Helicopters and Submarines
by Alan Lawrie
November 9th, 1989 was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the gradual breakup of the Soviet Union followed. By 1992, Russia was run by gangster capitalists (and still is.) and the former republics loosened their grip and became independent sovereign states. Russia was an enormous market and totally open to business with anyone. I went to Russia with the intention of selling music somehow.
What in the hell was I thinking of?
Suddenly reality hit me, and I smiled. A gallows smile knowing my turn was up and my fate was plunging fast into the vast unknown.
It was January 1993, the plane was preparing to land, descending and bouncing through the thick night clouds in the middle of a snowstorm. Peering out the window I could make out distant lights of the runway. This was sheer madness why was I doing this?
I was about to land in Moscow in the middle of the night, in winter, without a hotel to go to and not sure if my ‘friend’ and contact Sergei would be there to meet me off the plane. How would I handle immigration with my limited knowledge of Russian? The risk and recklessness made it all the more exciting though.
Touchdown, well I survived that. Then challenged by a labyrinth of endless empty corridors to walk down without a soul in sight. Made it through passport control and customs to the second world. Sergei, an ex-red army captain whom I had never met before, let alone seen a photo was there to meet me. Relief. Next thing I knew we were hurtling down icy roads with large ominous Soviet tower blocks on either side of this bobsleigh run and everything else was a white out with a thick layers of snow.
He took the corners without slowing down, I was scared out of my wits – not smiling now, he never touched the brakes only the handbrake with sharp flicks of the steering wheel. Eventually, we made it to the city centre where he pulled up outside the notorious Intourist Hotel just off Tverskaya.
My first experience of a Moscow Hotel was back in those Soviet days of 1978. I was on a charter flight (Good old Aeroflot) from Bangkok to Copenhagen, (Changing planes in Moscow), however that flight had technical problems, a minor fire on board, and hit by a tropical storm, it landed several hours delayed which consequently led to the missing of the connecting flight to Denmark. We passengers had to disembark in the dead of night -5 degrees outside the immigration building still wearing our shorts and sandals from the Thai heat. After what seemed an eternity, we cleared passport control and were herded into a rickety old bus which took us to the dreaded Intourist Hotel. In those days, on every landing there was a desk, and a very fat woman would sit there forbidding anyone to leave their room. Also, there were security guards with machine guns that patrolled the building. I was with my mate, Pete – a fellow adventurer –and we both decided to find a local bar to sample Russian life. We didn’t get further than the world’s strongest woman who screamed at us and ordered us back to our room.
Pete and I were distraught, we were genuinely thirsty, so we turned on the tap in the sink which emitted a brown watery trickle. That was it – Sleep!
The whole of the following day was spent back in in the transit lounge of Moscow airport. We were told we had to wait seven days for the next connecting flight to Copenhagen. We had no food or drink and as we were in transit were not allowed to change money to buy anything. Pete was luckier he made friends with a delightful, but dubious Filipino called Eddie who did have a bottle of whisky on him. Needless to say, they got hilariously drunk and loud. I was surprised they weren’t hauled off to Siberia.
The majority of us hapless Aeroflot hospitality victims were Danes and bless them. They organised a sit-down strike in the busiest area leading to the departure gates and refused to be moved until they were guaranteed a flight home (to Denmark). It worked. After being shepherded back to prison for a second night (we were allowed a meal but black potatoes and grey peas that wouldn’t have won MasterChef and didn’t help the hunger pains but hey what a great way to diet!). That beautiful morning, we were ordered harshly to line up along the corridor and Eddie added ‘- you vill all be shot’ mind you he was still grinning like a hungover Cheshire cat.
Now back in the grip of this infamous hotel I wondered if all the rooms were still bugged. Nothing much had changed except a bankrupt soviet system had been replaced by Gun Law Capitalism. Everybody wanted to be in business. After 70 years of repression everything was possible – at a price. And that was why I was there too.
