by Terry Fallis
Uh-oh. Hadn’t planned for that one. Think. Think. I offered just the first faint traces of a smile as my mind raced. I turned back to her.
“You do not want such a high stake because you rightly fear that it would irrevocably change the character and culture of Innovatengage and how it actually feels to work there. And you don’t want to tamper with a dynamic that has worked very well thus far.”
She said nothing, but nodded through narrowed eyes and a growing grin.
Robert appeared again, this time looking a little more anxious. He pointed to his watch, though that gesture was completely unnecessary.
“We’re done, Robert. Calm yourself,” she said.
“I was hoping to show you a platform demo,” I said.
“No need. I’ve been through the platform many times on the many engagements currently underway,” she replied. “But I do have one final question before I must, quite literally, fly. When you and I spoke two days ago, I told you I’d be back in London next week and we’d have more time for this initial meeting then. But you proposed staying with a shorter, likely more rushed encounter today. Why?”
WTF? I hope I didn’t look as bowled over as I felt. Reaching. Reaching.
“It’s really quite simple. You’re a very busy person with many balls in the air. Seven days is a very long time. Much can happen in a week. To me, the certainty of a short meeting today was preferable to the mere likelihood of a longer meeting next week. Besides, if today went well, I figured we might be meeting again next week anyway.”
“Smart,” she replied. “Why don’t you ride with me to Heathrow and then my driver will get you back home afterwards?”
On the drive to the airport, we did not talk at all about Innovatengage, social licence, or whether she’d invest. She asked me a series of quite personal questions. I hadn’t really expected that, but I figured being open and forthcoming was the right play. Plus, I was feeling a strong connection with her, and I think that made it easier to venture into the personal realm.
She already knew about the car crash that had claimed Matt’s parents. But she was quite surprised when I told her about the recent reunion of two long-lost identical twin brothers. I figured there was no harm, and perhaps some benefit, to bringing her into that exclusive circle. She was blown away. I was blown away as I listened to myself recount an abbreviated version of the story. It really was quite extraordinary.
“Well, I’d really like to meet your brother some time,” she said as we neared the private planes access gate at Heathrow.
“We can make that happen,” I replied. “Alex is a little quieter than I but he’s a brilliant coder, absolutely brilliant.”
“Most coders I know are quiet,” Stephanie replied. “And you really do look alike?”
“I’d say so, yes.”
The car pulled right up to the sleek Gulfstream.
“Customs staff are already on board waiting for you,” Robert said as he got out of the front seat.
“I enjoyed our meeting, Matthew,” she said, offering her hand. “Thank you.”
I shook her hand.
“I appreciate your time. I know it’s precious,” I said as I handed her our leave-behind document. “A little transatlantic reading. Strat plan, financials, and growth projections.”
She took the package, got out of the car, and headed to the plane. Robert scurried just behind her.
Forty-five minutes later, the black Mercedes pulled up in front of Matt’s building. I could barely contain myself. I was exhilarated. I was on fire. I was ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille. Still in character, I thanked the driver and climbed out, affecting nonchalance as I entered the building. I stepped off the elevator and walked down the corridor to Matt’s apartment. I was about to bust down the front door when I heard Matt inside talking on the phone. Yes, talking. It was muffled and I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it was clearly his voice. I walked in. He looked up with eyes wide and immediately coughed into the phone.
“Alex is back, I have to go,” Matt said into the phone in a raspy, breathy voice. “I’ll give you a full report as soon as I have it.” He hung up, rushed over to me, and grabbed my upper arms.
“Well?” he croaked.
What the hell? Your voice is back.
“Your voice is back,” I said.
He winced and rubbed his throat.
“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s back. Isabella could hardly understand me on the phone. But it’s clearly making a valiant attempt,” Matt whispered. “It just happened about forty minutes ago, out of the blue. Fever and voice.”
I just looked at him.
“Come on, tell me what happened!” he said, pulling me into the living room. He lay back down on the couch and pulled the comforter from his bed on top of him.
I sat in the chair and gave him a full report. It took me about half an hour to tell the story. I tried to remember every detail.
“And she asked you to drive to Heathrow with her?”
I nodded.
“That is a very good sign. Brilliant! Just brilliant!”
His voice was nowhere near normal, but he could make himself understood. He sounded a little like Darth Vader after a three-day debate with the Rebels.
Matt was over the moon. He kept asking questions and then clapping his hands at the responses I’d given. The phone rang. On instinct, I reached for it as I had for the last couple of days while Matt had been mute.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello, is that Matt?” I froze when I heard the unmistakable but somewhat distant voice of Stephanie Mosel.
“Um, no, this is his brother, Alex,” I managed. “Um, let me get Matt for you.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear, closed my eyes, and breathed for a few seconds.
I looked at Matt. He shook his head then pointed at me. I lifted the phone back to my ear.
“Matt Paterson,” I said.
PART FIVE
Below me, I locked onto the eyes of a girl about my age in a red dress. There were tears in her eyes as she stared up at me, her hand over her mouth.
