Chapter Thirty-Nine #2
That is the first thing that goes wrong for them, because a man who stands up in that room is a man about to make a presentation, and there is no presentation, and I have no paper, and Katherine Vane looks at my empty hands and puts her pen down before I have said a word.
“There is a note,” I say.
Michel Aubry says, “A note.”
"Two hundred and ten million euros. Subordinated. Written in 2011, after my father’s stroke, when the yards were refinanced. It is secured against the ground at Perama and the ground at Elefsina and the coastal fleet. It is callable on demand.
"The register says it is held by a vehicle in Vaduz.
“It is held personally by Eleni Kastellanos and it has been since the day it was written.”
Nikos Trantas says something in Greek, one word, and does not apologize for it.
Michel takes his glasses off.
He does not put them back on. He holds them by one arm and he turns them over, and he goes on turning them over for the rest of it, and I watch a man I have known for twenty two years handle a pair of spectacles for nine minutes because he cannot look at me.
“You have known this,” Katherine Vane says.
“Yes.”
“For how long.”
And this is the question. This is the entire meeting and everybody in the room understands it at the same instant, and there is a small movement round that table, the movement people make when a plane drops.
“Chair,” Ellis says, quietly, from the end. “I am minuting.”
“Minute it,” I say.
I look at Katherine Vane, because she is the one who asked and because she is entitled to have it in her face and not in a document.
“Since the ninth of November four years ago,” I say. "Thirty seconds before the doors of a ballroom in London were opened. My mother put the instrument on a table in an anteroom and told me she would call it that night unless I sat still and said nothing while she did a thing to my wife in public.
“I did the arithmetic. I sat still. And I have said nothing about the note to any person in this company, or to the auditors, or to the syndicate, from that evening until this one.”
Hendrik Voss says, “Six sets of accounts.”
“Six.”
“The March representation.”
“My hand,” I say. “In this chair. With a coffee going cold at my elbow, and I did not read it.”
Ruth Barnard has not moved. She has sat on this board since before I was chief executive and she has a way of going completely still that I have learned to be more afraid of than anything Katherine Vane does with a pen.
“Are you giving us a confession,” she says, “or are you giving us a proposal.”
“Both. In that order, deliberately, so that nobody can say afterwards that I bought the confession with the proposal.”
“Then give us the proposal.”
“Clause four (c) of the instrument,” I say. "The company may redeem the whole of the note at par on thirty days’ irrevocable written notice. Once served it cannot be withdrawn. I am asking this board to resolve to serve that notice today.
"Two hundred and ten million euros. The company has nothing.
To fund it the company sells the coastal fleet, and the only buyer for a coastal fleet in a fortnight is Rotterdam, and Rotterdam is currently standing on our neck with a hostile bid and will therefore pay us less than it is worth and will know exactly why we are selling.
“When it is done, the yards at Perama and Elefsina come out from under that security forever and cannot be pledged again without a vote of the whole company. And no person living, including my mother and including me, can ever put that folder on a table again.”
Nobody speaks.
Constantin Pallis pours himself a glass of water and puts the jug down too hard.
“Adjourn,” Michel says.
“No.”
“Adrian.” He has stopped turning the glasses. “Adjourn until Monday. Take advice. You have not slept, that is obvious to every person at this table, and there is not one thing in this that cannot wait seventy two hours.”
“There is one thing,” I say. “The auditors sign off on the eleventh.”
Michel Aubry closes his eyes.
“So you are going to make us do it,” he says, “in front of him.”
He means Ellis. Ellis, at the end, with the pen.
“Yes,” I say.
Alice Kwan says, “May I ask a question that is not a legal one.”
“Yes.”
“Why now.”
And I stand in a room I have run for nine years and I look at a woman who joined this board in March and who has been in six meetings with me and who has never once said an unnecessary word.
“Because it is Tuesday,” I say. “And because I could have done it on any Tuesday for four years and I did not, and there is no answer to your question that does me any credit, and if I give you one you will feel better about the vote, and I would rather you did not.”
Katherine Vane says, “Seconded.”
She says it before anybody has proposed anything.
She says it in a voice like a door closing, and I understand, standing there, exactly why she has done it. She has seconded it so that it is on the record with her name on it, and she is going to use it to end me, and she is right to, and I have never respected her more.
“The chair proposes the resolution,” Ellis says. “Redemption under clause four (c). Thirty days. Irrevocable. Funded by disposal of the coastal fleet. Seconded by Ms Vane. I will take it by name.”
And he does. He goes round the table with his pen, and he does it slowly, and he says each name properly, the way you would read names off a stone.
“Ms Barnard.”
“For.”
“Mr Voss.”
“For.”
“Mr Pallis.”
Pallis looks at his water.
“For.”
“Ms Kwan.”
“For.”
“Mr Trantas.”
Nikos Trantas puts both hands flat on my grandfather’s table.
“Against,” he says. "And I want the reason in the book. There are a hundred and forty men on the coastal fleet and they did not put a note on a table and they did not marry anybody, and you are paying for Perama with Piraeus, and you are going to stand in a hall in Greece and be a hero to three thousand people with a hundred and forty men’s jobs in your pocket, and I have crewed with two of them.
“I hope it carries,” he says. “I am voting against it.”
“Minuted,” Ellis says. “Mr Aubry.”
And Michel Aubry, who came to my wedding, and who wept at my father’s funeral, and who has called me mon vieux in nine countries, puts his glasses down on the table in front of him.
“Against,” he says.
“Reason, Mr Aubry.”
“Because it will kill him,” Michel says, “and he knows it, and I am not going to help him do it.”
He is looking at me now. He is the only person in the room who is.
“That is my reason,” he says. “Write it exactly as I have said it.”
“Mr Kastellanos. Theo.”
“For,” Theo says.
“Mr Kastellanos. Adrian.”
“For.”
“Seven to two,” Peter Ellis says. “Carried.”
Nobody moves for a moment. Somebody’s telephone goes off somewhere in the building and stops.
Then it comes apart into what those things always come apart into, which is chairs and papers and a woman from the outer office at the door with a question about a car, and Katherine Vane is already speaking quietly to Ruth Barnard with her back half turned, and Michel Aubry walks out of that room without picking up his glasses and has to come back for them, and I stand where I have been standing since nine o’clock and my legs have gone strange.
And Peter Ellis comes round the table to me with the minute book under his arm and the pen still in his hand.
He is a very kind man and a very thorough one and he speaks to me the way you speak to a man at a funeral.
“The date of your knowledge, Mr Kastellanos,” he says. “I have to record it. What would you like me to put.”
“Put this,” I say. “The chief executive informed the board that he has known the identity of the holder since the ninth of November four years ago. That he did not disclose it. And that he did not disclose it in order to protect himself.”
Ellis stops writing.
“Mr Kastellanos,” he says. “The last part is not necessary.”
“Do it properly,” I say, “or do not do it at all.”
And Peter Ellis, who has kept the minutes of this company for nineteen years, looks at me for a long moment with his pen over the page.
Then he writes it.
He writes it in his own hand, in the book, and he does not abbreviate anything, and when he has finished he turns the book around on the table so that I can read it, which he has never done, and he waits while I read it, and then he closes it.
“It will go to the auditors on Thursday,” he says.
“Yes.”
“You understand what happens then.”
“Yes.”
Ellis puts the pen in his inside pocket.
“My father was a shipwright at Govan,” he says. “I have never told you that.”
And he takes the book and he goes.