Beaune.
He had heard whisperings that Cannondale was in Brussels, and that he had eaten at La Truffe Sympatique. Claude, the owner, was a good friend of Eatwell’s. One phone call was all it took to get some clues as to what the dinner was about. In addition, Eatwell had a member of his staff track down details on Cheyenne.
This Yank, Cannondale, clearly had his sights set on grabbing Cheyenne – a Dutch company, a European company, after all — for himself. And if Eatwell let it happen, a golden nugget of technology born in Europe would be lost to the Americans. Once upon a time, the winds of technological advancement had blown from East to West – from Prague, Budapest, Florence, Heidelberg and Antwerp to the New World. But those winds had changed direction some time ago, and that ate at Eatwell. The things they talked about in Silicon Valley – things he didn’t entirely understand – were now exported the other way - to the Grandes Places of Europe.
Cannondale had taken his 30% investment in Cheyenne. Soon, he would, no doubt, make his play for the whole company and Eatwell would be forced to make a decision. It wouldn’t be easy saying no to Cannondale, but that’s exactly what Eatwell intended to do. He didn’t even need to look at the facts. In this situation, facts were irrelevant.
Eatwell’s speech in Paris had achieved the desired effect, which was to whip up the European business community into a frenzy - to make them feel proud of their creative heritage, and then shame them for having accepted their fate as technological “also-rans” to the Americans. The head of the European Commission — the former Prime Minister of Portugal, José Manuel Barroso – had decided that the European Union was going to take growth and innovation seriously, and Eatwell was going to see that Barroso made good. Eatwell wanted to reinforce the fact that the winds of technological change could once again be reversed.
Bernard, Eatwell’s butler, served more wine as Eatwell watched a woman through his dining room window. She was letting her black Bouvier relieve itself against a horse-chestnut tree out on Avenue Tervuren. Brussels could be dreary, but it was Eatwell’s home now. It had been for a while. He had come a long way from the stone walls of an English boarding school. If there was one thing he had taken with him from those days it was the concept of self-preservation. That lesson had come early, among the fresh faces of the next generation of the entitled. Boys became men and went on to run banks and companies and law firms and rarely spoke of that day when they were introduced to that enduring public school tradition of being bent over and used as toast racks by bullying seniors.
Come to think of it, the concept of self-preservation went back even further for Eatwell, to the days before boarding school, during the war, when, as young boys, Eatwell and his friend, Menno Kuipers, were scooped up by their parents and moved to Bletchley Park.
It was a lonely place, Bletchley, especially for a kid. The adults would disappear for hours at a time to solve their mathematical riddles in rooms where children were not invited. Eatwell and Kuipers didn’t actually mind. It gave them more time to play. But somehow they knew, even at that young age, that they had all been on the side of unquestionable good. It was so binary — good vs. evil, very little grey. What was done to defeat fascism had to be done and the hell with the nasty little compromises. The world had depended on people like their parents. Eatwell and Kuipers had grown up, and now the world depended on men like them.
Eatwell was a heavyweight in Brussels, and Kuipers had become the Minister of Transport and Waterworks in the Netherlands. Waterworks dealt with the more technical aspects of the country’s complex system of dikes and canals. It was a seemingly mundane corner of the Dutch bureaucracy, but the dossier was broad and powerful. It
He had heard whisperings that Cannondale was in Brussels, and that he had eaten at La Truffe Sympatique. Claude, the owner, was a good friend of Eatwell’s. One phone call was all it took to get some clues as to what the dinner was about. In addition, Eatwell had a member of his staff track down details on Cheyenne.
This Yank, Cannondale, clearly had his sights set on grabbing Cheyenne – a Dutch company, a European company, after all — for himself. And if Eatwell let it happen, a golden nugget of technology born in Europe would be lost to the Americans. Once upon a time, the winds of technological advancement had blown from East to West – from Prague, Budapest, Florence, Heidelberg and Antwerp to the New World. But those winds had changed direction some time ago, and that ate at Eatwell. The things they talked about in Silicon Valley – things he didn’t entirely understand – were now exported the other way - to the Grandes Places of Europe.
Cannondale had taken his 30% investment in Cheyenne. Soon, he would, no doubt, make his play for the whole company and Eatwell would be forced to make a decision. It wouldn’t be easy saying no to Cannondale, but that’s exactly what Eatwell intended to do. He didn’t even need to look at the facts. In this situation, facts were irrelevant.
Eatwell’s speech in Paris had achieved the desired effect, which was to whip up the European business community into a frenzy - to make them feel proud of their creative heritage, and then shame them for having accepted their fate as technological “also-rans” to the Americans. The head of the European Commission — the former Prime Minister of Portugal, José Manuel Barroso – had decided that the European Union was going to take growth and innovation seriously, and Eatwell was going to see that Barroso made good. Eatwell wanted to reinforce the fact that the winds of technological change could once again be reversed.
Bernard, Eatwell’s butler, served more wine as Eatwell watched a woman through his dining room window. She was letting her black Bouvier relieve itself against a horse-chestnut tree out on Avenue Tervuren. Brussels could be dreary, but it was Eatwell’s home now. It had been for a while. He had come a long way from the stone walls of an English boarding school. If there was one thing he had taken with him from those days it was the concept of self-preservation. That lesson had come early, among the fresh faces of the next generation of the entitled. Boys became men and went on to run banks and companies and law firms and rarely spoke of that day when they were introduced to that enduring public school tradition of being bent over and used as toast racks by bullying seniors.
Come to think of it, the concept of self-preservation went back even further for Eatwell, to the days before boarding school, during the war, when, as young boys, Eatwell and his friend, Menno Kuipers, were scooped up by their parents and moved to Bletchley Park.
It was a lonely place, Bletchley, especially for a kid. The adults would disappear for hours at a time to solve their mathematical riddles in rooms where children were not invited. Eatwell and Kuipers didn’t actually mind. It gave them more time to play. But somehow they knew, even at that young age, that they had all been on the side of unquestionable good. It was so binary — good vs. evil, very little grey. What was done to defeat fascism had to be done and the hell with the nasty little compromises. The world had depended on people like their parents. Eatwell and Kuipers had grown up, and now the world depended on men like them.
Eatwell was a heavyweight in Brussels, and Kuipers had become the Minister of Transport and Waterworks in the Netherlands. Waterworks dealt with the more technical aspects of the country’s complex system of dikes and canals. It was a seemingly mundane corner of the Dutch bureaucracy, but the dossier was broad and powerful. It
Similar Books
