The Man Who Risked It All

by Laurent Gounelle

  The venue of the meeting had been changed at the beginning of the week. An official letter informed us of a new address: POPB, 8 Boulevard de Bercy, in the 12th arrondissement. The location meant nothing to a newly arrived Parisian like me.

  I already knew that Dunker would never forgive me for standing against him. The day after the annual meeting, I would either be CEO of Dunker Consulting or an unemployed ex-recruiter pursued by a half-mad former psychiatrist.

  Fear had gone right to the core of my being.

  The morning of the annual meeting went by very quickly. I reread my speech for the umpteenth time, and then went for a walk to clear my head and lower my stress level. I was in a strange state, with nagging stage fright. As I came out of my apartment building, I saw Étienne under the steps and felt the need to confide in him.

  “I’ve got stage fright,” I admitted.

  “Stage fright?” he said in his rough voice.

  “Yes, I’m going to speak in front of people today, to tell them my vision about certain things, and it’s giving me stage fright.”

  He gazed at the passersby.

  “Where’s the problem?” he said. “I say what I think when I think it, and everything’s fine.”

  “It’s not that simple. I won’t be alone. I’m going to be seen, listened to, judged.”

  “Look, if they’re not happy, too bad! You got to say what you think. Listen to your heart, not your fear. Then you won’t have stage fright.”

  I made myself a light lunch and then switched on a radio news channel. I had just started eating when I was suddenly stopped in my tracks. The journalist had just announced the news headlines at 2:30 P.M. My heart leapt as I checked my watch. It said 1:45 P.M. I ran to the bedroom. The alarm clock there said 2:30 as well! It couldn’t be!!! The annual meeting started at 3:00 P.M.—on the other side of Paris!

  I pulled off my shirt and jeans, threw on a white shirt and my gray suit, and grabbed an Italian tie. It took me three attempts to get the knot in the right place. My shoes were tied up in a flash. I seized the meeting notification and my speech, slipping them into a folder, then tore out of the apartment, slamming the door and rushing down the stairs.

  I hit the street at 2:38 P.M. I’d never make it by 3:00. Hopeless. All that was left was to pray that the meeting wouldn’t start on time. I had to declare my candidacy to the chairman at the beginning of the session. If I missed the boat, I was screwed.

  I ran as I’d never run before and reached the Métro platform, out of breath, just as the doors were about to close. I jumped on the train and, panting like mad, collapsed on a seat opposite an elderly woman who was looking at me wide-eyed.

  I was beside myself. How stupid for my watch to act up on the very day I had no room for error. I spent the whole journey in a terrible state.

  When I came out of the Métro, my cell phone said 3:05 P.M. But was it accurate? I started frantically looking for 8 Boulevard de Bercy. Along either side of the street were huge, grass-covered berms, with openings like gaping mouths cut into the earth at intervals. No street numbers in sight. I was cursed. I ran up to a passerby.

  “Excuse me, where is 8 Boulevard de Bercy, please?”

  “Hey, I don’t know,” he said. “What are you looking for?”

  I got out my notification.

  “POPB. It must be …”

  “Oh, it’s there,” he said, pointing to one of the gaping mouths, which had a giant poster of Madonna displayed beside it. “Don’t panic,” he said. “The concert’s tomorrow!”

  I ran as fast as I could through the gate, waving my notice at a security guard. Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy said a sign. Omnisports Palace of Paris-Bercy. I didn’t know sports stadiums rented out rooms to businesses. Strange idea.

  “Go to reception,” said the guard, pointing to a line of tables with bored-looking, blue-uniformed receptionists sitting behind them.

  I rushed over. “I’m late!” I said impatiently, flashing my notice.

  The receptionist took her time, looking up my name on a list while talking to her colleagues. She began to prepare a badge, fumbling with it as quickly as her long red-varnished nails would permit, then broke off to take a call on her cell phone.

