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Clayton nodded and sat back down on his side of the conference table. “No offense, my friend, but I’d rather she had come. There’s quite the party in Boston tonight. It’s something my old fraternity brothers are hosting, a masquerade ball, and I wanted to invite her to come with me after the signing as my honored guest.”
Zahir’s jaw clenched before he worked it free. “I’m sure that Fairuza will be much aggrieved to hear she missed something like that. Do tell me where it is, though. Perhaps I’d find it an amusing way to pass the time after all these negotiations.”
“Of course. It’s at Club Rouge downtown. The owner’s an old friend. You’ll love it. It’s one of the biggest bashes in Bean Town.”
“I’m sure,” Zahir replied. He was glad that his sister hadn’t come.
Fairuza was no fool, and Clayton’s reputation as a womanizer was well known. She’d have been bored to tears humoring him and whatever pathetic come-ons he managed at the party. If she stopped being bored, she might very well have kneed him in the groin and endangered all future business dealings. Zahir, however, preferred to make his trips a mix of business and pleasure. There were so many advantages to being a young, wealthy royal, and no matter how often or vigorously his sister teased him for it, Zahir intended to enjoy all of them.
“Now that we’ve gotten through all the pleasantries…” Clayton fumbled. The other corporate titan may be self-absorbed, but even he seemed to understand when a meeting was floundering. Of course, implying he’d wanted to take Zahir’s sister out didn’t help. Perhaps there was still too much frat boy left in Clayton for him to have much common sense left. “I think you’ll find the contract is well and in order. I spoke additionally with my own advisors and lawyers, of course, pursuant to our last conversation.”
“Oh I’ll bet,” Zahir said, taking the thick sheaf of papers and frowning as he thumbed through them.
Technically this tête-à-tête was a preamble to the official meeting with their lawyers and secretaries present. It was a show of good faith so that neither of them would feel ambushed when their legal teams were present. However, as Zahir read through them, he realized that some of the stipulations he’d wanted had been dropped, and Clayton had certainly rethought his own points. Angered, Zahir shoved the papers back across the desk. It was a struggle to remind himself to keep his voice down.
“Are you serious? Do you really expect to try sneaking in completely new terms?”
“I wasn’t sneaking. I let you reread them and your attorney would have in a few minutes. I just was thinking that this whole merger is about what you need. You want access to the pipes and other steel that my company can provide you. What exactly am I getting out of this?”
“Ten percent stock options, and a hefty paycheck for the immediate pipe order we’re going to be filling as an entity,” he said, his voice still low and menacing.
Clayton chuckled, and Zahir wondered if he’d perfected that laugh in a mirror somewhere before this meeting, trying to get every action and tactic down pat. As if any of that would snow him. “Well, that’s the deal I want. I get thirty percent of controlling interest out of this merger or I walk.”
“That would be insane. The oil side is worth billions more, and I’m not about to let you get that much of a toehold in my organization. There’s no telling what you’d do, how many other partners on the board you’d try and buyout. Suddenly, I’d find myself out on my ass in Dubai. You really thought that if Fairuza were here as my second she’d let this bullshit slide? You want any deals, it’s ten percent or I walk right now.”
The other man shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “If that’s how you feel, but I know your whole infrastructure is in dire need of repair. You acquiring me is easier than finding and contracting out all the work you need, and half the all-American firms around here aren’t interested in overseas work with the Middle East anymore.”
“They’re interested in money. You’re hardly the only game in town, McDermott,” Zahir reminded him.
“No, but I’m the best and the fastest and continued delays mean dropped profits. Do as you will, but I want my thirty. Otherwise, I hope to see you at Rou
ge. Have a good day, Zahir.”
He stomped out then, before he could do something that would get him kicked out of the country.
***
“Brother, brother, as much as I am with you about how terrible Clayton McDermott is and how little I trusted him to begin with, I also don’t need to be shouted at or hear every curse word you know across five languages,” Fairuza said, her voice a calming anchor in the middle of the storm roiling within him.
“The asshole totally re-inked the deal. Does he think I’m delusional or high in some way? Only a fool would sign that. I’m not that desperate.”
“No, I don’t suppose we are yet, but we had another oil leak on the outskirts of the UAE. One of our oldest wells is coming across at the seams. We do need his steel. His company is the fastest and the best, and if we could have come to accords on the merger, we’d be exporting to our own competitors their hardware for drilling.”
“We can replace.”
“I don’t want to be slow,” she said. “We save this merger even in the next month or so, and we’ll be able to stay competitive with Hussein Oil, but they’re gaining on us fast and our bad press and faulty equipment is why.”
He wanted to chuck his cell phone against the wall, but it wouldn’t help his situation. Besides, it wouldn’t feel at all like throttling Clayton McDermott would have.
“Then you suggest I just go back to the negotiation table with that rat bastard? I have no interest in it, and he’s clearly not budging. He’s heard the press as much as we’ve been fielding it.”
Fairuza sighed on the other end. “There’s always more than one way to skin a cat, as the Americans say. They’re direct and vulgar, but they’re not wrong. We do have to renegotiate with him.”
“And we’ve been at this for months, and he pulls out such a ridiculous and crazy counteroffer.”
“Then you negotiate after you have the right dirt on him. Clayton has a reputation but I bet he’s about as cavalier in his business dealings as he is with his women and everything else. We just need to find an employee we can hire away, who can be our best information source. Dig for a few weeks or so, come back to the table, and have everything about him we need. If he doesn’t comply, then we just release whatever unflattering information we get about him from the helpful ex-employee to every blogger and paper on the planet.”
“That’s actually…it’s sneakier than I’d like.”
