Chapter 1: Abandon Ship!

In the end it all went very quickly.

My name is Bond, Matt Bond. Well, strictly speaking, it is Matthew Mihail Serhiyovich Bondarenko.

Although both my dad Jeff, or Jeffrey Mihailovich Bondarenko, and I were born in California, our family tree has its roots planted firmly in Ukrainian soil. My grandfather Mihail Volodimirovich Bondarenko emigrated to the States as a young man, because he was a Jew, and therefore in the eyes of the Nazi Germany invaders, not particularly Aryan. As result he and Grandma had a simple choice - get the hell out of dodge or book a one-way ticket to Auschwitz-Birkenau eventually. They chose option one.

Unfortunately that was not where their problems ended. Although the States provided a new and much safer home for them, the McCarthy era came, and having a ‘Russian’ name was bad news. That was why Gramps had our family name shortened to Bond. Although Jewish, he had not been particularly religious, so he never tried to influence how dad would decide. As a result, both dad and I grew up to be atheists.

Grandpa didn’t have any time to worry about holy books and invisible dudes in the sky anyway. He was way too busy building up his business. The Bondarenkos have always been the entrepreneurial types. Back in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were not many options to become wealthy in Eastern Europe. You were either born into nobility, which meant you would spend your life filthy rich, bored out of your mind, and inbreeding mostly. The second option was to become a Kulak, a wealthy peasant farmer. That was what Grandpa had been before leaving. He had had lots of land and cattle that he had inherited from his father.

When the Nazis were hot on his heels, he had to sell all that for bargain basement prices, but at least it was enough to not arrive in the States in complete destitution. Grandpa had always been someone who didn’t dither and delay over a decision. That ultimately saved his life.

Once in America, he didn’t dilly-dally either. Once settled in California, he started to look for ways to support his family. Although he had grown up as a farmer, Grandpa had always been good with numbers. After financing a college degree in accounting with his last savings, he started a small accounting firm, doing the books for local businesses.

By the time dad was old enough to take over - in 1981 - the once small accounting office had become a large consulting company with hundreds of employees and customers all over the mainland US. Unfortunately both my grandparents did not get to enjoy retirement for long. Grandpa died in 1983, and Grandma, her heart broken from the loss, followed just half a year later in early 1984.

Not satisfied with what had been achieved, Dad went even bigger and started to branch out into international markets - first stop being the United Kingdom, where he, inevitably, crossed paths with who would become his biggest rival, or so the world was led to believe. Uncle Bill was about dad’s age and he ran O’Connor Consulting out of Santa Clara valley. Dad and uncle Bill were kindred spirits, both being the sons of immigrants. While they let the world believe that they were fighting each other hell-bent for leather, they were in fact quite good friends.

I had never really known my mom. She died of cancer when I was just one year old. Whenever dad had to go on a business trip, he dropped me off at the O’Connors, where I spent time with their son Ian and that very cute house maid of theirs - Sofia. Although I still call Bill’s son uncle Ian, he is more like the big brother I never had and only a few years older than I. Havin inherited his father’s knack for business, he was now running an airline in Germany.

It didn’t take long for dad to realize that I was the black sheep of the family. Unlike all Bondarenkos before me, I had no business sense whatsoever, and certainly no appetite for it. All I wanted, was to become a racing driver, preferably in Formula 1. Bless his soul, despite his own misgivings, dad always supported me with that. However, that support came with a big honking caveat. Motorsports have had one ailment since time immemorial - it was an expensive hobby. Now, with dad running a multi-billion business, that shouldn’t be a problem, right? Wrong!