CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

PAST

Phoenix arrived at my office at 4.00pm.

At least he knew how to use a watch, I mused. I had his wages in cash and his termination letter on my desk.

“Come in, take a seat,” I instructed and he obliged. From his demeanor he clearly knew what was about to happen. I was finishing off the last few words of my letter to the United Nations and felt no necessity to give him my immediate attention. To my surprise he was the one to start the conversation.

“Can I speak first?” He asked. I could not be bothered analyzing if this was a good idea or a bad idea, letting him speak first, I was honestly just too tired. He took my silence as an affirmative.

‘I’m not suited to this job,’ he began.

No kidding - was the expression on my face.

“I don't understand the technical side. I thought I would, but the things that come second nature to you I just cannot get my head around. I’m sorry for that, I did not intend to mislead you, I just over estimated my technical abilities.”

Well I had to give him credit for honesty, but I sensed this was going somewhere, I sensed I was being led down a path of Phoenix’s choosing and I regretted not giving more thought to whether or not letting him speak first was a good idea, but again I was so tired. I’d been working over twenty hours a day for weeks and weeks and it was starting to show with moments like this. I desperately needed staff I could rely on in positions they could actually cope with, I could not go on working 20 plus hours a day.

I pulled my mind back to the here and now and said “What are you trying to tell me?”

“You should make me office manager,” he replied confirming that my instincts had been right. Before I could get out a “not a chance in hell” he added shrewdly and quickly ‘you need an office manager, you need to implement the system yourself, no one knows the system like you, you designed it. But you cannot do it without an office manager to organize everything else and give you the free time.” He sat back in his chair as if he had just made an unassailable point.

He was absolutely right in every word he said. I was the best one to implement the system and to do that I’d need an office manager to take over the other duties. But that did not mean that he should be the office manager.

“Your track record hardly marks you out for a promotion does it? Why should you should be the office manager?” I asked and as soon as I said it, I knew I’d made a tactical mistake. In business, in negotiations, the art of the deal is you only ask the questions to which you know that the answer you’re going to get is the answer you want. Because I was worn out I had asked the question that was on my mind instead of the clever question which would have been “but do you think now is the right time to be hiring for such a crucial position?” That would have taken the conversation down a discussion of the rights and wrongs of timing that I could have easily closed off with a managerial “No, now is not the time for many reasons. But thank you for your suggestion. Oh - and your fired.” Well maybe a little softer than that. Better still, don't get into the bloody conversation in the first place, tell him he can speak when you've finished!

But instead, my 4th grade negotiating mistake, meant he was one good answer away from being made manager, I’d backed myself into a corner entirely of my own brain fatigued making. What’s more I knew he had the answer.

He had thought this through thoroughly. I didn't like Phoenix and I was happy he was going to be leaving, now he was about to give me the answer that not only kept his job but got him promoted. This conversation would never have gone like this six month ago, I fumed at myself. What was worse, the look on his face, he knew he was going to get what he wanted, he had out negotiated me and he thought he was clever.

I was livid at the smug twat; I was livid at myself. I wanted to scream “YES, WHEN I HAVENT SLEPT FOR TWO MONTHS AND MY BUSINESS IS IN CHAOS BECAUSE YOU AN DANGEL CANNOT DO THE BLOODY JOBS YOU’RE PAID FOR AND I’M TRYING TO HOLD IT ALL TOGETHER IN A COUNTRY WHERE I DON’T EVEN SPEAK THE BLOODY LANGUAGE AND I HAD METH ONLY AN HOUR AGO – YES NOW YOU CAN OUT NEGOTIATE ME, BUT ON A NORMAL DAY YOU WOULD NOT STAND A CHANCE YOU SMUG LITTLE PUNK.” But I didn’t scream that, not out loud anyway.

“You’re going to have to have a damn good answer for me to even start this discussion!” I said backtracking as hard as I could.

