DON'T DOUBT. DO.

4AM.


Never a good time, but the best time for doubt. In the middle of the night, the barely active mind can sift through the unconscious and dredge up a thousand excuses for failure, details that might go wrong, regrets for things done or left undone,  worries about the future or dreams that may never happen.


It is a time to glance over at the clock, and groan. There is almost nothing good about 4AM.


Except.


Sometimes in the midst of the miasma of self examination, an insight can be had.


Sometimes a pattern can be discerned through the fog of semi-consciousness. Sometimes a eureka moment can pierce through the gloom, a pinpoint of light from off in the distance.


Of course. It is so simple. So obvious. The word doubt itself.


It is an anagram. 


Rearrange the letters.


DO BUT.


Doubt is doing, but doing at half speed. Not being fully engaged.  Looking while leaping. Being a spectator in your own scene. Letting fear rule. Stopping nature but added a comma where there should be a full stop. Second guessing. Thinking about the past instead of the present. Doubt, is doing, but with an unnecessary addendum. 


Doubt is doomed to failure. 
 
Want to know what a champion thinks of doubt? Martina Navratilova, when asked what made a champion, said total commitment. Prompted to clarify, she said, it's like with ham and eggs. The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed. Undoubtedly. Totally. Unequivocally. No but.


That is why Nike uses as its slogan Just do it. Do without asking why. Get to the point where you trust yourself totally, where your mind, heart, body and soul meld into one, where you strip off the But from Do, leaving the essence of your being.


Forget the voice inside your head at 4AM, and get some rest for a new day.


Don't doubt. Do.

A LIFE WITHOUT PrOblEMS....IS NO LIFE AT ALL

What did you see when you read this title?  


Did you think that this is an impossibility, that all lives are full of problems, and to think otherwise is naive and deluded? 


Or did you notice that the real intended meaning lies hidden amongst the letters?


Read it again. The capital letters only this time.


For hidden beneath the problems which are inevitably a part of the human condition, of trying to exist in the temporal, physical, and spiritual world at the same time, is poetry. 


A life without PrOblEMS is no life at all.


And that is what makes us human.


You can't define poetry. You can't just summon up poetry unless there is a reason, and usually that reason is a feeling...a moment of pain or pleasure or insight or appreciation.


A word.
An image.
An emotion.
A frustration.
A contradiction.


You cannot describe poetry, just like you cannot describe love. It just is.



I have loved hours at sea, grey cities
The fragile secret of a flower
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour
First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.

Sara Teasdale


I don't know Sara Teasdale from Adam. But I do understand her....somehow....for in a few words, she gave me heaven for an hour.



I have no idea why she wrote this, or when. I do not know if she was beautiful, or old or young....whether she had a happy and complete life or one that was full of regrets, of chances not taken, of hours of pain alleviated only by few sublime moments. I only know that she can feel, and that she can tell others about it. I know that she can tap into my spirit, if only briefly.


We leave little behind us in life. A few friends. A family if we are lucky. Memories that quickly die. We can leave words however, and the right words can live on forever. 

WHAT THEY MEAN TO SAY: Coded English

So much of English...I mean the real English spoken in England, is delivered in code. The language is a very subtle dance using coded signals that may mean precisely the opposite of what they seem. The typical British person wants, at all costs, to avoid controversy, confrontation, or commentary, at least in person face to face. In groups, this subtlety is dropped and a pack-of-hyenas mentality takes over as hapless prey is ripped to bits (not surprising from the country that brought you Prime Minister's Question Time in Parliament or Lord of the Flies). I am also not talking about the media, for the media is the most open, clever and vicious in the world, and can get away with the most amazingly scurrilous headlines or commentary which in most places would be considered libelous. This in spite of the fact that the UK is the libel capital of the universe. Nor am I talking about the hooligan element. They are just as in-your-face as your basic gangsta rapper.


I am talking about the way sentences are constructed in person, face to face, mano a mano. Have no idea what this means? Humour me.


Let's start with some prefaces to sentences which one hears daily.


With the greatest of respect...
I hear what you're saying...
At the end of the day....
To be fair....
Without putting too fine a point on it...
I think we can agree....


I think we can agree that all of these starts to sentences are no more than preparatory jabs designed to soften up the belly before delivering body shots which are in fact the opposite to what they sound like they mean. The real meaning of these are hidden in the subtext, and woe betide the gullible foreigner who takes them at face value.


