***
When I got back to the hotel, a swim in the sea did nothing to improve on my pessimism. I had some dinner and some more Barolo with it, and that improved nothing either.
Jeremy's phone rang.
"Hi, Peter," he said, "Geneva is a great city. Not that I have been able to see much. There are a few thousand police and soldiers guarding everything, armed patrol boats are on the lake, fighter jets patrol the air, helicopters monitor the ground, and it is all a perfect, but perfect, example of how and what your human race is. Similar to your World Economic Forums in Davos and any other meetings of importance around your planet. Humans wanting to murder other humans, and other humans ready to kill in order to stop them. Crazy, crazy, crazy, but never mind. I escaped from the conference center located on the road to Nyon and made it into town. I have just had a meal of onion soup and raclette in the old town."
He sounded cheerful enough. Presumably he had suffered no major ridicule during today's summit meeting, nor had anyone made the mistake of trying to arrest him.
"Hi, Jeremy. And how did the meeting go?"
"Ah well, it went well I suppose. And for all I know, they are still at it. I was only in the meeting myself for about two hours."
"So what happened?"
"Well, more or less as you might expect, Peter. I was subjected to a lot of questioning about the Mars event and that produced the two main foreseeable reactions. Most of them—but even so, not all of them—are convinced of what they refer to as my 'telepathic weapon potential' and are significantly frightened by it. I think they are also frightened of each other. They know that every single one of them in that room would be working out ways to try and get hold of me and to harness me, for their own selfish, unilateral purposes, and that whoever managed to achieve that would, assuming I ‘functioned’ properly, rule the world. And that all the rest of them—the other countries—would be toeing the line and singing to the tune of the dominant power for, probably, ever and ever. Power seems to be the only thing your species is hungry for, power over the other members of its species. As I say, a totally foreseeable reaction."
"And the other foreseeable reaction?"
"Understandably the same as yours, Peter. They think I am mad. They didn't say so of course, they are too scared. But they don't believe a word about aliens. And I don't think they would even if they were to be confronted with some aliens in physical form—impossible of course, as I have already explained—or even if they were able to 'capture' some of these creatures and subject them to scientific tests, probe them, analyze them, dissect them mentally or physically, or whatever."
"O.K.," I said, "so they reacted as you knew they would. And what then?"
"A lot of things, Peter. Firstly, and although my 'telepathic weapon potential' is more or less a proven fact, they want still more proof. And if I supply that, they want to arrange another urgent summit meeting for next Wednesday, also in Geneva, and I have to be present at that one also. So at least they accept the urgency and the possible enormity of what they are dealing with here. Fear, Peter, as we have said, is the one driving force to which every single member of any species will react. And the few doubters, the few who aren't yet scared enough, they want some additional proof of a kind that will scare them. Properly. Either that, or they are not going to be interested in any more summit meetings or in anything else, I shouldn't think. They will just carry on either causing or administrating your planet’s self-inflicted disasters as before.
"And so what additional proof are they asking for?"
"They are leaving that up to me. But it has to be something that will occur on Earth. Closer to home. It seems that, for most people—at least for those who are not scientists—something which happens close to home is more realistic than something which happens a short way away, on Mars for example. Don't ask me why. As you yourself might say, Peter, it's just the way they are."
"Indeed it is. And are you going to do it, whatever it is?"
"Yes. I will think about it and let them—and you, Peter—know tomorrow. What they do not know, however, is that I shall not be attending their next summit meeting, nor any other meetings after that. After this next event, your species is on its own. It has to prove that it has the will, the desire and the ability to change itself. All by itself. And then, that it is capable of implementing that change. I explained all of this to them in detail and I explained what would probably happen to them if they didn't. The disbelief and skepticism filling that room could not have been greater if I had said that either Jesus Christ or Mohammed would be returning in order to speak to them next week. But one thing they were interested in was my little biology lesson."
"Ah, yes. I wanted to hear about that."
I could hear him walking up and down, presumably in his hotel room, and the occasional gaps were no doubt him pausing to look out of the room's window.
"I told them," he went on, " that I could understand their disbelief, but that what I now wanted to explain should be of interest to them and their scientists irrespective of the existence of aliens or otherwise. And irrespective of the existence of a fifth dimension or otherwise, and irrespective of the reality of the infinity concept or otherwise, and irrespective of the many other realities external to their solar system and of which they were unaware. And what I am about to explain, I said, is an inevitable and essential component of the transformational process required to mutate a species, in this case to mutate a non-benevolent species into a benevolent one. And I expounded briefly, and without any complex scientific details, on the subject…and they listened."
"And the essential component you referred to was a biological component."
"Exactly. And I tried to explain to them why. I told them that one could reasonably enough assert that they, the meeting's attendees, constituted the representatives of the human race. And that they were therefore in the position if they so wished, right now in this meeting, to create a new law, a global law, to abolish the manufacture, sale and possession of all weapons on this planet, either by individuals or by states—except initially for a single small central arsenal, under their joint control, which might be necessary to enforce the implementation of the new law."
"I bet that provoked a lot of comments."
"Actually, it did not. There was a bit of murmuring and some wise and cynical shaking of heads, but nobody said anything. And then I told them why they wouldn't do it."
"You did?"
