A Harvest of Thorns

by Corban Addison

  Cameron smiled grimly. Game on.

  CHAPTER THREE

  OUTSIDE PRESTO TOWER

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  NOVEMBER 10, 2015

  10:00 A.M.

  The sky was overcast, the wind blowing briskly off the Potomac, but so far the forecasted rain hadn’t made an appearance. The same couldn’t be said of the media crews. Every outlet with a role in shaping national headlines had someone in the audience. Griswold & Associates—the PR firm founded by Josh’s father after he left the Carter White House—had erected a stage on the sidewalk outside the entrance to Presto’s headquarters. Twenty microphones now adorned the podium, bent in all directions like a bouquet of black roses.

  The gathering was at least a hundred strong. There were television vans parked on curbs, satellite dishes beaming signals into the heavens, guardrails and police officers keeping people separate from traffic, and gawkers all around—across the street, at nearby intersections, and inside the tower itself. Josh could see the shadows of Presto employees as they moved in front of the windows. He knew Cameron was watching. How’s this for a show?

  The press conference had been conjured by a brilliant group of media strategists—Frank Griswold, Tony Sharif, and John Remington, managing partner of Remington & Key. Their pitch, delivered to every contact in their combined address book, had been shockingly effective. The girl in the photograph had a story to tell, and her family was suing Presto in federal court.

  At precisely ten o’clock, Lewis Ames stepped to the podium. Clad in a chalk-stripe suit and cobalt tie, he looked like a diplomat or a royal. Behind him stood Madison and Josh, Rana and the plaintiffs, and a phalanx of staff from CJA, LA Legal, and Remington & Key. Ashik and Jashel were wearing suits Madison had bought them for the occasion, and Alya was dressed in a crimson sari. Only Sonia was not present. The flight from Bangladesh had exhausted her, and she was resting at the hotel with a Bengali-American occupational therapist Rana had hired.

  As flashbulbs lit the air, Lewis introduced the plaintiffs. His voice, amplified by speakers, carried easily above the wind. Afterward, he took a poster-size enlargement of the photograph from the fire and placed it on a tripod. A number of the reporters winced.

  “All of you remember this picture,” Lewis said gravely. “It captivated us for a time, and then we let it slip away. We stopped asking questions and demanding answers. The protests that happened on this sidewalk melted into memory. We turned to other things, and we forgot. But Sonia didn’t forget. That’s her name, Sonia Hassan. Her father, Ashik, didn’t forget. Her mother, Joya, and sister, Nasima, didn’t have a chance to forget. They died in the fire.”

  Lewis placed another poster on the tripod—a photo of Sonia in Nadia Jalil’s parlor.

  “Sonia was thirteen when she started working at Millennium. She was fourteen when she climbed out of a burning window and fell to the earth, sustaining injuries that have yet to heal. She’s sixteen today. She’s legally blind, deaf in one ear, and has trouble staying awake. If this disaster had taken place in America, there would have been a massive lawsuit, and Millennium and Presto and all the other brands that made clothes inside the factory would have been forced to pay. The law wouldn’t have restored Sonia’s health, or the lives of her mother and sister, but it would have forced Presto to admit the truth—that the merchandise they offer us under the banner of ‘People First’ is manufactured under conditions that put their workers last, conditions that endanger, exploit, and enslave.”

  As Lewis paused for effect, Josh felt the first misty raindrops begin to fall.

  “If only the Millennium fire had happened in this country,” Lewis went on. “But it didn’t. Sonia was injured in Bangladesh. And Jashel was forced to labor in Malaysia, and Alya was raped in Jordan, all while Presto employees were aware that abuses were taking place in their supply chain, and all while Presto executives and shareholders profited from them. Yet neither Sonia nor Jashel and Alya—nor thousands of others like them—have received a cent for their injuries. If it weren’t for my son-in-law, Joshua Griswold, and Rana Jalil of LA Legal, their stories never would have been told. But we’re going to tell them. We’re taking Presto to court to prove that justice knows no borders, that Bangladeshi lives matter as much as American lives, and that at least some of our laws follow multinational companies into the darkest reaches of their supply chains, making ignorance no longer a defense.”