Herewith a primer:


WHAT THEY SAY
WHAT THEY MEAN



With the greatest of respect…
I have little or no respect for you (ie. you're shite and you know you are)



I hear what you're saying...
I have no idea what you are saying and in any case it matters not a whit since I am right



At the end of the day…
A meaningless phrase, having nothing to with the day, or indeed the end of it. Used as filler.



To be fair....
This is my opinion, and fairness has nothing whatsoever to do with it. Also used a filler



Without putting too fine a point on it...
There is no point, even down to a nanometer, fine enough to underline how I am right and you are wrong, or otherwise put, you're shite and you know you are



I think we can agree....
I think I can agree, what you think doesn't enter into it, and anyway, you're shite and you know you are



The Japanese are well known for sucking their teeth, nodding their head, saying Yes, and meaning Yes, that question is difficult....Yes, I heard you and may or may not do what you want or have asked me, when they really mean: you're shite and you know you are. The English are the same. It is just a different form of subtlety.


We are all human, after all.

THE SEVEN PILLARS OF PERFORMANCE

I once was in Athens, and asked a taxi driver why he thought that the Parthenon had stood for more than two thousand years. An amateur architect, he said because of two things: balance and simplicity. 

That got me to thinking. What makes a successful design, or indeed any successful venture?

The answer is in the simplicity of the design, the clarity of purpose, the attention to detail, and most importantly, balance.

A strong venture is a like a strong building and should be approached as such.

What are the characteristics of strong performance?

A strong foundation based on a strong PRINCIPLE, a clear PURPOSE, and an unselfish PRIDE in work and achievement.

A balanced approach to the seven pillars which support the structure of any enterprise:

• The People who are the central support to a company--including employees, customers, suppliers,  family, and friends.
• A commitment to the continuous development  of Products which will stand the test of the harshest critics and inspire loyalty from their biggest fans and which form the cornerstone of any company
• An attention to the components which make up Profit-- the generation of sales, the control of costs, the strength of capital structure and financing
• Investment in Plant -- the working environment, the technology, and the infrastructure which enable employees to extract the maximum productivity and pleasure from the work that they do.
• A Process which is continually refined to simplify development, production and delivery of products and takes into account both the internal and external needs and desires of the company, its employees, its customers,  and the environment
• Systematic Planning for the future which is structured but dynamic, which tries to anticipate but can respond to a sudden change in market realities
• A clear-headed and consistent approach to Problems which inevitably crop up--whether or not they stem from internal failings or external forces--and which demonstrate an honest and decisive path towards their resolution

Is this a recipe for success? Well maybe not, because luck and timing also play their part. But if these elements are not considered in their turn as part of a whole venture, the venture is doomed to failure. Forget one key element- a lack of capital, treating your employees or customers badly, not planning, ignoring problems, not investing in plant, abandoning long term principles in favour of short term gain,not taking pride in your work or indeed not recognising the pride that others take in theirs, forgetting the purpose of the whole enterprise...and the whole thing goes down the tubes.


A very bright accountant once said to me: Ce qui se concoit bien, s'annonce clairement. That which is well conceived can be clearly explained.


Construct things with the same aforethought as the people who built the Parthenon, and you have a chance, a small chance, of success. Forget balance and simplicity, and the importance that the foundation and each pillar plays in supporting the infrastructure of performance, and the structure will crumble eventually.

CORPORATE SURVIVAL

I have survived in large corporations. Or not. Well, to be honest, the corporations (large banks) haven't survived (not my fault really, a global trend if you haven't noticed). In the past this used to be a surprise. At least it was to me. Now, however, in post Credit Crunch purgatory, it is a surprise if they DO survive.

Anyway, over the years I have come up with some observations about the process of survival, and have distilled it to the following four short sentences.

Get up.
Show up.
Put up.
Shut up.

Sad but true. I have also been, both as a boss and an underling (where I find myself again), a keen observer of human nature. I have decided that in the main, modern corporations don't really give a rat's ass about management, despite what the self-help books may say. Jacques Cousteau, the famous french oceanographer, once said: "Dans la mer, il n'y a pas de cruauté, seulement l'angoisse de survivre."   In the sea, there is no cruelty, only the terror of survival.

