Chapter 4 III

Source

Footsteps behind me, whispered words:
 

-- I like the version with the seaman better -- Those where the words I was hoping for. Had it been

--It would have been more powerful of a message had they included a reference to a submarine-- I would have had to turn around, walk down the street without looking back and fly back to my life and forget all this... and perhaps expect a new contact.

In any case, thing were looking up, so we exchanged a couple of muffled commentaries while we walked along, or I walked along him, towards the opposite end of the room from the entrance. There a small distribution hall let you access to the toilets on one side but my guide lead the way up some relatively steep stairs.

 
Not only were they steep but also rather narrow and I had to walk a little behind my guide, and they were carpeted too, which made me sneeze. When we reached the landing, I could feel my heart beating on my temples. I wish to think it was excitement and not lack of physical form. I had not had yet the chance to have a good look to my contact, however there had been not a chance for it

The landing lead to a corridor, which was also not on the wide side. The figure ahead of me opens a dark door in the also dark paneled corridor and turns around towards me.

--Please-- he said, signaling me to enter the room. Friendly face with friendly smile. Not too much teeht. small eyes, wide appart and dark which also seemed to smile.






I entered the room, dominated by an oval table in dark wood, same tone as panels and doors... there was a whole damn forest in this building. Anyway, sitting with their backs to the windows and faces towards the door there were two men.

One of them looked in charge, he looked about 50, fairly long white hair and pale blue eyes. He smile weakly, with his eyes on me and introduced himself as Alfred Vonsteinfeld, the one who had guided me in, now on my side after closing the door behind us, introduced himself too, as Jim Petersen and the third one, a big bloke of big hands and dark short hair, with a straight look behind thick lenses turned to be James Wooldrow.

After handshakes and all that, we took a sit around the table, almost equally spaced. And we got to it. The three of them were responsible of the finances of Boone's and Co. Project. They were based in London and they were busy with building and maintaining complex networks of companies in different convenient locations. On the other hand, the respectability and legality was ensured through a totally legal front, Green Island, which was in reality little else than a mailbox in London. Green Island was necessary to make purchases, manage sites and perform certain tasks. Therefore one of the first actions of Geen Island to support the European Project, as Boone was so keen on referring to, was to buy themselves an engineering company. This would enable it to create a department dedicated to the engineering tasks of the project, which were not little, and this is where I came in.

The matrix company they chose to buy was called InGnio InGnieros and it was based in Madrid, Spain. The buyer (Green Island) would do little changes there, basically they would create a small separate department for "special developments", some sort of skunk works, subdivided in small areas. The rest of the company would keep working the same way. Obviously all that this special department would deal with would be the technical aspects of the project. Much of the manpower needed would be part of the project, but not necessarily and not from the beginning.

There was also the possibility to transfer part of the work from the new "Special Developments" dept to the conventional workflow of InGnio InGenieros, but financing would be done through Green Island.




"Special Developments" would be created with a structure that ensured that the small subdivisions could work separately and independently, but they could also be arranged to work together. The so called Technical Committee would be setting the targets and priorities and thus creating sub-projects. The workflow was that each package would be assigned to a ad hoc analysis team to create a concept solution and then different packages would be created, from technical solutions to logistics or budgeting. These budgeting would be validated and passed on directly to Green Island, which would chalk them up to clients, which where really companies controlled by Green Island, which would then contract InGnio InGnieros to perform the task. There would be of course real outsourcing, which would be handled by Green Island.



So, the first task was getting the technical committee to get to work, so we needed people to get on it. Recruitment was on the top of the to do list.

Parallely there is the point of assembling and acquiring resources and supplies for the future. The main Idea of the project, phase 1, was to gather and train the participants, and pile resources. Phase 2 was to transport them to a new location and settle there. Thus a few work groups were to be commissioned to create these concepts

•  Shipping and Transport committee: Transport ships 
• Vehicle Design comittee
• Housing and urbanisation committee
• Energy and resources committee
• Weaponry and defence committee
• Education committee
• Internal security committee to develop procedures and maintain secrecy while the project was underground 
• Storage and housing committee, to allocate storage of resources and provide accommodation for those relocation, while the project was underground
• Logistics committee, which would take it from the previous, once things go underway
• Production committee, to ensure that a given range of items could be produced and serviced, even under the collapse of society

I would be tasked to create them and find the right people to run them, as well as following them. The timeline was not entirely under my control but I would get milestopnes from Jim Patterson, who would be my reference point for this. On financing, personnel or other ressources needed, James Wooldrow would me my ontact.

The purchase of InGnio InGnieros was almost completed. The Idea was that I would officially change job in about a month, and I would take the responsability ofr SD, the new Special Developments division based in Cologne, Germany. That was because the headquarters of InGnio InGnieros was there. Until then I was supposed to work on my own training and to prepare candidates to start populating the different committees.

Little by little, the meeting was reaching its end. I had a lot of stuff to get done. First, my new work contract would be delivered next week. Then, I had a lot of people to talk to... into a little new adventure.