The Project Manager

by Terry Connolly

  It was an uneventful trip back. After two days of debriefings and meetings in Houston they both boarded a transatlantic flight to Belgium. Hong became quieter and quieter the closer they got to their final destination. Their flight arrived a little early. By the time they got through passport control, picked up their luggage, and grabbed a taxi at the airport, she could barely keep a conversation going beyond one word answers. John wrapped his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “Relax, I’ll be there right beside you, Abby is going to like you.”

  She turned her head and looked into his eyes. Hers were wet with held back tears. “It’s not Abby I’m scared of, it’s your parents.”

  This took John by surprise. His parents were relaxed and pretty easy going. Sure they had been strict when he was younger but they had mellowed with age. It never crossed his mind that anyone would be afraid of them. “That’s ok too, I know they’ll like you, I’ve told them so much about you that they are really looking forward to finally meeting you.”

  The tears she was holding back were released, “meeting me? That’s the problem, they won’t be meeting ME, they’ll be meeting your girlfriend, they’ll be meeting Sophie all over again.”

  He held her even tighter. No wonder she had been trying not to think about this trip. John wondered what to do, being an engineer he had never been comfortable in these situations, but then again who is? In French he asked the taxi driver to change destination, there was a café about 5 minutes’ walk from his parents place.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise. We won’t rush there; I’ve asked the taxi driver to drop us off a little before.”

  “Thank you,” she managed to sniffle, “at least I can clean up a bit. I must seem silly.”

  “I would probably look the same in your situation. I feel like a right idiot. They’re not expecting us for another hour anyway.”

  They got out of the taxi and the driver helped them bring their bags to a table underneath the dull red awning of the café. He remembered it being bright red with window boxes filled to overflowing with the flowers of the season. It had not aged well since John was last here ten years ago, but then again he thought, neither had he. With two coffees on the way, John took Hong’s hands and looked her straight in the eye, “it’s almost seven years since Sophie died, and yes my parents loved her, but they will love you just the same, because I love you.”

  “They will compare me to her though, even if they don’t say anything.”

  “There’s nothing you or I can do about that, but trust me, they will love you too, and perhaps all the more since you have helped me move on.”

  “Move on from what? Surely getting revenge on people we both know killed her is what has helped you move on, it’s how we met after all.”

  “I won’t say that didn’t help. Watching Ephrem Resources struggle day by day as it is taken over gradually by its competitors is a pleasure, but that night when we first kissed, when I handed over the data to you, that night I made peace.”

  “You still miss her though don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do, but now it’s more like missing an old friend. Every time I see Abby I see a little bit of Sophie. Before I wanted revenge for my love that had passed, now I want a future for the new loves in my life.”

  “Also you’re nearly fifty, you’re getting old and sentimental,” Hong gave him a soft kick under the table.

  “You know I love you, don’t you?” asked John.

  “Yes, I do. Maybe if we had met a few years earlier we could have had a daughter of our own.”

  “If’s and maybe’s, life is full of them. Who would have outfitted that lump of rock we call home then?”

  “Someone else.”

  They moved their chairs beside each other and sat there a little longer. They were a little sleepy, their jetlag wasn’t bad but neither of them had slept during the flight.

  The sun came out briefly from between the semi-permanent Belgian cloud cover and a brief gust of wind blew the receipt off their table. Hong looked at it through the tiredness that was beginning to cloud her sight, the sun warming her skin. “John?”

  “hum mm,”

  “Will the next generation have this? Sunshine and cafés.”

  John thought for a second, “thanks to you they will. They can grow coffee beans in the garden can’t they?”

  “Some, so they can have coffee as a treat. That’s not what I mean though, sure I can feel the breeze from the ventilation shafts and the sunshine from my lamps, but it’s controlled. Will they have gusts of wind that blow things away, chaos creating opportunities?”

  “I love it when you get philosophical. I guess they will. We’ve planned for so much already, but we can’t plan for day to day chance.”

  “I hope you’re right.” They sat there in silence for a little while longer.

  “Ok,” said Hong, “I’m ready.”

