The Dead Bank Diary by Anna Schlegel
This is not a robbery. A bank is taken with all its guts:
accounts, debts, points of exchange, with the staff to the last secretary, and
the building. This is a beautiful and clean fraud.
I was out of work while all around smelled millions, even the
air outside. It was an unforgettable smell of public debt, oilfields, gold,
bank guarantees, diamond ... I wanted to breathe in the air of easy cash
Moscow, to revel and roll in this air. I can feel the smell of money in the
wind on my face. This air was used to make up funds overnight, to make a
fortune, to go rack and ruin and grew rich again. It was going free across the
wreckage of the sold out Soviet empire.
I was asked to help redeem the debts of the bank. The
insider man in bank was on a post of the vice-president.
A bit of danger and a bit of love.
This novel is not based on real events, but you will feel
the reality in every word.
Book One Of The Dead Bank Diary Series
ABOUT SERIES
These are stories about a man who is not alive any more. He
was a financier, the retired intelligence officer. I had the good luck to
arrange a couple of financial frauds. We bumped into each other before the
recession, in the flood of shit, together with the dust.
After his death I still have the right to sign.
Of course, Victor knew I wouldn’t be able to work on his
contacts. I had tried. Now it’s funny to think of it. I am, and always have
been, a go-between, a rat. Nobody needs middlemen. They get rid of them, they
send them to hell. But I had a white shirt with a necktie, and copies of
million-strong contracts for oil, gas, diamond, and rare-earth metals.
Light-as-air, fax sheets with lots of zeroes. They made me giddy, they made me
drink. And I ran along with them, and easily foisted them for some middlemen –
muddy middle-aged misters.
When some of the first deals failed, I went into hysterics.
I wanted to throw everything up.
Once I had a dream. In my dream, I heard a telephone call, –
Miss Schlegel? We need your signature to extend a contract concluded by Mr… I
woke up scared; something turned over inside of me. I realized that I was
spending my life waiting for such a call. It didn’t matter where it caught me.
But there was no going back. Once you’ve taken a step
forward, you realize you can’t turn back anymore.
Why did he leave all this to me? I looked the papers over,
recalling past years, deals, people, talks – everything from the first meeting
to the last minute. And I couldn’t find anything for me. Because it wasn’t for
me, actually. For the old me. I changed. I became a con.
My life was changed. Sometimes it’s convincing and
disgusting as a life of a whore. It’s also inaccessible as the man who despises
you. It’s like vomit or sweat from the body like from heavy hangover shivers.
You wish to run, and there’s no place to run to. It’s a cold stupor. So it’s
stupid to look at the smeared corpse on the road, and it’s impossible to regain
consciousness to look away. This passion nests in the heart, and you don’t know
what is it.
I have his photo, the last one, taken at Arkhangelskoe
hospital. Summer. We’re sitting on the edge of a dried-up fountain. He embraces
me with one arm, and I’m lost nearby him. He is gray-haired and corpulent. He
has a mocking look. And behind us there are towering white marble angels.
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