  Lewis held up a copy of the lawsuit. “We’re not going to argue our case today. But our allegations are in the public record. We called this press conference to make sure you didn’t miss them, and to invite you to join us in demanding justice—for the plaintiffs, and for millions of exploited workers around the globe.” He surveyed the crowd. “I’ll take a couple of questions.”

  As cameras flashed, two dozen hands shot into the air, among them Meredith Blakely from CNN, Tim Robinson from Bloomberg, James Foster from the BBC, Latasha Owens from the New York Times, and Tony Sharif from the Post. Lewis called on Tony first. The question was staged, the answer a carefully crafted soundbite they wanted viewers to hear.

  “With the holidays coming, there are people who are going to wonder whether they should shop somewhere other than Presto,” Tony said. “While the lawsuit is company-specific, I’m guessing the abuses you’re talking about are not. Can you offer consumers any reassurance that the clothes they’re going to buy for their loved ones weren’t made in a sweatshop, or a death trap, or by the victims of forced labor or sexual assault?”

  “I wish I could say yes,” Lewis replied. “But I can’t. There are good companies out there selling ethically made products. But other companies are not. The real question is how do you and I, as consumers, tell the difference? I have no idea. But it’s time we start asking.”

  “Mr. Ames! Mr. Ames!” The voices reached a crescendo before Lewis motioned to Meredith Blakely.

  “When stories like this have surfaced in the past,” she said, “companies like Presto have always said the same thing: ‘We didn’t know what was happening. We don’t control our suppliers.’ Are you telling us they’re lying, that they do know what’s happening?”

  Lewis’s eyes flashed. “Let’s not talk generically. Let’s talk about the company behind me.” He held up a sheet of paper. “This is the statement Presto issued a week after the fire. In it they said, and I quote, ‘As a company founded upon the principle of putting people first, Presto works tirelessly to ensure that its suppliers around the world operate in accordance with all local laws and international norms. Presto rates its suppliers by color, and those that fail to meet the company’s exacting standards are placed on its Red List for one year. During this probationary period, all orders are suspended. At the time of the fire, Millennium Fashions had been on Presto’s Red List for six months. It was not authorized to make clothing for any of Presto’s brands. If Presto clothing was being made there, it was in violation of the company’s Code of Conduct and without its consent.’ That last part about consent was a lie. Whatever the Red List said, Presto was one of Millennium’s biggest buyers, and had been for some time.”

  As hands went up again, Lewis pointed to Tim Robinson. “Last question.”

  “Mr. Ames,” said the Bloomberg correspondent, “your allegations carry the whiff of scandal. Are you worried about a countersuit for defamation?”

  Lewis laughed softly. “The beauty of defamation law is that the truth always wins. We’re giving you the truth. Don’t let it get away from you again.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  PRESTO TOWER, 16TH FLOOR

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  NOVEMBER 12, 2015

  9:41 A.M.

  Cameron entered Vance’s office nineteen minutes before the chief executive would go before the cameras and speak to the world. He found his friend sitting in his desk chair, his eyes fixed on something across the river. Cameron walked to his side and looked out at the Mall. It was a glorious November day, the kind of day that made him nostal
gic for autumns past, when he had taken Olivia south to Kiawah Island, and they had unplugged and relaxed on the beach and eaten seafood and played golf on the Ocean Course—him badly, her better—and made love to the percussion of the surf filtering in through open windows. He felt the misery inside of him, the sense of sadness and loss, but it wasn’t just about Olivia.

  Despite all of his meticulous planning, he had underestimated the whirlwind the lawsuit would unleash. No, that wasn’t quite correct. He had underestimated the brazenness of Lewis Ames. He had known that Lewis would go to the media, but he had expected a written press release, as Lewis had done before. He had anticipated that the major outlets would pick it up and drop some quotes into their nightly newsreels, along with clips from the fire. He had expected the columnists from progressive papers to run op-eds accusing corporate America of a cover-up. He had expected Presto’s stock price to take a hit. He had even expected the Justice Department to send him a letter expressing concern about Presto’s compliance with federal law.

