Chapter 8
Intrigues
In the meantime incompetent competent persons had decided about my fate. The girl, who went to work for the ministry 7 years before, not waiting for her term after that of Veronica, had come back to the company and wanted to take the place at once. She was annoyed finding that the chair was full. The bosses incited her to find mistakes in my work and then she would replace me. To do that she has been selected for my replacement during holiday. She called me, introduced herself and wanted to tell when I wanted to go on my holiday. I would not surrender so easy, but at last she would have her way at least partly: being the mother of a 6-year-old, she would not stay after September 1. It meant, I had to take my holiday about 3 weeks earlier than wanted. But not at once, as she wanted to force me to do.
I would not say too much about her.
At the airport in Budapest, two surprises were waiting for me. First, the customs officer took my camcorder into his custody as long as I would pay a deposit of the duties. Second, my wife said to wait in the arrival hall as "the children” were coming soon. The children have been my son and a girl, his favourite, or let us say fiancée. It was the first time he introduced somebody to us. She was Clare.
During my holiday at home I had to find my sales manager, who informed me about changes involving me, too. First, Eurogate London would place their own man into our Moscow office in the person of a young man, Gabriel, whom I knew already. He had finished his high school in the city, as his parents had been living here on mission. After their return he stayed, with the slogan that he was specializing, but would do nothing for it. He would start with us when I would return. Second, an office in Ukraine was to be opened with a man as employee there, who had joined our company only lately, but had been doing 12 years in Moscow as a serviceman for another firm.
In the first week of my holiday a time bomb exploded. My wife might have got a false – at least I think so – information about my friendship to Judy and, as in one of our private commercial actions with Joe she has been also involved, and I sent her share of the money by the help of my wife, she might have thought, there had been something between us. Once during this holiday, when I went somewhere leaving my bag home, she found my pocket agenda in it. She would not understand records in it otherwise as proof to her suspicion. I made an account of that discussion at the beginning of this book.
She lost her mind completely, she began to shout at me charges, accusing me of a line of adultery cases as long as we had been married. She said, she decided to leave me alone and go to live in a rented room, leaving all her property to me and my girls and their children from me.
It took me half a day to convince her not to leave me. About my guilt there was no doubt in her mind. All the same, I attempted to convince her, with the help of the younger generation, to come with me to Moscow. As she would not leave our son alone as before, I was ready to place all the three of them. It was to be a financial disaster, but I wanted to do everything for my family to stay together.
It was slow work. She told me all my past guilt. Our rear neighbour, a tram driver woman, once said to her: "Do you know that your husband has a girl-friend, tall and blond?” It was Margaret, the protocol executive from Machine Tool Works, with whom I was frequently going to the press to check proofs. And she told me such things that were unimaginable from her some years earlier.
Delay to gain her consent resulted in that I forgot to get the agreement of my bosses for the action to take my family with me. Anyway, my holiday was out and I had to go back. My family promised me their reply in a short time. When they decided to come, I forgot to consult with my boss, sent my wife to the woman in charge of air tickets and passports.
It was a period full of events. The girl, my backup, did not speak well English, she switched the language of communications to French. It took me two weeks to return with customers to the original routine.
When I called J., she told me, she had no desire ever to meet me or to hear about me or about the wife of such a man. She was rather vulgar in her expressions. It took me some sentences, until she understood, she was talking about something I did not know about. She then informed me, she has got a telegram from my wife with congratulations for her newly-born child. When I later forced my wife to answer about it, she said she had seen a pregnant woman around our house and thought it was J. – she thought her equal to F. in my pocket agenda. I made my wife sit down and write a letter of apology to the same mail address.
My family arrived around the middle of September. My wife’s ticket was paid by the company, my son flew by one of my free tickets earned from the airlines for a discount on their cargoes. The girl, Clare, paid for herself.
About two days after the arrival I got a telex from Louis D. asking with whom I had consulted about the change in my status – from single man to married man with family. I knew that it was my fault, but the arrogant style induced a similar reply in me. Beside asking for his excuse for forgetting to contact him about my decision, I informed him that according to relevant regulations it was no extra wish for a representative abroad to have his wife with him, but his inalienable right. As for my son and daughter-in-law, it was my private affair with no effect on the company’s finance. I have got no more correspondence in this topic, but a new stain was again on me and I think it remained there.
