The Deceit of Riches Read online

  I didn’t know what to say. I was speechless. An American businessman in Nizhniy Novgorod? That couldn’t be right.

  “What more can you tell me about him? Which company is he working for? How long has he been here?" I peppered her with questions.

  “Telephone him. He is not traveling this week and would like to meet you,” she said amused at my excitement.

  “Thank you. I will call him tonight.” I was stunned to learn that another American was in the city, and maybe a bit disappointed at the same time that I was not the first American to set up an outpost in Nizhniy Novgorod. I was also very curious. Maybe he could be my step into the business world that was a constantly moving target. Deep down that is why I came to Russia; to make my fortune and become an unmissable part of a western corporation setting up its operations. I was no different from the other students I had already met who were dreaming of their financial success by helping bridge the linguistic divide between those with money and those with local connections and local know how.

  After lectures, I met Yulia at the river station in the lower old city for a light dinner in a traditional cafe there on the waterfront. Even though darkness falls around mid-afternoon in January, the white snow illuminated dark corners in the city’s alleys and the opaque ice on the Volga lit up the vast expanse of the night so that black silhouetted ice fisherman in the middle of the frozen river were visible in the twilight at four o’clock.

  “You look very tired!” Yulia said concerned as we took a corner table waited for soup and bread to be served.

  “I am very tired! Haven’t slept well for almost a week and can’t get enough to eat. I am not feeling too chipper tonight,” I admitted.

  “Why can’t you sleep?” She asked like a concerned mother.

  “Jet-lag, roommates who stink and snore, and my goodness you'd never believe how warm it is in that room,” I complained like an over tired child. Everything annoyed and irritated.

  “Can you change rooms maybe?” she suggested setting aside her menu.

  “I have a better idea! I met another student today from Germany who is renting his own apartment in the city center, says he almost has a view of the Volga.” I perked up a bit when a warm bowl of borscht and black bread was put under my nose.

  “It's very expensive to live the city center,” Yulia commented from her financial perspective.

  “Maybe I could get a room on your side of the river where it’s less expensive. Maybe a room, not an apartment?” I ventured.

  “You need permission from the University and the police to do that,” Yulia cautioned.

  “So, I’ll ask permission. And I’m pretty sure I can live anywhere in Nizhegorodskiy Province according to the stamp on my visa.” I had pulled out my passport and was reading the back of the yellow tri-fold paper with my picture on it.

  “Really, can I read it please?” Yulia reached out her hand.

  “I don’t believe it, but you’re right,” she confirmed, “It says you can live anywhere in Nizhniy Novgorod. We used to have our identity documents with our home addresses on it. I wonder why they changed?”

  “Everything is changing my dear!” I smiled the smile of a robber baron sensing an opportunity for exploit.

  After filling bread and warming borscht the frozen evening felt a bit more hospitable and so we strolled out to the land’s edge overlooking the frozen river, reminiscing about the time when we met on the river in the summer. We snapped a photo of the two of us ‘for old time’s sake,’ the dark abyss of the wide Volga behind us, our faces pale white from the flash.

  “It sure would be fun to take another voyage this summer,” Yulia commented wistfully as we turned to walk back to the river station and the bus stop that would take her home.

  I interrupted the nostalgic moment to tell her about my new contact in town, “Hey, you’ll never guess what. Valentina Petrovna handed a name and telephone number to me today of an American businessman living here in Nizhniy. He has invited me for dinner on Friday night. Wouldn’t it be great if I could get good work with him and stay on here for a few years after my degree, and well, just see what happens?” I suggested.

  “Peter, keep your feet on the ground. You should be very careful when people speak about business in Russia. It is not always what it seems and there is usually something darker behind it,” Yulia cautioned me.

  “What could be so bad about it?” I scoffed at her caution.

