The Plot – Chapter 13
Digger's Rebellion
‘Yeah, right. An accident.’
Jorja took the bait.
‘Yes, Ray, an accident. Why?’
‘Nah.’ Ray shook his head. ‘It was a hit. Russian Mafia. Obviously.’
‘The poor man was half Romanian, half Greek,’ objected Millie Davies, the retired librarian with the foghorn voice. ‘Not Russian.’
‘Same difference,’ shrugged Ray. ‘Eastern European.’
‘Ah, the notorious Graeco-Romanian Mafia,’ said Jorja rather more loudly than intended. Vince chuckled into his mug of hot chocolate.
Ray’s face darkened; behind folded arms he sank further into his chair.
‘A hit’s a hit. And this was a hit.’
The consensus amongst the score of attendees was that this kind of speculation was irresponsible and, given that the man had died at the gardens, insensitive.
Still, you couldn’t help but wonder.
Professor Crisp tried to get the meeting back on track.
It had been a difficult week for the Plot. The gardens had been closed while police traipsed around – and members fretted about late tomatoes, early root crops, blighted bush beans and keeping the water up to the pumpkins.
Now the police tape was gone, finally, but the area under the Big Tree was still out of bounds, pending the council arborist’s report. Not that anyone wanted to risk walking under the deadly canopy.
The question was, after the developer’s sudden death, whether to continue with the campaign against the closure of the Plot and its transfer to another, less satisfactory location. Should they instead bide their time and hope for a more conciliatory approach from the new CEO?
‘Strike hard before they have a chance to regroup,’ urged Ray. ‘Kick ’em while they’re down.’
This brought tutted disapproval and muttered agreement. It was difficult to tell which was which.
In the end, the consensus was to wait and see. Everyone except Ray voted to send flowers and condolences to the Kapanadze family – it seemed the only decent thing to do.
The meeting broke up early. No-one was keen to be at the Plot after dark.
You know. Just in case.
He stood back and admired the brushed steel nameplate on the door of his office. His office!
Robert Horák
Chief Executive Officer (Acting)
By half-closing his right eye he could blank out the last word.
Bob Horák had the reputation of a cautious, by-numbers man, the polar opposite of his brilliant boss, Dima Kapanadze. Hardly anyone thought that he could fill Dima’s shoes as CEO of ConStruct Corp.
However, Dima was dead, killed in a freak accident, and Bob was not. The shoes were vacant.
He was just standing in, of course: keeping the shoes warm for the next ‘proper’ Chief Executive Officer – to be appointed just as soon a suitable candidate could be headhunted. Three months at the least, then, possibly six.
‘Suitable’ in the Board’s terms was not a grey-haired bloke who had been with the company for a quarter of a century, steadily working his way up from site foreman into the upper echelons of management. Bob was quite clear on that score.
‘Suitable’ was someone who was media-friendly, ticked boxes.
In the meantime, what the Board and the Executive Leadership Team expected from their erstwhile Chief Operations Officer was a complete absence of surprises. He was to do nothing to spook investors any further than they’d already been spooked by the untimely demise of Dima, their Blue-Eyed Boy.
That had been made clear in terms adapted to the meanest understanding.
‘Bob, we’re appointing you to not do anything,’ Sally McFarlane, the Chair of the Board of Directors, had said. ‘Don’t disappoint us.’
Yet they had misunderstood gravely. He might be a plodder, but Bob Horák was not a man to bow to popular opinion, nor one to tolerate illogical and risky ventures – not if it were within his capacity to do otherwise.
Oh dear me, no. Not at all.
Any way he looked at the project spec, the costings, the revenue forecasts: the new development in Corymbia City made no sense. It was a typical Dima infatuation, one of those gut feeling, seat-of-the-pants projects which he was famous for. Which Bob loathed to the core of his being.
Worse still, it was a distraction. The key thing to focus on now was the Dubai project, which had the potential to dwarf the Corymbia job by two orders of magnitude.
Then there had been that debacle with the activists and the journos. The last straw, so to speak. The last bale of straw.
Militant gardeners!
He’d seen the funny side at first, when the joke had been on Dima. Then he’d returned from lunch to be informed by a flustered PA that they’d taken over his, Bob’s, office – his office! In their handknitted sweaters, their gumboots, their straw hats and practical drawstring pants. One of them had even brought a dog, an admittedly photogenic fox terrier named Digger. The Herald Sun had excelled itself with the headline ‘Digger’s Rebellion’.
He should consider himself lucky nobody had brought a herd of dairy goats or rare-breed pigs.
Boutique housing development my arse, thought Bob.
On the other hand, there was the grieving widow to consider. Her feelings carried some weight with the Board and it was not pure sentiment, either: she owned a fifteen per cent share in the company. How would she react if her husband’s pet project were to be scotched? The one he had died on the very site of?
He would have a quiet chat with Tina Kapanadze, he decided. Sound her out.
Next week in The Plot:
Chapter 14: Not Quite Right
Courtney is concerned by her husband’s behaviour. Mel Hanrahan does some digging.
Disclaimer: The people, organisations and events described in this story are entirely the product of the author’s imagination; they bear no intentional resemblance to real-life people, organisations and events. Some locations are based on real places, however the City of Corymbia and its localities are inventions of the author.