Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice by Bill Browder Read Free Book Online

that. We can get you a woman to keep you warm at night!”
    I looked sheepishly at my shoes and stammered, “N-no thank you. A space heater will be just fine.”
    I promptly got to work, and my first week in Poland was the biggest culture shock I had experienced in my life. Everything in Sanok—the smells, the language, the customs—was different. But what made it particularly hard for me was the food. The only available meat was pork, and it was ubiquitous. Sausage for breakfast, ham sandwiches for lunch, pork chops for dinner—every single day. There were no fruits or vegetables. Chicken was a delicacy. Worst of all, every single meal was drenched in heavy grease, as if this weresome kind of magical condiment that made everything more palatable, which it didn’t.
    By day five I was starving. I had to do something and decided to go to Warsaw and check into the Marriott to get some decent food. As soon as I arrived, I dropped my bag in the room and headed for the restaurant. I had never been so happy to be at a hotel buffet in my life. I scooped piles of salad, fried chicken, roast beef, cheese, and French bread onto my plate and ate like a man possessed. I went back for seconds—and then thirds. By the time I was ready for dessert, my stomach started to rumble and I knew that if I didn’t hurry to a bathroom, I would be in trouble.
    I made my way to the men’s room as fast as I could, but just as I was crossing the lobby, there was Wolfgang Schmidt standing right in front of me.
    “Browner! What the hell are you doing in Warsaw?” he demanded.
    I was so surprised to see him that I didn’t know what to say. “I-I just figured that since it was Friday night—”
    “Friday night?” he barked. “Are you kidding? You need to get your ass back to Sanook—”
    “Sanok,” I corrected, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.
    “Whatever the fuck. You need to get back there and integrate yourself with the client on the weekend. That’s how this business works.”
    The gas in my stomach was so intense, I barely heard Wolfgang. “Okay. I’ll go back. Sorry. Really, I am.” The bathroom was right there and time was wasting.
    “All right, Browner.” When he finally stepped aside, I hurried toward the toilet at full speed.
    After the Wolfgang run-in I was so intimidated that I didn’t dare set foot in Warsaw again. Instead, on weekends I drove my little Polski Fiat around the countryside, foraging for food. I would stop at small restaurants and, since I didn’t speak a word of Polish, point at three or four random entrées on the menu hoping that one would be edible. I prayed for chicken and occasionally got it. I could afford to do this because the Polish zloty was so depressed that each dish costthe equivalent of forty-five US cents. It was fun to get out of Sanok, but no matter how far I went, the food was still generally awful. Eight weeks into the assignment, I had lost almost fifteen pounds.
    The food situation was one of many signs of how dire everything was in Poland. Autosan was a total mess and faced imminent disaster. Following the economic “shock therapy” implemented after the fall of communism, the Polish government canceled all of its orders for Autosan buses. As a result, the company had lost 90 percent of its sales and would either have to find an entirely new customer base or drastically cut costs.
    Finding new customers would be next to impossible because, at the time, Autosan made some of the worst buses in the world. The only plausible option for them to avoid bankruptcy was to fire a lot of people. Given that the whole town depended on this company for its livelihood, this was the last thing they needed—and the last thing I wanted to tell them. The whole thing left me feeling sick, and my romantic notions of doing business in Eastern Europe were quickly starting to disappear. I didn’t want to hurt these people.
    Three weeks before the Christmas holidays, with my dread growing ever