Offshore Islands

by John Francis Kinsella

They drove in a Volga which had seen better days, taking the Sadovoye Koltso or Garden Ring, a very broad avenue that circled the centre of Moscow. The low sun shone directly in front of them, reflecting a leaden sheen from the worn surface of the road and the roofs of the cars.

  They had arrived back the previous evening and Arrowsmith had decided to look deeper into Ortega’s manipulations, following their visit to Azotphos and check out any other reliable sources of information.

  “This was a car of the high nomenclatura before,” Koskinen explained with a wistful smile, “today they have Mercedes.”

  Arrowsmith was reminded of the comforts of the Western cars by a bone jerking series of bumps, at the same time the driver stamped on the brake projecting him forward.

  The early spring had made a sudden appearance, it was warm, over twenty degrees; the buds on the trees were opening giving a thin aura of green. The road had some very impressive holes, the driver snaking skilfully between them and the tramlines, as did the other vehicles, resulting in a constant uncoordinated weaving motion of the traffic.

  The driver was rather short and slightly built probably from one of the Central Asian republics; he wore Ray-Ban sunglasses and sported a sharp moustache. He had a tendency to speed and Arrowsmith was frequently forced to remark the fact to Koskinen out of an aching sense of self-preservation.

  “What Russian doesn’t like speed,” said Koskinen interpreting the drivers comment with a wry smile.

  “Dead ones!” replied Arrowsmith grimly, images of collisions with the never ending lines of silver birch that lined the roadside and twisted rusty Russian metal in his mind. The reality was probably not quite as bad as his fertile imagination told him. Red Ladas and SUV’s at considerably greater speeds recklessly overtook them at every opportunity.

  Ortega’s omnipresence had begun to create a worrisome source of concern, but there was another more immediate and personal matter to be attended to; Arrowsmith had promised Olga to contact her old grandmother and to help with some money if possible.

  The temperature had reached an astonishing twenty-six degrees, it was dry and dusty, and Moscow suddenly seemed to be covered with a layer of dust, though no doubt the result of years of accumulation. He walked in a residential district behind the Kiev railway station, it was hopeless task to find the grandmother’s apartment block amongst the run down buildings, not speaking Russian and the Muscovites wariness of foreigners was of little help. Olga had told him that her grandmother was a fervent believer attending religious services every day a nearby church. Arrowsmith found the church without too much difficulty, its golden dome shone in the sun, a bright contrast to the grey surroundings, it was undergoing restoration. He was immediately shown to a pope, one of those directing the work, a certain Father Sverdelov.

  Sverdelov was an Orthodox priest, a pope, trained at Sergi Posad the centre of the Russian Orthodox Church. As a functionary of the Church he was the eminence grise to an elderly but important bishop.

  Fortunately for Arrowsmith, Sverdelov spoke good English and after listening with what appeared to be a sincere interest promised to assist Arrowsmith to find the old lady. It would take a few days and when Arrowsmith returned to Moscow from his trip to Ufa hopefully there would be some positive news. Arrowsmith had hinted that he would make a generous offering to the church in return for the help.

  “Mr Arrowsmith, that is very kind of you and I appreciate that, but one other thing, I would really like is to introduce you to a friend, a business friend, Anatoly Lavrin, his office is not far from your hotel off Tverskaya, I will join you if you are free.”

  “When?”

  “Now, we shall take my car.”

  Arrowsmith could not refuse if he was to get help with finding the old lady. The pope’s car was a new black Volvo. It looked as though Sverdelov was not one of the poor. They talked of the Church and the future of Russia.

  “It is a great future business!” Sverdelov explained to Arrowsmith. “There are one hundred and fifty million Russians crying out for spiritual guidance, that is a good business!” he quickly added with a pious smirk, “mind you we are not the Mafiya! In any case most Russians would prefer the old system.”

  “The old system! You mean before communism?” asked Arrowsmith a little confused by the man-of-god’s remark.

  Sverdelov laughed. “No my friend, Brezhnev’s system!”

  “Oh!” replied Arrowsmith weakly.