  The five minute walk to John’s parent’s house was more like ten with their luggage. They didn’t have many cases but it was awkward on the bad pavement. Their house, like all the diverse architecture of Brussels, both fitted in and yet quite didn’t. Its clean lines boasted the confidence of the early 1930’s, of a future that didn’t come to pass. The hugs and kisses happened when Abby answered the door. She had her mother’s features more than John’s. For a ten year old she was tall and seemed to be full of energy. Valerie and Henri Peeters bore a striking resemblance to their son, though they were now in their early seventies. They still seemed full of energy; John assumed it was because having a child around helped make them feel young. He was painfully aware of their age. Soon it would be too much for them to have Abby living with them all the time so boarding school was to be the preferred means of education. John had the money to pay for the best, he never did buy that Italian sports car, it bought two years tuition at a top international school in Luxembourg. He earned comfortably enough now to secure her future. If she wanted to apply for a place on the Zheng He when she turned eighteen then at least she would have all the best opportunities John could offer her.

  There was the usual expected awkwardness at first, delayed for a while by the giving of gifts. Abby loved her rock from Hong and placed it pride of place on her bedside table. John’s parents had been fluent English speakers, but they had gotten rusty since they retired. Abby of course was able to chat away at ninety miles an hour about cats, and her friends, and about volleyball, and about all the latest fads a little ten year old girl could have. She was an easy kid to get along with and in no time was subjecting Hong to an unexpected Spanish inquisition on how the real sun worked and how Hong’s artificial sun worked. This gave John time to sit down with his parents and catch up on all the local gossip, what his old school friends were up to, who was divorced or having an affair. John enjoyed these moments of normal life and poured himself an extra glass of Malbec to make the experience last longer.

  As the first week of their month’s stay drew to a close Hong was looking decidedly relaxed. As they got ready for bed John posed a question she was not prepared for. Not marriage, tough she suspected that would come one day.

  “Fourteen years Hong, that’s all I’ve left with her. And I don’t know how long I have left with my mum and dad, they’re not getting any younger. They have already asked me to cancel their stay on the ship when it’s a temporary hotel, they say they are too frail to fly, especially after mum’s hip replacement. Do you think I should retire and stay with them?”

  “John, you’re fifty, you have another twenty years before retirement. What would you do?”

  “Spend time with Abby, actually be there for her.”

  She looked at John. The only time she had ever seen him so downcast was when something went wrong on the ship.

  “If you retire then you know I would have to retire with you?”

  “I couldn’t ask that of you. You love what you do too much.”

  “I love you more, and besides, in five years I could stop, most of the construction work wo
uld be done, it would be mainly maintenance. I could hand over to Borislav after that, he’s better at my job than I am anyway.”

  “Don’t say that, no one is better at what you do than you.”

  “No one has done what I do before, but he’s still better at it than me.”

  John laughed at her, “I sometimes think the same about Alex. They are bright young things, but their confidence means they keep wandering into situations they can’t handle. I would be more comfortable if they had a little more humility.”

  “Me too to be honest, anyhow, they’ll have to take over from us someday, may as well be sooner rather than later. I want at least another five years though, just to be sure Borislav isn’t going to starve the crew one day,” she said with a smile.

  John nodded in agreement, “we don’t need to fully retire at the same time. There are lots of jobs we could do here on Earth; I bet we could walk into a job preparing for the new Mars colony.”

  “Same problem dear. You’d be on Earth but not here, just commuting all the time.”

  “We can find a way,” he said, “if she decides to apply for the Zheng He then she will have to enter training eight years from now, the window of opportunity for me to spend more time with her is closing.”

  “Yes we can find a way,” said Hong as she climbed into bed beside him, “but speak to Alex first and see what his plans are. If you have to train another project manager to replace you then there’s no point in retiring, you’ll be at it for another ten years anyway.”

  “Do you think I can trust him to finish the project?”

  “Do you have a choice?”

