SLINGING AK-74S, THE COMMANDOS patrolling L____ Petroleum’s headquarters were substantially better armed than the pudgy FSB man assigned to protect the country’s once-secret files. One examined my laminated pass carefully while the other made phone calls from a special glass booth, returning with a second set of passes for me, printed and stamped three times.
I was the last to show. The others (all but Kablukov) were inside, waiting for my arrival to slice open the envelopes with the contract bids. Valery did the honors with an elegant ivory letter opener. He placed each bid on a conference table varnished to such an expensive gleam that it resembled an amber skating rink. The afternoon sunlight filled lead-casement windows that were like lunettes in a French chapel. Were it not for the two-headed Russian eagle that hung over the fireplace, I might have thought the room a library in a venerable university.
Our first order of business was to weed out the obvious losers. Gibkov, the most ostensibly neutral of us, began. “Murmansk Shipping?”
“Solid Arctic experience. And they’re giving us the best rate,” said Tom.
“But their financials are a mess,” said McGinnis. “They might not be in business five years from now.”
There were no objections to cutting Murmansk Shipping—surprisingly, I thought, since it was one of L-Pet’s hundred or so daughter companies.
McGinnis picked up another envelope. “Jessem. They’re Swedish. Can’t beat their safety record. Looks like they’re doing well, expanding.”
Tom objected this time: “They’re building a lot of new ships; they’re already undercapitalized. We can admire their ambition, but, we all agreed, debt-to-capitalization ratio has to be in the standard range.”
Neither of Kablukov’s two lieutenants—Serdyuk and Mukhov—had yet to speak. The talkative Mukhov was uncharacteristically quiet.
“Okay. What about this one?” said Gibkov. “Sausen Petroleum. A new company. Based in Geneva. Former oil trader for L-Pet, still does some trading, but moving into shipping.”
Mukhov perked up. “We have very good experience with them.”
I leafed through the application packet, which didn’t take long, since it was about as thin as a communion wafer. “I don’t get it,” I said. “They have no experience. Let them apply once they’ve chartered a few ships.”
Serdyuk shook his head disapprovingly at what I’d said. “Take a closer look. They have a very good reputation.”
I lifted the bid and let it drop like a feather. “What reputation?”
“They have never had one oil spill. No accidents. Clean record.”
“I’ll tell you who else has a clean record,” I said. “A doctor that’s never operated on a single patient. Tell me what vessels they have in their fleet—a bulk carrier, a container ship, a cruise yacht, even? Anything?”
“They have a very good relationship with the banks in Switzerland,” Mukhov put in authoritatively.
“Like every commodity trader in Geneva.” Tom smiled.
“The Swiss will give any yo-yo a credit line if they start trading oil,” I added, unnecessarily. I cast my eyes around the room for another ally. “And has anyone else noticed they want to charge us more than the others? Sixteen million more a year than the Swedes. What for, exactly?”
Nobody answered.
Serdyuk looked at Mukhov and shook his buzz-cut head like I still didn’t get it. “Sausen has a very good relationship with Mr. Abuskalayev.”
The air seemed to grow a few degrees cooler at the mention of the name of L-Pet’s president. It was not, I knew, a name that got invoked very often, and when it did it was usually spoken solemnly, like one of the seventy-two names of God. It has been said that Abuskalayev, who is half Azeri and half Russian, keeps a Koran in the left drawer of his desk and an Orthodox Bible in the right. He started his business career as the first deputy oil minister of Soviet Azerbaijan, and used his political connections to be named the head of L-Pet. He’s not a young oligarch but an old Soviet, which goes a long way to explaining why L-Pet has never been raided or disemboweled. Abuskalayev’s balancing act of loyalty to President Putin was, as I saw it, his greatest achievement; in the press, he’s given to strategically self-effacing statements such as “On its own, a national company cannot enjoy greater respect abroad than the country itself.”
Once more Serdyuk elaborated what a good relationship Sausen had with the CEO, how well they’d done by L-Pet as a broker—all at a subaudible volume that suggested it was our responsibility to pay heed, not his to persuade.
“We understand they have been a loyal servant to L-Pet for many years,” Tom said diplomatically. “But you’ve done well by them, too, after all.”
I checked my watch. Somehow it was already three.
“Let’s keep them in the pool for now,” Gibkov suggested, sensing tension. “We’ve got a few other companies to look at.”
But I couldn’t let the thing go. “Come on, people,” I said. “Who are these guys? Are they even real? We’ve never worked with them. We’ve never met them.” I’d spent three years of my life designing the ships in question. I wasn’t about to let a few well-connected amateurs steer them into an iceberg.
“So you will meet them!” said Mukhov cheerfully.
“I thought they were in Geneva.”
“Geneva—so what’s the problem? We fly them in tomorrow! You meet them here, in this room, at ten o’clock.”
Mukhov had a habit, like an actor, of saying something with a straight face, then suddenly smiling, which he did now. “Nu?” he said in Russian. “Vsyo spokoyno?”
—
IT WAS TEN MINUTES past four o’clock when I resurfaced at the Lubyanka Station. White cottontail puffs from the topol trees swirled around me, rolling in waves down the cobbled street. At the office on Neglinnaya Street, the security guard was sitting exactly where I’d left him several hours earlier. He looked up at me with a clouded expression.
“Is the archivist here?” I inquired.
In ceremonial disappointment he turned his palms out at his sides. “You just missed him.”
She returned to climb the steps of the OVIR the following week. This time she met a different woman at the window, one who handed Florence her renewed city-residence document and a receipt for the old documents. A pulse of panic, a tectonic quiver, passed through her.
“Where is my passport?”
But the new woman didn’t know anything about it. “Here!” She tapped a brittle yellowed nail on the square slip she’d given Florence. “We take your old documents, issue new ones!”
“Yes, but I gave you my American passport.”
With a facsimile of patience she reserved for the dim-witted, the woman pointed again to the top of the paper. Florence could see the typed-up number of her American passport. With a sensation she wasn’t fully sure was relief, she read her name (typed in Russian with a Cyrillic “tz” at the end), and the place and date of the passport’s issuance (Nyu Iork, 1933).
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“You take it to the embassy; they issue you a new one.”
“What happened to my old one?”
“How the devil do I know? I’m just giving you what they gave me!”