The next event was not better, either. I got a fax one afternoon, about a week after the arrival of my family. It was an instruction from my boss, the sales manager, to fly home by the earliest possible plane. I ordered my ticket at once, but for the next day there was no free seat on the plane. My family would be in the adverse situation as before. I in Budapest, they in Moscow. I tried to get information, but I could get none. I flew home and appeared in the office of the boss. He shook my hand and offered a seat.
"There is information about black loads and cabotage (local transport by an international carrier) in your office”, he said.
I have not been prepared for this charge. I have never let happen such things. Of course, sometimes there were packages of colleagues to be sent, but not as a cargo, only in the cabin of the driver.
"May I ask the source of that gossip?” I asked him.
"No”, he said decidedly. I stood up.
"Then, would you let me fly back to my place? There is too much work in the office for me to stay here for an unidentified gossip.”
He became red. He went to his desk and was looking for a document. When he found it, he handed it to me then said:
"Read it and give a written report about it. Now I am going to the general manager.”
It was the report of the girl, my replacement for my holiday. She reported about a phantom customer coming into the office one day and demanding a free ride for his cargo "the same way as with Mr K.”. Also her report contained a cargo sent from Kiev to Moscow or vice versa. She wrote astonishing lies about dirt in the office, too.
I prepared my report carefully. About the man who allegedly had got free rides from me I knew nothing, I wrote, I considered it necessary to restore the situation with the man, the girl and me – plus someone in charge of the investigation – to clear me from that accusation. I mentioned that it was not my competence to check statements of drivers many hundred miles away, who rejected loading up goods on the poor state of their trucks. It was that of the department head of the driver to check his record, as in my advises about returning trucks I always gave clues on technical incapability of them.
The charge of cabotage was a joke. Kiev and Moscow lay in separate countries since the dissolving of the S.U.
The cleanliness of the office has not been a real topic. In Moscow roaches were found everywhere because of common ventilation systems as their communication routes. The office has been cleaned once a week by a cleaning woman and drivers could be questioned about their opinion if it had been necessary.
I left my report on his desk and went to my dentist. Around the end of working time I phoned to the secretary and learned, I had to wait and phone the next day at noon. When I did so I was told I could return to Moscow.
That event proved me that my desk was desired. It has been no wonder, I remembered the three fiancées mentioned by John. Moscow had been free for me that time only for the reason that it had not been a dollar-earning place. But since January 1, 1991 it has been turned to exactly that.
Returning to Moscow I tried to establish the status of my family’s young people. My son has been blocked from doing a useful job at the agency and without Russian he would not register in the high schools either. I decided to employ him in the office on my pocket. Clare has got a job as a secretary at the agency. She was quite good, she re-learned her Russian quickly and her bosses were satisfied with her work. Soon my son became a company employee and at least it relieved my pocket.
The man of Eurogate caused me a lot of problems. How he succeeded at all to get this place, I learned only in my later years in Kiev. His mother has been a financial consultant at one of our new commercial banks and she gave advice from time to time to the wife of our general manager in her job. The general manager was the one who created Eurogate for his former technical secretary and since its establishment he became one of the biggest owners of the branch. Their representative was getting his money from Eurogate, but he was to work for us. Only he did not. And, the same way as he succeeded to get the job, he always succeeded to survive any trouble.
He even became my competitor. Many times he confused things by sorting out my trucks for other loads, to which I selected them. He did it in the same way with the company parking lot. On the parking of Sovinter at city limits theft has been a daily business and police has been involved in crime. We had to find a place secure for our trucks and the goods. I have got one about half that far from the office as the present one and was in talks with the owner, when Gabriel confused it by getting the support of his boss in London for another place in the north.
Our general manager’s interests in Eurogate decided all. According to clues from drivers the owner of the site has not been free of organized underground relationships. Also, by the same information source, Eurogate’s G. has been interested in the operation of the refreshment room.