  Chapter 17: 2048

  Alex Braun had been assistant to John for almost six years. He realised how privileged he was, to work on the Zheng He, a position coveted by so many others. John had been a good boss, the work was exciting and there had been promotions over the years. While they both still did a little Ephrem consulting on the side, the work wasn’t as plentiful as it had been in the beginning, and now that it had entered financially difficult times it was mainly some candidate screening work that they did. Alex had managed to sell a lot of his Ephrem shares back to his father before he went into negative equity. It had been his father’s accountant’s idea; there was no point in bankrupting him for the sake of one branch of the Braun family’s business interests. It would be his older brother who would inherit most of the fortune in the event of his father’s death, but he knew he would be well provided for, his father loved him best. His father never prayed with his brother like they prayed together, and his father never trusted his brother with the secrets he was entrusted with.

  It was another busy day for him this week. John had asked him to carry out a stock take on the seed banks with special care to check for coffee plant seeds for some reason. He had a list of what should be there and in what mass. They had a specially calibrated scale since weight was different on different parts of the ship, a scale which removed whatever the downward force was. It would take him several days to get it all done even with the extra help he had been given. Like everything done on the ship if it wasn’t important now then it would be at some point in the future so it needed to be done carefully. There were huge quantities of common seeds such as wheat, oats, rice, potatoes, carrots, onions all the basic food that the colonists would eat from day to day. Then there were the specialty seeds, the ones that would be dried and stored until they arrived on Amrita, the ones that would be tested for their suitability on the new planet. It was monotonous work largely, work that allowed him to think about other things, and right now he had a lot of thinking to do, a lot of planning.

  While his brother was sent the regular rich kid route through education, via Switzerland and Oxford, Alex had been sent to a private boarding school just outside Munich. There weren’t many students there, most of the other boys came from old Catholic aristocratic families who still had titles and large houses but not much else. It was here that a friend of his fathers, Fr. Juan, made sure that Alex received extra tuition and extra prayer time. His father wanted to make sure that Alex would be ready for the future he had in mind for him, a future of devotion to his religion and to his family. None of the other boys in the school had preferential treatment like this, and many of them became jealous as Alex began to excel in class and in sport. There was one afternoon when they tried to make their feelings known with their fists, but thanks to Father Juan’s tuition, Alex was able to make sure they never bothered him again. He knew how to fight and how to inflict pain as effectively as possible. He had practiced his techniques on a punching bag in the gym and was glad of the opportunity to use them on real people. There were other lessons he had been taught too, much more permanent techniques, and three nights later he was able to make sure the boys ringleader would never bother anyone again, ever. Father Juan gave him a harsh beating for that one, his duty to God was not to avenge himself, but to use his natural born freedom to serve God, the freedom from conscience.

  Alex had it tough at school. The fall of their friend from one of the school’s upper windows was seen as a terrible tragedy, and none of the other boys ever suspected it to be anything more than that. However they never forgave him for the fight they had and were glad to leave Alex alone and isolated with no one to speak to other than Father Juan. Somehow other children were able to tell he was different and took advantage of any excuse to avoid him. Eventually, thanks to his father’s money and some of the best child psychologists around, he was able to learn to hide his lack of conscience and to appear not only perfectly normal around others, but actually friendly and a person others wanted to get to know. It had made his life’s work serving God much easier and throughout his adolescence and into his college life, his father and Fr. Juan had made sure he was kept busy at his work. God had a lot of enemies.

  John had been keeping Alex busy since he returned a fortnight ago from his latest leave on Earth. Within an hour of arriving back John sat Alex down in his office and had one of his heart to heart conversations. Alex had been expecting it to be a debriefing session on how things had been over the last two months but instead it was an offer to manage the whole recruitment process and take over John’s role in it. Apparently John was missing his daughter and wanted more time with her. So as not to appear rude Alex had said he would think about it and would let him know in a few weeks. This was an unexpected development, something which he needed clarity on so he could fold it into his plans. He prayed himself to sleep every night thanking God for this opportunity, a chance to truly demonstrate his faith, a chance to offer up a sacrifice that would just be between them, and only them.

