The 2005 New Year holidays in Cuba turned into a nightmare for Andrei Razgon. He owns a company selling medical equipment and a pharmacy chain, and he is also a co-founder of a dealer company for a large industrial enterprise. For a long time he was lucky, however, a certain penchant for paradoxes at some point led him down a dangerous path. The summer of 2004 was the milestone when the limit of advances of fate was exhausted; in the deck of fortune for him there were only bad cards and no trump cards. An adventurous financial policy, as well as a conflict with the security officer “covering” him, brought Andrei’s business to the brink of disaster. Envious people and ill-wishers helped push the confused businessman into the abyss - as you know, it rarely happens that people who have access to big money part ways quietly and peacefully. The troubles that had haunted Andrei since mid-2004 reached their climax in January 2005, when he and his friends went to Cuba for two weeks. And in order to avoid a catastrophe, he must solve these problems during his vacation. The novel consists of three parts: the first part, entitled “How it all began,” tells how Andrei started and developed his business, and characterizes those people who took an active part in the events of early 2005; the second part, entitled “The Caribbean Crisis,” describes Andrei’s stay in Cuba - how he tried to solve his problems at a distance; the third part, “The Beginning of the End,” tells the story of the events that took place upon Andrei’s return from Liberty Island. In particular, he describes the risky steps he took in order to quickly obtain a large sum of money: taking out a loan simultaneously from two banks secured by the same, and someone else’s, equipment; the use of at-fault employees as guarantors when concluding supply contracts with companies that were subsequently overturned; and other clever moves. The narrative is based on real events.