A Harvest of Thorns

by Corban Addison

  It wasn’t long, however, before he realized that the city had many faces. Outside the commercial district, the skyline flattened out, the glamor retreated, and a vast urban landscape stretched toward the horizon, its buildings and roads and shops and residences neither majestic nor tidy. In a way, Jashel was relieved. In another way, he was disappointed. But he had little time to think about it. His destination had arrived.

  Before the van stood a metal gate with a large printed sign—RIGHTAWAY GARMENTS. The guards waved the van through, and Foysol found a parking spot alongside a handful of other vehicles. He turned off the ignition and swiveled around in his seat.

  “Now that we are here, I will take your passports for safekeeping. I will do the same with your work permits. I will return them to you when the time is right.”

  Jashel clutched his backpack, feeling a vague sense of foreboding. Mr. Amin had said nothing about relinquishing his passport and work permit. In fact, the agent had advised him to keep the documents with him at all times in case a police officer or immigration official ever questioned his legal status. He watched the others reach into their bags and hand over their passports. Foysol collected them in a bundle, binding them together with a rubber band.

  Jashel shook his head forcefully. “The documents are mine. I will keep them safe.”

  As soon as he spoke the words, Foysol’s expression hardened. “You are a guest of Malaysia. And you are my guest. You will follow my rules or your stay will be difficult.” He extended his hand, palm open. “Now, give me your passport.”

  Jashel’s heart began to race, but still he refused.

  Foysol glowered at him. “Let me tell you what will happen if you do not obey. I will report to immigration that you arrived with HIV. They will revoke your work permit. The factory will disown you, and your contract will be void. I will then hand you over to the immigration police, and they will take you to a detention facility where you will rot until you are deported, either because your family bought an airline ticket, or because the government finally decided to get rid of you.” Again, Foysol put out his hand. “Your passport, please.”

  The blood drained from Jashel’s face. If Rightaway Garments voided his contract, not only would he forfeit the chance to send money home to his family—and, in time, to Farzana—but the lender from whom he had borrowed two hundred thousand taka would call the note and foreclose on his family’s property, leaving them destitute. His brothers were fourteen and twelve, his sisters between seventeen and five. If he were detained as a criminal, they would be forced to beg—or worse. And when the time came for his deportation, he would return home an outcast. Farzana’s father would call off the betrothal. No outsourcing agency would ever speak to him again. His only option would be to return to construction, no matter how poor the pay.

  At that moment, Jashel realized that Foysol held his fate like a parrot in a cage. If he sang the agent’s tune, Foysol would watch over him. If he disobeyed, Foysol would ruin him. He slipped a trembling hand into his backpack and withdrew his passport, handing it over to the agent. Foysol opened it and examined Jashel’s picture. He grinned malevolently.

  “You’re smarter than you look, Jashel Sayed Parveen. Let’s hope you stay that way.”

  PART THREE

  Cameron

  November 2013–January 2014

  CHAPTER ONE

  PRESTO TOWER, 16TH FLOOR

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  NOVEMBER 21, 2013

  10:15 A.M.

  The bullhorns were still audible two hundred and fifty feet off the ground. The height dampened their effect, as did the glass, but the strident chanting and squawk-like sirens were impossible to ignore. Cameron stood at his window looking down at the protestors outside the tower’s entrance. There were at least fifty of them huddled together against a stiff wind blowing off the Potomac. Their numbers were down from two hundred a week ago, but the demonstration was still large enough to merit the attention of the police. The mob was waving placards, most of them homemade. They were calling for Presto’s head.

  Cameron regarded the slogans with amusement. They were juvenile things, some warmed-over relics of the Occupy movement, others sophomoric interpretations of Marx and Lenin—“Capitalist Pigs,” “We Are the 99%,” “Wall Street Is Evil,” “Our Kids Want Clothes Made in the USA,” “Justice for Workers,” “Corporations Oppress the Poor,” and other such pabulum. But one sign pierced him with its appeal. “Tell Us the Truth!!! End the Cover-up!!!” Though the exclamation marks were gauche, the accusation was accurate. But the truth was something Presto could never tell.

