The 2084 Precept (28 page)

"Yes, Fred, and I'll keep it short. As you
know, we have already sent out letters to all major suppliers
telling them we would like to meet with them individually to
discuss our long-term relationship, 'partnership' is the term we
used, I think. They will have realized that it's about prices of
course."

"Yes. Some of them have already contacted
us," said Charlie.

"Good. See if you can't fix some meetings
for tomorrow and daily after that. The meetings themselves
shouldn't take more than an hour each, but we should leave plenty
of time between each one. I will be leading the meetings for the
next couple of days and your purchasing guy should find the time to
be with me. He's the one with the technical knowledge and he can
see how I go about it and then he can do it on his own after that.
We're aiming for an average of 8% by the way. A hard target, but as
you already know, I consider easy targets to be a waste of time. I
think we can swing it or at least get close to it. We'll tell them
all we want 10% of course, and see how it goes."

"I'll be amazed if you can achieve that,
Peter. But go ahead and surprise us. Wouldn't be the first time,"
said Charlie pleasantly, and laughed. "What's more, if you achieve
it, it would probably mean we've simply been overpaying some of
them." Another laugh.

Dead right buster, if you only knew it. Your
so-called purchasing department hasn't negotiated anything for
years, nothing at all. And why talk as if it has nothing to do with
you?

"O.K. Well, now I will need a schedule of
all suppliers showing products supplied, annual volumes, discounts
or rebates agreed on, any issues on quality, any issues on meeting
delivery deadlines, and anything else of interest. Starting of
course with the ones for tomorrow."

"Right, I'll ask Ron to fix that," said
Fred.

Right Fred, the purchasing department
reports to Ron. Little do you know that we're going to be changing
that before year-end. We're going to stop the separations of
authority from responsibility in this area as well.

"Thanks, Fred. And to move on quickly, just
a couple of words on today's last subject, results reporting. As
you know, we have started to under-report to Group. They expect us
to break even this year and are hoping that we will meet our
estimates for a positive £2 million next year. And they will be
delighted on both counts. Now…as you are aware, it is more or less
certain we will beat both of these numbers but they don't need to
know that yet. We therefore need to continue to maximize our
accruals and provisions. By the way Charlie, I noticed that we
still have a lot of room left in our inventory provisions, both for
obsolescence and for shrinkage. At some stage, we will need to
decide when to start releasing some of these amounts back into
profits, depending on when and by how much we want to start
exceeding Group's expectations, and in which year."

"The problem with doing this," said Charlie,
"is that it won't get past the auditors at year-end."

"No problem there Charlie. This is monthly
internal reporting. There are no fiscal responsibilities involved.
And if we have to make some adjustments for the year-end tax
accounts, so be it. But that can also be avoided in my view. We
need to create some calculated methodologies to support the
provision numbers we want to show, and document them. I can assist
on that if you wish; they need to be based on a formula, but it
must provide flexibility. And in a year or two, if we want to
change the methodologies again, well…we can do that too."

"Sorry," said Fred, "but I have to be off
now, Peter. Charlie and I will discuss what you have just mentioned
and see what we think. Once again, many thanks for your input and
see you tomorrow. My apologies for having to rush off."

We all stood up, shook hands, and that was
that.

I passed by Ron's office to say hi but he
wasn't there. I avoided the old cow's wasp nest and ran to the car.
I got soaked, it was still pouring.

I drove off and about a hundred meters down
the road I passed a parked blue Nissan. There was somebody in it,
but I couldn't see whether it was a man or a woman. Strange. But it
couldn't have anything to do with me, no reason. Just coincidence.
Another blue Nissan, plenty of them.

