We’d had a call. A strange call. It was from California – we could see the incoming number. They said they had an interesting and potentially lucrative business proposition to put to me and they wanted to meet as soon as possible. I said I’d fly down and meet them and they’d said Monday would do which was only two days away. Flights were arranged and they said we’d be met at the airport. They also asked me to keep the meeting with them quiet.
After the weekend, Steve and I got on the flight to San Fran and sure enough there was guy waiting to meet us just outside ‘Arrivals’ – the ‘meet and greet’ card held by their driver at the airport said ‘VeezaCard’ which was strange considering they said the project was top secret! We were whisked off in a stretch limo to a Mexican restaurant some place just outside San Francisco where the rest of the Veezcard team were already downing frozen Margaritas. I stupidly allowed one of them to choose my food, not being a connoisseur of Mexican cuisine and was ‘treated’ to chicken and chocolate sauce which was absolutely disgusting. Why do Mexicans combine their main course with dessert!
We chatted a bit during the meal, introductions and the like and then we went a few blocks to a bar where Bruce Springsteen used to play when he was first starting out, not that I was impressed with that, and then the wine started to flow. Californian of course.
It appeared that he Veezacard guys had been monitoring our business and had been informed by somebody that our software was ‘state of the art’ and they wanted to buy it so their treasury operation could use it in the investment division. The conversation, at a very high level, continued well in to the night, however despite my increasingly inebriated state, I knew there was a bigger fish to catch. Rather than sell them the software, why didn’t we manage their funds – apparently there was a spare $100 million to invest!
At about 2am, I felt duty bound to pay the bill at ‘Bruce Springsteen’s’ bar but when I went to sign the check, making sure I had my Veezacard prominently on display, I didn’t have a pen and the barman couldn’t find his. The girl at the bar who I had been talking to didn’t have one either so I was forced to ask Paul, my Veezacard opposite number if he had one, which he did. I noticed it was quite a nice roller-ball with the Veezacard logo and ‘Project Trident’ engraved on it.
Once I’d signed the voucher, I turned back to Jemimah who had taken quite a shine to me – I think! I said
The next morning we had to meet Veezacard in a conference suite in a hotel which my office had booked. My head was still spinning (I’d only had about 3 hours sleep) and it was absolutely lashing down with rain. The cab only took about 10 minutes to travel the ten or so blocks and as Steve paid the fare, I ducked out of the cab and ran into the hotel.
Once inside, orange juice and smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels were the order of the day before the meeting started. I wanted to make sure we wanted for nothing so I dashed down to reception to give them my card and to tell them that we needed the best possible service. But then as I went to get my card, I realised that my wallet, which I knew I had put in my suit inside pocket when leaving my hotel, had disappeared. Bugger!
When I got back to the conference room, I made my excuses and started phoning round my banks and credit card companies to cancel my cards. Steve was the software man in any case and he’d probably take till lunchtime giving Veezacard an overview of the system capabilities. It was all a bit of a show of course, we had no intentions of selling them the software but giving them the key attributes of the system and some, but not all of the algorithms, would be the sprat to catch the mackerel.
I couldn’t taste the lunch of lobster, deep fried crab pieces and salad, for thinking of the creep who would probably be spending his (or her) way round San Fran with my cards. But in the afternoon session, I put my personal problems to the back of my mind and sprung the surprise on the Veezacard guys – no sale of the software but we’ll manage your funds for you.
Initially I thought they were going to leave as Paul signalled to his guys to go outside but they just wanted a couple of minutes to discuss this ‘excocet’ as he called it.
When they were outside, Steve asked me if I’d noticed anything about Paul and his team. ‘Nope – regular guys’, I said. ‘Every one of them is gay’, he said. ‘Every single one of them – all ten of them’.
When Paul and his team re-entered the room, I watched them with renewed interest. And there they were – all the discreet and some not so discreet signs that they were gay. The touching of each other’s arms when talking to each other. The hands on the hips when trying to make a point. Steve was right – 100% correct. How come I hadn’t noticed? As far as I was concerned it didn’t matter one jot, just as long as they bought my plan.
Paul said that this new approach would need to be discussed with the Treasury guys and called the meeting to a halt but not before he reinforced the message that the project was absolutely top-secret. Their newish President wasn’t a fan of doing anything outside the company and if word got out either about buying the software or managing some of their funds, Paul would be for the high-jump. I reassured him and we called the meeting to a halt.
I couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel. I just wanted to crash out for several hours.
I downed a large G&T from the mini-bar and lay on the bed, fully clothed. What seemed like hours later but was actually only about 30 minutes from when I lay down, I was awoken from my slumbers by my room phone ringing. I could hear the screaming voice before the earpiece even touched my ear. ‘What the fuck have you been doing?’ I recognised Paul’s slightly camp voice. ‘What are you on about Paul?, I asked. ‘I’ve just been summoned to a meeting with the President and his first words were, ‘who the fuck is Nigel Smarther-Blair and why do the FBI want to speak to him and what the fuck is Project Trident?
Eventually, I managed to convince Paul that I had no idea what he was on about. I’d never spoken to his President, I had no idea what Project Trident was and why did the FBI want to speak to me? I said we’d better meet later that night.
Paul gave me the number the FBI had left and after calling it and having been told to get down to their office, I dashed downstairs, jumped into a waiting cab and a couple of blocks later, I entered a rather grubby building. I explained at a sort of reception that I was to meet a Sergeant Joel Schmitt and a few seconds later, a huge guy came out of a door and grabbed my hand and shook it.
‘Is this yours?’ he asked holding up my black leather Cambridge wallet.
To cut a long story short, my wallet must’ve fallen from my pocket when I left the cab that morning. Amazingly, of all the people who could have picked it up, Sergeant Joel Schmitt of the FBI had spotted it lying in the rain and so started a rather clever, but short sequence of events.
There was nothing in the wallet to say where I was staying and nothing which allowed Schmitt to trace me to my office as I kept my business cards in a separate holder. But there was a business card from a Jemimah Parker – the girl at the bar the previous evening. Schmitt had phoned her and she’d said she had no idea where I was staying but she had a pen which I'd left in the bar and said that I worked for Veezacard and I was on the Trident project! Schmitt had then phoned Veezacard and when the telephonist heard the letters ‘FBI’, she had put him through to the President whereupon Schmitt explained that he needed to trace one of their employees, a Nigel Smarther-Blair! The President had then called Paul into his office and laid into him big time.
Later that evening I explained the whole story to Paul who I anticipated would be fuming. Over a bottle or three of Californian Chardonnay we resolved our differences. I apologised for dropping him in it with his President, albeit unknowingly, and Paul announced that when he’d explained what Project Trident was, his President was quite enthusiastic about an external company managing some of their funds and wanted the project to proceed as fast as possible. It was music to my ears – and all because of a borrowed roller-ball pen and a girl’s business card!
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