  “Just be careful, Peter. You never know who is behind it. There must always be a Russian partner to set up a company in Russia, and the laws in Russia right now make these things sketchy. Somebody is dancing with the devil in order to get permits and stay protected from criminals if their partners aren’t the criminal types,” she said as we paced through the shin high snow in tandem.

  I listened to her warning but didn’t question her any further. I remarked to myself that she was too cautious, too worried, but let her comments go unchallenged. She bade me goodnight with a peck on the cheek and boarded her bus in front of the river station. I watched as her bus disappeared down the quay into the remnants of a pale pink winter dusk.

  3. Del Sanning

  Friday afternoons in the old town center of Nizhniy Novgorod were always flooded with the youth of the city. Lectures ended on Friday afternoon at lunch time and with the pending weekend, nobody was in a rush to head home, or back to a cramped dorm room. Hans invited me for lunch with him at a new fried chicken restaurant on the upper river embankment not far from his apartment. My mouth salivated at the thought of fried chicken and a cold Pepsi. My belt, already a notch tighter pleaded at me daily to fill my belly properly. I was truly grateful for Hans’ suggestion and invitation. Between the two of us, we bought and ate more chicken pieces than I could count. The bones piled high on the table. We sat for fifteen minutes, blurry eyed and satiated before we could stand to leave. I had to fight falling asleep where I sat.

  “Peter, I think we should do this every week!” Hans commented as I picked the last scraps of oily meat from the bones on my plate.

  “Hans, that’s the best idea I’ve heard since I arrived in town. Hey, by the way, I am trying to move out of the dorms. Do you need a roommate by any chance?” I asked sheepishly.

  “No room for that. It’s a one bedroom apartment and well, let’s say on the weekends it's a busy bedroom,” he left the details unsaid as he wiped his greasy mouth and fingers with a napkin and wiggled his eyebrows at me to confirm my assumptions about his meaning.

  “Wouldn’t want to get in the way. It’s just that your apartment is so perfectly located between the history department and the American library, and this fine eating establishment that I thought I should at least ask,” I said disappointedly.

  “Sorry, Peter, a man must have his priorities straight,” Hans said with a sheepish grin on his face.

  “Understood my friend. Say, I’m on way now to the American Library on Minin street. I’m headed right past your apartment. Are you going that way?” I suggested we walk that way together.

  “Why are you going to study on Friday afternoon? The girls are waiting, Peter,” Hans said, alarmed at my over studious ambition.

  “Ah yes, but the library is not open tomorrow, and the girls will still be in the city on Saturday. I want to start to narrow my field for a thesis topic already and I’m curious to see what type of data I can access here. Just gotta go check it out.” I smiled and waved him goodbye and headed toward the door. “See you next week, same place, same time?”

  “Ja sicher, mein Herr!” Hans shouted to me as I pulled the door open to a blast of freezing air in my face.

  On my way toward Minim Street I passed the Rossiya hotel, just a stone’s throw from the chicken restaurant and stepped inside purely out of curiosity. As I pushed through the revolving doors of the street level lobby I spotted immediately on the concierge’s desk a display with a stack of several copies of The Economist magazine. It was a week late but was everything I had missed in the
news cycle of the last two weeks. I eagerly bought a copy from the receptionist and started for the door, but turned and spoke again with the concierge on a whim.

  “Does this magazine come every week?” I queried.

  “Da, it is delivered each Thursday morning,” was the concierge’s uninterested answer.

  I handed him a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet I asked. “Can you always reserve one for me each week? I will come by to pick it up each Friday afternoon.”

  “Of course!” he said this time with great interest and slipped the bill effortlessly into the breast pocket of his shirt.

  “Yes, my dear, everything is a changin’!” I repeated to myself, recalling my discussion with Yulia earlier that week as I pushed the door around again letting me out again on to the cold street.

  When I arrived at Del Sanning’s apartment block on Frunze street for our dinner appointment that evening the snow was coming down hard. I rode the lift to the top floor and was still brushing snow off my shapka while I knocked on door 26 and waited. I sensed someone looking through the peephole. There was no noise, just a blinking eye. I sensed a nervousness behind the door.

