Carter's War - 23. Chapter 23

Avery geared down as the Rover plunged through a small stream, negotiating the rocks with surprising agility for a motor vehicle of its age. Robert paid it little mind as he geared up again, his foot depressing the accelerator. The large green box-shaped four-by-four leaped ahead again propelling itself onwards through the countryside estates he had bought on the edge of Lake Ontario.

Lisa Sternosti sat impassive in the seat beside him, making no comment as the industrialist pushed the Rover to its limits. She could sense his frustration, his anger over the Tri-Tech merger. There was little that could be said to calm him down. He had been forced to gamble the futures of some of the finest men and women he had working for him, some of them his friends, and he hated himself for it.

The Rover crested a rise and followed the ridge a short way before slowing to a stop at the edge of a sheer cliff face. Below, the grey Lake Ontario boiled and frothed in its ancient fury, roaring its anger as it threw itself against the rocky cliff face. It was into the rain that the aging media mogul exited the vehicle, pulling with him a worn baseball bat and a bucket of balls.

He slipped off the overcoat he was wearing and tossed it lightly into the vehicle, bending down to scoop up one of the balls. He tossed the small white globe into the air, swinging the bat and connecting with a stout crack that sent the ball sailing through the air, arching slowly and gracefully down until it vanished with a splash into the waves below.

"I thought you preferred to golf," Lisa said, as she struggled to get out of the Rover and perched herself on the bonnet of the vehicle to watch him curiously, her eyes seeming to sparkle in the haze of the Canadian storm.

"I do," Avery replied sending another ball to its watery grave, "but golfing in the rain, off a cliff in Canada, isn't considered eccentric, I think some might call it a national pastime. I have a need to be different."

"Well, you could have always asked maintenance to open the roof of the corporate tower and let you golf that way, rather than drag me to the middle-of-nowhere place you call home so you can change your sporting habits." She reached into the pocket of her oversized jacket and pulled out a thermos, pouring herself a cup of steaming tea. "If I catch a cold when I'm pregnant, Mister Avery, not even the RCMP will save you."

Another crack, the ball spinning upwards this time as it sliced towards the right finally bouncing off of the edge of the cliff sending a shower of loose gravel plummeting with it. "You sound like my ex-wife. She used to make similar threats whenever I dragged her along on an eccentric quest."

"Ah, you're feeling nostalgic." She drank heavily from her cup, watching him hit his ball, wondering how the old man must have looked as a child in this god-forsaken country. She stopped herself; there was no imagining Avery being that young, the man had probably come out of the womb with more wrinkles than his grandparents. "Does this have anything to do with Bruce's late night antics?"

Avery turned to regard her with his stern eyes, "Bruce screwed me, and now I'm stuck in a deal that will make or break my company."

Lisa nodded, "You have taken risks in business ventures before, more risky than this, because you knew it had to be done. When you wrested control of the firm from old Mister Woods..."

Avery murdered another ball cursing loudly, "There was something I could do about that situation. Here with this one, I am stuck waiting behind a desk, praying that I will still have a company tomorrow, regretting ever starting the damn firm in the first place."

"You are the president of a multinational firm, arguably the richest man in Canada, and considered to be the businessman of the year. Your innovations to communication technology help people all over the world, and it breaks the monopoly the States and Japan have held for decades, an overwhelming success. Your humanitarian programs make parts of the world actually a decent place to live. Because of you, there are no children dying in the streets because there is no food to feed them. How exactly are you helpless?"

"I should have been able to prevent this." Avery turned the bat over in his hands, "you know this was a gift to me from the staff when we sponsored the celebrity baseball game at sky dome? Now that was a moment, just before the big Nortel layoffs, where we were still riding high on the IT industry, nothing could touch us. I taught that pup of a CEO of theirs a lesson he would never forget. I actually felt like I was doing something worthwhile."

"And after that?" she asked. "You accomplished a lot out there despite the fact that you lost a small fortune then. And you turned Avery-Woods around when other firms were laying off thousands of people. You stood firm and said no layoffs, a decision that went against your own board of directors, but you got them to agree to it. It staved off a recession, you have to be proud of that..."

"Neville Chamberlain did the same," Avery responded. "He negotiated peace with Hitler in 1938, a peace that only served to delay the inevitable. The last little while I have seen everything I believed and fought for fall apart because I trusted someone, and what do I find myself doing now?"

"You are not going to find the answers to your crisis of faith standing on a cliff on Lake Ontario, although you might discover a new variant of the cold virus."

Avery nodded pulling out the cell phone in his pocket, "Get me Bruce Weippert."