  But then Lewis had arranged a press conference on Presto’s doorstep and invited everyone on earth with a megaphone, and all of them had come and listened and tweeted, and gone back to their offices and written columns and filed stories that made it seem like a bomb had gone off in Arlington and Presto was behind it. In two days of trading, Presto’s share price had plummeted by 35 percent. The board had gone berserk. Investors were calling for Vance’s head. Customers were jamming the phones, asking if their kids were wearing slave-made clothing. Lester Grant and Jim Dunavan were agitating for a purge of the compliance department and a lawsuit against Atlas Consulting on the instinct that someone had leaked the findings of the investigation. Facebook and Twitter were awash with calls for a nationwide boycott. Protesters had descended on Arlington like a plague, fulminating through bullhorns about “child killers” and “slave masters” and “corporate rapists.” And the Justice Department hadn’t just sent a letter. They had called Cameron directly, threatening to open a criminal investigation.

  “I was just thinking about Abraham Lincoln,” Vance said, his voice subdued, matching the stillness of the office. “The country was coming apart at the seams. An entire generation was dying on the battlefield. This is a cakewalk by comparison. But I’m not sure I can manage it.”

  It was one of the humblest things Vance had ever said. But the irony only added to Cameron’s melancholy. This “cakewalk” had started beneath Lincoln’s solemn stare.

  “I’m going to give you some advice,” Cameron said. “Kristin would flip if she heard it, but you know the stakes. If we don’t neutralize this, the company could go down. Ditch the script. Speak from the heart. Don’t give a disclaimer. It’ll only make things worse. You need to give Presto a human face. People need to see that we’re not monsters. We’re just like them.”

  Vance took an audible breath, then let it out. “I’ll do it.”

  His phone beeped, and Eve came on the line. “They’re ready for you downstairs.”

  The chief executive went to the couch and donned his suit coat. “It’s showtime,” he said to Cameron and led the way to the elevator.

  The C-suite was eerily quiet for a Thursday morning, but everyone was in the conference room, watching the proceedings on CNN. The elevator whisked them to the lobby, then the doors opened and they were caught in the shutter of a hundred cameras.

  Vance strode to the podium, which stood atop a flight of steps. Cameron took his place behind him with Eve and Kristin and the board. He watched as Vance surveyed the assembly, smiling hospitably as if the media had come for a celebration, not a scavenging expedition.

  “I had a speech,” he said without preamble, “but I’m not going to give it. I’m just going to talk for a few minutes about this company and what it means to me, what it means to every one of the three hundred and fifty thousand people we employ—people like you, people like the folks watching at home. We’re a family company, not family-owned anymore, but family-born. Hank and Dee Dee Carter had a vision for giving people quality goods at an unbeatable price. Their timing was right, and America embraced that vision, and the rest”—he swept his hand toward the vaulted ceiling—“is a bright spot in the history of business. In the past few days, a lot of terrible things have been said about Presto. A lot of accusations are swirling around. I know you want answers, and we intend to give them. But there’s a lawsuit pending, and my attorneys tell me I can’t get into all that, not here at least.”

  Vance took out his wallet and retrieved a photograph, displaying it for the cameras. “But this much I can tell you. I have a daughter about the age of Sonia Hassan. Her name is Annalee, and she’s the light of my life. I would do anything to protect her from the pain that Sonia feels right now. As a father, I feel deep empathy for Ashik Hassan. I don’t blame him for his anger. If I were in his shoes, I’d feel the same way. On behalf of Presto, on behalf of everyone who cares about this company, I want to say to Ashik and Sonia and Jashel and Alya that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything you have suffered. But I didn’t cause it. Presto didn’t cause it. We will respond to the allegations in court, and we will defeat this attempt to defame and destroy a great American success story. Thank you all for coming.”

  When Vance left the podium, the lobby erupted in a riot of noise. Reporters shouted questions, bystanders hurled epithets, but Vance paid them no heed. Instead, he walked back to the elevator with Cameron, Eve, Kristin, and the board. After the doors closed and the uproar receded, Lester Grant put a papery hand on Vance’s shoulder.

