The Road Least Traveled

by Jerry Cole

  Henry made a pretense of sobbing like a little child but he reached for one of the bananas. Greg went into the bathroom and stepped into a hot shower, where he could smell the alcohol seeping through his pores. A whole bottle of scotch between them. Five years ago, Greg would have already been in work, whistling in his office without a care in the world. Now, at thirty-eight, he knew it was time to admit that his heavy drinking days were probably over.

  By nine-thirty both men were showered, dressed and sipping coffee in the kitchen. Henry looked positively depressed, but the aspirins were beginning to clear his headache and as he was a little ahead of Henry, Greg was considering a bacon bagel for breakfast. He suggested it to Henry.

  “Not from Schwartz’s,” his best friend growled. “It’s not really bacon.”

  “Henry, it’s a kosher deli,” countered Greg. “Of course it’s not really bacon. But as much as I love you, my Jewish friend, I am not eating salted turkey. I need the real thing. Let’s go to Bertha’s. They have a drive-thru.”

  “Are you even fit to drive?” asked Henry, and Greg shrugged.

  “I feel fine,” he said. “More coffee is the answer and bacon will help. I’ll drive slow.”

  Despite the levels of alcohol in his blood still very probably putting him over the limit, Greg carefully drove himself and Henry to the office. They stopped on the way to collect breakfast, including the longed-for bacon bagel and two hash browns each, which helped to sop up the last remnant of the liquor in their stomachs. Henry was in a clean suit, but Greg was still in his jeans and shirt. When they arrived at the office, Greg immediately went to the company gym he’d had built in the basement, where he opened his locker and pulled out his emergency office clothes, stowed away for such a time as this. While the batteries in the razor weren’t quite as fresh as he’d have liked, they were just enough for the razor blades to buzz away sluggishly, clipping his gray stubble to a length more than acceptable for a meeting.

  By eleven, he was in the board room with the rest of his colleagues, including Henry. The conference call was set up and ready to go. Greg’s headache had almost completely cleared and he sipped at a glass of iced water which helped to hydrate him after the salty bagel he and his non-observant friend Henry had munched on the way in.

  After years of him dreaming of building bridges all over the world, Turbo Metro Drilling was not Greg’s first choice of employer. However, on a college placement with the company, he was bowled over. TMD was the brainchild of Richard Dwyer, and after practically begging, stealing and borrowing from every family member he had and every bank he could, Dwyer had purchased a tunnel boring machine, which he named Mary. Loaning the machine to cities all over the world made Dwyer a millionaire in little over a year, once he’d paid back the bank and his relieved family. The millions became the billions, and by the time he retired, Mary was joined by her three sisters: Martha, Maggie and the irritatingly-named, non-conforming Betty. The machines bored through millions of tons of rock and soil, creating a path through which subway lines, mineshafts, oil wells and thousands of other uses a city may have for a tunnel were built.

  A gifted engineer, Greg loved each of the machines the way a sailor loves his ship. To Greg, the girls were things of beauty, not only in their form and structure, but in the wonderful things they helped create. They linked people across cities and even joined continents together under the sea. They brought forth priceless drops of oil, and all by simply pushing on, relentlessly making their giant, worm-like burrows through the earth. Greg was immensely proud of being CEO, along with Marty. The business was still very much in Dwyer’s name, but Greg’s experience and passion had brought him an excellent salary and the opportunity to travel to some of the most exotic places in the world, as well, of course, as the most dreary and dull industrial parks and oil rigs.

  The board room was abuzz with the latest project: bringing a metro line to the city of Thessaloniki. Situated in Northern Greece, it was home to two million occupants whose lives were to be made so much easier by the arrival of a new way of transporting them across the city for both work and pleasure. Crowded and growing, the streets could no longer cope with the increasing volume of vehicles that sat in traffic from dawn until dusk. People had taken to parking in the middle of intersections and blocking other cars in with their own. The metro was not only a luxury, it was a necessity. It had been promised to the city for the past thirty years, but Greece’s economy, historically rocky but made worse by the financial crises of the past two decades, meant that each deadline came and went with little progress.

