A Harvest of Thorns

by Corban Addison

  Cameron glanced at his watch and realized that five o’clock had passed. He picked up the phone on his desk. “Linda, please remind Rebecca Sinclair about our meeting.”

  He waited, statuesque, as the second hand on the wall clock circumnavigated the dial. Irritated, he picked up the phone again. “Linda?”

  “I’m trying, sir,” his secretary said. “She isn’t answering.”

  Cameron shook his head, rankled by the sourcing VP’s rudeness. Rebecca had been with the company for twenty years, and every CEO since Bobby Carter had worshipped at her feet. The board treated her like the goose that laid the golden egg. Her blasé attitude toward time was but one feature of her legendary arrogance. She was only certain to be punctual for the directors.

  As the minutes multiplied, Cameron began to pace alongside the window. He couldn’t let her get to him. The Black File put him in the driver’s seat. But, of course, it didn’t. In Presto’s organizational chart, Rebecca’s office was on par with his. And in the hierarchy of company politics, she was fifteen years his senior and had a far more lucrative compensation package.

  At last, at twenty minutes past five, Rebecca breezed in, tossing him a half apology about a meeting that ran over and seating herself in one of the wingback chairs without being invited. Cameron suppressed his annoyance and sat down across from her. Over the years, he had heard many words used to describe her, but one of them summed up the rest—severe. She was like a one-woman magnetic field, inspiring almost religious zeal in her admirers and near superstitious dread in her detractors. She cared nothing for consensus, only competence. She believed that fortune was a choice, not a matter of chance. In a contest of wits, a clash of personalities, or an argument about business strategy, he had never seen her lose.

  “So I hear you’ve been poking around,” she said, stepping into the silence as if Cameron had intended it. “I was wondering when you were going to inform me.”

  Her preemptive strike shocked Cameron as thoroughly as if she had dropped a cobra in his lap. It took all his internal discipline to throttle the instinct to lash back at her.

  “Oh, I know your little inquest was supposed to be confidential,” she went on. “But my people are loyal. They know I can protect them.”

  “Your people,” Cameron said calmly, “have made sourcing decisions in disregard of our Code of Conduct, our Red List, and the standards of compliance that have been the hallmark of Vance’s tenure as CEO. The ‘little inquest,’ as you call it, was his idea, not mine.”

  This gave her pause, but only for a moment. “I have one question for you, Cameron. Have my people done anything illegal?”

  He tried not to smile. “As a matter of fact, the suppliers your people have chosen solely for the benefit of the bottom line have been involved in corruption, bribery, and forced labor and human trafficking, all federal offenses for which this company could be held liable.”

  For a long moment, Rebecca was speechless. “You have evidence of this?” she said.

  He held his hand out toward his desk. “It’s all in the Black File.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Does the board know?”

  “I’ve kept Blake Conrad apprised. But he isn’t fully briefed. Nor is Vance. I wanted to talk to you first.”

  Her eyes pierced him. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to send a letter to every member of your sourcing team. We’ll draft it together. I promise to be reasonable, as long as you do too. The letter will establish a new ethical baseline for sourcing decisions that respects all prevailing laws and company policies. After that, I want to give a speech at your annual sourcing meeting. Without your endorsement, your people won’t listen to me. But with it, things will change.”

  “Done,” she conceded. “Anything else?”

  He took a slow breath. “I also want to talk to you about your performance incentives.”

  She didn’t reply, just gave him a look that said, You’re starting to step on my toes.

  He went on. “Aran Wattana in Bangkok has been borrowing money from my compliance team to reward his sourcing staff for putting his office at the top of the global heap. The letter is going to make clear that that kind of budgetary reshuffling will be cause for termination.”

  “That’s fine with me,” she said, “so long as I get to keep Wattana. He knows the Thai factories better than anyone.”

  “He’s all yours,” Cameron agreed, lowering his voice to lend it gravitas. “My concerns are actually much deeper. I have doubts about the calibration of the sourcing system itself.”