"Yes. You won't do it, I said, even though you can, because you are human beings. And human beings are animals which do not have it in their nature to be peaceable, I said. And that is the crux of the matter; it is not in your nature. You are too aggressive and you are too distrustful of others. By which I mean of yourselves, since you are all members of the same species. It is a biological problem."
"And did they have anything to say to that?"
"Indeed they did. The president of the United States in particular. He took the stand and started referring to the vast amounts of research performed by his country in the fields of biology, physiology, behavioral sciences and so on and so forth, and he said that many of their experts argue against a biological cause for aggressiveness in humans. He continued by saying that those experts cite many causes for aggression including ethnic ones, religious ones, territorial ones, economic ones, social ones involving either family or external influences, and miscellaneous other ones including the effects of certain chemicals; he gave alcohol as an example. He also mentioned the drive for social dominance as a frequent reason for gang warfare and other group conflicts. And he continued in that vein for a considerable length of time and concluded that it was more or less a proven fact that biological origins did not enter into the equation."
"Interesting."
"Interesting enough for me to point out to him the major error in these findings, while at the same time asking him why he didn't refer to those experts of his who do support biology as the cause. I told him that the ones who rejec
t a biological explanation are guilty, extremely guilty, of confusing confrontational and other abnormal situations—and the resulting manifestations of aggressiveness—with the very cause of it all. If for example, I explained, you have a problem of religious differences, then your reaction can be either to tackle it with aggressiveness or, alternatively, to tackle it in a peaceful manner. So why choose aggression? What is the reason for reacting with aggression instead of in some other way? The reason, I told him, is biological. It is in your nature."
"Did he accept that?"
"I don't know. But he didn't say anything more, and nor did anybody else, and so I continued. The human species, I said, has been capable throughout its history of perpetrating the most horrifying acts of violence on its fellow humans. These acts of violence occur not only between different states and different societies, but also within them. There have been wars since before your recorded history, I said, and you, Mr. President, have just made a reference to group violence, a phenomenon which includes, among other things, gang wars and wars between states. Now, in the course of the evolution of your species, belonging to a group or a community was certainly a method of enhancing the ability of an individual to survive or to reproduce. There is no doubt about that. But the group or the community did not have to decide to achieve those aims through aggressiveness. You have in fact had several peaceful societies in your planet's history, societies such as the Arapesh of New Guinea, the Xingo of Brazil or the Simai of Malaysia, among others. But, regrettably, the 'survival of the fittest' hypothesis applied. These communities were overrun by the more numerous aggressive societies of their time. Which brings us back to the question of why aggressiveness is the dominating factor of your species. Where does it come from and what is the cause of it?"
"And they were listening to all of this?"
"Oh yes, they were finding it interesting. There were mumbles, there were shufflings and there were coughs, but they were listening. Let me take a step back, I continued, and remind you again of what exactly aggression is. It is correctly defined by your behavioral sciences as 'an intent to cause harm'. And your sciences describe the various ways in which this intent to cause harm can be applied: physically, verbally, psychologically and so on. But these sciences also make it clear that needful predatory or defensive behavior is not aggression, or at least not in the same sense. On the contrary, these behaviors are nothing other than forced necessities, and as such are also to be found among all those non-aggressive species which find themselves obliged to kill in order to eat, or to defend themselves against aggressive species to ensure their own survival."
"Against aggressive species such as the human race," I said.
"Yes. I told them that they were of course aware of the fact that the human race does not kill merely in order to eat or in order to defend itself. And that the reason for this was a biological one. And I said that, because nobody present—as far as I was aware—was a scientist, I intended to provide them with only a few non-technical words on the area to which their biologists should direct their attention, and for which they would hopefully decide to provide some fairly massive funding—easily financeable for example by reducing their absurd and preposterous expenditures on their various ongoing arms races and their continuing drive for increasingly lethal destructive power."
"So you finally got to the point."
Jeremy laughed. I could imagine him running his hand through his hair, his moon-face crinkling into that pleasant smile of his. "Yes, I did," he said. "And I also went on to explain the following. The undeniable existence of biology as the source of human aggression is already observable shortly after birth. Human babies and small children exhibit aggressiveness long before they have been exposed to external influences which might possibly be deemed to be the cause of it; such as, for example, school. And even external influences only provoke what is biologically already in place in any case.”
Indeed, even the gender-aggression ratios are identifiable and apparent at an early stage. The genes involved can be identified—as your biologists already know. And the key genes are inherently, if not exclusively, to be found in the male. And what these genes do, they determine the structure of the proteins in your bodies' cells. So far, so good. But what I am here and now strongly recommending is that you have your biologists concentrate on Step 1: the long and intricate sequence of complicated processes interposed between the aforementioned proteins and what, for the want of a better phrase, we can call behavior."
"They were still listening?" I asked.
"Yes, they were still listening. But their interest was beginning to wane. My fault. I was trying to be helpful, but in retrospect it was unnecessary for me to elaborate at length on which areas of the brain and which of the hormones need to be researched."
"Testosterone is a hormone."
"Yes it is. I also spoke quite a bit about the central role of numerous circuits within both the neocortical and subcortical structures of the brain. And I emphasized the role of the chemicals in the brain, especially the neurotransmitters."
"You bored them."
"I'm afraid so. They were interested in the subject but, in retrospect, I don't think that in the end they took it very seriously. Their only interest in me was as a potentially incredible new weapon, and in having that capability proved to them beyond all doubt. And what would happen after that and in which way they would react and what they would decide to do about it…"
"They still consider you to be a lunatic, someone suffering from delusions."