  It had been nearly fourteen days since his return from Bangladesh, but he had slept less than sixty hours—many of them on the sofa in Vance’s office. In the late evenings after the emergency meetings adjourned, and the phone grew quiet, and Vance and Kristin Raymond and the rest of the C-suite ran out of questions, he searched for a metaphor to describe the madness. A bullet train with no stops. A rock skipping across water. A death march. On the long flight home, he had formulated a plan to widen the investigation. But it was predicated upon assumptions that had floundered as soon as the Gulfstream landed at Reagan—that Vance would give the investigation top priority; that Anderson, Cameron’s deputy general counsel, could handle the battalion of advice-seekers with minimal oversight; that Blake Conrad would run interference with the board, giving Cameron space to ferret out the causes behind the crisis.

  But events had overtaken all of them. Right now, with Presto’s share price down 18 percent—25 at the nadir—online sales more sluggish than they had been in three years, and Black Friday only a week away, no one gave a damn about the why. Only the what mattered. What written reassurances would prevent a sell-off among nervous investors? What Facebook and Twitter messaging would tranquilize the piranhas on social media? What TV ads would keep consumers spending without making Presto appear callous? What charity campaigns would salvage the company’s reputation as a family-friendly retailer? What disclosures would temper the media’s insatiable curiosity? The cascade of practicalities was endless, and all of it—for reasons Cameron hadn’t quite discovered—seemed to require his attention.

  It was flattering in a way. He had never seen executives so deferential to a lawyer. But his body was starting to rebel against the pace. His eyes were perpetually bloodshot. His memory was slipping. He was having heart palpitations. If Olivia were still alive, she would have intervened. But she was gone, and he was responsible.

  He went to his desk and picked up the phone. “Linda, I need half an hour with no interruptions. Please get Blake on the line, and have Declan in my office when I’m finished.”

  “Certainly, sir,” Linda replied. Cameron heard a couple of clicks, then a pause, then Linda’s voice again. “Mr. Alexander, please hold for Mr. Conrad.”

  While he was waiting, Cameron rehearsed the high points of his proposal. Blake was a managing partner at Preston Conrad—a K Street law firm with an outsize reputation. A graduate of Yale and Yale Law School, Blake had learned the art of lobbying from his father, a former US congressman. Now he was one of the most sought-after favor-brokers in DC. At Cameron’s behest, he had joined Presto’s board and taken the helm of the Risk Committee.

  “Cameron,” Blake said, coming on the line. “What can I do for you?”

  “We have a situation,” Cameron replied. “I need a backstop.”

  “Should I make notes?” Blake asked.

  “No, it’s just preliminary. It’s not ready for the board.”

  “Go ahead then.”

  Cameron swiveled around and looked out at the Washington Monument, its white spire blanketed by gray clouds. “I made some discoveries in Bangladesh. The Millennium factory was on our Red List, but our Dhaka office authorized the order anyway. Apparently some of our sourcing people think that on-time delivery is more important than our Code of Conduct. This order was not an exception. There have been others. How many I’m not sure.”

 
Blake took a slow breath. “Who else knows about this?”

  “I was able to contain it. Our supplier confessed to me in confidence, as did our office director in Bangladesh. I swore them to secrecy by promising to take no action against them. They assured me it would never happen again. Beyond that, you’re the first.”

  Blake cleared his throat. “My people have been monitoring the media. The jackals are starting to tire of the story. They’ll go away as long as we don’t give them another carcass.”

  Cameron listened to the faint chorus of amplified voices wafting up from below. The protesters had taken up a new chant. “Tell us the truth! Tell us the truth!” They were persistent. He had to give them that. But they had lives to live, jobs to attend, holiday shopping to do. They, too, would soon go away, sublimating their anger into seasonal good cheer.

