The 2084 Precept

by Anthony D. Thompson

  DAY 31

  Sunday morning. I woke up refreshed. I went out onto the balcony. The Spanish sun was shining and the Spanish sky was blue. There was also quite a strong wind as is often the case on Mallorca, one of the benefits of being an island. There are worse places to live for the price of having to turn your hearing aid down.

  I didn't stay on the balcony for long. The wing in which my room was located diagonally faced another of the hotel's wings and around half of the balconies over there had people sitting on them and a hefty percentage of those people were playing with their mobile phones. A fair number of them were actually talking into their phones or, to be more correct, shouting into them, the need for which has recently fully analyzed and explained by, among others, child psychologists. And the air was consequently full of those grating consonants and jarring vowels which are the hallmark of this planet's harshest and most strident of languages, German, and that is the way it would presumably remain until they all cleared off to the beach or onto their bus for their visit to the cathedral or for their tour around the mountains.

  But it was a woman who finally drove me back inside. She was sitting opposite me on her balcony, fortyish or thereabouts and if not grossly fat, then at least disgustingly so. And as soon as she noticed me, she got up, went into her room and came back out wearing only a tanga, udders and belly hanging freely in accordance with the theories expounded by Galileo, Newton and others. She specifically avoided looking in my direction but pretended to be adjusting her sole piece of clothing in order to more properly cover that part of her which it was supposed to be covering and which, thank God, it was. My views on the requirement in certain parts of the Islamic world for the wearing of burkas took on a more positive hue. I bolted back into my room, metaphorically vomiting on the way, and reflecting on the fact that Jeremy Parker's delusions were nothing compared to those of human females such as these.

  But no big deal, it was a holiday hotel of a certain level, the adjective requiring no further elaboration, and I would be out of here in a few hours' time. I put on some shorts and a T-shirt. I avoided the hotel breakfast room, the coffee in these places is usually ghastly. I bought yesterday's IHT down the road and read it while drinking some decent coffee in a place facing the sea and revoltingly called 'Chez Hartmut'. There had been 243 conflict deaths planet-wide on Friday, including six car bombs and five suicide bombings. Not bad.

  Next to Hartmut's was a place renting bicycles and I picked one up for half a day and cycled along the beach path to Palma, past the docks and the naval station, past Porto Pí, and up the hill and out of the other side of the city. I sat on a rock and smoked a cigarette. I enjoyed watching the coastline and the ocean for a while, and I enjoyed a second cigarette.. And then I cycled back, stopping on the way for two cold beers in Cala Estancia. German beers of course, not your gaseous Spanish concoctions whose wafer-thin and short-lived foam is only possible thanks to the use of rice in the manufacturing process; or so I am told. About twenty-five kilometers in total, more than enough in this heat.

  I went out to the hotel bucket and splashed around a bit and relaxed in the sun. It was great, just great, to be away from the world of lunatics, aliens, policemen, ministers and birdbrains in general for a while, and to contemplate the piles of money and the return to normality which would be mine after a few more interviews with Jeremy.

  I checked out of the hotel at 2 p.m. and took a taxi to Illetas, a small town a few kilometers to the west of Palma. This is my kind of hotel. To be sure, it costs what it costs, but you get adults only, you get a luxurious room with a wide balcony overlooking the ocean, you get two pools, large pools, or—if you prefer—you walk down into the sea from a ladder fixed to the rocks, and you get service, you get well-trained waiters and you get personnel all over the place. And it's only twenty minutes or so from the center of Palma.

  And so for the rest of the afternoon it was just the sun and the water for me. And in the evening I called Monika. She sounded subdued. Her sister was to be operated on tomorrow morning but she didn't want to talk about it. She was in love with my car, and Mr. Brown had settled in and was enjoying life as he always did. She wished she could also be in Palma but she would certainly make up for it later on with that wonderful, exorbitant Corsica gift of mine. I asked her if she had the Mallorca hotel details I had given her and she said of course she did, she was not as young as she used to be but she hadn't got Alzheimer's yet. I told her I would be back with her car in three weeks' time, four at the latest and she said that would be great, she could thank me properly for her birthday, whatever she meant by that. In the meantime, she said, she had her friend Mr. Brown, he reminded her of me.