  I called out in English through the door, “Hello, is this the Sanning's home?”

  The latches instantly began clapping and the door swung open quickly. In the doorway, inviting me in, stood what looked to be a middle-aged cowboy, sans cowboy hat, with flashy white teeth, broad shoulders and chest and rugged face with sandy brown hair and blue eyes, dressed in Wrangler blue jeans and an ugly Christmas sweater.

  “It sure is! Are you Peter?” Mr. Sanning bellowed with enthusiasm.

  “Who else would it be?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Well, you sure as hell don’t look like what I was expecting. You looked like a Russian knocking on my door!” he continued in his cowboy manner.

  “Well, that could very well be as we are in Russia,” I said very logically a bit flustered by his bombastic reception.

  “I’m Del! C’mon in and take off your boots and coat. Is it snowing outside?” he asked seeing the cover of snow on my fur hat.

  “When isn’t it?” I huffed.

  The Sanning’s apartment was a typical Russian apartment with a small rectangular living room looking out to a glassed-in balcony, overlooking the next apartment block which overlooked the next apartment block. There were two small bedrooms, one was converted into a home office with a computer, telephone and a fax machine and one for the pair to sleep in. The kitchen was long and narrow tiled in white ceramics. The water closet and shower shared the wall of the kitchen sink with water pipes exposed on either side. Hot water was heated in the building's boiler in the basement. The only real difference to a local citizen’s apartment is that it wasn’t stuffed full of the souvenirs of a full life; photographs of children or parents on the walls, sets or books, the good china. Obviously missing was the clutter of common Russian families who have to hoard a bit, keeping a cupboard of home preserved fruits and vegetables from a garden plot, old clothing, extra blankets and whatnot as one doesn’t know when you might get a chance to purchase them again. The Sannings obviously hadn’t been in the apartment long and from what I could gather weren’t planning on staying for years. This was a temporary home. It was spacious enough for the two and a guest, tastefully furnished in a Scandinavian style, well lit and clean. I hung my wool and fur at the door and removed my boots and slipped into the house slippers for guests and Del then led me into the living room.

  “So how do you know Valentina Petrovna from the University?” Was my attempt to break the thin ice.

  “Well, the Mayor introduced us to her when we first arrived a few months ago. Thought maybe we could use her as an interpreter for our project,” Del answered hiding nothing.

  “Oh, so she is working for you on the side?” I hoped to hear that she was. It wouldn’t have surprised me.

  “No, couldn’t use her. She didn’t want to travel and I already had a young local fellow who does my books, taxes, and whatnot who does the local stuff. Valentina now just sends us video tapes of CNN. She has a satellite dish at the university that catches the signal. That way at least we catch the highlights of the world news from last week.” He chattered on like a ranch hand who hadn’t seen anybody but the cows for a week.

  “Clever,” I remarked.

  “So what brings you to Nizhniy? We don’t see many Americans here at all, let alone one who moves in and sets up camp,” Del asked me.

  “I’ve come for a master’s program for the next twelve months, but not anxious to leave after that,” I said, as a matter of fact, hoping he would read between the lines.

  “Well you sure looked Russian at the door. Do you speak the language as well?” he continued his tirade of questions.

  “Yes, sir. Spent some time here last summer working on the riverboats, turning my book Russian into real world experience,” I said with a twinge of pride.

  “Were you here when Yeltsin blew up the White House?” Del sounded so ‘cowboy’ it was distracting my thoughts.

  “No, that was the summer before. I was in Moscow for the first time just last summer. The building looked to be in good repair when I saw it in May,” I remarked.

  “That’s because they hired a Turkish construction company to repair it after Boris put a few tank shells into it. You know that Russia is the only real estate market that deals in NEW second-hand buildings, right? You ever seen a building site here? The place is half broken before it's finished,” he was waxing philosophical.

