“What about Guyana, Grant?” Dru said, echoing his quiet tone, deliberately ignoring the fact that he had ignored her comment.
“Where are we with the air transport deal, Dru?” He spoke patiently, as if to a child.
“We’re moving along well with it, Grant.” She responded, as if to an old man who had become senile.
“It doesn’t seem that way, Dru.”
Dru shrugged. “Our people down there are meeting with the transportation minister again this week, Grant.”
“And what can we expect the outcome of that meeting to be, Dru?”
“We can expect the outcome to be satisfactory, Grant.”
“Just satisfactory?”
“The term seems appropriate. The Pilgrim Boone motto is temperance in all we do and say, is it not?”
Silence flooded the room. Grant spoke first.
“I understand someone named Andrew Goodings exercises an extraordinary amount of influence on the minister and the president.”
“I would say that understanding is flawed.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie. “Extraordinary” was an exaggeration.
“I am told also that this Goodings is a rabid nationalist who would rather see a new railroad system in place than an air transport network.”
“I, too, have been told the same about him.”
All through this tit-for-tat conversation, Featherhorn had not moved an inch. He kept his eyes fixed on Dru’s, his voice even. At six foot five, his wavy salt-and-pepper hair styled in a page boy, he was a casual but commanding figure. He was not a handsome man by any means. But his height and his air of ownership gave him that présence that made even his peers bow and scrape before him.
Dru was not in the least bit intimidated. More than being mentored by Featherhorn, she had been schooled in the art of verbal fencing by Lawton Pilgrim himself. Over the years, she had seen Lawton in some of the most grueling negotiations. She had studied every one of the moves he drew from what he described as his arsenal of diplomacy-cum-martial arts.
“If you are having trouble with this deal we can always get Sharon to help you. She’s on a first-name basis with all the Caribbean ambassadors and just about all the heads of state in the region.” Featherhorn said, his eyes narrowing just a tiny bit.
Dru smiled. “You’re panicking, Grant. There’s no need to reach into the trash bin.”
To Dru—and, for that matter, most of the staff at Pilgrim Boone—Sharon Brinkley was a blonde, blue-eyed slut who never saw a male executive, official, or diplomat she did not like. Race, color, or creed did not matter to her. The combination of high rank, two legs, and a penis was enough to crank her negotiating skills into high gear, though she insisted coyly that she did not have to sleep with the men she negotiated with. She was always brought in as a last resort on deals that really mattered and she almost always delivered.
Featherhorn returned Dru’s smile. His intention had been to push Dru’s famous mouth button by mentioning Sharon Brinkley and he had failed. The indignant, defensive tirade he hoped for did not materialize. Quite the contrary, the relaxed composure of the woman before him bordered insultingly on boredom.
It dawned on Featherhorn, then, that this Drucilla Durane would give him more trouble than he had anticipated. Fury settled behind the mask in his eyes. Not a nerve in his face quivered in betrayal. He and Dru remained smiling at each other for a long moment, each fully aware of the hatred simmering between them.
Eventually, Featherhorn turned and opened the door. His movements were calm. He left without a word or backward glance. He did not close the door behind him either.
“Good riddance!” Dru said under her breath. She sank into her chair the moment he disappeared from her doorway.
All of a sudden she felt boxed in. She needed to get out of her office. Out of the building. She needed a vacation, period! She hadn’t taken any real time off in God knew how many years. How could she, with Featherhorn breathing down her neck as she slogged her way up the Pilgrim Boone hierarchy. Featherhorn and all those jealous bitches on the fifty-first floor, the ones in middle management, waited eagerly to see her screw up. Some even tried to make her screw up. The little black girl from Brooklyn who was Lawton Pilgrim’s pet!
‘Pet,’ my foot!
She had slogged. And it was worse now that she was in the Inner Circle. Oh, sure, Grant Featherhorn had eased up a little, if you can call switching from racist remarks to biting sarcasm “easing up.” Maybe the “easing up” had more to do with the fact that she had learned how to handle him than with any change in his behavior. All she knew was that one day she did not go home and cry her eyes out, and her eyes had stayed dry since that day.