CHAPTER 14
“It’s Stephanie Mosel calling from somewhere over the Atlantic,” she said.
“Hello, Stephanie. You sound like you’re in the next room,” I said. “Thanks again for seeing me this afternoon.”
“I’m glad we could meet,” she said. “I liked what I saw and heard. You’ve clearly thought through this next phase of your growth and identified the client sectors that will fuel it. Very comprehensive. The numbers in your plan look reasonable and realistic, though I do want you to stretch. My team in San Francisco is already digging in to your financials just to make sure nothing comes up strange. We may have some more questions for you in the coming days. But I really just wanted to let you know that you should be feeling good right about now, because I’m feeling good.”
“Then I’m definitely feeling good,” I replied.
“And you were wise to have stuck with today’s meeting time even if it was a bit rushed,” she said. “As it turns out, my schedule just changed for next week. Seems I won’t even be in London. I’ll be in New York. Do you think you might be able to come over to Manhattan next week? I’ll be there until Wednesday. I’d like to move this along quickly so you can get ramped up on your growth plans.”
“New York? Early next week?” I said, eyeing Matt. He nodded so vigorously it was a miracle he didn’t pass out. “That sounds great to us, to me.”
“Excellent,” she replied. “We’ll be in touch with the details. When you’re here, we can decide on the investment and what our mutual obligations are.”
“That sounds wonderful. Looking forward to seeing you next week,” I replied. “I may have my brother in tow, if that’s okay.”
“If that’s okay? I’d love to meet your other half, genetically speaking.”
We closed out the conversation a few seconds later. I was actually eager to hang up so we could start celebrating. It soun
ded like the deal was as good as done. Matt, who seemed to be making a rapid recovery, had been bouncing up and down in front of me as I finished the call.
“Unbelievable!” he said after I ended the call. “You’ve got a real future playing me. So we’re going to New York. That sounds like a positive development.”
“I should really head back soon anyway, so I’ll tag along to New York on my way back to Ottawa,” I replied.
“Can’t you stay a little longer? We’ve only just met and we’ve spent exactly no time with our father. We’ve got some catching up to do.”
“I know, but I have a job and a cranky boss who wants me back in the cubicle farm yesterday so it’s easier for my colleagues and me to continue saving her bacon,” I explained. “But I’ll be back and I hope you’ll visit Ottawa some time, your ancestral home.”
“It just doesn’t seem right to have been separated for twenty-five years, reunite for a week or so, and then separate again. Why don’t you stay and work at Innovatengage? I have some pull with the founder.”
“Thanks, but I already have a job, and Ottawa is home,” I replied. “By the way, why did you tell me today’s meeting was our one and only shot with Stephanie? She told me she offered you a longer meeting next week when she expected to be back in London.”
He looked a little taken aback. He didn’t quite blanch, but the question clearly caught him off-guard.
“Well, um, I thought a bird in the hand was better than a maybe meeting next week,” he said, his voice still hoarse. “Turns out I was right.”
—
The whole family had dinner together that night at Matt’s condo. Our father arrived well after dark, bearing wine and what we learned was a classic Russian dessert, chocolate-covered prunes. Who knew? We’d made the dinner arrangements after Dad, if I can call him that, texted us both on what he described as a safe phone. I know this will sound strange, exaggerated, and idealized, but after the first hour, it was almost as if we’d been together all our lives. There was a natural chemistry among us, a bond that ran deeper than friendship. Some of the common physical mannerisms Matt and I had seen in one another, we now saw in our father. If either of us harboured any doubt when he arrived that Alexei Bugayev was indeed our biological father, it was banished within an hour. We talked late into the night and covered a lot of ground.
“You must have been ready to assassinate Bobby Clarke when he broke Kharlamov’s ankle in ’72,” I said. “I watched the video. It looked like Clarke was swinging an axe.”
“I was not dressed for that game, but was up in the commentary box watching,” our father said. “We were outraged. But then again, we had our own tricks in the corners, too. Subtler, but no less effective. I can tell you, my KGB colleagues had some other ideas for Mr. Clarke, but they were never pursued.”
He was warm, thoughtful, engaging, and full of stories.
“You know, the KGB really wanted me to have my tattoo removed,” he said. “It makes no sense for an agent to have such a distinguishing mark that can so easily identify you. It is like a brand. But ’72 was a special time for us all, even if I didn’t play. So I somehow always managed to avoid having it removed. Lucky for me. Lucky for us.”
At one point, when he was telling us about his time in Ottawa working at the Soviet Embassy and courting our mother, his eyes welled up and he fell silent for a moment to regain his composure.
We had three more late-night dinners together, the last of which was the night before Matt and I were to fly to New York. That dinner carried on to well past midnight. By the end, I was not only inside-out with Matt, but with our father as well. It was 1:30 in the morning when I said goodbye to him. We both knew we’d see each other again and often. We just weren’t exactly sure where and when. Alexei hugged me for a long time, his hand cradling the back of my head, perhaps as he had done on December 24, 1990. Then he slipped out the door, along the corridor, and down the stairwell.
