It was Tuesday morning as he walked along the tree lined esplanade to the Tour Adriatic and entered through the glass doors into a huge lobby, an artificial courtyard complete with plants and a water fall. The receptionist, a peroxide blond in her late forties, was deeply occupied with the daily chore of sorting a pile of morning mail, comparing the envelopes with a list of names on a computer terminal. She looked up suddenly and flashed him a good morning smile.
‘Bonjour Monsieur Ennis,’ she greeted him, it was as though he had not been absent for the last four weeks.
He crossed the lobby to the lifts, it was quiet, a little too early for the crowd, he pressed the button for the 24th floor. Looking at his watch he noted it was twenty five minutes to nine, he went to his office, it just a dozen paces away, to the right of a broad spiral stairs leading down to the twenty third floor, the oval corridor was wide, very wide and the offices curved around it on both sides face to face.
His office was almost opposite that of Brodzski’s secretary, Eva Hardin. She was not bad looking, in fact sometimes she even looked attractive, unfortunately to Ennis’ view she believed Brodzski’s idea of his own exaggerated importance and had consequently elevated her own status to an appropriate level.
There had been moments, when Ennis had thought that she was a common little bitch, transplanted daily for eight hours from her distant and dreary east Parisian suburb. That was whenever she had deliberately obstructed him as she often had in the past; he was pleased by the thought of her embarrassment in the new situation.
Her door was partially closed, preventing him from seeing if she was there, it would have been early for her, she had two young children and was normally not there before a little after nine. In any case he did not want to be seen for a few minutes, time to look on his desk at the latest faxes and messages, there was nothing special.
He then wandered back into the corridor and looked into the other offices and at his watch again, it was twenty to nine. His own secretary Marie-Paule never arrived before nine fifteen. He pushed open the door of Hardin’s office, nobody, on her desk were some faxes and telexes, he flipped through them, they were all from the middle of the previous week.
Next to her office was the fax, telex and photocopy room. He checked the latest arrivals that still lay in the tray of the fax machine. The first was dated Friday from Axelmann’s hotel in Sydney; he picked it up and gave it a rapid glance before folding it and quickly stuffing it into his pocket. It had simply announced that he would be back at the beginning of the week. The second was the last message he had sent himself from Jakarta, it evident that things were quiet, normally the number of messages would have been greater than that.
He took the lift down to the ground floor and walked to the Longchamp, a cafe restaurant a couple of minutes down the esplanade; it was their local since they had moved into the tower. He greeted the barman and ordered a small coffee with cream and a tartine, a slab of buttered French bread.
He then went to the men’s room down a narrow flight of steps to the basement where he went into the cubicle locked the door and took the fax from Axelmann out of his pocket.
It was short and to the point just informing the office of his imminent return, nothing else. He carefully tore it into small pieces and flushed it down the toilet, as he watched them swirl around and disappear, he noticed his heart was beating fast, he flushed again after waiting a couple of minutes, thinking about his flight to Dublin for the same evening.
Ten minutes later Savio walked into the café, always looking like the company president that he aspired to be, with his camel hair coat casually hanging over his shoulders and his Sean Connery beard neatly trimmed.
‘Hey! Hello there!’ he said with a pleasant smile seeing Ennis and advancing with his hand outstretched, they shook hands. Ennis sipped his coffee and ate his tartine whilst Savio ordered a strong black express.
‘What’s new?’ Ennis asked.
‘You tell me,’ he said laughing.
‘Well is Brodzski back?’
‘Yes, he arrived Thursday morning...I’m afraid he’s had it,’ he said with a grimace.
‘What do you mean?’ Ennis thinking not for the first time that Brodzski was dead.
‘He’s in a coma, completely paralysed.’
‘Did you see him?’
‘No,’ replied Savio shrugging.
‘He was already like that in Jakarta.’
‘They say that in the best of cases, if ever he comes out of the coma, he’ll be totally paralysed for the rest of his life,’ he paused looking fatalistically into his cup of dark coffee, ‘which wont be long in any case.’
They paid and went back up to the office; Hardin had arrived, looking less buoyant than she did normally. She asked if he had any news from Axelmann.
‘No,’ Ennis replied casually avoiding looking at her directly. ‘The last call I had from him was in Singapore, from Sydney. He said he’d be back sometime this week,’ he continued after a pause, ‘Have you any news from him?’
She replied that there was no news.
Savio together with Ennis walked into Brodzski’s large office, they sat down looking silently at Brodzski’s empty leather armchair. It was from that same chair on avenue Matignon and then in the Tower that he had held court over the last years. They had listened to his pontifications on every subject ranging from French politics to industrial development in the third world.
‘So, what’s the situation in Paris?’ Ennis repeated to Savio.
‘Not very much reaction, surprisingly enough. I’ve tried to find out the position of different people, but the only question they seem to be interested in is our financial situation.’
‘Well how is it?’
‘Were okay for about another couple of months at the best, it depends on whether or not the consortium continues to pay it’s share of the costs.’
He lifted his shoulders in a Gallic shrug.
‘I think TPS will probably take over, they will buy Brodzski’s shares.’
‘If they don’t pull the plug.’
‘Why?’ he said with a hurt look. ‘It would be best for us all if they took over...what about Axelmann, what does he think?’
‘It’s difficult to say,’ he replied as it flashed through his mind that Axelmann didn’t think any more, ‘we’ll see as soon as he’s back…in a couple of days or so.’
They spent an hour or so talking over different scenarios as people came in and out to say hello and listen. Ennis was surprised; it was as if the company had stalled. In the past, after a prolonged absence of Brodzski things seemed to run down and only on his return did things liven up again, this time it would not be the case.
He supposed, as they had often discussed, that Papcon was not much more than a one-man show, he and the rest of them had simply played supporting roles or walk on actors in Brodzski’s show.
Nobody was especially concerned by Axelmann’s absence; it was not unusual for him to be out of contact with the office for several days. In any case nothing more seemed to run according to past rules.
It would be some days before they had any signs from Indonesia concerning Axelmann, if anything happened at all. Ennis now had to prepare his own planned absence.
He joined Savio for lunch and feigned a headache with stomach trouble and fatigue; he said that he would take the afternoon off to visit his doctor and rest.
Ennis returned home and called his doctor who asked him over to his surgery, after a brief examination he suggested a few days rest and prescribed a mild medication. Ennis had visited him in the recent past for similar problems after long trips and it had become a sort of routine.
He returned to his apartment took his car and drove to Brussels. From there he took a direct flight to Dublin, where over the next couple of days he would lay the foundations for his future.
THE OLD COUNTRY