The Emperor Awakes (39 page)

Now Manoukios was really panicked. ‘Are you declaring war on us?’

‘Oh, no. That would be too crude, too gentle a word. I’m using a little-known clause in the rules of the company to ostracise you and force the delivery to me of your holdings.’

‘You cannot do that. We will take you to court, if you even try. We will sue you for everything you have.’

Elli turned to Vasilis. ‘Please distribute the relevant documents.’

Manoukios again. ‘What? What is this? But how…?’

Elli just smiled and waited while those present around the table read their indictment and sentence all wrapped in one beautifully presented package. They were studying the document and Elli could see their eyes opening wide in disbelief. She had their attention. She pressed her advantage.

‘However, I will not be cruel. I propose that the company buys you out. You will tender your shares at a fair value that has been reached by an independent valuation.’ Elli gave copies for distribution. ‘If you accept this valuation and this offer, which is voluntary and very generous, your shares will be purchased at that price and cancelled. This is conditional upon you also signing a document surrendering any rights you may have in law.

‘The purpose of this is to avoid any unnecessary trouble in the future. I think you know that anything you may be considering to try has no chance and you will lose. And you will be left with nothing. The offer will not be open indefinitely. You have five minutes. Think it over.’

It took them a lot less than that. She could see that they had not expected her generosity and they liked it. She could almost see them drooling and licking their lips with their tongue. They had been won over. She had them eating out of her hand. They were nodding like a group of penguins copying each other or a set of dominoes set up in a scheme and now falling.

Elli had already sold company assets worth around seven billion US dollars, which was the amount needed to fund the buy-out of the other shareholders’20% stake in the company. She and Iraklios together held a combined 80% stake. She had the authority to sell those assets, even up to such a large amount, according to the company’s explicit and very detailed rules.

She was not obliged by the company’s rules to obtain the board’s approval, nor was she obliged to notify them of the sale, before or after. That is why she was able to do it in secret and well in advance of the meeting. She was quite surprised, though, that none of them even got a whiff of such large sales. Some gossip should have reached their ears. It showed how detached they were from the business world at the very least and, perhaps, the world at large.

It was as if they lived in an extremely protective cocoon. But as she thought that, Elli knew that she was so feared and respected that nobody would dare to say anything or allow anything to leak about those transactions. The vow of confidentiality was sacred and would be respected. It was not just a matter of a reciprocal ‘my word is my bond’ pact.

And even if the buyers were publicly-listed companies, they could not reveal the deals until after this particular meeting. It was all included in the contracts with draconian penalty clauses and a whole array of legal consequences that would have come raining down on them, if they stepped out of line and breached them. And none of those transactions required the approval of the purchasing companies’ shareholders.

Nobody could afford to find themselves on the wrong side of Elli. Let them think or speculate that Valchern may be in trouble. It didn’t matter. As a private company it was not at the mercy of the markets and, furthermore, it was cash rich with ample resources and did not need any credit or loans from any banks that may be reluctant to lend, acting on rumours of financial difficulty, rumours which could though be easily crushed by access to the company’s accounts. And she had engineered a blanket on the media too.

But Manoukios would have none of it. He was not yet convinced. He had to fight his corner. That was exactly what he was, cornered. And those who are cornered become desperate. They don’t think things through and just lunge out and make mistakes. He had to win his rapidly waning support back. He had to make one last desperate effort.

‘With what money?’

‘The money is there. And let me remind you that you have no choice. You and your conspirators went against the company rules, against the best interests of the company and that is a punishable offence. I believe that the sentence or penalty, as you may prefer, is appropriate and it is within the power accorded to me by the rules to impose.’

Manoukios was standing alone and isolated now and he knew it. He finally realised that he had been defeated. He said nothing more and sat down looking at his notepad. He could not believe he had lost. He had been confident it had all been meticulously organised.

How could he have underestimated Elli so much? Maybe he was getting too old, losing his touch. If Elli had heard his internal debate she would have commented: “What touch? You never had any to begin with.”

As it dawned on the other shareholders, and hitherto supporters of Manoukios, that Elli would not be bluffing and could indeed do what she declared and held all the cards, they started to bicker amongst themselves, blaming Manoukios and each other. As a result of this split jury in their mind, they had been outmanoeuvred, had been rendered unable to agree to take any decisive action. Their precariously-and-loosely-held-together pact had proved to be very short-lived indeed. Now, with them out of action for quite a while, Elli was free to pursue her plans for the company.

CHAPTER 42

Constantinople (Istanbul)
Present day

The private jet, a converted Boeing 767, landed in Istanbul’s airport in heavy rain and strong gusts of wind. Elli was not scared in the least. Not for her the flimsy light-as-feather smaller private jets. She saw the sense in a properly-sized plane, a necessary luxury.

In a weird way the discretion of the treatment she always expected and received guaranteed her the desired anonymity. In no time, she was in a limousine on its way to the Ayia Sophia Square.

She was dropped off at one of the minor entry points to the great church. She went in, down some stairs, then up through another flight of stairs, to the spot where only a few days earlier, Katerina and Aristo narrowly escaped certain death.

There was nobody around. What was about to happen was no sight for untrained eyes. She looked at the image of St. George and closed her eyes. St. George extended his arm and grabbing it, she was pulled into another picture that was inside the depiction on the wall and which was the Emperor Justinian in 537 A.D. standing next to his great church.

