Jane Mercer cracked her shoulders as she walked into the lobby of Ophrah's Denver HQ.
Quarterly review. Ophrah didn't do the all-hands thing often (four times a year, and one of those usually got folded into something else) but when they did, she took the notes. She'd taken them for eleven years.
The lobby was busier than usual.Polished dark stone with the early sun coming off it flat and cold, and an array of high-strung corporate employees making their way past the security desk with their visitor badges and their garment bags. The guard looked bored. She flashed her ID. He nodded her through without looking up.
Elevator. Twenty-nine.
The hallway on twenty-nine was quiet at this hour, even with the hustle and bustle of the slowly filling building. She pulled open the boardroom door, checked her watch. Ten minutes early. Excellent.
She sat, laid out her pad, cracked her knuckles, and waited.
They filtered in over the next five minutes. Advanced Systems came first — Dr. Reisman, who wore a disheveled tan suit, with a younger man behind him carrying two binders and a slide carousel. Life Sciences after: Karen Whitfield, hair immaculate, already talking. Oscorp had let her go while the board was still running the place after Norman Osborn died, which Jane had always thought was the board's error and not Whitfield's. She was good. She was also the only person Jane had ever watched line up three pens at equal distance before she sat down, and then adjust the middle one.
The Vandergraf Energy pair came in together and sat together, which they had done at every meeting since the buyout. Nowicki's tie was already loosened and his face was slightly flushed. The rumor was he drank. The other rumor was that Gideon didn't care, because Vandergraf had headhunted him off Roxxon at twenty-nine and nobody else could read a field like he could. Balogun beside him, Vice President, who had come over from the Nigerian state-owned oil company to Vandergraf two years before Ophrah bought the whole thing. He wrote more than anyone in the room besides Jane.
Aides took the chairs against the wall. Principals took the table.
Margot Lindqvist claimed the same seat she claimed every time, third from the end on the left, and set down a legal pad she would not write on. Robert Deeter arrived looking sleep-deprived, eyes bloodshot, coffee in hand. Evelyn Cranford came in fast, said something apologetic to nobody in particular, and started sorting press folders she'd clearly already sorted. Warren Tolliver sat at the far end and did not take coffee.
Adam Vance came in at four minutes to, notebook in hand, sharply tailored suit the same as ever.
He set his notebook down on the table, squared his suit, and sat. He said good morning to Jane by name, which he did every time, in exactly the same tone.
Two minutes before the start, the Chairman of the Board,and the founder of the company, Gideon, entered the room.
She saw him maybe a dozen times a year and it was always his height that struck her first. The doorframe was tall enough that he didn't have to duck, but not by much. Six-eight, she'd guessed once and built like a linebacker. He was bald, with a green ponytail he'd had as long as she'd been at the company . He bore a passing resemblance to that psychiatrist they interviewed on the news, the one with the green hair. Idly, she wondered if they were cousins.
His suit was cut like any of theirs and cost more than her car, because nothing off a rack was going to fit that. Most CEOs she'd worked around had gone soft in the middle somewhere near fifty. Gideon hadn't. She'd heard he trained every morning at four and moved it for nothing.
Looking at him, she believed it.
She turned to a clean page and wrote the header, the way she'd written it for eleven years. Titles in full, first initial only, principals flush and their people indented under them.
PRESENT
Gideon, Chairman of the Board, presiding
A. Vance, Corporate Secretary
C. Ward, Managing Director, Ophrah Capital
J. Davies, Vice President, Corporate Development
P. Ruhl, Vice President, Corporate Development
J. Ackroyd, Associate, Ophrah Capital
D. Sarnoff, Associate, Ophrah Capital
T. Ibarra, Associate, Ophrah Capital
M. Lindqvist, General Counsel
S. Auerbach, Deputy General Counsel
R. Deeter, Chief Financial Officer
G. Pallis, Treasurer
L. Bequette, Vice President, Tax
E. Cranford, Vice President, Corporate Communications
W. Tolliver, Director, Corporate Security & Facilities
A. Reisman, President, Ophrah Advanced Systems
K. Whitfield, President, Ophrah Life Sciences
F. Nowicki, President, Vandergraf Energy
H. Balogun, Vice President, Vandergraf Energy
Recording: J. Mercer, Executive Secretary
NOT PRESENT
E. Magdalene, President & Chief Executive Officer (travelling; noted)
He sat. The meeting commenced.
Ward cleared his throat and checked his folder, though Jane doubted he needed to. "Roxxon. What direction are we pursuing?"
Gideon didn't open his own folder. "Oil leases, eventually. Savage Land, a few other places. Long-term."
He tipped a hand down the table. "Where are we on Red Diamond?"
Red Diamond — acquisition, Jane wrote, and underlined it.
