Crimson Clouds

Chapter One: The Tears of Napoleon

Julie stuck her head of curly red hair through the door. “Robert, it’s time to go. You’ve got less than five minutes before the start of the meeting.”

She pronounced my name the French way: Rob-air, without sounding the “t”. I liked the way she said it. She drew out the “air”, rolling it softly in her English mouth. I was going to miss her, my ever-so-efficient secretary. The round face, the freckles, the constant smile and her mothering me, always reminding me of my next appointment.

It was odd how much space Julie had taken in my life – many more hours than my wife. Maybe, on reflection, it was not so strange. Think about it; add up your waking hours. You spend more time with people in the office than with your own wife. Especially if she happens to be like Kay, always busy doing her own stuff, always on the go. And I travel for my work too. I often come home late at night. Over the years, it has added up to much less time with Kay and much more with Julie, though I’d been married to Kay for twenty years. And now that I was retiring and coming home for good, what would happen? We had no children; our marriage was all about each other. I started speculating how Kay would take my homecoming when I was interrupted. 

 “Robert, you are going to be late.” That was Julie again.

I checked my watch, five minutes left. I glanced one last time at my speech. No, it was no good. I wished I’d come up with something better. I had worked on it, on and off for weeks, especially at the end of the day after the secretaries had left and the phones had gone silent. I’d figured the peace would inspire me – it usually did, but not in this case. How do you celebrate thirty five years of life dedicated to the Agency? I thought of mentioning the grand ideals of the institution, the vision of a glorious Future for Mankind Free of War and Hunger. But it all sounded trite and hopelessly cliché.

Ideals? Vision? Lofty words devoid of meaning, yet they hadn’t seemed empty when I had first started to work for the Agency. Those were the very words I had been drawn to when I’d come out of graduate school. I had been certain then that the United Nations was the Institution of the Future, that in joining it I would help in writing a new page in Mankind’s History, the start of never-ending World Peace.

What a letdown.

 “Robair, still there? It’s five o’clock now.” Julie almost screamed, genuinely concerned I would arrive at the meeting after Napoleon, my nickname for the Big Boss. Like everybody in the Agency, she knew he didn’t like to wait. He was like royalty. You were supposed to get there before him. Or else.

I crunched the pages of my speech and started running through the long, white corridors, barely nodding at colleagues on my way. They didn’t try to stop me. They knew where I was going, to the EAM, Executive Advisory Meeting. It was strictly reserved for high-level managers. Lower level staff was allowed to attend only if a matter of direct concern to them was on the agenda. And as soon as the item was over, they were told to leave. They weren’t permitted to listen to the high-level discussion that ensued. EAM meetings were always held under Napoleon’s whip, unless he was abroad on official travel. This time, the meeting was just before Christmas and Napoleon was in-house, poised to take his year-end vacation.

So I ran like a deer avoiding the elevators. They were too slow. I took the staircase, flying up the steps, two by two, making it to the EAM meeting room in record time. I glanced at my watch, two minutes to spare. I was happy that my legs were still in good working order; less happy that I was puffing, out of breath. I hoped nobody noticed.

Napoleon had not yet arrived but my colleagues were all here, thirty grown-up men and two women disciplined like schoolchildren. They sat primly around the mahogany meeting table, polished to a high sheen, exchanging words in hushed tones, the way one does in church. But for the most part they were silent. And they waited, staring at each other, at the agenda, at their reflection in the polished wood of the table, at the Mexican mural depicting screaming refugees under an erupting volcano, an appropriate symbol of the Agency’s humanitarian work.