  “That was the most courageous speech I’ve ever heard from a CEO.”

  Vance sighed, his relief palpable. “It was Cameron’s idea.”

  The old banker gave Cameron a look of unvarnished respect. “Well, my friend, you may have just saved the company.”

  Cameron met Lester’s eyes, guilt and satisfaction at war within him. No, he thought. I haven’t saved it yet.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  OUTSIDE PRESTO SUPERSTORE

  TYSONS CORNER, VIRGINIA

  NOVEMBER 26, 2015

  7:46 P.M.

  In the America of modern consumerism, Tysons Corner Center was one of its capitals. Its anchors were two colossal malls with four hundred stores and restaurants, fifteen thousand parking spaces, and a dozen hotels that offered shoppers shuttle service to the bonanza. But it didn’t end there. The whole area was a cash register. If a shopper took a break from her quest and listened, she could almost hear the sound of money being spent, the chatter of card readers turning credit into commerce, the cries of children begging parents for one more toy, the squeals of those who were rewarded, the pouts of those who weren’t, and the millions of thoughts running through the minds of people on the edge of decision.

  On any ordinary Saturday, the shopping scene was harried but orderly. On Thanksgiving weekend, however, the place turned into an anthropological spectacle, part human zoo and part city on speed. For anywhere from twenty-four to forty hours, depending on the start times set by the retailers, the paved-over paradise became paradisiacal again—for bargain hunters, at least. Judging by the bedlam outside Presto’s flagship superstore, that included half of Virginia.

  Josh was there in the throng along with Tony Sharif and two female reporters from the Post, interviewing shoppers anticipating the eight o’clock opening. The coverage had been Josh’s idea. He had pitched it to Tony, who had cleared it with his editor on the condition that Josh’s name would be nowhere in the byline. Madison had resisted at first, because it meant Josh would miss Thanksgiving dinner at the farm. But Lewis had overruled her. The story was too tempting to pass up. It had been only two weeks since the dueling press conferences, and the lawsuit had been all over the media. No American with a television or Internet connection could have missed it. Yet here they were in a crowd of nearly a thousand, clamoring for the chance to exchange their hard-earned dollars for products on Presto’s shelves.

  Josh had expected resistance to his
questions, but he had encountered none. Excitement, it seemed, loosened tongues as effectively as alcohol. He had sought out a diverse sample of interviewees, chatting with them about their buying habits, their opinions of Presto, and their concerns, if any, about the working conditions of the people who made the things they were about to buy. Their comments had been freewheeling, often engaging, and always enlightening.

  From Donald—white, midfifties, CPA, father of two: “I saw the story. It’s shameful what happened to those people. But I didn’t come here for the clothes. I came here for the 60-inch 4k TV. It’s the deal of the century. I’m not sure how all the hullabaloo relates to me.”

  From Jamila—black, midtwenties, hairstylist, toddler at home: “Yeah, I saw the boycott thing on Facebook. I thought about it, but, you know, boycotts don’t do anything. Presto couldn’t care less what I think. I’m just trying to make a living and raise a kid with no help from my ex. My son wants that new tablet. You’ve seen it, right, the DreamTab? It’s half off. Crazy!”

  From Louisa—Latina-Asian, schoolteacher, mother of three: “What happened to those people is very disturbing, but so is everything else going on in the world. ISIS. Syria. Russia. North Korea. If I made more money, I could shop somewhere else, but would that really change anything? My kids know Christmas is coming. What am I supposed to do?”

  From Victor—Hispanic, forty-two, delivery man for a shipping company, accompanied by his two children, both teenagers: “I heard it on the radio. Hope the girl wins. Big companies are always squeezing the little guy. I bet my company is doing the same. You won’t quote me on that, will you?”

  From Rashad—black, nineteen, community college student: “I think the allegations are probably true. But we’ve got bigger problems in this country. You should do a story on Black Lives Matter. If people talked as much about racism as they do about all these other things, we might actually make some progress.”