The 2084 Precept (62 page)

Carmen is one of those few operas, very few
in fact, that I enjoy. The name derives from Our lady of Mount
Carmel whose apparition was reported in—you only get one guess—the
town of Fatima in Portugal during
The Miracle of the Sun
in
the year 1917. During the miracle of the sun, our star behaved
irrationally and, among other things, sped around on itself in a
mad whirl and then took it upon itself to adopt a zigzag course in
the direction of our planet, which scared the living daylights out
of those who were watching. This event was interpreted as being a
message from God for us to finally get our act together and stop
sinning…or else. It took the Roman Catholic Church another thirteen
years to do it, but they eventually confirmed this as an 'approved
miracle' in the year 1930. And later on, in mid-century, the
‘
Miracle of the Sun'
was witnessed on three separate
occasions in three different years by the pope himself in his
Vatican gardens in Rome, Italy. These miracles were apparently not
noticed by anyone else in any other part of the planet, Christian
or otherwise—which, if you think about it, is a bit strange if your
star was zigzagging about and heading straight for you—but who are
we to judge? Maybe it will happen again and we will all be able to
grab a look while trying to gain another millisecond of existence
by heading for the nearest available underground shelter.

None of which is here or there and my
neurons merely recorded her name and filed it away in the immediate
recall section.

Alfonso and I sat down to coffee in his
office. His office was large and overlooked the quays. It was
decorated with a variety of maritime mementos, an old ship's bell
was on a table next to his desk. Alfonso himself was what you would
call plump rather than fat, he was in his sixties already, and he
seemed to be one of those people who are always full of the joys of
life, no matter what. In other words, he was a person who, although
responsible for losing the considerable sum of €10 million of other
people's money annually, was full of cheerful bonhomie. And
consequently a pleasant enough person to be with.

I asked him what, in his opinion, the major
problems and issues were and what possible solutions and corrective
action did he recommend. This question seemed to surprise him. He
gave it some initial thought and then he launched into a long,
jovial diatribe about the shipping industry, the rising fuel costs,
the dockworkers' wage demands, the increase in competition and the
price wars which had escalated to impossible levels in recent
years.

He was obviously clueless. There were no
comments about any possible inefficiencies or problems within his
own company, not a single word about potential improvements or
solutions and nothing else of any use. But it didn't seem to worry
him. As far as he was concerned, this was simply the way things
were.

I wanted to tell him that if you can keep
your head, Alfonso, while all around you are losing theirs, it is
just possible that you haven't fully grasped the nature of the
situation. But I didn't. There was no point in my wasting my time
attempting to modify the cerebral operations of a guy like
this.

I went to my office and asked María del
Carmen to come in. She was the bookkeeper. I gave her the list of
what I wanted to be informed on, and asked her about a minor item
about which I was curious. Why did the year-end balance sheet
indicate that we had €65,000 cash on site, and was that still the
case, and irrespective of anything else, what was it for? Oh, she
said, we need to make miscellaneous cash payments every month to
transporters, the ships' captains always need petty cash for minor
crew and ship expenses, and so on, and actually the balance was now
over €70,000.

This didn't wash with me. Unless there was
something she hadn't explained, the amount was too big. I asked to
see the cash and the cash book. Oh, no problem, she said with a
smile, we'll update it for you and give it to you first thing
tomorrow morning.

That didn't wash with me either. If any cash
was missing, not that I necessarily expected that, it could easily
be replaced overnight and removed again after I had seen it. No, I
said…now please. This caused her smile to transmute into a
contentious frown of consternation but off she went and came back
with a large metal box which was, I thought to myself, presumably
and hopefully kept in a decent safe. I opened it with the key. I
saw a few bills in there, maybe two thousand euros in cash, and I
also saw many small pieces of paper in there which turned out to be
I.O.U.s signed by Alfonso, €69,000 in total. Thank you María, I
said, and handed the box back to her.

I have always been good at sniffing out
fraud, even if it's only petty cash fraud. The I.O.U.s should have
been recorded as payments of course, and accounted for as an
employee loan, which the supervisory board and the shareholders—in
this case, Sr. Pujol and his finance people—would have been able to
see in the balance sheet. Or if not explicitly so, at least in the
external auditors' annual comments. But I was in a good mood,
Alfonso was a pleasant guy, the amount involved was not exorbitant,
and—most importantly—I was going to need Alfonso's help in dealing
with the intricacies of an industry about which I knew absolutely
nothing. So I would be dealing with this in a gentle and civilized
manner.

I went back to his office.

"Alfonso," I said, "the I.O.U.s"

"Yes," he said, smiling his permanent
smile.

"What are they for?"

"Oh," he replied, "repairs and maintenance
to a small motor launch I keep down in the yacht area. I've been a
bit short on cash this past year, my daughter's wedding and so on,
you know."

"Uh, huh," I said. This really was a guy for
whom the sun shone at all times. And there appeared to be little
doubt that he thought that it shone out of his ass as well. "Well,"
I continued, "these amounts will need to be authorized by Sr. Pujol
or his delegate of course, or else they will need to be
repaid."

"But of course," he said, "of course they
will be repaid."

"When?" I asked.

"Well, over the next twelve months,
definitely," he said.

The guy obviously didn't have the money. How
can you own a ‘small’ launch, probably it was an ocean-going one,
and not have this kind of money? "Then it will all have to be
authorized in the meantime," I said, "and recorded as a loan."

This—no apologies for the phrase—took the
wind out of his sails.

"They won't do that," he said, "I requested
a loan over two years ago and they rejected it. Employee loans are
against group policy."

"Well, then you will have to do a quick sale
of the launch or whatever else you need to do to raise the money,"
I suggested.

