So far there have been no surprises. Hobb has announced the launch of our new broadband service and he has placed a call to the minister of broadcasting via our new network. That had required a few mirrors and a lot of smoke, but we made the connection.
“Mr. Hobb, can you confirm the rumor that Ozcom is buying out the other shareholders?”
Hobb’s face freezes; he looks down at his notes and then raises his head and looks across the floor. “There have been discussions about a potential buyout, but nothing is confirmed.”
Hobb stretches his mouth in a smile, and the audience buzzes back at him with interest.
“Mr. Hobb,” calls another journo. “Would this be an amicable buyout?”
Hobb’s smile evaporates. “No decision has been made. There is some disagreement over future strategy that we expect to resolve after further consultation and discussion.”
“What strategy is that?”
“We can’t divulge Hera’s detailed plans,” Hobb says, shaking his head.
“Mr. Hobb, are you still expecting Hera to be a partner in the consortium?”
“We expect Hera to be a player in New Zealand’s broadband future,” he says. “But the form remains to be seen.”
“What does this mean for your chief executive, Linnette Mere?”
Corporate psychopaths don’t need to use their hands to murder people in order to get what they want. There are plenty of opportunities in the ordinary and legitimate power they have.
They do kill things though, if you let them.
At the Board meeting three days before, Hobb had proposed to halt the network build, sack most of the staff, and use the remnants of the company to support Australian business in New Zealand. Ozcom had always been more interested in protecting their trans-Tasman business than they were in investing in New Zealand’s residential infrastructure. What they wanted were business connections for the New Zealand branches of Australian companies. They certainly didn’t want to spend money on anything that would be purely for the benefit of New Zealanders. Mark Stanton, always more interested in minimizing risk than in creating something new, voted with Hobb.
They had expected us to fail to hit the launch date. With Hera’s ability to compete in tatters, Ozcom expected to be able to buy out the other shareholders for a pittance. And I have no doubt my unloyal CFO Scott Peake expected to see himself at the helm of a new branch of Ozcom. Twig, really.
But because we made the launch there was a choice over Hera’s future. Hera could join the consortium and become a real player in New Zealand’s broadband future.
The American and Asian shareholders voted to continue with the network we’d started building and to join the consortium.
Pita Lane held the casting vote.
Pita called for a hui at very short notice to discuss what the iwi wanted to do with their investment in Hera. The Maori elders came from all the regions the iwi held. We watched them troop into the Marae, the Maori meeting place on the waterfront across the road from Hera’s offices, and we ferried documents out to them whenever they asked for more information. Ian and I worked on models to show different financial scenarios whenever they came up with a new angle.
It is a difficult time when your Board is in fundamental dispute over the very existence of the company as an independent entity. I kept Peake out of it, even though as CFO, he should have been the man to present the finances. But we didn’t trust him.
Tom’s people laid on a hangi to feast them. He brought food back to Ian, Fred, Marion, and me, slaving away in my office. We feasted on packages of vegetables and meat, slow cooked for hours on hot rocks, buried under flax and earth. We nibbled on fresh crayfish from the southern coast, and clams from the beaches to the north. I didn’t eat the rotten corncobs, but I developed a brief, unlikely to be repeated, taste for muttonbird, the oily swamp fowl of New Zealand.
By Wednesday morning, the Maori elders had reached a consensus: they would not support selling out to Ozcom, and they wanted to keep building the network. They wanted the jobs created by Hera. Both the jobs and the competition would be better for New Zealand.
Lane’s vote killed Hobb’s proposal. At least until the next pool of funding was depleted, and by that time, money should be coming back into the accounts and Hera formally confirmed within the consortium. The buyout price would be a lot higher, and the prospect therefore rather less attractive to Ozcom.
Or so Robert and I thought.
There was something else Lane wanted before he cast his vote to save Hera. He wanted control over the appointment of the chief executive. He wanted a better cultural fit, he said. A local.
Robert argued, no, that wasn’t fair.
“Fair?” Lane had asked. “What’s fair got to do with anything?”
In the end, the survival of the company is more important than any one individual. I could have pushed to stay, but I decided to step aside.
Besides, I could still feel the rage I felt when I knocked Christopher off the cliff. What had I become that I could so easily kill a man?
I was no longer fit to be a leader.
Hobb does not glance at me when he opens his mouth to reply.
“Ms. Mere’s job was to launch Hera. We will be appointing a new chief executive to oversee the ongoing operation.”
