Lily expertly navigated her big Mercedes 450 SEL sedan through the mid-morning Paris traffic despite the heavy rain that was falling from the angry black clouds that covered the city. I had a ten o'clock appointment with a realtor in Argenteuil and Lily had decided that she should come along. As I watched her drive, I couldn't help but notice the confidence that she displayed as she masterfully shifted the car's five-speed manual transmission through the gears without any perceivable loss of power and easily weaved from lane to lane as we crossed the city.
I had come to Paris almost a week ago with the ostensible purpose of negotiating the purchase of a French company in our line of business but while here I experienced one life-changing event and I was now possibly dealing with another. The first was the woman who sat next to me. In an incredible four days, I had gone from just meeting Lily to being convinced that I was in love with her. The second was why we were heading to an appointment in Argenteuil.
Two days ago, my CEO called me with some disturbing news. They had discovered some unusual movement in our company stock and there was some concern that we ourselves might be facing a hostile takeover. For a variety of reasons, I believed that the threat, if that's what it was, was likely a European-based company and I convinced David that I should stay in Paris and use my contacts to ferret out any information about my suspicions without the burden of trying to do so with trans-Atlantic phone calls across six time zones.
David was putting one of our three corporate jets at my disposal and it was scheduled to arrive in Paris tomorrow along with my personal assistant Meredith and her husband Ralph along with Pete, our Chief Financial Officer, and two management trainees. I needed to set up a temporary office that could deal with the call volume that I expected would result from our inquiries and that's why Lily and I were weaving our way through Paris' notorious traffic.
I had christened our little operation "Pegasus" after the winged horse of Greek mythology. In one epic story, Pegasus allowed the hero Bellerophon to ride him and defeat the three-headed monster Chimera. I likened our effort to Pegasus because while we ourselves wouldn't thwart any potential hostile takeover, we'd put the people who could in a position to do so.
On the way, Lily asked me why I was so convinced that the possible hostile takeover threat was probably one of two companies that I'd told her about. I replied that takeovers were usually driven by one of two objectives; to expand a business or to gain value from undervalued assets. I used the example of Carl Ichan, who in 1978 took a controlling stake in Tappan, a company in the consumer appliance business. He sold off some of the company's assets and then negotiated the sale of the rest of the company to Electrolux. It was estimated that Ichan had made three million dollars from the deal. In our case, I didn't think our assets were undervalued relative to the price of our stock, so I didn't see any big incentive for a corporate raider. That meant that someone might be looking at us as a way of expanding their business. If that was the case, I thought there were only three possible candidates. One was a Japanese company, but a hostile takeover was a very alien concept in Japanese business culture and I highly doubted it could be them. The other two possibilities were a Swiss company headquartered in Geneva and a German company in Hamburg. Hence, my conclusion that the potential threat was coming from Europe. Lily smiled as she followed my train of thought and just said another possibility was that God had arranged the whole thing to keep me with her. I silently admitted that given the incredible recent events, Lily's idea couldn't be dismissed.
When we arrived I was presented with seven properties that the realtor had said she thought might fit our needs as a short-term rental, but from the pictures and descriptions she showed me, I wasn't thrilled about any of them. They were all in newly constructed high-rises and seemed cavernous and sterile, not at all the small office that I envisioned that would facilitate easy and quick communications, not to mention having the need to still furnish and equip the space.
I was prepared to leave disappointed when Lily drew my attention to a property that was posted on the wall. It was a storefront and the neon sign above the doorway said 'Agence de voyage.' Even with my limited French vocabulary, I knew that meant 'Travel Agency,' and I guessed Lily was making some kind of joke. But she drew my attention to the description which she translated for my benefit.
I had just assumed that the property was outside on a street somewhere, but Lily said that, no, it was located inside on the mezzanine level of the Hôtel de la République, an upscale hotel that I knew was out near Le Bourget near the N2. I'd never stayed there, but I knew some people who had. In many respects, it was a peer of the five-star Hôtel Barrière in Enghien-les-bains where I was staying now. Lily had the realtor pull the listing and I could finally see what Lily had immediately appreciated.
It seemed that the firm had just gone out of business earlier in the week, and the hotel had confiscated all of the furnishings and equipment to compensate for several months of unpaid rent. The relator thought that, if I wanted, the hotel would leave everything in place.
The hotel had a grand lobby rising about three stories above the ground floor. A mezzanine surrounded it on the second level occupied by various stores. The travel agency was located in one of the corners and the view from the outside just showed two large inward swinging doors that during business hours opened the establishment to potential clients, but otherwise there wasn't any visibility into the property. The pictures of the inside looked promising. There were four cubicles with desks and phones, a small private office, what looked like a break room, and a conference room with a round table and about six chairs. I liked it immediately and that was before I considered the advantages of being located in a hotel. There wouldn't be a need to commute and restaurants and parking were taken care of, not to mention that there was a Metro station half a block away. Plus, given its location, there wouldn't be any need for Vic and Don, our pilots, to be in a different location since we would be close enough to the airport. I looked at Lily who had been watching me consider the possibilities and she just stood with her arms folded and an expression on her face that seemed to be saying, "See."
Two hours later I signed a month-to-month lease with the hotel manager, reserved five rooms in the hotel starting tomorrow night that could be extended on a week-to-week basis at a nice discount, and got a promise that the property would be cleaned, and telephones and fax connected by Tuesday. I told him that he needn't bother removing the neon sign or the travel posters that were on the walls, but I didn't explain that it was because I was anticipating the perverse pleasure I'd get in the future when I'd relate how we conducted our little operation out of a travel agency.
