GORDON S. RIESS
Passports to Adventure tells, in a highly readable, down-to-earth, and amusing style, how an international businessman and his family met the many challenges of living and working in Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Asia.
The author and his wife dealt with an remarkable variety of unusual situations and colorful characters, including a smuggler and an assassin, an archbishop and a Mafia don, a bigamist and a prince, a counterfeiter and an Abbott, as well as scores of farmers, business people, government officials, educators, and ordinary citizens in all walks of life in some forty countries.
The book describes unorthodox business operations and fascinating personal experiences. It offers acute insights into many diverse cultures. Although primarily written as entertaining reading, it is also informative. Anyone interested in travel abroad, international commerce, and the customs, practices, and life in foreign lands, will enjoy this book.
The tales are all true, although the names of certain individuals have been altered to protect their privacy.
The author has been a senior executive of giant multinational corporations, as well as the founder of several small entrepreneurial companies. He has worked in a number of widely diverse industries ranging from automobiles to motion pictures and from paper products to medical devices.
The book spans a period of several decades. Consequently, the political environments and the standards of living in some of the countries have changed over the years. However, the basic cultures, business practices, and moral dilemmas continue to be very much as the author described them. His observations and recommendations to individuals interested in traveling, living, or working abroad remain valid and pertinent today.
Some of the material in this book was published in “Confessions of a Corporate Centurion” by the same author, from 1st Books Library.
Gordon Riess was born abroad and has spent his entire career in international business.
He has been a senior executive of major multi-national corporations, including Ford Motor Company, International Paper Company, and Cinema International Corporation, the world’s largest international motion picture company. He now heads a worldwide consulting and training consortium with partners in North and South America, Europe (including Eastern Europe), Asia, and the Middle East.
Mr. Riess lived in nine foreign countries over a period of 30 years, and has been responsible for corporate operations on five continents. Two of his three children were born abroad. He is an active consultant, lecturer, trainer, and adjunct professor of international business. He is a frequent speaker at government, professional, business, and academic conferences and conventions, as well as a guest on radio and television talk shows and interviews.
Mr. Riess founded and ran five entrepreneurial companies and has served on the boards of twelve others. He has been an overseer or advisory board member of two U.S. colleges and the Czech Management Center, as well as the board chairman or a trustee of ten educational and charitable foundations in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
His earlier book, “From Communism to Capitalism,” describes his Volunteer Executive assignments assisting individuals, companies, city governments, and charitable organizations in Eastern Europe to make the difficult transition from the centrally-controlled Communist system to the highly competitive free market environment.
He is a U.S. Army veteran and an honors graduate of Whitman College. He received his MBA degree, cum laude, from the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration.
Mr. Riess now resides in Beverly Hills, California, where he can be contacted by e-mail at: gsr@mindspring.com.
Excerpt from Part II – Assassins for Hire
Finally I was sent to Tehran to try to pacify the outraged Kenan Bey and perhaps patch up the relationship. On my first evening there he invited me to a fine dinner. (Darius was not invited.) We sat on tooled Spanish leather cushions in an elegant restaurant. The walls were covered with Arabic quotations from the Koran, executed in high relief and highlighted with gold leaf. There were no pictures or paintings in evidence because the Koran prohibits representations of human figures. Beautiful Persian carpets covered the floor in both the public dining spaces and in our private room.
As is customary, we spoke of family matters, international politics, and other subjects, leaving business discussions for later, until the atmosphere was right and the stage was set.
While we were eating, Kenan Bey ventured a mild comment, "As you know, Mr. Riess, Mr. Parviz has not made himself popular or useful here."
He paused. "Please try some of the baba ghanoush eggplant dip."
A little later, after some desultory conversation and with no preamble, he remarked, "Tehran can be a very dangerous place for foreigners who do not follow the local customs, even for those of Iranian descent. Have some more of this roast lamb, it is excellent."
Additional rounds of food appeared, accompanied by jasmine tea. We talked about present business conditions in Iran. Then, apropos of nothing, Kenan Bey fixed his eyes on me intently and said casually, "Mr. Riess, do you know what it would cost to have someone assassinated in Tehran?"
I was startled but had to admit that I did not. It was not something I had ever investigated or priced-out.
"It costs only $100 U.S." There followed a thoughtful silence. "Would you care for some baklava?"
No more was said on the subject but it did not require a great deal of insight to know we had been given a very clear warning - and not one that we should disregard or take lightly. I had been in the Middle East long enough to know that there anything could be arranged without a great deal of difficulty or expense, including assassinations.
As I flew back to Alexandria, I wondered how we could deal with the problem. Since the orders to employ Darius had come down from on high, we could expect great resistance to terminating him. No headquarters executive would want to take the chance of offending the Senior Vice President or any of his staff, particularly over an issue involving a very junior individual so far away.
Assigning Darius to another country would merely shift our troubles to a different Ford company. Still, he was one of our people and we could not risk his safety. We had to find a way out. Luckily, fate took a hand as it sometimes does.
Darius'' wife Nancy was an American from Iowa who had never been abroad. She came to Egypt most reluctantly, suspicious and fearful of the strangeness of the place. When Darius went on trips to Tehran, Nancy always stayed home in Alexandria. She was having grave doubts about life in Egypt. Everything was unfamiliar and highly discomforting: the harsh language, the strange local customs, the poor sanitation, the unavailable or unreliable central heating and air conditioning, the exotic foods often covered with flies, the lack of malls and supermarkets. To Nancy Egypt was neither fascinating nor romantic; it was simply a weird hardship post.
On this particular occasion, while Darius was away in Iran, the Parviz''s suffragi (house servant) Abdul smoked more than his usual allotment of hashish - a particularly strong variety of marijuana. Hashish is the drug used by the original hashasin, the Persian professional killers from which the word "assassin" originated. It is far more powerful than the milder marijuana "grass" favored by American college students.
In a hashish-induced fury, Abdul came after Nancy brandishing a large carving knife. Around and around the house he chased her. Nancy was screaming, Abdul was shouting curses. Nancy could not speak Arabic so she could not understand what Abdul was saying, which was just as well. But she did not need to know the words to get the meaning. It was clear enough that Abdul was in a dangerous state.
Nancy leaped out through an open window and started running down the street in her house slippers, Abdul in hot pursuit. The passers-by were so stunned by the sight of a foreign woman racing down the road shrieking in a language incomprehensible to them that they did not take any action at first. Finally, some of the bawabs (doormen) from nearby apartment buildings tackled Abdul, held him down securely, and started to calm him. They were very familiar with the signs of hashish intoxication and had experience in dealing with it. Bawabs, like concierges, know everything that goes on around them.
Nancy took refuge in a local store and stayed there, trembling, until a friend''s wife from Ford came to take her home. The experience was the last straw for Nancy.
The very next day Darius returned from Iran. As soon as he walked in the door, Nancy delivered her ultimatum. "I want to go back home! I never want to leave there again. You have to find a job back in the States. Let''s get out of this terrible place."