Hobb calls for Tom Heke to stand. I reach out to shake his hand. He has a good heart, has Tom, and he’s the right man for the job, now. He grips my hand and looks at me.
We’re quits. I smile and he smiles back, his warm brown eyes vanishing into the folds of his cheeks. Then he climbs onto the stage and I slip away.
And so the psychopaths lost out this time.
The hotel is around the corner from Hera’s offices. I climb the stairs one last time to my office, now as bare as when I first took over, sit down at the PC, close my eyes, and wait for the feeling of loss.
Instead, I feel—numb? I open my eyes and type out my farewell e-mail.
Thank you, I tell them. We knocked the bastard off.
Chapter 54
It is one of the good days in Wellington. People sit at the outside tables taking in the sun. As I walk up Cuba Street, the singers are out, singing “How Bizarre.” The girl singer’s face is alight with what might be love for the boy she is with or maybe just happiness from the warmth of the air. As I pass the fountain, water splashes from one bucket to the next. A small brown bird sits in the pool fluttering its feathers.
I look around and memorize how pretty this place is. Already I feel nostalgic for the soul of Wellington, clouds rampaging across the sky, the green and blue of the hills and the sea, and Cuba Street sparkling in the sun.
I wonder whether my father grew to love this quirky town as I have grown to love it.
Did he miss it, as I know I will?
Did he miss his family? As I know I will?
My father had it all: a rich and beautiful wife, twin daughters, and a top job at the university. But he’d lost them all and lost my mother too.
I know how he must have felt.
Inside the apartment, my niece sits at the table, a half smile tilting those full lips, eyes downcast, thumbs flying.
She completes her text and looks up. “Hi, Auntie Lin. Ben dropped me off.”
I drove back for the Board meeting, and Ben stayed behind at Ngatirua. We didn’t get a chance to talk about anything other than pulling wool over policemen’s eyes. When I told him I planned to leave New Zealand, he went very silent.
“Is Ben coming back?” I ask Jess.
“He didn’t say.”
My heart sinks. He left without saying good-bye?
“I’m meeting a friend for pizza downtown, and then we’re going to the Library Bar. Can I borrow some money? Student loan hasn’t come through yet.”
“Is a hundred enough?”
“Sweet.” She stretches like a cat and bounds to her feet. One of my favorite scarves seems to have got caught up around her neck.
She vanishes o
ut the door. “See you!” echoes up the stairs.
The house is empty. Dirk and Jiro are still hard at work, creating their world-beating Hobbit movie and Sally and Michael are staying at the new house tonight, Sally’s nirvana, the lifestyle block up the coast. She told me to visit any time. “Plenty of room,” she said.
I smile, suddenly realizing there’s nothing stopping me visiting her whenever I want. What I have, finally, is plenty of time.
I’ll call her. I might even let her look after me this time.
A bottle of Kiwi bubbles is in the refrigerator. I take it out and stare at it. I don’t recall putting a bottle in to chill. Then I take out two plastic shopping bags that weren’t there this morning. One contains a rack of lamb and the other seems to be some kind of shellfish.
Oysters. I split open the bag and count one dozen of the little beauties. On the bottom shelf is a dish containing a mess of potatoes and cream. Ben’s pièce de résistance.
I hurry into my room. On the far side of the bed is Ben’s scruffy old pack, and he has already managed to leave a trail of clothes across the floor. In the bathroom his toothbrush sits next to mine.
Back in the living room I fetch a flute and hold the cork still while I twist the bottle free. A champagne cork popping is supposed to resemble the sound of a lady’s fart. Much the same as the sound of my own, I’ve always thought. I wonder if that makes me a lady?
The wine hisses down my throat. Probably not. Ladies don’t kill.
And I sit at the table and wait.
The door latch rattles and Ben comes into the room. I raise my eyes and examine his face, trying to read his intentions. My face feels naked without the executive mask I lack the energy or the inclination to pull on. This is Ben, who knows me.
“I had to get some butter,” he says, waving a small packet.
He looks the same as he always does: relaxed, unhurried, focused on the task at hand. He takes the lamb up to the terrace and puts the rack on the barbecue. When he comes back, he turns on the fry pan, slips in the butter and the potatoes, and then carries the plate of oysters to the table.
He tips an oyster into his mouth and licks his fingers. “How did today go?”
“In the end it was almost a relief.”
“I guess you’ll have to go hunting another job. Are you sure there are no prospects here?”
“Perhaps in a few years time I could come back, but now I have to leave.”