“I have,” he said ‘I'll get you cheap Pico straight from the chef, uncut.” 

I looked at him blankly, giving nothing away. This was easy, I was shattered and I was stunned, a blank uncomprehending stare was both the right look to adopt and the only one I could adopt.

He took my blank stare as an unspoken challenge.

“You shake and twitch, but not all the time, so does Angel, you do it in unison,” he replied. “You both sweat at the same time as well, but mostly it’s the edginess and the shaking, everyone gets it with Pico. You need to either smoke a couple of cigs - which you don't - or drink alcohol -not enough to stop the Pico working but enough just to stop your hands shaking.”

I was too tired to even try to bluff it out and it was pointless anyway. The issue, which even my Pico riddled exhausted brain could figure out, was even if he was wrong he would lose nothing by going to the police. Whereas I knew he was right and I would lose everything if he went to the police. I had two choices, sack him and stop Pico there and then or make him office manager and get cheap Pico.

“How come you know so much about drugs?” I asked nonchalantly and casually. I was hoping he would admit to being a user and we would thereby be in the same boat.

I was disappointed.

“I used to be a heroin addict, I was at the Woodlands Commune for a year recovering,” he claimed. That was bollox, I knew enough about drugs and drug takers to know that Heroin addicts and Crystal Meth dealers don't associate with each other. They are the opposite end of the scale, Heroin is a downer and Meth an upper - you don't go to a Nitromethane supplier for brake pads! I let it go, the repugnant scum had given me the damn good answer he needed to get the promotion, so instead of the sack the jerk got promoted.

Life has taught me the lessen that some great books had very bad covers and some very bad books had great covers, but it had yet to teach me to distinguish between the two. 

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“I need you to place an advert for a someone who speaks fluent English and German, I’m opening up on Amazon in Germany and I need someone to translate the product descriptions,” I said to Phoenix, I was damn well going to make him work for every penny he was getting.

“My wife speaks fluent English and German,” he replied as I was typing out the job description for the applicants on a ‘pages’ pre-formatted template. I paused and looked up at him, she would wouldn't she’ I thought.

I paused a long time before speaking, I was not going to be so dumb as I had previously been when he flipped his fire day to one of promotion. I typed the words ‘TEMPORARY CONTRACT FOR 5 WEEKS ONLY’ at the top of the page next to the title DURATION.

“Oh, tell me about her?” I wanted to know every bit of information before I revealed any aspect of my hand.

“She is 32, Hungarian,” he began.

Wait, Hungarian? I was confused. Didn't he come back to Bulgaria to marry her? Why do you leave the UK to come back to Bulgaria to marry a Hungarian? I made a mental note that there was something in that statement and to keep it in the back of my mind rather than bring it up at this moment.

“She studied Human Rights Law at Budapest - Eötvös Loránd University, her mother and farther are both judges in Budapest. She speaks fluent English and German, what more do you want to know?” He asked looking bored.

What more did I want to know? What’s she doing marrying a scumbag like you was what I wanted to know?

“What’s her name?” I enquired nonchalantly”

“Hanna Vargasa,” he said giving her his surname.

“No, what’s her family name?”

“Oh,” he replied. “Hanna Kovaka.”

I typed Judge Kovaks Budapest’ into Google, leaving of the ‘a’ at the end of Kovaka, turning the name into the masculine form. Family names in Eastern Europe end with a consonant for men and are feminized by an ‘a’ for women. This substitutes for the western Mr. and Mrs. prefixes.

Her father had his own Wikipedia page, he wasn’t just ‘A’ judge, he was a member of the Supreme Court of Hungary. He was the second highest ranking judge in the country! Now I was intrigued. I’d been determined to ensure she did not get the job no matter what, but now I’d already mentally given her the position. There was something strange going on here and I simply had to know what it was, my OCD refused to just let it go.

