Surging waves frothed onto the ledges two hundred feet below me, dark, licking, awaiting. In a hissing voice the man spoke, “What a pleasure this is for me to be able to offer you a choice. Very decent of me.” His laugh more of a screech, “Which do you prefer, a jump without a parachute or the bullet first? Wait, wait, I’ll be kind to you, I’ll give a brave Scotch bastard like you a chance.”
Now,” he screamed, “down on your fucking knees.”
Pressure. Click.
An uncoiling spring, I swung, hit him, the back of my wrist across his neck. Crack, a violent burning on the side of my head.
The man swayed, moments passed. Attempted to grab me. Missed.
I stumbled, clawed at grass. It gave. Came away in my hands. I slithered over the edge, stared into space, the chasm of imminent death.
In slow motion, I began to fall. Time slowed. Eilidh came to me. I saw her again, her eyes in mine, talking to me.
The man pitched forward, his eyes bulging with the terror of death. He hurtled past me, arms flailing, floating almost, his raincoat spread by the wind.
Screaming, falling headlong, down, down. I heard the thud. The crunch of bone.
I slipped down the rock, my whole body pressed against it. Torn fingers searched for hand holds, feeling over a cold wet surface, gripping the tiniest roughness. Slowly, five feet, ten feet.
Suddenly my hands lost their hold. Faster, faster. In the terror of death the sweetness of life came to me with an overwhelming sadness. My boots caught something. I fought to hang on.
Legs buckling with fear, wind buffeting the narrow ledge. This, the end of a glorious saga? Hopes, ideals, all tomorrow’s promise brought to a futile end below a Viking grave?
I saw Eilidh weeping, I touched her hair. She looked up and I kissed her. A longboat put to sea, a fair wind billowed its raven sail. I journeyed back through time, no longer afraid of dying.
Calmer now, I found hand holds, my legs steadied and turning my head, I glanced down.
Face up, on a shelf of bare rock he lay, beside the Sound, grey and flecked. Broken- backed, fully conscious but immobile.
A wave backed off, came frothing in again and lapped around him. Blood trickled from his mouth. The next wave surged to his face. He spluttered, arms waving franticly.
Unable to move, each wave came and went, indifferently. The tide rose slowly.
Balancing precariously on the narrow ledge, I looked down. He saw me. Fresh screams carried up the cliff, crying, pleading, “Save me, climb down, for Christ’s sake, please, please.”
Waves began to lift The Agent’s body, gradually at first, wrapping a raincoat about his useless legs.
Still he clung, snatching at the rock between surges, the dripping shelf his only haven.
Another wave covered his face, retreated, drew back into the gurgling depths, gathered momentum and white tongued, it came licking towards him again.
Vomiting water and gasping, I could see the man’s eyes bulging in abject fear. He waited each wave, gulping air between each measured space, powerless in the agony of breathing death.
They came. Slow, hissing waves, deliberately unfolding, washing him up the shelf and then, with rattling detachment, unhurriedly sucking him down.
Little by little, without compassion, they dragged my visitor towards a sinuous grave.
Without remorse, I watched his drowning.
Gradually his threshing body below a floating raincoat ceased to move; a mere dot, no more than a piece of flotsam rising and falling with the swell, he drifted into the Sound.
And the uncaring sea covered his bloated face in a veil of waves.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Shorted and Shafted
Nuen spared nothing, least of all expense, in moving from its New York, Park Avenue offices to a prestigious site overlooking a bend of the Hudson River. Fifty million dollars down and forty floors up, on the rooftop of the flamboyant Nuen Building, Chairman Anderson paced back and forth the full length of his lavish sunshine garden. This dream child, which the Chairman had conceived after several viewings of ‘Jurassic Park’, involved him in the expending of many creative hours and it might be said, a prodigal amount of the company’s petty cash.
