The Silent War

HUMPHRIES’S DREAMS

He was a child again, being led by the hand through the majestic marble-walled building where people stood in quiet little groups gazing at the pictures on the walls and speaking in hushed murmurs. The paintings meant nothing to him, nor did the names that his tutor whispered to him: da Vinci, Raphael, Degas, Renoir. Then he saw the picture of the beautiful sailboats gliding across a calm blue sea beneath the summer sun. When he refused to leave it, his tutor sniffed, “Monet. Quite overly popular.”

Suddenly it was Christmas, and instead of the painting he wanted, his father presented him with a new computer. When he started to cry with disappointment, his father loomed over him and said sternly, “You can look at all the paintings you want through the web.”

And then he was on the boat, the trimaran, and the storm was coming up fast and the boat was heaving wickedly in the monstrous waves and one of the waves broke over the bow and swept him off his feet. He felt the numbing cold water clutching at him, dragging him under, while his father watched from the tossing deck, his arms folded sternly across his chest, his face set in a scowl of disappointment. He doesn’t care if I drown! young Martin realized as he thrashed helplessly in the icy water. He doesn’t care if I live or die.

“That was foolish of you, Marty,” his father growled at him after a crewman had fished him out of the ocean. “Nine years old and you still don’t have the brains that god gave to a rabbit.”

Martin Humphries, aged nine, dripping wet and shivering with cold, understood from that moment onward that he had no one on Earth to protect him, no one to help him, no one that could ever love him. Not even his mother, drunk most of the time, gave a damn about him. He was alone, except for what and who he could buy.

“This is a dream,” he told himself. “This all happened long ago. Mother’s been dead for ages and father died years ago. It’s all over. He can’t humiliate you anymore.”

But others could. He saw himself at the board meeting of the Astro Corporation, everyone seated at the long table staring at him.

Sitting at the head of the table in the chairman’s seat to which she’d just been elected, Pancho Lane was pointing her accusing finger at him.

“How long are we going to allow the head of our biggest rival to sit on our board of directors?” she demanded. “How long are we going to let Judas sit among us? All he wants is to take control of Astro Corporation, and he’ll keep on screwing us every chance he gets, if we don’t get rid of him here and now.”

The vote was close, but not close enough.

“That’s it, then,” said Pancho, barely able to conceal the satisfied smirk that played at the corners of her lips. “Martin, you’ve been kicked off this board. And high time, too.”

He saw how white his face was, how his hands trembled no matter how hard he struggled to control them. The others tried to hide their emotions, but he could see they were secretly laughing at him. All of them, even the ones he had thought were on his side.

Feeling cold sweat beading his forehead, his upper lip, he rose shakily to his feet, the blood thundering in his ears, his mind pulsing with ringing, defiant declarations.

But all he could manage to choke out was, “You haven’t seen the last of me.”

As he stumbled out of the richly carpeted boardroom he could hear muffled laughter behind his back. I’ll get them, he swore to himself. Each and every one of them. Especially Pancho, that guttersnipe. I’ll get her if it takes every penny, every ounce of sweat, every drop of blood that I’ve got. I’ll get her. I’ll see her dead. I’ll dance on her grave.