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Kane was in a very difficult position.

It was not for the first time, but this time was significant because he had basically agreed in principle to vote for both sides.

And, when he realized what had happened, he had, depending on how you looked at it, been tricked.

Not good for someone who was well respected by both sides, and whose vote would count towards picking up those who were undecided.

That was just pointed out to him by Amy, his personnel assistant, the moment he arrived back in the office.

He leaned back in his chair and stared at a point just past her head, a copy of a painting by one of the old masters, still an object of beauty.

“So, when did Cheney change sides?” He asked, dragging his attention back to the problem in hand.

He suddenly realized what had happened, and it was a well thought out scheme.  Cheney had always been on board with the Board’s recommendation until he accepted Kane’s invitation to come to a meeting that would attempt to explain why the board’s recommendation was wrong.

He should have been skeptical of Cheney’s sudden change of mind, and then of the discussions he had attended with Cheney’s allies, with the objective of changing their minds too.  In fact, he had left with the impression he had persuaded them, saying, in essence, they should all vote against.

Seeing Cheney that morning with the leader of the group agreeing to vote for the motion, should have set off alarm bells.  The phone call from Williams, the head of the group voting for the board’s recommendation, saying he was pleased that Kane had finally seen ‘the light’ as he called it, had been interesting, to say the least, especially when he mentioned in passing, how very much the board appreciated Kane’s confidence in them.

He had done no such thing.

Instead, Cheney had put him on the spot, and his words were now being taken out of context.

“This morning.  I just got word from Ellie, who told me he had a breakfast meeting with Jacobs and Meadows. She said he came back looking very pleased with himself.”

Jacobs was the chairman of the board and Meadows was the CEO who was pushing the new plan, which would break up, and sell-off, or disband, the underperforming divisions of the company.  By having Meadows in attendance, Jacobs could basically offer Cheney anything he wanted.

And top of his list was my division.

“Yes, and I think we can guess why.  He wants this division.  Of course, if they gave it to him, it would not be the magic bullet he thinks it will be.  Nor would it line the shareholders, and therefore the board members pockets as it has in the past.”

“Is this situation the proverbial double-edged sword?”

“It depends.  I doubt you could quit out of dissatisfaction with a crappy board decision.  I doubt anyone could in the current financial climate.  But you won’t have to worry.  It might mean going back to the pool for a while if you don’t want to work with Cheney.”

“No problem there.  Ellie had already told me my days are numbered.”

Understandable.  Ellie and Amy had put themselves forward for the role of Jake’s personal assistant, and Ellie had tried very hard to convince him Amy was not suitable for a variety of reasons, none of which he found valid, and appointed her.  Ellie was not one who forgot or forgave easily.

Although he didn’t like denigrating anyone, he had said more than once to Amy, both Ellie and Cheney suited each other.  Neither cared who or what they destroyed to get what they wanted.

“Then it looks like you and I are heading for the scrap heap.”

“Sounds like an excuse for a long lunch.”  She smiled.  For a woman who was about to lose a dream job, she was in remarkably good spirits.

“Ask me again in an hour.  I have a few things to do.”

“Call in some favors, maybe?”

People didn’t rise in a company over several decades without making friends, making enemies, and stumbling over information which may or may not be used depending on circumstances at the time.  He had a few interesting tidbits in his arsenal, but whether he would use them or not wasn’t uppermost in his mind.

“We’ll have to see.”

Jake watched her leave, and, not for the first time, he wondered what life with her might be like.  He had never married, but had, for a number of years had a more or less relationship with the Chairman’s daughter, before she broke it off.  He suspected the Chairman had instigated it given the number of times she had tried to contact him since parting.

That door had closed. As for Amy, she had a husband who was a member of the armed services and had been killed in Afghanistan.  She had weathered that event and finally come out the other side of some very dark days, some of which he had witnessed personally, and tried to help where he could.  But was she up to dipping her foot into the dating thing.  He wasn’t prepared to ask.  Not yet.

He sighed and picked up the phone.  It was time to call Jacobs.  It was the day I knew he would be in his office, not at the factory site where we all were housed, but in the top floor of a prestigious building in the city, twenty miles away  You could call it an ivory tower, but the board did oversee the functioning of seven different and diversified companies.

Some time ago they had called for ideas on how to integrate a lot of the similar processes of those diversified companies, but in the end, they had paid a ‘crony’ a million dollars for an unworkable plan, and it had not gone any further.  Now, the conglomerate was bleeding cash, someone had come up with a new, knee jerk, plan.

Jacobs was surprised to hear from him.

“I was told,” he said, “everyone is now on board.”

“They probably are.  It’s just that it is no longer a problem for me.  You’ll have my resignation on your desk by close of business.”

That statement was met with silence.  Stunned, or was it smug satisfaction.  He had always viewed Kane as a thorn in his side.