So it is in corporate life. There is always a bigger shark in the pool, or if you are the shark, then the hunter pack of shareholders, the press, or the market, which is faceless, emotionless, and brutal.

The large corporation is staffed by the silent majority, who have learned that the path of least resistance is the answer to survival in the pool. So much of corporate life is about how you are perceived, and a performance loop is created (see above) which can be a virtuous or vicious circle. Most people can't be arsed, and thus sleepwalk through the process, trying not to rock the boat, anesthetising their feelings with drink, iPods, or a collective shrug of shoulders (the yeah-whatever syndrome).   If for one moment, a boss, preoccupied with his own battles above him, took a minute to consider how to enter into the performance loop of each employee, then people might be happier and more productive.

But the world is not like that now. Longevity counts for nothing. You want loyalty, go get a cocker spaniel, said a boss in Salomon Brothers in the 1980s, itself swallowed by Travellers which was merged with Smith Barney and then Citibank and then almost imploded before being merged with the US government. This is merely symptomatic of an attention deficit disorder planet with the memory of a flea and the morals of a whore, or a general impermanence and lack of values.

Everyone knows that we need little to survive, but spend a lot of our time fighting for the excess that never really makes us happy. Sad but true.

But most of us, when faced with the deep pile of caca which is the daily grind, just learn to keep our head down and stare straight ahead, and hope the baying hounds of greed don't notice. Survival, but at a price, requiring the guile of a fox.

WEEKLY MARKET UPDATE

For a little over a year, I have been writing a weekly market update at work, a commentary on world markets, centering mostly on the UK. Check them out.  

Santander Weekly Market Update

The Magic 100%

I went to a seminar over the weekend- a team building exercise given by a professor and former hostage negotiator, George Kohlrieser. I learned a lot about how to approach people (something I almost never had reflected upon), and a little about some of the weaknesses (call them character traits) that I have which may prevent me from winning as much as I would like. Then I returned home, and got an email this AM from a friend which put a different spin on the whole thing.

First the seminar. There were about 50 or so people. Multicultural, multilingual, varying ages. All were bankers, but upon closer examination some had unusual backgrounds. A national ballroom dancing champion. Marathoners. Musicians. Someone who wanted to run a hotel, or be a chef. Working mothers.

The point of the exercise was to understand a bit more how you interact with people, your colleagues and customers, within the organisation and outside. This was done with a mix of a lecture, slides, some videos, discussion, and role plays.


If I had to sum up what I learn it would be the following:

1. Listen.  MY BAD
2. Remember the question. MY BAD
3. Think before you speak. MY BAD
4. Stick to 4 sentences. MY BAD 
5. Cut to the chase.
6. Find common ground with whomever you are engaging with.
7. Learn to control your emotions.

and something which, oddly enough, was not mentioned but is perhaps one of the most important factors in all interpersonal relationships:

8. Laugh at yourself. MY GOOD


I used to come up with all sorts of what might charitably be called psycho-babble when I ran a company, trying to distill many ideas into simple thoughts, and a lot of those ideas resonated within me while I thought what I learned at this seminar. In fact, the exercise dredged up a lot of feelings and thoughts which had long been submerged.

Then I returned home and got the following email. I'll call it the Magic 100%, and it is mathematical proof of what we were talking about.....perhaps in a cynical way. Unfortunate, my friend Liam Leckie who sent it to me did not attribute it to anybody, so I cannot give credit where credit is due. So kudos to the anonymous cynic. 

THE MAGIC 100%

What Makes 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life?

 Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:
If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 (%).

Then:
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K  =
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

and
K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E  =
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

But...

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E  =
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

And,
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T =
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%

AND, perhaps most surprisingly.
A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G =
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%


So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty, that while

Hard Work and Knowledge will get you close, and
Attitude will get you there...
It's the
Bullshit and Ass Kissing
that will put you over the top.

Har har har. Good one, eh?

This is certainly the attitude of many of the footsoldiers who have to put up with the pronouncements of the generals who are far from the action and don't understand what is needed every day to achieve the results the generals want. I am not sure whether George would have approved of this (hostage negotiation not really being a laughing matter) but what the hey?

But back to the team concept.

