million, – I also rounded up the amount a little. Turning a little pale, Mikhail said:
– I never thought that Oleg was doing such things.
This was the best characteristic of the significance of our work. On the other hand, a high degree of secrecy was maintained between the brothers – how wonderful, gentlemen counterintelligence officers! After this incident, he did not come to us again, but we happily greeted each other in the corridor.
Employees of other departments stopped coming to us at all – apparently, such a command came from above. I was disconnected from other matters, and my habitat is my own room and the head of the department, a reception room with two secretaries, and the offices of the president and his deputy. It was in the reception room that I met Anna Samokhina – she came with some question to the assistant, and I was just finishing a conversation with her. As polite people, we greeted each other, our eyes met for a second, and I went out into the corridor. But Sergey was often behind the wall – apparently, he was attracted by the magic power of art and its representatives, he even invited the director to come to us, cordially offering the services of himself and our car – this is more interesting than boring numbers and pieces of paper. It is curious that Anna Samokhina quickly figured out the situation in our business community and rather flatteringly nicknamed the brothers Oleg, Evgeny and Mikhail «the Kennedy brothers» – obviously, not only because of the quantitative coincidence.
As a result, somewhere around the New Year of 1993, a restaurant was rented, where, according to the script, a gala evening and a presentation of the Holding were held. The presenters at this musical festival were Anna Samokhina and Igor Azarov, whose song «Full Moon power» became the name of this action. The whole color of our company was present at the shooting, including the head of our department Viktor Vasilyevich and his wife. The President and his two vice-presidents pronounced health resorts in pauses between musical numbers, but we can say the opposite, that is, the songs sounded in pauses between health resorts. Sergei and I were not invited, and for him it was a serious blow to his reputation, especially after advertising his own image to the creators of this film. But on the evening of the thirtieth of December, sitting at a party among friends over a glass of cognac, we were able to see our bosses on the TV screen «Russia» and hear about our company, like many citizens of our vast country. Guitar songs were also played this evening – «How great that we are all gathered here today» and the all-season «Sunny Afternoon» by The Kinks – after all, we are the lucky ones from Department Foreign Trade! We were overwhelmed with pride – we are a part of this holiday and our holding, and each of us received not only moral satisfaction, but also champagne with a small bag of money as a New Year’s gift from Santa Claus.
Chapter nine. John Hunter’s Lessons
I remember, somewhere in the mid-seventies, I read with great interest the book «The Hunter» by the Scottish writer John Hunter. The writer was able to vividly describe his adventures in Africa in the late XIX – early XX century in the exotic role of a hunter of large animals – lions, buffaloes, rhinos, elephants and leopards. Later, our well-aimed and courageous shooter became a safari guide for rich people looking for thrills in the wild and hunting big animals. If his client could not shoot or missed, then Hunter could not be mistaken, because this mistake could well cost the lives of himself and his companions. He was and will forever remain the record holder for the number of predators killed, and in whose courage, firmness of character, physical condition and common sense there is no doubt. Although not every reader likes such a craft, but Mr. Hunter expressed a universal truth for any activity, which he established on the basis of his experience.
In any activity, he writes, there are three stages. At the first stage, a person does not know how to do anything, but learns some kind of craft and achieves the first successes. At the second stage, having gained some experience, he often already considers himself an expert who has learned all the secrets of his profession. But this is a delusion, and it is at this stage that he makes serious, and sometimes fatal mistakes. At the third stage, when a person has experienced the second stage, there is a sense of reality, an objective assessment of their skills and possible obstacles, and at this stage the specialist is most effective. Hunter himself almost died at the second stage, overestimating his abilities and getting lost in the center of Africa, and only a miracle saved him – after two days of wandering in the endless impenetrable forests, he stumbled upon a power line support, and a day later he went to a small town.
– I hugged a metal pole and fell to my knees – I cried because I realized that I was saved now, – he wrote.
In the activities of the oil department, everything happened according to the classic Hunter scheme. Two large transactions, which were written about earlier, ended successfully. Our intentions and decisions were balanced – we, the seller and the buyer, two companies, the parties to the contract, insured each other against failures. Planning for further sales began in 1994, and then, instead of the previous cohesive work of the Holding and a thorough inspection of buyers, something absurd began. Each of the managers, believing in his competence, began to sell petroleum products himself, without having sufficient knowledge for that. This concerned both the quality of the goods, and the knowledge of INCOTERMS – the basic concepts and conditions of international trade, and the reliability of potential counterparties. There was a kind of competition, who will sell more and more expensive. The network of intermediaries selling the same as our department was expanding. And the sale of serious volumes and the transaction itself is an intimate matter, here the number of participants can spoil a sweet wedding night: this is not only my opinion, but, obviously, there were others. It is possible that someone’s pride was infringed here – he can, but why not me? And off it went…
The first bell rang back in December 1993. While I was working on fuel oil, Viktor Vasilyevich personally sold two thousand tons of diesel fuel to a St. Petersburg buyer. As it turned out, neither he nor the buyer had a deep knowledge of the specifics, and as a result of the contract, summer diesel fuel was shipped, which was prohibited from receiving at this time of year in St. Petersburg. Realizing this too late, the buyer diverted the entire train to Chechnya, where, according to him, he «disappeared», and was called to negotiations, and in fact to disassembly, to the Holding. Khazir Daudovich, after listening to all this, retorted:
– In Chechnya, my fuel cannot be lost, – and sentenced the buyer – a brave young officer of one of the special services – to compensation for losses.
– We will have to sell the apartment… – the debtor declared in his heart. To finish with this story, I will briefly tell you how events unfolded further. Having suffered, the officer wrote a statement to the prosecutor’s office about extortion, and thereby made the second wrong step. The prosecutor’s office tried in vain to reach the defendant, who was rarely on the spot and often abroad. Having felt the situation, the businessman realized the mistake, withdrew the application and then worked with our company on special conditions – repelled debts.
In the last days of December, Gorchakov calls me from the refinery and nervously asks where to apply for a license? I mean, to which country – Latvia, Belarus or somewhere else. I had no answer, the question was not discussed and hung in the air, at the management level (of course, with our participation), was not discussed and was not resolved.
– And where are Khazir and Oleg?!
– I don’t know…
And I shouldn’t have known. Actually, it was not uncommon for our leaders to mysteriously disappear when they were really needed – just like this time. I remember there was a conversation with Oleg Borisovich about the purchase price