“Is that really necessary?”

“I think you know why, and whatever the plan was, it has backfired.  I don’t need the job, nor do I need the aggravation of scheming and plotting.”

“I think you’re making a mistake, but let’s be very clear about this, you leave, there’s no coming back. If I were you, I would consider my position very carefully.”

Interesting reaction.  The only conclusion from his reaction was that the thorn was now removed.

I expected just such a reaction.

Now, for the next job.  Kane went down to the factory floor and called in all the production managers.  Like himself, he knew most of them didn’t really have to stay, some could retire, some could go into business by themselves, most could walk into another job, even a better job, the next day.

Kane left that meeting a half-hour later, telling them the decision to stay and work under Cheney, a man none of them liked, was their decision but he was moving on.

He called Amy, asked if she had sent his resignation letter, which she had, and to pick the restaurant for lunch, the more expensive the better, and that he would pick her up outside the front of the office block.

For Kane, it was the 107th day of what he called the rest of his life.  He was woken by the sun streaming in through the window of his hotel room.  He had reached Singapore and had been told that Raffles Hotel was the place to stay.

He agreed.  Old but new, the place just reeked of nostalgia.

The figure beside him stirred, opened her eyes, and smiled.

“Good morning, Amy.”

“It is a good morning, isn’t it Kane?”

Over lunch that fateful day 107 days ago, he took the chance of asking her if she would be interested in dating him.  Nothing heavy, no strings, he would understand if she thought it inappropriate.

She didn’t think it was inappropriate, just wanted to know why it had taken him so long.

The had got married in Rome, 42 days ago, in a quaint little church, and after a week, moved to Venice for the honeymoon.  They hadn’t set a limit on how long it should be.  There was no reason to go back.

Of course, just when it’s least expected, the phone would ring.  His cell phone.  It was the first time in months.

“Hello?”

He was surprised it was Jacobs.  He’d followed the fortunes of the company he had abruptly left, as it tried to implement the plan that Cheney and his ‘friends of the board’ had voted for.  One problem after another; in three months the stock value of the parent company had lost 90% of its value.  As Kane had expected, every one of his management team resigned the day after, knowing full well, once Cheney was installed as manager, the transition would fail.

Now, faced with hostile shareholders, a corporate watchdog investigation, someone had to turn around the company’s fortunes or it would slide into liquidation before the week was out.

“It seems that we have serious problems implementing the restructure.  We have made some mistakes, but I think if I could tell the receivers that we have a plan and you would be heading up a new management team, we could save the company and all of the employees.”

The 2,500 left.  They should have left well alone, and the whole 8,000 that had been there the day Kane left would still be employed.

The Board and upper management would do well out of the company going under.  The staff, well, they always lost.

“I’m sorry to hear that.  Now, if you don’t mind, I have business to attend to.  Goodbye.”

I turned the phone off and put it back on the bedside table.

“Who was that?”

“Someone from another lifetime.  Now, where were we?”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

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I never did take advice very seriously.  Especially when they were issued by old man Taggard, a man of some mystery that we all, adults and children alike wanted to know about.

Everyone in the street knew him as he had lived in the almost derelict mansion at the end of the cul-de-sac forever, way longer than anyone else in the neighborhood had.  In fact, it was rumored he had owned all the land around and sold it off bit by bit over time, the reason why there were so many houses of varying age in the estate.

Ours was one of the older houses, a few doors up from it.  We were close enough to observe Taggard’s habit, like sitting gon the porch on an old swing chair in the afternoons, to the late-night wanderings in the street.  Some said he was accompanied by the ghost of his long-dead wife, which led to stories being told of the house he lived in being haunted.

As children, we had been brought up on a diet of TV shows such as ‘The Munsters’ and ‘The Addams Family’, and had invented our own make-believe show called ‘The Taggard Mansion’, the house with ghosts, and the neighborhood center for strange goings-on.

And as children were wont to do, we had to ‘investigate’.

There was a ‘gang’ even though we didn’t refer to it as such, about seven of us who lived in nearby houses, and all of whom had very active imaginations.  We also met in the cubby house out the back of our house to plan forays to find out whether the rumors were true.  The thing is we never got very far as he seemed to know when we were sneaking in and scared us off, so for years, the rumors remained just that, rumors.

But as grown-ups, and by that I mean, middle teens, our plans became bolder and more sophisticated, based on a whole new breed of TV shows, where the seemingly impossible was no longer that.  And Andy Boswell, my older brothers best friend, his father was a private detective, or so he told us, and he had managed to ‘secure’ some of his father’s tools of the trade; a camera on the end of a wire that could connect to a cell phone, a listening device that could hear through walls, and in-ear communicators.  We could now, if we were close enough, see under doors, and hear if anyone was in.  We could all keep in touch, though I couldn’t see how this would help.