I remember a situation in the company I ran where selfish and irresponsible behavior had threatened the makeup of the team, and I wrote the following. As I said it resonated within me listening to the people speak at this seminar (as time goes on we forget even the things we said or did), and I went back and read what I wrote those many years ago and found it just as applicable today, tomorrow or whenever.

T is for Talent and Trust

E is for Enthusiasm and Empathy

A is for Attitude and Appreciation

M is for Motivation and Membership.


Every individual on the team must HAVE the Talent to make a difference, the Enthusiasm to make it happen, the Attitude to overcome obstacles, and the Motivation to persevere, and every individual must FEEL a Trust in his teammates that they can be counted on and will deliver, Empathy for their situation, their point of view and their weaknesses, Appreciation for their accomplishments, and a feeling of Membership no matter how great or seemingly insignificant the role.


A Team is never eternal; it is a holy creation of the Moment.
 
 
So thanks to George for giving my psyche a nudge, and to some of the exceptional people (like Daniel and Charles and many others) whom I met there.

PICTURES FROM SARDEGNA

THREE BLIND MICE

The afternoon sun plays tricks on the mind, creating an imaginary mousehole on a colourful italian terrace in Sardegna From GalleryDEricPettigrew

GLOBAL WARMING

We are all trapped in a bubble of gas in a barren universe From GalleryDEricPettigrew

