Читать книгу Integrity - Anna Borgeryd - Страница 16

9

Peter’s fall semester was exciting. Maybe a little too exciting, he found himself thinking. It was damned good luck that he hadn’t agreed to participate in that strange welfare project. His active social life hardly left him time to study and go to jujutsu.

He often went out with friends, and he frequently took some girl home with him. Sandra was kind of half-steady, even if he had never promised her anything. Linda called quite often, and she was always fun to be with. And then there was that pretty, new graduate student, the little blonde, Jeanette. That had also become a little too exciting. Peter had only just turned 24, but he still wondered if he was starting to get old, if he worried about such a trifle when the girl didn’t seem to care.

To say that Jeanette had been eager was an understatement. Single-minded didn’t do her justice! She had suggested that they meet at the gym, and after a workout at the palace-like training complex on campus, they walked the short distance home to Stipend Lane. Once he had shut the door to his dorm room, very few minutes passed before she wanted to do it in the shower, and Peter wasn’t the type who refused. He had definitely been right… She had glorious, firm, almost swollen, natural breasts, and she was uncomplicatedly turned on. Simply put, it was good sex. Unusually good for a first time, Peter noted. But they didn’t notice until afterwards that the condom had broken. Peter got a cold lump in his stomach. Jeanette, on the other hand, took it remarkably calmly. She showered, dried herself off on his only clean towel, dropped it on the floor, got dressed and left with a smiling, ‘See you!’

Peter didn’t really know what was worrying him. When he was younger he would never even have thought about the minimal risk that Jeanette might, for example, have HIV. It was true that he had had to take a chlamydia test once, when one of his one-night stands had turned out to be infected. That had been no fun at all. He had imagined what it would be like if he were forced to call, say, five girls he had been with since then, and say that he had probably given them a venereal disease. But he had listened to his dad, who during an unusually intimate exchange had told him, ‘Sow your wild oats, but make sure you have a condom!’ and the test had been negative. What a relief that had been! Maybe he should get himself tested again, just to be on the safe side?

What a drag I’m becoming, thought Peter. If I don’t watch out I’ll become like Vera, who hobbles around in her baggy clothes and looks crabby all the time. Her biggest evening pleasure seemed to be sitting in her room eavesdropping and then banging on the wall and disrupting. He could have sworn that Vera considered it a sport to identify absolutely the least appropriate moment to bring out the heavy artillery.

Just because she didn’t seem to be getting any, that was no excuse to be so damned snippy to others.

It was time for the fall board meeting. Peter sat on the flight home to Stockholm and read Fortune magazine to get into the right mood for Great Escape. You needed to ‘know your target group’, as his dad used to say. And he wasn’t so dumb that he didn’t realize by the time he was 20 that in order to meet ‘the most well-to-do one per cent of the population, which engages in conspicuous consumption,’ you needed to hang around Stureplan and do exactly that, engage in conspicuous consumption.

Peter remembered as if it were yesterday the very rewarding conversation he had had with his father, which had resulted in him getting a corporate American Express card, and the many hysterical party nights and high-status contacts that the card had financed. Not to mention all the girls he had raked in – good-looking, young, rich and generous, he could pick and choose among hundreds of Stureplan wannabes.

Then things had got a little out of hand. When Peter started racking up charges in excess of 300,000 kronor but only delivering a few vague contacts, Lennart immediately pulled the credit card, thus ending his triumphal march among the cream of Stureplan. Peter had always suspected that it was his Uncle Ernst, finance officer at a large bank and chair of the board of his father’s company, who had called his little brother’s attention to the cost of Peter’s networking. Ernst talked all the time about what the accountants would say. But it didn’t feel completely wrong to give up the slicked-back hairstyle and expensive clothes and move up to northern Sweden to study. Peter had honestly begun to tire of spraying girls with 10,000-kronor bottles of champagne. Been there, done that, Peter thought. The feeling was just, ‘Yeah, okay, now what?’ In any case, he thought it was more fun with girls who found him attractive regardless of his father’s money.

For a while Lennart had been furious. Now it had faded into a permanent disappointment, and Peter only got paid for his participation on the Board or if he did other work. In Umeå Peter tried to show that he was a Stavenius – damned right he could also finish a ‘character-building period of studies’ in a crowded dormitory with poorly installed vinyl flooring, furniture that was both old and disgusting, and a shared kitchen in which people warmed all kinds of stuff in the toaster. But compared to Charlie, Ernst’s son, who was independent and earned big bucks in finance, Peter fell short. These days Lennart had a skeptical attitude to his son’s merits, and he didn’t hesitate to tell Peter all about cousin Charlie’s success in London. And Charlie was only five years older than Peter. The latest was that Charlie seemed to be on his way to earning a bonus this year that was as big as Great Escape’s entire profit. The jealousy was never expressed, but it was palpable, a restless dissatisfaction. Peter didn’t know if it was because Lennart felt himself inappropriately outdistanced by his young nephew, or if it was simply a disappointment to have the less successful offspring. Whatever its cause, the situation hurt Peter more than he was willing to admit.

