Days 361 and 362 – Writing exercise

A member of a group in a remote location during a team bonding camp goes missing

…

My job was not an easy one.  Working in HR for a family-run business, a particularly successful one, brought with it specific challenges.

Over the years, working for the grandfather, then the father and his brother, had its moments, but they were all successful and influential.  They earned respect and rewarded loyalty.

But, moving into a different world, a vastly different economic climate and commercial challenges brought on more aggressive competition, as well as a new generation, it wasn’t quite the same as it had been in the past.

I was an anachronism from a different generation.  My contemporaries had moved on, and between the Managing Director and me, we were the last two to hand over the reins to a younger generation.

The boss to his son, Chester Wordsworth Moseby III, and me the the Assistant HR Manager, Walter James, who was not my son.

I just had to survive until the end of the annual team bonding exercise, which was designed to strengthen the working relationships of the top management group, and had been for the last ten years.

It was staged on an Island paradise, a place that could also be hell on earth depending on the package purchased, and ours was for various teams to be dropped in different parts of the island, and the ‘teams’ work together to get back to base.

A simple exercise for each team if they work together.  Three days maximum.  And in the ten previous events, not a single problem, though it did identify those who were not necessarily ‘team players’.

That, I suspected, was not going to be the case this year, a fear I kept to myself because the one reservation I had and communicated to the boss had been heard and dismissed.

It made me wonder, briefly, if I was being overly cautious, and I decided that it soon wouldn’t be my problem.

…

Even so, I was one of those people who worried about consequences, and one who knew that little things mattered.

Little things, such as reports that didn’t find their way to my desk, little things that subordinates filed away, doing what they were told rather than what was expected of them.

And finding out about some of them quite by accident, a week before the event.  Disquieting, but pointing to a planned action by a certain individual which, if allowed to continue, would have consequences for the company.

I had done my duty of care, and it was noted, if ignored.  I pondered the situation for three days before I decided to take action.

It would be my last act for the company.

It led to two actions.

The first was a phone call.  I was sitting in the park opposite the company headquarters building, where I had been every day for nearly the last 45 years, and where I first met the woman I eventually married.

A surly voice on the other end answered.

“David.  What are you doing for the next two weeks?”

“Dad?  Why?”

“I have a little job for you and three of those interesting friends of yours.”

“What have you done?”

“Nothing.  Well, perhaps something, but I think you’ll like it.”

He sighed.  He had told me that all he wanted to do was relax.  This was almost as good.

“OK, what kind of mess have you made now?”

The second was an invitation to a picnic lunch.

I had been watching a young woman, Millie, climb slowly through the ranks, battling a corporate mentality that favoured men over women, and it had been getting better until the father announced his retirement, and the son assumed some of the responsibility.

Unlike his father, he was no judge of character and certainly didn’t promote on merit.

But that wasn’t the only problem with the new wave of management.  The son was in trouble, and had been for a long time, and being the only son, he had traded on indulgent parents.

He had a bad history with women, outside of the company, with his relationships, each foundering, I suspect, when the women in question discovered his character, or lack of it, and then dealings within the company.

That disdain had landed on Millie, the latest in a line of women he had tried to date and failed.  She had, like others before her, complained, but those complaints never reached me, and the one I’d found was by accident.

And then it didn’t take long to find the test, the pattern, and the enablers.  Like I said, it was going to be my final act.

The girl who had first arrived seven years ago was shy, but intelligent, unworldly, yet had a manner about her whose qualifications were impeccable and a work ethic the father looked for in his employees.

The father also thought her the ideal wife for his errant son.  That, I’d told him, would never happen.  The son tried and failed led and then did something stupid.

It’s how he got on my radar.

She sat at the other end of the bench and looked far from the young woman she had become.

“I got your letter of resignation,” I said.  “I can’t say I’m surprised.  Now that I know the truth.  I’m just a little disappointed you didn’t trust me.”

I could understand.  She didn’t know what my situation was, or where my loyalty lay.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t know who I could trust.”

“Trust has to be earned.  And to do that, I have a job for you.  It might go pear-shaped because we’re dealing with an unstable entity.”

“Chester?”

“At least we agree on that, then.”

“If you knew…”

“Suspected, because I didn’t have the previous complaints.  You’re not the only one who now has trust issues.  I’m sorry you had to endure what happened, but it isn’t going to stop unless we do something about it.”

“How?  The entitled son of a bitch had been allowed to get away with it for too long.  His friends are everywhere.”

I looked around.  “They’re not here, now.  And where he’s going, not so many.  Top management, only this year, people of my choosing.  A place where he cannot leave until I say he can.  A place where anything can happen, and probably will.”

“Give me a gun.”

“You kill him, you will have to go to jail.  Sorry.  I can’t condone murder.  But a lesson, a very tough lesson, might work.  The thing is, I need your help, but if you prefer not to, that’s fine.  I’ll make sure you get a glowing reference and suitable compensation.  But if you stay, and help me…”

“There isn’t really any upside…”

“Just think about it.  Please.”