  On his previous two month leave Alex and his father had discussed what needed to be done next. Leon Braun and his son spent hours together in silence listening to their own internal monologues and interrupting them with rites and rituals to cleanse their souls. They were so alike in many ways, father and son, and both had been taught to control their inner demons, ones which hungered for power over others; physically, financially, sexually, in almost every way. One evening, as they sat by the fireplace relaxing and discussing various family issues, Father Juan came by without warning. He had driven direct for hours from the Ephrem office in Milan and refused to say what was wrong, in fact he refused to say anything at all. There was panic in his eyes as he pointed towards the door and out into the woodland that surrounded the house. They both followed him.

  “We’ve been completely compromised. You were right Leon, the leaks and collapsing share price, they’ve been on purpose,” he blurted out as soon as they reached the treeline.

  “How far does it go?” asked Leon.

  “The office in Milan, even the one in London, all communications are been tracked. Maybe even your own home isn’t safe.”

  Leon Braun didn’t flinch. In the pale blue moonlight as the trees creaked in the rising wind he just looked at the ground for a full ten seconds before speaking; “It has been going on for some time I fear. No matter, t
he Lord will help us find a way.”

  And the Lord did, via Leon Braun’s church connections to an IT expert from the German military counter-intelligence service. A full sweep of all their phones and computers was done as discretely as possible, remotely where possible. It turned out that there was data tracking software on almost everything; including Alex’s laptop. Alex wasn’t surprised, why should he be when it seemed to be so widespread? He did become enraged though. He was questioned about the time and date that the software appeared on his computer, a time and date when his hard drive seemed to have been copied, at a time and date when was asleep in John Peeter’s office. The shame he felt at being compromised like that, by someone he had been placed to earn the trust of and thought he had succeeded. Never had he felt used like this. He had been taught not to kill in revenge however his father and Fr. Juan said this latest work of his would be God’s will, and God’s will needed to be done.

  So Alex Braun did consider John’s request to take over all the recruitment work. It would place him in a position of control that he was sure his father wanted and there would be no need to hurt a man who had mentored him, taught him, befriended him and betrayed him. No, it was God’s will. John considered whether to tell his father or to tell Fr. Juan, but surely God’s will should not be questioned. How often had God’s will coincided with his own desire to hurt? Never. Surely this was a reward for his loyalty and his faith. He could have been caught when he replaced the heart medication of one of the older members of the UN committee deciding on the Zheng He contract. He could have been caught when he pushed his father’s business partner, Giacomo Conti, down the steps after he panicked about that bombing. Indeed, he could have been caught as he planted the plastic explosive under Laure Dubois’s car, but it had all been Gods will and so it had been done. John’s death would be his thanks.

  As he loaded a sack of sesame seeds onto the mass balance, careful not to burst open the bag, he ran once more through the trap he had set up. He respected the philosophy of John and his predecessor Graham to have as few moving parts as possible to minimise what could go wrong. The bomb that had killed John’s wife had worked perfectly, a simple plastic explosive attached to the locking mechanism in the trunk set to go off when Laure Dubois unlocked her car. It was unfortunate that Sophie had been in the way but there had been no way to predict she would have been there. This time he needed to make it look more natural. There were two hundred and fifty workers on the Zheng He at the moment, a limited pool of people to search through in a murder investigation, so it was essential that John die accidentally. Alex had gone through several options. Minor accidents were so common that a fatal accident would not be any great surprise. In total four people had died so far on the project, all in the early mining stages. A remarkably low figure considering all the hazards. If John went outside there were many options; he could weaken John’s guide rope, arrange an airlock fault, or tamper with his oxygen tank. The only snag was that John wasn’t scheduled to do any space walks but there were still plenty of options inside the ship such as carbon dioxide poisoning from a faulty scrubber or even a simple electrical fault, after all this was one big construction site with cables hanging everywhere, it wouldn’t take much to make one live. Alex had his method though, one that he was sure would work, he just needed to finish setting it up, and soon. A shuttle containing ten tons of artificial fertilizer was due to arrive that night and John was scheduled to oversee its storage in a room near the garden, a room that already contained bags of fertilizer which Alex had cut open, all he needed to do was pull some wires from the wall and expose them to the fertilizer mix he had prepared. Then wait and cause a brief power surge when John entered. This he planned to do by simply flicking the trip switch on a fuse box for that group of rooms. Easy; no moving parts.