  Finally, the mayor of Thessaloniki put his reputation on the line and pledged to have the work completed within five years. He begged for money from Athens, and they agreed that the first two miles of tunnel should be excavated for as cheap a price as possible. Turbo Metro Drilling, while a seemingly unlikely candidate given their location on the west coast of the U.S., put in a bid for nearly half the price of their nearest rival. It was very much a strategic move: the project, should it go well, would open up a part of Europe so far literally untapped by TMD. Greece, nicknamed the Gateway to the East in ancient times, would live up to its reputation should all go well. Greg intended nothing less.

  “Guys, are we all here?” Greg called out, as one by one the fifteen-strong team took their seats.

  “Just waiting on Andrew,” said Henry, who was chewing gum fiercely. Greg was sure he wasn’t the only one to notice his friend’s slightly bloodshot eyes and wondered how he was faring. The evening could not come soon enough, and Greg dreamed of his cool, gray bed, clean and fresh and waiting for him. They needed to get this project meeting out of the way and then he would be clear to escape the office for a quiet weekend all to himself. Until, of course, he met up with Sarah and Molly. Just the thought of him and his ex-wife wrangling with their daughter over her choice of college brought a throb to his temples, and Greg reached forward to take another sip of water.

  He didn’t have to spend any more time concerning himself with that thought, however, as a breathless Andrew from logistics burst into the room with a grimace of apology. He sat down and Greg stood up, the room seeming to spin just a little.

  “Thanks for coming, everyone,” he said, as he flicked on the large television screen, which was linked up to his computer. On the screen was a map of the city of Thessaloniki, with lines drawn across it in red, showing the route the drill was due to take. There was a thicker black line, no longer than an inch on the map, and Greg pointed to it with a laser pen in his hand, as the red dot danced around the small black streak.

  “Okay, so just to get everyone up to speed, here is the progress Betty has made over the past three weeks. This represents one hundred yards of drilling, which as we know is not as fast as we’d like. Today our conference call with Eddie and the Greek team is going to hopefully give us some idea of what’s causing the delays. Andrew, do you know of anything before we make the call?”

  “No, sir,” replied Andrew, who flicked through some screens on his tablet. “I have an email here saying the concrete arrived on time, the engineers have Betty in perfect working order and Marty himself oversaw that she was put together with all her parts.”

  “Marty is now further down the line,” explained Greg, swirling the red laser dot on a different part of the map, “right here. He’s looking into the rock formation and has a team of geologists with him and then he’s off on vacation for three weeks. We need to make sure all of this is looking sharp before he goes. So if there are no further questions, we’ll give Eddie a call and see what’s going on with our men in Europe.”

  As nobody objected, Greg leaned over to the dome shape in the center of the table and punched in some numbers. The entire room was silent as the telephone put feelers out across thousands of miles, and within a second or two had made a connection. The dial tone was long and hollow, and was answered within two rings.

  “Eddie Gabriel.”

  “Eddie, it’s Greg and the team,�
� Greg called into the microphone. “We got you here on speakerphone, buddy. So, how are things over there?”

  “They’re a fucking nightmare, Greg,” Eddie replied, and his tone was so unexpectedly sharp that the room raised their eyebrows in collective shock.

  “Okay,” replied Greg, slowly. “Why don’t you tell us the problem and we can help?”

  “Well right now, Greg, I should be down in the hole with Betty. Instead I’ve got a team of guys chipping away at eight feet of concrete with sledgehammers.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Greg, frowning. “What do you mean, guys with sledgehammers? Where’s Betty and why isn’t she doing the work?”

  “Greg, take me off speakerphone, won’t you?” Eddie barked. “I’m going to say some pretty fucking nasty shit and I’m not sure everyone will want to hear it.”

  “Eddie, stay there a second.” Greg looked up from the table at the sea of worried faces. He gave them a silent nod and one by one they filed out, with the exception of Henry, who Greg motioned to stay in his seat. Once the room was empty, save for the two friends, Greg spoke to Eddie once more.