…

It was stifling on the island, particularly out on the field.  There was shelter, if you knew where to look, and food.

There was a day of basic training, which, if you were smart, you listened and learned, just in case you got disoriented, lost, or injured.

Those who didn’t get what they deserved.  Humiliation when they had to be rescued.  People thought that because it was an island, it would be easy to get back to the main camp.

It was not.  The island was bigger than it looked, especially when arriving in the corporate jet.  From 20,000 feet, it looked small.

When the teams were delivered to their drop-off point, the helicopters stayed at tree height, and moving so fast was disorienting, so players did not get a sense of direction or any landmarks to find their way back.

They didn’t get one compass and a heading.  They got food for three days, rations and water each.

Four teams of six, each with a chain of command that was supposed to work together.

The other team, well, it went exactly as I expected.

Chester’s team was different.  Chester, his cousin, a yes man, the CFO, who hated him, the Administration manager, who was indecisive, Millie, who finally agreed to go, and Eileen, a senior PA, an outdoors adventuress.

On paper, it was the strongest team.

Three days later, the other three teams were home and luxuriating in the spa before attending a banquet.

Chester and his cousin, Walter, were in two separate cages, the sort American soldiers captured in Vietnam by the Viet Cong were held, the CFO and Administration manager were being escorted to another camp where they would be ‘interrogated’, and Millie and the adventuress were exploring the island with a guide.

The adventure of a lifetime package.  It went for a week.  Long enough to terrorise Chester over crimes he did not commit, but didn’t know that.  They were getting the prisoner-of-war package.

So was I, for all intents and purposes.

Chester thought for all of ten seconds that I had come to save him.

“Richards, thank God.  Pay them whatever it takes and let’s get out of this shithole.”

I thought the theatrics were brilliant.  My clothes were torn, blood stains on my shirt and a headband that belied a whack from the butt of a rifle.  Certainly, my handling in front of him was rough.

“What did you do to piss these people off?”  I growled, the manner of a man not happy about his situation.

The man behind my shilling me in the back with his rifle barrel, just hard enough to hurt, said, with anger and feeling, “You’re wasting your time with this piece of shit.  Chucked two women in the river.  Drowned them.”

My cage was next to his.  I was shoved in the door closed.

“You killed them?  Why?”

“What do you mean, I killed them.  They fell in the river, and I tried to save them.”

I’d reviewed the video footage.  There had been an argument at the drop-off zone, which was near the River.  The Adventuress had suggested they follow the river, Chester said they were dumb bitches who knew nothing, Millie said they were supposed to be a team, and then Chester shoved both women into the river, telling them they could follow the river … from within it.

Unexpected, but every eventuality had been covered.  David and his team rescued them from the river.  A day later, they picked up the others, split then, and brought Chester and Wally to the cages, then contacted me.

“We’ve got video.  They fished two bodies out of the river a day later, and they’re in the process of calling the authorities.  You’re going to be charged with murder.  If we get off this island.”

“Murder?  That’s ridiculous.”

“That as may be, but I got the call, brought a million bucks ransom, and here I am.  They took the money and now want five million.  This isn’t going to end well.”

“Not if you pay them.”

“You don’t get it.  We pay, the person paying becomes a prisoner, and they demand more.  There is one other small problem: we don’t pay, they started executing prisoners.”

He snorted.  “World’s dumbest kidnappers.  You kill the hostages, how do you get paid?”

Not as dumb as he looks, then.

…

It took 10 days to break him.

When he was brought back to the main camp, a shadow of his former self, his father was there to meet him.

He had been reviewing the interrogation tapes, where bragging had been replaced by bluff, blustery and then the truth.

It wasn’t pretty, and his father couldn’t believe that his son could be that reprehensible.  Until he realised the truth.

Needless to say, I didn’t get the reception I expected, but I guess it was, in the end, for the greater good.

He was astonished to find that Millie was still alive, not only alive but so much better for her experience.  She was still close to leaving because she believed a leopard would never change its spots.

In the back of my mind, she was probably right.

As for the rest, only Wally left.  The experience had destroyed him.  And I doubt he and Chester would ever speak again.

Chester’s enablers at the company were fired, and Chester did not move into the top job, not for five years.  Nobody ever found out what happened on the island, where he had been held or by whom.  Only Millie and I knew that, and she never told anyone.

It wasn’t a surprise that some years later, she married David, and I got to see her and my grandchildren every year on the island until I was too old to travel.

Chester eventually died in a car accident, rather conveniently making an investigation into commercial malfeasance on his part go away, but sadly wrapping up the company’s 145-year history.

It was always going to happen; they could not weather the foreign import storm, and hadn’t diversified fast enough to keep the company afloat.

As for that fateful team-building event, what happened died with me, the report Chester’s father had asked me to write never saw the light of day, and now, well, it was just folklore, a day that was commemorated as the day Chester grew up.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025