Hidden Agendas. Paul Boardman
the computer array and punched in ‘Michael Farris’, then clicked on ‘profile’. Why would Farris call him after six years of silence? They had made a deal to have no further contact with each other. It had been a costly deal for Farris, who, in return for a safe retirement, had foregone payment on a very large delivery which would normally have netted him at least two million dollars.
Farris was very wealthy. It was hard to conceive that he would have made such bad investments that he now needed money. Furthermore, as his wife, Linda, came from a wealthy family her situation was also secure. So why would Farris call?
Eduardo continued his search. As a retired associate, the Farris file had been maintained fully open and updated regularly. Perhaps there was a change in lifestyle recently. A death or divorce. Yes, Michael Farris had recently purchased a boat in the Mediterranean through a corporation of four shareholders. Farris, his wife, Phil Harrison and Judy Simpson. This was odd. Farris had always been an independent, operating without partners. Very interesting. An icon flashed on his screen. New information was incoming. There it was. Farris and a man by the name of Phil Harrison had arranged an appointment for two weeks from today.
It was time for lunch and Eduardo was hungry. He closed off his computer screens and moved over to a round table resting inside a bay window. Here, overlooking the Colombian mountains, was where Eduardo usually dined, alone. Pressing a hidden button underneath the table brought his chef to the door, where he had been waiting. He entered pushing an elaborate cart, on which was an entire meal. A calamari salad, a small steak and a few vegetables, all of which were exquisitely arranged on a gleaming silver platter. There was a Sterno warmer beneath the steak and crushed ice beneath the salad. Accompanying the meal was a thin slice of cheesecake for desert and a silver thermos of fine Colombian coffee. The meal was placed on the table by the chef himself who, after receiving a quick nod of approval, left. Eduardo ate, gazing out the window over a magnificent tropical garden, resplendent with every tropical bush, flower, fountain and waterfall imaginable. The garden was truly a work of art, designed by a brilliant Brazilian landscape architect. It required a full time gardener, just for the one hundred by one hundred foot area that was visible between the castle-like wall surrounding the house and the window where Eduardo sat. He had only one rule pertaining to the garden. No one was to enter it while he ate and there were no exceptions.
Opposite the door to Eduardo’s office sat a striking Spanish beauty, a Colombian woman of twenty-seven years. Though born and raised in a farming village less than a mile away, Alicia had graduated from Florida State University with a Masters in Business Administration placing third in her class. Following graduation she had been given a one month holiday to anywhere she chose in the United States. Alicia had chosen California. For her it was a wonderful month. She swam and attempted surfing. She hiked in the lower ranges and tried skiing in the mountains but having found skiing too cold she returned to the beach house that was her home base for the month.
Although Alicia did not develop any strong relationships during her holiday she had been invited to a few parties along the beach where she did meet one man with whom she had spent most of the last two weeks. He was an assistant professor at Berkley. There was enough physical attraction for the couple to be lovers, but there was no strong emotional fascination. The relationship, at least for Alicia, had been mainly intellectual. Consequently, when the couple parted, Alicia returned to Colombia with more questions about her life than she had ever asked herself before.
Alicia had been raised by loving parents. Her father was a farmer who had a magical, green thumb. He seemed to be able to preach to the multitude of plants in a field, coaching and coxing the entire field to be stronger and more fruitful. His specialty was the coca plant. Although Alicia had spent five years in Florida, she had never questioned the moral issues that surrounded the life of a coca farmer. To her, it had been her father’s work and as she loved her father, she never questioned his morals. But the assistant professor from Berkley instilled within her a tiny grain of doubt.
With her degree firmly settled, as was the arrangement, she returned home and began working for Eduardo’s company and he soon capitalized on Alicia’s skills. He needed an executive administrator whom he could trust with sensitive material. Who better than Alicia? A local farm girl who had excelled in school. She was not the first person whom Eduardo had educated in the States but she appeared to be amongst the most successful of his choices. While studying, Eduardo had provided Alicia with a salary, enough to live on comfortably, and paid all her expenses. There was no written contract. On completion of her schooling, it was understood that she would return and work for him, at a salary commensurate with his opinion of her.
Her father, as a result of his skills, was wealthy enough to drive his own Dodge Ram pick-up truck, and live with his wife and daughter in a spacious ranch house. Now, only two years after graduating, Alicia’s income had doubled her father’s. Their lives may have lacked some freedom but they were both formidable people who had power. That was an important quality in the Colombian psyche.
During the first year, following her graduation, Alicia’s employment had taken the form of an office managerial position in a converted hacienda, half a mile from the Fernandez estate. It had been built twenty years ago, adjacent to an abandoned gold mine and had formerly been the home of the owner of the mine. Additions had been added and there were now roughly fifty people working at that site. Although the décor was different if compared to offices in a high end American business park, the office equipment was state of the art.
It was Alicia’s job to review financial statements of dozens of companies that owned real estate throughout North America. Alicia, who had been fortunate enough to be in school during the high tech meltdown in the USA, had witnessed, from the classroom, the strategies that high tech firms had used to become leaner and meaner, slicing jobs and cutting back on R&D that did not have any short term benefit. She had studied the mergers and acquisitions as the high tech industry survivors ate up the less affluent competition, in the same manner that the big three auto makers had swallowed up competition fifty years earlier. Back in Colombia, she began to implement the same strategies amongst the group of companies under her domain. She had organized a couple of real estate swaps, cutting out duplication of unnecessary jobs. Combined with the real estate boom that followed the high tech meltdown, her success had been extraordinary. She advised Fernandez to sell off his bad properties at huge profits, a result of the real estate boom and use the profits to accumulate larger, more virile acquisitions. Within a year Alicia had been moved into Eduardo’s personal office on his estate, with a huge increase in her salary. Now she drove to work in a BMW, from her parent’s home, a mile away.
Immediately on assuming her new position, Alicia had been given a new group of ten companies, much larger and more complex. She began to appreciate the intricacies of Eduardo’s mind and how his companies, though independent entities, were taking on a common theme.
Chapter 10
The foursome clambered out of the rented Peugeot, everyone dressed in short pants and hiking shoes and each carrying a small shoulder bag or pack-sack.
“The guide book says it’s about an hour and a half walk from here,” stated Linda.
“There’s the first sign post with the reflective tape on it,” said Judy. “That’s what the brochure said to watch for.”
Phil and Michael took the lead, talking occasionally and setting a brisk pace. The women fell behind a few hundred feet and maintained a steady conversation about almost everything. Within a hundred feet of the parking lot, the path entered a tropical jungle. The air, dank with moisture from the rain and dew smelled of rotting vegetation one minute, then the sweet smell of some variety of flora in full bloom, the next. The trees were a hundred feet tall with massive trunks and their foliage formed a canopy but small bushes, ferns and shrubs made the forest dense on either side of the path. The rock formations were black lava rock, thick with lichens and moss. It was cool, almost chilly, damp and always devoid of direct sunlight.
Suddenly the path turned and a bubbling stream opened up before the travelers. The water was crystal clear,