Paradise Burning (The Virtagwalla Series Book 2) (11 page)

19

              Rachel Rove knocked softly on Eric Larynx’s office door. There was no answer. It was late in the afternoon and Susan had already left for the day. She giggled the handle lightly, and found it unlocked. Pushing the door open, she discovered Eric sitting at his desk, with his fingers threaded through his hair. She could easily sense the tension in the room, and entered slowly.

              “Eric, dear, what’s wrong?” Rachel asked attempting to sound as tender as possible.

              Looking up after a momentary pause, he looked at her as if he didn’t know who she was, “How did you get in here? My door was closed.”

              She walked over to the desk, laying her purse down on the couch. Noticing the empty bottle of scotch, “Babe, what are you doing? What is wrong?”

              Rachel went to slide her hand on his back, but he pushed it away. His bloodshot eyes were painful to look at. He quickly stood and lashed out, “Rachel, god damn it, I am not in the mood right now. Can’t you tell I am a little busy?”

              She grabbed his shoulder, “Yes, I can,” attempting to calm him down, “Can I help in anyway?”

              Grabbing some papers from his desk, “Not unless you can find me $500 million dollars in cash by next Tuesday.”

              Rachel recoiled, “What do you mean? Why do you need so much money?”

              Punching his desk, he paused for a moment. Standing back up, and taking a deep breath, he turned and passionately hugged her. Speaking while still hugging, “I am sorry dear. I’ve just been very stressed recently.”

              “I’m sorry to hear that, dear,” she said, her face strained, attempting to read his intentions through the sudden mood swing.

              He pulled her away. “LLR is not doing too well,” he murmured walking back towards his desk.

              “What do you mean not doing too well?” Rachel inquired slowly, shifting in her stance.

              Taking a deep breath, “Due to the skyrocketing unemployment, no one is riding the trains anymore. We aren’t bringing in the revenues necessary to keep these carriages moving,” he gazed out the window. With a rebuffed sense of confidence, he explained very matter-of-factly, “We are announcing lay offs tomorrow. Hundreds maybe even a thousand or so jobs will be cut from across the system. We are being forced to cut our daily service routes nearly in half as our ridership is so low.”

              “Oh. Dear,” she sauntered up behind him, placing her arms around his waist.

              “We have to do it to stay alive,” he turned to face her. “Rachel, I am afraid Larynx Light Rail as we know it doesn’t have much longer. If we don’t get more people on to our trains, and quick, we won’t survive. Not in this environment we will not. Just a few months ago we were doing phenomenal! We had lines, and scarce capacity across the network of rails. But since industry has tanked, shipping cargo has disappeared, and commercial ridership is dwindling we are staggering along. According to my CFO we have barely enough cash on hand to continue operating for just over three weeks. After that, the LLR will official cease to exist.” The once bigger than life tycoon shuttered, his fortune and life unraveled around him and lay in shambles at his feet.

              Laying her head against his chest, “Eric,” she looked up into his face, “Whatever happens it will all be okay in the end. I promise you it will. You’ll see.”

              “I hope so,” Eric responded flatly, gently kissing the crown of her head.

20

Lis Mooring’s job had become anything but fun. The newspapers nicknamed her the “Hopeless Harbinger”. She started off each morning’s briefings with the latest updates from the President and his economic council of advisors on what companies had failed in the last twenty-four hours and how many the surviving ones had laid off. The day that the Larynx Light Rail Corporation had announced they were reducing to fifty percent of their work force the Press Corp was out for blood. In fact the Press Corp had in fact also downsized, a couple of the smaller newspapers on the island folded under their small circulation and high costs.

              Bouncing into the Press Office, Lis took in the sight of the congregation of reporters. Noticing many open seats she opened up her notebook and began, “It has been two weeks since LLR’s devastating layoffs, and the President wanted me to speak to some of the actions the Parliament have taken since that event. First the day after the announcement, they acted quite out of character, and actually passed two resolutions. The first disbanded the incredibly high minimum wage in an effort to encourage employers to pay their works less, but keep more of them around. However the President and Finance Minister Sensado informed me this morning, that this maneuver has regrettably failed. The second resolution granted Minister Sensado emergency powers to better regulate the monetary supply of the nation and streamline the process of adjusting government spending. Each morning at nine, she conferences with the President’s office to outline the cuts she is going to make. The resolution gave her quite liberal authorities, but bound her hands when it came to money contributing to the Social Net. The Social Net has become nearly seventy percent of the National Government’s budget outside of the money needed to pay back the interest to debt held by the government. Minister Sensado has been able to make some cuts such as the National Science Board, the Jungle Preservation Foundation and the Water Feline Protection Society, but overall she is struggling to significantly lessen that burden.”