  “What has capitalism brought them? Nothing! If not insecurity and poverty. The rich are few, the poor are many, and they are both in need of our help, the rich pay us to absolve their sins and gain respectability, and the poor need our salving balm.”

  The reality was a little different. The state had restored the Orthodox Church to its past role during Tsarist times as the official Christian Church of Russia, which like every other Russian institution was desperately short of money; it needed to train new priests, to renovate its places of worship and monasteries, set up schools and help the poor and sick.

  As a consequence the church had gone into business and there it did not refuse aid from souls to be saved, honest or otherwise, believers or not. Sverdelov was part of the new generation and did not hesitate to cultivate relations to advance his ambitions, as men of all religions, such as he, had always done. If money could serve God and restore the power of the church, it could also serve Sverdelov.

  Larvin’s office was on a street off Tverskaya Prospect, the principal fashionable avenue of Moscow, lined with stores catering for the wealthy, stocked with expensive imported fashions goods. Per. Sadovskih was a nondescript side street and N°6 faced a small run down garden. The architecture was known in Moscow as Stalin Gothic, it was a sad building dating from the late twenties, painted yellow with sculptured relief in white.

  The neighbours opposite gave the tone of the district, the impoverished Jordanian and Ugandan embassies. The door was made in a cheap looking varnished plywood, it was an add-on to the original door, it had the look of a doubtful nightclub, with a tiny rectangular window for the purpose of inspecting visitors.

  Arrowsmith entered the aluminium lift and pressed for the 4th floor, nothing happened, he then remember to press the green button marked with what he supposed was ‘Close’ in Russian, with a jerk the doors closed and the lift started.

  Anatoly Lavrin’s office, once inside was bright and modern, and appeared to be busy, there was an air of efficiency with the ring of telephones as well-dressed secretaries came and went with sheafs of papers in their hands.

  “We are building up demand through imported goods.

  “What kind of goods?”

  “Everything from Frutella, Trill birdseeds, BMWs or air-conditioning units.”

  “Doesn’t that harm local produced goods?”

  Lavrin laughed.

  “Local production does not exist, unless you want to buy tank turrets or crude oil. Seriously, Russian factories produce sausages, bread and things like that. Imports teach the consumer about new products and quality, then we set up manufacturing joint ventures with foreign companies.”

  “You put up local capital?”

  Lavrin laughed again, “If you like! We provide the land, the building, the construction permits and recruit the management and staff. The foreign party provides the product, marketing know-how, the machinery and working capital.”

  Working capital was often Russian money, coming back into the country after a long and devious route overseas, under the protection of foreign companies and offshore accounts. This state and local Russian business partners were obliged to treat foreign capital differently to that of local investors, whose money when deposited in Russian bank accounts could be blocked or even confiscated by various ruses of the state.

  Arrowsmith had seen the empty streets lined by grim apartment blocks, and the strange almost total absence of parked cars, which in any other European capital blighted the life of its residents by their overwhelming presence. There were few s
hops, though those which existed were not in short supply of a wide variety of imported foodstuffs and goods for the consumer starved of attractive goods for so long, the local street markets were a vision of misery with their tiny irregular piles of low quality potatoes and onions, it was not difficult to see how Lavrin had built up his wealth in such a short time.

  That evening joined by Mika Koskinen, Lavrin, Arrowsmith and the pope dinned at the Sirena, a Russia restaurant favoured by the nouveau riche business class. Arrowsmith enjoyed the meal starting with what the menu called ‘a fisherman’s snack’, which consisted of caviar piled on three perfectly spherical cold boiled potatoes, presented on a bed of sour cream and echallots, accompanied by chilled Vodka served in a carafe embedded in a solid block of ice.

  “Fishermen don’t do too bad!” smirked Mika swallowing his Vodka in a single gulp.

  “Anatoly can help you in Ufa, with his partner, the Orthodox Church.”

  “The Church?” Arrowsmith wondered if it was another of Koskinen’s pleasantries.

  “Yes, Father Sverdelov here, is also responsible for business development for the Church, they have invested in Bashkiristan, a mostly Muslim republic, as missionaries.” Koskinen was greatly amused by Arrowsmith’s perplexed air.