  “Yup, I’ll be finished soon,” she said with a laugh. “Wait for me, because after, I’m going to the hairdresser’s and—”

  “Please,” I interrupted. “I’m very late, and I absolutely must get in. It’s very important.”

  “I’ll call back,” she said, looking daggers at me as she put down her phone.

  She finished writing my name on the badge and held it out to me, nodding her head in the direction I should take. “Over there, second on the left,” she said.

  “Thanks. I don’t know if I should go the same way as everyone else, because I’m”—I could hardly say it—“running for CEO.”

  She looked bewildered, and then dialed a number on her switchboard.

  “Hey, it’s Linda from reception. I’ve got a visitor who says he wants to stand for CEO. What do I do? Yup, OK.”

  She looked up at me. “Someone will come and get you.”

  3:20 P.M. Time went on, and no one came.

  For Christ’s sake, I don’t believe it! I’m screwed.

  I was torturing myself so much with the idea that I was too late that I completely forgot my stage fright. Unwittingly, I had found the antidote.

  I saw him approaching and swallowed hard—our finance director, Jacky Kériel. He came up to the receptionist, who pointed at me. He opened his eyes wide in amazement when he recognized me, then pulled himself together and came over.

  “Monsieur Greenmor?”

  Who else did he think it was?

  “In person.”

  In his surprise, he forgot to say hello. “I’m told you …”

  “That’s right; I wish to run as a candidate for the position of CEO.”

  He remained silent for a moment.

  “But … have you … told Monsieur Dunker?”

  “’That’s not a precondition, according to the bylaws.”

  He stared at me, obviously ill at ease.

  “Shall we go?” I said.

  He seemed to be thinking. Finally, he said, “Follow me.”

  I fell into step, advancing into one of those vast, high-ceilinged passageways found in every sports arena. We walked along for a while, then turned down a corridor watched over by a security guard who nodded to my companion. At the end of the corridor we came to a gray metal door with a red light on above it. I followed the finance director through the door … and had the shock of my life.

  I was on the stage of an enormous hall, filled to overflowing. People were everywhere, seated in tiers in front of me, to the right, to the left, rising to the ceiling. There must be 15 or 20,000 of them, perhaps more.

  I should have been overjoyed. There were enough shareholders to counterbalance the remaining big investor. Henceforth, my fate was in my own hands. But, in my stomach, a ball of anxiety was getting bigger by the second. I was going to have to speak before this immense crowd, and the very idea made me feel like I was going to throw up.

  I suddenly realized that the finance director had continued walking, leaving me behind. I hurried to catch up. We headed to the right side of the immense stage, where there was a long table covered with a blue cloth—the blue of our company logo, which was projected on a huge screen at the back of the hall. At the table, facing the audience, were 10 or 12 people: Dunker in the center, the directors around him, and a few people I didn’t know. Behind them were 50 or so armchairs arranged in rows. I recognized only a few of the occupants, carefully selected colleagues.

  The finance director stood next to Dunker and leaned down to speak to him. I could hear none of their conversation, but it was clear my candidacy was disturbing the order of events. The finance director finally came back and motioned to me to follow him.

  “Go and sit there,” he said, pointing to an armchair that a hefty guy was c
arrying across the stage. To my surprise, the stagehand put the chair down at least five or six yards away from the rest of the group. I was being kept shunted off to one side, as if I had the plague. As I went and sat down, anger rose up in me, an anger that gave me a semblance of courage. And a desire for revenge.

  A few seconds later, one of the strangers at the big table got up and came over to me, introducing himself as the company’s auditor. He asked me for ID and handed me a declaration of candidacy to sign. He then returned to his seat at the table, leaving me alone at the side of the stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.” The voice boomed out of the powerful loudspeakers, bringing silence in the hall. “I’m Jacky Kériel, the finance director of Dunker Consulting. I am responsible for opening our annual general meeting with some legal matters. To begin with, the number of people present …” Droning on, he began reading a long list of figures: ratios, quotas, results, debt rates, self-finance potential, cash flow.

