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7

I could not recall any point previous to these last few days when I had ever before been intimidated by daylight.

Mid-morning, I flicked my eyes around my office hurriedly to check for any overlooked details that would salvage my situation, preparing to push myself from my chair.

Yellowish sunlight, diffused by the tinted glass of the broad windows, had leaked in around me.

I hated it, bloated with lemony brightness.

With no shadows, I felt denied any sense that there was something left unseen, something yet to discover, some new possibilities or solutions.

I was hatefully tired.

I had spent the night in a chair in my living room. Three times I had tried to reach Albert Quan; falling back into a tense and listless sleep, the lamp light seeping under my eyelids, each time the man would not take my call. The final time I woke it had been dawn. With the twelve-hour time difference, the business day in Singapore had run to its conclusion. Bank of South Asia had closed. My attempted contact incomplete. My possibilities shrinking.

At my desk, I swallowed sorely, my throat dry. My eyes scratchy with fatigue. Feeling forced to take on my business day, empty-handed and reluctant, as it unfolded in uncertainty and false glare.

Time to report to Kyle’s called meeting.

I took a final breath, trying to disband my doubts. In unbroken momentum, I rocked to my feet, paced rapidly out of my office, down the hall, and through Kyle’s open door.

There were four of them waiting: Kyle behind his desk; on two inward-facing chairs, Brenda Gibbons from our treasury department, Dimitri Sarkans from trading; and, on the deep couch along the side wall, an older man I did not recognize.

Kyle commenced while I was still entering the room. “Sit down, Paris. I’ve invited Brenda and Dimitri in to keep them informed of what’s happening firsthand.”

I nodded to them.

“And I’d like to introduce Ted Dwyer.” Kyle swept his hand to the older man. “Ted and I go back a long way. All the way to Yale, in fact. At various times, Ted has been president of two of our largest brokerage houses and one of our largest banks. These days he spends most of his time up in Ottawa warming a bench in the Senate, but I persuaded him to fly down this morning to give us the benefit of some of his experience and perspective.”

I stepped over and shook hands with Dwyer who, with difficulty, hiked himself partially out of the couch cushions, prefacing his greeting with, “Sorry. With this hip replacement, I always need a little more advance notice to get up and running.”

I eyed the remaining chair.

Instinct warned me not to relinquish my command of the ground between Kyle and Dwyer.

“Okay.” Kyle launched the discussion impulsively, like tearing the paper from a cheaply wrapped package. “Paris, what have you got for us? Our treasury department has a stack of overnight messages from Bangkok Commercial Bank requesting settlement on the bond issue no latter than March tenth. That’s three weeks. How much do we have from Bank of South Asia?”

I stood before them.

I looked at their faces in sequence, all united with Kyle in their stares of doubt and indictment.

What to tell them? What not to?

(Was the raging in my ears what a diver felt while suspended in the drop with no return available to the anchored footing of the diving board? Did you consume the gravity in your descent, becoming calmer as you neared the crash with the water?)

“We may,” I opened, “have a lot less than we need. But …”

Kyle wedged in his demand like a knife blade. “Less?”

“But we may not need anything at all.”

“Why?”

“Because we may not have a deal at all.”

“Bottom line,” Kyle demanded, swift and severe.

I scrambled for some lean line of argument. “I got hold of Bank of South Asia last night. They’re our financing arm for the deal. Suddenly there’s a lot of confusion. Even though we’re sitting with all their contracts in hand. They sound like they’re trying to back out on us. From the looks of it, I think the whole deal is going to come unravelled. And we’re not going to have any financing. But there aren’t going to be any bonds available for us either. So we’re not going to get any bonds, we’re not going to owe anything. It’s a wash. And we just move on to the next deal.”

“No.”

Halted by Ted Dwyer’s pronouncement lobbed in from the side of the room, I stood, reticent, uncertain how to proceed, steeping in my own frustration.

Tall, thin, and balding, with thick folds of skin under his jaw where he had once been beefy, Ted leaned back into the couch, bunching the blazer bearing his thready air squadron crest on its pocket, and unceremoniously brushed a scattering of dandruff from his shoulders and lapels.

“We already know that this thing has blown up in your face,” Ted stated. “But it seems we’re not the only ones that know.”

Sensing I would make myself vulnerable by having to ask for more details, I only raised my eyebrows in inquiry to Dwyer.

Adroitly, he handed me back off to Kyle with a curt nod.

“This,” Kyle explained, lifting several sheets of paper from his desk with tangible disdain. “Waiting for me when I came in this morning. Faxed in to us from London just after their open. From Amsterdam Bank.”

I could only wait for more.

“It’s their offer, Paris. For the Bangkok Commercial Bank bonds. They’ll give us eighty cents on the dollar for bonds that we buy for ninety-two cents on the dollar. If we take it we’ll only lose twelve million.”

