VIII #4
The next day, at work, he first checked the ownership shares of the complex and was not a little surprised by the fact that the complex was nowhere registered in the land books.
All he could find, rummaging through the land registry or cadastral office, was the fact that the yard where the entrance to the complex was located was listed as state property and declared agricultural land, and that it had for some time been up for auction, offered for a miserable sum,
with almost no interest.
The location wasn't good, it encroached on the boundaries of a just-declared nature park, the infrastructure was nonexistent, and it was no wonder the location couldn't be sold.
The engineer couldn't believe his luck. He could completely legally buy the location for the price of two months of his salary.
And that was exactly what he finalized in the following days.
First he bought the land, and then he leased the development rights on the same location.
Development rights at that time were completely unregulated by law and, with the cooperation of a few lawyers, he managed to obtain a concession contract for the area lasting a hundred years.
The contract enabled the exploitation of natural resources, like water, of the existing and all planned construction complexes and, finally, since it was on the western boundary of the Medvednica nature park, the possibility of unobstructed construction on the plan and space of the owned parcel.
Waiting for the slow bureaucracy, for weeks he came to his newly acquired property, planned his steps, and here he ran into a problem.
The space had been used for years as an illegal dump and, in order to start construction, the first thing he had to do was get rid of the waste.
His biggest problem was in the form of waste motor oils.
That waste couldn't just be hauled to some city dump, and the engineer spent several weeks struggling and inquiring about the possibilities of hauling and storing hundreds, if not thousands, of barrels of the dangerous flammable liquid.
Finally, following rumors and quiet whispers, he contacted a shady group that, for a certain sum, dealt with cases similar to his.
His ideals of honest business buckled under the offered price for hauling away thousands of barrels of waste.
He agreed to what was offered, and in a dark café in Zagreb's Dubrava a deal was struck on, as they called it, the cleaning of the sub-Sljeme zone of hazardous waste.
He spent the next few days searching for partners, because what he had in mind was literally a project he couldn't finance on his own.
Warehouses had to be built, the approach to the location widened, infrastructure secured and the existing one upgraded or repaired.
But partners who would share his vision were lacking, because no one saw any use in yet another row of warehouses at a location where accessing it for construction alone required setting aside enormous capital.
All the so-called investors were more than satisfied with the short-term possibilities of quick earnings that reigned in the gray of business unburdened by laws.
And there our engineer stalled with the whole plan, because in order to use the enormous capacities of the shelter as a base for a huge quantity of storage material as he planned, he would have to have something legal that he could show potential investors.
Finally, in desperation, he again turned to the gentlemen from Dubrava and asked them for a loan for a certain period at interest rates they set.
Since they'd already done business with him and he'd paid off all his debts on time, he was approved a million-euro loan with fairly high but affordable interest.
He knew that if he had something to show investors, he'd manage to pay off the loan just on the basis of the space lease, which he knew he could build.
He knew the location had to look enticing, so he invested most of the money in bringing in infrastructure, building a wide asphalt access road along which road-going ships could comfortably move,
and even spent some money on bribing road officials so he'd be allowed direct access to the location from a local branch of the expressway.
He acquired the equipment and material needed to build four mass sheet-metal warehouse structures with which he intended to entice possible tenants of the space.
And only then, with the start of the work, in the company of a dog, did he finally explore the buried shelter fully.
He was fascinated by the space and the possibilities the enormous complex offered.
The shelter possessed enormous capacities for storing goods with very minor alterations.
The large elevator connecting the first four floors was "god-given," because large loaded forklifts could descend on it, and the wide spaces and corridors allowed those same forklifts to move about unobstructed.
To the lower levels led a steep staircase and a somewhat smaller but well-hidden freight elevator from one of the rooms.
By some miracle the infrastructure still worked, water flowed, and the complex had power, and it required minimal investment in alterations or, in the case of the first three floors, only the bringing in of racks that could receive their first cargo in a very short time.
He rubbed his hands with satisfaction as he thought about how he'd gotten this space on concession almost completely for free, because none of the authorities knew about the space and, as such, the shelter didn't fall under tax obligations.
The engineer rubbed his hands with satisfaction; on paper he had half a million tons of built storage space, while in fact he had a storage capacity of several tens of millions of tons.
And all that remained was to sell that invisible storage space.
He spent the last of his money on making an enticing website, and that was the last investment he could make before the gentlemen from Dubrava demanded their first installment of loan repayment.
For days he had not even an inquiry, and the worry about repaying the loan squeezed his soul and heart.
And then, when he'd almost resigned himself to fate, he got an inquiry from an international trading concern that was starting the planned construction of an enormous shopping center near his storage space.
The engineer rubbed his hands with satisfaction when, after an abundant dinner, the delegation commission officially leased almost the entire footage of the built complex at a price almost twice lower than the market one.
And there the first money landed, with which he paid off the owed installment to the gentlemen from Dubrava, with a briefcase of cash in an exclusive restaurant by the city's main square.
He spent the following days resolving little things, like hiring warehouse workers, setting up an impressive security and camera system, since he didn't want anyone poking their nose in to cause him problems around his newly acquired storage empire.
Having resolved those last problems too, he duly paid off all the further loan installments.
As the shelter's floors filled with goods that came from several sides, he also noticed a steady increase in the deposit on an account in a Swiss bank.
Only then did our engineer allow himself some rest and relaxation.
He bought an old mansion on the slopes of Sljeme in the middle of Zagreb's elite neighborhood and hired a well-known architect to whom he gave a free hand for the renovation.
He bought a villa in the forest of Gorski Kotar and an apartment in every seaside location he liked.
In all that idyll he forgot about the gentlemen from Dubrava, who had noticed his sudden social and financial rise and who wanted to have their share of the cake.
It started with inquiries, and soon with threats when the engineer refused cooperation.
Then the world economic crisis of 2008 happened and the leasing in his warehouses began to fall.
The first more serious tax reform in Croatia was also launched, and for the first time tax inspectors began looking into the questions of how a middling-paid engineer had been granted a million-euro investment for building the entire warehouse infrastructure.
At the same time, provoked by shootouts and several car bombs planted in Dubrava, what the media called a "criminal organization" was caught, one that dealt in shady business of extortion and completely illegal deals in drugs and human trafficking.
The inspectors also found papers incriminating our engineer, who, then under the pressure of conscience and with a protection agreement, agreed to testify in court against his former investors.
Throughout the whole process, which lasted several years, he was protected by the government and, from house arrest, continued running the well-established warehouse business, which kept filling up as the economic crisis eased.
Not even a dozen or so planted bombs stopped him, though the damage to the outer warehouses was enormous.
He continued to rent out space via the internet, because over time he'd built a good business reputation that no longer needed verifying.
With him, goods were stored in good conditions, dry and available at a price lower than the market one.
And that was quite enough for many to keep leasing storage space on the basis of internet footage, even though in reality the situation was completely different.
The built warehouses were literally destroyed and could no longer be called storage space.
Even the paint was peeling off the half-collapsed buildings.
But the trucks kept arriving, the goods were duly stored, the forklifts worked diligently, and the taxes were paid.
Even reputable institutions, like the agronomy and technical faculties during their renovation, leased the cheap storage space of the former shelter because, on paper, the business was completely legal and no one raised too many questions.
And all that time our engineer, from the comfort of his villa, duly ran his business, splashed about in the water of a heated pool and, simply, lazed about, enjoying the fruits of his incredible luck and the shelter's construction plans, which now lay quietly inside his safe.