She worked harder than the others in the circle. She loved her work, loved the thrill of the negotiation, of taking potential clients through possibilities they had never dreamed of. She loved watching for that moment when they made that crucial mental leap and she could relax because she knew she had them. Then she would close.
She had no illusions about the weight that the name Pilgrim Boone carried. But she was still a black woman in a white, male-dominated world. Lawton had given her jurisdiction over the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa, and even there her blackness still mattered, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a way that hurt. Her gender mattered, too, though it mattered more with Africans than with West Indians. She had to bring in those accounts. She could not let Lawton down. She couldn’t let herself down.
She sighed—a long sigh—and rolled her head around. She really needed to get away. She rolled her shoulders and chuckled as an image of her Aunt Petal flashed across her mind.
“Aunt Petal would say I need a husband more than I need a vacation,” she muttered.
Aunt Petal was her great aunt on her father’s side. Eighty years old and as irascible as a hen with new chicks, sometimes she sounded as if she had just landed from Guyana: “Now you listen to me, you Drucilla! I don’t care how much degree you have or how much countries you been to. I don’t care if dem Pilgrim Progress people you work for make you Queen of de Roundtable. If you don’t have a man to squeeze you up and chil’ren to make you remember yuh pooh-pooh does stink, den all dem odda t’ings don’t matta, you hear me? Dey don’ matta one bit! Take what I tell you, yes!”
Ever since Dru could remember, she had heard her Guyanese family describe her as “Aunt Petal to a T.” She was the image of Aunt Petal in looks, character, and especially “that mouth!”
Dru swiveled her chair around to face the window. Aunt Petal’s admonition aside, which had a lot of merit to it, she conceded grudgingly—it wasn’t as if she didn’t want to get married and have kids—she really needed a vacation. The odd day off here and there didn’t count. Since she had made the Inner Circle, her business trips doubled as her vacation. It wasn’t much, but at least she was away from the pressures of the office.
Staying in the best hotels, compliments of Pilgrim Boone, she would use her free evenings—yeah, right!—to have a good workout in the hotel gym, then relax in the pool or the Jacuzzi. Afterward, she might take a walk if it was safe enough, or indulge in a long dinner, a drink in the bar, or maybe enjoy casual dancing and conversation with a business associate she met on the trip.
But right now she would settle for a long walk to rid herself of feeling she was suffocating.
After the Jamaica fiasco she had to bring in Guyana. Fast. Lawton did not blame her at all for the way the Jamaicans had acted. Still, she felt responsible for the loss of the contract. Lawton had put the squeeze on the Jamaicans big time, meeting with top officials of the fifteen leading developing countries and persuading them to call for a change of venue because of the high crime in Jamaica.
His meetings with these officials were not cloak-and-dagger affairs. And Lawton himself never uttered a word against Jamaica. But it didn’t take much to connect Lawton’s meetings with subsequent calls from the same countries for a change of venue. Trinidad and Tobago was the venue
most often mentioned as an alternative.
Jamaica had come crawling back to Pilgrim Boone and the calls subsided, hosting the G-15 summit countries was that important to them. Not only would it send their national ego further into orbit, it also would be a boon to their tourism industry.
They didn’t come back with the same contract. People have to be allowed to save face, Dru shrugged. They came back with a juicy one for an urban renewal study covering Kingston, the administrative capital, and all the main towns, including Montego Bay, the tourism capital, and May Pen, capital of the sugar and citrus region.
Although she did not let Featherhorn know it, Dru was every bit as concerned about Guyana as he was. Things were moving far too slowly. Roopnaraine had told her about that troublemaker Goodings and all his we-the-people blabber.
Maybe she should go down there herself. Talk to Goodings and MacPherson. Win them over. Assure them that she shared their ideas about rail travel and that she saw no reason why those ideas could not be implemented as well, but, most important, she would press home the point that Guyana needed to move forward at the same pace as other nations of its size and potential. This could happen if people and commerce moved faster from point A to point B, which air transport would do.
