Serendipity Foundation_292

by The Serendipity Foundation (retail) (epub)

  ‘It’s a shame, as a writer, you don’t recognise the problem lies not in the disagreement, but how you frame the argument. As the realist I’m paid to be, I know you’ll view an order to apologise as compromising your integrity. So let’s start with you trying for a few weeks to avoid criticising others. And in the meantime you might want to look into a few rumours I’ve been hearing from our stringer in Cairo.’

  Liam looked blankly at Barrett. ‘What’s happened in Cairo?’

  Barrett smiled mischievously. ‘It seems there’s a group undermining the whole thesis of your book.’

  The Kidnap of Head Teacher Salma Mirza

  When Miss Mirza didn’t arrive at school on Monday morning, her staff were immediately concerned. When she hadn’t called by break time, her assistant visited Miss Mirza’s house to no response. This was a school she had almost single-handedly saved through a decade of onslaughts from local government, property developers and extremists. The school remained in a permanent state of dilapidation; she had joked that so many plasters had been stuck on it that the structure was 80 per cent gauze. In a community that had become increasingly transient and crowded, she was a figure everyone knew and respected.

  The police were called in on Tuesday. The recent release of Commissioner El Sayed had led to an uneasy truce between the community and the local police force. But no leads were forthcoming. The police widened the net to Greater Cairo, but by the end of the week worst-case scenarios dominated people’s thoughts. Parents and ex-pupils reflected on how they had taken her leadership for granted.

  On Sunday morning, early risers found the following message on posters stuck on walls around the neighbourhood.

  We have Head Teacher Mirza. To secure her safe return, 60,000 EGP must be raised by Tuesday afternoon. The maximum donation is 200 EGP, and will be collected in buckets at the school reception. All donors must leave their names and amount donated in the provided books. Cheating will end badly.

  It seemed safe to presume this was the work of Commissioner El Sayed’s kidnappers. Yet he himself proved useless to the investigation, claiming his captors had neither spoken to him, nor shown their faces, and no, he hadn’t any idea if Miss Mirza’s life was in danger.

  At 8am on Monday morning, Commissioner El Sayed joined the donation queue outside the school.

  Richard

  Tuesday, April 14th

  GoldBlue Oil offices, London

  Richard pressed his face against the glass wall of his office, craning for a view of the pedestrians 30 floors below. Early in his career he had believed there was a correlation between the level of your office and the power you had to change the world; now he would only vouch for the improvement of the view.

  After guiding a small mining company from villain to ethical stock market hero, headhunters offered him the opportunity to recreate his success on a global stage. A couple of high-profile accidents had left marine driller GoldBlue Oil looking to rebrand, and they needed a young, progressive CEO to make the transition credible, and they were prepared to pay for it: a brand-new mission statement, wedded to a commitment to explore a new energy future was what it took to make him jump. At his inaugural speech to the shareholders, he held out a vision of the future where the name of the company stood proud for the gold of the sun and the blue of the ocean waves.

  Now, 16 years on, he was preparing for the big goodbye. He had seen it coming for a long time, and yet as he prepared for the inevitable showdown, all he could think about were the reasons he hadn’t quit: the power, the respect, the being somebody. He had never been in denial. From the start he shook hands with dictators and fought regulation. Oil, the lifeblood of the age, couldn’t choose whose land it lay under. But he was convinced one day he would build a company that had no need for such glad-handing.

  As the honeymoon period wore off, it became clear the board loved the brand, not the substance. Renewable energy initiatives were greeted with great fanfare, but then offered every assistance short of actual help. The present was profitable; the future would have to wait.

  And then five of his employees were kidnapped from the Crest Voyager.

  The vanity of power ill prepares you for the reality of grieving widows and fatherless children – the pain of being found wanting when it really mattered. He spent restless nights creating stories that would absolve him from blame, wishing for anonymity in a dizzying cast of thousands.

  And then there was his board, resolute in the defence of its convictions: a commodity, like any other, that has a price. While they sat in the shadows, Richard became the face of corporate heartlessness.

  On his office wall hung, as it had done for a decade, a poster of a Teddy Roosevelt quotation:

  It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming . . . who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

  Its display was tactical. Adversaries arriving for meetings would scan the words and be on the back foot before the conversation had even started. But there were side effects: Richard came to believe the primacy of simply being in the arena. Bad decisions could be excused purely by having made them; opponents were dismissed as naïve non-combatants.

  This led to an initial bout of self-righteousness in the wake of Crest Voyager. The media scrambled to hold him responsible; his photo framed next to grainy images of the deceased. He was portrayed as a cold pragmatist, unilaterally weighing the odds. He steeled himself to it – people preferred blaming a celebrity rather than a system. But this time it was more personal. In the Daily Voice, the journalist Liam Powell traced Richard’s descent from a young progressive CEO to one who sacrificed employees in order to retain his ability to pollute. The article was a hatchet job, but this time it was accompan-ied by memories of the distraught families he had tried to console.

