The alcohol was really kicking in. We were interrupting him and filling in blanks that needed no filling. Clearly, we speculated, this sort of thing happens all the time. How were we to know? We wondered if the security guard knew the yacht guys from World of Warcraft, possibly, and that the whole thing was set up in advance which Ruskov denied. The owner of the establishment had taken over for her staff and pestered us now twice in the past twenty minutes so we started to wonder if either she really liked us or wanted us to get out. There’s always a bigger fish. Either way, the tension was rising.
“Here we were near the maritime territory of Azerbaijan with some strange Yacht goer who was apparently hustling us for a handout on open waters. I started to get the sense that something strange was going on. Furthermore, I got nervous that we were basically sitting ducks vulnerable to potentially more aggressive strangers when a battleship appeared out of nowhere.”
“Now this ship was a little bigger than the yacht but was armed to the teeth not just with onboard armaments but with armed soldiers. It was a national border guard ship about 40 meters from stem to stem that found it necessary to focus its spotlights on us at 8 or 9am while we were in the midst of working out a deal to let us go on the cheap with some yacht-going vagrant. I have no idea what to make of any of this now. I think I was getting seasick. But as all of this is happening, and this is how I knew they were national border guard, over the megaphone they start squaking at us in Russian DON’T MOVE WE HAVE TO SEARCH YOUR VESSEL!”
“It was at this point that my head of security started showing some emotion. Now I told you about my probably nonexistent poker face? Well this guy didn’t even have an endocrine system that would allow him to show emotion at least up until this point when he became visibly rattled by the developing events. Accosted by a yacht on the Caspian Sea? Pay him off and let’s get on our way. Apprehended by national authorities? This is not good… Watch out.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
“The officers come out from inside their ship and my guy goes up to meet them. I could hear shouting over the water crashing against the hull of our ships. The guys in the yacht were tiptoeing to their bridge. I swear I could smell fresh tuna. There was no gentle discussion going on: this was a bona fide argument with higher stakes than even the deal I made with that Iranian for the BTC. I couldn’t really hear what they were saying but it didn’t really matter because my guard came back in due time and told me that I could let them search but it would just be easier to give them money which I agreed to as it was likely the path of least resistance. You have to understand the gravity of this situation. I was standing in the middle of open waters, near the Azerbaijan border with bags full of cash I’m illegally carrying across borders. Just cash, and I guess a bunch of sand too, but mostly cash. They could have put me in an Azerbaijani jail or whatever for who knows how long. My palms started to sweat as soon as I realized I was actually neck deep in this shit.”
“I asked him how much I should give. –
He stood silently. I swear I heard someone’s heart beating. No answer. Then he reached into the bag and pulled out another handful of money. I agreed so he walked back over to them and came back moments later with the money still in his hand. They don’t want it he said. Talk to your guy. I knew he meant Sergei.”
“Oh! Sergei! I jumped. I reached out for a phone, but the guard kept telling me to call him myself. At that exact moment I was the luckiest person on the face of the planet because I hadn’t yet destroyed the burner phones with Sergei’s number that I brought with me at the beginning of the trip. I reached into my pocket and found his number, then grabbed the satellite phone to make the call. Meantime, the urgency from my guards to will something good to happen unsettled me. My doomsday clock was rapidly reaching zero and the search was going to happen. The sooner I could get a hold of Sergei the sooner I could get out of this. I mean, he was my good friend from Dota. He got me this far…”
“I called him but of course he didn’t answer. Probably in the middle of a game. At this time the officers started to board the yacht we were still standing on. The main guard guided them away from me but the unease began to weigh on my stomach. Finally Sergei answered his phone:
I’m being searched by border guards!
So just give them money!
They don’t want it. (I whispered)
What? Everyone wants money. Who are these idiots?
I’m with these security guards from *Special* outfit. They said-
Oh! You’re with *Special*? I know them. Put someone on the phone.
“I finally get the attention of one of the other guards who didn’t speak any English and with whom I had basically no interaction at all. The border patrol must have seen the commotion because they rushed over, my security guy in tow, with guns pointed at his head. No shouting, just calm as could be with a very present intensity that I was not ready for but apparently Sergei was. You see, right then I put the phone to my guy’s ear. He gestured to me to give one of the border guards the phone. They were NOT in the mood for a call. I thought they were going to shoot the phone but one of them took it to his ear. Maybe two words bleated from the phone when the officer said Oh! Sergei! Hey it’s been a long time! And everything was called off. The noose was loosened. The flood was drained. The forest was felled… Sergei is a border patrol guard too. Either that or they all play Dota too.”
“Following that I did wind up giving them some cash for their efforts. With that they allowed us to board the border guard vessel and took us all the way to Russia. I didn’t even need to go through Azerbaijan anymore. Since I was holding Russian Rubles, that was removing a pretty big obstacle for me to travel through Azerbaijan anyway. We talked about my ‘vacation’ in Iran and all the amazing sites I had seen while I was there. To be frank, the deck of that ship topped off all.”
“Two factors I hadn’t taken into account when we got to Russia were how hungry guarding a border can make soldiers and how my guards were going to handle being out of their element. You see, those officers asked me to eat with them in this Russian town they took us to, which I declined for the sake of getting the fuck out of there and away from them entirely. Also, my guards were in a completely new place and were clearly jittery about how they would get home and how they would fare wielding assault rifles in Russia. The funny thing about it all is that my head guard who was calling the shots the whole way from the crazy cigar-smoking driver up to the appearance of the battleship was no longer in charge. By picking up the phone and making the problem completely disappear I think I emasculated him or at the very least stripped him of his leadership role in some kind of primitive simian social hierarchical way so he stood despondent and unsure of what to do after landing in Russia. I was no longer some ignorant rich guy without a worldly brain, I was the ultimate problem solver.”
—
We reflected on his adventure for him. We speculated further and clinked glasses. As shocked as we were about the whole thing is how exuberant the establishment had become. Seemingly all had come to celebrate Ruskov’s victory arbitraging Bitcoin in Iran. We knew for sure he would have been comfortably able to pay for all the guests in the place and then some. He could have done anything at that moment and not needed to worry about making rent. We also knew he wouldn’t do it because there was no risk in it. Being who he is and being who I am, I know that the best traders will only make moves in trading and in life that have an inherent potential for net gain, whether significant or marginal. Experienced traders also know that the amount of potential gain is usually matched or exceeded by the inherent risk. Some like it hot.
Ruskov is a shrewd economist who thinks on the margins like all shrewd economists do. In that case, why wouldn’t he attempt what he did? The potential for one-day profit was 3 times higher than anywhere else in the world. I read in my friends’ eyes those of us who held what I believed to be negative misconceptions about the adventure. The risk outweighed the potential benefits to some assessors. Not to all. I peered into the eyes of those who had no stake in it and therefore felt the whole situation was a sideshow to the real thing: their world and their world alone. It was something they would never try. Finally, there were those who couldn’t stop speculating with the barriers of social inhibition removed temporarily or heavily lubricated with several bottles of the stuff mistakes are made of. Assuredly none of that was on tap while Ruskov went on his adventure.
What we ultimately learned from his fast-forwarded passage through time that was certainly relived a million times over to him was that there are no surprises. Ever. That rings especially true for those who dive deeper and deeper into cryptocurrency. No scam may surprise us anymore and no outlandish bid for quick wealth will seem too foolish to attempt as all such bids are heavily tinged with the musk of experience that lingers on all of us who have been there and done that. This time, however, only Ruskov had been there, and for now, among us, only he would do that.
-end-
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