  “Right, Ed, it’s just me and Henry,” he said. “What’s going on? Where’s Marty?”

  “Marty’s gone back to the hotel. It’s nine at night here. He’s spent the afternoon at the university with the geologists,” said Eddie. “I’ve called him and he’s not picking up. He’ll come over tomorrow morning. But this morning, our entrance hole was blocked. Literally. We’ve got the entrance site cordoned off and nobody’s allowed near it. And last night I guess security was a little lax because the fucking hippies got in and blocked it off again.”

  Greg held his head in his hands, his elbows on the table. He was confused.

  “Eddie,” he said. “I don’t have a goddamn clue what you’re talking about. What hippies? And what have they blocked up?”

  “Didn’t Marty tell you?” Eddie asked, exasperated.

  “No,” said Greg. “Where’s Betty? Is she damaged? Why has she only made one hundred yards of progress in three weeks? We should be at least double that by now.”

  “We’re being protested against,” said Eddie, and Greg and Henry could hear banging in the background. “Apparently, Betty is endangering years’ worth of research by archaeologists in the city. She’s boring through ruins that are Roman, Greek and God only knows what else, according to these guys. So, they’re stopping us from working. They’ve poured cement into the tunnel and we can’t get in. That’s why I have five Greek guys who think I’m fucking stupid, asking them to smash a wall in when they smashed it in three days ago. And they’ll be doing the same thing again in three more days’ time. And I’m out about a thousand bucks right now because I’m giving these guys cash to break rocks for a living. I feel like I’m running some kind of fucking chain gang. They’ve been chipping away all day. They’re exhausted. And so am I. We’re all so fucking tired of everything.”

  He paused, probably for breath, and Greg looked over at Henry, whose jaw was clenched.

  “And the security guards?” Greg pressed. “Where are they? We’ve got millions of dollars’ worth of machinery buried under that city. Haven’t we hired security to protect Betty from this kind of shit?”

  “You forget that these guys can be bought,” spat Eddie. “They get told to look the other way for a hundred euros, and hey presto, the great wall of Greece is thrown up in a couple of hours.”

  “Fire their asses and get new ones,” ordered Henry.

  “You don’t think we’ve thought of that?” asked Eddie, sarcasm dripping along the phone line straight from Thessaloniki to California. “But last time I checked, my Greek wasn’t too hot, and I don’t know the words for ‘your lying asses are fired. Send me someone else.’”

  “All right, Eddie,” appeased Greg. “What’s it going to take? We can’t back out of this now. Betty’s not leaving the tunnel until she comes out the other side of the city. How do we make that happen?”

  “I can’t talk to these guys,” said Eddie. “For three weeks, I’ve had some group of archaeologists come and throw papers and pictures of ruins in my face. I don’t know what they’re saying. They have no right to protest when the mayor has given us permission. But at this rate, we’re not going to get any payment from the city, and we’re going to have to take Betty out again, piece by piece, and walk away with our tail between our legs for one hundred yards and millions of dollars wasted.”

  “We need Marty to come back and sort this for you,” said Greg. “Look, get the wall down, and I’ll get you some better security. Leave it with me and I’ll call you in two hours. Okay?”

  “Right,” Eddie replied, and Greg could tell he was not convinced by his CEO’s reassurances. Greg and Henry heard a click and the line went dead and they knew their main engineer on the ground had hung up.

  Greg lowered his head and placed his palms flat onto the table. His headache had returned with a vengeance.

  Chapter Four

  Irritatingly, Marty was just as helpless with the situation. Once he finished eating dinner at the hotel, following a five-hour meeting about the challenges of different rock formations and how best Betty could handle them, he put in a call to Greg. Yes, the team was currently facing hostility from local groups. What made it worse was the growing attention of local and even some international media, which was making Marty more nervous.

  “This is the kind of publicity we don’t need, Greg,” Marty urged. “The whole thing is out of our league. This is our first European metro contract and already it’s a giant shit show. I say we cut our losses here and now, get Betty out while she’s still intact and leave.”