  “Yes, I’ve noticed that everything modern looks like it was built for a Gulag camp, inside and out,” I mentioned thinking of my dorm room.

  “Exactly!” he hollered and nearly jumped out of his chair at me.

  After a signal from his wife, Els, who was busy cooking in the kitchen, Del looked at me with a serious face and said, “Soup’s on!”

  Del Sanning was a true blue, dyed in the wool American from the heart of the prairie land. He looked it, he talked it and his wife sure cooked it. After ten days of watery Russian cabbage or over salted beet soup and meat dumplings of questionable origins, and too much garlic, a home cooked cowboy stew was a true comfort. Els Sanning was a studious and intelligent woman who didn't show her hand quickly. She was hospitable and generous and full of questions of a different sort. She knew how to ask questions that opened a discussion up quickly to the heart of the matter.

  “So, why did you choose to study in Nizhniy? Why not Moscow or St. Petersburg? It would seem that you would have more resources and a bit more comfort than out here in the boondocks,” Els asked.

  “Well, I wanted to go where the others had yet to see. Told Del just now that I spent last summer working on the river and saw so much of the country and realized that there was much more to Russia than Moscow,” I said thoughtfully.

  “What’s your major then? Or are you just here for language training?” was her follow-up.

  “Well, funny you should ask, I just came from the research library and I think I’m going to write my thesis about the privatization of state companies to find the secret to success and figure out why one succeeds and another doesn’t,” I replied resolutely.

  “Sounds very academic,” Del said and glanced over at Els.

  “…and very ambitious,” Els said gravely, setting down her fork and folding her hands above her steaming bowl.

  “Well, we’ll see where it takes me…,” I brushed off their obvious cautiousness and concern for my academic project and took another chunk of beef with a potato.

  “Peter, Del and I have been in Russia now about four years now,” Els was trying to be tactful but was dead serious, “the people who you will need to research for these topics don’t like to be asked too many questions. What you might think is a transparent, orderly process is nothing but a free-for-all. Businessmen and journalists are being murdered on a weekly or monthly basis. Rules don’t apply here. Be very, very careful about the type of questions you ask. You migh
t live to regret a number of them if you are not very tactful and very careful. It’s not what you read in the American press. Take some time and observe….”

  Del interrupted, “You’ll need connections! The business people here are not typical managers or CEOs. They usually have something to hide and don’t trust people with their life stories. Doing any due diligence is like pulling teeth. They give you the official books and you play along for a few days and then you have to ask for the shadow bookkeeping before you know the true health of a modern Russian enterprise. They play the shell game with assets and cash better than anybody I’ve ever played with. The truth is a slippery pig, my young friend.” It seemed both Del and Els were trying to dissuade me from taking up this line of research.

  “Yes, I’ve heard about the shadow accountants,” I commented as I chewed a chunk of beef.

  “Really, from who?” Del reacted surprised.

  “A bookshop keeper in St. Petersburg. Selling books, paintings, postcards, Kodak film.” I didn’t think anything of it.

  “Really, he just told you about it?” Del seemed put out. I couldn’t understand why.

  “No, we asked him. I was translating for one of my tourists who was an accountant. He asked him straight up about how he can make a profit in the mess of communist and capitalist rules. The fellow knew what he was talking about. The owner of the place just opened up and told us about his shadow books. Look I’m not making this stuff up! I was just translating,” I said defensively.

  “Kid, everybody here has a shadow life or a shadow operation and they keep it very close, sometimes they don’t even tell their spouses what they’re up to, and this shopkeeper in Petersburg just tells you this in the middle of his shop, right as he’s ringing up the till, like he’s talking about the weather?”

  Els chimed in, “Well Del, maybe you should take him to your next meeting with your contractors. Maybe he has a trustworthy face…,” Els smiled a play pity smile to tease her husband.