The Container Affair Read online

  *****

  WASHINGTON, D.C. Bill Spurlock was the spitting image of a public relations flack. Always well dressed in immaculate suits, designer ties, and well-shined shoes. He was thin, but not anemic looking, and he had all his hair. Not too much of a nerd, but not too much of a jock. At exactly six feet tall, he was not too tall where he would tower over mere mortals nor was he too short where he was viewed as a scheming little weasel. But, James Benden thought, that is exactly what Bill Spurlock is. He was like a weasel who loves to climb into someone’s hen house and eat all the eggs and then run out without being caught. He was loyal to James and the company and knew his income depended upon being very careful and very clever.

  As Bill entered the spacious office of the president of the Integrity Center for American Business, James looked up from his immaculate antique desk and asked Bill what he had found out so far.

  “James, we’ve got a bunch of angles to work on for Mr. C. This is big, and there are so many sponges hanging around for campaign contributions we should have no problem getting things delayed for a year, let alone for six months.”

  In the past two weeks since James’ meeting with Cartwright, the wheels were set in motion to first understand the dynamics of any investigation being planned or considered in the U.S. and Europe. Once these rumors were confirmed or denied, Bill had created a list of key influencers who could be called upon to raise questions or cause delays in any governmental process, including police investigations.

  After a good thirty minutes of reviewing the plan in great detail, James was satisfied with the first salvo against the attorney general. “Okay, Bill, I want you to set up a meeting with Ralph as soon as possible. I want to summarize the position he will take on his program. This will have to build slowly and without a great deal of fanfare. We don’t want to alert the mainstream media people early. We need to set up the usual red herrings and some other schemes for them to chase before we get Ralph totally rabid. Who do you think we can get to champion this in the Senate?”

  Bill thought for just a second, “Why of course our man from Michigan, Sen. Bradley B. Stewart!”

  James quickly agreed, “Yes, Stewart is our man because he can be easily bought on this. We can leverage his state’s finances, unemployment rate, lack of investment opportunities and appeal to his Americanism. Wow, he’ll take the hook and run with it! Okay, I like this. We should get at least one or two western or southern congressmen to jump on the bandwagon in the house. I think some investigations and some breast thumping for the media is just what we need.”

  “Now, what is our angle on this? How do we incite the Stewarts of the world to join our crusade against the AG? What dirt do you have on him or the department?”

  Bill showed his best weasel smile and said quietly, “We have three things to hang on him, and some of it might even be true. First, the AG had a girlfriend for three years while he was a congressman. She has been paid to go away for some time, but we can pay to bring her back. Second, we have an internal investigation on misappropriation of funds in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York. Begs the question of how you can make charges against some poor bankers when your own people are corrupt. And third, the whopper, how about government payoffs to the AG’s own inspector general and maybe even the attorney general by an offshore bank?”

  James smiled knowing full well the answer already, “This pay off has been going on for how long, Bill?”

  Bill smiled back, “Well it just started, but I think the records will show it has been going on for over say, fifteen months to the tune of $1,250,000, all paid to an account in the island of Palau and owned by the brother of the Inspector General. Damn, I hate when good people go bad.”

  James smiled again and asked, “How long would it take the government investigators to find out this “outrage” to the American public was false and a plant?”

  Bill again thought about it and said, “As a matter of fact, I think with the shoddy banking records in Palau, it would take a good investigator some nine to twelve month to figure out this was a plant. Also, James, we have this set up so wildly there is no way NASA could figure out where in space this money came from. But oh, what an interesting trail we’ll send them on!”

  James stared at the door and wondered to himself how deep he was involved in messing with the government but then thought again, he had been doing this for over twenty years starting as an aide to a congressman who showed him the ropes of obfuscation and misappropriation.

  “Bill, go ahead and start the ball rolling. Let’s play the first card with Ralph and get some righteous indignation going over this sleazy sexual dalliance. Then we can move onto step two. Let me know when you can meet with Ralph, I might want to be in on this one to make sure he plays it correctly.”

  *****

  SAN FRANCISCO The emails from the investment bankers kept coming in, and the offers kept getting larger. Malone, thinking about this as a series of circus acts, wondered where all of the money was coming from. The newest offers were worth sixteen times his current revenues and the amount of leverage this would require by any investor troubled him. First and foremost, he knew if he sold out, he would be leaving the company to idiots who would run amuck. They would start by laying off the people who made the company grow and prosper. Second, he thought about his customers and their commitment to him and his team. Any buyer would raise prices, cut service and stop research and development to get the cash flow to pay off the huge loans required to buy the company.

  “Gee,” he mused, “I wonder if these idiots really know anything about doing business. It looks to me the only thing they want is to get their fees and bonuses and run like hell.”

  He turned the screen away from him and ignored the last emails. He decided a long time ago he would not sell the company for any reason and especially not to idiot investment bankers and hedge funds. Wow, what a mess they have made of everything except their bank accounts. They don’t care about anything but themselves.