  Rebecca’s eyes flashed with indignation. “As I see it, that’s dangerously close to saying you have doubts about the character of my children. You attack me, and I fight fair. You attack my sons . . .” The line drawn, she continued, “But, please, enlighten me.”

  Cameron leaned forward and waded into the thicket. “It’s like this. You put a normally functioning nineteen-year-old boy on an island with a dozen underage girls. What’s going to happen? Unless the boy is Jesus himself, he’s going to commit a crime. The same is true of our suppliers. Your people push them to drive their prices down, to shorten their lead times, to invest in new technology. You threaten them with competition from factories in other countries. The consequences are as predictable as the boy on the island. Decent managers start cutting corners, paying bribes, squeezing wages, shirking on overtime. They fire women who get pregnant, hire shady outsourcing agents to bring foreign workers from distant lands, and then ignore the fact that those agents are making false promises and ensnaring the workers in debt bondage. It doesn’t matter if we have auditors. It doesn’t matter if we have a Red List. It doesn’t even matter if your people abide by every jot and tittle in the Code of Conduct. Unless the incentives change, the crimes will continue. We won’t be committing them. But we’ll be responsible because we created the climate that made them inevitable.”

  Rebecca shook her head condescendingly. “You’ve crossed the line. Those incentives you hold in such disdain are the lifeblood of this company. They give us competitive advantage. Why do you think I make twice the money you do? Why does my department get a Learjet? It’s because I make the rain. When customers buy something from us, it’s not because our stores offer an enjoyable shopping experience or our website is user-friendly. It’s because we give them the quality they want at an unbeatable price. That’s the holy grail of retail. You dismantle that and you might as well shutter the company.”

  Cameron returned her gaze without blinking. “When was the last time you read the company handbook?”

  She laughed irreverently. “I didn’t read it the first time. Hank and Dee Dee Carter are dead. Their business model lost its mojo in the 1980s.”

  “I figured as much,” Cameron said. “So what you’re telling me is that our philosophy of ‘People First’—the philosophy that dragged us out of the abattoir of the Millennium fire by the power of historic goodwill—only applies to customers and investors. Is that right?”

  Her laughter turned contemptuous. “Pardon my French, Cameron, but the market doesn’t give a shit about self-righteous mottos or sentimental PR campaigns. We’re a public company. Our owners are investors. We sell things to consumers. At the end of the day, we do and say whatever it takes to keep them happy.”

  As brutal as her logic was, Cameron couldn’t disagree. The market was a system with no master, regulated by governments and corporate legal departments like his own, but governed by the blind and impersonal laws of economics. If Presto’s sourcing system yielded exploitation, it did so because the market rewarded self-interest. They worked in a ruthlessly Darwinian world, where the hammer of creative destruction shaped the future and where fortunes were more easily lost than made. But that gave Cameron leverage.

  “I’m going to take this to Vance and the board,” he said. “I don’t want to undercut our competitive advantage. But there are tweaks we could make that would diminish our exposure. I might make half your sal
ary, but I’m the guardian of this company’s reputation. Without the trust of the marketplace and the regulators, your rainmaking doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

  She gave him a wintry look. “If you do this, I’m going to make opposing you a matter of personal pride.”

  He clenched his teeth, thinking of Sonia Hassan, and Jashel Sayed Parveen, and Alya Begum, and the words etched in marble in the north chamber of the Lincoln Memorial. “I’m glad we had a chance to talk,” he said, rising from his chair. “You know the way out.”

  She stood without another word and headed toward the door.

  “Rebecca,” he said and returned her glare with a grin. “Good luck.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE POTOMAC RIVER

  NEAR INDIAN HEAD, MARYLAND

  JUNE 2, 2014

  11:21 A.M.

