Trilemma (4 page)

Earlier in the year, he contacted me when he needed some help and so I worked for him for a few months. That job ended, and when I decided to come to New Zealand, Robert told me he had a venture starting up in Wellington and there might be an opportunity for me.

I thought about it long and hard, but you have to utilize favors, don't you, to keep climbing the ladder?

In subdued lighting Robert can still look like a catch. His hair is a subtle shade of bleached blond and his tan speaks of some place where men are not afraid to use a sunbed. Only his chicken-skin neck betrays his true age.

He rises to greet me, blinking in the dim light of the lobby bar, blue lenses circling his irises before settling into place.

“How are you, my dear?” he asks, and smiles his shiny triangular smile, like a discreet shark.

“I'm well. Can I get you another drink?”

He finishes his glass. “Whiskey.”

“I know.”

“The good stuff.”

I order him the best they have and a glass of Chablis for me.

“No Moana?” Moana was Robert's aide, in more ways than one. A big beautiful island girl.

He glances up but doesn't meet my eyes. “I left her in Hawaii. She doesn't need to come on all my trips.” Then he says, “Caught up with lover boy yet?”

I put my glass gently down on the table. “That's all over. So, you're setting up a new telco to compete with Kiwicom?” I ask.

Robert smirks but lets me change the subject. “Indeed. The company's called Hera. We've got an international set of investors as well as the usual local suspects.”

“There's a lot of Government money sloshing around for broadband.” I have done my research. “Are you looking for a slice?”

“The Government is letting us join the Broadband Consortium on the condition we prove our commitment by launching a pilot service by March.”

“Less than six months away!”

“We're slipping badly behind the plan. The guy running the project had a nervous breakdown or something, so we need another project manager urgently.”

The project manager is the person who works out what needs to be done and when it needs to be done and chases everyone to make sure it is done. Of course, it's more complicated than that, and a lot of it involves writing up plans, reporting on status of tasks, and meeting to discuss issues, risks, and constraints. And, hopefully, find solutions.

“So are you interested?”

“I am very interested.”

“They're not expecting to pay expenses so you'd need to find your own accommodation.”

“I already have an apartment.”

“So you're already committed to living here, huh?”

“I like Wellington.”

He smiles his small, expensive smile. “Don't get too comfortable, Lin. In this country you're the alien.”

I take a sip of the wine and look around the bar at the other guests. This is one of Wellington's top hotels, so you can expect there will be a few foreign visitors. The woman talking to the bald man, for instance. The way she is dressed, the makeup, and the perfect hair don't look local. And I can easily recognize the origins of the Asian women sitting at the table beyond us and the beautiful South American girl at the bar.

Everyone is an alien somewhere, but I seem to be an alien every place I go. If it isn't the Asian eyes, it's the American accent. If it isn't how I look and sound, then it's because I am a
thirty-nine-year-old woman working at a level more commonly occupied by middle-aged men.

I lean back in my chair and scrutinize Robert's face. “I never told you I was born in New Zealand, did I?”

Robert's eyebrows rise slightly, but it is hard to tell the difference from his carefully cosmetically tightened forehead.

“I thought your father was British.”

“He immigrated here in the sixties. He had this romantic idea that New Zealand was a South Seas paradise and took a job as professor of English Literature at the university.”

“Must have been a shock when he arrived in a Wellington southerly.”

“It's still sunnier than England. Most of the time. Anyway, I was born in Wellington, but when I was a toddler, he took me to the States.”

God knows why my father hooked up with Mom. They never talked to each other beyond a grunt from him and “uh-huh” from her. Maybe she thought Dad was a tasteful accoutrement for her décor, and maybe he thought she was an easy way to keep him in comfort once his career had collapsed.

But it wasn't a comfortable household. I can still remember the fights my stepbrother, Steve, had with Dad. Mom always used to take Steve's side; “he's just a boy,” she'd say, and it would always be Dad who left. “Another conference,” Mom would explain when I came down and he wasn't at the breakfast table.

Looking back, I think he'd just take off whenever he couldn't stand living with us any longer. That last time it turned out he'd driven off the road on one of those long stretches between the mountains where you can't take any risks or you end up down a cliff. Mom kept saying he wasn't drunk, but it was a while before they found him, so who knows?

“You might say I'm a Kiwi.”

He snorts. “Don't delude yourself. You are what your accent says you are. In your case, a Yank.”

The South American girl shuffles on the bar stool, crossing and re-crossing her legs. Robert's attention wanders.

But I am not a Yank, although I grew up in America. My stepsister, Hilary, used to call me “Cuckoo” which was cruel, especially since no one could have pushed Steve and Hilary out of the family nest if they didn't want to go. Like Mom they were large blond people with blue eyes and a lot of gleaming white teeth. I was little, with brown hair and the dark slanting eyes that marked me as different. A small brown cuckoo.

I am not the Brit my father was either, even though I followed in his footsteps and studied at Oxford and have worked in London on and off for years. I am not French, although I've lived there too, nor Australian. And, although my birth mother was Chinese, I know nothing of that heritage.

I think about the alien I have always been and I decide it will be different this time.

Although I've searched all the directories and the social media sites, I haven't found any trace of Vivienne or Alison Mere. My sisters from my father's first marriage.

I guess both must have married and changed their name. No matter. From past experience, I knew it wasn't going to be easy. But one way or another, I plan to belong in this country.