  He thought again about the weekend encounter with the kids in the small boat in the bay. He was sailing single-handed, as was his desire, and came across a small sailboat in distress. It was about twenty-two or so feet in length and evidently not well taken care of. There were four college-age kids on board, two young women and two young men. The false bravado of the young male sailors was evident as they had broken their main halyard, nearly dismasted the boat in a jibe and then could not get the motor running. John had seen this from a quarter of a mile off and sailed back several times to get a closer look at the mayhem on board. The tide was going out of the harbor, and the boat was moving toward the Bay Bridge, so John finally decided to see if they needed a tow.

  He came toward the boat and about three hundred yards from the stricken craft, he yanked down his mainsail and then dropped the jib. The boat’s auxiliary motor was chugging along, and he slowly got within hailing distance.

  “Ahoy,” he yelled, “do you need assistance?”

  One of the young men yelled back they were okay, but one of the young girls quickly yelled they indeed needed some major rescuing. So again, John yelled, “If you need help, let me know otherwise I will head back up to San Mateo without you.” He pointed to the north and said, “It appears you are headed toward Angel Island right now and with the tide going out, you’ll be there soon. But I’m sure you know that.”

  The two men looked at each other and then looked at the looming structure of the Bay Bridge and decided false valor was not a good thing and so they asked for help.

  John told them how to get their rig stabilized and get all the sails down. Then he told them how he would pull them next to him and take them off the boat and then extend a line to serve as a tow line off their bow cleats. After all was secured and the small sailboat dropped astern, John increased power to his auxiliary diesel and began the forty-five-minute run back to his marina.

  He found out the “captain” of the boat was named JD and his buddy was named Frank
. The two of them could barely make the boat go downwind let alone tack or jibe the mainsail. The two young ladies were named Jeanette and Cate. Both were slightly older than most students at San Francisco State University and had never been sailing before. The two men said they had sailed before but not recently, and the old boat belonged to JD’s father.

  John asked the young women what they thought of sailing and both gave the exasperated look of people who were not at all pleased with the course of events so far this day. Cate said, “It seemed as if we were going to get sucked out to sea, but I guess that was not the plan.”

  Jeanette chimed in with a scathing comment about the “promise of the day” sailing in a nice yacht and drinking fine wine, but now she knew the truth of screw cap wine and nothing to eat.

  John smiled and decided to support the two men for at least a minute. “You know, I’ve sailed this bay for a good fifteen years, and it’s very tricky. The winds can change abruptly, then throw in the fog and stir it with a tide which eddies and flows in strange ways and you get some very unfortunate situations.” He pointed back to the Bay Bridge saying, “If you ever watch the racers out here, you will see them head in the strangest directions knowing full well they are heading some ninety degrees off the line to the next mark, and then you see the reason they are doing it. All of the variables in this protected piece of water are very dicey and again, unknowing.”

  The young women now looked at him and began asking questions about his boat and his background.

  “How long have you owned this boat?” Jeanette asked looking down the companionway toward the dark woods of the interior of the cabin.

  “About ten years ago I found this boat in fair condition, and then I spent a good two years re-outfitting it to meet my needs. It’s called a Valiant 40 and is known as a world cruiser. Stable, easy to sail and very seaworthy.” John replied with a comfortable knowledge of the things he had done to make the boat worthy of his time and how important it was in his life to be able to spend time on something else than his business.

  Cate was amazed the boat was that old. “How do you keep it looking so nice and fresh and clean? I don’t know anything about boats, but this thing is immaculate. Much nicer than our apartment.”

  John looked to both sides of the bow to make sure of his bearings and then shrugged off the compliment. “When you have a boat or something you really enjoy, you either take care of it or it rots. I enjoy this boat and the time I spend on her, so I do what is necessary to make us both happy.”

  JD asked if he could go below and John said it would be fine if he would also provide everyone with a cold beverage or something to eat. JD said, “Wow, no problem being your beer bitch, sir! What will you have, Captain?”

  John laughed at the beer bitch comment and said he did indeed have beer on board, but he preferred the wine stored in the cooler on the top rack. “Anyone else want some wine? I have a suitable selection of whites, reds, and sparkling.”

  The girls immediately lit up like Christmas trees. Jeanette said, “You have champagne? Really?”

  John looked at her very seriously, “No young lady, I have no champagne, just a couple of very fine single vintage Domaine Carneros sparkling wines from California. “

  Jeanette, was deeply embarrassed by the captain’s comment, said shyly, “I’m sorry, I don’t know wines. I thought all of the bubbly stuff was champagne.”

  “No,” John replied in a very kind way, “there are all sorts of sparkling wines, but only sparkling wines from the Champagne Region of France can be called champagne. Otherwise, the European Union stormtroopers will invade your apartment and wave their stinky cheese at you.” John now laughed along with the others at his witticism, and he instructed JD on where the flutes were and how to properly pour the Domaine Carneros without bruising the bubbles or spilling the wine on the deck, which was more of his concern.

  JD did a decent job of this, much better than his sailing prowess, and then went back below deck to pull out an assortment of cheeses, crackers and a very nice selection of Spanish hams and olives. John was always prepared for boarders and had the boat stocked each week with a fresh supply of refreshments. Any leftovers from the prior week were removed by his cleaning team and they divided the spoils amongst themselves. Most weeks John did not have the time to take his beloved boat out, so the cleaners got a great meal. They knew not to touch the wine or beer, but everything else was fair game.