ROSSO

Only colours catch the eye in the glare of the sun From GalleryDEricPettigrew

OCHRE AND BLUE

From GalleryDEricPettigrew

OF COURSE, OF COURSE

A horse obligingly poses on an early morning walk From GalleryDEricPettigrew

BINARY CODE Chapter 20 A False Talisman

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"You remember the time we almost hit the submarine?" I was asking Dewey as we crossed the Cooper River Bridge heading towards Mt. Pleasant and Sullivan's Island. "What was that, dear?" asked Dewey's wife Elisabeth. "You've never told me this one." "In fact it was the same threesome," said Dewey. He looked through the rear view mirror at Tess, who was in the back seat of the minivan along with Elizabeth. His three kids were in the back seat of the Toyota, two rambunctious boys and a little sister momentarily distracted by their books. "Where was Stokely that time?" he asked, not directing his question particularly. "That was the summer he was in Europe, wasn't it Tess?" I offered up. "I think so," answered Tess. "So what happened?" Elisabeth was insistent, used to our detours and sidetracks. I started. "It was August, really hot and hazy, and we decided to go on a sail on Dewey's Hobie from Sullivan's Island all the way into the harbor. We were out there somewhere near Sumter, and ahead of us in the haze I saw what I took to be an island with a flag flying from a narrow building on it. You know how sometimes the sky is blue but around the water it's foggy?" I was turned halfway in the front seat, talking directly to her. She nodded. "Anyway, it was the first time I had been sailing in the harbor, and I didn't really know if there was another island in it or not. I had only heard of Fort Sumter." "I was at the bow and Tess and Dewey were astern, talking to each other. I called back at Dewey. What's the name of that island?" ‘"Island?" he yelled back. Dewey chimed in. "Some island. I looked up and saw this Skipjack class sub bearing down at us. They were still a couple of hundred yards off, but they were steaming straight for us, and us for them. There wasn't a lot of wind, and by the time we headed off they were close enough to yell at. There were a few of them in the conning tower waving their hands like crazy and yelling at us, "Assholes!" or something like that." We laughed with the luxury of those safely recalling the folly of youth. Out on Sullivan’s island at Dewey’s family house, things hadn’t really changed that much since we were teenagers. Of course now there were several rows of houses and not a spare lot in sight, but a lot of the old clapboard houses which I remembered from my youth had escaped the ravages of the hurricane which blasted the coast several years before. His house had been in his family for years, passed on through three generations to him when the elder Mr. Ravanel died several years back. We sat on the porch, looking out at the waves and sipping margaritas while the kids played inside. Dewey read through the Shareholder’s Agreement and what Tess and I had written about our talks with Mary and our theory about MacEnzie and his friend Doctor Riley. Dewey reacted like the calm, reasoning lawyer he was. He had his fingers pressed together under his chin, his lips pursed in thought. “Well?” I asked him. “ And you want me to tell you what to do...or what can be done.” “It would help us...decide which way to go.” I said, looking over at Tess as our eyes met in confirmation . Dewey spoke slowly and deliberately. “What does Stokely think about all this? It will have an effect on your whole family.” Again our eyes met, and Tess spoke up. “Uh...we haven’t told him...” she said, “....yet.” Dewey’s eyebrows arched and he ran his tongue over his lips slowly as he realised that the two of us were in on more than just this discovery. “Oh.” he said, letting this fact float in the salt air, carried by the bouyancy of the sound of waves crashing in on the beach. “I see.” “Well, let me put it this way,” he continued. “There is a statute of limitations which runs out after forty years. What is more, all the people involved are long since dead, and proving anything will be problematic...at best. “ “What about the Shareholder’s Agreement?” I interjected. “Doesn’t that give us...I mean Helmut’s heirs, some sort of leverage?” I caught myself trespassing on territory that wasn’t mine, and looked over at Tess, who seemed not to mind. “Don’t you think it’s possible that Tess’s family still has rights to the ownership of UBI? Especially since perhaps MacKenzie killed their great grandfather just to take away what was rightfully his? Isn’t there some way legally to get back at them?” Dewey looked skeptical. “What are you trying to accomplish?” he asked. “Take over UBI? Become multibillionaires?” Tess spoke up. “Justice, Dewey. The assholes always seem to get ahead in this world. Wouldn’t it be nice if they don’t get away with it for once?” Dewey shook his head. “That particular asshole seems to have gotten away with it quite nicely. He’s long dead and I bet he died rich and happy. Even his family no longer owns the company. I’ve got shares in UBI for Chrissakes. So do you probably, and practically every fund manager and Belgian dentist. Don’t you think this might just be like tilting at windmills a bit?” He looked at us, expecting a reply. The waves crashed in the background, a steady syncopation accompanying a silence that gave him his answer. Tess and I said nothing but just looked at him and then at each other, realising without speaking that we were serious. “Well,” he said finally. “Who would have thunk it fifteen years ago? We were just kids then, weren’t we?” He shifted in his chair, uncomfortable with his role as arbiter in a struggle between his friends and an as yet anonymous foe. “ It was all such a lark back then. Everything was. We never played for keeps.” I realised suddenly that he had quietly been knocking back margeritas twice as fast as the rest of us, and that the calm steady voice of the lawyer masked a tiredness, perhaps the tiredness of upholding a perfect and unsullied life. “What do you want me to do?” he sighed at last. “Can you look into it?” I asked. “Can you see if there is a legal basis for a claim against MacKenzie’s heirs? You’ve got the Shareholder’s Agreement and we have Mary as a witness... even if it will be difficult to prove.” Dewey had a pained expression on his face. He looked over to his wife for guidance. Her words surprise him. “Why not, Dewey? What have you got to lose? At least this beats defending big corporations against product liability suits.” “Okay,” he said finally. “We should tell Stokely though. When is he coming back?” The Brains Trust had never really been disbanded, I thought to myself. There was still a leader of the band, and nothing would ever change that. Not even growing up. Tess spoke in a tone that only a sibling could produce. “Stokely’s in Asia until next week,” she said. Dewey grunted non-committedly. “Why don’t you do a little research before then? “she asked. “That way we’ll know whether it’s worth pursuing at all before we tell him.” This was unassailable feminine logic at its best. “Okay,” he said. “Monday. Monday I’ll look into it... Who knows?” he added. “Stranger things have happened.” Dewey suddenly raised his margerita and said with mock seriousness: “To victory over injustice, villains, and....” He left the sentence unfinished. “And what?” I asked. He reached forward, lightly tapping the glass five times on the table. “Best of luck to you all in this quixotic quest!” He tapped four times more. On the final tap he brought the glass down too hard, cracking it in the process. The snap code had been resurrected from the dead. “And UBI!” Tess broke in, still proficient at the code after all those years. I looked at the glass. The crack ran down from the crusty remains of the salt around the rim, stopping at the frontier of the heavy base. The opaque yellow liquid stayed in, peering out through a curved lens on the verge of bursting. “To victory over UBI!” I repeated, clicking first Tess’s and Elisabeth’s glasses, and then touching Dewey’s ever so gently. He didn’t notice the crack as he picked it up. “Careful,” I said. “Go softly.” “Yeah, softly.” Dewey drained the glass and slammed it down on the table. This time the crack didn’t hold and a triangular piece fell out, leaving behind a jagged edge which sliced the meaty base of his thumb. “Damn,” he said. “Damn.” He dabbed at the blood with a napkin. The triangular wedge of glass had falled inward to the bottom of the glass with its most acute angles pointing like an arrow at me. I bent down to pick it up, and the thought that went through my mind was that this was a bad omen, a false talisman pointing its bad luck in my direction. This thought followed me out to the kitchen, lodging itself in the pit of my stomach while I disposed of the glass. There it remained, a warning that went acknowledged but unheeded.

