Persephone switched on her radio. She wanted some distraction from the task she had set herself to clean out her home office. She had been reading from some old corporate client reports and was getting depressed. Even though they had seemed enthusiastic at the time to rid their organisations of waste, error and corruption, as time passed nothing had really changed. As if to further mock her efforts, the ABC morning announcer was interviewing Janet Goodright-McLaughlin; an ‘expert on corporate governance’ about the latest international corruption scandal to hit a global sporting body.
The announcer opened the conversation.
“So Janet. We have now seen the world’s wealthiest and largest sporting bodies in disarray, with owners and managers of soccer clubs all over the world scratching their heads and wondering how FIFA became so corrupt. How would you fix it?”
“Great question Linda,” said Persephone to the empty office, “this should be good.”
“Well Linda,” Janet started, “I think, slowly and carefully.” Persephone swore and threw the file she was holding at the radio. “For god’s sake! When will you people ever get it?”
The radio survived the missile and Janet continued in her calm and reasonable tone to explain that this was all quite fixable if only these bodies hired people just like her to help them see the light. Persephone stormed across the room and turned it off so she didn’t have to listen to any more of this rubbish. She returned to her desk and put her head in her hands. Was she the only person in the world who knew the truth?
After nearly 30 years of working in Corporate Australia and around the world. Persephone knew that ‘slowly and carefully’ ensured that corruption remained and that the people behind the schemes prospered. She had recently decided that trying to fix this from within as a consultant was never going to work and had taken a new approach. The directors of Élan international, the formerly successful insurance company, were languishing in jail and were no longer profiting from their illegal schemes. As well, Craig Sellars had been permanently prevented from murdering any more of the unlucky victims of his ruse to get rich quickly. She had been surprised at how easy it had been to kill him and also how simple it had been to get away with it. Her planning skills and ability to remain flexible when executing the plan, first gained in the military and then honed in her consulting career, had really paid off.
Persephone was now the grateful recipient of the millions of dollars that Craig had embezzled. It had proved far too difficult to return them as it would have exposed her role in the matter. In any case, eight million dollars was an insignificant amount to the insurance company, but was a great help to Persephone, who was using the money to pursue her new career as Australia’s avenger of corporate greed gone mad. Her new role had presented her with some challenges and she’d had to confront her own beliefs about how far she was prepared to go in pursuing her goals. She had accepted that she was willing and able to dish out the punishment to fit the crime; taking the ultimate step of removing the villains from the face of the earth was less troublesome than she had thought. The trick now was to make sure that she could continue to right these wrongs without getting caught.
Still fuming from the stupidity on the radio, she decided that she wasn’t going to get any more cleaning up done today. It was 10 o’clock and she needed a caffeine fix. Time for a trip down the road to her favourite café run by her mate Vinh the mad Vietnamese and his wife Mai the cook of the best middle eastern pastries this side of Parramatta Road. On her way out she called Isaac.
“Hey sweetheart, are you busy? We need to go through the information you have uncovered on my new target.”
“Anything for my Bubbala,” was the prompt reply, “got plenty of time? I have heaps of information.”
“Great, we can take all the time we need. I am just going to Vinh’s to pick up coffee and baklava. How about I grab some for you and jump in a cab? I can be there in 10 minutes.”
Isaac was a huge fan of Mai’s cooking so he agreed with alacrity. Persephone grabbed a dozen of the delectable pastries and a couple of strong lattes. Within a few minutes she was in the lift going up to Isaac’s penthouse apartment in the City. Isaac was one of the world’s best hackers and computer geniuses and she was sure that the information he had gleaned about Crowning Constructions was going to be gold.