Maserov called the handwritten number on Radhakrishnan’s business card and told him the good news, Malcolm Torrent was prepared to make Maserov the lawyer responsible for all Torrent Industries files.
‘Mr Torrent is prepared to sign a document to this effect,’ Maserov explained as calmly as he could, hardly believing the words he was saying. Radhakrishnan showed little emotion during the call as there were still several stages to be satisfied in order for what was in effect a silent coup to be accomplished. He calmly explained that in order to validly effect the change there was a specific form that needed to be filled in and then signed by Malcolm Torrent himself. He cautioned against leaving this form unsigned anywhere.
‘You should not take the form to his office until you have a face-to-face appointment with him that would permit you to bring the form into his office unsigned and take it out again with you once he’s signed it. It’s better to wait with the unsigned form in your safekeeping for however long is necessary than to rush over to his office without an appointment and leave it somewhere, insecure. The importance of this, coupled with its secrecy, warrants patience. That said, Stephen, the sooner you’re able to get the document signed the better. Do you understand?’
‘Yes sir, I do.’
‘For your own sake, I strongly advise you to follow these instructions to the letter. Should something go wrong, no one in the partnership will confirm having entered into any prior arrangements or agreements with you and you will be seen to have acted on your own initiative with all the negative consequences that such a course of action would entail.’
‘I understand.’
‘Now the form itself,’ Radhakrishnan continued, ‘is not one of those available as a standard precedent for all fee-earners to access. Only partners have access to these forms because of their value. Rather than trouble you with the mechanics of this, my secretary will print two copies for you, one as a spare in case something happens to the first one. She will place both copies inside a plain white envelope, which she will, in turn, secrete inside a copy of a magazine, say, the Law Institute Journal. Then she will put the Law Institute Journal inside a larger white envelope, which will have your name typed on it.’
‘Got it! Where will she leave the envelope? She could leave it for me at reception?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Radhakrishnan. ‘Is there anyone in the firm you could trust with your mail on a no-questions-asked basis?’
‘Hmm,’ Maserov was thinking. ‘Yes, a Second Year named Emery, he’s currently in the litigation department. I can ask him to hold it for me.’
‘Can you trust him to keep the envelope safe for you without opening it and without your needing to tell him not to open it, which could arouse his suspicion?’
‘I trust him. And if I tell him it’s my copy of the Law Institute Journal he definitely won’t open it.’
‘Do the Second Years not enjoy the Law Institute Journal?’
‘There is the view that they are not its target market. They like getting it but they don’t read it.’
‘If they don’t read it why do they like getting it?’
‘Several reasons. It’s frequently used as professionally sanctioned camouflage to cover whatever the given Second Year is really reading. Additionally, it can be brought out when waiting for someone in a bar or cafe to signal to everyone else there that the person occupying the table or seated at the bar is a lawyer. And, finally, the Second Years do like getting mail personally addressed to them. It’s an uncommon happening in the work setting. They show it to their parents.’
‘I see. And you’re absolutely sure you can trust this Emery?’
‘More than I can trust anyone else in the firm, other than you, sir, of course.’
‘No, for this you would need to trust him more than you can trust me.’
‘Certainly, if you advise it.’
Maserov was to give Radhakrishnan an hour to do all he had described with the required form and its insertion in an envelope containing the Law Institute Journal. In the meantime Betga had called and convinced Maserov to leave the spare copy with him for safety’s sake. Then Maserov called Emery, casually, to see if he would be around if Maserov had to drop into the office in the next hour or so.
‘Well,’ said Emery, ‘I was thinking that if I got enough done in the next hour I would duck out to the Rainbow Mountains of China, which are said to be spectacular. But otherwise, yes, I’ll be at my workstation.’
‘Listen, Emery, if I get my copy of the Law Institute Journal delivered to you, can you hold it for me?’
‘You read it too?’ he asked Maserov with surprise.
‘Do you read it?’ Maserov asked with equal surprise.
‘I check the obituaries to see if anyone in the firm that I haven’t seen for a while has died and they’re not telling us. Listen, there’s something I need to talk to you about but I can’t do it right now.’
‘Okay, I’ll see you in about an hour.’
Maserov’s heart went out to Emery when he approached his workstation from the elevator but before he could get there he was set upon by Fleur Werd-Gelding.
‘Maserov!’ she whispered. ‘Thank God! He won’t look at me. Emery won’t look at me.’
‘Have you approached him?’
‘I’ve tried but he won’t look at me. He turns away. There’s no way he’s going to tell HR to take me with him if he won’t even look at me. Am I too late?’
‘Relax, Fleur, you’re probably not too late.’
‘“Probably” means possibly I am. Am I or not? I’d rather know.’
‘Fleur, other than Bradley Messenger in HR, only Emery would know that.’