"Yes, as you do yourself, Peter, if you don't mind my saying so. A lunatic with, possibly, some amazing capabilities. But I have done my best. My next 'demonstration' will be the last and it will be the end of my attempt to prevent a possibly unnecessary annihilation of your species. I will, so to speak, have tried to get the wasps to choose to fly out of the window instead of making it necessary for them to be eliminated. The wasps' choice."
"Aren't you concerned that they may be having you watched, followed, put under surveillance by the NSA, the CIA, the GCHQ or some other secret service organization?"
"Not at the moment, Peter, no. I am probably under surveillance right now but that doesn't cause me any inconvenience. In London, it was different. There was a perceived need, initially, for me to protect you and your private affairs. In the meantime, I don't think they have too much interest in you any more, except for the fact that they would still like to have your assistance and cooperation as a person who, in their view, has a close relationship with me and who knows me fairly well. Mind you, after the next demonstration, the nature of their interest in me will possibly change definitively, as will their decisions on how to 'handle' me. We shall have to wait and see."
"So we will be talking again tomorrow?"
"Yes, Peter, I will call you."
And we said our goodbyes.
I realized that in my contacts with Jeremy over the past few weeks I had progressively been talking to him more and more as if he were a perfectly normal person, one whom in fact I had come to quite like. He was pleasant, he was courteous, he was well-meaning, he was never intentionally rude and he complied meticulously with any agreements he made. This made him superior to the majority of other individuals who had floated past my life raft on their own particular ocean currents. Certainly, Jeremy was deranged, very seriously deranged, but in all other respects, in his Dr. Jekyll respects let us say, he was perfectly normal. And, to be truthful, I would not even think he were deranged if the feasibility of his being an alien were not such an inconceivable, impossible and ridiculous concept. My neurons would not budge on that one and quite right too.
I was tired, but before crashing out, I typed up and printed a two page document for my visit to the Naviera's bank tomorrow.
DAY 35
My review of this morning's invoices turned up nothing of interest. I wandered around my office and made a leisurely inspection of Alfonso's maritime souvenirs, an old ship's lamp was impressive, and
then I went into town, had a coffee near the Plaça de la Reina and turned up at five to ten at the bank.
The manager was polite and courteous but he was unable to hide the fact that he was worried. He was worried about our loan balances and our maximum use of the expensive overdraft facility. And so, notwithstanding my station in life as an honest person, I lied through my teeth to him. I explained how the company was being turned around, how I had replaced the previous general manager, how he would soon (a delightfully vague and hazy word) be seeing monthly reductions in the amount of our debt, also how the situation in twelve months' time would be such that he would probably be wanting to make additional new loans to us. Ha, ha, create confidence, has to be done.
In the meantime, I continued, elements of the turnaround initiative involved recuperating some of our 40-ton container cargo business and reducing the number of lost transits, and for those purposes we needed a small amount of additional financing to repair the wharf crane in Palma and the top deck of one of the ships. And I handed him my two page document which showed the estimated investment requirements, the additional revenues and profit which would be incrementally generated, and a fairly rapid repayment plan for the additional loan facility.
I now expected a prolonged and difficult discussion. But there wasn't one. There wasn't one because he simply said no. He said it without hesitation and he explained why and he repeated his comments just in case I hadn't understood him the first time. What made things worse, he said that the bank had for some time been having serious misgivings about the financial situation of Naviera Pujol, and would be considering demanding a reduction in the amount of the debt already existing. However, in view of the fact we were a long-standing and traditional customer and in view of the initiatives I had just described to him, they would continue to watch developments for a further period of three months before making a determination. And he wished me every success in my difficult task.
I don't blame him. He was right. And it was fair. He would have had to be mad to have said anything different. I liked him. No beating about the bush, no bullshit, and he communicated in a faultlessly civilized and courteous manner. I liked him enough to stay on for another coffee and discuss the pathetic economic situations created by the elected birdbrains in his country and in the other countries around Europe and around the world. He called in a member of his staff and I signed various forms to have the company's signature and password authorizations changed and I had the signature limits and the dual signatory requirements amended at the same time. And then he had another member of his staff come in and they opened up a personal account for me as well.
Out in the street, the heat was reaching its midday intensity and the shade I found to smoke my cigarette didn't reduce it much, not noticeably anyway. But accustomed as we smokers are to the various sacrifices required to maintain our compulsory nicotine levels, I smoked the thing doggedly to the sweaty end prior to disappearing into a nearby air-conditioned cafeteria for a chicken salad and a glass of cool white wine as a prelude to my return to the office.
I sat in my office chair and I thought about the problems. And then I picked up the phone and called Sr. Pujol. No, he said, there was no possibility of any money for any purpose at all. The only thing the group was doing was to continue subsidizing our negative cash flow in order to ensure the Naviera's operational liquidity for the time being. And the banks, he said, will lend you no more either.
As if I didn't now know. Well, I couldn't blame Sr. Pujol either. His group was lending around €700,000 per month to keep the Naviera afloat until that miracle worker, Peter O'Donoghue, turned it around into a nice cash-generating and financially independent entity. Very good, very pleasant indeed, except for the fact that the miracle worker had absolutely no idea as to how he might achieve that. And maybe he couldn't. And that would be decided within another ten days or so at the most.