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BINARY CODE Chapter 19 The Theoretical House

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Proving a theory is like building a house. If the foundation of logic is solid, the frame of analysis sound, and the angles of support symmetric, then hanging the doors and windows and walls of proof on the skeleton of supposition is merely a question of application. We were sitting in the Richmond Airport. I was going to catch a plane back to New York, and Tess was heading back south to North Carolina. She held my hand easily, naturally, as if we had been this close our whole lives. The silence between us carried just as much weight as words. "What are you going to do?" she asked. This was a question with a thousand and one meanings and twice as many answers. "What do you mean? Today? Next week? Over the long term? About us?" I said it good naturedly, and she took it the same way. She smiled. "It wasn't a loaded question. Start with today..." "Today..." I said. "Today I am going to figure out a way to get back to see you. That means thinking about everything else in my life ..." She picked her head off my shoulder and looked straight through my eyes. "And yours..." I added. "You know, Evan. You don't have to hurry into anything. I'm not going anywhere." I knew what she meant by that. "Neither am I, Tess," I said. We sat in silence, watching people move by at different speeds and with differing degrees of care on their faces. An airport is a good place to view the full gamut of human emotions. In the anonymity of transience people let down their guards. "What about our mystery?" she said. I looked around as people milled back and forth, oblivious to us or to what we were talking about. "It all revolves around the doctor. I think he's the key. Without his complicity my idea makes no sense. Since he obviously wasn't from around Matthews, it's probably going to be easier to find him out about him in New York." I squeezed her hand. "Power, money, and pride. It's all there, Tess. People haven't really changed much over the years. They still do bad things for stupid reasons. And a lot of times they get away with it." The plane was called, cutting short our conversation. I looked at Tess and one of those seemingly incongruous thoughts passed through my head. "Isn't it strange?" I asked her. "What?" "I calculated it once. When you're forty years old, you've lived over 21 million minutes. Yet out of all that time, there are really only so few that count for anything, so few that have any bearing on the direction you take in life, and only two that start you off or end it all." "Oh, that sounds ominous," she said. "No, I didn't mean it like that. I meant these past few days. They were important moments...a new beginning, Tess. We're going on a trip...and I wonder where we'll end up." "As long as we're together," she said. Suddenly a sad smile creased her face. I nodded with my eyelashes. I kissed her and held her tightly, her body a perfect fit against mine. "I'll call you tonight," I said, and as I entered the tunnel at the gate I looked back at her, her shoulders sloping towards the floor, her arm half-raised in an attentuated girl scout salute, a fake pout on her face masking the sadness we both felt. I slept on the plane. When I awoke the lights of Manhattan were ambling past as we banked towards LaGuardia. My mind raced back to earlier that day at Valhalla, when the two of us were trying to eke out a few last moments on the hammock. It's just like God, I had thought to myself. Every so often he lets us all climb out of the valleys of despair, but he makes sure that the slog up the mountain is long and hard. And when we get to the peak, we can't stay there too long. The air is too rarefied, and even though the view stretches endlessly before us, it's an illusion. We'll have the memory, but already we have to start the descent just to survive. My mind and heart were hiving off in two directions like jet fighters at some airshow. Had Tess been there, perhaps I would have ignored my mind and just followed the whims of my heart. Back alone in the chill of the Northeast however, the warm hand of my curiosity was leading me, and I pressed forward to confirm the theory quietly percolating in my subconscious. My phone call to Tess that night was long and frustrating, the magic of technology making her voice seem right next to me, dangling the false closeness maddeningly out of reach. The next night's call was different. "Guess where I've been today?" I began. "Where?" she humoured me. "I went up to New Haven to the Medical School to look through the AMA files they have there..." There was an excited tone in my voice. "And?" Tess was impatient. "Doctor Riley was pretty famous himself. There's a wing of the hospital named after him." "A wing? Which hospital?" "The Yale Hospital. I visited it myself. There's more..." I was being cruel. "Guess what kind of wing?" Tess was losing patience. "Go on, Evan. Tell me." "The Malcolm Riley Cardiology