“The tall poppy thing.”
“Not only that.” I flinch. “I killed a man. You can’t just kill someone and carry on with your life as if it never happened.”
I don’t know why Christopher became a killer. Perhaps he was born a killer. Perhaps it was the culmination of what happened to him, the disaster when he was so close to success, his rage at all he had lost, his fear of losing everything else.
He was a crippled thing, vermin, a dangerous dog who threatened me and threatened the people I loved, and the world was better rid of him. All of those thoughts went through my brain in that split second when my arm moved.
Was it the best decision? Were those reasons enough to justify a murder? I don’t know. Whatever, I chose to give up the job and give up Ngatirua.
Penance, you might say. I have wrestled with psychopaths and I am not one of them.
Ben’s face wears the uneasy look it wore after he saw me knock Christopher off the cliff. “The worst moment was when we found his body. I was so afraid.”
“Afraid? He would have been in no state to hurt anyone.”
“Afraid he was still alive and I would have to decide whether to let him live or die.”
I reach out and touch his hand and his face relaxes.
He says, “You shouldn’t have had to—that is, I feel I failed you.”
“One killer in the family is enough.”
Ben grips my hand briefly before rising and taking the empty dishes away. He returns with two plates of creamy, buttery potatoes and lamb chops, and a perfectly dressed salad.
As he puts the food on the table, he catches sight of my picture of The Road to Ngatirua, propped against the wall.
“You’re still giving up your claim to the family farm?”
“It just seems like the right thing to do. Getting this apartment is all I want.”
When I chose to gift their land and Vivienne’s precious Goldie back to my sisters, Alison’s offer to give me the penthouse in return had been perfect. I loved this apartment. I loved the way I could see all of Wellington sprawled at my feet.
“Jess was rapt you’re letting her live here while she’s studying.”
“That seems right too.”
A smile slowly breaks over my face. I will be luckier, I think. I might lose my family for a while, but not forever. Alison promised to keep in touch and Jess might even follow in my footsteps. Like Sally told me, sometimes a bit of family is enough.
“Will that jerk find you another job?”
“Which jerk? Oh, you mean Robert? Maybe. And Dao told me to look him up if I’m ever in Hong Kong. But I want to take a break first.”
My hands are no longer automatically reaching out for the next rung of that ladder. My hands are reaching instead for the people I love. And for a glass of wine. Ben holds out two bottles of red. I nod at the Pinot, although, come to think of it, I am growing tired of Kiwi wine.
He fills our glasses. “Where will you go?”
I look out the window to the north and then back to Ben’s face. “I haven’t decided.”
“Do you think you could—” He lifts his glass and swirls the wine slowly. “Do you think you could—maybe—live with me?”
My heart swells, even as I remember Ben’s tiny studio miles away from anywhere. Miles away from any prospect of my sort of work.
Sometimes you have to make sacrifices. So I smile at him, my mouth wide enough to show my crooked tooth.
“Yes.”
His eyes crease and he takes a deep breath and looks around the room. When his gaze returns to my face, he smiles back.
“I’m sure I can find something to do in Dipton,” I say. “Perhaps I can help market your furniture. Or maybe,” horror of horrors, “teach?”
Ben’s face slackens and for an instant he looks appalled. “Oh, Lin, I wouldn’t ask that of you!”
I shake my head. “I will never ask you to leave Emmy. It’s what our father did to my sisters. Vivienne never got over it.”
My thoughts have been flying somewhere else too.
“And it’s what my mother did to me.”
Ben looks down at his plate in silence. Outside the birds twitter amongst the branches of the copper beech, and the last of the sun floods through the western windows.
“Emmy’s only staying in Dipton for my sake,” he says suddenly. “She wants to join her mother in South Africa for the rest of the year.”
He lifts his head and smiles. “Maybe it’s time to put you first. So, where shall we go?”
I pause for a moment’s thought. I remember coming to this land of hope, following my instincts, hoping to find my sisters, and hoping to find a way back to Ben. Okay, so I took a couple of diversions, but I was proud of what I had achieved at Hera even though I wouldn’t be around to reap any of the harvest. And, although I had to leave Ngatirua, I still held onto some small parts of my family.
And I had Ben. I felt lucky.
Now my instincts are telling me something else. You might say what I decide to do next was fated, but I know it was logical.
I reach over and take Ben’s hand and smile back. “I have another address. I’d like to see where my mother was from. How about a trip to Macau?”
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Trilemma Page 24