Rock piled upon rock climbed to a summit pool from which, by virtue of the cleverly arranged sound recording, there tinkled an icy waterfall. Splashing ledge by ledge with a sparkle enhanced by hidden lighting, it descended as a delightfully musical cascade until it vanished into the enveloping steam of a heated lagoon. Realistically moulded dinosaurs perched on outcrops overlooking the swimmers, pterodactyls flew past on invisible wires and to boost the effect, a growling Tyrannosaurus Rex belched flame at the flick of a switch. Every rocky crevice bloomed with fragrant plant life, miniature jacaranda trees blossomed in the background, date palms leaned over the lagoon’s blue effect water and to perfect the vision, on a sandy bank facing the sun sat a Tahitian beach hut complete with cocktail bar. Perhaps the only discordant feature of the garden’s pretentiousness was its helipad. Given a succession of celebrities dropping in by private chopper to the Chairman’s ‘novel’ all night swimming parties the downdrafts tended not only to defoliate the vegetation but in some cases to ravage the more flimsy outfits of his female guests.
Andrew Anderson’s great grandfather ploughed his last furrow on the family farm, turned his back on a Shetland homestead and around the 1840s joined the peak years of migration from Scotland. His people, fishermen, crofters and fiercely independent in true Norse character had a parcel of land beside a west facing voe on the wind swept treeless island of Unst. To the youngest son it held no more prospect than rye bread and cockle soup. For a restless young man born by the sea, seeking adventure and fortune, it meant following the westering sun. Six hundred miles and a pack on his back, sail and steerage out of Liverpool, three Scots pounds and his father’s blessing, eight weeks later he landed on Staten Island at the mouth of the Hudson river.
Following the sun, he headed northwest, fur trapping his way through forest and mountain. Down the wide MacKenzie River and up to the Yukon he travelled, to the gold nugget days of the ‘Forty-niners’. Fellow Scots all the way, batwing doors, hard drink, hard fists, wine, women and song, and not too much of the song. On the Atlantic passage he’d met a Scots girl, in her teens and from the Hebrides. Tina MacAulay, she, with her parents, heading for Pittsburg. In spite of his raking, on nights rolled in a blanket when the frost at twenty degrees put the stars on the pine tops, her face came to him and pay dirt in his pouch, he worked his way towards a sun which rose in more ways than one over the steel smelters of Mr. Carnegie.
Future father-in-law, MacAulay, by then foreman at a Carnegie foundry, willingly provided a job for any man with a good Scots tongue in his head. Anderson had such credentials and smartly progressed from pouring pig iron to pressing for Tina’s hand in marriage. Pioneers to the very flapjack, young Anderson, plus bride, was soon honeymooning west by covered wagon; this time the prodigal son building bridges with Carnegie steel, as railroad companies conquered the Rockies.
Mix a harsh upbringing with the genes for hardiness and enterprise, you’re liable to breed success and sure enough the Scots couple’s boy, born in the back of a covered wagon, founded a company involved in the early days of electricity generation. Father to son, each brood added to the company’s expansion, until under the forceful drive of Andrew Anderson senior, diversification led directly to the creation of Nuen and its extensive operations in nuclear energy production. Top secret U.S. government contracts followed, immensely lucrative arrangements involving the supply of weapons grade plutonium for the latest military developments.
Of particular interest to Anderson junior were the nuclear warheads and fueling requirements of U.S. navy submarines. Indeed he’d paid a visit to Scotland’s nuclear submarine base on the Clyde when a new project was mooted. Visiting Shetland crossed his mind but his American wife who’d accompanied him took a pathological hatred of Scotland,
any homecoming to seek his roots she firmly vetoed. It piqued Anderson a mite but more to the point his trip had led to fresh contracts. Naturally such agreements between Nuen and the U.S. administration were strictly off the books and most definitely well away from any prying public attention. All of which meant that Chairman Anderson was no stranger to the Pentagon, by the back door.
How his family had built their wealth had been preached to him as a child and when business pressures mounted the Chairman would chill out from his office, two floors down and leaning on the balustrade of his rooftop play garden he’d watch the busy shipping ply the Hudson River. Staten Island ferries scooting back and forth, top heavy container ships, liners, inward bound from Le Havre, Oslo, Liverpool; shipping of the world towed by tugs below the Statue of Liberty, docking, pouring people ashore, sometimes it awakened his father’s preaching, ‘My grandfather left the poverty of a Shetland farm, sail and steerage, a canvas cover at the stern of a square rigger but I can tell you this, his longing for the island never left him. He always wanted to go back, return to its basic ways but he was trapped on a treadmill of serving the fortune he’d made.’