‘But he won’t even look at me.’
‘Okay, look Fleur, I can’t stay long. Let me try to talk to him on your behalf. If I give you a nod, you need to be brave and do two things. First, approach Emery and, whether he looks at you or not, you need to ask him out for a drink. You know what to do.’
‘What’s the second thing?’ she whispered.
‘Once you’ve got Emery in your corner, you need to go to HR and tell them you want to share the role of Second Year rep with me. Oh hell, you can volunteer to take the whole thing from me. I don’t care. They’ll never entrust it all to you, anyway. Unless . . .’
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless Emery tells them to.’
‘You think he would?’
‘Well, that’s kind of up to you, Fleur.’
‘And you’d let HR make me the sole Second Year rep?’
‘Yeah, HR already knows I’m completely loyal. I’m in their pocket. You need to get there too. Let me go to Emery now. Remember, if I nod, it’s all go.’
‘And if you don’t?’
‘Well, Fleur, obviously it’s your call, but you may want to look at another firm before the end of the financial year. Discuss it with your agent.’
‘My agent? I don’t have an agent!’ she whispered in panic.
With this, Maserov walked over to Emery’s workstation. When he saw the envelope with his name on it on Emery’s desk all he wanted was to get away as fast as he could without arousing anyone’s suspicion, not even Emery’s.
‘Maserov,’ Emery whispered, ‘Fleur Werd-Gelding keeps looking at me. It’s unnerving.’ Emery looked around and saw Fleur Werd-Gelding looking at him. ‘She’s doing it now! Is she going to fire me?’
‘Emery, she can’t fire you. She’s a Second Year just like you. In fact, if I give her a nod right now, she’s going to ask you out for a drink.’
‘She would never do that.’
‘She would. All I need to do is nod.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she thinks you know things about the running of the firm that she doesn’t and that you have sway with HR.’
‘Why would she think that?’
‘She’s confused. I think I confused her.’
‘How?’
‘I told her you know things about the running of the firm that she doesn’t and that you have sway with HR. Let me nod to her then I’ll go. Thanks for looking after my Law Institute Journal.’
‘Wait!’ said Emery in panic, holding on to Maserov’s sleeve. ‘What will I do if she takes me out for a drink and finds out I don’t know things about the running of the firm that she doesn’t and that I don’t have sway with HR?’
‘Your mission, Emery, should you choose to accept it, is to take this whole thing as far as you can and report back to me.’ Maserov turned towards the eagle-eye of Fleur Werd-Gelding and gave her an unambiguous nod. Then he stood up with the envelope that had been addressed to him, gave Emery a tiny pat on the back and headed back towards the elevator. When he was safely out of the building and blocks away from the Freely Savage offices, Maserov called Malcolm Torrent’s secretary and got the first available appointment with him, which was the following afternoon.
On returning to Torrent Industries, Maserov called Jessica to his office.
‘Where did you get all that finance talk about “risk-adjusted net present value” or whatever it’s called? You blew me away with all that. And Malcolm Torrent too, I think,’ he asked her.
‘You know the bartender at the Ghost of Alfred Felton?’
‘The tender bartender, the one who idolises you and can’t take his eyes off you?’
‘Yes, that one. Well, he used to work in finance before he was laid off and decided to make his living watching me drink. I got talking to him about what we’re doing at work and he started explaining this stuff, put it on a cocktail napkin too, along with his phone number if I needed to discuss it further.’
‘Have you been going there . . . without me, to the Ghost of Alfred Felton?’
‘Well, I always used to. I meet friends there . . . sometimes. I mean . . . I don’t see you every night.’
Jessica immediately regretted reminding him that she didn’t spend every night with him. She hadn’t wanted to sound needy or vulnerable and, in any event, while her feelings had developed to the point that on any given night she did want to spend her time with Maserov more than she wanted to be with anyone else, she knew that to do that, to be with him every night, would inevitably unleash a cascade of consequences for a lot of people, including children. Even to say it out loud was dangerous. It could lead her to stumble into a future she was unsure of.
Maserov, for his part, was about to ask her if she wanted to see him every night. But he caught himself just in time. He knew not to drive the conversation when he didn’t know where he wanted it to go, not when he wasn’t going to be able to erase the words and feelings that had fuelled the journey. They both felt that whatever was going to happen between them, they each wanted to be the one that made it happen. They didn’t want to be rejected, however honourable the reason. Equally, neither of them knew how far they wanted things to go notwithstanding that they both shared an unspoken horror of them ending. So, simultaneously, and with all the absurd illogic and contradiction inherent in the business of being human, they also longed to have the decision made for them by the other. And as this amorphous clutch of incompatible wants became ever clearer via the space framed by the words they did not say, Jessica went back to her office.