Nina asked him, “Ignatiy Savelievich, why haven’t you privatized anything? Why do those people have billions while you, already on pension, have to work?” “That’s because I am a fool,” answered Ignatiy Savelievich. “No,” protested Nina. “You are not a fool, but a good, honest man.” “It’s one and the same thing,” laughed the old finance hand.
Before Nina’s time, Ignatiy Savelievich had been the department’s main force in everything that required application of knowledge or intellect. When Nina arrived, he sized up her potential at once and started shifting work on her without ceremony. The benefit was mutual, though – in compensation for the exploitation, he taught her many niceties and tricks of their profession.
It was from Ignatiy Savelievich that Nina received the file of her father’s company. Now she was the one who supervised that debtor on behalf of the bank and received quarterly reports on his operations. According to the reports, the company’s business was going on in a satisfactory way.
After she had worked in the department for half a year, Nina was already its unofficial leader. Whenever complex questions arose, everyone turned to her now. Ignatiy Savelievich was not jealous of her growth, and Kirill was happy to have such an employee on his staff. Strangely enough, Nina’s life in that ‘joint’ as it had been referred to by the late Misha Permyak was quite tolerable – the work suited her and so did the weird, disorderly state of things in the department which gave her a great deal of latitude.
About once in a month Nina visited her father at his place. Lydia Grigorievna was willing to receive her and made a special dinner for such occasions. Those evenings à trois ran peacefully, everyone trying to be polite and avoid sore subjects. Nina’s father would not talk about his work, and when asked, would only say, “Everything’s all right, there’s nothing to tell.” Nina, who had never told him about her getting a job in the bank, could not dwell on her work either and got away with the same dummy formula, “Everything’s all right.” As a result, they mostly discussed Lydia Grigorievna’s culinary novelties and theater shows which Nina’s father and his wife were frequenting again.
It was from Lydia Grigorievna that Nina learned how things actually were with her father. The woman would snatch a moment to give Nina a brief account – everything seemed to be quiet in the company, no new gangsters had turned up. Yevgeniy Borisovich was off drink, working a lot.
Nina was thinking of joining them for their theater outings, which had been more than once suggested by Lydia Grigorievna. However, Nina really had no time for that – she was busier than ever before, loaded down with work for almost all her evenings.
What depressed her was that she was deceiving her father. What had started by holding back some minor things from him at the time when he had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown and had to be spared had grown into a big lie which she did not know how to stop. Confessing to her deception now would mean hurting him badly and probably, estranging from herself for good the only person on earth with whom she had a real bond, while not confessing meant leading the situation further and further into an impasse.
Nina was stalling, unable to make up her mind and put an end to the lie. That was not at all like her. Rather, it was like her mother who had not had a single conflict with anyone in her life, preferring to smooth over the differences and let time sort everything out. “Mama, mama, where are you?” sighed Nina. “If you are there somewhere, forgive me for not remembering you more often. I love you.” It seemed to Nina that an eternity had passed since her mother’s death and sometimes she caught herself at not being able to recall the dear face.
Nina had not come to the bank in vain – a time arrived when she actually played the guardian angel to her father’s company. The due date was approaching on the last short-term loan, the largest of them all. The company clearly did not have enough money to pay it off. Nina believed that, if she had been by her father’s side, she would have found a way to obtain the necessary means from another bank, but she doubted that her father could manage it on his own. Or rather, she was sure that he could not.
She was pondering what arguments she could offer Kirill to convince him to grant the company an extension on the loan. But then the worst possible thing happened – the bank was swept by a wave of cash mobilization. The owners, who were suddenly in urgent need of huge sums of money, gave an order to collect debt ruthlessly from all the borrowers, and squeeze out cash by all means. The first thought that occurred to Nina when she heard of that was, “Good heavens, the same story all over again. First Simonyan, then Misha Permyak, now these fellows…”
Kirill convened his brain trust consisting of Nina and Ignatiy Savelievich, and announced the immediate goals. Then, separately, he complained to Nina, “I can’t take it any more. What are they doing, for heaven’s sake? I’ll quit. I mean it, I’ll quit.”
Nina panicked, not knowing what to do. Asking Kirill for an extension on the loan would be futile now. However much he might favor her, he was not going to cover such a violation of the rules with his plump white body. Should she rush to her father, confess to her lie and offer help? At the thought of that Nina recalled the terrible incident when she tried to reason with him and was called a traitress in return. What her father would call her now was hard to imagine.
Nina and Ignatiy Savelievich had formed a habit of having tea twice a day, and each time, the old finance wizard would tell her something of interest. Seized by her new anxiety though, Nina was not disposed to listen to his life recollections and observations. At one of their tea sessions, on a sudden impulse, she interrupted the man with the question, “Ignatiy Savelievich, please tell me – how can an extension on a loan be arranged for a company?”
The old fox figured out everything at once. Looking at her ironically, he munched on a dry biscuit, took a sip of tea and said, “Oh-ho-ho, young lady. You, of all people! I’ve been holding you to be a model of integrity, and now this…”
Nina blushed. “Ignatiy Savelievich, I’m begging you. It’s really important. And it’s urgent.”
However, the old man was in no hurry – he was clearly enjoying the situation.
“Who is it you have in that company – a sweetheart?”
“Well… Yes, kind of,” said Nina, with her eyes dropped.
“All right,” said Ignatiy Savelievich, taking pity on her at last. “Your problem can be helped. Here’s one solution for you.”
He described a scheme of four successive operations. The first of them consisted in taking out, contrary to all common sense, another large short-term loan in the name of the company. At the second stage, the borrowed money was used to buy shares of that very bank, which made the company its stockholder, and accordingly, gave it some essential privileges. As a result of all the four operations, the company was freed from all short-term loans and left with long-term debt given out to her on very favorable terms.
Nina gasped at the simplicity and ingenuity of the scheme.
“And, mind you, each separate operation is quite legal and justified from the standpoint of the bank,” added Ignatiy Savelievich. “But there’s a catch.”
He gave her an earnest look, not joking any more.
“According to the rules, there are certain minimum time intervals that must pass between those operations, so fixing the whole affair should take at least…” he pondered a second. “…about three weeks.”
“But that’s impossible!” Nina cried out in despair.
Ignatiy Savelievich took another sip of tea and then asked quietly, “When is it due?”
After some hesitation, Nina named the loan due date which was only ten days off.
“Not good,” said Ignatiy Savelievich. “Then, my dear colleague, you’ll have to take the road of forgery. But don’t you say afterwards that I spurred you on to that.”