  I stopped following what he was saying and let my eyes and thoughts wander around the hall. I never would have imagined that the drop in the share price would make so many people come to the annual meeting. They must be bitter, anxious, and unhappy. The meeting would no doubt be stormy. I knew, of course, that I ought to be overjoyed at this huge turnout, because it gave me a chance of tipping the vote in my favor, in spite of the remaining big shareholder. But at the moment I could think of nothing but speaking in front of so many people, on this stage where I was so exposed. A nightmare.

  I felt completely overwhelmed by events, out of place. Out of my place. Where was my place exactly? Was I made to fill a position without heavy responsibilities? Perhaps. That certainly seemed more comfortable. But why? It wasn’t a question of educational level; there were too many exceptions at both ends of the spectrum. Was it personality, then? But the directors of the company seemed very different from one another; I saw no typical profile emerge. No, it must be something else. Perhaps our family background unconsciously held us back, if, for example, we aspired to a profession that was clearly superior to that of our relatives. Perhaps we couldn’t quite allow ourselves to outdo them. Or perhaps we couldn’t go beyond the level our parents had intended for us, feeling deep down that to do so would be a betrayal. However probable that might be, it wasn’t certain that climbing the social ladder brought greater personal fulfillment.

  “Now it’s your turn to ask questions, and we’ll do our best to answer them,” I heard the finance director say. “People will be coming up and down the aisles with microphones. Please raise your hand if you want to say something.”

  The question-and-answer session dragged on for a good hour. The directors replied from the table. Some were concise; others were chattier, at times losing themselves in soporific details.

  Finally, it was Dunker’s turn to speak. “And now,” Kériel said, “I’ll turn the meeting over to our CEO, Marc Dunker, a candidate for reelection, who will give us his analysis of the current situation and present his strategy for the future.”

  Dunker got up and walked confidently to the center of the stage, where a podium had been set up. Silence fell over the hall. His speech was clearly much awaited.

  “My dear friends,” he began. “I must first thank you for having come in such numbers. I think it’s a sign of your affection for our company and the interest you have in its future.”

  He was good; I had to admit it.

  “We are in a paradoxical situation: The company has never been in better shape, as is shown by the results my finance director has just presented to you, and yet, our share price has never been so low.”

  His ease and charisma reminded me painfully of my own shortcomings. What would I sound like, coming after such a good orator?

  “The practices that we have been criticized for by the press and by one journalist in particular are nothing out of the ordinary. They are common in our profession and normally no one is offended by them. But, really, I ought to be flattered by this criticism, these attacks. They are the treatment reserved for the great, who are targets for the jealousy of the weak.”

  Not necessarily very clever of Dunker. On which side did the people in the audience see themselves? The great, because they own three shares? Or the little people, characterized as weak?

  “Unfortunately,” Dunker continued, “I have to face the facts. The origin of this disorder, apparently, is an informant inside our company, who has passed these slanderous accusations to journalists, who have had a field day with them. There is a traitor in our ranks. His harmful actions have upset our company’s share price and have jeopardized your savings. But here, before you, I promise to find who it is and drive him out as he deserves.”

  At that moment, I wished I could teleport elsewhere, disappear into thin air. I made an effort to look impassive, while underneath, I was seething with a frightful cocktail of shame and guilt.

  A wave of applause spread through the audience. Dunker was succeeding in shifting the anger of the small investors onto a mysterious scapegoat, while he passed himself off as a protective leader who was going to give them justice.

  “Soon it will all be no more than a bad memory,” he went on. “Even cyclones don’t stop the grass from growing back. The truth is that our company is in full development and our strategy is winning.”

  He went on in this self-satisfied way, asserting the validity of each of his strategic choices, going through them in detail and expressing his desire to continue them in the future.