"Wouldn't work," he said, "a quick sale of
the launch would mean my having to virtually give it away, and in
any case I still have some debt to pay off on its purchase."

How do these people do it? The guy earned a
good salary, a very good salary, how could he not have any money?
We sat there looking at each other for a while. His sails, as I
have mentioned, had lost some of their wind, but he wasn't dejected
or nervous in any way, the sun was still shining for him and would
do no doubt continue to shine up until the moment he climbed into
his coffin. You get people like that. They are always happy. The
requisite for this is a total lack of a conscience. If you have a
conscience, you just can't do it, you can't sleep at night with
things like this going on. You worry, you have nightmares.

"I will have to inform Sr. Pujol," I told
him finally.

"Yes, I can understand that," he said. He
clearly knew that this was a serious matter but it did not affect
his genial disposition, nor did he become at all discourteous.
Amazing, I thought, he probably sang 'Don't worry, be happy' to
himself in the shower every morning. An overdose of
self-confidence, a guy who walks down the street holding his own
hand.

During the afternoon, María came into my
office with some of the information I had requested. There were no
problems with the customer receivables—her aging analysis showed no
particularly long overdue balances—but an item of €3.4 million in
the 'Other Receivables' account turned out to be an insurance claim
pending from over three years ago. It seemed that one of the ships
had been on an overnight run from Barcelona to Palma and the
captain, who was dismissed soon afterwards, had missed the port and
run straight into some cliffs on the island of Cabrera, only a few
nautical miles away. He had apparently been drunk, although none of
the crew members were prepared to ratify that in any formal
manner.

Cabrera is only 16 km
²
and its
name derives from the
cabras montesas
which used to live
there until the human race arrived and carted them all away. The
goats were eating everything that was green and making the island
too unattractive for tourist excursion businesses to be successful.
But the hideous human race had also been there before, and the
island's history is home to a series of major horror
stories—including the products of human wars such as the fate of
the 10,000 French prisoners who were once incarcerated there. But
there you go, what's new?

I asked Alfonso about the situation, but he
merely said that it was a 'complicated matter'. Well, no point in
wasting time discussing it further with him. I asked María to fix
an appointment for me with the responsible insurance executive in
Barcelona on Monday of next week, in the morning if possible.

The company had four ships, two of which—the
Gerona Sol
and the
Mahon Star—
sailed six nights a
week to provide a fixed weekday Barcelona-Palma-Barcelona service.
There was no longer any work for the two other ships which had been
sitting idle for the past nine months, moored to the quay here in
Palma. One of them required a major engine overhaul for which no
money was available and the other one needed to comply with the law
on its dry-dock inspection requirement, a costly affair lasting
four days, and for which no money was available either. María's
data also showed me that all four ships were relatively small, with
capacities of between 50 and 75 standard containers on two levels,
lower deck and top deck. Her cargo summary showed me that the
loading for each of the two ships in use was on average only about
50% of capacity, and that an average of 30 transits were being lost
each year, mainly due to bad weather.

Food for thought indeed. Revenues could
obviously be more than doubled if the ships were to travel full
instead of only half-capacity and if we could get rid of all, or at
least most, of the lost transits. That would solve the company's
problems in one fell swoop. A pleasant theoretical daydream, worthy
of some perusal, but don't ask me what needed undertaking or how to
do it. I hadn't the faintest idea. Also, the daydream might quite
simply turn out to be an unfeasible one.

I decided that María was not my type, black
hair and nice legs notwithstanding. She was too reticent, she was
only supplying me with what I asked for, she offered no comments or
suggestions and she was probably displeased about that check of
mine on the petty cash. She had perhaps classified me as
the
enemy
, you get that sometimes. And maybe she was into an affair
with Alfonso, who knows? You get that as well sometimes, the
adulation for the man with the authority and the power. Or maybe
she wasn't. It didn't matter anyway. I thanked her for the
information and decided to have a short meeting with Pedro, a young
stringy-haired fellow in charge of operations, before leaving for
the day.

Pedro administered just about everything,
the loading and unloading of the containers, the land transport,
the ships' operations and the relationships with both the
dockworkers and the customers. He was a positive young guy and he
bombarded me with comprehensive information to all the questions I
asked and to some I didn't. He told me that the dockworkers' union
in Barcelona insisted on seventeen workers; if we didn't pay for
this number each day, our ships would neither be loaded nor
unloaded. He told me that in Palma they insisted on twelve workers.
And he told me that only five were necessary including the crane
operator. Therefore we had huge unnecessary costs, he said, which
unfortunately could not be avoided. I asked him if our customers
really needed a guaranteed daily shipping service, and he said that
he was 99% sure they did, and that we would lose customers if we
were to stop providing it.

There we go again, that phrase I keep
hearing wherever I go and the subject of my small gift to Geoff at
United Fasteners. I told Pedro that in my experience the use of 99%
as an adjunct to the word 'sure', a noun which speaks for itself in
any dictionary and which requires no amplification of any kind,
generally indicated that the speaker was in fact
not
sure.
He smiled at this, and agreed one might interpret it that way. And
at my prompting, he also agreed to circularize all of our customers
with a questionnaire asking them to confirm this need, and at the
same time asking them to suggest to us any improvements they would
like to see in the way we handled their business.

An interesting first day's work, I thought
to myself, as the taxi took me back to the hotel. As soon as I got
to my room, I called Pujol and told him the tale of the
self-authorized employee loans and the fact that they could not, at
the present point in time, be repaid. There was a long silence from
his end and then he said he would be flying over tomorrow morning.
He had decided it was a serious matter, as of course it was. The
flight was less than an hour each way but he would be losing a
minimum of five hours out of his day for the trip, including the
time spent at the office. Not a happy man, nor did he sound it.