Afterburn

by Colin Harrison

  "That's the first scenario, what's the next?"

  "It may be that the scaffolding companies are just trying to shake down the Western companies more than usual."

  Ming! Charlie thought. I have dinner with Ming tonight. "When will you know?"

  No answer. A stalling pause. "It takes a little time, in my experience."

  "That answer is a torpedo, Mr. Anderson. That answer sinks my boat."

  "Okay, yeah, I'd say a week or two. But when the site isn't active, your workers go somewhere else, and it takes a while to get the crews back up. You have to reacquaint everyone with the project. Get the materials moving in sequence again, things like that. The project will slow maybe three or four weeks or more if we don't get this thing resolved fast. Plus, we are moving toward the rainy season, and the plan was to get the site enclosed before then, start in on the gross electrical."

  "So what are you doing?"

  "I've shifted about half the crews to another site and I'll park them there for a few days, just to keep them together, but that becomes an extraordinary expense over the contracted bid, so I need to get—"

  "Yes," Charlie interrupted. "Fine, approved. That's—what?—only a couple of hundred thousand, but that doesn't get us back up and going. We need some answers from the municipal people. What about that guy, the subdeputy mayor for the special economic zone? I just saw him a couple of weeks ago. We got along fine. We had a few drinks, in fact. He could straighten this out."

  "I can't call him, Mr. Ravich. He's too high up," Anderson explained. "It would take a couple of weeks to work that out through intermediaries. They know I'm just the construction manager. Pete Conroy is in Shenzhen, can't get away. The principal architects do have that Swiss guy—"

  "No, no, he'll just piss them off. He's too abrupt. Too German. They know he hates them."

  "You said it, not me."

  Ming's bank had an office in Shanghai, and Charlie would have to be careful about how he described the factory's progress. If Ming had doubts, he could run someone over to the site in a taxi and have a report in an hour. On the other hand, the problem didn't sound very bad yet. Maybe it was better not to meet the subdeputy mayor.

  "What about the guy who runs the scaffolding company?" Charlie asked.

  "I can set that up."

  "Do it."

  They would sit down in the Peace Hotel overlooking the Huangpu River, drink some bad Chinese wine, and get the thing worked out. You needed the personal connection in this situation. Someone with gray hair who could make a toast.

  "All right," he told Anderson. "I'll be there Friday afternoon, your time. I'll be at the Peace Hotel. But I'm going to call you tonight, my time, to go over this."

  "I hate to say it, but this is probably the best thing."

  "Meanwhile, maintain some activity at the construction site."

  "You mean make it look active?"

  "I mean make it look fucking busy."

  "SO EXCELLENT TO SEE YOU AGAIN, CHARLIE." Mr. Ming nodded slyly as he slipped his soft fingers into Charlie's bony paw a few hours later. The restaurant was packed. Swell place, twenty-dollar appetizers. In the corner, Barbara Walters, pretending you didn't notice her. Toupee-to-implant ratio almost even. "You look very healthy after your visit to Hong Kong."

  "I had a good trip."

  "Profitable?"

  Did Ming know about his speculation on the death of Sir Henry Lai? What didn't he know? "Yes."

  Charlie nodded sternly to the maître d', and he and Ming were conveyed to Charlie's table, past other businessmen being tortured by their moneylenders, past the piles of cheese and vegetables and aging Italian waiters who could discern the relative power of their clientele with the same dispassion they imposed on cuts of steak—and present the check accordingly. Dinner will run five hundred dollars, thought Charlie, as much as Dad made in a month at my age.

  Mr. Ming accepted his napkin, then lifted his eyes. Again the fox's smile. After they ordered, he asked, "How is business?"

  "We're on track for the next quarter."

  "How is the plant construction going?"

  "Some delays. The usual stuff."

  "How worried are you about Manila Telecom?"

  "Worried," said Charlie. "Worried enough."

