‘I benefited from the situation,’ he confessed, crunching the tension out of his neck. ‘Also Transnistria – lying between Western Europe and Ukraine – has more than two hundred miles of open border. What else do I need to say? All the big money has come to us because of our unrecognised status, through contraband of one sort or other, like in the USA during Prohibition.’ He paused to assure me, ‘But I did no smuggling. I tolerated no corruption. I paid my taxes, unlike Big Brother.’
‘Tell me about Big Brother,’ I asked on cue.
‘Big Brother has a buy-and-sell ideology. They are interested only in profit. They make money. I make things.’
He laid down his cigar, scraped the charcoal off the steaks then sprayed the grill with spirit. Flames leapt into the air, almost singeing my eyebrows and melting snow around the barbecue.
‘In the Soviet years people had stability, social guarantees and their own apartment,’ he reminisced, warming to his theme. ‘I still have those things, plus a new Lexus, only now I must work thirty-six hours every day.’
In time more glasses were raised and emptied and the steaks were done. We wove our way indoors – heads buzzing, fighting for focus – and Nikoluk twisted his broad shoulders through the doorways between bedroom suites and fitness room, showing off the newly fitted kitchen and sauna converted from an old bomb shelter. On a huge widescreen TV in the living room his four-year-old daughter Maria watched Ukrainian cartoons at top volume. I asked Nikoluk how he had found the apartment on central Karl Marx Street.
‘I was just lucky,’ he said and laughed, delighted by the choices he had made, his expansive spirit filling the room with crackling energy. Behind him the icemaker clinked in a stainless steel American fridge-freezer.
Nikoluk’s table groaned under the weight of yet more food: platters of charcuterie, plates of marinated tomatoes, three varieties of potato, half a dozen cheeses as well as the remaining butter-tender kostitza pork. In Eastern Europe it’s said that guests are welcomed with everything on the table, while in the West the best food was kept in the cupboard. There were also more bottles. Every time a new vodka was opened and the glasses filled, little Maria tried to recap it.
We ate, drank then debated historical materialism and business synergy. I asked him about the utopian ideals of developed socialism and he quizzed me on Apple Inc.’s share price. Maria lay on a toy tiger rug and turned up the television again.
Around nightfall Nikoluk barked at her, an edge of unpredictability flashing in his eyes. Alexandra noticed it and slipped out of her chair to nestle in his lap like a small and delicate bird. He was twice her size, and twice her age.
‘I found her working at the Domsoviet,’ he said as if discussing the netting of a rare specimen for a collection. ‘Every time I passed the city hall I’d call by her office and say, “Your uncle is back to see you again.”’
‘I didn’t notice him at first,’ chirped Alexandra in mischievous English, her smile revealing new dental braces. ‘But he was very persistent, and very sly.’
Nikoluk bellowed with delight, wrapping her in his beefy arms. The short sleeves of his black T-shirt emphasised his biceps. Her proximity mellowed him and in a surprisingly wistful voice he said to me, ‘It was always my dream to travel. But I can’t, even with my two passports.’
All Transnistrians had a Transnistrian passport, which was useless for foreign travel. All wanted a Moldovan passport, which was rarely forthcoming. Most were stuck with a Russian or Ukrainian document.
‘Why are we just a forgotten island between Moldova and Ukraine?’ slurred Nikoluk in lament, overlooking the fact that its fuzziness had enabled him to prosper. ‘No one is happy with the present status. If Europe really wants to end our isolation, they should simply welcome us as brothers.’
I suggested that Transnistria would never be allowed to join the EU as it was run by criminals (present company excepted). But by then it was too late for such discussions. As she stroked his beard, Alexandra chirped, ‘I’d like my name to be on a European passport.’
With another glass-cracking laugh, Nikoluk pulled himself upright in his chair. Pretending to be a border guard, he inspected her document and welcomed her into an imaginary, expanded European Union. ‘Nikoluk, Alexandra…’ he read aloud, swaying, then hesitated. He had forgotten her middle name. ‘What is your patronymic again?’ he asked his young wife.
For the first two decades of Transnistria’s existence, its leader, Russian-born Igor Smirnov, had maintained the guise of a working man. His suits had been tailored with peculiar, short, rolled-up sleeves. A Lenin goatee beard had enhanced his presidential looks. None of his four election victories was recognised by the outside world yet when he fell from power he smashed his office, wailing at his aides, ‘You said that I would win. You said that I was the winner.’ His election slogan had been ‘The Motherland is not for sale’, a truth for the simple reason that it had already been sold. Soon after the election Smirnov went missing. And so did 90 per cent of the central bank’s gold reserves. There is no evidence that the disappearances were linked, but the incoming president claimed to have found only $49,000 in the national kitty. Nevertheless, five years later the ‘father of the republic’ was back, and on the board of Nikoluk’s ‘Big Brother’.
The next morning I went in search of him – or rather it. Beyond wretched little shops, gloomy apartment blocks and broken-down garages, I recognised the sweeping blue arch crowned with a sheriff’s yellow star. Beneath it, a uniformed security guard checked my passport then waved me into the landscaped oasis of the Sheriff Sports Complex.
Sheriff – a state within a non-state – was the country’s most powerful corporation. Its three vast stadiums and football clubs were its brashest holding, built up over the last decades at a cost of more than $200 million. When filled to capacity the three FIFA-approved arenas could seat one-tenth of Transnistria’s entire population.
‘Why football?’ enthused Pyotr Lyalyuk, director of the complex, when we met on a manicured training pitch. ‘Because football is the ambassador of peace. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we at Sheriff decided to invest our money in the ambassador of peace.’
In flawless English, Lyalyuk introduced himself as Transnistria’s former criminal police chief. Like the company’s founders, all of Sheriff’s executives had first worked as intelligence officers or in law enforcement during Smirnov’s regency.
‘I oversaw the project from the very start,’ recalled Lyalyuk while adjusting his Dolce & Gabbana jacket. ‘I remember when there was nothing here but a simple field. Now we have built a kingdom for football.’
In a vast, heated indoor hall, half a dozen teams of different ages practised at the nets. As we circled it, Lyalyuk explained with smooth self-esteem how Sheriff sponsors sports clubs in dozens of local kindergartens. Once a year the children and their families are invited to the complex. Company coaches then select the best players and offer them places at the Sheriff football academy. Over 400 boys are schooled there without charge. Boys from out-of-town are given room and board. Boots and kit are also free.
As a result of its programme and investment, FC Sheriff Tiraspol has come to dominate football on both banks of the Dniester, twice winning the Commonwealth of Independent States Cup and determined to top the UEFA Champions League. Graduates of the academy had been sold to European and Russian clubs.
Nikoluk had told me that football was good business. ‘Young players are sold abroad for millions. No one does the business better than Sheriff,’ he’d boasted.