80 % stake. She had the authority to sell those assets, even up to such a large amount, according to the company’s explicit and very detailed rules.
She was not obliged by the company’s rules to obtain the board’s approval, nor was she obliged to notify them of the sale, before or after. That is why she was able to do it in secret and well in advance of the meeting. She was quite surprised, though, that none of them even got a whiff of such large sales. Some gossip should have reached their ears. It showed how detached they were from the business world at the very least and, perhaps, the world at large.
It was as if they lived in an extremely protective cocoon. But as she thought that, Elli knew that she was so feared and respected that nobody would dare to say anything or allow anything to leak about those transactions. The vow of confidentiality was sacred and would be respected. It was not just a matter of a reciprocal ‘my word is my bond’ pact.
And even if the buyers were publicly-listed companies, they could not reveal the deals until after this particular meeting. It was all included in the contracts with draconian penalty clauses and a whole array of legal consequences that would have come raining down on them, if they stepped out of line and breached them. And none of those transactions required the approval of the purchasing companies’ shareholders.
Nobody could afford to find themselves on the wrong side of Elli. Let them think or speculate that Valchern may be in trouble. It didn’t matter. As a private company it was not at the mercy of the markets and, furthermore, it was cash rich with ample resources and did not need any credit or loans from any banks that may be reluctant to lend, acting on rumours of financial difficulty, rumours which could though be easily crushed by access to the company’s accounts. And she had engineered a blanket on the media too.
But Manoukios would have none of it. He was not yet convinced. He had to fight his corner. That was exactly what he was, cornered. And those who are cornered become desperate. They don’t think things through and just lunge out and make mistakes. He had to win his rapidly waning support back. He had to make one last desperate effort.
‘With what money?’
‘The money is there. And let me remind you that you have no choice. You and your conspirators went against the company rules, against the best interests of the company and that is a punishable offence. I believe that the sentence or penalty, as you may prefer, is appropriate and it is within the power accorded to me by the rules to impose.’
Manoukios was standing alone and isolated now and he knew it. He finally realised that he had been defeated. He said nothing more and sat down looking at his notepad. He could not believe he had lost. He had been confident it had all been meticulously organised.
How could he have underestimated Elli so much? Maybe he was getting too old, losing his touch. If Elli had heard his internal debate she would have commented: “What touch? You never had any to begin with.”
As it dawned on the other shareholders, and hitherto supporters of Manoukios, that Elli would not be bluffing and could indeed do what she declared and held all the cards, they started to bicker amongst themselves, blaming Manoukios and each other. As a result of this split jury in their mind, they had been outmanoeuvred, had been rendered unable to agree to take any decisive action. Their precariously-and-loosely-held-together pact had proved to be very short-lived indeed. Now, with them out of action for quite a while, Elli was free to pursue her plans for the company.
CHAPTER 42
Constantinople (Istanbul)
Present day
The private jet, a converted Boeing 767, landed in Istanbul’s airport in heavy rain and strong gusts of wind. Elli was not scared in the least. Not for her the flimsy light-as-feather smaller private jets. She saw the sense in a properly-sized plane, a necessary luxury.
In a weird way the discretion of the treatment she always expected and received guaranteed her the desired anonymity. In no time, she was in a limousine on its way to the Ayia Sophia Square.
She was dropped off at one of the minor entry points to the great church. She went in, down some stairs, then up through another flight of stairs, to the spot where only a few days earlier, Katerina and Aristo narrowly escaped certain death.
There was nobody around. What was about to happen was no sight for untrained eyes. She looked at the image of St. George and closed her eyes. St. George extended his arm and grabbing it, she was pulled into another picture that was inside the depiction on the wall and which was the Emperor Justinian in 537 A.D. standing next to his great church.
Justinian took her by the hand and let her inside the church where she saw the two keys hanging from the huge chandelier above the central space of the church. Justinian lowered the chandelier and gave her the keys.
Within minutes she was outside Ayia Sophia and standing before the entrance to the Topkapi, which gleamed in the sunlight that broke through the clouds, all guns blazing.
Her destination was a section of the former Ottoman palace that housed important manuscripts, an extension of the Topkapi’s famous and very valuable library.
She saw the glass case as she stood by the entrance and walked to it briskly. She stood there staring at an Ottoman manuscript, which provided the detail on the Sultan’s ownership and wealth. There was nobody around. She inserted one of the keys. She heard a click and at that moment the room disappeared to the outside world.
A Ruinand pair following her didn’t know what hit them. They were locked out, if you could call it that. But how could the room have disappeared? Ahead of them the corridor continued and disappeared in the distance with no end in sight, no obstacle in its way. They walked the distance to make sure and they went right through where the room was supposed to be.
They looked at each other furious with themselves. They should have followed her inside even if they, no doubt, would have given away their presence. Their mistress, the Marcquesa, would have them suffer a slow and painful death for this fiasco.
Once the room was off public radar, the glass case flew open. Elli carefully and gently pushed the manuscript to one side to get to a hidden compartment underneath. She inserted the second key and opened it. Inside was an even older parchment than the manuscript resting above it, signed by not one but many Sultans, Kings, bishops and archbishops throughout history.
In there it was safe and invisible, in full public view, but in reality hidden from anyone but her who only knew of its existence. Public display guaranteed the object’s safety from intrusion by prying eyes well trained in the art of sightseeing.
On the parchment was a list of sites that she personally owned. The sites were mining deposits of an element called kalbendium that fuelled the time travel devices she used. Only she knew of the element’s existence which was mined, extracted by specially designed machines and processed in top secret facilities using top secret unique technology in a protected sterile environment.
Kalbendium was calm and glowing when in a static condition, but volatile when handled and the process converted it into a usable stable form. Its volatility precluded the use of humans in its extraction. Maintaining secrecy was another reason. All the names of her predecessors who had owned and controlled those deposits were written by hand at the bottom of the parchment during the initiation process once each new head of the company and the family was appointed after the death of the previous occupant of the post whose duty was to groom his successor.
One day Aristo’s name will be added to this list. Satisfied, she returned the parchment to its place and locked the compartment. She then put the Ottoman manuscript on top and locked the glass case. She put the keys in her handbag and calmly but purposefully walked out of the room, pretending to be looking at various exhibits like a visitor on her way out of the Topkapi.
