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So there they all were, standing on the production floor, which was the only space big enough to hold everyone. Ms. Delaney had suggested that the board members and senior leadership not stand apart from everyone else but rather mingle with the crowd. The result was the director of sales next to a mail clerk, the chief financial officer next to one of the cafeteria workers. It was particularly novel to see CEO Noar Graf standing among the workers. Matteo wouldn’t pretend to know anything substantive about the watch industry, and Noar had been wooed from Blancpain, so Matteo would defer to the man on matters of business. But Matteothoroughlydisliked him. Noar would never be one of those American-style CEOs who worked in cubicles alongside his staff or invited them to one-on-one lunches, but even so, he struck Matteo as unjustifiably self-impressed. It was satisfying, somehow, to see him looking as uncomfortable as he probably felt as he was forced to mingle with the masses.
Matteo continued to survey the crowd. He would have thought he knew many of Morneau’s employees. He had, after all, been responsible for getting quite a few of them their jobs. Matteo considered a word to the king about a family he knew needed some help part of his extended mission—which he still could not believe he’d told Ms. Delaney about. He caught the eye of one suchwoman he’d assisted in this manner, Florina Ulmer, who had fallen on hard times when her husband, who had been employed at the factory, died several years ago. Matteo had gotten her a job at Morneau as a payroll clerk. She smiled and waved, and Matteo nodded in return.
Seeing everyone amassed showed Matteo that he didn’t know as much about Morneau’s staffing as he’d thought. That, combined with Ms. Delaney’s questioning revealing that he didn’t know how much the company’s workforce had grown, was unsettling. He liked to think he knew the ins and outs of the company, even though he had no direct hand in its doings. And he certainly knew the company’s history, given that it was so intertwined with Eldovia’s. He carried in his vest pocket his great-grandfather’s Lange 8522, a simple but timeless white-gold pocket model from the late nineteenth century. His grandfather, who’d been given it by his own father, had given it to Matteo directly, and as such it had survived Matteo’s father’s indiscretions. Matteo had wondered if perhaps that was why his grandfather had skipped a generation with the heirloom. Perhaps Grandfather had known, somehow, what the future would bring.
But, he reminded himself, just because he didn’t personally know everyone who worked at the company didn’t mean he didn’t care about them. He wished there were a way he could protect them from what was coming.
He glanced at Ms. Delaney. She was dressed in another suit, this one a mid-toned gray. She wore a black blouse underneath it, and the shoes of death from the airport. Her hair was up in the same style of chignon as yesterday. She was so dark and so... tightly coiled. She reminded him of a snake about to strike.
And yet her demeanor could be so easy and friendly. With people other than Matteo, anyway—witness breakfast with the king. The juxtaposition was disarming. Or would have been if Matteo had been the type of person prone to disarmament. He was not easily manipulated.
Princess Marie arrived at Matteo’s side. “The translator we arranged has not arrived.”
He pulled out his phone. “I can find someone else.”
“I was hoping you might do it.”
Oh, for god’s sake. Translating for the angel of doom was not part of his vision for this meeting.
“I would do it myself,” Marie went on, “but I fear a member of the board translating for the consultant the board itself hired won’t look right. And you have such a high degree of fluency in English.”
He sighed. The princess’s conclusion was sound, and Matteo often functioned as unofficial translator when one was needed. “Very well.” He made his way to Ms. Delaney’s side. “Apparently your translator isn’t here. I’ve been pressed into service.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I need you to translate exactly what I say.”
“Of course,” he said, with a snappishness he hadn’t intended but couldn’t seem to control.
“I don’t need you and your ‘extended mission’ getting creative with my words.”
“Shh!” He glanced around. Thankfully, no one had heard her.Whyhad he told her about that? “Most people here have at least some degree of fluency in English, and several are entirely fluent, so even if I wanted to, as you say, ‘get creative,’ I would be caught out.”
“Good. You’ll just have to find some other way to sabotage me.”
“I’m not sabotaging you. I merely want you to understand that Eldovia is—”
“I think we’re all ready, don’t you?” She smiled brightly as she interrupted him. Again. She waved at the king, who was a few feet away, signaling that she was ready for him to introduce her. After he’d done so, she began. “Thank you for coming.” She smiled widely at the crowd, but as she turned to him expectantly, her eyes narrowed.
Matteo barely managed to refrain from growling as he translated. “Vielen Dank, dass Sie gekommen sind!”
“When I come in to do work on a company, I like to start by getting everyone together and addressing the elephant in the room: Are you going to get laid off? The answer is maybe.”
A collective gasp arose from the English speakers in the room that Matteo, to his chagrin, joined in on. So much for not being easily manipulated. He translated, and there were more expressions of shock.
“I know that sounds dramatic.” She went on to review the history of the project, and they slipped into a rhythm whereby she spoke a sentence or two, glanced at him, and he translated. Soon, he had internalized her speech patterns and was able to anticipate when she would break for the translation. They worked well together. It was too bad that everything coming out of her mouth made him bristle.
After she’d finished her review, she said, “My core operating principle on a project like this is that gossip is the enemy of an efficient, productive process, and without an efficient, productive process, we can’t get an optimal outcome.”
“What’s an optimal outcome?” someone shouted, a man Matteo recognized as the union steward from Morneau’s smaller plant in Riems. Ms. Delaney was scheduled to make a visit there late next week, but the man had muscled his way into this gathering.
Ms. Delaney did not seem to mind being interrupted—perhaps she was so prone to doing it herself, she could tolerate it from others. “Good question. This, in a nutshell, is where we stand now: the luxury watch industry is on the decline. Your company makes luxury watches. In English, there’s a turn of phrase that goes: ‘Change, or die.’ It’s a bit of a motto of mine, and it applies here, I’m afraid.”
Oh, for god’s sake. That was a bit melodramatic. But he dutifully translated. “Eine Englische Redewendung, die ebenfalls ein bisschen mein Motto ist und hier leider zutrifft lautet ‘Ändern oder Sterben.’”
“And your company represents sixty-six percent of your country’s GDP. In the plainest possible terms, I see my job as helping Morneau, and by extension Eldovia, change. So the best outcome is change.”
Goodness. Melodramaticandoversimplified. Ms. Delaney really had an entire arsenal of nonsense at her fingertips, didn’t she?
Thinking about her metaphorical fingertips made him think about her actual fingertips. They were as darkly red as ever. Matteo knew very little about nail lacquer, but he did recall his sister going through a phase of polishing her nails weekly and complaining about how easily her polish chipped. He wondered how Ms. Delaney preserved such an impeccable finish.