She would let Goodings and MacPherson know that while they could always build a railroad system, a deal like this for an air transport system, with all kinds of concessions and perks, came around only once. The offer could easily be taken elsewhere, and where would that leave Guyana?
She would remind them that her own interest in Guyana went beyond something as mundane as an agreement with Pilgrim Boone. With her, it was a matter of her birthright. She would be earnest and passionate because she truly believed all those things.
Yes. That was exactly what she needed to do: Get on a plane to Guyana. Roopnaraine and Dalrymple had come through for Pilgrim Boone before. But that was more than a decade ago, and she did not think they had it in them to do it again. For one thing, the new president was a much younger man—so young, in fact, that Guyanese had nicknamed him “Quartapint,” Quarter Pint—who was still very much in salt-of-the-earth mode. That meant he was likely to decide with his heart. Either she or someone close to him that she could win over would have to influence that heart.
Yes, she would fly down to Guyana this very week and take the blasted bull by its blasted horns herself, she thought, using one of Aunt Petal’s favorite expressions.
She swiveled around again to her desk and punched a button on the phone.
“Yes, Dru?”
“Leona, I need you to book me on a flight to Guyana. Departing Wednesday, returning the following Monday. And you can book me into the Pegasus, too.”
“You got it, Dru. Want me to set up any appointments for you while you’re there?”
“Yes, but not right now. I need to make a couple of calls first. As a matter of fact, as soon as you get the flight and hotel reservation arranged, call Roopnaraine and Dalrymple. I’ll talk to either one of them.”
“I’ll get right to it.”
“Thanks, Leona.”
“Oh, Dru—”
“I know, Leona, I know. A bottle of fifteen-year-old El Dorado. You got it.”
Leona giggled. “Thank you, Dru. You know how much my husband likes it since you introduced him to it.”
“Yeah, right, Leona. You and I both know who the real rummy is in the family.”
Leona giggled again and cut the connection.
Dru sat back in her chair with a smile. Leona was one hell of an assistant. She was the only black one on the executive floor and, true to her name, she watched Dru’s back like a lioness guarding her cub.
Dru had insisted on hiring her own secretary when she joined the Inner Circle. She knew what she wanted—needed, rather: a mature, efficient black woman who knew the ropes, one who was familiar with the nasty little games men and women played in corporations in order to reach—and stay in—the upper ranks and, at the same time, one who knew how to earn the trust and respect of the foot soldiers, from executive assistants to mailroom clerks. Equally important was one who liked herself. Leona had been with IBM for twenty-five years when she was pinkslipped in the company’s last round of layoffs. At sixty, she was too young, too healthy, and too full of joie de vivre to stay home, but too old for a job market overrun by eager beaver college graduates willing to take any job in any blue-chip corporation for any salary, as long as the pay was enough for them to afford their one-fourth of the rent at an address in the newest lipsticked slum. She had been referred to Dru by the wife of Dru’s pastor.
With Guyana being taken care of, Dru felt a little more relaxed. “Now for you, Mr. St. Cyr,” she said aloud.
Her face hardened as her thoughts returned to Theron St. Cyr. She reached for her day planner, opened it to the sheet of paper with his phone number, and stared at it. How was she going to deal with him? She had vowed to make him pay for what he had done to her. In all the years since she had written that contract into her heart, she had dreamed only of seeing him suffer.
She hadn’t bothered to contact the French police or the American Embassy. How could she? What would she say? That she had gotten into a car with a total stranger at a train station in Paris? That he had imprisoned her in an apartment with chains on the door but she had managed to take the door off its hinges and escape? And what proof did she have that St. Cyr was involved?
The whole thing sounded bizarre, even to her. Except that she had lived it.
And when she returned to New York, whom could she complain to? The French Embassy? The NYPD? That would have been a laugh! They probably would have grilled her about what she did to get herself invited to the man’s place.
