The Business

Satisfied that we were pointing in the right direction, with approving nods from our captain and pilot, Mr Cholongai relinquished control of the wheel to a small, smiling Chinese seaman, who didn't look remotely big enough to handle it. 'You take good care now,' Mr Cholongai said to the seaman, patting him on the back and gri

He turned, sca

We sat on the sun deck just beneath the windows of the bridge, shielded from the ship's self-made wind by tall, sloped panes of glass, all streaked by dried salt and spattered here and there by birdshit.  Above us a parasol provided shade, its edges rippling in the breeze.  The two of us sat on cheap plastic seats around a white plastic table.  A white-coated Malay steward delivered iced coffee.

The air felt thick and hot and the faint breeze curling over the glass barrier didn't seem cooling at all.  I'd dressed in a light shot-silk suit, the coolest outfit I had with me, but I could feel sweat trickling down between my shoulder-blades.

'My friend Jeb tells me you are concerned, Ms Telman,' Cholongai said.  He sipped his iced coffee.  He was a dense-looking man, of average height and bulky but smooth-ski

'I seem to be,' I looked round at the paintwork's glare, 'getting kept in the dark, Mr Cholongai.' I smiled.  I tried the iced coffee.  Very cold, very strong.  I shivered, the sensation of cold and the white blaze of light suddenly taking me back to the snowfields of Wyoming.

He nodded. 'This is true.  One ca

Well, that was suitably gnomic. 'Of course,' I said.

Cholongai was quiet for a moment.  He sipped at his coffee.  I resisted the urge to fill the silence.  'Your family,' he said eventually. 'Do you still see them very often?'

I blinked behind the shades. 'I suppose I have two families,' I said.

'Truly you are blessed,' Cholongai said, without any obvious irony.

'I'm afraid I don't see either often.  I was an only child, my mother was a single parent, she was also an only child, and she died some time ago.  I met my father just once.  Mrs Telman was like a mother to me…more like an aunt, perhaps.  I only met her husband once, on the day of the court hearing when she — they — adopted me.' I was not, of course, telling Cholongai anything he couldn't find out from my perso

'That is very sad.'

'Yes, but I've been very lucky.'

'In your career, do you mean?'

'Well, that as well.  But I meant that I was loved.'

'I see.  By your mother, you mean?'

'Yes.'

'A mother should love her child.'

'Of course.  But I was still lucky.  She made me feel loved, and made me feel special, and she protected me.  There were many men in her life and some of them were violent sometimes, but none of them ever touched me and she did her best to hide from me what they did to her.  So, though we were poor, and things could certainly have been easier, I had a better start in life than some.'

'Then you met Mrs Telman.'

I nodded. 'Then Mrs Telman came along, and that was the single luckiest thing that ever happened to me.'

'I knew Mrs Telman.  She was a good woman.  It was sad she could have no children of her own.'

'Do you have a family yourself, Mr Cholongai?'

'One wife, five children, two grandchildren, third grandchild on way,' Mr Cholongai said, with a big smile.

'Then you are blessed.'

'Indeed.' He sipped his iced coffee.  There was an expression on what I could see of his face that might have meant the coffee was giving him a toothache. 'Might I touch on a personal matter, Ms Telman?'

'I suppose so.

He nodded for a while, then said, 'You have never thought of having children of your own?'

'Of course I've thought of it, Mr Cholongai.'

'And you decided not to.'

'So far.  I'm thirty-eight, so I'm not in my prime for child-bearing, but I'm fit and healthy, and I reckon I could still change my mind.' In fact I knew I was fertile; I'd gone to a clinic when I was thirty-five, just out of curiosity, and been again a few months ago, and gotten a clean bill of reproductive health both times.  Nothing wrong with my eggs or any part of the system, which made not having children my choice rather than an imposition.

Cholongai nodded.  'Ah-hah.  This is awkward, I know, but, may I ask, was it simply that the right man did not come along?'

I tasted my iced coffee, glad to remain inscrutable behind my glasses.  'That depends what you mean.'

'You will have to explain.  Please.'

'It depends on how you define the right man.  The right man did come along, as far as I was concerned from a purely selfish point of view.  But he turned out to be married.  So, not the right man after all.'

'I see.  I am sorry.'

I shrugged. 'One of those things, Mr Cholongai.  I don't cry myself to sleep every night.'

He nodded. 'You are not, perhaps, a very selfish person: you give a lot of money to deserving causes, I think.'

This is the sort of thing you have to live with in the Business; that old financial transparency means there's no feeling quietly superior to somebody about things like this.  If they have the slightest interest in your private affairs they'll already know exactly what causes you feel most strongly about, or what system of checks and balances you've put in place to square your conscience with your functional life.

'Actually,' I said, 'I'm very selfish.  I only give to charities so that I can sleep easily at night.  In my case the proportion of my disposable income I find I need to jettison is about ten percent.  A tithe.' More coffee. 'It's the closest I come to religious observance.'

Cholongai smiled. 'It is good to give to charity.  As you say, all benefit.'

'Some think otherwise.' I was thinking of a few — mostly US-based — execs I'd met who had nothing but contempt for anybody who gave any money to any cause, with the possible exception of the National Rifle Association.

'Perhaps they have their own…indulgences.'

'Perhaps.  Mr Cholongai?'

'Please, call me Tommy.'

'All right, Tommy.'

'If I may call you Kathryn.'

'I'd be honoured.  But I'd like to know, Tommy, what all this has to do with anything.'

He shifted in his seat. He took his sunglasses off briefly, rubbing one knuckle into the corner of one eye.  'Can we talk in confidence, Kathryn?'

'I assumed we already were. But, yes. Of course.'

'It has to do with Thulahn.'

'Thulahn?' That threw me.

'Yes. We would like to ask you to change tracks.'

What? Maybe he'd meant change tack, but it worked either way. 'How do you mean?'

'In your career.'

I felt a coldness sweep over me, as though I'd drenched myself in iced coffee. I thought, What have I done? What can they do to me? I collected myself and said, 'I thought my career was going just fine.'

'It is. That is why it is difficult for us to ask this of you.'

My initial panic had subsided, but I was still not at all sure I liked the sound of this. My heart was racing. It suddenly struck me that a light silk blouse and unlined jacket were bad things to wear when your heart was thudding: people could probably see the fabric quivering. Maybe women and fat men suffered more this way; some sort of resonant frequency set-up magnifying the effect in your breasts. Breeze, I thought. There's a breeze. Should cover any signs. Calm down, girl. I cleared my throat. 'What exactly are you asking me to do, Tommy?'