  The wind was up on the Potomac, blowing out of the east at twenty-five knots. Despite her oceangoing draft and heavy keel, the Breakwater was heeling hard and hammering through the waves, sending plumes of spray high into the air. Cameron was at the helm, holding the sailboat steady on a beam reach at almost eight knots. Vance was behind him in the cockpit, working the winches and adjusting the sails with the quiet competence of a professional racer. He was the best yachtsman Cameron knew, his touch delicate yet firm, and his judgment unerring. He moved with the instinct of a man born under sail. He might as well have been. He had spent every summer of his childhood plying the waters off Nantucket.

  “She’s a beauty today,” Vance yelled over the wind.

  “More like a beast,” Cameron called back, gripping the wheel as a thirty-knot gust sent the Breakwater heeling even harder to starboard.

  In contrast to Vance, he hadn’t stepped foot aboard a sailboat until business school. It was Vance who had taught him to love blue water. A week before their first spring break at Harvard, he had invited Cameron to join him and a couple of buddies at his family’s place in Saint Croix. The house came with a thirty-foot yacht, the Bohemian, that Vance sailed with the mastery of an old salt and the panache of a playboy. There were four of them in the house when the week began, but after a day on the island their number grew to seven. The newcomers were young ladies, all beautiful and available. Only Cameron refrained from the bacchanal that followed. In the company of anyone else, he might have felt jealous. But Vance was a born leader who prided himself on making and keeping friends. While the other men drank and cavorted with the ladies, Cameron spent time on the Bohemian with Vance, learning how to handle lines and sails and anticipate the changing sea. Harvard brought them together, but sailing cemented their bond—and deepened it across three decades of friendship.

  “I’m going to tighten her up and head toward the creek,” Cameron shouted.

  Vance nodded and trimmed the headsail as Cameron brought the sailboat closer to the wind. After securing the winch, Vance picked up the mainsheet and hauled in the boom. They maintained a close reach to the entrance of Mattawoman Creek. Then they came about, shortened their sails, and glided under partial power into the protection of Sweden Point Marina.

  When the sails were down and the anchor set, they went below and prepared sandwiches in the galley. Afterward, they grabbed bags of chips and bottles of beer and took the meal topside, eating together in the shade of the canopy.

  “It’s been too long, Cam,” Vance said, chewing a bite of his sandwich. “Remember when we used to go out every other weekend?”

  “Yeah,” Cameron replied, feeling his friend’s nostalgia. Then he laughed. “Olivia hated it. I don’t know if I ever told you that.”

  Vance grinned. “It was written all over her face. But she was tough. I never saw her get green around the gills. I can’t say the same for the ladies I brought along.”

  Cameron shook his head. “Don’t you ever get tired of it? All the flirting and dating and breaking up.” With women half your age, he wanted to add, but didn’t. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you found another Jackie and settled down? It would give Annalee something to come home to.”

  “Another Jackie would be the end of me,” Vance quipped. “I’m defective in the domestic department. No woman would stay married to me for long.” He paused and turned reflective. “What you had with Olivia was special. I’ve never been the sentimental type, but seeing you guys together was something beautiful.”

  Cameron looked out at the water, his eyes misting behind his sunglasses. In the two years since his wife’s death, he couldn’t remember a time when he and Vance had shared a moment like this, just the two of them, under sun and sky, away from the Presto pressure cooker. It was a shame he couldn’t just relax and enjoy it. But there were matters he had to discuss with Vance, matters of grave consequence that could destabilize their peace, even destroy it.

  “I know how much you miss her,” Vance went on, unaware of Cameron’s musings. “Even though I wasn’t her favorite person, I miss her too. She was sharp and sensible, generous and trustworthy—a lot like you, in fact, although much better looking.”

  Cameron smiled at the joke, but his preoccupation didn’t abate.

  Vance regarded him thoughtfully. “Something’s on your mind.”

  Cameron put down his sandwich. “Back in November you asked me if I’d discovered anything about the Millennium fire that you needed to worry about. I said I’d loop you in when I had an action item. Well, I have one now, but you’re not going to like it.”

  Instead of looking puzzled, Vance replied bluntly, “Does it involve Rebecca Sinclair?”

