April 2, 1991, 7:30 AM – Outside Leningrad Trucking Enterprise #7
The morning shift arrived in waves—men on rattling trams, women on foot with shopping bags, a few on bicycles that looked older than their riders. They flowed through the gates of Leningrad Trucking Enterprise #7 like water through a cracked dam, their faces grey with fatigue and the particular despair of workers who hadn't been paid in ten weeks.
Alexei watched from a parked Lada across the street, Ivan beside him, a thermos of tea growing cold between them. They had been there since six, watching, counting, cataloging.
"How many so far?" Alexei asked.
"Three hundred, maybe. The second shift starts at eight." Ivan's eyes never stopped moving, scanning the crowd with the practiced attention of a former scout. "The ones who look most desperate are the ones we want. The ones with the hollow eyes."
Alexei understood. Desperation was the currency they were trading in. It felt ugly, but so did unpaid wages and empty cupboards.
Grigory, the personnel clerk, had been true to his word. In the five days since the workers' meeting, he had compiled a list—names, addresses, family situations, estimated willingness to sell. One hundred forty-seven workers who had already indicated, in whispers and hints, that they would trade their vouchers for cash. Another two hundred who might, if the price was right.
The target was six hundred twelve vouchers. Fifty-one percent control.
They had forty-three days until the privatization was finalized.
9:15 AM – Apartment of Viktor Stepanovich, Driver, 23 Years Service
The building was a Khrushchyovka on the outskirts of the city—five stories of prefabricated concrete that had looked cheap in 1965 and looked like a prison in 1991. The elevator didn't work. Alexei climbed four flights of stairs, his breath coming hard, his briefcase heavy with cash.
Viktor Stepanovich was waiting in a kitchen that smelled of cabbage and resignation. He was a big man gone soft, his driver's muscles turned to fat, his eyes carrying the particular hurt of a man who had worked his whole life for a pension that no longer existed.
"You're the buyer," he said. It wasn't a question.
"I am."
"Sit."
Alexei sat at a small table covered in oilcloth. A woman's voice drifted from another room—querulous, sick. Viktor's wife. The desperation in the apartment was a physical presence, thicker than the cabbage smell.
"How much?" Viktor asked.
"Five hundred dollars. Cash."
The man's breath caught. Five hundred dollars was six months' salary at the old rates. A year's worth at the new. It was freedom from worry, if only for a little while.
"And my voucher?"
"I take it. You sign a transfer agreement. You never saw me."
Viktor stared at the table for a long moment. Then he nodded, a single, jerky motion. "My wife is sick. The hospital wants money. What choice do I have?"
Alexei didn't answer. There was no answer that wouldn't sound like an insult. He opened his briefcase, counted out five hundred-dollar bills, and placed them on the oilcloth. Viktor produced a folded paper from his pocket—the voucher, a rectangle of cheap stock printed with official stamps and meaningless promises.
They exchanged. Alexei examined the voucher—it looked legitimate, as far as he could tell. Viktor examined the money, his thick fingers tracing the portraits of dead Americans.
"There will be more," Alexei said, standing. "Workers who sell. If anyone asks, you don't know where the money came from. You don't know who bought it. Understood?"
Viktor nodded again. His eyes never left the money.
Alexei left him there, sitting in his cabbage-scented kitchen, holding the first real currency he had seen in months. The voucher was in Alexei's briefcase, one of six hundred twelve needed.
First down. One hundred forty-six to go.
11:45 AM – Apartment of Maria Fyodorovna, Dispatcher, 18 Years Service
The pattern repeated.
Maria Fyodorovna was a different kind of desperate—not sick family, but a son in the army, a daughter with a baby, a pension that had stopped arriving. She was sharper than Viktor, suspicious, demanding to see identification, demanding to know why a boy was buying vouchers with dollars.
Alexei told her a story: a foreign investor, interested in Russian industry, hiring locals to acquire stakes. It was plausible enough. She didn't believe it, but she believed the money.
"Five hundred is too little," she said, her voice hard. "The voucher is worth more."
"To whom?" Alexei asked. "Name one person who will pay you more. The factory is bankrupt. The government is broke. The voucher is paper. I'm offering dollars."
She glared at him, but the math was inescapable. She took the money. He took the voucher.
Twenty-two minutes later, he was on the street, voucher number two in his briefcase.
4:30 PM – Grigory's Office, Leningrad Trucking Enterprise #7
Grigory had transformed the back room of the personnel office into a command center. Lists covered the walls. A ledger recorded names, amounts, dates. A samovar bubbled in the corner, providing tea for the stream of workers who came and went with the furtive energy of conspirators.
Alexei arrived to find Grigory beaming.
"Thirty-seven today," the clerk said, pointing at his ledger. "Thirty-seven vouchers, average price four hundred eighty dollars. We're ahead of schedule."