I want to be a kiwi and not a cuckoo.

“When can I start?”

Five percent of the population are psychopaths, or so the article says. Psychopaths are often confident and articulate. They lie with ease, they feel no guilt, they smile and smile and yet are villains.

According to the writer, the modern psychopath typically doesn't kill—why take that kind of risk? They don't even break the law. The modern-day psychopath can gain everything they want through legal manipulation of the world they live in. If you're not encumbered by self-doubt, consideration for others, or the inconvenient need to be truthful, what can you not achieve?

The writer states that being a psychopath is a genetic predilection, unlike the sociopath who is likely to have suffered neglect, abuse, or some major trauma that has damaged their humanity.

Seek out the untruthful, self-serving egotist when you look for your five percent, the writer says. Psychopaths always focus on their own best interests.

The article deteriorates into emotive claims that such people lack “souls,” and I stop reading. But that doesn't mean there is no truth in the conditions described, and it makes me wonder how many of the people I meet might be a psychopath.

I consider myself adept at reading people; it is a useful skill for a manager, and I pride myself on being able to read the truth or the lie in a person's eyes. But I wonder what you can read in a psychopath's eyes?

I put away the paper, stretch, then roll out of bed and prepare
for my working day. Washed, dressed in black, and made up in the immaculate image of a career woman, I climb into my car and drive down the hill into the city.

At the office, I add the final touches to our presentation on the status of the launch for this afternoon's Board meeting. The elevator arrives, and Hera's chief operating officer Tom Heke emerges; tall, dark, and self-assured, striding across the office like a warrior coming to battle.

Tom and I are metaphorically circling; not in a sexual way, well, yes, there is something of a sexual element to male-female interaction when you work together, but this circling is more about who is going to be top dog. Tom is used to being the leader of the pack and he doesn't like giving ground.

Neither do I.

He places a firm hand on my shoulder and smiles at me with warm brown eyes.

“How are the plans going?”

I shrug my shoulder to dislodge his hand. “They'll go better once you decide on the location for the operations center.”

“I'm getting another opinion on the fault line in Petone,” he replies. “And we're still working out how to get network across the rail yards if we go for the port site.”

“What's wrong with Seaview?”

“Nothing's wrong with Seaview, but we need to look at all our options.”

“We need to get started.” I relax my mouth into a small polite smile of encouragement. “When can you make the decision?”

Tom smiles widely back. “Don't be so impatient.”

His eyes are so self-assured.
Oh, man, don't you ever wonder if you're wrong?

“We're running out of time—”

Tom pats my shoulder lightly. “We need to do this right,” he says, and strides away before I can answer.

I watch him pace across the room with my eyes calm, my anger hidden. The decision on where to locate the operations center is on the critical path for the project. The location has become less important than the delay in starting the build.

I've reasoned, I've cajoled, I've pushed, but Tom still won't commit to a choice, and Adam listens to Tom.

Corporate testosterone has a smell of its own; a subtle blend of cologne with high notes of expensive soap from the executive washroom where they wash their hands of responsibility for any mistakes, a touch of cigar smoke, maybe a whiff of the bouquet of a fine wine, a soupçon of eau de secretary's perfume. There is never any stink of sweat. Never the stale odor of well-worn shoes nor the whiff of wet wool from walking the streets in the rain.

I sit at the foot of the table with Hera's chief executive, Adam Challoner, wearing the calm and confident mask I present to the corporate bosses.

It's best, I've found, to show no emotion at all. If you smile, they think you want to be liked and mark you down as needy. If you frown, they think you're at a loss as to what to do and mark you down as indecisive. If you narrow your eyes, they think you're challenging them, and they'll huff and they'll puff louder to make you back down. I prefer to keep them guessing. My father's little hothead keeps her temper well hidden.

Robert, representing the American shareholders, sits on the nearest side of the boardroom table. Alongside Robert is Quon Dao from Hong Kong who heads up a Chinese company that seeks to invest in New Zealand. Dao has short, thick, ash-colored hair and eyes like mine.

On the other side of the table is gray-suited, gray-haired Stewart Hobb, CFO of Australian shareholder Ozcom and chairman of Hera's Board. Beside Hobb is plump and pleasant Pita Lane from Christchurch representing the
iwi
—the term for a Maori tribe, and Mark Stanton, a lawyer from Auckland, who
is the independent professional director who ensures good governance and proper bureaucracy. There's something of an Old Boy and Old Girl network of directors in New Zealand, I'm told. Same as anywhere, I guess.

Stanton is white-haired, red-faced, and pleasant when the going's easy, gruff when it's not. Right now he's gruff.

“That is not acceptable,” Robert states after I present the plan. “The launch date is not negotiable.”

“Okay,” I say. “Then working back from the March launch date, we'll need to start the build by this date,” and I point at the chart. “Which means we need to complete the design by this date, which means we need to make the decision on the operations center by—”

“This week!” snaps Robert.

“This week?” asks Lane.

“This week.” I confirm.

After the Board members have gone, the management team arrives for a debrief. Adam slumps amongst the clutter of papers, teacups, and leftover food, dark rings around his tired eyes. Hera's head of human resources, Marion King, glances at him before taking her seat. Fred Mitchell, head of IT, and Ian Green, our marketing guru, help themselves to the leftover sandwiches and Tom snags the last sausage roll. CFO Deepak Gupta hurries in last and closes the door.