles of hard to find vodka for sale. They arrived at the Europa, a hotel of renovated Czarist splendour, Arrowsmith headed for the marble toilets, where he defecated in the luxury of a sparkling clean and spacious cubicle, then washed and shaved. Koskinen and Kutzmenkov waited in the hall under the light of the sparkling chandeliers.
The vast art décor breakfast room was restored to past glory, the atmosphere was sedate as shy pretty girls in starched uniforms served the tables, they looked well brought up, it was an image from a far distant past. A pretty guitarist, elegantly attired in a black evening dress, played soft Spanish classics seated under the potted palms. Arrowsmith marvelled at the carved wood balconies, the stained glass roof and superb stained glass windows, which crowned the room, suggesting a extraordinary airy and luminous cathedral.
They sat at a round table set for at least eight people, laid out in impeccable style with fine silver and chinaware. Antonov loaded his plate from the buffet with enough food to feed half of St Petersburg’s hungry. Koskinen tried to flirt with one of the shy blond waitresses, quickly abandoning his gambit in favour of an attractive German girl he had spotted seated near the buffet.
Returning, some moments later, a lonely croissant on his plate, having accomplished his reconnaissance mission, he announced, “She has nice blue eyes,’ and after a pause added with a wicked smile, ‘and big tits’.
Chapter 73
Moscow
Offshore Islands Page 72
