“At that salary, I’ll marry her on the spot.”
“Amy knows you too well to let you marry her. You’ll be happy with the new female hire, much happier than with Amy. Amy is a lady. A lady of untouchable honesty and integrity.”
“You clearly know her very well, ma’am.”
“Of course I know her well. Now back on task. Have the five assistants received their instructions?”
“They’ll march around like tin soldiers. I wasn’t a sergeant in the Marine Corps for nothing.”
“Okay, good. I want to see the five in my hotel around six o’clock. Tell them that they should arrive in their street clothes and bring their uniforms for a final dress check. Two seamstresses will be present to do last looks and to make any necessary alterations. And by the way, Mr. Beckford, you have done more and better work in the last two weeks than I would have ever expected.”
“I only followed your orders and commands, ma’am.”
“That’s true, but you know as well as I do that it’s possible to follow orders in many ways. Some of your ideas were actually excellent and truly original.”
“It was a pleasure, ma’am. No reason for eternal gratitude on your part. It was a pleasure, and plus it’s my job, ever since you picked me up off the street.”
“‘Picked up off the street’ is probably not the right expression. But if that’s what you want to call it, fine. The truth is you crossed my path at the right moment.”
“Let’s say I crossed the path of your Cadillac, ma’am,” Beckford corrected her, and laughed.
12.
Aslan was glad that she had spent several years in the world of illusions. The Senate committee’s conference room would have made any film director green with envy. The gentlemen of the Senate looked very dignified. These terribly honorable senators were first and foremost men, and so an intelligent woman like Aslan knew she had to sate the hunger left by their boring wives at home.
Aslan wore a dark blue, excellently tailored dress. The dress discreetly accentuated her curves, and the suggestiveness only made her more seductive. Amy was also wearing a dress, but one that flattered her figure more explicitly, especially beneath her hips. Not too much and not too little.
The five female assistants, who wore tasteful, quasi-military uniforms, were constantly in motion. They played their roles marvelously. Each one was prettier than the last. Their lips wore an inviting smile, promised everything. Two blondes, a redhead, and two brunettes.
Beckford, who was wearing a simple suit, attempted to insinuate that he was the actual brains of the operation. No one believed him, however.
The whole scene looked more like a film production than a serious hearing in front of the most venerable Senate; a hearing that was to deal with the existence of a company worth billions on the stock market. The half dozen cameras reinforced this impression when they began to roll as soon as the honorable senators entered the room and took their seats.
The audience noticed immediately that the senators were intent on appearing like movie stars on television. They pulled on their ties, smoothed their hair, and pasted onto their faces the stereotypical, paternalistic grins of career politicians. Such politicians only took up the heavy burden of representing the people and sacrificing their health and life for the good of the nation and of the general public.
First, the committee posed the usual questions. How had they founded the company and for what purpose? Of course, this information had already been entered into the register, and yet the gentlemen of the Senate needed to be told as if they had never heard of the company before.
Beckford explained that he assumed full responsibility for everything that had happened since the founding of the company, since he was the general manager of the company as noted in the official registry. When a senator asked him to name the majority shareholders, two other senators immediately leaned over to whisper in his ear. Even those at home watching on television could hear their advice: the senators feared that one of their friends might be implicated and they would not serve him well by revealing his name to the public.
Of the eighty-two million television sets in the country, likely forty million were tuned in at that very moment. Aslan had calculated correctly. If it were not for her Hollywood orchestration, if it were not for the girls in their tasteful uniforms, with their beautiful legs and winning smiles, several million viewers would have soon lost interest in the hearing, dense with legal jargon.
Someone ordered a forty-five-minute break. After the intermission, the gentlemen of the Senate entered the chamber in a dignified manner. As soon as they realized that the cameras were rolling, they struggled to wear again the paternalistic smiles that their voters knew so well.
Now they asked Beckford whether he believed that such a cross-country canal was feasible and how construction was to be executed. He explained that it was feasible.
How did he plan to cut through the Rocky Mountains?
“That is not my job. It is a matter for the American engineers,” he answered. “I am merely the general manager of the company in charge of administering the company’s assets to benefit the shareholders and of managing the business side of things.”
“Mr. Beckford, do you know the distance between New York and San Francisco?”
“It is two thousand five hundred seventy-one miles overland, in so-called statute miles, or two thousand two hundred thirty-four nautical miles. Ships calculate distances in nautical miles, which have been a recognized unit of measure since July 1, 1954.”
The interrogating senator cleared his throat, apparently surprised by the precision of Beckford’s answer.
Aslan thought to herself: “I put great effort into getting him to memorize these numbers, but he does deserve praise for doing it so well.”
“Mr. Beckford, do you know the height of the highest point of the Rocky Mountains?”
“It is four thousand eight hundred thirty-two meters at its peak.”
“And you want to overcome a rock wall of that height?”
“Of course not, sir. However, since the lowest point of the country is at most eighty-five miles from the highest, our engineers will find the best middle ground; because the lowest point, of which I just spoke, is seventy-four meters below sea level and that may give our engineers more headaches than that highest point.”
Well said, thought Aslan.
The interrogating senators began to shift nervously in their seats. Senator Drake, who had neither said nor asked anything up to that point, thought it was about time to show his voters how important he was. He grinned, hoping it would rattle Beckford, and asked a question tricky enough that he hoped it would garner the admiration of the viewers at home.
“Are you trying to tell me, Mr. Beckford, that you will abort the canal project if the costs of breaking rock are too high or if it indeed proves to be impossible?”
“We have a simple solution for this problem, sir. We just lift the ships across the rocks. Very simple, really.”
“You lift the ships across the rocks,” repeated the most venerable senator, exploding into a rumbling laugh, joined by his colleagues when he nudged them in the ribs. “And you claim this is very simple?” He changed his tone: “We are not here to listen to fairy tales.”
“I apologize if the gentlemen misunderstood. I meant to add that this is already the case with the Panama Canal and many others. Ships are lifted by sluices where necessary to cross points of high elevation. Of course, it is costlier in terms of time than if a ship could go straight through the canal. However, I wanted to point out that if you disregard cost, you can build a canal anywhere on earth, no matter what its length and no matter what obstacles stand in the way.”