  "Let me show you how worried we are." Ming slipped his hand into his coat. He handed Charlie the sheet. "This is a report generated by our investment division. We have started to examine the telecom supply business as a whole."

  Teknetrix's market share and supplier relationships have been eroded by Manila Telecom's recent surge, but this trend may be only temporary, as its product development is first-rate and its marketing systems highly developed. Yet Teknetrix remains a viable takeover candidate by a telecom-supplier competitor of equal or greater size because of its superior applications for WAN internetworking interfaces, Internet service provider (ISP) servers, multiplexers, digital access and cross systems, channel banks and cellular base stations. The company is quite an attractive target.

  "Your success is your vulnerability," Ming observed. "But so, too, is any weakness."

  "We're very aware of Manila Telecom," said Charlie tightly. "I mean, I take their sales reports home with me."

  Ming watched him. Don't blink, Charlie thought. He blinked.

  "As you know, Charlie, corporate financing in Hong Kong is very dynamic right now." Ming spoke like a man gazing across a calm expanse of water. "Our exposure is huge. And we have recently increased our presence in the Philippines."

  "Is the government pressuring you to help Manila Telecom?" asked Charlie. "I mean, hell, let's lay it out here."

  "I cannot answer that question directly." Ming slipped a tiny shrimp into his mouth. "But I can say they do not fully appreciate our American lending portfolio."

  "Great," answered Charlie. "I understand you loud and clear. The other thing I've heard is that the MT sales reps are promising their customers—our customers—a much larger product line in a year or two, with order-fills getting much faster. We've been assuming they have a lot of capital coming in, either through a new stock offering or a direct loan, or even both."

  Ming nodded.

  "You're not saying?" Charlie asked, watching Barbara Walters get up from her table, hair as soft-looking as a football helmet.

  Ming let his fork rest on his plate. He looked away in thought, as if listening to himself tune an obscure and difficult musical instrument. "I am unable to comment on the financing strategies of the bank's clientele," he said.

  Charlie leaned forward, his back hurting. "You're telling me that your bank has opened a new office in the same city where my major competitor is located, that your bank has entered into some kind of stock offering or financing deal with them, money that could be used in the very same hostile buyout that is hinted at by the research generated by your very same bank? Is that what you are telling me?"

  Ming lifted the fork to his mouth, his expression unchanged.

  "You're fucking telling me that!"

  The man sat in awkward silence.

  "The situation within our bank is very complicated," Ming said finally. "Let's discuss the Q4 surface-mount transformer."

  "It's in goddamn development," Charlie hissed. "You know that."

  "You've been saying that for six months."

  "It's been true for six months."

  "I think it's further along than you explained," Ming said.

  "We're pleased," Charlie admitted. "But we're not going to oversell it. We need to test it, size it, figure out the costs."

  "If that switch hits the market by April, you will have an advantage on MT."

  "Yes, until they copy it," Charlie said bitterly. "And sell a bad version of it at ninety percent of our price."

  He wondered if Ming was telling him that the internal politics of the bank put Ming and his loan to Charlie in jeopardy. Or that the bank was quietly betting on the whole sector by supporting both companies. Or that the bank was trying to decide whi
ch company to back. Or that he, Ming, knew enough about MT's internal intelligence to know that Charlie could seize an important advantage by accelerating the development of the Q4 switch at all costs. Or, quite differently, that he, Ming, wanted to know the exact status of the Q4 so he'd know how to advise MT on the timing of its attack on Teknetrix.

  Mr. Ming's trout arrived, swimming through a bed of rice, one eye turned inquiringly upward. Hooked, poached, and soon to be eaten. That's me, Charlie thought. But he could attack back. They could update their poison pill provisions, they could issue stock to water down whatever MT had accumulated, they could throw themselves at the mercy of another bank, refinance the construction loan, pay off Ming, and ride again. And they could accelerate the Q4, nail the factory's start-up date, jolt forward in market share. Afterburn, he told himself. Time to go into afterburn and get out of trouble.