I arrived back at the hotel, checked my
emails, no message from Céline yet. I showered, changed into chinos
and a sweater and rang housekeeping for my suit to be collected and
ironed. It was still grey outside but no more rain. I caught a cab
to the Strand and walked up to Covent Garden for lunch, picked up
an IHT on the way. There were 78 conflict deaths today, spread
around fourteen countries, and they included some young girls blown
up by the Taliban for going to school. The optimists are presumably
saying don't worry, as they always do, it will all get better soon,
the human race has already improved itself and it will, eventually,
at some undeterminable and un-forecastable point in time in the
future, improve itself some more. We will eventually stop killing
each other. Ha.

Optimists. Optimists are people who are not
in full possession of all the facts. How else could you choose to
ignore tens of centuries of unassailable proof to the contrary?

I left the restaurant, lit up a cigarette
and turned right to head towards Obrix Consultancy. And…there was
that morose looking fellow again. He disappeared around the corner
as soon as I started walking in his direction. Now, this was not a
coincidence, it couldn't be. But why would anyone want to follow
me
? Maybe something to do with Jeremy Parker. Yes. But what
for? And why
follow
me, instead of stopping me and asking or
saying whatever needed to be asked or said?

* * * * *

The dream was sitting at her desk, gamma
rays pouring out of her the same as before. I am no longer
interested of course, other than for the pleasures of visual
inspection, that inoperable male disease. And so I was polite, a
small smile instead of a big one and no prolonged gazing into those
large and erotic eyes. A treatment to which she probably wasn't
accustomed. Perhaps that's why she switched on her own penetrating
look, bombarding me with a cloud of lethal electromagnetic rays,
pure actinism, asking me how things were and so on as she took me
down to the meeting room. Or maybe there had been a split with
boyfriend number thirty eight that weekend. Or maybe she had
decided that chinos and a sweater made me into a
real
man,
one worth investigating more deeply. Or maybe none of that, maybe
she was just having fun, playing her favorite game of destroying
the harmonic arrangement of the male hormones.

She opened the meeting room door.

"There we are Mr. O'Donoghue," she said,
with a smile one would normally associate with a boa constrictor, a
nice boa constrictor in this case, and a sexy one, but nevertheless
a boa constrictor, one contemplating how best to lovingly crush a
newly identified victim.

"Thank you, Miss…?" I said. Might as well
get the name even though I had no intention of adding her to the
blinking red light list.

"Goodall," she replied, "
Jane
Goodall. Mr. Parker…Mr. O'Donoghue." And with that she did her
noiseless disappearance act again.

Ahah. Now there we have some proof. Which
Jeremy put into words for me. "Good day to you, Peter," said
Jeremy. "You appear to have attracted the attention of our lovely
Miss Goodall. An unusual and rare event, I can assure you."

"Good day to you Jeremy. Attracted her
attention?" I asked.

"Yes, she never gives her first name to
anybody. You are an exalted exception. The ball, as you might say,
now appears to be in your court."

For a guy with a mental health problem, a
massive mental health problem in fact, friend Jeremy could sound
excessively normal and sane sometimes.

"Well, Jeremy, you probably did your
computer hacking trick again, just to make me feel welcome. But
don't worry, I won't be lobbing the ball back. I never mix business
with pleasure. One of my rules."

Jeremy laughed. "No," he said, "And I have
my rules as well. No hacking unless it serves a laudable purpose.
Let me assure you that Miss Goodall decided all by herself that you
should become acquainted with her first name."

"Well, then I am definitely flattered, but
as I said, I shall not be mixing business with pleasure. Although
it was definitely a pleasure to receive your two payments, for
which thank you very much, Jeremy. And here is the business end of
that as requested, the two related invoices."

I handed him the documents to which he
applied his speed-reading technique, about two seconds it took
him.

"These are fine, Peter, thank you very much.
And now perhaps, we could start off on the second item of our
agenda? Coffee?"

"No thanks," I said. "I had one just before
I came here. But before we start, there is a small matter I would
like to ask you about if I may."

"Certainly," said Jeremy, pouring a coffee
for himself, "go ahead."

"Do you have someone following me?"

He looked straight at me, clearly
puzzled.