A completely unproductive day and so I took a taxi back to the hotel as soon as the first of the employees began to leave. My employees, I should now say, although for how long that would be the case remained to be seen. My hotel was an oasis, a much needed oasis after a day like that. I swam, I had an early dinner and I settled into my lounge chair on the balcony and I became immersed in that book I was reading, Platform.
Jeremy's mobile rang at around 11 p.m.
"Hi, Jeremy. How are things?"
"Things are fine, thank you, Peter. Oh, by the way, since we got the world's leaders together, you are owed the €300,000. I transferred it to you this morning."
Jingle Bells.
"Thank you very much, Jeremy. As it turned out, I didn't have to do much for it. Easy money, for which thank you again. Nevertheless, it might have turned out differently. I suppose we might say that I got paid for the risk of the trials and tribulations to which I might have been subjected. For my readiness, as it were. And that I just got lucky."
"Now that would be a fair enough way to put it, Peter. And I hope you enjoy the spending of it."
"Did you decide on your next and last show?"
"Yes. But not very original, I'm afraid. Frankly, I would have preferred to do something positive, something that millions of people could enjoy and/or benefit from. But I decided against it."
"Why?"
"Because fear is what they understand. We are back to fear again. It is the only emotion which stands even the smallest chance of getting them to agree to start doing something about weapons, population and peace…and to commence the research on how to achieve the necessary biological transmutations."
"Don't tell me that it is going to be another asteroid. Hitting our planet this time perhaps?"
"Yes, it will be another asteroid. Hitting your planet. Without causing harm, needless to say. Except to a few sub-aquatic and cold-blooded creatures. It's boring, I know, but it will create the chance of the shit not only flying but of it also hitting the fan."
"And don't tell me, Jeremy, it's a good idea, if a repetitive one, because you just happen to be aware of something like that which is due to occur anyway in the near future. It coincidentally happens to be a period of considerable activity as far as our solar system's asteroid belts are concerned."
"Well, I do happen to be aware of such an event and it will occur on Monday, as I have informed them. But it is not going to be because of any undue asteroidal activity; it is going to be because some of my colleagues are again arranging for it to happen."
"Do you know what I am thinking, Jeremy?"
"No, but I believe I could make a pretty accurate guess."
"Yes, well, I am thinking that you somehow—don't ask me how—have an extraordinarily advanced knowledge of astronomy and that you are simply in the position of knowing more or less what is going to happen and where."
"And also when, perhaps?" With a smile in his voice. "O.K., as you prefer, Peter. But this one is really fascinating for my colleagues. As usual, they have to perform their normal calculations regarding the asteroid's size, which has to be big enough to produce a massive impact effect, but also small enough to avoid any massive destruction. And this time, because of the unusual characteristics of your atmosphere, they need to work through highly complex computations to calculate the exact approach trajectory required, also the speed and angle of entry, and then what the appropriate size of the asteroid needs to be. They also have to select an object of a specific mineral composition. It mustn't break up too much on its way in nor, indeed, not enough."
“Really?" I said. Is it not amazing what convoluted intricacies this guy was continuously capable of creating in order to support his fabrications.
"And even then," he continued, "they needed additional technical data from me."
"Such as?" I asked.
"They needed to know what the maximum allowable area was which could be affected by the impact without causing harm to human beings, and whether that area was land or water or a mixture, and where the precise center of that area was."
"And so you
told them?"
"Yes, and I gave them the center's exact coordinates."
"And they are?"
"They are 54˚26´S and 3˚24´E."
"And where is that?"
"That is the most remote island on your planet. It is uninhabited and it sits in the South Atlantic and it previously belonged to Britain and now it belongs to Norway. It is called Bouvet Island and it has an area of 49 km2 and it is mostly covered by a glacier."
"And the nearest inhabited land?"
"The nearest inhabited land is the archipelago of Tristan da Cunha which is 2,260 kilometers away. Tristan da Cunha belongs to Britain and is the most remote inhabited island on your planet, although the population consists of only a few hundred people."
"And that is the information you gave to your colleagues?"
"Yes, and now they are performing calculations on matters such as non-dangerous tsunami ranges and so forth. They are, as you say, having a ball."
Well, if anyone was having a ball, it was Jeremy. He must be a pretty good student, I thought, he knows how to do his research. In fact by now, he probably knows more about my planet than I do.
And so we said goodbye. He expected to hear from his professor tomorrow about the ongoing interview agenda and he would give me a call so that we could decide on some mutually convenient dates.
But my neurons were in disarray. They were in total disarray. If this event were to happen, and happen when and where he said it would happen, and if it didn't turn out to be bigger than he thought and destroy us all, well…what then? What would my neurons do? My neurons were in Zugzwang as we chess players say. They were even beginning to reconsider the possibility of an extraterrestrial explanation. And this caused a short-circuit and they shut down in confusion and I fell asleep.
DAY 36
I had brought a suitcase with me today for my stay in Barcelona. I stuck it in a corner, got myself a cup of coffee and began checking the day's invoices. There were only a few, but one of them was a billing for 'monthly fee: consultancy services as per contract'. The amount was for €20,000 but there was no further indication as to what the services were.
I called María into my office and asked her what services we were receiving from this company, 'Gestoría Transbalear S.A.'.
"Well…they perform various different services for us," she said.
"Yes?"