  Well, I thought to myself, she is definitely becoming too nest-like, I will have to take gentle steps to make it clear again that I am not, at this point in my life, interested in nests in any shape or form, with or without eggs.

  I had dinner in the hotel, a ruinously expensive filet mignon which was superb and a ruinously expensive Rioja which was not very good at all. I then spent some time on the Naviera's financial statements and made notes of the specific items I needed to find out more about tomorrow, and I went to bed and fell asleep over my book which, in case you're interested, was Platform, a translated version of an intellectually interesting novel written by a Frenchman who lives in Ireland. Recommended, despite his penchant for over-explicit sexual descriptions which tend to crop up here and there, and which you can simply ignore. Or, if you are like me, not.

  DAY 32

  I got up at seven o'clock. The sun was rising nicely, the ocean was blue and it was green and it was as calm as a pond, the balcony lounge chair was comfortable, and I had breakfast brought up and ate it while absorbing the scene, and the first cigarette of the day tasted as good as the coastline looked. Oh yes, there were worse locations in which to perform a consultancy assignment. Slough for example.

  I wore a suit and a tie and a short-sleeved white shirt for my first day. I pulled the switch and converted my brain into full Spanish language mode, a simple enough matter of neuron reprogramming similar to that of switching your driving to the left side of the road when arriving in the U.K. Or, come to that, in Japan or any of the other countries which do the same.

  I took a taxi to the docks entrance and was met there, a real slice of courtesy, by the general manager himself, Alfonso Orfila. I like that kind of thing as much as the next guy, it makes you feel important, even if you're not, and what is the harm in that? He fixed the security arrangements with the port policeman and I would be able to come and go as I wished. He took me to the office building, the first floor of which was occupied by the Naviera. He showed me the office I would be using, and then he introduced me to the staff and asked them to please cooperate with me for the duration of my 'review' assignment. There were only nine of them, six men and three women, two of whom were middle-aged and one of whom was in her early twenties, black hair, pretty face and good legs. She had an attractive name, María del Carmen.

  Carmen is one of those few operas, very few in fact, that I enjoy. The name derives from Our lady of Mount Carmel whose apparition was reported in—you only get one guess—the town of Fatima in Portugal during The Miracle of the Sun in the year 1917. During the miracle of the sun, our star behaved irrationally and, among other things, sped around on itself in a mad whirl and then took it upon itself to adopt a zigzag course in the direction of our planet, which scared the living daylights out of those who were watching. This event was interpreted as being a message from God for us to finally get our act together and stop sinning…or else. It took the Roman Catholic Church another thirteen years to do it, but they eventually confirmed this as an 'approved miracle' in the year 1930. And later on, in mid-century, the ‘Miracle of the Sun' was witnessed on three separate occasions in three different years by the pope himself in his Vatican gardens in Rome, Italy. These miracles were apparently not noticed by anyone else in any other part of the planet, Christian or otherwise
—which, if you think about it, is a bit strange if your star was zigzagging about and heading straight for you—but who are we to judge? Maybe it will happen again and we will all be able to grab a look while trying to gain another millisecond of existence by heading for the nearest available underground shelter.

  None of which is here or there and my neurons merely recorded her name and filed it away in the immediate recall section.

  Alfonso and I sat down to coffee in his office. His office was large and overlooked the quays. It was decorated with a variety of maritime mementos, an old ship's bell was on a table next to his desk. Alfonso himself was what you would call plump rather than fat, he was in his sixties already, and he seemed to be one of those people who are always full of the joys of life, no matter what. In other words, he was a person who, although responsible for losing the considerable sum of €10 million of other people's money annually, was full of cheerful bonhomie. And consequently a pleasant enough person to be with.

