Carstairs of Arabia
Copyright© 2019 by Ron Dudderie
Chapter 5: My name is Carstairs. Reginald Carstairs.
Caroline summoned me to my office on Friday. My ticket for travelling the next Monday had just been arranged. I was actually discussing something with Daphne, which always takes a while, but Alice, her secretary, was quite clear: I was to report to the fourth flour at once.
“Sorry about that, but I think you got the gist of it. Winston will certainly be able to flesh out the code. It will give you a chance to hang out together.”
“I still want to know why you’re leaving,” said Daphne, trying to sound angry. She was actually managing to, a rare occurrence where all the muscles in her face followed the same set of instructions from her brain.
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you, my dear,” I said, deliberately impersonation Roger Moore.
“Pfff. Yeah. You’re pro ... profawby swoo ... swooting another ad in Ja ... Japan you don’t want us to kn ... know abouf.”
I made a clacking sound with my cheek, fired a bullet from my finger pistol, winked and left for Caroline’s office.
“Martin, do sit down,” said Caroline. Her secretary was still in the room, ready to minute this conversation for some reason.”
“Something wrong?” I asked, as I took a seat across from her.
“You won’t like this, so I’ll come out with it right away. We have made another acquisition.”
“Oh?”
“It’s TicketBooth. The American ticketing company.”
I knew it well. Scytale, the company I ran for Keller & Fox, was also in the ticketing business as you may recall.
“Oh, right! So you bought into the competition?”
“Not into. We already owned around forty percent. Another party with twenty percent sold us their shares so now we have a controlling interest. We will be replacing senior management at once. That is where you come in. I shall need you in Boston for the foreseeable.”
I will swear her secretary braced herself, like someone who is walking his dog on the beach and suddenly sees a fifteen foot wave looming in the corner of their eye.
“Excuse me?”
“Boston. At once. For several months,” said Caroline.
“Uhm ... I assume she knows, right?”
Caroline’s secretary knows everything.
“Yes.”
“So ... There’s this thing I’m doing in the next few weeks, maybe even months. In Saudi Arabia. It involves tea and MI6. Ring any bells?”
Caroline tutted her lips for an instant.
“I’m well aware of that. Martin, TicketBooth is an eight BILLION dollar company, of which we now own sixty percent. And it’s busy digging it’s own grave, as large companies often do, by clinging on to the past and failing to innovate. They also had a security breach recently, losing the credit card information of some 400,000 customers. I need boots on the ground and I need them now. That company needs a CEO who understands the internet isn’t actually a series of tubes.”
“Uhm ... Hello? A couple of bombs exploded in London, not that long ago. My friend ... OUR friend, in fact, died. My wife and my son were threatened.”
“Yes. Did I mention the eight BILLION dollars?”
“I’ve been training with MI6! I’m packing half my bags tonight! How can you...”
“Martin, I do appreciate you were going to do something important. But it is not your job to save the world and frankly, it does not match your skill set. I’m actually amazed you’re still willing to see this through, because I honestly thought you’d see the error of your ways. But I’m afraid you won’t be going to Saudi Arabia. You will go straight home and inform your wife she will be joining you in Boston at her earliest convenience. There will be domestic help to assist her, including a nanny.”
I was looking at Alice now, just to see if there was the tiniest chance Caroline was joking. It’d be a first, but there is a first for everything. But she avoided eye contact and seemed to want to be invisible right now.
“Look at ME, Martin. Alice is only here to record this conversation. I am giving you a direct order, and Peter agrees with me. You are to be our man in Boston for this. I do understand this is a sudden change, but the shares became available only yesterday and Peter and I decided to jump in before any other parties could act. We had the Lego funds available.”
I don’t if I told you this, but Keller & Fox owned Lego for about ten years. Virtually all of it, minus some family shares kicking around. I mean the Danish toy company, the one that makes bits of plastic that feel like shards of glass to your unsuspecting bare feet. And then they sold it for some reason. Well, I say ‘some reason’ but it did happen to coincide with sweeping Danish tax reforms aimed at large companies suspected of laundering money. But that’s conjecture on Kate’s part.
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