  Within a few minutes everyone was sipping the fine bubbly and munching on the great cheeses including a Spanish Manchego which was one of John’s favorites. Cate asked about what John did which allowed him the time to sail and to own this fine boat.

  John hated these conversations about his background so he used his canned answer. “Well, I made some money years ago in Silicon Valley and now I just do some consulting with various companies. As I told you, I bought this boat used over ten years ago and it’s my one extravagance. As things go in the Bay Area, I’m just one over-the-hill techie who made some money and managed to hang onto at least a part of it.”

  Cate smiled and said her father was in technology in Cupertino and knew about the ups and downs of the industry. She had hoped to go to Claremont in Southern California, but the downturn killed any chance of that happening, so she was at San Francisco State and enjoying it.

  Jeanette also said she understood the ups and downs of life in the fishbowl of technology deals and said her father had died a few years before of a heart attack when he had been laid off from one of the big names in Silicon Valley. “Dad was always looking to be the best and put in fourteen-hour days and worked every weekend. He made a bunch of money and lost a bunch of money. Then the company would lay him off, he would land somewhere else, and it would start again. All he ever achieved was to make some SOB very rich and make me an orphan.”

  John didn’t know what to say. Thankfully, Cate came to the rescue. “Jeanette has had a couple of bad raps in the past few years, which is why she is studying nursing. She wants to do good things and help people without having to mess with their lives.”

  Appearing to be a fairly shy lad, Frank finally said, “That’s the trouble with this economy. Nobody looks out for the other people. Everybody is out for themselves and no one seems to care.”

  He sucked down the last of the Domaine Carneros and continued, “What is the meaning of this existence if it is only to outwit and outlast the other guy or end up in the dumpster with everybody else?”

  John thought carefully about his response as he looked off the bow to the city on his starboard. “Well, what each of you has said is true. I’m much older than you and have lived through some calamitous times. Saying this means little to you because you’ve not had too many comparable experiences. The loss of a job is nothing like the loss of someone close to you.”

  He looked over to see Jeanette looking at him intently, hanging onto each word he said. “Tragedy appears in all sorts of ways and we tend to linger on the unpleasant events of our lives.”

  He pulled on the wheel to adjust his course, glancing over his shoulder to make sure he was not being overhauled by another vessel. “But the joys of living can outweigh them. If you take the time to think about life as a series of events, both good and bad, I’ve found you can have at least some control over what happens. Yet, often we are like this boat, we can steer into the wind, and the wind will win. We can steer with the wind and sail with the wind until it dies down or changes direction. It’s how we adapt to these changes which allow us to set our course. But if you don’t ever go out into the sea and try at least to challenge it, then you have not lived at all.”

  Cate thought for a minute while watching the skyline of San Francisco fading into the distance. “You know, Captain John,” she smiled at him warmly, “you’re probably right, and it appears you have been successful in spite of things.”

  She looked at Jeanette, who was staring at the man behind the wheel like he was some sort of prophet. Jeanette smiled back at
her friend and turned to Captain John saying, “I guess you never know what’s going to happen to you and what impact you might have on things until you try. I just wish things were better. All of us are working to succeed in college, get out, and not be in debt. We wish there were better options for our future.”

  John decided to change the conversation by asking Cate, JD, and Frank what they were studying and found out Cate was studying Information Technology, JD was in Finance, and Frank was in Marketing. All of them had met while working odd jobs in and around the college and were all living in apartments near campus with at least three roommates each. Cate and Jeanette were roommates with a girl named Sheila and JD and Frank were in a three-bedroom apartment with two other guys.

  John asked them about their part-time jobs and quickly discovered Cate had recently been let go from a retail clerk job, while Frank and JD’s hours had been reduced by the cleaning company where they were employed. Only Jeanette had a stable job, partly because of her nursing education. She was working nights and weekends at a nursing home. Her salary was low, since she was not an LVN or RN, As an aide she was paid $15 per hour.

  John again checked his bearings and discovered he was dealing with more tidal current than expected. He pushed the throttle forward to get a good five knots out of the big boat and again pondered the young people sitting around his boat. JD poured the last of the sparkling wine and John told him to open another bottle, which was met with a great round of applause by the young crew.

  They were good kids who were playing by the rules, working hard, but having a tough time. They reminded him of his own youth and working his way through the University of Texas. It took him nearly six years to finally graduate after stopping twice to work full-time and take care of his sick mother. He did not dwell too much on the days of poverty and work. He made few friends at UT and had made fewer friends in the past twenty years. He was a self-made man, whatever that was. He often remarked that all men were self-made except those born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Most of the people he worked with were hard-working middle class, overachievers who toiled in the bondage of today’s corporate culture. Everyone was struggling to meet some goal, however weird or average, but all were fighting for their part of the American dream. Now, these kids seemed to be doing the same thing. He wondered what their future would be if they had some help.