  “Don’t worry, Anatoly will explain.” They had discovered they had common friends in Ufa.

  Koskinen outlined their programme for the visit to Ufa where they were to meet with Jari Punkari, a Finnish construction engineer and consultant, who had information on Erikkson’s involvement in Bashkiristan and where the Handelsbank was financing the construction of a pharmaceutical plant.

  The next morning they left early for Domodedovo Airport, some fifty kilometres to the south of Moscow, it was a model of post Soviet air transport, to say it was severely run down was a gross understatement, even the concrete walls were crumbling away. On the tarmac was an impressive fleet of Russian passenger aircraft, but judging from the covers on the jet intakes they were not anticipating flying that day or probably any other day soon.

  The car instead of pulling up at the passenger terminal took a side road, which led to a high gate that after a short moment opened automatically; they then headed across the tarmac towards the foreign passenger terminal.

  The flight took a couple of hours over the flat Russian steppe to Ufa which lay at the southern tip of the Ural Mountains, south of the city of Perm. On arrival in Ufa, the capital of the Republic of Bashkiristan, Jari Punkari, a hugely overweight Finn, met them.

  Punkari operated a construction and consultancy business specialised in the hospitals and health care clinics. He had built a clinic in Ufa catering for the needs of the new ruling class and as a result had become the confident of Jamil Novotsky, head of the Bashkir Mafiya. Novosky was one of the local partners in the clinic, without his presence almost no new business could be set-up.

  Jari ensured good medical care abroad and hard to get medical drugs for the family and friends of local politicians and Mafiya members. When he was not in one of the ministries, he spent most of his time in the local hotels and nightclubs, setting up deals and keeping close to his clients.

  They met in the hotel bar on the first floor where Arrowsmith saw for the first time in person what very evidently were young members of the Mafiya. They were ensconced in a spacious corner of the bar which was obviously their reserved domain. There were about a dozen of them sitting back comfortably on large couches around low tables. Three of them were perched on the armrests. They were with their girls, mostly blondes. Some of the men were good looking, not unlike Italians, others more Turkish looking, only one or two could have been described as typical Russians. They were all fashionable dressed in the rather flashy style of their age group.

  The leaders shook hands with Timo and one of them embraced him kissing him on the cheek in pure Mafiya style as would have suited their Sicilian counterparts. The girls were young and very pretty, they all looked relaxed and confident, enjoying an innocent evening of privileged youth.

  That evening Jari invited them to join Jamil Novotsky and his friends for dinner in a night club on the outskirts of Ufa. They would enlighten Arrowsmith on the production of counterfeit money that was being printed by Ortega’s friends.

  The friends looked very doubtful and seemed to splash an endless supply of dollars around ordering foreign Champaign and Cognac. They drank quantities of alcohol that Arrowsmith had never before seen and seemed to become argumentative. Novotsky having drunk a considerable amount of Cognac boasted he could supply Arrowsmith with whatever currency he wanted for a third of its face value and confiding to him that it was produced to order by his men who worked at the Perm Printing Factory, four hundred kilometres to the north of Ufa.

  Mika explained that the factory was one of Goznak system enterprises in Russia. For about 175 years it has been the only manufacturer of monetary units and securities in Russia. The Perm printing factory had been founded in 1941 as part of Goznak. Certain of its workers, struggling to survive, had taken to setting up their own illegal business of printing the currency of any country to order in collusion with Mafiya gangs.

  As the drinking and noise grew more and more aggressive, Koskinen decide it was the moment to leave, and bidding farewell with the promise of future business they left the basement level night club restaurant with Mika climbing up the stairs to street level hoping they would find a taxi. The street lighting was dim but they could make out the form of two traffic police who stood on the road about two metres from the curb side making spot checks on the passing cars. Mika asked them where they could find a taxi.

  “Further, near the Russia Hotel,” he pointed with his baton.

  “It’s a long way,” Mika told Arrowsmith.

  “Ask them to stop a car for us,” Arrowsmith joked.

  Mika talked in Russian to the nearest policeman and pulled out a five Rouble note.