“But there’s no way – ”

“And if we hustle around and do a lot of selling for them on the side they’ll pay us enough commission that we can carve our loss down to ten million.”

Kyle snapped the pages against his fingers.

Thinking there would be more, I waited in the ensuing silence while Kyle’s words drifted down like dry, brittle leaves.

When no one else spoke up, I began constructing my protest. “We have contracts with Bangkok Commercial. And with BSA. That let us off the hook …”

“Apparently not.”

“Amsterdam can’t do that.”

“Apparently, they have.”

Again, from my periphery, Ted Dwyer’s voice intruded, casual and terse.

“Amsterdam Bank not only knows this firm is in trouble. They know a great deal about how much trouble. They must know everything. Exactly. Or they’d never issue an offer like that. They’d never risk having a firm this small spit back in their face.”

Now I was certain there would be more.

“So,” Dwyer continued, “I think you better tell us everything about what you’ve been cooking up in Singapore with Bank of South Asia. What’s the full story, my friend?”

I bristled at Dwyer’s patronizing remark, tacked on to blandly assert his seniority over the room. I tried to curb my irritation, hastily absorb the extra rules in the game and the fresh positions of the players on the board.

“We have a deal with Bank of South Asia,” I explained briskly, rushing to reach the words before they could be refuted. “Put together when I was in Singapore. We have contracts. Cash. An asset-backed line of credit for at least eighty million bucks secured by the Bangkok bonds. Then, last night when I call, I learn that BSA’s suddenly fired their finance director, Stanley Man, who tells me BSA sold the financing contracts to Amsterdam Bank because Amsterdam was threatening to dump some large blocks of BSA stock from some of their insurance portfolios. And BSA buckled under because they live in constant fear of their reduced capital base with so much blood-letting in the Asian markets all last year.”

Kyle pushed back in his chair impatiently. “Well. That’s it, then.”

“It would seem so,” Ted Dwyer agreed.

Kyle added firmly, “That’s the bitch of it.”

I dashed after them to interrupt their momentum. My impatience swam like a carp beneath my skin bumping for escape. “We have contracts.”

“What you have,” Ted Dwyer declared, “is a legal fight that will take two years to get to court, take two million dollars to run, and take two more years to win.” He paused to allow Kyle to mutter his accord. “In the meantime, what are you going to use to pay for those bonds?”

“Then,” I insisted stubbornly, “let Bangkok Commercial sue us and let them wait a few years.”

Kyle snorted. “And where would our next deals come from? Do you know of anybody that would put a deal through here if there’s even a hint that we might not perform or that their deal might get sucked into some pending litigation that could jump out and bite us in the ass?”

“Only if there is any litigation. Bangkok Commercial will come to the same conclusion and not spend the time and money to chase us.”

“Bankrupt for cash, Paris. Or bankrupt for reputation. It’s all the same thing.”

“But,” I argued, “that’s only if Bank of South Asia is really going to back out of the deal. We need to get to them directly. To their president and directors. Find out what the hell is really going on.”

Kyle shrugged, cynical, broadcasting his scorn of such obvious simplicity. “You can if you like.”

I could not understand why Kyle was conceding so fluently, and so haphazardly; his wrath would normally have been huge. Instead, his indifference was cast about the office in careless plenty.

Arrested as much by my own confusion as by Kyle’s lofty dismissal, I ground my heels into the smooth carpeting under the scolding hum of the fluorescent lighting.

Kyle ploughed on. “Brenda, what’s our current treasury position?”

Without hesitation she chimed it out with her customary efficiency. “We could sell off most of our short bonds and commercial paper, some of our equities. Raise twenty million. Draw another couple million on our credit lines if we had to.”

“Dimitri, have we pre-sold any of those Bangkok Commercial bonds yet?”

In the thick Latvian accent that adhered to his English, Dimitri drawled, “Maybe ten million.”

“What if you put on a fire sale this afternoon?”

“Maybe another ten million. Not more. We’d need about three or four more months after March tenth to sell off a full hundred million. That’s why we could only do this with a massive credit line.”

“Well, that about settles it.” Kyle caught my eyes venomously.

It took all of my concentration to retain my balance and return his lethal stare.

In the stony quiet, with transparent ceremony, Kyle rose. “Please, all of you, listen very carefully. And, as of this minute, everything I’m about to tell you is absolutely confidential. The Securities Commission will prosecute you for insider trading if you act on any of it.”

Kyle waited for our sketchy gestures of assent.

Kyle cleared his throat, bit back a burp on his morning coffee. “This was to be my year to retire. So we’ve been working on a merger to sell out to a major bank. To cash out the equity of all the founding shareholders and leave our remaining partners and staff with a clean start.”