I wanted to sell music. CD’s anything that Russia needed, and I would buy goods that I could sell in the UK like amber, and military night sights which was the actual link to Sergei in the first place. Night vision binoculars were available on the Russian market but hard to obtain in the West. A colleague of mine, Graham – who delighted in anything illegal and anti-authority - found Sergei on the internet somehow and they struck up a dialogue. Sergei – ex-military and still well connected could source and provide them. Communications in the early 90’s was still being conducted via the old clattering telex system and the new modern method of facsimile, or fax. Faxes ping ponged back and forth between Moscow and Norfolk (where I was living at the time) incessantly. As I was the only one who had funds, it was agreed that I would take up the dialogue with Sergei with a view to visiting Moscow and creating business opportunities.
The Business Opportunity
Sergei was now working in a newly established film company called VARUS Video (we called it VIRUS Video and they never cottoned on). His boss was a man called Tamaz Topadze – pronounced Thomas Topaz. I had to prepare myself properly for this venture so the first thing I did was to embark on a one-to-one intense Russian language course down in Bury St Edmunds. The dear old lady who taught me was an admirer of the old Soviet system and refused to teach me any slang or rude words. I stammered I needed to learn the language of the streets not proper society Russian, but she wouldn’t budge. I remember sleeping every night with a large book of Russian verbs by my bedside studying more and more with every passing day. Well, my first wife (Vicky) was an alcoholic so there were no distractions there sad to say. I learned very quickly and got fairly fluent mainly because Russian is a phonetic language, and everything is written how it sounds. Cyrillic lettering is like a code of sounds. My tutor explained that the Soviets simplified the Russian language once in power and did away with nearly all irregularities and complicated grammar thus making the language so simple that every peasant, policeman and taxi driver could communicate. My greatest achievement was to walk into a typical workers canteen near the main station and order a piece of bread with a café latte. I also found that I could read all street names, public notices, train timetables and so on – an unexpected bonus.
Another part of the preparation was how to behave out there and how to conduct oneself in business. So, I studied Russian etiquette, manners, history and superstitions.
For instance, it is taboo to shake hands over a threshold, to be the odd one out at a dinner party and so on. To obtain a visa visiting Russian in 1993 one had to have a sponsor. That was easy enough as Sergei’s boss, Tamaz would be the one. But, as etiquette had it, what gift should one bring as a thank you for sponsoring me? What do you buy for someone you don’t know, who probably had access to everything. The omission of offering such a gift would be seen as outright rude, bad mannered and certainly be getting off on the wrong foot. So, I decided a 12-year-old Johnny Walker Black label whisky couldn’t be far off the mark.
The following day, Sergei collected me in his rattly old Muscovitch and took me to Tamaz’s office block. I assumed Sergei had an agenda worked out and I just followed his lead. It was about midday, and I was introduced to Tamaz. I guess he was about mid-fifties, rather portly and his command of English surprised me. I thanked him profusely for sponsoring my visa and said I had brought a little gift for him. He took wrapped box and acknowledged the 12-year-old Black Label. Alan – you shouldn’t’t have, this is very kind of you he said. He promptly walks to the back of his office and opened the door of a very large green metal cabinet and placed my bottle of whisky alongside 20 – 30 others.
- Alan, he continued, you must join us for lunch. And so, we all took the elevator to the restaurant situated two floors below ground level (bomb proof I guess).
The meal was fairly nondescript, I ate whatever was put in front of me (which is amazing as I am a fussy eater). The thing of significance was Tamaz’s way of lunching and giving orders. It was straight out of the Godfather trilogy. He would sit at the end of the table, a minion would bow down and whisper something in his ear, Tamaz would nod or comment in a low voice, and the minion went about his errand. This kept happening throughout the meal. I wondered who he was having liquidated at the time.
Another thing, he never touches a telephone in all the time I knew him. Mobile phones were around in the early 90’s but only just having advanced from field phones with large batteries to holding a large black brick to one ear. No, Tamaz whispered his orders to a constant stream of lackeys and after each instruction he would apologise to us (well me really) for the interruption.
After the meal, we drove out to the Film Studios of VIRUS video…(it was a cover for other dark activities). Firstly, this large estate looked like a disused warehouse and might have been. Some rooms were converted into editing suites, and others used for storage. There was little evidence of film making but who was I to question them.