But a plan was formulated.  All seven of us had a role to play.  My brother Ron and Delilah, his girlfriend, were taking point, whatever that meant, Andy and I were going to take point, while Jack, Jill, and Kim were going to run distraction.  The theory was, they’d make enough noise to keep the old man occupied chasing them.  No one had been inside the house, ever.  Andy and I were going to be the first.

Andy had drawn up a plan and it was up on the wall.  He had charted the house, and had a very accurate picture of the house’s footprint, where doors and windows were, likely entrance points, including a hatchway down into what he assumed was a basement, though he preferred to call it the dungeon, and a layout of the grounds.  Apparently under the undergrowth were paths and gardens, even a large fountain that once graced the grounds of the three-story mansion made of sandstone, and built sometime during the middle of the 1800s.

Andy had done some research, mostly from old newspapers, and also discovered that the old man had once been married, they had a half dozen children, three of whom had died, the others scattered around the world.  It explained why no one ever visited the place.

The distraction team would be going in through the front gate, easy enough because it had come off its hinges and just needed a shove to open.  The old man usually emerged from the house via the driveway, or what was once a drive that cars could enter one side of the property, stop under a huge canopy, and emerge on to the road further along.  But it’s overgrown stare, the width of the pathway was now about six feet.  The fact it was once an amazing feature was the roadside lights, now all but disappearing behind the undergrowth.

Andy had found a photograph in the paper of it, and it had looked magnificent, as had the gardens, the overhanging canopy, and all the lights.  To think such magnificence was now lost.  And having seen it for what it once was, it was not hard to imagine any number of scenarios, my favorite, rescuing a damsel in distress from the tower.  Yes, it even had a tower, two, in fact, at each end of the house.  My brother always said I had an overactive imagination.

Andy and I would be going in by the less used car exit, and heading for the left side of the building where Andy said was several floor to ceiling windows that looked to him like French doors.  Of course, none of us knew what French doors were, and my brother cut Andy short when he tried to explain.

Failing that, there was a door at the rear that seemed to be open, and we’d try that next.  We would get into position, advise the distraction team, and the operation would be a go.  The only debate was what time of the day were we going to do it.  My brother preferred late in the afternoon.  Andy said it was better at dawn, or soon after if we were looking for maximum confusion of the target.

Dawn, confusion, tactics, target, Andy was in his element.  He was going to be a spy when he grew up.  My brother said he would never grow up, but then, my brother said I was a dreamer and would never amount to anything.  We ignored his advice, well, we pretty much ignored everything he said.

We were going in at dawn.

At 5 a.m. on Saturday morning, we gathered at the cubby house ready for action.  We all took a communicator and put it in our ears, and then had fun saying stupid stuff, and hearing it through the earpieces.  It was weird but added an exciting element to the adventure.  I know my heart was beating faster in anticipation.  Andy was pretending to be cool and failing.  I suspected my brother and Delilah had other plans when we left them alone in the cubby house.  The distraction team was ready to go.

Shortly after the sun came up, it was cool and the air still.  It was going to be a hot day, and that first hour, everything was almost perfect.  It seemed a waste to do anything but let the early morning serenity settle over us.  Not today.  Andy and I went to our position, slowly feeling our way through the bushes, taking bearings from the light poles, and every now and then seeing the guttering and what looked to be a concrete path.  Beyond that was once a garden, and I tried, more than once, to imagine what it was like.

In my ear I could hear the others in the distraction team setting up at the start of the driveway, ready to go.  We reached our position, about twenty feet from the so-called French windows, the view into the house blocked by curtains, but beyond that, what we could see was darkness inside the house.  Taking in the whole side of the house, there were no lights on behind any of the windows.  If we didn’t know better, we could have assumed the house was empty.

I heard Andy say, “Ready.  Start making noise.”

A minute later we could both hear the distraction team in the distance and through the communicators.  It took two minutes before we heard the old man, yelling, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”  Their job done, getting him out of the house, all they had to do was retreat.

Time for Andy and I to go.

Working on the basis that no one else was at the house, and the fact we had no evidence there was, we were not overly worried about making a stealthy approach.  I could hear in my earpiece, the gasping of those in the distraction team having just made it outside the gate, and to tell us the old man had stopped at the gate.  I doubt he had been running, but his yelling was just as effective.

That had stopped, and a sort of silence fell over the area.

We were now at the French doors, and Andy produced another tool that he’d forgotten to tell us about, a lock pick.  The fact it didn’t take long to unlock the door told me he was either very talented, or the lock was old and presented no problems.  Either way, he opened the door and ushered me in.

I brushed the curtains aside for him to follow, then moved in as he followed, closing the door behind him.

I’d taken five steps before I heard a woman’s voice say.  “Uncanny good luck shines upon me.  My knights in shining armor.  You’ve come to rescue me, no?”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2021