So she had bided her time, knowing in her gut that one day she would see St. Cyr again. She imagined him begging her for mercy after she did whatever it was she was going to do to him. That part she had never worked out. She always told herself she would figure it out later. In her dreams he would be down on his Euro-pimp knees and she would spit in his face and laugh as she walked away.
Or as they took him away to prison.
The dreams were daydreams and sleep dreams. They were so real she would come out of them trembling with the thrill of revenge. Like the thrill she was feeling right now.
What gave him the right to talk to her so casually? What gave him that comfort level?
A thought struck her and she turned to her desktop and logged on to the Internet. There might be something about him on the Web.
At the prompt she typed in his name. Four entries came up. She clicked on the first entry. It brought up the transcript of a presentation Theron St. Cyr had made a year before at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, an iconic institution in New York City’s Harlem community. His presentation was about black Americans who had migrated to France in the second half of the twentieth century. Below the title of the presentation was the presenter’s name: Theron St. Cyr, Chief Executive Officer, Trans-Global Solutions, Inc., New York/Atlanta/Paris.
Trans-Global Solutions.
Dru had never heard of the firm. She scanned the presentation, stopping every now and then at a passage that caught her attention. St. Cyr’s account of black life in France for his Schomburg audience was as captivating as it had been for her twelve years ago in Marseille. There was the same sensitivity, the easy humor, the deep introspection.
He must have wowed them. The snake!
Dru closed the document and used the computer’s Back button to return to the list of entries for “Theron St. Cyr.” She clicked on the second entry. It was a repeat of the Schomburg lecture. A click on the third entry brought up a news item about the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s annual spending with minority-and women-owned companies. Trans-Global Solutions was mentioned as the recipient of a contract to study urban traffic patterns, part of a massive transportation improvement project the Port Authority had just undertaken for the airports in New York and Ne
w Jersey. St. Cyr’s name was cited as Trans-Global’s CEO.
The fourth entry took Dru to The Network Journal, a monthly business magazine that she subscribed to but had little time to read from cover to cover. Theron St. Cyr’s name appeared in the magazine’s latest “40 Under Forty Dynamic Achievers” edition as one of the top black entrepreneurs under forty years old. A biographical note read: “Theron St. Cyr, 38, CEO, Trans-Global Solutions, Inc. New York, Atlanta, Paris. Born Paris, France. B.A., Economics; M.A., Finance, Strasbourg University, France. Special Officers’ Corps, French Navy. M.Sc., Environmental Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Dru’s head swam. Theron St. Cyr was conning the world with his little Trans-Global setup and his college degrees and his special-officer-ofthe-French-Navy crap.
What happened to due diligence? Didn’t anybody dig deeper than the credentials people threw at them? What about character? What about morals? Don’t people care about those things anymore? Is it only about what school you went to, who you know, how much money you make, and how young you are when you’re making it? Is that it?
Dru shoved herself up from her chair and paced the floor, furious. As she passed her desk a second time, she stopped suddenly and stared straight ahead.
Why do people believe him? She asked the question out loud. That was the problem. People believed Theron St. Cyr. There was nothing about him that sent shivers up your spine. Nothing that told you to be wary. He was totally, utterly believable.
Dru circled her desk and dropped into her chair.
Well, you can’t con me anymore, Theron St. Cyr. Either you’re out of the slavery and prostitution business altogether, or you’re still in it and Trans-Global is a front. Whatever. You’re in my territory now, and I know exactly what you are even if nobody else does.
She clicked off the page on her computer screen and began a search on Trans-Global Solutions. There were five entries, the same four from before and one other that gave the Web address for the French-American Chamber of Commerce in New York City. Dru clicked on the address. The chamber’s home page came up. Dru moved the cursor to the menu and clicked on “Member Directory.” A log-in prompt came up. She sucked her teeth, went back, and clicked on “French-American News.” She scanned the page quickly.
The Guyana Contract Page 12