  The victims had joined him in the arena – one increasingly crowded with ghosts whose existence he had previously ignored.

  In desperation, he tried to find comfort in minor acts of rebellion.

  It began with lifestyle changes that would have confused those close to him, had such people existed. He became vege-tarian, cycled his bike, recycled his waste, and cold cycled his laundry. He even volunteered to join a team cleaning the wings of seabirds after an oil spill on the east coast. But none of these acts soothed the festering contempt he felt for himself.

  He started signing online petitions for good causes. One night, in his inbox was a request to sign a petition against GoldBlue. It was a strange moment, as if the ether had placed a direct challenge to make a long-awaited stand. He scrolled up and down, rereading the case against him. The text was emotive and embellished, but the argument of GoldBlue’s continued breach of environmental regulations held true. The barometer of millions of other signatories increased before him, as did the financial pledges to continue the legal fight against GoldBlue. He stared at the screen, unsure if the petition signalled a watershed moment in his life, or an act that would be instantly lost in the digital universe. He entered a fake name, only to be told the correlating email did not exist. After a couple of deep breaths, he entered his name, email address and card details, with a £25 donation.

  And then things began to spiral. He gave a larger donation to an environmental pressure group a couple of weeks later. Soon after, he received a call asking if this was the Richard Pounder. He hesitantly agreed. The caller introduced herself as Fiona Kittle, the head of the pressure group. He mumbled an excuse that even GoldBlue’s detractors deserved the resources to hold them accountable. Fiona made no attempt to probe
his intentions further. Twenty minutes later, after a conversation that surprised Richard for its warmth, he agreed to meet Fiona for dinner.

  At face value, there was nothing inappropriate about such a meeting: GoldBlue still coveted environmental credentials, and she indisputably held them. But he could feel the recklessness within him. They met at an Italian restaurant chain in the West End. She stood up as he arrived and hugged him like an old friend. She was in her early fifties, had lightly greying brown hair, a twinkle in her eyes, and wore a skirt and jacket that broke the scruffy environmentalist stereotype Richard refused to let go of. She exuded confidence.

  ‘Richard, we’re on the same team,’ she said as she sipped from her third glass of red. ‘You want what I want. My role is to make your job easier by putting your board under a little pressure.’ Usually he felt apprehensive when spoken to about being part of a team, but he felt a kinship with Fiona. ‘It’s ridiculous the way you were treated after Crest Voyager. I was very disappointed with the coverage,’ she said as they finished coffee, cementing the goodwill.

  They saw each other every couple of weeks, and exchanged the odd email or text in between. At no point did their relationship hint at anything beyond platonic. She represented a rare chink of sympathy, matching each of Richard’s anecdotes of thwarted ambition with one of her own. They plotted ways to change the system, without ever asking anything from each other. She invited him to dinner parties, introducing him to a range of people he had previously viewed with suspicion: fellow activists, scientists, government advisers and entrepreneurs. Richard felt their reserve melt away as Fiona championed him – she vouched for his good intentions. In front of him lay a world filled with people who understood the pressures he faced, where he felt he could slowly learn to forgive himself.

  So when, on a Wednesday three years and eight months after Crest Voyager, he received a request from Fiona, he had no idea what to do.

  ‘Richard. We’ve been working on a report about how energy companies have been blocking the development of renewables: sitting on patents and companies they’ve acquired, cutting R and D, launching green brand campaigns while inflating the quantity of reserves that won’t be pumped for decades. You’ve told me so many stories about how your board blocked the funding they promised you. This is the opportunity to put them under pressure. But . . . well, we’re going to need some hard evidence.’

  He felt sad and disappointed as she spoke, foolish for being so blatantly played. Or had he been? Was this not the natural conclusion of their conversations? The public airing of hyp-ocrisies he had suffered so long alone.

  His instincts told him it was a bad idea.

  That week, Fiona invited him to an exhibition launch. She didn’t mention the request. It was as if the evening were a showcase of everything he would be granted in return. The path to redemption glittered before him. At their next meeting he handed her a padded envelope. She nodded and drew no further attention to it.

  Anxiety filled the following week; every phone call sent adrenalin rushing through his body. But the tension eased as the weeks passed. He sat in the monthly board meeting, strangely exhilarated by the fact that they had no idea what was coming.

  But soon after, Fiona rang. ‘I’m sorry. Please believe me, Richard. I had no idea this would happen. I told them in strict-est confidence. They knew this was absolutely confidential.’

  ‘Told who, what?’

  ‘The writers . . . of the report. They wouldn’t include it unless the source was verified.’

  ‘You told them it was me?’

  ‘Richard, these are people I trust. They swear they spoke to nobody.’

  ‘So what makes you think they did?’

  There was a pause. ‘I got a call.’ Fiona breathed out heavily. ‘They know, Richard. Your board knows.’

  *

  The emergency board meeting was about to start. He put on his jacket, and stared at the book that lay on his desk: Kidnap: A Tale of Alternative Taxation in a World of Inequality. The author had chosen a more conventional path to closure.