Alexei did the math. Thirty-seven vouchers at roughly five hundred each was eighteen thousand five hundred dollars. At that rate, they would reach six hundred twelve in about seventeen days—well before the June deadline.
"Keep going," he said. "But be careful. If too many workers sell at once, someone will notice."
Grigory nodded, his excitement tempered by caution. "I'm spacing them out. Different neighborhoods, different times of day. No patterns."
"Good. And the ones who haven't sold yet—the ones who are holding out?"
"A few. The union organizers, mostly. They think the vouchers will be worth something if they stick together. They're wrong, but they don't know it yet."
Alexei considered this. Union organizers could be a problem—not because they had power, but because they could rally resistance. If they convinced enough workers to hold their vouchers, the acquisition would stall.
"Approach them separately," he said. "Offer more. Six hundred, seven hundred. Break their solidarity."
Grigory's eyes widened. "That's expensive."
"That's insurance. A few thousand dollars now is cheaper than losing the whole deal later."
Grigory nodded, making notes. Alexei left him to his work, threading back through the depot's corridors, past workers who didn't know they were being harvested.
7:15 PM – Volkov Apartment
The vouchers spread across the kitchen table like a bizarre collection of currency. Thirty-seven of them, each representing a piece of Leningrad Trucking Enterprise #7. Thirty-seven workers who had traded their future for cash.
Alexei sorted them by type—driver vouchers, mechanic vouchers, administrative vouchers. The distinctions mattered less than the simple fact of ownership. Each one was a brick in the foundation of control.
Lebedev arrived at eight, his face flushed with excitement. "Thirty-seven already? That's incredible."
"It's a start. We need five hundred seventy-five more."
Lebedev sat heavily, staring at the vouchers. "Do you realize what this means? In a few months, you'll own a trucking company. A real one. With assets, employees, contracts. You'll be legitimate."
Alexei didn't respond. Legitimate was a word with many meanings. The money buying these vouchers came from stolen copper and extorted fuel. The workers selling them were desperate because the system had failed them. There was nothing legitimate about any of it.
But the company, when it existed, would be real. The trucks would move goods. The employees would be paid. The contracts would be honored. That was a kind of legitimacy, even if its origins were stained.
He thought of his mother's photograph, still in his pocket, still watching.
"Be better than this world."
He was trying. He didn't know if this was better. But it was different. It was building, not just taking.
He picked up the next voucher and added it to the stack.
April 5, 1991 – Various Locations
The collection continued.
Ivan took the eastern districts, visiting workers in their homes, his veteran's presence somehow reassuring rather than threatening. He came back each evening with a handful of vouchers and stories of desperation—a grandmother selling to feed her grandchildren, a young mechanic selling to buy a wedding ring, a dispatcher selling to pay for her mother's funeral.
Vasiliev worked the western neighborhoods, his sniper's stillness unsettling at first but effective. People sold to him just to make him leave. His tally grew slowly but steadily.
Sasha used his linguistic skills on the few workers who spoke only Tatar or Ukrainian, building trust where others couldn't. The twins worked together, their synchronized presence somehow comforting to the superstitious. Oleg handled the ones who looked like they might cause trouble, his burned hands a silent warning.
And Alexei continued his own rounds, hitting the most desperate cases, the ones who needed not just money but the sense that someone saw their suffering. He listened to their stories, accepted their tea, paid their price, and left with their vouchers.
By April 10, they had one hundred eighty-three.
By April 15, two hundred forty-one.
By April 20, three hundred twelve.
Halfway there.
---
April 22, 1991 – Grigory's Office
The problem surfaced on a Tuesday.
Grigory was waiting when Alexei arrived, his face pale, his hands trembling. "Someone's asking questions. A man from the city privatization committee. He came by yesterday, wanted to know why so many workers were selling their vouchers."
Alexei's stomach tightened. "What did you tell him?"
"That I didn't know. That workers do what they want. That it's none of my business." Grigory shook his head. "He didn't believe me. He's coming back tomorrow with an auditor."
An auditor. Someone who could trace the purchases, identify the buyers, potentially freeze the acquisition. This was the risk they had hoped to avoid.
"Who is he?" Alexei asked. "The man from the committee."
"Komarov. Yuri Komarov. Mid-level bureaucrat, ambitious, always looking for ways to prove himself."
Alexei filed the name away. Komarov. Ambitious. That was both a threat and an opportunity. Ambitious men could be bought. They just had to find the right price.
"Delay him," Alexei said. "Give him excuses, paperwork, anything to slow him down. I need a few days."
Grigory nodded, still pale. "And if I can't?"
"Then we adjust. But try."
He left Grigory to his fear and walked out into the grey afternoon. The vouchers were in his briefcase—three hundred twelve of them. Not enough. But closer.
Komarov was a problem. Problems had solutions. He just needed to find the right one.