"Well…things like finding new customers. Marketing services. Advice on publicity matters. Er…things like that."
She was nervous and a bit red in the face and I smelled a rat. Or maybe several of them.
"What exactly have they done for us this past month, María?" I asked, "I mean, concretely?"
"Yes, well…it's an ongoing contract and is not based on any precise actions taken in any particular individual month."
I wasn't going to waste any more of my time on this. "I would like to have the name of the contact person, please," I said.
"That is not a problem," she said. "I will get hold of him and have him contact you directly."
"No. I will contact him personally. What is his name?"
She didn't like that. She became extremely nervous, I even saw her hands twitching, and her face had taken on a deep crimson color. There was a pause while she tried to think of which would be the best answer to provide me with, but she failed to find an acceptable alternative to the one she gave me.
"Actually…er…it's Alfonso."
"Alfonso Orfila?"
She nodded.
"The general manager of our company? The one who has just left?"
She nodded again. She definitely looked as if she would have preferred to be somewhere else, Bulgaria maybe.
"And who manages this…gestoría for him, María?" I asked.
Another long pause. Again, no alternatives found.
"Well…he manages it himself," she said.
"Oh, he does, does he? And how many employees does he have?"
This provoked even more discomfort. She now looked as if she would like to be able to disappear through the floorboards, an option suddenly superior to the Bulgaria one.
"Actually…he is the only one," she managed.
"O.K., María," I said. "I will handle this. Thank you."
She stood up and fled from this chamber of horrors, and my neurons reacted with a couple of quick thoughts. Maybe she was in on this obvious fraud. Maybe she wasn't even having an affair with Alfonso, maybe she was just doing the books for his gestoría and typing his invoices and processing the payments for him as well? And receiving a decent fee for doing so? And maybe she was having an affair with him on top of all that, why not? A paid affair, not the first woman on the planet to be doing that. And why not? If I were a woman, I would probably be doing exactly the same thing myself. But I would be doing it at a far higher monetary level than this one, let it be said.
None of which was here or there. Whatever it was would come out in the wash. I picked up the phone and informed Sr. Pujol. I told him we were stopping the payments and that it was up to him to decide whether we should begin the legal process which would most likely send Sr. Alfonso Orfila into jail. He said he would think about it. As for me, I was going to reflect on what to do about María. She would have to go, no question about that, but I would need to find a provable reason to dismiss her without having to pay her any money. Which I would, shouldn't be too difficult. I would look into it when I got back from Barcelona.
At lunchtime, Pedro came into my office. I am astounded, he said. Every single one of our customers, except for two of them who haven't yet replied, say that twice per week is more than sufficient to cover their needs. They have no need for a daily shipment service. I can't understand why Alfonso always insisted that everyone demanded a daily service.
That's O.K., Pedro, I said, you were only 99% sure. And I gave him a broad smile to let him know that I wasn't being serious. It was interesting information, that's for sure, but it didn't tell me what I should now do about it. Mothball one of the ships? And no change in revenues?
In the afternoon I had a meeting with our dockworkers. I explained the company's situation in some detail, exaggerating—probably unnecessarily—the extent of the predicament and I told them that severe and painful cost reductions were unavoidable. Unfortunately these reductions would have to affect all areas of the business including cargo operations. I would like to discuss, I said, the extent to which we could reduce the headcount requirement for loading and unloading our ships.
No, they replied, that is not a matter which is open to discussion. I told them that we had no option. If we could not reduce the number of people handling our cargo, then we would be obliged to reduce the number of times they had to handle it. Another lie, honest person though I am. Bad for them, bad for the company, I continued, but there were no other available options. No, they said, there was no point in discussing it.
Typical communists. They would rather see all of their jobs disappear instead of sacrificing a few to save the rest.
Well, I had tried. I was not really getting anywhere at all; a consultant who could find no solutions. Life is hard, but we shall, of course, plod on for a while.
The captain, Antonio, came to fetch me twenty minutes before departure. I picked up my suitcase and we strolled over to the ship. He showed me to his cabin and when I protested, he said please not, this was tradition, the ship owners' representative always got the captain's cabin, and he was insisting on it. The cabin proved to be little more than a cubbyhole and a fairly humid one at that. It had a dank smell to it and the sheets on the bed felt damp, but I suppose I should have been grateful. Antonio slept here every night for five months on end until he got his month's shore leave. I decided I didn't want to see what the crew's accommodation was like.
DAY 37
The cabin contributed to my spending most of the night on the bridge, despite the Tramontana which started blowing just after midnight, that violent north to north-westerly wind which comes down from the Pyrenees
and not infrequently at storm strength. This made the sea pretty rough and in these ships you knew all about it—they were not cruise ships—but, thank goodness, no storm arrived on this occasion. Which was good news for cowardly creatures such as myself.
It was interesting on the bridge. The radar screen was covered in small dots, most of which at this time of the year were recreational yachts and other small vessels en route from somewhere to somewhere else. The seaman on the bridge had me worried at first. He spent most of his time sitting on a stool watching the television, which was on a table at the rear of the bridge station, in other words he had his back both to the bridge window, if that is what you call it, and to the radar screen. I, however, watched the radar screen like a hawk and called him over whenever one of the dots appeared to be approaching or about to cross the path of our ship in close proximity. He would get up, stare at the screen for a while, say no problem, and go back to his television. In the end I gave up, I was obviously merely annoying him.