Two of the executives started to speak at once. The one on the left won by half a second. Sharp suit, faster voice, British accent. Jeremy Davies, headhunted two years ago out of Imperial Chemical Industries.
"We buy Red Diamond now. Undervalued Gulf leases, and Roxxon's circled it eight months without closing. They can't afford a fight over a mid-cap oil pickup. We bid, Roxxon folds. Halderman's practically an invertebrate."
Jane got most of it down.
Ward waited to be sure he was finished. He'd been with Ophrah longer than Davies had been in the country.
"Or they don't fold." He turned toward the chair, addressing Gideon rather than Davies. "Sure. Halderman's a pushover. But he's only there because the Roxxon board put him there. Whatever went on at Roxxon House two months back, the people who came out of it holding the pen were the directors. Halderman signs. August D'Angelo decides." He let that sit. "And D'Angelo is a hardass. He's not going to back off because we threaten to squeeze."
"Then we go hostile," Davies said. "Accumulate to four nine, file, and take a cash tender straight to the holders at a premium. Twenty business days. If the board won't redeem the pill, we solicit consents and change the board."
"And with what, exactly? The paper market's gone. We'd be writing a check." Ward let that sit. "That'll make a hash out of the Jankos Industries timeline, and that's before the pill. Their board says no and we're a year into a proxy fight with our name on the tape."
Davies opened his mouth.
"Let Roxxon have it," Gideon said. "It isn't worth the friction right now. Next item."
Red Diamond — no action, Jane wrote.
Ward turned a page. "Harmon. Smaller pharmaceutical concern, Delaware, one hundred employees. Holds some interesting IP. Oscorp's been looking for a buyout angle. Fireheart Enterprises has been sniffing around as well, quietly. Life Sciences would want it folded under them if we moved." A glance at Whitfield, who kept her face very still. "Are we interested?"
Gideon rolled his shoulders. Somewhere in the middle of the movement something in his back popped, audibly.
"Harold Osborn isn't the man his father was. And I do enjoy crossing swords with Mr. Fireheart." A pause, the sort he took not because he needed it but because he could. "But no. No point in it presently."
Harmon — declined, Jane wrote. Whitfield's jaw ticked.
"Which brings us to the Jankos Corporation buyout," Ward said, and turned two pages at once. Everyone had a folder for this one. "Corning and Saint-Gobain are both in, subject to structure. Corning wants the substrate line and the composites patents. Saint-Gobain wants the European plants and would rather buy them than build. Neither wants to lead, which suits us." He didn't look up. "Da Costa International hasn't come back to us."
"They will," Gideon said.
"Emmanuel has no reason to. He mines the feedstock, he doesn't process it. If he wants Jankos's business he can go on selling to them and keep his money."
"Emmanuel is a difficult man to move." Gideon said it without any particular weight. "Leave the allocation open and ask again in the spring. The position will have changed by then."
Ward wrote nothing down.
"And Arianna Jankos?"
"Stubborn. But stubborn isn't the same as able."
Jankos — proceed, consortium structure, Jane wrote.
Ward closed his folder. Vance said, "Reports," without looking up, and Reisman was already reaching for the carousel.
Reisman got six minutes on the Advanced Systems programs, most of which Jane transcribed phonetically and would clean up later. Deeter walked the capital allocation summary. Tolliver said that site matters were nominal. Cranford said Jankos wouldn't need a statement until signing, and that she had a line ready if the trades got there first.
Then Ward said, "Two smaller items on the inbound side," and passed to Ackroyd, who sat forward like a man who'd rehearsed.
The first was a materials firm in Ohio, and Jane got the name down wrong and fixed it.
"Second is a systems company out of the Bay Area. Falcis. Early stage, technical founder, came to us through Mr. Tan. It's small, whatever they raise our position would be a rounding error, but the work is interesting enough that I'd like a proper look before somebody else does. I've had a call with the founder."
Deeter looked up from his summary for the first time in ten minutes. "What do they make?"
Ackroyd started to answer. Ward got there first, the way he did when a question came from the wrong end of the table.
"Computers, after a fashion. Not the machine. The shelf it sits on." He held two fingers a few inches apart. "Twenty machines take up a room. These people stand them on edge, like books, and slide them into one cabinet. Same twenty, a fraction of the floor. And each one comes out on its own, so when one dies you pull it and the rest keep running."
"That's it?"
"There's a piece that lets you check all of them from a terminal without walking over. Advanced Systems tells me that's the clever part."
Deeter made a noncommittal noise and went back to his page.
Gideon didn't appear to be listening. He turned a pen over, once, between two fingers.
"Fly him out next week. Give him the standard pitch." He didn't look up. "I may drop in, if it develops interestingly."
"Of course."
Falcis Systems — proceed, standard package, Jane wrote, and drew a line under it, and turned the page.
The meeting ran another forty minutes. Jane took it all down.