Tamaz proudly announced VARUS video had access to 200 outlets in the Russian Republic, and that he wanted to talk to me about a deal in provided CDs to them all.
We have all the hardware he said but have trouble in getting the CDs to play on them.
My mind went into overdrive- supply 200 shops with their cd’s. Inside one day, this sounded like my first major deal. We’ll discuss this in London Tamaz went on to say. and he did in April of the same year (but more of that later.)
Moscow
Not only did Tamaz sponsor my visa but by the very nature of sponsoring he was responsible for anything I got up to, crimes I committed or problems I caused. Consequently, he instructed Sergei not to let me out of his sight and be the perfect, ‘friendly’ and helpful guide which he was.
At the time of my Moscow visit, I had a contract with Scottish and Newcastle brewery as a music consultant to assist in any way they wished to increase their wet sales across the board through the profiling of the right music in their outlets. Moscow at that time had three daily English newspapers and in the city their readers consisting mainly of contract workers, thousands of foreign residents and of course tourists. And not one English styled pub in the city, so I asked Sergei to show me pubs, bars and restaurants…so I could learn from how music was being presented or played. We drank in several bars and ate in typically Russian restaurants during my four day stay and in most cases of the restaurants, they had a violinist doing the tables, or a live, traditionally styled band playing music in the background. No DJ’s, no juke boxes, one had to remember Russia had only just stepped out of 70 years of communism and a wholly different way of life.
A traditional English pub (or Irish for that matter) would have made a killing (literally!).
However, I was at least ten years ahead of my time. Then there were hard currency bars that only traded in US dollars, or ordinary outlets in roubles. Another problem was security. I asked Sergei about the idea of a large Western bar, but the security question came up as rival gangs had rival protection rackets and you had to be in with the right “security” company to survive commercially and probably literally. I would want my margin for the idea and the initiative of setting it up, but would I get my money out?
If S&N supplied the beer, they would have had a massive PR advantage let alone sales.
Everything at that time was new through the winds of change.
I went one day to Gorky Square where the first McDonalds was established. Amazingly, the price for the burger was exactly the same as you would pay in the west.
The meal was perfect and felt like home from home.
I was very impressed, but not with the security guards that patrolled the premises guns ready. Apparently, the staff had to be taught how to smile at customers – so unusual was the concept.
One afternoon I asked Sergei to take me to a typical Russian bar – a local. He wanted to impress me with a new Western styled Hotel bar, NO! I said emphatically, I want to know how real Russians socialise and drink. He gave in, OK, he said, so we walked to the Arbat shopping complex where he took me through an alley to the back of a block resembling an industrial area. Up some metal steps to what seemed like a large storage unit. Inside, you could barely see the far end of the bar for smoke. It was crammed full.
We found a couple of seats where two ladies were sitting drinking. Both wore those classic furs hat and full winter coats. Both were very rotund and jolly in appearance and smiled at us. We sat down, Sergei got the beers in – local beers of course.
After a while one of the women asked Sergei if he had a knife. Well, what would you expect a military man to have? Out came this enormous flick knife which he opened and handed to the woman. She dug into her bag under the table and pulled out a long eel, that was salted and (presume) cured. She used Sergei’s knife to slice the eel and offered slices to all of us – each piece at the end of his knife. On the table the ladies were drinking peppered vodka which they also offered us. Finally, I was happy, this was exactly what I wanted to see. I thanked Sergei who looked at me with a muttering look of ‘you English’.
I had the last laugh at him in April 94 when he and Tamaz came to London. I offered to show him round and he said he wanted to buy his wife and son a present. We were in Regent Street, so I took him to Hamley’s (something for his young son? No…) Several stores later, his eyes finally lit up when he found something perfect for his wife. A brillo pad for a £1.
On my last evening, Sergei said he had to go to Moscow’s East station as he was accompanying his friend Youri to the station, as Youri was leaving for Riga in order to work for the Latvian Tourist Ministry. I said I would be happy to join them.