And so the ship continued for most of the time on auto-pilot and nothing much happened. Antonio eventually appeared and took over to guide the ship into Barcelona harbor. We docked at around 6 a.m. and Friday had become Saturday.
Antonio took me and my suitcase to a seamen's café and I paid for two of his carejillos as thanks for his hospitality. I personally stuck to cortados, those espresso type coffees with a splash of milk. Around 7 o'clock our Barcelona supervisor walked in. Then there was more coffee while he and I introduced ourselves to each other and talked about this and that. His name was Fernando García Hernandez and he came from Andalusia. His skin was that pleasant permanent tan colour which a lot of Andalusians have. He spoke with his region's dialect (they pronounce most 's's as 'th' and so on). He was a tall, gangly young fellow, smartly dressed and hair glued into place by one of those gel products with which I am not acquainted, and with which I never will be acquainted, thank you very much. I didn't much like him. He struck me as a guy whose job here involved him in minimal work, for which he was—as I had determined from the payroll summary María had given me—overpaid, and which, I surmised, allowed him to lead a happy and enjoyable life in this exceedingly personable city, probably in female company for most of the time. He was, how should I put it, too facile for my liking. All of which might be pure unadulterated crap, sheer invention on my part. Just my initial impressions, is all.
He had nothing of any value to say other than to complain that seventeen dockworkers for ships of this size was ludicrous. He was right about that at least. I asked him to fix up a meeting for me on Monday with the dockworkers' boss. Preferably around midday if possible, I said, I have an insurance company meeting in the morning and a visit to our pallets provider in the afternoon. Shouldn't be a problem he said. And then he drove me to my hotel—a cheap one, I have to set the tone, I am sacrificing myself because of the company's situation, and the rest of them will soon start having to do the same—and I went up to my room and straight into bed to catch up on some sleep.
I slept like a dead rat until Jeremy's phone woke me at three in the afternoon.
"Great news for you, Peter," he said.
"Ah, it's always good to hear something like that, Jeremy. What is it?"
"My professor has communicated that, in view of developments, in view of my practical involvement in this planet's affairs, all further interviews with you can be voided. He said that I am already strongly on track with my research and that my doctorate dissertation is likely to turn out to be an outstanding one."
"Well, Jeremy," I said, politeness to the fore, "I can't say I am sorry about that, much as I enjoy your company."
"I thought you might say that, Peter. I knew you weren't enjoying our meetings at all, relatively short ones though they were. And of course, the fact that there are no more interviews means that all conditions have been met for the remaining €400,000 as per our verbal contract. I will be transferring that amount to your account before the end of the day."
Unbelievable. Unless something went wrong, I would now be receiving a total of €700,000 sometime next week. Which just goes to show that although you would never particularly want to meet deranged persons, let alone have a relationship with them, business or otherwise, there are exceptions to every rule.
"Jeremy, let me say that I appreciate it very much. And let me say also, that because my participation has been considerably more restricted than originally envisaged, you have erred somewhat on the side of generosity."
"Perhaps, Peter. But let me say that your assistance was invaluable. It was concise, it was precise, you triggered the summit meeting and it has benefitted me just as much as if more work had been involved. So…congratulations! Spend some of the money and take good care of the rest! And goodbye for now. Enjoy the asteroid!"
Well what do you do? I mean really. Huge amounts of money. Asteroids all over the place. One of them massively impacting the planet. But hurting nobody. Well, in my case, what you do is you avoid some major foaming at the mouth by closing down the hatch on all neuron functions, you go out to eat in the late afternoon, you drink too much wine and you come back to the hotel and you slide languidly into one of their plush barstools and you sink three of their inferior single malts. Enjoyably, needless to say, even an inferior single malt is still a single malt. And if someone should say that alcoholic abstinence is a good thing, I would reply that I hold the same view, providing, as with many other things, that it is practiced in moderation. And while I was being moderate, I was thinking about the piles and piles of banknotes heading my way and I wallowed non-stop in that glorious and sumptuous feeling I assume most rich people enjoy. Or perhaps they don't, perhaps only some of them do. Rich people, after all, are simply poor people who happen to have a lot of money.
And then I went back to my room, I read my book and I fell asleep waiting for Sunday to arrive.
DAY 38
Which it did. Arrive, I mean. Nothing had occurred to interrupt our habitat’s twirling and spinning around on itself. The day of rest. The day for which Americans have rooms. The day on which, according to certain religions and their various correlated sects, the creator rested after a job well done. A job which apparently required some serious repair work eons and eons later, the success of which each individual has the right to judge for him or herself. This right was provided to us as part of the gift of free will, or so they say, except of course that we are now instructed to be very careful about what opinions we decide to adopt and which of them we decide to broadcast. I personally have nothing against free will. Each and every human judges and thinks differently anyway. Look at the number of hung juries.
The fact that free will also serves as the perfect excuse for blaming the created for everything, rather than the creator, is merely a happy coincidence for those in the know, those peculiarly robed persons who preach this amazing knowledge to the rest of us.
But this was not a day of rest for me. Certainly I had some breakfast, such as it was—no poached eggs, no bacon, and no Chivers in this place—certainly I had a swim in the sea, but not in the pool, the hotel didn't have one—and certainly in the evening I went to a bar, nightclub is possibly a better word for it in view of the ratio of women to men, the prices of their drinks, and the quasi-naked females gyrating around on a miniature stage.