  He finished to the applause of the directors and the guests, soon followed by a fair share of those in the hall. Dunker waited until they were silent and then continued speaking in a relaxed tone. “It turns out that we have a last-minute candidate for CEO. A slightly fanciful candidate, shall we say.”

  I sank down in my chair.

  “The candidate is a young man who happens to be an employee of our company. A young recruit, I ought to say, since he’s only been with us for a few months. He joined our firm directly from the classroom.”

  Laughter in the hall. I sank down a little farther.

  “I nearly dissuaded him, to avoid wasting your time, then I said to myself that after going through these difficult moments on the stock exchange together, it would do us good to be able to smile together.”

  Snickering could be heard in the hall, as Dunker calmly returned to his seat, wearing a satisfied smile.

  I was appalled at his shameful remarks. It was lousy of him.

  He slowly turned his head in my direction, briefly giving me a contemptuous look.

  Dunker had barely sat down when the finance director took the microphone and said, “So now I invite our second candidate for the position of CEO, Monsieur Alan Greenmor, to speak.”

  I swallowed hard while my stomach tightened as never before. I felt weighted down in my seat, cast in a block of cement.

  Go on. You must. You’ve no choice. Get up!

  I made a titanic effort to stand up. All the directors had turned in my direction, some of them with mocking smiles. The guests were staring at me as well. I felt alone, terribly alone, so oppressed I found it hard to breathe.

  My first steps to the podium were the most painful. Carrying the sheets of paper with my speech, I crossed the stage toward the vast audience. If only they would turn off the lights in the hall, leaving just the footlights. Then I wouldn’t be able to see the thousands of unknown, mocking faces looking at me as if I were an animal at the zoo.

  I reached the podium at last. As I placed my speech on the lectern and adjusted the height of the microphone, my hand was shaking, and my heart was beating as if it was ready to burst. I could feel the blood rushing to my temples. I absolutely had to refocus before I started. Breathe. Breathe. I mentally reread the first sentences of my speech. Suddenly it seemed bad, unsuitable, off balance.

  Far off in the rows of spectators, right up at the top, a voice shouted, “Come on kid, out with it!” immediately followed by hundred
s of scattered snickers.

  It’s painful when two or three people make fun of you. When there are 300 or 400 of them with 15,000 witnesses, it’s unbearable. It had to be stopped. In a wild desire to survive, I gathered my strength and threw myself into the water.

  “Good afternoon.”

  My voice, powerfully amplified by the loudspeakers, seemed hollow.

  “My name is Alan Greenmor.”

  “Tell us more,” a wit called out, setting off another wave of laughter, louder than the first. The problem was spreading.

  “I am a consultant in recruitment, which is the core of Dunker Consulting’s business. I have come here today to introduce myself as a candidate … “

  No good. It doesn’t sound right.

  “ … for the post of chief executive officer. I am aware of the heavy responsibilities that go with the position.”

  On my left, a mocking voice called out, “You already look crushed!” A new outburst of laughter. The machine was speeding up. Prepared in a Machiavellian way by Dunker’s derisive words, egged on with his tacit permission and given his blessing, the small investors were being unleashed. I had been thrown to them; they were going to make mincemeat of me.

  To be the laughingstock of the audience was the worst thing that could happen to me. The worst. It destroyed my credibility, crushed all hope. I would have preferred hostility to mockery. Hostility pushes you to react, mockery to run away. I wanted to disappear, to be anywhere else, but I absolutely had to stop this. Immediately! Anything, as long as they stopped making fun of me.

  Impelled by the gravity of the situation, which was getting worse by the second, terrified at the idea of being booed by the whole audience, and gripped by shame, I forgot my speech, my notes, even my own best interests and looked up at the tiers of faces where the laughter was multiplying in response to my silence. I looked straight at this audience totally devoid of compassion. Meeting the mocking eyes, I finally brought my lips so close to the microphone that they touched the cold metal.