Full Circle (2 page)

“My third.”

“We have two Americans on our staff, both graduates of Ivy League schools.”

“Did either of them double their investment capital their first year in the market?”

Dobbins was saved from responding by his secretary appear-ing once more. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. But this can't wait.” She walked over and handed her boss a note.

He glanced at the slip and said, “The file is on my desk. You were saying, Mr. Wright?”

“One of my business courses required us to set up and run an investment portfolio. I did it with real capital.”

“Your family gave you the funds?”

“My family had no funds to give me.”

“Yet you had free capital with which to invest.” When Adam did not rise to the challenge, Dobbins went on, “Any number of young men and women manage investment port-folios while remaining in school.”

“That was not possible in my case.”

The gaze sharpened. “How
did
you obtain your funds?”

“I'd rather not say.”

“I did not ask for your preferences. My objective is to detect sordid little details before they might risk the company's good name.”

Dobbins' secretary glanced over. Her somber expression was broken by a tight little smirk. There was no question in Adam's mind. She knew.

“I'm waiting, Mr. Wright.”

“I got an acting job.”

“Acting? As on the stage?”

“I was doing some amateur work with the university's theatrical society. Before.”

Dobbins flipped the pages of Adam's file. “You had a partial scholarship to Georgetown?”

“Full academic.” Adam focused on the secretary's smirk and continued, “A Hollywood studio began shooting a prime-time drama based on the Washington political scene. They came to the college looking for somebody they could cast as a congressional intern. I got the part.”

Dobbins recalled they were not alone. He looked over to his secretary. “Are you quite done?”

“Sorry, sir. I can't seem to find the file.”

Dobbins rose and walked over. “So you quit university to act on television, and you invested your capital in your spare time. Not what one might call stellar qualifications.”

“I gave Mr. Austin a copy of my investment records. I tripled my money in six years.”

Dobbins impatiently sifted through the papers on his desk. His tone was not cold so much as impersonal. “Then why do you need to work for us, Mr. Wright?”

“I lost my money in a personal matter.”

“Personal, as in an investment gone sour, perhaps?”

Adam sighed. There was nothing he could say that would change the man's mind.

Dobbins said to his secretary, “Go ask Trevor if he took the file and failed to inform me.”

“Yes, sir.” As she turned to leave, Dobbins' phone rang. The secretary picked it up. “Mr. Dobbins' office. Oh, good morning, sir. Yes, he's right here.” She handed him the phone. “It's Mr. Austin.”

“I've been trying to reach you. Yes, he's still here. No, I'm sorry, I do not . . . Peter, I must ask that you hear me out . . . Yes. Very well. If you insist.”

Dobbins set down the phone. He studied Adam for a long moment. “You have thirty days, Mr. Wright. One month to come up with a pair of investments our firm would otherwise not have identified. And not one instant longer.”

chapter 2

K
ayla was awakened far too early by the ringing of the phone. Her flight from Tanzania had been delayed six hours, and it was after midnight when she finally arrived home. She had then taken her first true bath in months, reveling in such marvels as clean water and a spotlessly tiled bath and lights that worked. When she had emerged, her father had gone to bed. She had made a midnight snack of toast and marmalade and drank in the home's silence.

Thankfully, her father's new wife of nine months was not around. Kayla had only met the woman once. That time, their argument had brought the restaurant to a standstill. The next day, Kayla had left to resume her work in Africa. If the excuse of urgent work had not existed, Kayla would have invented one.

As she rose from bed, the phone rang again and finally cut off. Her parents had started attending morning chapel the win-ter her mother had become ill. Her father still attended almost every morning. Peter Austin never took calls before church. It was one of their home's ironclad rules. Kayla made herself a cup of coffee, then returned upstairs to dress. When she came back downstairs, Peter Austin had returned from church and stood reading the
Financial Times
at the kitchen counter. He set down his coffee, kissed her forehead, and examined Kayla's dark suit. “I told you on the way back from the airport. The board will not be able to speak with you today.”

“If I could just have five minutes—”

“Kayla.” He addressed the paper instead of his only daughter. “There is no money for you.”

“We don't need much.” Kayla had spent much of the night rehearsing the words she intended to use before the board. She had never thought it would be necessary to use them with her own father. “Without the extra funds, we face bankruptcy before Christmas.”

Peter Austin sighed and turned the page. Sipped his coffee. Shook his head. Sighed again.

“The robbery shouldn't mean the ruin of a very good project. The welfare of over a thousand families in Kenya and Tanzania hangs in the balance.”

“No one denies the value of your work. But none of this matters in the face of our current—”

“You know it matters, Daddy. Three minutes. Please.”

Nineteen months earlier, Kayla Austin had returned from working with England's largest private aid organization with a plan. One that had sparked a passion and a drive in her that had astonished everyone, most especially her father. Together they had presented her plan to the company's board: set up a trust to run this project, and use the resulting publicity to pro-mote the company's good name. The board had agreed, with one proviso. Kayla was sent back to Africa with instructions to hire a number two with solid business experience.

Everything had proceeded swimmingly, until the business manager had vanished. With all their capital. He had stripped the project's bank accounts and even robbed the office cash box. But the money was not all he had stolen. By then, Kayla had become engaged to the man she was certain was her life's mate.

All of it gone in an instant. Grinding her heart into dust.