  Shit, Cameron thought, admiring the sourcing VP’s resourcefulness and loathing it at the same time. “What did she tell you?”

  “She called me Friday night,” Vance replied, “but I stopped her before she could say anything. I didn’t want to hear it secondhand. As long as I’m CEO, you get first dibs.”

  Cameron felt a rush of gratitude for his friend.

  “Out with it,” Vance said. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”

  So Cameron told him about his trips to Bangladesh and Malaysia and Jordan, about the rot he had discovered in the sourcing system, about the damning results of the Atlas audit, and about Sonia Hassan, the girl in the photograph. Vance listened to everything without a word. Since his eyes were hidden behind mirrored lenses, Cameron couldn’t follow the trajectory of his thoughts, but he knew Vance like he knew his own soul. He knew the earth was shaking beneath his friend’s feet, and that he would do anything to stop it.

  When Cameron finished, Vance took a noisy breath. “I’m starting to understand why Rebecca sounded so desperate. This is unprecedented.” He took a long swig of beer, then said, “You’ll have to permit me a little skepticism; I wasn’t quite prepared for this. But I’m wondering how much of this can actually be changed, assuming we keep our current business model, which is the only model we’ve ever had.”

  For a moment, Cameron was astonished by Vance’s insouciance. Cameron hadn’t pulled any punches. He had used the words slavery and serial rape. He had described in detail Sonia’s fall and Nasima’s leap from the ledge. Then he recalled something from the past, the only time he had seen Vance face a personal crisis. The girl was a twenty-two-year-old staffer at a late-night show in Manhattan. Vance had bumped into her at a bar in Chelsea. What happened next was just a weekend fling. He took her to dinner at Eleven Madison Park, showed her his suite at the Mandarin Oriental, and then parted ways. When she called him a month later claiming she was pregnant, Vance was surprised that she even had his phone number. But his response was swift and decisive. He sent Cameron to New York with a briefcase full of cash and a simple question: How much? He never asked about the baby or whether she planned to keep it, just made her an offer to stay quiet and leave him alone, which she accepted, all two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of it.

  “Some of the problems are endemic, I agree,” Cameron said, trying to shore up the bridge between them. “But there are steps we can take. We can tighten up compliance and improve auditor
oversight. We can recalibrate incentives in sourcing, so performance reviews are based on more than delivery, margin, and costing. We can hire Atlas to do a thorough evaluation of our supply chain. We can run a new PR campaign making ‘People First’ a global priority.”

  Vance looked across the water at the boats floating in the marina. He arched his eyebrows and scratched his chin. “I take it Rebecca disagreed with you.”

  “Not in every particular,” Cameron replied, “but about the core of it, yes.”

  “No surprise there.” Vance took off his sunglasses and regarded Cameron openly. “Look, I understand how you feel. You did exactly what I asked. You’ve been out in the field. You know what you’re talking about. I doubt any other general counsel would have gone so far to protect his company. Thank you for that. I mean it.”

  He took a breath, and Cameron heard the swish of the blade as it fell.

  “But the timing isn’t right, not for anything major, anyway. The shareholder meeting is in two weeks. The board is still holding its breath, but I think we’re in the clear. We climbed out of last year’s hole and followed it up with a good showing in the first quarter. If sales stay strong, we’ll deliver investors even better news in August. The fire was an awful tragedy. It sickens me that our clothes were the last thing those poor girls made. But we didn’t make the factory blow up. We did nothing more than send them an order in violation of our own policy. I don’t mean to be callous here, but Millennium is yesterday’s news. The world has moved on.”

  Cameron sat in stupefied silence, grateful that his friend couldn’t see his eyes. Vance had not only ignored his advice, he had spit in his face, and in the faces of Declan and Kent Salazar and Victoria Brost, and the entire global compliance staff, and every worker across the world making apparel for Presto under conditions of danger, violence, and abuse.

  “This isn’t just about ethics,” Cameron finally managed. “This is about liability. The potential for a verdict is huge, to say nothing of the damage to Presto’s reputation.”