Moscow’s East Railway station is a building I will never forget. Stunning architecture, high arches and arcades in light blue, it was a fading elegance, it must have been a sensational place.
Outside the streets were all cobbled, and the snow came down and softly carpeted the area. At that moment, I half expected Dr Zhivago to come round the corner in a troika and complete the imagery.
The jigsaw of which Youri was the centerpiece eventually became the greatest and most thrilling adventure of my life.
Riga
I kept up the dialogue with Sergei once back in Norfolk. Night sights were not going to be easy to obtain, amber at the right price was going to be coastal but supplying CDs to the Russian republic through the 200 outlets of Varus Video was looking good. Sergei explained that Russian business opportunities were being held back by red tape and bureaucracy, so he suggested reconvening outside Russia to explore other business opportunities. Youri was in Riga, through his ministerial role he had access to markets and contacts. I had access to hundreds of virtually mint condition CD’s I wanted to sell to the Baltic States, and perhaps on to Russia. So, a meeting was set up.
I booked a flight to Riga, the Latvian capital where incidentally half the population was Russian and pro-Russian back then. The only reasonably priced hotel I found was – yes – Intourist Hotel. I arranged for Youri and Sergei to meet me in the bar at 2 pm on the day of my arrival, and we’d discuss music. I couldn’t wait.
Why I don’t know but I chose to wear a white suit, and if I had a hat and cane I could have doubled as Maurice Chevalier, the late French actor/singer.
I found a large round table which I commandeered and sat and waited for my business friends to arrive. Three came, Youri, Sergei and a large bear who introduced himself as Ivan.
All three focused their eyes on me – after all I called the meeting. This was it !
I leant over towards Youri and said.
- Youri, you are the tourist minister, I want to supply Western music to as many people in Latvia as I can. He glanced at Ivan who nodded,
- Actually, no Alan, not anymore. We have a new business. We are selling military hardware.
- Oh, I replied, totally wrong footed and off balance, tell me what you do?
- We have a consignment of MIL8 Russian Helicopters we want to sell. 13 of them, Ivan took over the explanation. They are based at a local airport here in Latvia.
Then a voice inside my body silenced my rational thinking and blurted out
- Well, I might be able to help you there. I have good contacts in the UK.
(Good contacts sure I have. I had a Danish secretary who was my P.A, and her boyfriend Paul was a ground mechanic at RAF Honnington, Suffolk). The voice continued to hijack me and continued to bluff its way into deeper trouble.
- Just leave me the specifications, and details of your hardware at reception and I will see what I can do.
- We have more, Ivan mumbled in a very low voice. More? More what?
- Submarines. We have 8 decommissioned submarines for sale.
I was so far out of my depth I was drowning but still a voice represented me whilst its owner was unable to utter a word.
I felt myself leaning over towards Ivan and asking the unaskable question
- Have the nuclear warheads been removed?
- Oh yes, of course, Ivan replied. what the hell was I playing at?
The voice impersonating me continued unable to prevent it from further embarrassment.
- Please get me a breakdown on the metals and tonnage and leave the information at reception.
Well, metal is metal, Precious metal always has a value. If there is value and a market it can be sold, cant it?
And so that meeting concluded, having totally bullshitted my way into a whole area I knew nothing about. No music deal occurred, No one was interested to even discuss it.
So, back to England, and find buyers for the helicopters and submarines.
Mars Bars
- Think of them as Mars Bars, I rambled on. Don’t be in awe of the product just because they are MIL8 Russian Helicopters. Whether we are dealing with a chocolate and toffee sweet or some awesome military aviation machines the principle is the same. We need to research and learn everything there is to know about the product. Pictures, technical data, capacity, maximum flying hours – everything right down to the last rivet.
I had summoned my entire sales and marketing team together for a debriefing. All eyes were upon me, and no one said a word.
Back then in the early 90s, information on the internet was still fairly basic, so with researching online, scouring glossy reference books in libraries, interviewing anyone in the know, we managed to piece together a portfolio of Russian MIL8 Helicopters.