Anderson looked round at what he’d inherited and the opulence it had created. That night there happened to be an invite to another party, one of an interminable round which circled the city and well beyond. Beneath a frivolous surface they amounted to highly competitive affairs, pretentious occasions for networking and being networked. A system for doing business, meeting important people, politicians heavily loaded with hangers on, and spare me, the dreadful women, half an inch of makeup, three inches of cleavage and voices that would drown a chain saw. Was this social roundabout just a gross expression of self indulgent values, he sometimes wondered? Greed at its most sophisticated, unmitigated self interest crawling round in empty vessels? Perhaps it might be his current mood; he spun on his heel and shouted, “A thousand acquaintances, and not a friend to trust amongst the lot of them!”
Beyond the mercantile panorama which the Chairman’s rooftop retreat enjoyed, it also looked to a forest of New York skyscrapers, each vying for air space and a larger slice of the world’s finances. Though not averse to using their money, Anderson privately considered bankers and their minions to be sneaky manipulators of other people’s hard work, only trustworthy so long as self interest wasn’t threatened. And when not covering their backs at the customer’s expense, still taking a fee and passing the package of risk down the line. Fat, bonus inflated operations little better than a loathsome form of extortion. He raged inwardly, with good reason. It was money matters which had him striding the roof amongst the exotic foliage and cursing banks and bankers in general.
For six months now, a straight line drawn through the graph of Nuen share price headed down at a forty-five degree angle. Small rallies there had been, especially when he, as Chairman, albeit obliged to borrow heavily against his other assets, had bought up shares in the hope of steadying their fall. Why, why this collapse in Nuen’s equity value? Slow progress in the expansion of fresh nuclear plants? The threat from ‘renewables’, especially this damn Sahara Solar Power? Worse, maybe the company was being ‘shorted’? Acutely aware of the latter possibility, somebody borrowing shares and offloading them to get the price down but who would do it?
Only a week ago, Anderson’s main personal banker had asked for an interview. Not the normal sherry and chat, no, an unpleasant demand for more collateral to support the volume of shares being chalked up to the Chairman. Every morning as Wall Street trading opened, Nuen’s shares flashed red. Nothing seemed to halt the slide. O.K. stock markets round the world might be tottering, great finance houses rotten to their foundations but from a high of over twenty dollars, Nuen’s fall steepened, twelve dollars, five dollars, the breaking point approached.
Newspaper headlines, shares were rated ‘loss/sell’ by leading brokers, Abrahams. More selling, Anderson phoned Sir Joshua Goldberg, “Josh, the accountants are having difficulty in tracing who’s doing all this selling. D’you think somebody with access to holdings is ‘shorting’ our shares?” Goldberg’s voice, calm and reassuring, “No, Andy, impossible, it’s just the market’s volatility, don’t worry, Nuen isn’t toxic debt. If I’d only the means, Andy, at five dollars they’re a steal.”
Anderson threw in another ten million dollars. A blue flash on the Wall Street screen, Nuen shares rose fifty cents. Was this the turnaround? Next day the shares dropped to four dollars and a demand from his Board of Directors for an immediate special meeting arrived on his desk. The morning before the meeting, their price hit two dollars. Nuen faced insolvency. Anderson stared at personal bankruptcy.
“Don’t forget it’s the Oppenhiemer’s party tonight, darling. My hairdresser’s coming here at six, taxis at nine.” His wife sat up, ruffled her tousled hair and putting her feet over the edge of their carved mahogany four poster, she stood up. Letting a diaphanous silk negligee slip to the floor, she walked over to the full length tilting mirror. Pressing in her stomach and lifting her bosom, she announced, “Can’t wear that black Dior off the shoulder creation, I’ve worn it once already, that hellishly boring Soras party and it was too tight.” Viewing her tanned body, she carefully examined her breasts, pushing them together, “Darling, would you turn on the sun bed?” and noticing his clothes, “Going out again Andrew, you’re never here to help me.”