But all of this time I was working. That is to say, I my neurons were working. They were searching and searching and searching for possible solutions to the Naviera situation. And it wasn't until about 10 p.m.—and curiously enough at precisely the moment a female hand removed itself from my inner thigh and began some sensual caressing of that part of me whose reflexive reaction to her ministrations had become unavoidably apparent—that my neurons' bells began to ring. And they rang and they rang and they rang. Joyful, victorious chimes. Which provoked me into ordering yet another of this bar’s single malts—I was drinking one of the Islay malts, a 16 year-old Lagavulin, not bad at all—and the lady got another expensive glass of cham
pagne, or maybe it was a mixture of fizzy water and a cordial, who cares, and, euphoric as I was, I permitted her to continue doing what she was doing until the danger of it becoming a messy business became too great.
She gave me a kiss—on the cheek; never, ever on the client's mouth, they are not stupid—and was already eyeing the room for another frustrated member—no pun intended or required—of the male sex as I paid the bill and pushed my way through the heavy curtains and back out into the street. I took a taxi back to the hotel and went up to my room.
My neurons had come up with the following: I had to take one of the two ships completely off the Barcelona-Palma route and find full-time work for it somewhere else. Easier said than done of course. But nobody, so far as I am aware, has ever maintained that the easy solutions are always the best ones. The other ship would then only do the Balearic run three times per week, but it would be running at full capacity instead of half, so no loss in revenues. And…we would only be paying for three days' dockers' work instead of six. And…the entire costs of the newly non-operational ship and its respective dockworkers' loading operations would disappear until we found profitable work for it again. The savings on fuel, maintenance, crew wages and loading costs alone would go a long way toward solving the company's financial situation in one fell swoop.
I would have to do some exact calculations next week, not that they would affect what now appeared to be an unalterable decision. The aim of course had to be to find regular work again for the newly-idled ship. This would result in a doubling of the company's revenues, or close to it; instead of merely resolving a loss situation, it would catapult the organization into being a highly profitable one. And if we were successful over the next few months in stealing some of the 40-ton business away from our Barcelona-Palma competitors—I would have to investigate how we might go about trying to do that—I could fix up one of the long-term idle ships and put it back into operation. And longer-term, there must be ways for the remaining idle ship to generate full revenues as well. But that would be something for the future, not an item to worry about now.
I thanked my neurons, I thanked them very much indeed. But they didn’t reply, they are not very educated, and I fell into that pleasant world of malt whiskey-induced dreams.
DAY 39
This kind of latitude has a lot to say for it. The sun was shining again, I had no hangover and I took a taxi directly to the insurance company's offices. I had a coffee nearby, there is always somewhere nearby to have a coffee in Spain, I smoked a pre-meeting cigarette, and I entered the company's reception area at approximately two minutes before the appointed hour.
The girl at reception was one of those blonde Catalan women you see quite a few of—I speculated that at some point in history a fair share of the local females were duly raped by invaders or by the foreign powers who happened to be ruling this area at the time, maybe by the Visigoths, maybe by the Habsburgs, maybe by both or maybe by more. Or maybe nobody had raped them, I had no idea. It was mere idle speculation on my part. It filled in the time as she walked me along to the insurance executive's office.
The executive was not as tall as me, but he was tall, and he was a very business-like executive. He had a thick file in front of him on his desk, 'our' file obviously, and he got straight to the point. The insurance claim investigation had necessarily been a prolonged one, he said, due among many things to a question of possible inebriation on the part of the ship's captain and, totally irrespective of that, a question of possible gross negligence in the matter of how and why the ship was driven onto Cabrera's rocks in the absence of any kind of weather conditions which might have been considered a contributory factor.
He paused and looked up from his file. I looked back at him. I knew what he was thinking and I didn't blame him. I was thinking the same.
However, he continued, viable proof on these and other matters had not been forthcoming, at least nothing which would have held up in a court of law. The claim file had therefore eventually been closed in favor of Naviera Pujol S.A. Three months ago in fact. So why wasn't the Naviera informed, I asked, and why hasn't the claim been settled? Ah…he replied, finalization for settlement purposes is also a process which requires a certain amount of time…but you will be pleased to hear that there is de facto no longer anything standing in the way of an immediate and full payment of this claim.
I did not show any elation at this unexpected piece of great news. I didn't show any emotions at all. I knew exactly what it was all about. These insurance companies delay settlement of all and any insurance claims for as long as they reasonably and legally can. At any given point in time they probably have hundreds of millions, maybe more, sitting in interest-earning or dividend-paying assets instead of sitting where they should be sitting, namely in the accounts of their clients. These dividend and interest amounts are simply additional revenues, with no additional cost involved. 100% profit. Of course it doesn't work with clients who stay on the ball and continuously monitor their claim situation and regularly demand written updates of the status. But these are a minority and Naviera Pujol was not among them. And from what I had seen of the Naviera so far, nor would I have expected it to be.
So when do you expect to make the transfer, I asked. Oh, it will be sometime this week already, he said.
And that was the end of the meeting. I thanked him for his time, he thanked me for coming, and I was smoking a celebration cigarette within seconds of hitting the street. A painless meeting, no work involved, hardly any time wasted, and €3.4 million coming our way! Now, this week!