  ‘How is everyone?’ Richard said, as the board settled into their seats around the rectangular table. He was met with silence.

  Monroe sat at the opposite end of the table, his stare by-passing the five executives sitting on either side. ‘How’s yours been, Richard?’ There was menace in his slow delivery.

  ‘Had better.’

  ‘This meeting has only one agenda item, so let’s get to it.’ Monroe held up the report and dropped it theatrically on the table, all the time looking at Richard. ‘What does our chief executive recommend?’

  ‘We could deny the claims,’ said Richard with a non-committal shrug. ‘Or we can try to turn this into a positive.’

  Monroe smiled coldly. ‘A positive, you say, Richard.’

  ‘We could relaunch our commitment to a progressive agenda – with a programme and money up front. Our critics will be left with yesterday’s news. We will own this story.’

  Monroe took his time, wetting his lips as he prepared. ‘My main concern right now, Richard, is that there’s a rat in our organisation. Any idea who that might be?’

  ‘There’re 50 staff with access to our ledgers and budgets, and many others who cared about the technology we acquired. It’ll take time.’

  Monroe nodded. ‘I don’t understand how we left ourselves in such a position.’

  ‘We made a song and dance of buying technology we claimed would change the world. Any reporter can go to these labs and see they’re closed.’

  ‘I don’t remember pinning internal memos on the doors.’ Monroe angrily continued, ‘You seem to have avoided all criticism in this report. Instead it’s the evil board blocking the dreams of our dear visionary chief executive.’

  ‘I didn’t read it like that, Ted. I think you’re being a little paranoid.’

  ‘Paranoid?’ Monroe tried to regain his composure. ‘I was named, as if I were the one who decided to kill all the funding.’

  ‘Ted, come on. Everyone knows it’s not the chief executive or chairman who makes these decisions. The company has its own ethics that overrides our own.’

  Ted glared across the table as his memory located the quote, before his expression settled somewhere closer to regret.

  ‘Of course I blame myself a little for how things turned out. You took the fallout from Crest Voyager and maybe we could’ve been more . . . supportive. Fine, but . . . none of us was prepared for this.’

  ‘Prepared for what?’ said Richard, daring Monroe to spell it out.

  Monroe looked around the room, as if securing a consensus before speaking. ‘After 16 years you’ve decided the company needs fresh blood at its head.’

  ‘Have I now? You’ll have to find another scapegoat this time.’

  Monroe wasn’t paying attention. ‘You will resign, or you’ll be fired for gross misconduct. Your call.’

  Richard knew each second of silence bore testament to his guilt, but he had no inclination to plead his innocence. ‘The veneer of choice where there is none.’

  ‘You weren’t seriously expecting a negotiation?’

  They locked eyes across the table. Richard finally broke the gaze, surveyed the room and the cityscape one last time, then pushed his chair back and rose. ‘Gentlemen.’ He nodded to the room with all the dignity he could muster, and turned towards the door.

  Liam

  Wednesday, April 15th

  London

  Crowd-sourcing a ransom. Liam shook his head as he read the email from the paper’s Cairo stringer. Five hundred donors – the money going on repairs to the school run by the hostage. Then there was the kidnap of a police commissioner who was released halfway through a football match. Both hostages claimed they knew nothing of their kidnappers.

  But it hardly undermined the thesis of his book, as Barrett had claimed. Its ripples weren’t rocking the geopolitical landscape. No other outlet was covering it, and unless he decided to pick it up, that would li
kely be the way it stayed.

  He wasn’t planning to undermine his book. It wasn’t his type of story anyway.

  He played back Barrett’s words: Whenever Crest Voyager is brought up, you transform yourself from a man people dislike but respect, to a man people simply dislike. He suspected she meant since Crest Voyager happened, which would be a disservice: it had taken a decade to perfect his unique brand of misanthropy.

  Writing these types of scathing, intellectual critiques of people and politics was hardly fulfilling the dreams he had as a young activist. But in a competitive world, he had a niche. He appeared on Question Time as a guest whose answers mixed the profound with the vitriolic, to the point where those who agreed with his sentiments were loath to do so publicly.

  Kidnap had been inspired after loosely covering the Crest Voyager disaster four years earlier. It had been without any redeeming features. Everyone had failed and five people were left dead. Out of it came two things for Liam: first he had written a lazy character assassination of the CEO. Barrett would later describe it as representing everything the younger Liam would have stood against. The second sowed the seed of an idea about the inevitable futility of all such actions, which germinated into a solid top-ten non-fiction hardback.

  The newsroom was glass-walled and open-plan. In most cases, the journalists marked their territories with computers to the front and pictures to the sides. Liam’s was cordoned off with high filing trays.

  Over the last few years he had cut down to three days and two comment pieces a week. Younger journalists viewed him as a grumpy enigma, his bestseller reputation receiving grudging respect. For his peers, his misanthropy was singled out for banter, largely to disguise the varying levels of jealousy they felt towards his notoriety.