“Yawn,” said his wife as she packed her bags. “Trouble is, you are General Generic, Mac. There’s nothing exciting about you. Not your looks, not your opinions and for sure not your personality.”
She told the divorce court that MacGregor was such a monotonous personality that living with him amounted to emotional cruelty. The courts agreed to the tune of $2.9 million annually.
“She’s right, you know,” his mother told him on her deathbed. “All you ever cared about was money. You never did anything new with this company.”
“Except make it profitable,” MacGregor protested. “When Dad died it was almost insolvent.”
“Very mundane, Sherm, to insult my dead husband as I’m about to die myself.”
“Mother, you don’t mean that.”
“Oh, Adam,” said his mother to herself, “why weren’t you my son instead?”
Adam. Adam Fence. Cousin Adam ran the competing cereal company up the road.
Fence Flour Company and MacGregor Biscuit Company were launched by two half-brothers in 1887. Battle Creek, Michigan, soon became the breakfast-cereal capital of the world, and new companies came and went.
In the 1890s Fence Flour Company became the biggest of them all on the success of a special new variety of corn flakes that took the country by storm. Celebrities like Mark Twain and President William McKinley were enthusiastic eaters of Fence Patented Premium Corn Flakes with Sorghum.
But Fence had stolen the formula for this brilliant innovation from his half-brother, Gerald MacGregor. A patent-infringement suit achieved nothing for the MacGregor Biscuit Company, and a family feud lasted decades. It took World War II to bring about a hesitant reconciliation.
MacBisCo never quite made a name for itself, but was known as the place to go for cheap knockoffs of popular foods. It depended on periodic infusions of cash from the Fence family to keep it from closing its doors. Then Sherm took over and turned MacBisCo into a thriving business.
Somehow, he never felt appreciated. The Fences were the real stars in the family, even to the MacGregors. The Fences had the looks, the huge corporation and the hundred-room mansion. MacGregor’s family home had only twenty-six rooms.
Sherm MacGregor was irritated by it all. Then frustrated. Then angry. He carried around his anger for a lot of years until his mother laid on the last straw.
“Adam Fence?” he hissed. “The guy practically bought his MBA. He goes to the office two days a week. His lawyers run the company. He’s a pampered poodle. I’m the real deal.”
“Adam is a success,” his mother said. “He acts like one. He doesn’t sit in his office and push around papers. He travels the world.”
“He has three butlers.”
“He acts like a gentleman.”
“He’s a well-trained pretty boy.”
“He makes things happen, Sherm.”
“I can make things happen,” Sherm said. He showed her.
They buried his mother without ever knowing that Sherm had finally made something happen. He used a pillow to make it happen. There were no signs of murder.
“How’s that. Mother?” he asked the coffin. “It’s just the start. I’m gonna do what you said. Things are happening now.”
He started planning what was going to happen. Yeah, it was just more paper-pushing, but a guy had to be careful. You couldn’t just make big things happen. You had to plan for them.
MacBisCo was gonna get real big. Extremely, outrageously big.
Any day now.
“Where’s Sydney?” he demanded, stomping into the reception area.
“Right here, General.” A human weasel came scampering. “Didn’t know you were looking for me.”
“I told you never to call me General. And I’m not looking for you. I want Sydney, Australia! What is going on in Sydney, Australia?”
Sidney from HR shuffled his feet. “I have no idea, Gen—”
The silence was icy. “Get out of my sight. You’re fired.”
“But I’ve been here thirty years.”
“Out!”
The HR weasel scampered off. MacGregor found his receptionist glaring harshly at him.
“How long have you been here?” he asked Steph with a sneer.
“Long enough to think that I knew who I was working for. You used to be a nice guy. What happened to you, Mac?”
“I am Mr. MacGregor to you. Get me Sydney or I’ll get someone who can.”
She thrust the phone receiver at him.
“Talk to me,” he said into it. “How’s it going?”
“Everything is coining together. We have all arrangements made. Our man is ready to compete.”
“What about the party preparations?”
“All the decorations are in place. We’ll have some big surprises ready.”
“What about our man? He fit enough?”
“He’s fit, everything’s ready. I always come through, don’t I?”
“Yeah. Thank God I’ve got one competent man on my staff.”
MacGregor slammed the phone. “Now, there’s a man who knows how to get things accomplished,” he remarked, slamming the door to his office.
The foreman was in Australia, if not actually in Sydney. The Sydney office was just an encrypted relay to his mobile phone. You couldn’t be too careful. The foreman was a wanted man in more than thirty nations, and he was infamous for never getting caught.
A good foreman hired the right crew to do what needed done. The foreman knew all the right people, whatever the job.
His most important subcontractor in recent months was the Russian kid with the doctorate in bioelectronic engineering. The kid knew a thing or two about mixing chemicals and microwaves to create thermal dynamics. You could do a lot of-funny things with advanced thermal dynamics.
“Is that enough? It’s a big outback.”
The Russian kid lifted the handles of the wheelbarrow. It was full of heavy rubber sacks oozing blood. Testing the weight, he nodded. “It is enough. I go now.”
“Okay. Good luck.”
Petyr marched his cart to the dock, alone in the dark. Good luck, the foreman told him. The foreman was an American who talked too much. Petyr didn’t need luck, nor did he believe in luck. It was meaningless to say good luck.
“G’day, Pete.”
Petyr’s guide was outback trash—rotting teeth and powerful body odor. Like every other Australian, he said “G’day” whenever you met him. It was strictly for the tourists. The Australians were an ingratiating bunch. Petyr dumped his soggy load into the rowboat.
This guide had one attribute that made him usefuclass="underline" he knew this armpit of the outback very well. He knew where to find the crocs.
“What kind of experiment is this, anyway?” the guide asked as he rowed them deep into the swamp. Petyr ignored him.
“There’s a croc,” the guide announced finally.
Petyr donned a rubber glove and opened a rubber bag of ripe kangaroo meat. The chemical marinade had not slowed the decay. Not that the crocodiles cared. Petyr tossed the chunk into the water and the croc snapped it up.
“Nothing’s happening to the croc, mate,” the guide pointed out a minute later.
“Nothing is supposed to happen,” Petyr answered. “Go.”
The guide rowed him up and down the swampy channels. Finally he couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Well, you must be expecting something to happen, right? I mean, why give the crocs a treat for no reason.”
“There’s a reason.”
“Don’t have nothin’ to do with the big footrace, does it?”
“No,” Petyr lied.
“That’s funny. Never had anybody interested in Jaiboru Junction ever before. Now in the same week we got the footrace comin’ here and we got you boys doing experiments on our crocs.”