"No. Why?"

"There is someone following me. Not very
professionally either, or I wouldn't have noticed him. I've seen
him three times since yesterday. And I'm not sure, but he may have
been following me this morning to Slough as well."

"Hmm…interesting. And you think this has
something to do with me?"

"Yes. It can't be anything else."

"Alright. Let us do two things. First of
all, let's check it out. A good way would be to walk over a long
bridge. We have the Thames handy for that. Stop about three
quarters of the way over to look at the river. Watch everybody
coming from the direction you came from. If anybody is following
you, he or she will have to stop and look at the river as well.
Nowhere else to go on a bridge. Take good note of anybody doing
that and then start to walk back the way you came. Once off the
bridge, turn a corner somewhere and wait. See if that person comes
along."

"O.K., total confirmation. And if I
am
being followed?"

"Then we will need to talk about it. In the
meantime, let me give you this." He fished in a briefcase sitting
on the floor next to him and gave me a mobile phone.

"This," he continued, "is one of a couple of
mobiles I adapted in case a need arose for confidential
communication regarding non-Obrix matters. It has no number and it
won't work if you dial another number on it either. Just press the
green button and you will reach me. It will record the fingerprint
of whichever finger you elect to use first time around, and it will
only function after that if recognizing that print. The phone looks
very similar to yours, but it is non-locatable and has automatic
encryption just in case. Encryption of a kind unknown on this
planet. If you
are
being followed, you should please use
this phone to contact me. So that we can arrange a different
meeting place each time and discuss how you are going to get there
without being followed."

"I don't know that I like this Jeremy. My
life is great as it is and I don't need it being messed around
with. Being followed is not, I repeat not, going to be part of my
existence. Nor is it a part of our agreement."

And as for the mobile phone, I thought,
well, it's easy enough to fix the dialing if you know how. It
doesn't matter who the carrier is. And some kind of alien
encryption? Just another delusion of his in his long, long list of
delusions.

"Well, we have to confirm your suspicions
first, Peter. And in any case, and in spite of our revised
conditions, you could walk out of our contract at any time, so you
don't have a problem as far as I can see. Except, of course, that
the €400,000 would walk away in the opposite direction to the one
you take, and the €200,000 you already have would need to be
returned as well."

"Yes, Jeremy, well…I’ll have to think about
that.”

Yes, indeed, €600,000 needs thinking about.
And no need for me to consider how to retain the €200,000. Not with
him being a madman and with those powers of his to boot.

“In the meantime,” I said, “how about we
move on with the day's agenda?"

"Right,” he said. “
'Interaction among
Selves'
. Just fire away."

"I don't have much to contribute on this
Jeremy, just some facts that I personally happen to be aware
of."

"That's O.K.," he said. "Whatever you have.
I will research any gaps."

I was in a bad mood. I really don't need all
of this shit. First of all a lunatic, and now I'm being spied
on—probably anyway—for reasons I can't conceive and couldn't care
less about in any case. On the other hand, another €400,000 for
doing nothing more than attending a few more interviews was not a
concept that my neurons were allowing me to junk just yet. So okay,
I'll do this meeting, I'll tell him some more about his own planet.
I'll give it to him straight.

"Our main interaction," I began, "by which I
mean one that began at the beginning, has continued throughout
history and is perpetuated to this day, is…how shall I put it…we
kill ourselves."

“YOU KILL YOURSELVES?”

“Yes, Jeremy, we kill ourselves. We always
have done and we always will.”

I paused and looked for his reaction to
this. There was none. He was obviously battling to grasp the
concept, a concept clearly foreign to his culture and to any of the
philosophies involved in influencing or guiding it.

"In other words, we do not just slaughter
other species. We slaughter ourselves. We have always done this and
we do it in several different ways. Mass slaughter is something we
call war, individual slaughter is something we call murder, the
slaughter of unborn fetuses is something we call abortion, and when
individuals kill themselves we call it suicide."