—
The next morning, Matt and I were at Heathrow awaiting our flight to LaGuardia. Abby sent me a cranky text asking about developments. I apologized and replied that she should check her email inbox in ten minutes. I then typed a longish email bringing her up to date on all that had happened, which included a short version of reuniting with our father without referencing the whole KGB thing. I also told her I was coming home in a few days.
Two minutes after I’d hit Send, she replied:
Alex,
It’s friggin’ amazing that you found your brother AND your father. I’m so happy for you. But I’m glad you’re coming home. Some serious shit is going down around here and I think you need to be here for it. Don’t bother asking what’s happening. I have no idea, but something is definitely up.
See you when you’re back.
Abby XO
I emailed Simone to tell her I’d be back in the office three days hence. I was about to close down my computer as our flight was about to be called, but an email had just arrived in my inbox. It was yet another missive from Laura Park. I almost ignored it, but didn’t.
Dear Alex,
In case it wasn’t already obvious, I’m persistent. I’m serious about talking to you. This is more than just one of those “where are they now” features. I really want to showcase the impact viral videos can have on their victims. I’ve already spoken to Numa Numa boy, the backyard Light Sabre guy, the boy whose little brother Charlie nearly bit off his finger, and a bunch of others. But you’re the first and arguably the most shocking viral video in the history of YouTube. We can do it without photos and without formally identifying you. But others might learn how profoundly their actions can affect others. You’d be doing something in the public interest, something that might actually help other victims, or perhaps more importantly forestall some jerk’s prank on another innocent person.
I’d read all this before but read it again because it was moderately less boring than waiting for boarding to start. Matt was on his phone to his office. But then I read her closing line.
You know, you weren’t the only one affected that night in your high school auditorium. I was there when it happened, almost directly above me. I was transfixed, not by the whole scene, but really by the look on your face, in your eyes. I couldn’t look away. It haunts me. It’s why I’m writing this piece, to try to understand not just its impact on victims like you, but to try to figure out why it has such a hold on me. You wouldn’t just be helping other victims; you’d be helping me, personally, I mean. Could we please meet?
Laura Park
I read her last few sentences several times. No. It couldn’t be. Why hadn’t she said this earlier? I hit Reply and typed:
What were you wearing that night? (And I don’t mean that in a weird, creepy way.)
I bounced my heels up and down as I sat there waiting for her reply and for our boarding zone to be called. Just before I closed the lid on my laptop and rose to join the line, her reply arrived.
Bright red dress.
Holy shit. Why hadn’t she told me this in her first email? I closed my laptop and stood beside Matt in line. Several people looked at the two of us and whispered to their companions. For the first time in a decade I didn’t fear they’d recognized me from a certain viral video. Rather, I knew they were just observing that a set of identical twins was standing together in an airport lounge. I was learning that that was enough to turn heads and trigger double takes. At the gate, the airline employee stared at the photo in my passport and then at me.
“I just had a haircut.”
She looked closely and waved me on to the flight. My hair was now even shorter than Matt’s. We decided to trim even more in the hopes that Stephanie would accept the real Matt as the same person who’d met her the previous week at the Four Seasons Park Lane. A brush cut, right down to the wood, had been proposed, but I refused. Still, my hair was cut shorter than it had ever been, even in Gabriel’s time. It might have been the haircut, but I felt different after the events of the prev
ious week. By different, I mean better, happier, more comfortable, less anxious, closer to whole, more like myself, if that makes any sense. The flight was long but uneventful, though identical twins sitting together did stimulate some interest from the flight attendants.
We met in Stephanie’s Manhattan office in the heart of Wall Street. She was not alone this time. Three of her staff sat alongside her at the boardroom table while Matt and I sat across from them. Matt handled his “reunion” with Stephanie very smoothly. He asked about her flight from Heathrow and thanked her again for having her driver take him back home from the airport. With my very short hair, she had no idea Matt’s understudy had stepped in for the previous performance. That was a relief. Plus, there was no longer a need for me to fake an English accent.
It became clear soon after the meeting started that Stephanie was going to invest. The discussion focused on the terms of the deal, not on the possibility of a deal. In keeping with my standard operating procedure, I said very little in the meeting and let Matt carry most of the load. However, late in the proceedings, one of Stephanie’s colleagues asked a technical question about the software that supported the Innovatengage platform. Matt could easily have answered, but turned to me for a response. I started off a bit haltingly, but found my way and soon got into the moment. After all, software was my safe harbour.
Ninety minutes after the meeting started, Matt and Stephanie signed a binding term sheet for her investment and commensurate ownership stake in the company. Lawyers representing both entities would hammer out the actual legal agreement in the coming week or so. But the deal was essentially done.
“Thank you for this vote of confidence,” Matt said. “I was kind of expecting that you’d want more shares.”
“That’s what you said last time we met,” Stephanie replied. “Too many good companies have been ruined by VCs that get too deeply entangled in operations. I need you to remain the creative and cultural leader of Innovatengage. That’s how I protect my investment. So unless or until you’re heading off the rails, it’s your show.”