The Deal Read Free Page B

upside down.
    I hit the speaker button.
    “Jonah Gray.”
    “Jonah, Andreu.”
    “Andreu?” I probed further.
    “Wow. I guess it has been a long time.”
    Then the voice hit me.
    “Andreu!” I exclaimed. “Andreu fucking Zhamovsky, you ghost! How the hell are you?”
    “I’m well, Jonah. I’m well.”
    “What’s it been, two, three years?”
    “Something like that.”
    Andreu Zhamovsky, son of Alexander and Galina Zhamovsky. Back in the days of Communist Russia, Alexander was a key player in the country’s natural reserves ministry. “Post-enlightenment,” as I like to call it, he was awarded the largest ownership interest in, and control of, Prevkos, which today is one of the world’s most vital natural gas corporations. As I tell you this, Prevkos sits somewhere around number two hundred on the list of the world’s five hundred largest companies. The organization controls over 50 percent of the country’s gas reserves and produces about 90 percent of all Russian gas. The firm’s primary exploration fields are located in the Nadym-Pur-Taz region of western Siberia. It is the largest vertically integrated natural gas company in all of Russia, engaged in everything from geological exploration to natural gas production and transportation. Prevkos is one of the most influential corporations traded on the Russia Trading System, Russia’s equivalent of our big board, the New York Stock Exchange, and, subsidiaries included, it employs over three hundred thousand people. Needless to say, the Zhamovsky family is one loaded clan.
    During the 1970s, amid growing talks and realization of one day privatizing business, many potentially well-to-do Russian businessmen were sent all over the world for classified, politically motivated seminars. The simple goal of these seminars was well-defined: to learn what it takes to stand alone in industry without government intervention or direction. One of these secret seminars was held in New York City. My father, considered an expert in Western business practices, was a speaker at that seminar. That’s where my father and the Zhamovskys first met.
    My father and the Zhamovskys kept in touch over the years, becoming close friends. Every summer, even after my mother died, they would meet my father and me in the south of France for a vacation. That is how Andreu, only six weeks my junior, and I became friends. We would write letters a couple of times a year, and as we got older we’d phone each other from time to time. When my father and I were traveling in Europe or Asia, Andreu and I would do our best to get together. But as the years went on, we started to lose touch. Not because we wanted to, but because each of us became so focused on the respective directions of our lives. Lives which were literally continents apart.
    I never really got all the details, but Alexander Zhamovsky tragically died in 1998. From what I understand he was mugged and murdered late one night in a Russian subway station, a mode of transportation I always found odd for him considering his wealth. Anyway, Andreu has been key in running Prevkos ever since.
    “How’s life in Siberia?”
    “Oh Jonah, you owe it to yourself to get to Russia. Our country is truly beginning to thrive again. It’s such an exciting time.”
    “No doubt that fares well for Prevkos—”
    “I can’t complain. We’ve worked hard at positioning ourselves for the future.”
    “Listen to you, you sound so serious,” I said. “It’s a bit frightening.”
    “I am serious, Jonah. I have to be. If you don’t mind my asking, when did you become so easily frightened? You wouldn’t last one second in the Russian business world.”
    “That’s a little more like it.”
    “Seriously though, Jonah, it’s not like I’m the only one who’s been taking things seriously.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning I’ve been following your career. You’ve been putting together some pretty incredible deals.”
    “And how would you know