Peter flipped distractedly through Fortune and suddenly saw Lennart in the ad for Rolex watches again. ‘To accomplish extraordinary things.’ Perhaps it wasn’t as easy as Peter used to think? Lennart made it clear to Peter that he shouldn’t count on being supported, that he needed to get serious and do something sensible with his life. ‘Do something sensible’ was code for following in Lennart’s footsteps – get a degree in economics, enter the labor market and start making good business deals. By the time cousin Charlie was 25 years old, he had already made his first million, entirely on his own.

When he arrived at Strand Street, Peter entered the code and stepped into the office. He no longer noticed the beautiful vaulted ceiling and the row of crystal chandeliers. He greeted Barbro, Lennart’s proper secretary, who had worked for the family since they had been in the interiors business. He walked across designer carpets and passed racks with exclusively designed Great Escape catalogues. At the far end of the office was the boardroom, with its thick wall-to-wall carpeting, large oval mahogany table and gold-framed diplomas that the company and Lennart had received over the years – ‘Exporter of the Year,’ ‘Businessman of the Year’ and ‘Sweden’s Super Gazelle 2005’.

As Peter greeted all the dark-suited men, he suddenly felt out of place in his grey blazer. Strangely, back at the dorm it had made him feel too dressed up. Dark suit, he thought: I need to get one. He discreetly wrote a note to himself on the yellow notepad in his board-meeting file folder, while the introductory formalities went on in the background – approval of the agenda, minutes from the last meeting… He woke up a bit during the quarterly report and concurred when the board members noted with satisfaction that the company was growing well in the US; their recruitments seemed to have been successful, and the New York office was proving to be a profitable investment.

The next agenda item was about a proposed investment. Lennart went through the travel company’s current destinations before quickly getting to the point. He wanted to purchase two Eurocopter Dauphins – monster helicopters that could carry up to 12 passengers at high speeds. Peter knew that under the existing investment ceiling set by the board of directors, the CEO could unilaterally approve expenditures up to 10 million. So that meant that these machines went for more than that.

Uncle Ernst, the chairman of the board, asked why their regular, one-motor helicopters weren’t sufficient. Did the company really need all five of them in Europe? Couldn’t a couple be transferred to New York? Ernst was always careful that the company’s fixed assets were being put to work; he had seen too many companies fail due to exorbitant capital costs. He referred to it as being ‘weighed down’.

Peter thought that Uncle Ernst and his boring questions probably had something to do with Great Escape’s success, even if it was the charismatic little brother who drove the company’s development and stood in the spotlight. Because it was now that Lennart was most alive; Peter saw the fire in his father’s eyes when he talked inspiringly about Great Escape’s new offer – a grizzly bear hunt with a private helicopter direct from Manhattan! The latest market survey from New York had shown that people were willing to pay a lot for that type of exclusive trip, and advance sales had been fantastic. These two-motored behemoths could fly sufficiently fast and safely in all weathers so the Wall Street elite could get to Alaska for a long weekend to hunt ‘one of the world’s most formidable predators’.

Not as formidable as the Wall Street elite, Peter thought with a grin.

‘What do you say, Peter?’ Lennart looked at his son as if he had just made a statement.

‘What is all this based on?’ Peter looked almost dazedly at the CEO and Board in front of him. A feeling of déjà vu crept up on him from somewhere.

‘Uh?’ Lennart looked at him as if he had said staphylococcus.

‘Why is this a good idea?’ continued Peter, now completely engulfed in a time-bridging Matrix feeling.

The chair of the board glanced approvingly at his nephew. This was actually an Ernst-type question.

Lennart irritatedly noted his older brother’s expression and answered sharply, ‘18,000 dollars per paying customer, and demand exists!’

Peter was pulled out of the odd, unfamiliar mood and he smiled crookedly, ‘Oh, right – why didn’t you say so?’

The meeting broke for coffee. As they were standing beside the trolley with refreshments, Lennart passed his son a cup and whispered, displeased: ‘Nice that you finally show a little interest in Escape, but damn it! You can at least ask sensible questions, can’t you? I have enough trouble with people who don’t get the genius of these trips. Just the messing around about landing rights is…’

Peter sipped the hot coffee.

‘Don’t slurp!’ his father shot immediately, and Peter put down the cup, his lightly burnt tongue mumbling something that was supposed to resemble an apology.

‘We’ve hardly done any marketing, but we already have three fully booked weekends in March. And then suddenly everything comes to a dead stop. I don’t get how the land of opportunity can be such a bureaucratic nightmare all of a sudden. They completely reject the Wall Street landing pad and are hesitant about giving approval for West 30th. Can you believe it?’

‘No, why?’ wondered Peter.