A link took me to her mother’s Wikipedia profile, she was a top Human Rights lawyer in Hungary as well as a Circuit Judge in Hungary’s relatively few Human Rights cases. They only had one daughter, Hanna, she didn't have a page of her own just the mention on her father’s page.

The wedding of the only daughter of a Supreme Court Judge and a top Human Rights Lawyer / Judge would have been the wedding of the Budapest Polite Society’s year, so why was it held in Bulgaria.

“So, did they fly over to Bulgaria for your wedding then?” Before I even asked the question, I knew the answer. I was about to pop with excitement.

“No, they could not attend. They could not get security clearance for Bulgaria, they both have bodyguards 24/7 you see and the Hungarian Secret Service could not guarantee their protection in Bulgaria. They have both been involved with sex trafficking cases involving the two countries.”

“And THAT is why the wedding was in Bulgaria wasn't it my slimy little friend?’ I thought.

However, “Oh, what a pity, Hanna must have been devastated,” was what I voiced out loud.

 

—- § —-

 

I could not wait to meet Hanna the next day. Was she some hideous moose who would be in awe of Phoenix’s good looks and style? Was that the reason she had married him without her parents blessing? Let’s face it, the parents would have flown Phoenix’s entire extended family to Budapest first class in order to be there at their only daughter’s wedding. There was no way Phoenix was giving me the full story and I just had to find out why it had happened that way.

Hanna arrived at 2:00 p.m. Or should I say Hanna ARRIVED. She was clearly a product of a very expensive education that no doubt ended in a Swiss Finishing School. She walked with the deportment of a Princess and had that particular refinement of appearance and movement that only Old Money buys.

You can drape a billion dollars’ worth of bling on a gorgeous girl but you cannot buy a lifetimes privileges and education. Moreover, Hanna was nothing near being a moose. She had long curly blond hair, clear skin, blue eyes and subtle makeup. What she lost to Angel’s straight 10 out of 10 beauty score, she made up for with composure and self-confidence. She was striking rather than gorgeous, and she sure as hell made an impression on me.

Hanna spoke in a beautifully accented English, rolling the rrrr’s in a way that reminded me of a Russian Actress trying to emphasize her Eastern European exoticism. From the start we were laughing and jesting, Phoenix was watching suspiciously. I’d thanked him for bringing her, which was an informal ‘go away’, but he’d remained loitering at the back of the room.

This was fun, I thought. He’d made a mistake, he thought he was pressing home the advantage of his blackmail, but now his new wife was laughing and joking with her soon to be boss; and he was jealous.

Oh, how I’m going to torture you my friend, I thought.

Phoenix “, go to the office and supervise todays F.B.A. shipment please, I want you to make sure it gets to TNT, in fact help Angel pack it and then the two of you go to TNT and dispatch it. I need to know for sure it’s gone out today.” I needed no such thing, but that got rid of both him and Angel for two hours.

I had no intention of seducing his wife, not that she wasn’t worth seducing, I’m just not that sort of guy.

But I am the sort of guy who’s fascinated by mysteries.

No, I didn't want to seduce his wife, I wanted to know why she was his wife? Plus, the two hours would be torture for him, which he deserved the useless blackmailing little scumbag. It was actually his uselessness that I hated the most, secretly I had a begrudging admiration for his tenacity and balls in blackmailing me, but I could not abide his day to day uselessness.

Hanna was exactly what it said on her tin. She was intelligent, well educated, sophisticated, cultured. She had been brought up most of her life with body guards but she felt stifled; she’d traveled extensively and what was more she didn't seem to hold Phoenix in high regard as she talked casually about him instead of adoringly.

Time started pressing so I decided to straight out ask her about the wedding. “Why did you marry Phoenix?”

I was about to add “in Bulgaria?” But she jumped in before I could finish. In doing so answered the far more interesting question.

What she said was fascinatingly cryptic “did I marry Phoenix?”

I was hooked and she was hired on a five-week contract.