The Guyana Contract

by Rosalind McLymont

  Lawton sat on the leather sofa opposite him. He, too, was in shirtsleeves, and he clutched his prized coffee mug. It was a classic ivory-colored mug that bore his initials embossed in gold. A grateful client had had a set of four custom-made for him by the house of Lenox. Beneath the vulgar overbrew of Featherhorn’s Starbucks, Dru could discern the earthy bouquet of the black Nepalese tea Lawton favored. Steam wisped languidly from the Lenox mug.

  Pilgrim had greeted Dru affectionately, jumping up from his chair and hugging her in an uncharacteristic show of relief.

  Featherhorn had approached her genially and pecked her lightly on the cheek. Dru had suppressed a grimace as his lips made contact with her skin. The gesture was typical of Featherhorn when he was in the presence of others, especially Lawton. But she did not miss the look in his eyes that Lawton could not see, nor the quick, derisive smile that told her he not only had anticipated her early arrival, but had deliberately thwarted it by showing up in Lawton’s office ahead of her.

  She had moved away from him as quickly as she discreetly could and taken a seat in the second antique chair, facing Lawton.

  “Before you brief us on Guyana, Dru, there are a couple of things I must clue you in on,” Lawton was saying. “I want to do it now, before the day gets going, because I know that you more than anyone else will be affected by these things; these decisions I have made.”

  A fist-size knot formed in the pit of Dru’s stomach. He’s moving me out, she thought with alarm. I should have seen it coming. First Jamaica, now Guyana. What else could he do?

  She bowed her head and stared at the floor. “I’m dying, Dru.”

  Dru’s head jerked up. She blinked at Lawton Pilgrim. And blinked again. She smiled, slid to the edge of her chair, and leaned toward him.”I’m sorry, Lawton. I think I misheard you. My ears must be jet-lagged. Would you repeat what you just said?”

  “I said I’m dying, Dru. I have cancer. The doctors have given me three months to live,” he paused, looked at his wristwatch and added. “Actually, I have about a week less than that now.”

  Dru’s smile fell away. She slammed back in her chair and glared at Lawton. “That’s not funny, Lawton. That’s not funny at all,” she snapped, not caring that she could pay dearly for her impudence.

  Abruptly, she shot forward and swung toward Featherhorn. Belligerence blazed in her eyes. “Is this one of your stupid ideas, Grant? Play a joke on Dru? Make her feel lousier than she already feels? Yes, I bet this was your idea, you sick son of a—”

  “Stop it Dru! Stop it at once!”

  Lawton’s command bit into the air. Dru fell back into the chair, her face crumpling, her hands limp in her lap. “I don’t believe you, Lawton,” she said tremulously. “It’s not true.”

  “Whether you think it’s true or not is of no consequence, Dru. I’m telling you the truth. Just accept it.” His tone had softened. He seemed relaxed, vaguely insouciant.

  His hands told a different story. They shook as they guided the coffee mug to his lips. Dru found her eyes drawn to them. Lawton Pilgrim’s hands never trembled.

  As if reading her thoughts, Pilgrim abruptly set the mug down on the coffee table. “Moving right along, then,” he said briskly. “Understandably, I’ve been forced to accelerate my succession plans. Are you with me, Dru?” Dru dragged her eyes up to meet his. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She swallowed hard and nodded.

  “Grant will succeed me as CEO of Pilgrim Boone,” Lawton said. He held Dru in a firm gaze. “I’ll make a formal announcement to the entire staff later today, after I announce it to the Circle.”

  Dru retched. She clamped both hands over her mouth and doubled over, forcing down the urge to vomit.

  Pilgrim jumped up in alarm and patted her back. “Are you okay, Dru? Are you okay?” He had expected her to be shocked, but he wasn’t prepared for this. He continued to pat her back until he heard her manage a weak, “I’m okay.”

  Lawton breathed a sigh of relief and sat down again. Glancing disdainfully at Featherhorn, who was smiling and had not moved an inch, he said to Dru: “I know this is a lot for you to take all at once, Dru, but surely you understand why I had to do it this way. It would have been inconsiderate of me to let you hear this for the first time in front of the others.”