  I asked him what, in his opinion, the major problems and issues were and what possible solutions and corrective action did he recommend. This question seemed to surprise him. He gave it some initial thought and then he launched into a long, jovial diatribe about the shipping industry, the rising fuel costs, the dockworkers' wage demands, the increase in competition and the price wars which had escalated to impossible levels in recent years.

  He was obviously clueless. There were no comments about any possible inefficiencies or problems within his own company, not a single word about potential improvements or solutions and nothing else of any use. But it didn't seem to worry him. As far as he was concerned, this was simply the way things were.

  I wanted to tell him that if you can keep your head, Alfonso, while all around you are losing theirs, it is just possible that you haven't fully grasped the nature of the situation. But I didn't. There was no point in my wasting my time attempting to modify the cerebral operations of a guy like this.

  I went to my office and asked María del Carmen to come in. She was the bookkeeper. I gave her the list of what I wanted to be informed on, and asked her about a minor item about which I was curious. Why did the year-end balance sheet indicate that we had €65,000 cash on site, and was that still the case, and irrespective of anything else, what was it for? Oh, she said, we need to make miscellaneous cash payments every month to transporters, the ships' captains always need petty cash for minor crew and ship expenses, and so on, and actually the balance was now over €70,000.

  This didn't wash with me. Unless there was something she hadn't explained, the amount was too big. I asked to see the cash and the cash book. Oh, no problem, she said with a smile, we'll update it for you and give it to you first thing tomorrow morning.

  That didn't wash with me either. If any cash was missing, not that I necessarily expected that, it could easily be replaced overnight and removed again after I had seen it. No, I said…now please. This caused her smile to transmute into a contentious frown of consternation but off she went and came back with a large metal box which was, I thought to myself, presumably and hopefully kept in a decent safe. I opened it with the key. I saw a few bills in there, maybe two thousand euros in cash, and I also saw many small pieces of paper in there which turned out to be I.O.U.s signed by Alfonso, €69,000 in total. Thank you María, I said, and handed the box back to her.

  I have always been good at sniffing out fraud, even if it's only petty cash fraud. The I.O.U.s should have been recorded as payments of course, and accounted for as an employee loan, which the supervisory board and the shareholders—in this case, Sr. Pujol and his finance people—would have been able to see in the balance sheet. Or if not explicitly so, at least in the external auditors' annual comments. But I was in a good mood, Alfonso was a pleasant guy, the amount involved was not exorbitant, and—most importantly—I was going to need Alfonso's help in dealing with the intricacies of an industry about which I knew absolutely nothing. So I would be dealing with this in a gentle and civilized manner.

  I went back to his office.

  "Alfonso," I said, "the I.O.U.s"

  "Yes," he said, smiling his permanent smile.

  "What are they for?"

  "Oh," he replied, "repairs and maintenance to a small motor launch I keep down in the yacht area. I've been a bit short on cash this past year, my daughter's wedding and so on, you know."

  "Uh, huh," I said. This really was a guy for whom the sun shone at all times. And there appeared to be little doubt that he thought that it shone out of his ass as well. "Well," I continued, "these amounts will need to be authorized by Sr. Pujol or his delegate of course, or else they will need to be repaid."

  "But of course," he said, "of course they will be repaid."

  "When?" I asked.

  "Well, over the next twelve months, definitely," he said.

  The guy obviously didn't have the money. How can you own a ‘small’ launch, probably it was an ocean-going one, and not have this kind of money? "Then it will all have to be authorized in the meantime," I said, "and recorded as a loan."

  This—no apologies for the phrase—took the wind out of his sails.

  "They won't do that," he said, "I requested a loan over two years ago and they rejected it. Employee loans are against group policy."