  “Niet!” He waved the offer away, the older policeman approached pocketed the note with a practised movement of his hand and waved down the next car.

  “I told them you were with the foreign delegation and you had a bad leg,” Mika laughed as the climbed into the car and started to negotiate the fare with the driver.

  Mika explained their abrupt departure by the fact that Jari’s friends were hardened criminals and it would have been unwise to linger with them once they had been told how the counterfeit currency system functioned.

  They left the hotel at five in the morning to fly back to Moscow pleased to get the greatest distance possible between them and the company of the previous evening.

  The Bashkiristan Airlines Tupolev Tu154 certainly won the first prize, as far as Arrowsmith was concerned, for the dirtiest aircraft he had ever had the doubtful pleasure to fly in. His knees were crammed against the seat in front and he inspected a lump of chewing gum stuck to the window surround, the grime was real ingrained grime not simply ‘overlooked’ dust.

  The jet engines had a heavy lumbering sound as though they were thinking ahead to the next move. Arrowsmith did not like to think of the age of the plane and concentrated on the fact that it had been designed and built at the height of the Soviet era by solid engineers, nevertheless the idea of the present day maintenance standards persistently crept its way back into his imagination, the lack of parts, the lack of interest and professional conscience. He had seen academics and scientists struggling to live on the most miserable of salaries that could not pay the price of a dinner in his hotel, whilst the youthful Mafiya thugs lived like princes.

  They arrived back in Moscow’s Domedovdeva airport a mass of rust, crumbling concrete and battered aluminium, considerably worse than any he had seen even in Algeria that had chosen Russia as a model after independence.

  The airport was indescribably chaotic. They had obviously missed Kutzmenkov who was to pick them up, they could have waited, but it would have been like finding a needle in a haystack in spite of the garish nouveau-riche appearance of the vehicle that
Kutzmenkov drove, a green Cherokee Jeep with imitation tiger skin seat covers. He had fixed a blue gyratory lamp on the roof, which he switched on whenever he was in a hurry, which was generally the rule. Koskinen checked the line of waiting cars; the Jeep was not in sight. He checked at the Intourist office in vain. A taxis was the best solution, they could be at the office in a little over an hour if the morning traffic permitted.

  They had been accosted by several taxi touts outside the Intourist office and one had followed him in, they struck a deal after a spirited but useless protestation from Koskinen, seventy dollars take it or leave it, then the tout presented a driver whom they followed to the car park, where they were shown to a worn out old Volga. The taxi was of the same vintage and condition as the airport. But for once Arrowsmith was pleased, the driver drove with extreme caution, he imagined that the least effort or any attempt to go beyond the speed of one hundred kilometres an hour would have signalled the death knell for the car fragile with age. The drive into Moscow was extremely sedate, except for the occasional sigh uttered from the tired motor and the grinding of the brakes as the traffic built up and they edged their way towards the centre of the capital in the morning rush hour traffic.

  They struggled through the endless tangle of Ladas, Volgas and trucks mixed with more than a few Mercedes and Volvos. The stench diesel fumes from the buses and trucks strangled Arrowsmith. Moscow was in gridlock, it was two hours since they had quit the airport and with the unpredictability of Russian appointments Mika started to worry about their presence for the meeting.

  The taxi was badly overheating and the warning light for fuel was flashing. The towers of the Kremlin had been in sight for more than half an hour but they were not moving.

  The drive made a u-turn to head for another bridge and the north ring, the traffic flowed easier and he started to take risks speeding when he could on the wide avenues in spite of his poor brakes.

  Looking from the taxis he saw endless publicity hoardings announcing the services of an astonishing number of banks. There were 1,500 so called banks that in reality only took deposits, offering almost none of the normal banking services such as loans.

  The proliferation of banks in Moscow since the dissolution of the Soviet Union had been a startling phenomena, every ambitious golden boy seemed to head a bank and the fledgling stockmarket attracted the same species. It was not surprising that the success of the banks inevitably attracted the Mafiya and the killing of bank managers became an every day event.

  74

  A Visit to Tampico