  “Nothing’s going to leak,” he said. “But that isn’t what worries me. I’m concerned about the next time. In the best case, our problems are limited to South Asia. But there’s a chance that the infection may be company-wide.”

  “You really think your sourcing people are going off the reservation?”

  “That’s not the way they see it. They see supply-chain metrics, sales targets, and growth calculations. They think they’re doing us a favor.”

  “While at the same time helping themselves,” Blake said. “What are you proposing?”

  “I want to bring someone in from the outside, someone who can look behind the Red List and tell me how compromised we are. I’ll get Declan involved, but I’ll keep everyone else in the dark—even Vance, for now. He has other things to worry about.”

  Blake was silent for a long moment. “I have great respect for you, Cameron. If you think this is necessary to protect Presto, I’ll support you with the board. Just keep me in the loop.”

  Cameron let out the breath he was holding. “Much obliged. I’ll be in touch.”

  Seconds after the call ended, he heard a knock at the door. His secretary’s efficiency was legendary. “Come in,” he said, and Declan made his entrance, closing the door behind him. Cameron waved his hand at the wingback chairs. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  Declan examined him closely. “How are you doing? Are you getting any sleep?”

  “Not enough,” Cameron said brusquely. “Sit down.”

  When Declan situated himself, Cameron spoke with gravitas. “Everything we’re about to discuss is confidential. I just got off the phone with Blake Conrad. He cleared it. No one else can know. Not your ex-wife, not your secretary, not your mistress.”

  “I don’t have a mistress,” Declan demurred earnestly.

  If only Vance were as prudent, Cameron thought. “I need you to set up a meeting with Kent Salazar of Atlas Risk Consulting. He’s in New York, but I want to meet him here. Reserve the private room at the Capital Grille. It’ll be just you, me, Kent, and whoever he brings along.”

  Declan made a note on his phone. “What’s the nature of the meeting?”

  “The Red List. We’re going to find out how often it’s being ignored.”

  Declan sat up straighter. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “There is, but now is not the time. After you set things up with Kent, I want you to create an encrypted folder on your hard drive and use it to store everything about Atlas. That includes the note you’re writing right now. I want you to gather all the electronic documents you have about our red-listed suppliers and put them in that folder—all audit reports, all correspondence with our offices and buying agents, and all internal memoranda, anything that relates to our rationale for delisting suppliers. Assuming Atlas wants the job, you’re going to give the folder to them. And then we’re going to go hunting.”

  Declan’s green eyes brightened. Cameron could see the wheels in his Oxford-educated brain turning. “You want information beyond Bangladesh?”

  “I want the entire Red List.”

  Declan gave him a piercing look. “Rahmani Apparel didn’t act on its own, did it?”

  Cameron shook his head. “That was a ruse. I’m sorry, but it was necessary.”

  Declan processed this at light speed. “You mean Manny—”

  “I don’t mean anything,” Cameron interjected. “Not yet.”

  He heard his iPhone vibrate. The name on the screen sucked the air out of his lungs. Iris Alexander. His mother. He glanced at his watch. He had eight minutes before a briefing with Kristin’s PR team. His blood pressure reached new heights.

  “We’ll talk more later,” he told Declan. “For now, set up the meeting and aggregate the files. And use the confidential channel for e-mail. This stays completely dark.”

  “Got it,” Declan said, disappearing through the door.

  Cameron answered the call just before his mother disconnected. “Mom? How are you?”

  As soon as she spoke, he knew something was amiss. It was the catch in her voice, usually so steady and sure. “I’ve seen better days. But that’s par for the course at my age.”

  Cameron went to the window again, his heart twisted in knots. “What’s going on?”

  His mother’s composure broke. “They found another tumor,” she said, sniffing away tears. “It’s malignant.”

  Cameron closed his eyes, the weight of dread settling upon his shoulders. It was the worst of all his fears coming at the worst of all moments. He and his mother had always been close. When he was a child, she had been a shield to his father’s steel, her winsomeness and empathy exceeded only by her wisdom and faith in his goodness. In his adulthood, she had become his oracle, his conscience, and his confessor. And in the aftermath of the car accident, when his only wish had been to climb into the casket beside Olivia, his mother’s voice had pulled him back from the abyss, persuading him to forgive himself, at least enough to live again.