Anderson, shaved and city suited, hesitated before bending to kiss the back of her neck, “It’s a vital meeting today, honey.” He patted her bottom. Knocking away his hand, she threw a look over her shoulder and crossed to the bedside telephone, “Meetings, always damned meetings. This is no life. Andrew, you’re so bloody selfish.” As he gently closed the bedroom door his wife’s voice, shouting down the phone, followed him round the first bend of their magnificent Georgian stairway, “I want you here at eleven, bring that backless cross fronted dress you designed for me the other month, we’ll check it for fit.” Pause. “Yes, today, of course it’s important. You’ll have to cancel your other arrange----.” He hurried down the last flight and out of earshot.
A full length oil of Anderson, the Shetland immigrant, filled one wall of their spacious hallway. From habit he glanced up. Its imperious pose and ice blue eyes had haunted his childhood days. A black servant handing the portrait’s great grandson his coat, held open the front door.
The chauffeur in maroon livery touched his cap. The Chairman nodded. His Company Rolls Royce, making barely more sound than its tyres on the gravel, coasted down a driveway whose canopy of leafless branches glistened white with the crystals of November’s first frost.
Not even the bright light of the cut crystal chandelier hanging above the board table could enliven the grey faces, deliberately studying their papers as the Chairman entered, “Morning gentlemen, welcome to this special meeting which you quite rightly have requested,” Anderson began briskly. Standing before them and surveying bowed heads, a coldness entered his voice, “I’m glad you could all arrange to be present. As you know we have much to deal with, gloomy as that may seem. As my father would say, nothing beats a challenge,” he forced a laugh.
Not a head looked up.
“I fully realise this a matter of us all having trust in our company. You will be aware of the recent fall in our equity value.” That bought the first response, nods around the table. Anderson continued at length, claiming a lack of liquidity in the world’s banking sector, the impact of a down turn in world wide GDP, the volatility of international stock markets; indeed he touched on anything which could have a bearing upon the fortunes of Nuen.
Winding up his explanations their Chairman appealed to his directors in a far from humble manner. “You too will have much to contribute. Difficult times are ahead. We must all pull together in trust, confidence and mutual support. Gentlemen, I welcome your comment and advice.” Hard faced and challenging, he demanded allegiance from a Board which his inner senses told him was fast descending into the pit of self interest. His stance m
irrored the family portrait. Anderson’s fierce blue eyes held a look of contempt, if not scorn.
No face lifted nor, it seemed, dared look towards him. Twelve men sat. Some looked sideways. Others gazed across at the paintings which graced the walls. November coughs, ritual nose blowing, fingers twiddled pencils, then silence. Forty floors up and into rooms from the freeway below, the wail of a police siren came and went.
Nicky Fellows glanced towards Sir Joshua who sat impassively at the bottom of the table. Goldberg gave the merest shift of his hollow eyes. Fellows stood, his hands grasping the lapels of his stripped suit to steady their tremble, “Mr. Anderson, I feel nothing but dismay at what I have to say but given the parlous state of the company’s financial position I feel I have no option but to table a motion of no confidence in you, sir, our Chairman.”
His eyes flicked back to Sir Joshua as he sank into his chair. Not a move, not a paper rustled. The Company secretary fixed his gaze on the wall clock at the far end of the room. Its minute arm counted time in jerks. He waited for its next jerk and its next. The passage of time had become spasmodic. Late November sun stabbed obliquely through the window.
Andrew Anderson appeared not to have heard. He looked over the heads of men who confirmed his deeply held private opinion. Though many of his Board had positions of high office in their respective professions, politics, banking, or whatever, suddenly a veil lifted. He saw them for what they were, blood sucking parasites whose skillful machinations provided a hearty meal of self-interest from the public at large. Corporate greed which ignored the social consequences. His jaw tightened. The soft facial curves of city living gave way to their underlying hardness. It became the face of a man of decision. Squaring himself, he cleared his throat and spoke with dignity,
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