  Dru lifted her head and her eyes met his. She saw understanding in his. She saw the understanding change to something else. A plea for forgiveness? Impossible. Why would Lawton need her forgiveness?

  Only then did it hit her that he knew. Lawton had known all along how Grant had made her life hell. And he had done nothing about it.

  And now, adding insult to injury, he had given Grant the reins of the company, elevated him to the supreme position, put him in full charge of her future, her very life, with the company.

  She drew herself up erect and turned to Grant. He smiled at her. It was a smile she knew well.

  28

  Something exploded in Dru’s head. She had to stop this madness. Pilgrim Boone must not, could not be put into the hands of Grant Featherhorn. Lawton had to know the truth. Two days ago, as they had driven her to the airport, Dalrymple and Roopnaraine had told her about their visit to Theron and what they had found out about the man named Alejandro Bernat, the one whose name the minister had queried her about.

  She sprang to her feet and jabbed an accusing finger at Featherhorn. “You can’t, Lawton! You can’t make him CEO! He may embroil Pilgrim Boone in a scandal of the worst kind!” she cried.

  Lawton stared at her. It was his turn to be shocked. “Dru—” Dru would not let him continue. She planted herself in front of Featherhorn, who had flattened himself against the back of his chair, eyes agape.

  Dru’s chest heaved. The torment she had endured from this hateful man welled up and crashed against the walls that had held it in check for so many years. The walls gave way. Any sense of restraint that may have been left in Dru disintegrated.

  “Listen to me, Lawton!” Dru shouted. “Your precious Grant may be mixed up with a drug lord in Venezuela, who may be planning to run drugs through Guyana if air transportation really takes off. The man’s name is Alejandro Bernat. He’s the one who probably had Andrew Goodings killed because Goodings was telling MacPherson to go slow on the deal, to have everything and all the parties involved thoroughly checked out first, and, if anything untoward turned up, to kill the deal entirely. Let Grant tell us what he knows. Ask him, Lawton! Ask him about Bernat!”

  A mocking curl of the lips had replaced the surprise on Featherhorn’s face during Dru’s tirade. He was convinced that Dru was fishing. She had no proof of a relationship between him and Bernat. Someone obviously had fed her information, but that someone had not yet connected all the dots. If they had, Dru would not be using words like “may” and “probably.” She would be spilling out the details herself instead of using Lawton to try to extract the information from him. Still, her outburst was unsettling. If Dru knew someone who had come up with information about Bernat and who was curious enough to start digging into Bernat’s relationships, it was only a matter of time before that someone made the connection between… Featherhorn folded his arms and stared at Dru with feigned amusement. He shifted his gaze to Pilgrim and encountered the older man’s frigid glare. His heart leapt. For an instant, he was once more the unsophisticated recruit in the awesome presence of the iconic Lawton Pilgrim.

  Why, he believes her, the son of a bitch! He knows what she’s saying is true even if she has no proof. Why wouldn’t he believe her anyway? He’s already found out about the meeting with Bernat and queried me about it, hasn’t he? All Dru did with that stupid outburst was connect his dots. She’ll pay for this. Oh, how she will pay for this.

  He kept his face impassive. He would not let Pilgrim see the fear that had begun to twist his stomach into knots.

  “Go ahead and ask him, Lawton!” Dru screeched.

  Lawton turned slowly away from Featherhorn and looked up at Dru with pained eyes. “Sit down, Dru,” he
said gently.

  Dru was taken aback. This was not happening. This could not be happening. Lawton was not dismissing everything she had said.

  She challenged Lawton, dismay making her voice shrill. “Sit down? Lawton, didn’t you hear a word I said? Aren’t you going to ask him about Bernat? Aren’t you going to ask him anything at all?”

  “I said sit down, Dru!” Lawton said sharply.

  Dru complied. Her eyes, wide with disbelief, remained on Lawton’s face.

  She clasped her hands tight in her lap to stop them from trembling. She felt as if she were falling into an abyss.