Wing." "Cardiology..." Tess exhaled. "It gets better. Guess where the funds came from to build it?" She was ahead of me. "UBI." "You got it. Every year until he died in 1936." "Jesus." Tess exclaimed. "I also found out his specialty in the journals," I continued. "He was one of the pioneers of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. He was the first person to use adrenalin to restart hearts. This guy was a clockmaker, Tess. He could start or stop the ticker at his whim. He would know if it were a heart attack, or more importantly, how to make it look like one. And who was going to argue with him in a small county hospital in Gloucester?" There was a stunned silence at the other end of the phone. What had seemed a theory suddenly seemed to make sense. "Faust." Tess seemed to spit out the word. "What?" I hadn't heard what she said. "Making a deal with the devil," she said bitterly. "The bastards." "Can we prove anything?" There was firm resolve in her voice. "Proving a murder eighty years on when the murderers are long since dead will be next to impossible and useless anyway. But it doesn't matter anyway." "What do you mean?" Tess asked, quick to respond. "We have ammunition, or rather your family has ammunition. We may not be able to get back at MacEnzie or his pal, but we can hit his family where it hurts. The Shareholder's Agreement, Tess. It's real alright, and we have Mary who can back it up with what she said about your great-grandfather's words to MacEnzie. We are partners again. Again. The agreement at 1819 is valid. Valid enough to make MacEnzie want to kill old Helmut." "So you think that was the main reason?" "An inventor starts a company with a businessman. The company does well. The businessman sees the possibilities way beyond their initial success. Big isn't bad, he thinks. He buys out the inventor, but he realises when the inventor's gone that he still needs his expertise. He brings him back again, but this time the inventor has wised up. He wants more of a say in the business side. Big egos clash. Something has to give, and the businessman is ruthless enough to win out and get rid of the old thorn in his side." I let that sink in, and then pressed on. "He's smart enough to get away with it, and he eases his conscience by giving some of the blood money for good deeds and by enshrining his dead partner as an icon of the twentieth century. And when nobody ever produces the missing shareholder's agreement, a myth is born. The company grows up around a doctored history, and bad deeds are erased." There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the phone. Something between a gasp and a sigh. "Oh me....."she said. "I think you're right." The enormity of it all filtered through the silence on the line. "What are we going to do?" she continued. "We know a lawyer, right?" I offered. "I'll call Dewey and get his opinion..." and then thinking ahead, I added: "Do you think you can go to 1819 and meet me in Charleston by this weekend?" "What should I tell the others? My parents? Stokely?" My brain was suddenly spinning. Between the two of us, a theory was only a theory. Brought out into the open, it would become set in concrete, either as truth or as the ramblings of an active imagination. It would have far reaching implications, both for us and for the family. We were about to cross our own little Rubicon, and rightly or wrongly, I preferred that we do it alone. "When does Stokely return?" Oddly enough, this was the first time we had talked of Stokely since going to Valhalla. "Not until next week," she replied. "Do we wait?" "What do you think?" she came back, the ball in my court. "I don't think either of us want to tell him over the phone with him in Asia, do you? He won't be able to do anything from there, will he?" "No." "And do you want to tell your parents or the others? It is still a theory." "Just us then." "Just us." As simple as that, a club had been created, a secret club with only two members. Perhaps it was the wrong thing to do. Perhaps in retrospect we should have co-opted the others, especially Stokely, by bringing them in at the beginning. I after all, was an outsider. I had nothing to gain. I just wanted to be with Tess. In any case, it was set. I called Dewey, and told him that the two of us were going to be in Charleston for the weekend. He sounded bemused that we were coming as a pair, but was as hospitable as ever, suggesting we all stay out at their house on Sullivan's Island. I didn't tell him anything. Tess and I agreed that we should collect our thoughts by each of us writing down independently what we had done from finding the agreement to our conversation with Mary. That way we would be sure to have a story to tell Dewey that was organised and as close to the truth as our memories would allow. Tess agreed to fly first to Washington, make a copy of the Shareholder's Agreement, and meet me Saturday morning in Charleston. We had built our theoretical house. Now we would live in it.

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