A fantastic piece of luck at last and one I was sorely in need of. I was already working out what would happen to that money. First of all, both the crane and the Mahon Star's top deck would be fixed. Both of these items would create immediate additional revenue potential and the payback would be an unbeatable one, months, not years. I might spend a bit more of the money on some sales and marketing activity to speed up the recuperation of some of the 40-ton container business. And then the remainder would be stashed away in bonds or other income-generating investments.
However, I would not be spending any money fixing our idle ships' engine and dry dock problems before I had worked out how to have them generating revenues. But I would prepare for the eventuality by obtaining two or three quotes for the engine repair in the meantime. And I would not tell Sr. Pujol that we would ourselves be able to cover the next few months' cash flow requirements; let the group continue paying for that until the company, hopefully, became profitable. Yes, this was similar to the insurance company's trick. But business is business; and as in most everything else on this planet, it is the survival of the fittest.
I took a taxi to our dock offices. The Mahon Star, having enjoyed its Sunday day of leisure in port, was being unloaded. The ship's captain, Agustín, was in the office chatting with Fernando about which containers should be loaded onto the lower deck this afternoon. So I said good morning and let them continue and sat down on a chair in the corner to flip through my emails until they had finished. And then my company mobile rang. It was Pedro. María del Carmen had called in early this morning with her resignation, he said. She wouldn't be returning to the office.
More good news! Not a huge item, but all gifts are welcome and will not be returned to sender. “Thank you for letting me know, Pedro,” I said. “We will probably outsource her bookkeeping function and halve the cost at the same time. No panic. Please have Conchita do what she can in the meantime; I expect to be back on either Thursday or Friday and will have a chat with her then. And by the way, Pedro, I said, I urgently need some quotes for a full repair of our crane. As soon as possible. And while we're about it, a couple of quotes for fixing the Mahon Star's top deck. And if you can manage to persuade them at short notice to come and take a look at the work to be done while the ship is in Palma tomorrow, that would be fantastic.”
Another of my mottos: never delay anything unless there is good reason to do so. Cash is still pourin
g out of the window here every day.
“I'll do my best,” said Pedro.
As Agustín stood up to leave, I asked him if it would be possible for me to travel back on his ship on Wednesday night if I needed to. Of course it would be possible for the boss to travel on his ship, he said. I was welcome to travel with him and his crew anywhere and at any time.
Good. I would try to make it on Wednesday. That way both ships' crews would have seen their new boss in jeans and without a tie, and they would also have seen that, in spite of being the boss, he was also a fairly normal guy. Important they think that, irrespective of its veracity.
I drank some coffee with Fernando and discussed which methods might be best to try and recuperate some of our 40-ton business.
And then it was time for the dockworkers' midday break and their much vaunted leader sauntered into our office. The sauntering was accompanied by an aura of surliness typical in uneducated humans of his ilk who, unable to be of much practical use to anyone anywhere, decide to spend their few short decades on the planet reviling and obstructing anything and anybody connected to what they refer to as 'the representatives of capital'. I tend to feel sorry for these poor, unfortunate specimens, half of their brains are missing or, as my father would have put it, 'thee'r all bone from t'neck oop', and so I addressed him as if he were a normal human being.
What is your opinion, I commenced, on the need for seventeen dockers to handle these small-capacity ships of ours. He didn't hesitate. Our opinion is the opposite to yours, he replied. And after making a few unsuccessful attempts to achieve a conversation of any kind, I thanked him for his time and terminated the meeting. It was either that or smash him in the face. But the latter does not form part of my character, and even if it did, I am, as I have previously mentioned, of a cowardly nature and wouldn't attempt it even with somebody less muscular than he was.
Zero success on the dockworkers' front both in Palma and Barcelona. More than a disappointment, those costs were one of our major problems. We would have to listen to some professional advice as to whether we could force the issue legally in any way, and I asked Fernando to find a decent lawyer over the course of the next few days.
I also asked him to urgently contact as many shipping agents as he could and try to fix me up as far as possible with some appointments for tomorrow and Wednesday. I wanted to see if yesterday's brainwave had any chance of becoming reality, or whether it was simply a dream solution born out of ignorance. We have a whole ship, I told Fernando, available for regular container cargo transport. I assume he thought I was referring to one of the ships already lying idle, no need to enlighten him just yet.
In an hour's time I had a not very easy meeting to get through with this pallet rental company. I had some quick tapas and a glass of white wine in a café to which I will never return. No air conditioning, two ineffectual fans in the ceiling futilely stirring the air around and about, and the floor strewn with even more garbage than you usually find in this kind of place in Spain. But worst of all, it was full of modern youth, some whisking away on their mobile screens, others concentrating on typing meaningless text messages, still more of them actually telephoning, shouting as usual in complete disregard for other guests of the establishment and - needless to say - completely ignoring each other at the same time. The Y generation is what it is called, except that I call it the visual display zombie generation, the predecessor to the Z generation. The latter will have chips implanted into their brains at birth, thus voiding the annoying need for today’s pesky hardware requirements: mobile phones, charging cables, T.Vs, desktops, laptops, tablets, google-glasses, video games, the cinema, computer wristwatches, and any other screen activities of which I may be unaware. They will be able to program their own dreams as well, including erotic ones if they wish, thus facilitating their fairly meaningless journeys from birth to death in a way that is not yet possible today.
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