  “Those are very serious charges, Dru,” Lawton said quietly. “If what you are implying is true, then we will have to go to the federal authorities and we will have to provide proof to back up your charges. We will also have to inform Savoy and pull out of the negotiations immediately. Word will get out, of course, and Pilgrim Boone will be ruined. No one will care that we took the high road and reported the whole sordid affair ourselves. On the other hand, if it turns out that none of what you’re charging is true, that whoever gave you this information was playing some sort of game to get us out of the negotiations—and I can see some of our rivals stooping that low—irreparable damage will have been done to Pilgrim Boone and to Grant. Grant would probably sue you, and the company, for libel.”

  He paused to let the full import of his words sink in. He took a deep breath and continued. “So! What proof do you have, Dru, that drug traffickers are conspiring to take over the air routes that Savoy hopes to open in Guyana. Why are you convinced that Grant is mixed up in this heinous conspiracy?” The tone of his voice, like that of a father to a wayward child, told Dru that it was all over for her. Truth be told, she had known it the moment Lawton had ordered her to sit down. The wagons were circled and she was not in their protective embrace.

  She bowed her head. There was a lesson here somewhere. An ugly lesson someone who had been fired from Pilgrim Boone had tried to teach her. It had been early in her career at Pilgrim Boone and she had refused to listen, telling herself it was a case of sour grapes, the facile defense of an underperformer who walked around with a chip on his shoulder. She was ready to listen now.

  The man’s words came roaring back to her now: “Be careful, Dru. When push comes to shove, the white boys will always side with the white boys.” For the second time since she walked into Lawton Pilgrim’s office that morning Dru felt like throwing up. Lawton, whether he believed her or not, was not going to question Grant Featherhorn, at least not in front of her. She had no proof to give him, of course. She had not waited long enough for Theron’s case to pan out. It would be useless to argue that her information had come from a reliable source. She could not, would not, bring Theron’s name into it for fear she would have to explain how she came to get the information from him. And if she did that, it would look as if she had betrayed Pilgrim Boone, consorted with the enemy, as the TV dramas would have put it.

  Dru raised her head and once again met Lawton’s eyes, eyes that pleaded with her to understand the position he had taken. She shifted her gaze to his mouth. It was drawn into a reproving line, a show he was putting on for Featherhorn, Dru supposed. But you can’t have it both ways, Lawton. You can’t have it both ways.

  Her eyes remained empty as they traveled slowly back to Lawton’s. She stood up. “I have no proof to give you, Lawton,” she said in a steady voice. “You’ll have my resignation within the hour.”

  Dru strode toward the door. The antique handwoven Armenian carpet that Lawton had bought at a Christie’s auction for two hundred thousand dollars swallowed any sound the defiance of her steps would have made. She didn’t deign to look at Featherhorn.

  Her heart pounded in the silence that followed her. She was almost at the door and Lawton still had not said a word in response to her offer to resign. She had hoped—foolishly, she told herself—that he would, even under the circumstances. She had not expected Featherhorn to say anything. Frankly, she would not have paid any attention to anything he might have said.

  She opened the door with a firm twist of the gleaming brass knob and pulled it shut just as firmly behind her. Isn’t that something? she thought with a wry smile. She had figuratively and literally closed the door firmly on her career at Pilgrim Boone.

  29

  The eyewitness was explaining to the lone TV reporter and a crowd of onlookers that the woman who lay dead in the middle of the road had had no chance at all to save herself.

  The eyewitness was taking the fullest advantage of his day on camera, knowing that an opportunity like this would never come his way again. He gave the performance of his life, recreating with his voice and facial expressions and exaggerated gestures the horror he had just witnessed, and his audience rewarded him with sighs and grunts and drawn-out sounds of sucked teeth on perfect cue.

  “The BMW was speeding, coming up fast behind the dray cart when it suddenly cut out into the oncoming traffic side of the road. It looked like he just wanted to overtake the dray cart. But he miscalculated bad! There was no way that poor lady could have swerved out of the way in time. Accidents like this happen all the time in Georgetown. It’s the law of the jungle on the roads. All this drug business that got people buying these fast fancy cars. This place is getting like the French connection. Money floating around like it falling from trees and every Tom, Dick, and Harry driving around in these BMWs like they on the racetrack. People right to call them Bad Man Wagon because that’s exactly who drive them, people who think they’re more bad than everybody else. I keep saying we should go back to the old days and give everybody bicycle. Guyana was a safe country when bicycle was kyar. None of this dashing helter-skelter t’rough de streets like life don’t mean nothing.”