Kayla swallowed against the rising gorge. She hated speaking the man's name. “Geoffrey robbed us blind.”

“That was ten months ago. Now is not the time—”

“Now is
precisely
the time. We've almost managed to make a go of it. That's why I came back now. To show just how close we are. We've scaled back and revamped and we're
so close
. All we need is the money to see us through this crisis.”

Her father turned to look out the rear windows. Something in his demeanor left Kayla certain he was no longer listening.

Peter Austin had a caesar's profile. At nearly sixty he still possessed a full head of silver-white hair. His eyes were deep-set beneath a strong ledge of a forehead. A melodious voice balanced the strength, revealing the man's calmer side. The openness. The ability to care very deeply. Kayla noticed the subtle changes she had missed the previous evening. His eyes were ringed by sleepless worry. The skin over his cheeks looked like aged parchment. “Are you all right, Daddy?”

“Kayla, this is highly confidential.” He closed and folded his paper, then slowly stroked his tie. Deliberate actions, intended to add emphasis to his words. “Our company is in serious trouble.”

“I don't understand.”

“No. Of course you don't. What is far more disturbing, neither do I.”

She followed him out of the kitchen and into the front foyer. “I need to do this, Daddy.”

“You are far too dark from your time spent in the sun and much too thin. And this morning you resemble your mother to an impossible degree.” Peter Austin buttoned his jacket and pulled the lapels down tight, the financial warrior preparing his armor. “Let me phone Joshua and I'll meet you in the car.”

Oxford Ventures, Peter Austin's company, was located in a sprawling Summertown manor that Kayla's mother had rescued from ruin. Amanda Austin had found the manor while pushing her baby daughter around Oxford in a pram. Summertown was the city's Victorian quarter, started in 1850 when university dons were finally permitted to marry and move out of their college quarters. Until then, professors had followed the medieval practice of remaining single until their teaching days were over. Following the change and continuing until the First World War, the dons filled what had previously been farmland with stately redbrick homes.

As Peter Austin turned onto Oxford's Ring Road, he said, “I'm having lunch with a new man. An odd sort. You might like him.”

“Am I only attracted to odd men, Daddy?”

Her father did not rise to the bait. “My phone call just caught Joshua in the process of firing him. I suspect that battle is not yet over. Perhaps you'd care to join us for lunch?”

It was hardly a ringing endorsement, as far as Kayla was concerned. “It's hard to think beyond the board meeting just now.”

“All right, daughter.”

“Besides which, I have an endless list of things I can't find in Dar es Salaam, all of which we desperately need.”

“Must you be leaving again soon?”

“I have to, Daddy. You know that.” But she did not want to add to her father's woes, particularly not before the board meeting. “So tell me about this new man. What is his name?”

“Adam Wright.” Peter Austin turned through the arched stone entrance. Sunlight lanced through the parade of winter-bare elms and speckled the drive. “I met him at a conference in Washington. I was so taken with him that I skipped most of why I made the trip and then offered him a job. Joshua was livid.”

This was unlike her father. While her mother had filled Kayla's young years with her various passions, Peter Austin was a rock. He took a measured approach to all of life, while her mother became swept up in one enthusiasm after another.

The wind shoved at Kayla as she climbed from the car. The cold slipped through her coat and struck at her very bones. As they walked the gravel drive, she saw that her father's face once again bore a grave expression. The two of them were lost in very different mental universes. Kayla asked quietly, “Do you miss Mother?”

Peter Austin blinked slowly. “What a question.”

“Do you?”

“Every day.” He climbed the front stairs behind her. As the front door opened on its electronic hinge, he added, “Which makes your being away so very difficult.”

Kayla entered the reception hall and froze.

The walls displayed a collection of Eve Arnold prints.

Peter Austin stood and watched his daughter take a slow circuit of the room. She stopped by the placard explaining that the photographs were part of a display of Magnum Photos, on loan from the Tate Gallery. Kayla stopped before one of Marilyn Monroe and said, “I remember this one.”

“Of course you do. It was your mother's favorite.”

A signed reproduction had hung in her mother's dressing room. Eve Arnold's photographs had been another of her mother's many passions.

Peter Austin said quietly, “You are more like her than you will ever know.”

Kayla understood him completely. “I couldn't possibly stay here in England, Daddy.”

“We could be very happy, you know.”

“My work is there.”

Kayla found herself recalling something from the year her mother died. One of those small items easily forgotten, and so piercing to remember. Kayla had been standing outside her mother's hospital room and overheard Amanda Austin tell her husband how he never looked more handsome than when he smiled through his sorrow.”

Peter Austin smiled at her in just that way. “I am very proud of all you have accomplished, Daughter.”

Kayla took a nervous breath. “Let's hope the board feels the same way.”

chapter 3

M
om? Hi. It's me.”

“Oh, my. Is it Sunday already?”

“No. Thursday.” Adam's top-floor office had formerly housed four junior analysts. The other three desks were now empty. The long narrow room was brightened with skylights and furnished in flowing Swedish lines but remained a far cry from the executive quarters two floors below. “How are you?”

“Adam, you know what we decided.” His mother's voice was soft but relatively strong. Eleven o'clock in Oxford was six in the morning, Maryland time. His mother had always been an early riser. Nowadays, this was her clearest hour. “You agreed it was best if we spoke once each week.”

“Only because I didn't want to leave after another argument.”