I was quickest to register, thirstiest for response. “Which bank?”

“That’s why Ted’s here,” Kyle replied.

In unison, we swung our attention to the side of the room.

Dwyer settled back, masterfully drawing us in. Straightened his shoulders. “Atlantic Laurentide.”

We waited for more details.

“At Kyle’s request, I approached Atlantic a few months ago. Got them to agree on the numbers. And I’ve since been building a case for Senate approval and to smooth things over with the Securities Commission. We’d have everything cleaned up for late this year.”

Listening to Dwyer explain it, I recognized, absolutely, like an approaching toll gate, the unfolding logic.

“Now that’s going to have to change.” Ted Dwyer ran his tongue around his gums as if burnishing his articulation. “I don’t have to tell any of you that the Securities Commission will never allow this firm to be muscled into the brink of receivership by any foreign bank, including Amsterdam Bank.”

“And,” Kyle asserted, “I’m not about to walk out the door and be tarred for the rest of my life for one botched deal. Nor am I about to stand by and see this company come out on the short end of the stick from Amsterdam Bank to the tune of ten or twelve million bucks.”

Ted Dwyer made an overt gesture of open palms with exaggerated shrug to indicate that there was nothing more to say. “So it’s obvious. You clean up things before you pay for the bonds. Or you go on the block. And we sell you to Atlantic Laurentide.”

“That gives us until March tenth, Paris. Three piss-poor weeks,” Kyle repeated, shaking his head in grim admonishment.

The discord in Kyle’s claim rekindled our recent grudges.

“You can’t be so sure,” I charged. “The Securities Commission. Stepping in to shut us down. We’re not some huge multi-national securities brokerage firm with offices all over the world. We’re just a small investment bank with our fingers in a minor international deal.”

“The banking and finance committee in the Senate sees it differently,” Dwyer told me pointedly. “Sure, we’re not London or New York. I agree. As far as the international markets go, we’re still some backwater farm team. Even Malaysia and Indonesia are better because, despite all their graft, they’ve at least got some action pumping away all the time. But what is it they always say in this country, Paris? Everybody in Canada hates Ontario. And everybody in Ontario hates Toronto. And everybody in Toronto hates Bay Street. And that’s because, at least in this country, we’ve got the goddamn money. So this is the price we pay. We live in a fish bowl with the regulators watching our every move.”

I made it obvious that I would not believe sight unseen.

Dwyer laid it out with prickly inflection. “The banking and finance committee is not about to ever let any bank or insurance company in this country fail and undermine public confidence in our finance industry. Biggest or smallest. Makes no difference to them. They are not about to let one ounce of public confidence, domestic or international, leak away.”

Watching them as they waited for my response, I squinted suspiciously into midday sunlight that poured in abundantly from the wide windows behind Kyle. Watched their movements and expressions for evidence of disagreement. Waited for them to speak with any trace of indecision. Strove to dilute their authority.

Ted Dwyer pushed himself to his feet with a refined groan, hobbled over to the corner of Kyle’s desk, his elderly eyes glassy and serene, and signalled an end to the discussion with an adept twist of his wrist to check his snug gold watch.

The meeting was concluded. I had lost their confidence. I had lost their respect. And I had lost their support. Inside myself, in a place where I could not deceive myself with my own indignation, I was forced to recognize that.

But I also knew, and had always known in that same place within myself, that I must reclaim the deal that had been stolen from me by BSA’s forfeit to Amsterdam Bank. Regardless of my ambivalent posturing during the meeting, I knew I had no other choice. I must redeem myself, somehow, if not to salvage my career from indelible misfortune, then simply because I could not endure the least splinter of further loss. It was, I sensed, taking all I had to travel through each day to its tattered close. Morning to night, my stamina was melting like thin ice, unable to outlast even the weak winter sun.

“Well?” Kyle inquired.

“Well,” I replied. I held in my objections, grinding down on them with my back teeth, waiting for Kyle and Ted to advance into the open, pronounce their penalty, expose their menace.

“Well, my friend,” Dwyer declared, “looks like you’re going to have to get us some straight answers out of Bangkok and Singapore.”

“Because you think I can change their minds?”

“No,” Ted Dwyer asserted dryly, “because the Securities Commission will be demanding them. And when they’ve got you in their sights for a couple of indictments for slipshod transactions that’ve bankrupted this firm, you better have something very convincing to say in your own defence or you could be looking at a couple of years in prison.”

* * *

Retreating behind my closed office door, I tried to heed the demands of my circumstances.

Like some stranger from outside the firm, I listened to the scraps of comments from colleagues as they passed by in the hallway. Their usually familiar voices seemed displaced, louder. Their babble swelled in my brain like a siren.