  The longer he spoke, the more animated he became and the more his language lapsed into the Guyanese patois. He came up for a quick breath of air and rushed on, fearing the reporter and her cameraman might seize the moment to question someone else, a groundless fear on his part. With a dearth of local production worthy of viewing, nothing captured the TV audience more than “man-in-the-street” commentary. Both the reporter and cameraman knew this.

  The eyewitness hit his stride again. “And this lambsy-bambsy government we got ain’ doing a damn thing. But you and I know why. Politics is a hell of a thing. And to think, that beast ended this lady’s life and he didn’t get even a scratch. There he is over there. Watch he. Standing up as cool as cucumber talking to the police. Rich boy. Got party connections. He know he gon’ get off. Not a day in jail for he. Life, eh? But God gon’ take care of him. Mark my words. God don’ sleep nor slumbuh.”

  The reporter darted in with a question. “Do you know who the lady is, Sir?” The eyewitness seemed offended. “Do I know who the lady is? I know who the lady is, yes. She live on my street. One of the most beautiful women in Georgetown. Never mind how she look under that sheet, with her head smash in and bloody like that. And never mind what people say ‘bout she. How she dis and how she dat. She’s a kind lady. Generous. She—”

  The reporter dove in again. “Can you tell us her name?”

  The eyewitness shook his head and sighed deeply. He kept his eyes downcast as he responded to the reporter. “Her name? Leila. Her name is Leila.”

  30

  Dru slipped the envelope with a check for the month’s rent under Mr. Jackson’s door and hurried downstairs to meet her brother Lance.

  He and Phil were driving to Martha’s Vineyard where they jointly owned a house. They had persuaded her to go with them.

  It had taken a lot of persuading.

  Approaching New York on the way from Washington with Phil, Lance had suddenly decided to visit his parents. The visit extended well into the night and he and Phil slept over. In conversation with his parents, Lance was shocked to learn that Dru not only had quit her job at Pilgrim Boone, but also had virtually cut herself off from family and friends.

  “When she called to tell us she ha
d left the firm, she kept saying these strange things about having to stay away from the family for the time being, that she did not want anything to happen to her or to us,” his mother explained tearfully.

  Not getting any answer on Dru’s landline or cell phone, Lance and Phil decided to stop at her apartment the next morning before setting out for Martha’s Vineyard. Dru finally opened the door after Lance threatened at the top of his voice that he would call the police if she did not.

  He refused to accept her explanation for her behavior.

  “Turn off the dribble, Dru! You were doing just fine at Pilgrim Boone and everyone knows it! Besides, you gave Mom and Dad a bunch of crap about your having to stay away from the family in order to protect them. What’s that all about? What the hell’s going on, Dru? Does this have anything to do with that contract in Guyana you were negotiating, or with that French guy you had me check up on?” he demanded angrily after Dru had prattled on for a good ten minutes about being tired of banging her head against the glass ceiling at Pilgrim Boone.

  She had responded—too quickly, Lance told Phil later—that the Frenchman had nothing to do with anything, that she just needed to get away. “So come with us,” Phil had interjected, catching both Dru and Lance off guard because he had remained mute while the two argued.

  Phil admitted to himself that he was being utterly selfish. But, he also insisted silently, taking Dru with them was really the best solution. Dru was not going to reveal anything—at least not now—and Lance would keep pushing and prodding until he and Dru started shouting at each other. Eventually, Lance would stomp off in a huff and he and Phil would drive in sour silence all the way to Martha’s Vineyard. Once there, Lance would walk around feeling and looking morose and the entire vacation they had planned for all these months would end up a goddamn disaster.

  He struck hard while he had their attention.”Pack a few things and come to Martha’s Vineyard if you really need to get away, Dru. No one will bother you there, and Lance will know where you are all the time and that you’re okay. You can stay at the house as long as you like, too, even after we leave.”