Justinian took her by the hand and let her inside the church where she saw the two keys hanging from the huge chandelier above the central space of the church. Justinian lowered the chandelier and gave her the keys.

* * *

Within minutes she was outside Ayia Sophia and standing before the entrance to the Topkapi, which gleamed in the sunlight that broke through the clouds, all guns blazing.

Her destination was a section of the former Ottoman palace that housed important manuscripts, an extension of the Topkapi’s famous and very valuable library.

She saw the glass case as she stood by the entrance and walked to it briskly. She stood there staring at an Ottoman manuscript, which provided the detail on the Sultan’s ownership and wealth. There was nobody around. She inserted one of the keys. She heard a click and at that moment the room disappeared to the outside world.

A Ruinand pair following her didn’t know what hit them. They were locked out, if you could call it that. But how could the room have disappeared? Ahead of them the corridor continued and disappeared in the distance with no end in sight, no obstacle in its way. They walked the distance to make sure and they went right through where the room was supposed to be.

They looked at each other furious with themselves. They should have followed her inside even if they, no doubt, would have given away their presence. Their mistress, the Marcquesa, would have them suffer a slow and painful death for this fiasco.

Once the room was off public radar, the glass case flew open. Elli carefully and gently pushed the manuscript to one side to get to a hidden compartment underneath. She inserted the second key and opened it. Inside was an even older parchment than the manuscript resting above it, signed by not one but many Sultans, Kings, bishops and archbishops throughout history.

In there it was safe and invisible, in full public view, but in reality hidden from anyone but her who only knew of its existence. Public display guaranteed the object’s safety from intrusion by prying eyes well trained in the art of sightseeing.

On the parchment was a list of sites that she personally owned. The sites were mining deposits of an element called kalbendium that fuelled the time travel devices she used. Only she knew of the element’s existence which was mined, extracted by specially designed machines and processed in top secret facilities using top secret unique technology in a protected sterile environment.

Kalbendium was calm and glowing when in a static condition, but volatile when handled and the process converted it into a usable stable form. Its volatility precluded the use of humans in its extraction. Maintaining secrecy was another reason. All the names of her predecessors who had owned and controlled those deposits were written by hand at the bottom of the parchment during the initiation process once each new head of the company and the family was appointed after the death of the previous occupant of the post whose duty was to groom his successor.

One day Aristo’s name will be added to this list. Satisfied, she returned the parchment to its place and locked the compartment. She then put the Ottoman manuscript on top and locked the glass case. She put the keys in her handbag and calmly but purposefully walked out of the room, pretending to be looking at various exhibits like a visitor on her way out of the Topkapi.

Elli was now free to look forward to her meeting in a coffee shop, a short twenty-minute walk away, in the shadow of the Egyptian or Misir Bazaar near the Southern end of the Galata Bridge spanning the mouth of what used to be called the Golden Horn.

The view from there of the Bosphorus and the city’s Asian side was breathtaking and never ceased to excite and move her every time. She loved to walk in her favourite city in her favourite time of the year.

It was a dazzling day. She made her way to the agreed spot, found a table and sat down to wait for her date. He had been on an errand deep in the Fanari district near the Ecumenical Patriarchate, not very far from where she was sitting.

He enjoyed visiting old haunts lovingly explored and tirelessly trodden during their frequent visits to the city as children. He saw her before she saw him. He stood behind her and covered her eyes with his hands. She did not even flinch as if expecting it.

‘My darling boy. It’s been some time. It’s good to see you.’

They hugged tightly and looked at each other. Elli’s face brightened by a wide smile. Vasilis studied her. She was still a beautiful “young” woman. She was ageless. To them it was a mother and son reunion. But they were both in disguise. To the rest of the world it was a meeting between a happy couple, a couple very much in love.

They both knew it wouldn’t be long before the pages of newspapers and magazines from Baku to Los Angeles and Sydney were splashed all over with the gossip of the Ducesa de Mori Astir taking a new lover, a new “beau”. That was a delicious thought that amused them both. The temptation to laugh was irresistible.

They laughed till their facial muscles met the limit of tolerance of excruciating pain. They stopped, breathless, as if they were drowning in a deep ocean and in a sudden rush came up with an unquenchable thirst for air. With an unsatisfied hunger they both started talking almost at once.

‘Mother. Thanks for the holiday.’

‘I thought you would enjoy it. Do they suspect you?’

‘I don’t think so. They think that we had a fall out and that, full of anger, in my disillusionment with you and feeling betrayed by you, I wished to hurt you by switching sides. And what would be the ideal vehicle of revenge than allying myself with your worst enemy? I’ve planted enough bugs in there to write a book about their lives. The bugs are working perfectly. They should be transmitting everything to your control centre on Mount Ellothon.’

Vasilis paused and his demeanour took on the excitement of a child’s emerging from a cave of wonders. ‘Mother, you should see their underwater city. Its beauty is beyond what words could describe. I hope we don’t have to destroy it to neutralise their threat once and for all.’

‘I think we should be able to avoid that. But we have much work to do. Keep me informed on what they have acquired. We will make sure they only end up with the fake goods. Have you seen the icon?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘Do you know where it’s held?’

‘No, but I’ll try and find out. Mother, you know we cannot underestimate the Madame Marcquesa de Parmalanski. She’s very smart. I’m the one closest to their centre of control and the one most at risk of blowing my cover and endangering our plans. I’ll be careful.’

‘Try and find out the whereabouts of the icon. We’ll have a fake one for you ready to make the switch when you do.’