  "I NEED TO FLY TO SHANGHAI," he announced to Ellie when he walked in the door to their apartment.

  Her mouth dropped. "No."

  "Yes."

  She'd been sorting the mail. "You just got back."

  "I know. But the municipal officials in Shanghai have stopped our construction. Our principal construction guy is supposedly in Shenzhen dealing with concrete, although I suspect that's a lie. There's some other problem. I'll leave Thursday morning."

  She tossed the envelopes down. "Charlie, you have people whose job it is to fix these things."

  "I'm needed on the other end. It's a one-hour conversation, but it has to be face-to-face."

  She breathed angrily. "I need you here."

  "My company needs me there."

  "Your wife needs you here."

  "It's a very quick trip, Ellie."

  "Then will you see it when you come back?" she asked. "Please?"

  "What?"

  "The house. Vista del Mar."

  "Maybe there are other places we should look at," he answered. "If this idea means so much to you."

  "No, I think this is the place. I've been very—" She looked at him fearfully. "I'm searching for the word."

  "Thorough?"

  "Yes." She smiled in embarrassment.

  "Careful? Comprehensive? Diligent? Scrupulous? Have you been all of those things, too, Ellie?"

  She began to cry.

  She scares me, he thought. "What? What is it?" He caught Ellie's arm and gently turned her around to face him. Her eyes were unblinking, her mouth was set. "You bought it, didn't you?"

  "Yes." She watched his reaction. "Yes, Charlie, I did."

  "How much?"

  "A lot. I put down the deposit. I signed all the papers."

  "Couldn't you have discussed it?"

  "You would have said no."

  He eased down into one of the dining-room chairs. "There's no going back?"

  "I paid the membership fee and committed us."

  Something like a quarter of a million dollars. "I haven't noticed any cash gone."

  She smiled in pride.

  "How'd you do it?" he asked.

  "I sold some of the jewelry Mother left me."

  "That couldn't be that much."

  "I got sixty-two thousand for all of it."

  "What about Julia? I thought you wanted to give it to her."

  "I showed it all to her and let her pick out what she wanted. She just wanted one ring and one necklace."

  "Sixty-two thousand doesn't get you into Vista del Muerte, baby."

  "I put it into the stock market."

  "The stock market has been lousy lately."

  "Teknetrix has done well," she reminded him.

  He stood up. "You didn't trade Teknetrix!"

  She said nothing, only smiled.

  "Ellie, all my trades have to be registered! The SEC doesn't distinguish between me and family members who buy the—"

  She pressed her hand to his chest. "Give your wife a little credit."

  "I don't understand."

  "You also said your competition was doing very well."

  "Manila Telecom?"

  "You bring home reports on them every couple of weeks."

  He frowned, barely believing her. "You've been reading my sales intelligence reports on Manila Telecom?"

  "They do have a lot of information."

  "You've been buying Manila Telecom?"

  "If they're in strong competition with you, then they're a very good company."

  He took two steps back. "You bought the stock of my competition so you could stick me in Vista del Muerte?"

  "I wouldn't put it like that."

  "That's beautiful. That's the best I ever heard. I thought I knew a few things, but no, old Charlie doesn't know nothing!"

  She moved toward him. "I can tell you are sort of pleased."

  "Well, shit, I suppose I'm amused."

  "I wanted to surprise you."

  "You did. You did that very well, for God's sake." He wondered how she'd done it. "Is this where you've been going so much? Someplace where you could trade?"

  "There's a very nice young man down at the Charles Schwab office on Sixth Avenue. I didn't tell him about Teknetrix. All I said was that I wanted to trade Manila Telecom." Her pride was unmistakable. "I was very disciplined about it."

  "It trades at about twenty-five."

  She shook her head. "No, no, it's closer to thirty-four."

  "Jesus, I had no idea."