  The cancer had appeared without warning in February, striking her in that most private of spaces—her uterus. It was stage two, her oncologist said and recommended surgery and then radiation. The hysterectomy was successful, and the disease retreated, vanishing from her bloodstream. As the months passed, her doctors grew more hopeful, as did her family. But if Cameron had learned anything about life, he knew it was a fickle thing—that every beginning had an end, every gain a requisite loss, every feeling and experience and wonder and gift a moment when it would all just slip away.

  “I’m so sorry, Mom,” he managed. “What is Dr. Radcliffe saying?”

  “I’m going in for more tests. But the tumor is in my liver. The cancer is spreading.”

  “Does that mean chemo?”

  “Probably,” she said. “We’ll know more next week.”

  Cameron touched the windowpane with his fingertips. “How is Dad?”

  “He’s not worried. You know your father.”

  Cameron nodded silently. The optimism of Cornelius Benjamin Alexander, civil rights luminary and legendary Harvard Law professor, was a force of nature. His platitudes on the subject were legion. Doubt is the nemesis of progress, he was fond of saying. No great achievement can rest on such a foundation. His students loved him for it—most of them, at least. Those more inclined to skepticism locked horns with him in debate until he subdued them with brilliant rhetoric and an encyclopedic command of history. But there was a category of disbelievers for whom Ben reserved his scorn: those who saw the world as a matrix of risk to be managed and avoided. People like Cameron.

  “Are you still coming for Thanksgiving?” Iris asked hopefully.

  Cameron tried to sound positive. “Of course. I already have my train ticket.”

  He heard a knock at the door and looked down at his watch. Damn, he thought, feeling irritated and guilty at the same time. Kristin’s briefing was in three minutes. “I’m so sorry, Mom,” he said. “I have to go. I’ll be there next week. Call me with any news.”

  “I’m glad I caught you,” she said. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “I love you much,” he told her and searched
for something to cheer her up. He found it in the unlikeliest of places. “Dad’s right. Keep your chin up.”

  “I love you too,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE CAPITAL GRILLE

  WASHINGTON, DC

  NOVEMBER 25, 2013

  8:02 P.M.

  The restaurant was quiet even for a Monday, but Cameron wasn’t surprised—Thanksgiving was only three days away. Congress was already in recess, its members long gone, sipping mai tais with their wives—or paramours—in the Bahamas or Grand Cayman, and its staffers and aides burning the midnight oil with the rest of Washington’s apparatchik class before fleeing the city until the second of December. Cameron scanned the candlelit dining room for familiar faces but didn’t recognize anyone, which was a relief. In DC, people had a way of talking and name-dropping that spread word of liaisons like chemical accelerant.

  Cameron followed the maître d’ to the Fabric Room, a private space decorated with floral wallpaper, wall sconces, and a gilt-framed painting of the American West. He saw Kent Salazar, the principal of Atlas Consulting, sitting at the table with an attractive fortysomething woman, her blonde hair pulled back in a twist. Kent introduced her as Victoria Brost, his chief of research. After greeting them, Cameron summoned the waiter and ordered champagne.

  “I hope you’ll forgive the indulgence,” he said, taking a seat between Declan and Victoria, “but the last restaurant I was in couldn’t serve alcohol.”

  Salazar’s eyes glinted with humor. “Was that in Bangladesh?”

  Cameron didn’t blink. “A fair presumption, but I can’t confirm or deny it.”

  He watched as Salazar reacted to this, saw the way his eyes narrowed and his shoulders stiffened, as if he was mildly offended, the way he sat back a touch, his mind seeking a reason for Cameron’s parry. It was a test delivered on the fly, a way to gauge Salazar’s tolerance for dissimulation. He was a truth-teller, Cameron decided, and smiled coyly, restating his answer.