  "Well, then you will have to do a quick sale of the launch or whatever else you need to do to raise the money," I suggested.

  "Wouldn't work," he said, "a quick sale of the launch would mean my having to virtually give it away, and in any case I still have some debt to pay off on its purchase."

  How do these people do it? The guy earned a good salary, a very good salary, how could he not have any money? We sat there looking at each other for a while. His sails, as I have mentioned, had lost some of their wind, but he wasn't dejected or nervous in any way, the sun was still shining for him and would do no doubt continue to shine up until the moment he climbed into his coffin. You get people like that. They are always happy. The requisite for this is a total lack of a conscience. If you have a conscience, you just can't do it, you can't sleep at night with things like this going on. You worry, you have nightmares.

  "I will have to inform Sr. Pujol," I told him finally.

  "Yes, I can understand that," he said. He clearly knew that this was a serious matter but it did not affect his genial disposition, nor did he become at all discourteous. Amazing, I thought, he probably sang 'Don't worry, be happy' to himself in the shower every morning. An overdose of self-confidence, a guy who walks down the street holding his own hand.

  During the afternoon, María came into my office with some of the information I had requested. There were no problems with the customer receivables—her aging analysis showed no particularly long overdue balances—but an item of €3.4 million in the 'Other Receivables' account turned out to be an insurance claim pending from over three years ago. It seemed that one of the ships had been on an overnight run from Barcelona to Palma and the captain, who was dismissed soon afterwards, had missed the port and run straight into some cliffs on the island of Cabrera, only a few nautical miles away. He had apparently been drunk, although none of the crew members were prepared to ratify that in any formal manner.

  Cabrera is only 16 km2 and its name derives from the cabras montesas which used to live there until the human race arrived and carted them all away. The goats were eating everything that was green and making the island too unattractive for tourist excursion businesses to be successful. But the hideous human race had also been there before, and the island's history is home to a series of major horror stories—including the products of human wars such as the fate of the 10,000 French prisoners who were once incarcerated there. But there you go, what's new?

  I asked Alfonso about the situation, but he merely said that it was a 'complicated matter'. Well, no point in wasting time discussing it further with him. I asked María to fix an appointment for me with the responsible insurance executive in Barcelona on Monday of next week, in the morni
ng if possible.

  The company had four ships, two of which—the Gerona Sol and the Mahon Star—sailed six nights a week to provide a fixed weekday Barcelona-Palma-Barcelona service. There was no longer any work for the two other ships which had been sitting idle for the past nine months, moored to the quay here in Palma. One of them required a major engine overhaul for which no money was available and the other one needed to comply with the law on its dry-dock inspection requirement, a costly affair lasting four days, and for which no money was available either. María's data also showed me that all four ships were relatively small, with capacities of between 50 and 75 standard containers on two levels, lower deck and top deck. Her cargo summary showed me that the loading for each of the two ships in use was on average only about 50% of capacity, and that an average of 30 transits were being lost each year, mainly due to bad weather.

  Food for thought indeed. Revenues could obviously be more than doubled if the ships were to travel full instead of only half-capacity and if we could get rid of all, or at least most, of the lost transits. That would solve the company's problems in one fell swoop. A pleasant theoretical daydream, worthy of some perusal, but don't ask me what needed undertaking or how to do it. I hadn't the faintest idea. Also, the daydream might quite simply turn out to be an unfeasible one.

  I decided that María was not my type, black hair and nice legs notwithstanding. She was too reticent, she was only supplying me with what I asked for, she offered no comments or suggestions and she was probably displeased about that check of mine on the petty cash. She had perhaps classified me as the enemy, you get that sometimes. And maybe she was into an affair with Alfonso, who knows? You get that as well sometimes, the adulation for the man with the authority and the power. Or maybe she wasn't. It didn't matter anyway. I thanked her for the information and decided to have a short meeting with Pedro, a young stringy-haired fellow in charge of operations, before leaving for the day.