              “Lis, has the President expressed any more concern for the economic future of the island?”

              “Well Hogan, he expresses concern every morning, afternoon, and evening. Let me assure you he is the busiest man on the island right now, with the toughest job.”

              “Has the President made comment about the quickly growing village of unemployed people gathered on the Eastern lawn of capital tower?”

              “The President has expressed that it is each and every citizen’s constitutional right to gather peacefully. As far as I can tell the “village” as you referred to it, is merely a gathering point for the unemployed of Ponchertrain. The President has rallied many of the non-profit organizations around the island to begin providing food and supplies to these people.”

              “How many are out there Lis?”

              “People?” She scoffed, “I don’t know, look out the window take a count. Your guess is as good as mine.”

              Lis knew quite well the number but she didn’t want the reporters to know that nearly four thousand people were now taking up residency on the Eastern lawn of Capital Tower.

21

              Xavier was beginning his day now before the sun even thought about rising. He would meet each morning for nearly two hours with his economic advisors and be updated on the devastating economic blows occurring that day. Lay offs and bankruptcies were becoming usual things, and Rove could only dream of a day when they would stop.

              Hampton Ray, as usual, met with the President every morning at ten am. Everything prior to that meeting had become a standing appointment, where Hampton found it not necessary to always be in attendance. Each morning Ray would earmark at least an hour to devoting himself to managing the endowment of the David Rove Memorial Foundation, hiring its staff, brainstorming ideas of how to implement the organization’s goodwill, and promoting the interests of the foundation. In addition Rove had him working on so many other projects, beyond having to manage a staff of nearly a four hundred, that he was finding it more and more challenging to perform his duties as Chief of Staff.

              Xavier Rove sat on his couch, quietly, reading briefs he had received earlier that day. They detailed accounts from his economic advisors that the National Government had been contacted and informed that the Australian Commonwealth Bank, or the ACB was moving forward with the immediate dissolution of its Virtagwallan outpost. The Bank had become unstable and was teetering on insolvency. Ray knocked softly on the door to the office and quickly entered shutting the door behind him. Rove took his eyes off the report, placed his coffee down, removed his reading glasses and stared at this Chief of Staff. Neither man spoke, but just kind of stared at one another. Hampton then moved away from the door, but slowly.

              He stopped, “Mr. President, are you, um, feeling alright?”

              Rove put the folder down, and stood up rubbing his face, “I feel fine. But I have been so busy recently, and all of this bad news is really beginning to wear on me,” he paused, “You don’t look too good yourself my young friend.”

              “It’s Whitley,” he sighed dropping some papers on his desk, “She hasn’t been able to sleep through the night recently, and every time she wakes up I get woken up too.”

              “Everything alright?” Rove asked turning to look at Ray.

              “Oh yes I am sure,” Ray remarked assuredly pausing for a moment to look up from the desk, and then he turned his attention back to the pieces of paper. Finding what he was searching for, he turned and tottered towards Rove with a piece of paper in his hand, “She is going to the doctor each week now just to be sure though.”

              Taking the piece of paper, Rove reached down for his glasses, “What is this?”

              “It is as much information as I could gather on our two Aurum corporations,” Ray moaned with a touch of dissatisfaction, “Unfortunately it just isn’t too much. Like I told you before because they are privately held corporations, their investors don’t have to be recognized or known publicly and even their officers don’t have to be named publicly.”

              “Well how do we get this information?” Rove probed.

              “That’s just the thing,” Ray pointed out excitedly, “Since we are a foreign nation the United States, especially Hawaii and Wyoming, will not disclose anymore information than their type of business and the contact information to their ‘headquarters’. “

              “Why do you say it like that?” Rove enquired snapping his gaze from the paper to his Chief of Staff.