So, who could we sell them to? For how much? Who actually owned them so who would we be representing? To even consider the project was ridiculous, to take on brokering a sale of military hardware on such a scale was perverse but the challenge against such odds had the adrenalin racing and heart pounding. The ultimate high.
Island republics all need helicopters, don’t they? So, we pondered over an enormous world map and encircled Malta, Cyprus, Singapore and so on in a big red marker pen. We made tentative enquiries to their various C.A.As either by direct telephone calls or by fax which had just superseded the old clattering telex system. In those days you needed special paper for telefax which had a tendency to fade quickly. Malta responded with interest as their pilots were used to Russian helicopters and were in the market to lease a MIL8 as it happened and were also considering buying one. The potential sale was pure exhilaration. So, we had to make a formal offer but who was the real seller?
This amazingly turned out to be our dear friend Tamaz Topadze of Varus video. We communicated mainly by fax and he detailed us which Swiss bank accounts the proceeds should be sent to and that each helicopter should sell for $ 1.2 million.
To cut a long story short, we discovered selling helicopters needed a different approach to flogging Mars bars. We needed to deal with the big boys in the game. Ultimately, we networked international brokers in this sector which ended up with a string of us - five in all - with ourselves representing the seller, and a buyer on behalf of the then Pakistani Military Junta that was interested in taking all thirteen of them. The dealing and the haggling went up and down the chain until finally the deal was rejected because the price was too low! What? Apparently, the sale had to be renegotiated at two million dollars each to allow for each general on the buying panel to be stashed with the appropriate bribe - sorry, I mean inducement. That said and done and we were already salivating at the thought of new cars bought in cash with our share of the half mill. dollar sales commission.
All this happened in 1993. Our biggest expense in this project was the astronomical cost of international telephone calls. If only we had WhatsApp or Email back then…
We commenced the campaign in April of that year and gave it until September to produce a sale otherwise we could not have funded it further.
Later in the year, Tamaz and Sergei came to London mainly it would seem to have firsthand news on how the sale was proceeding. We met in one of London’s most affluent hotels when Tamaz insisted our talks would be better held up in his room - quiet and discreet. Minutes later, I was sitting in his suite when he probed me about the big profits we were all going to make by selling his stranded MIL8’s still lounging away on a Latvian airport. It was uncomfortable, at that time with nothing new to say so he changed to the minor interest of importing thousands upon thousands of compact discs to his vast Russian empire of 200 outlets throughout the federation.
He even detailed me what price he would import them for, how much should be siphoned off to one of his Swiss accounts and when I raised the question of expenses, he shot an angry look at me and stated categorically all that came out of my tiny share. I froze. I could see exactly where this was going. Here was a very powerful Russian gangster used to getting his way just a few feet away. If I ever agreed to whatever intricate, crooked arrangement he would expect me to deliver for him, the thought occurred to me what if I held my end of the bargain but he misunderstood or concluded that I had cheated him and was on Russian soil at the time? In business you often need your poker face, not allowing your opponent to read you. I back-pedalled. The way out was to slow it down and forget about the glory of a lucrative income from selling music to Russia.
Well, what about the helicopters?
One month after the London visit, I received a fax from Sergei in Moscow. His boss, Tamaz had been gunned down, lying in a pool of blood by a section of the Georgian mafia. I didn’t ask questions but what goes around comes around. He didn’t even know the sale didn’t materialise.
The sale did not go through owing to a late decision by the Pakistani junta to buy a later model of the MIL8. Neither did the one-off sale to Air Malta owing to our naivety in not knowing about Non-Circumvention Agreements and the correct procedural paperwork. Of course, we could have put the seller in direct contact with the buyer. The rest of my team blocked that suggestion on the basis we would have been cheated out of our cut.
One week later, I got a hand delivered envelope delivered to me by a courier. It was a sales contract all in Russian agreeing to the sale of 13 MIL8 helicopters with the dead man’s signature on it, and a request for me to counter sign it
My God that was one, exciting adventure, but next time I will not swim out so far.
Did I really think we’d get nothing out of the sale had it gone through? No,I don’t think so, the seller would surely have thrown us a few Mars Bars.