  “What, and put her back to sea for several weeks, losing us even more money?” Greg retorted. He was frustrated by the way Marty seemed to give up so easily. “Marty, this is our first experience in Europe for a project of this size and what kind of message would that send to everyone else? That TMD might have the most powerful machine on the market, but they let themselves be outdone by a bunch of hippies in sandals?”

  “Greg, every day that we’re here, we’re losing money and being abused,” said Marty. “I have the safety of my team and my equipment to think about. Maybe Greece isn’t ready for a project like this. Maybe they’re not ready to come into the modern world and this is their way of telling us ‘Thanks but no thanks’. We can’t force them to take on the metro when they won’t even let us dig a couple of tunnels.”

  “How did the meeting go?” Greg asked, switching the subject. “What’s the status of the rock? Can Betty handle it?”

  “Of course she can,” said Marty. “It was pretty interesting. I don’t pretend to be an expert in any of the geological side of things but did you know that the north of Greece has millions of tons of untapped copper?”

  “I didn’t,” Greg replied. “I knew the islands had some resources, but I thought the mines had closed down.”

  “They have,” said Marty. “The islands are exhausted. The Germans wanted Greece for its copper deposits back in the war, but they weren’t successful. Turns out that the Romans had discovered copper here in Thessaloniki thousands of years earlier, but for some reason it’s never been efficiently mined, so the whole city is sitting on tons of it.”

  “And we could get it out of there for them,” Greg said, calmly. There was silence at the other end of the line as Marty considered the words.

  “It’s never going to work,” he said, finally. “Greg, these guys are going to end up blowing Betty into a thousand pieces. I can’t sit here and let that happen just because we want to tap into Europe. It’s too risky.”

  “Marty, come home,” Greg offered. “It’s your vacation next week. Take the month. Go spend some time with the kids and I’ll come to Greece and take over. Maybe a fresh pair of eyes will help? There’s got to be a way around this. I’m not giving up.”

  “Be my guest,” said Marty. “I really don’t think you can do anything here. But I’m ready to come hom
e and take my kids to our cabin and go skiing.”

  “Fine.” As he spoke, Greg was already jotting words on a notepad in front of him. Words like Molly. Sarah. Pack. Flight. Hotel. Currency. He was no longer mentally in his office. Instead he was fighting vigilante archaeologists and seeing Betty break through at the other side of the line. It had to be possible.

  “Marty, get on the next flight you can,” he ordered. “I have some things to sort out here, but I can be there on Monday.”

  “Fine,” said Marty. “I’ll have to fly through somewhere in Europe. Maybe Amsterdam or Berlin. You’ll have to do the same. You can’t get a direct flight to Thessaloniki. I can be on a six a.m. flight tomorrow to Athens, then I have four hours to wait until I catch a flight to JFK. I’ll have a stopover, then be back in L.A. sometime on Sunday night.”

  “I’ll get Patty to arrange everything,” said Greg. “Sit tight and she’ll have you home before you can say Greek Odyssey.”

  “Good luck,” said Marty. “And thanks.”

  After he hung up, Greg sat back in his chair. It wasn’t like Marty to throw in the towel so soon, but he knew, too, that his partner was very much a family man who, like Henry, had been reluctant to take up the mantle of CEO but who had been a surprisingly good choice as time went on. If he’s giving up, thought Greg, then do I really stand a chance out there?

  He beeped through to Patty, who was at his door in a flash. Greg gave her a list of everything he would need, including all his flights and transfers. He made sure Patty knew to clear his calendar for the next week at the very least. While his hangover was still sitting in his brain, stubbornly refusing to move, Greg knew that it was lighter than it had been a couple of hours earlier. Because he was now in charge and was itching to get to Greece and see what was really going on over there. He called Eddie.

  “I’m coming out,” he said. “Marty and I are swapping this weekend. We’ll sort everything, Eddie. I promise.”

  “Look, you do whatever you think you need to,” Eddie replied, and Greg could hear the wariness in his voice.