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Sam grinned. “Not someone specific, because many of those we’ve worked with in the past are busy with their own projects. But we have the resources to get whatever we need. Let’s put Selma on it and see who she can find. She can coordinate with the research vessel. Anything they don’t have she can get flown in.”
Remi took Sam’s hand. “He may look like just another pretty face, but every now and then he comes up with a good idea. I agree. Let’s get some serious talent here as soon as possible.”
“When is the boat supposed to be here?” Leonid asked.
“Tomorrow evening.”
The Russian rubbed his face and studied Sam and Remi. The dark circles and bags under his eyes lent him the appearance of an unhappy raccoon. “Then all you need to do is keep from getting killed for twenty-four hours or so while I endure the final tortures of the damned scuba instruction.”
Remi smiled. “Sounds like a good plan.”
“Particularly the avoiding being murdered part,” Sam agreed.
“No more driving around in the boonies,” Remi warned.
“My appetite for adventure is completely sated at the moment. One brush with death per day is more than enough.”
“The problem is tomorrow’s another day.”
“Right, but technically we had two brushes today: going off the cliff and being shot at. So that takes care of tomorrow, too.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Remi said, her tone skeptical.
Sam smiled. “I’m a changed man.”
“Sure you are, Fargo. Sure you are.”
CHAPTER 16
Sydney, Australia
Jeffrey Grimes leaned back in the executive chair and eyed the others in the conference room, the air filled with the aroma of half-drunk coffee, tension, and frayed nerves. The end of another quarter was upon them and the publicly traded conglomerate they operated was going to report a loss—the third straight quarter the company had hemorrhaged money due to its international subsidiaries.
Grimes was a fixture on the Australian business and social scene, legendary for his high-risk strategies that had, until now, turned out to be winners. But the increasingly difficult financial landscape and tightened access to investment capital had proved more challenging than any he’d encountered and several spectacular flameouts had gutted the company’s balance sheet as well as investor confidence.
Going public had seemed a brilliant idea two years earlier when the Australian economy was booming and money was flowing like water. The initial offering had raised almost a billion dollars. But Grimes’s personal stock was locked up and his net worth had collapsed in the wake of bad bets in the mining and petroleum sectors when the company’s valuation dropped by half overnight.
The decline triggered covenants in the company’s debt agreements and now the wolf was at the door, the former golden child of the Australian investment community struggling for survival.
Grimes ran his fingers through his thick salt-and-pepper hair, worn longish and combed straight back, and sighed. “Can’t we push some of the bad assets off into a subsidiary, at least for this quarter? You know, the usual game of musical chairs?”
His chief financial officer, Curtis Parker, shook his head. “The regulators will be all over us. If we transfer anything off the balance sheet, there will be fifty snoops demanding to know where it went and that will open a whole new can of worms. No, whether we like it or not we have to take our lumps and hope we can turn it around next quarter.”
Grimes frowned. “What about accelerating or slowing depreciation on some of the underperforming investments? Or why don’t we simply claim an inflated value for the assets with a straight face, get an accounting firm to sign off on it, and ignore that in a sale we’d get ten cents on the dollar?”
Parker gave him a humorless smile. “Because we aren’t a Wall Street bank. We don’t get to play those kinds of games. We’re expected to behave honestly.”
Grimes tossed his pen on the table. “Fine. How much of a hit are we going to take on the stock? Give me your worst-case scenario.”
“Fifteen percent. Which will recover within a week—I’ve lined up some buyers to come in and stabilize the price at that level and they’ll hype it once they’ve stopped the fall, turning a handy profit in the meantime—they’ve already established short positions to finance the purchases.” Parker glanced at a spreadsheet. “But we’re going to have a hell of a time with our credit lines. It’s looking increasingly like we won’t be able to service our debt within another two quarters and nobody’s going to want to be last in line to get paid.”
A beautiful brunette in her early thirties poked her head into the conference room an
d caught Grimes’s eye.
“Yes, Deb?” he asked.
“I have a call on your private line. Said it’s urgent . . . that you’re expecting the call?”