Michael Ridpath: Final Venture

Craig glanced at it and then scowled. Suddenly his finger jabbed the page. 'What about this then? "Such approval not to be unreasonably withheld." I'd say you assholes are being unreasonable.'

I sighed. 'Your lawyers can spend money with our lawyers discussing that if you like. It doesn't really matter. We'll win, and even if we don't, there are two more clauses we can use. Face it Craig, if we don't want to put in more money, we don't have to.'

Craig threw the agreement on to the table and moved over to the window overlooking a car park, and behind that the small ravine that was Hemlock Gorge.

'You gave me your word that we would get the money, Simon,' he said quietly, his back towards me.

'I know,' I replied. 'I haven't been able to deliver. I should never have made you a promise it wasn't in my power to keep.'

'I've put everything into this business, Simon,' Craig said. 'And not just all my money. I gave up a good well-paid job with stock options at a successful company. I hardly see Mary and the kids, now. And I'm not the only one. What about those guys out there?' He waved his arm towards the small crowd gawping at us through the windows of the conference room. 'I promised them Net Cop would be a success. That if they worked their asses off for a couple of years, it'd be worth their while. And if I have to let them down, because you've let me down, I'll…'

He stopped himself. He stood silently for several moments, rocking on the balls of his feet. He was a tight bundle of muscle in jeans, trainers and a black T-shirt with a white dumbbell across his chest.

'Who was it, Simon?'

'What do you mean?'

'Which one was it? Who turned us down? Gil Appleby? Frank Cook? That woman, whatever her name is? The Indian guy?'

I was impressed with Craig's memory of the people who had heard him present earlier that year.

'It was a partnership decision. A consensus.'

Craig spun round. 'Don't give me that bullshit! You at least owe me the truth on this one. Now, who was it?'

He was right. Loyalty to the firm could only stretch so far. I owed as much, or more, to Craig.

'Frank Cook,' I said.

'The bastard! The fuckin' bastard!' Craig shook his head.

'Craig,' I said.

'Yeah, what?'

'You'll get the money.'

'Oh, please! We're screwed, and you screwed us.'

'It's a great opportunity for someone.'

'Oh yeah. Like, some other VC is just gonna leap in with a ton of money once you guys have pulled out. Come on!' Craig's face was filled with contempt.

'You can try. I'll give you the best reference I can.'

'Like they're gonna call you! They're gonna talk to Frank Cook, and you know what that cocksucker's gonna say.'

Craig was right. Frank would make clear his reasons why Revere had pulled out. Craig glared at me, his small blue eyes burning underneath the folds of his brow, his short hair bristling. 'You make me sick, you know that? Just get outta here.'

'Craig, I can help-'

'Just get out!' he screamed.

I nodded slowly and left, passing a series of angry, puzzled faces on my way out. I managed to keep my expression firm until I was safely outside the building. But as the door shut behind me, I slumped back against the wall, cursing Gil and Revere and myself. I vowed never to get myself into that situation again.

When I arrived back at the office, Daniel was scanning a list of stock prices on his computer. He had an ability to recall price histories for certain stocks going back years, just from looking at them every day.

Daniel and I had hardly known each other at business school. He did well in class, and he talked a lot about his investments. For the most part these seemed to be remarkably successful. He had an uncanny knack for spotting take-overs be fore they would happen, and for anticipating the rapidly changing fads of technology investors. He made no secret that his ambition was to make many millions very quickly, and he saw the stock market as the quickest way to that end. He had supreme confidence in his own investment abilities, but all the risks he took were carefully calculated.

Revere had liked the look of him, and he had liked the look of venture capital, although, as he once told me, this was as much because it would give him better information about the markets as because he thought he would make big money out of it directly.

'Craig wasn't too happy, huh?' He looked up from his paper. 'Did he try to kill you?'

'Nearly,' I said.

'Did you use that army self-defence shit on him?'

'No, Daniel. I just stood there and tried to be calm. I think I succeeded.'

'So, what are you going to do?' asked John.

I slumped into my chair. 'I don't know.'

'Tea?' John asked.

I nodded. 'Thanks.'

He was back a couple of minutes later with a cup of tea for me and some complicated latte-type coffee for himself.

'What about me?' squawked Daniel.

John struck his forehead. 'Darn it,' he said. 'I've forgotten again.'

'Huh!'

John looked over Daniel's shoulder at the stock quotes on his machine.

'Forty-three and a quarter, eh?'

We all knew what he was looking at. It was the same little number everyone at Revere looked at every day. The BioOne stock price.

'Edging up,' said Daniel.

John picked up a stack of papers from his desk, and dumped it on Daniel's. 'Enjoy.'

It was the 'cold deals' pile. These were the deals that arrived in the mail from the wide world of wacky inventors and crazy dreamers. There was a virtual pile, just as high, in our computer system, that had been received electronically.

Daniel groaned. 'OK. But I'm not going to read them. I find my rejection letter is so much more polite if I don't.'

'You have to read them. It's your turn this week. Gil insists.'

'All right.' Daniel grabbed the pile of letters and business plans, and began to go through it. 'They're all losers anyway.'

'You don't know that,' said John.

'Oh, come on. This is all crap.' Daniel tapped a business plan in front of him. 'Look, this is from a guy who wants to sell UFO scanners over the Internet.'

'I got that wind-power generation deal from the cold pile,' John said.

Daniel rolled his eyes. 'Precisely.' He had a point. Although John had been very excited about the wind-power deal, Gil had dismissed it out of hand.

'At least I've got an open mind,' John said.

'Wide open,' muttered Daniel.

I tried to concentrate on work, but it was impossible. I was being attacked from all sides. Firstly by Frank and the other partners, then by Craig. Craig I could forgive. Frank I couldn't.

Frank and I had immediately liked each other when he had interviewed me for a job at Revere. Once I had joined the firm, we had worked well together, and he had watched my developing relationship with his daughter with approval. It was only in the last six months, since the wedding, that his attitude to me had cooled.

He was besotted with Lisa, and had missed her badly when she had moved to California with her mother when she was fourteen. When she returned to Boston to work for a small biotechnology company they saw a lot of each other. At first I fitted into this arrangement very well, but somehow, once Lisa and I were married, things changed. Invitations to spend the weekend with him at his house by the shore had previously been haphazard and informal, but now they became more insistent. When I came too, I no longer felt welcome, and I was sure that Frank engineered times for him and Lisa to meet up when he knew I couldn't be there.

In a way, I understood his feelings. Belatedly, he had realized that once Lisa married me, he would cease to be the most important man in her life. This bothered him. And he bothered me. Lisa and I both worked hard, and I wanted to spend what little free time we had alone with her.