Lennart shrugged his shoulders. ‘The usual, too close to the limit. They drone on about rotor diameter and noise, but, damn it, the latest Dauphin is quieter than those tin cans that are constantly flying tourists around the city!’

Peter’s curiosity grew. ‘Do you mean that we have already sold direct helicopter trips to Alaska?’

‘Yes, the Ultimate Adventure. Expensive. Exclusive. Half-crazy, but still possible.’

‘How is it possible?’

‘If you’re interested, Barbro has all the information,’ said Lennart, and they returned to the meeting.

The question about the investment decision had been tabled, and the meeting moved on to other matters, but Peter continued thinking about Wall Street-Alaska. It would undoubtedly look good alongside the company’s other destinations, and he believed his father: it would be a profitable sales success. He skipped lunch with the Board, choosing instead to eat a chicken salad in Barbro’s room while working on an exciting idea. Was there some way to reconcile ‘the Ultimate Adventure’ with the pile of rejection letters from everybody from the Federal Aviation Administration to the City of New York? Peter had actually negotiated for the family business in some small matters, but this time his social skills and charm were hardly enough. He read the reasons for the negative decisions. He looked things up in files and surfed the internet and determined that it was definitely a crazy idea – it would take 16 hours’ flying time plus five fueling stops to get the grizzly-bear-hungry finance yuppies to Alaska. Was there some other solution?

When the meeting resumed after lunch he said that he had something he wanted to say about the issue that they had tabled, and the Chair said he could have time at the end, during the agenda item ‘other matters’. He had two hours of waiting, and he discreetly prepared before finally getting the opportunity to talk.

‘13 million dollars is a lot of money.’ He felt Lennart’s cautious gaze resting on him. ‘But we have a large demand at a price that is clearly profitable. Wall Street-Alaska is too good an idea not to implement!’ Peter had turned toward the rest of the Board, but he was intensely aware of his father, just beyond his line of sight.

‘But we don’t know if it’s a flash in the pan or if demand will last long enough to pay for the investment,’ objected Ernst from the short side of the table, spinning the Chair’s gavel with his long fingers.

‘Exactly!’ said Peter. He saw his father’s face darken in response to his brother’s boring common sense. ‘So I have the following proposal…’ For that reason, and because we don’t actually have landing rights, he tried to signal to Lennart with his gaze. ‘We take a regular Raven to Manhattan, paint it for “the Ultimate Adventure” and make sure that we get the Wall Street landing pad for it. That way, the target group will see an advertisement for it outside their office windows every Friday. And then it can fly to Newark or…’

Lennart shook his head. ‘No, our customers don’t want that. Time is money.’

‘Exactly. Time is money.’ Assume that we have our own theme-park hangar in Newark where we directly outfit the guys for the trip. After they have the necessary gear they immediately board a comfortable private jet to Alaska! Then we don’t need to settle for Admiralty Island; we can get all the way to Fort Yukon in six hours. No refuelling stop.’

‘Yes, but the Eurocopter has an entirely different mobility and provides a completely different experience,’ said Ernst, suddenly on his little brother’s side.

‘Yeah, of course, but we rent that in Alaska from some search-and-rescue firm. The guests are just going to sleep on the long trip anyway.’ It’s over 5,000 kilometers, gentlemen, Peter thought, but instead he said: ‘It will still be seen as super exclusive and half impossible. And, of course, it’s a helicopter at the beginning and at the end, where it will be seen. Their pals will think they flew the chopper to the wilderness, because those are the only kind of pictures on Facebook.’

Ernst smiled broadly at his nephew. ‘No big investments necessary, we focus on concept and packaging. And the Newark hangar with add-on sales possibilities… The New York office can set this up. What do you say, Lennart?’ He held his pen, ready to cross out the decision to table the matter.

Lennart’s mouth formed a minimal smile, and he gave a little nod. A pleasant warmth spread in Peter’s chest.

When Peter came home late on Thursday he heard confidential voices from the communal kitchen. He went straight there and was surprised to discover Matt and grey Vera curled up on the sofa drinking tea. Could she actually be that social?

‘Don’t let this kind of stuff ruin you,’ she said, critically thumbing through a black book. ‘You are much better than this.’

Peter saw that it was The Game that she was talking about, the pick-up manual that he had loaned to Matt. It looked like it had been read a lot. For some strange reason, Peter felt challenged to defend it. That he had barely read it himself was suddenly unimportant. ‘There are actually things in there that are appreciated and work, at least on real women.’

‘Real men don’t need to lie and play-act.’ The retort came lightning fast.

‘Yeah, right, like your husband, that plastics guy. Is he a real man? Why are you living here, anyway?’ countered Peter.

Vera flinched as if she had been slapped in the face, got up and hobbled away. At the door she stopped, turning around and saying in a strangely trembling voice, ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but I am going to Stockholm on Saturday… to him.’

In the empty kitchen, Matt threw up his hands in irritation. ‘What’s your problem? Why are you on her case all the time?’