  She'd started with lots of two thousand shares, Ellie told him, selling them whenever the stock moved up a dollar or two, buying back when the stock fell two dollars or more. The volume on Manila Telecom, Charlie knew, was huge, so it was easy to jump in and out of the stock. Some days, Ellie said, she made a few thousand dollars, other days lost a bit. She'd moved up to orders of five thousand shares and even a few of ten thousand. Because the stock had moved in a classic upward sawtooth motion, just as Teknetrix's had, it was hard not to make money once you fell into the rhythm of the thing.

  "How much?" Charlie asked.

  "Well, I got it up to almost three hundred thousand, actually."

  Why did this cause him so much pain? "You turned sixty-two thousand into three hundred in what, five or six months?"

  "I did, and I'm pretty excited about it. No wonder men are always talking about the stock market."

  "Who is going to pay the capital-gains taxes on all that?"

  She smiled. "You are, mister."

  He studied her face. "I guess I am."

  "Vista is almost full. I just went ahead."

  "That's what you call it, Vista?"

  "Sure."

  "We're locked in?"

  She nodded. "Everything. It's a beautiful house, Charlie."

  "How much? No—don't tell me yet."

  "It sets us up, Charlie. We don't have to go now. But it's there, it's ready. We can move bit by bit if we want. I had to do it this way, don't you see? You never would have agreed to go anywhere. I just had to do it this way. I know you too well, sweetie."

  Not well enough, he thought bitterly, not well enough to know that after thirty-eight years of marriage I am erecting a gigantic lie that obliterates your tiny Vista del Muerte fib, I am resisting your kindly management of me, my dear wife, I will not be taken that way, I will not be shot out of the sky like that, not without my own secret consolation.

  AFTER ELLIE HAD TAKEN HER SLEEPING PILLS (how many? more than usual?), he tightened his tie and washed his face. Impossible to sleep; he wanted to be in Shanghai now, hollering at Anderson to get the factory started again. Ellie didn't understand the urgency, or if she did, she didn't care. Teknetrix was an ugly beast to her, a thing that ate at Charlie when he could be playing golf or traveling. It depressed her, in fact, that he still cared so much about the company. She's trying to pull me out of it, he thought, watching her make soft humming noises to herself as she waited for the pills to plow her under. At times he found the sounds endearing, as if she were trying to keep up her side of a conversation while desperately tired, and other times her utterances seemed to r
epresent her inability to retreat from the endless obsessive conversation with her set of friends. Talking, always talking, discussing each event and disaster and intrigue and tragedy, maintaining the soapless opera over the phone and tea and lunches at their favorite Japanese restaurant, weaving the talk in a relentlessly female way, the men in their lives—for he had overheard Ellie on the phone—reduced to gray-haired boys whose enthusiasms and preferences were indulged but of no interest compared to other topics, such as mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, nieces, and babies. The older he became, the more convinced he was of the absolute, unresolvable differences between men and women. Yet how strange and frustrating that he understood Ellie better than ever, and she him. They knew each other so well that they no longer spoke really but communicated by the exchange of symbols, each dense with meaning. Teknetrix. Apartment. Bed. Pills. Friends. Office. Daughter. Air Force. Breakfast. House. Penis. Funerals.

  I'm tied up here, he thought, trapped in this apartment, in Ellie's head, in Ming's cleverness. He needed movement, action, he needed to escape to Shanghai, zap the factory back on schedule, get the R&D guys to hammer out a manufacturing protocol for the Q4, flash the company forward. Fire up the sales department, send out a bunch of press releases, talk up the sector analysts. Announce a new product line, pop up the stock price. He'd lay it all out in a meeting of the senior staff the next day, then boom off to China, boom home. Burn, baby, burn.

  In the kitchen he left Ellie a short note—Out for walk, couldn't sleep, back soon, have the phone—on the odd chance that she woke up. She wouldn't, though, not gobbling pills like that. He summoned the elevator in the foyer and listened to it grind softly upward. The door opened.

  "Evening, Mr. Ravich," said Lionel, an old candle of a man, the shoulders of his uniform snowy with dandruff.