by Terry Morgan
CHAPTER 56
"Yes, of course I spoke to Mr Eischmann. And I didn't like what he told me."
Guido, rotating his big office chair and chewing on a pen seemed ready to sob. He sniffed, swallowed hard, then mumbled like a child.
"Those Cherry Picking bastards ignored us, Toni," he said between sniffs. "Even after I bought them pizza and paid for them to stay at the Park Hyatt Hotel - two single rooms with breakfast.- they have gone behind our backs. But they were so naive, Toni. They knew nothing. And after I told them to be more ambitious, what do they do? They stab us in the back by talking to a fucking Nigerian and now they've put in a bid for 35 million Euros. Imagine, Toni. 35 million Euros. That almost beats our record.
"And Mr Moses is very mad. He thinks it was me who caused him to receive two hundred boxes containing old copies of Corriere della Sera instead of his water purifiers."
He took a deep, audible breath as if trying to pull himself together. "So Guido is very upset and angry this morning because he could not sleep last night. His head, it hurts. He is very stressed."
The sniffing stopped abruptly. Instead, he started to giggle.
"But I like being stressed," he chirped as if a lost toy had suddenly been returned. "Whenever a little failure looms, Guido strikes back. Guido will never allow a mark of disgrace to be written on his forehead. So, you too, my flower, must wash away the dirty stain left by a tiny loss and together we will now show that it is not we who are the incompetent fools. It is others who have made a serious error of judgement.
"Stress, my precious flower, led to another new idea and another clever solution. So, when I spoke to Mr Eischmann I proposed a very simple solution to the problem of the fucking Cherry Pick bastards. You will see. A big revenge is the cure for a little failure."