              “I say it like that because I have tried all the numbers I could find and they keep coming back as dead or disconnected,” Ray smirked, “Even the information provided in both of the Villaggio real estate deals has not panned out to anything reputable. Furthermore the mailing address that was placed on the contracts for the reacquisition of the land in Villaggio has only turned out to be a post office box in yet another state, Delaware.”

              “Ah yes, Delaware the diamond state,” Rove gave the sheet of paper back, “What about their shares in VirtGold, does the company collect any information on the owners of those stocks?”

              Ray laughed, “Ironic that you ask me, don’t you think?” he looked at him facetiously, “They do, but since they are not going to be paying dividends anytime soon they didn’t have to keep track of the most recent addresses for the organization. Plus the address of the original organization was yet again in another post office box, this time in Texas.  You of all people should know that.”

              “Right,” Rove remarked inaudibly. Pausing Xavier chewed silently on the arm of his glasses, “What about Chamberlain or Chronic. Anything?”

              “No nothing in connection to Aurum,” Ray quickly moved back to his desk, “But I did find something interesting on our VORC mystery.”

              Rove stepped forward, “Really?”

              Ray smiled and handed another piece of paper to Rove, “And you’ll be happy to know it is another corporation.”

Grabbing the piece of paper, Rove found it to be complete front to back with details, “This is a Virtagwallan Company?”

“Not just any Virtagwallan company,” Ray sang, “But a corporation wholly owned by this government!”

Stopping for a moment, “Hold on. It’s owned by the National Government?”

Ray moved forward pointing to the sheet of paper, “The Virtagwallan Oil Refinery Corporation, acquired nearly five years ago. What’s even more interesting is who sits on the board of VORC, look.”

Rove looked at the list of names that sat on the Board of Directors for the organization.

Confusedly looking back up at Ray, “Why have I never heard of this corporations before?”

“I don’t know sir,” Ray took the piece of paper back, “Why don’t you go ask your buddies,” he scanned the sheet and began listing, “Artimus Zhang, Sylvester Chamberlain, Charles Teasdale, President Chipulta, and Fredrick Chronic?”

Moving around the couches, “I am sick of all of this secretive bullshit. I am going to get to the bottom of this VORC thing once and for all!”

“Are you going to talk to Zhang?” Ray asked moving towards the President who was on a mission.

“Damn straight I am,” Xavier shouted twisting the door handles.

He paused briefly because there was commotion behind the door. A man was yelling something he couldn’t understand and he could clearly tell Kay was arguing back. Deciding against his urge to go through the door, Rove’s innate senses were telling him something was going awry in his lobby. Ray heard it too, and quickly began to silently signal the President away from the door. The shouting was getting louder and Rove watched as the door handles quickly turned, and flew open. A man was standing in the doorframe, his clothes all tattered and his hair tied back in a ponytail. Officer Knaub was running across the lobby and Kay Lyons had moved in to apprehend the trespasser. Before either of the two of them could get to him, he lunged forward at the President. Slamming his fist into Rove’s jaw, both men were on the floor within just a few moments.

Knaub was on top of the man that had assaulted the President with a gun to his temple faster than Rove could even process. Ray was shouting something but the confusion of the moment was preventing Xavier from thinking straight. Taking a deep breath he stood up and stared down at the man who had just gave him a good licking. It was a familiar hit, one that Xavier knew all too well. Putting his hands on his hips, rolling his jaw, he instructed Knaub to get off of attacker, and to put the gun away. “You are going to hurt someone, or worse with that thing,” he cackled at the officer. When Knaub went to refute the order, Rove grabbed his shoulder and tried to pull the Guardsman off the heavy breathy hippy.  “This man is not a threat. Get off of him, and put that gun away!”

Reluctantly holstering the weapon, the Guardsman protested, “Sir I must insist for your safety that I apprehend this man. He just assaulted the President of Virtagwalla.”

Turning to check himself in the wall hung mirror, Xavier cracked a dubious smirk as he rubbed his jaw, “Its fine Knaub I think I can handle this one. After all, he is my kid brother.”