When Ray pushed open the door of the conference room, the atmosphere inside had already relaxed a lot.
Bard was saying something to Doris, and seeing him come in, he raised his chin slightly.
"How is it? Which major company has Thomas dragged over this time?"
"Don't tell me it's another person from Taiwan?" Glenn also asked with a smile, "Remember not to treat them to crabs this time."
Several people laughed again.
Ray did not answer.
His gaze fell on the television in the corner of the conference room.
That was Bard's habit.
Every time there was a meeting, he would have someone push the television in, turn it on with the mute on, saying it was to check the stocks at any time.
Everyone had talked to him about it several times, but he wouldn't change.
At this moment, CNN's morning financial news was broadcasting on the screen.
The scene was a very large conference venue, with people sitting full under the stage, a sea of black suits.
The camera zoomed in, and a very young girl was standing on the podium.
Beside her sat an elderly man wearing glasses. Ray recognized that face; everyone in the United States recognized it.
The girl was speaking.
There was no sound; one could only see her lips moving, her expression calm, even carrying a hint of a smile.
Then the camera cut away, and everyone in the audience stood up and began to applaud.
The subtitles at the bottom of the screen scrolled:
"...Salomon Brothers shareholders' meeting concluded yesterday, the Saionji Group..."
Ray looked at that screen.
"Ray?"
Doris noticed his expression, and her smile slowly faded.
"What's wrong?"
Ray raised his hand and pointed at the television.
"Thomas invited her over."
The conference room fell silent for a second.
"Who?" Bard asked.
"The one in the picture."
"The girl on the stage."
Bard opened his mouth, wanting to laugh, but stopped halfway through his laugh.
He looked at Ray, then looked at the television, and then looked at Ray again.
"...You must be joking?"
"She arrives tomorrow evening."
Ray pulled out a chair and sat down.
"The official inspection is the day after tomorrow."
This time, the conference room remained silent for a long time.
Breaking the silence was Glenn.
"Impossible, absolutely impossible."
He abruptly stood up.
"Ray, think about it, who is Saionji? The Japanese financial group that just propped up Salomon Brothers a couple of days ago!"
"With so many major banks on Wall Street lining up just to see her and unable to, would she go to see Thomas?"
"And brought by Carlyle? Are Carlyle's partners out of their minds, bringing a bankrupt developer to meet the wealthiest Eldest Miss in Japan?"
As he spoke, he paced back and forth around the conference table twice.
"Thomas has been played. In a place like New York, you can casually find someone dressed up like a human being, sit in a hotel lobby, and say they're someone's representative—who can tell the real from the fake?"
"Exactly."
Doris also came back to her senses and placed her pen on the table.
"Last year when I was attending an industry conference in San Francisco, I heard people say that those Wall Street traders love to make fun of this kind of thing."
"Finding a small developer from the countryside, impersonating someone from a certain fund to talk with him for an afternoon, and then telling it as a joke in a bar the next day."
When she reached this point, her tone softened a bit, carrying a bit of sympathy for her old classmate.
"Thomas has wanted this project too much over the past half year; once people get anxious, they easily believe these kinds of things."
Several people nodded along.
Ray did not refute.
To be honest, just now on the phone, his first reaction was also this.
Only Bard hadn't spoken the whole time.
He sat in his chair, his body leaning forward slightly, his eyes fixed on the television in the corner, as if he wanted to stare something out of that muted screen.
In the picture, the girl on the podium had finished speaking and was conversing in low tones with Buffett beside her.
The old man didn't know what he said; she turned her head and smiled slightly.
Then the camera cut, changing to a financial anchor beginning to broadcast this morning's Dow Jones index.
Only then did Bard slowly lean back against his chair back.
"...Impossible, right."
He muttered a sentence, not knowing who he was saying it to.
"Um... wouldn't we know by just making a phone call and asking?"
The one speaking was Linda.
This young staff member had been standing at the door all along, not daring to interrupt, and only spoke softly at this moment.
"Didn't Mr. Eden leave a photocopy of a business card last month? He said it was given to him by someone from Carlyle, and asked us to file it."
After she finished speaking, without waiting for anyone else to answer, she turned and ran out.
The people in the conference room looked at each other in dismay.
A rather complicated expression appeared on Bard's face.
He remembered that business card.
Last month when Thomas came back from Washington, he held that business card and showed it to everyone at the committee luncheon, saying that a partner of Carlyle was interested in his project.
Bard laughed at him for an entire lunch back then.
Saying that Carlyle's partners give out thousands of business cards a year, and if the clerk at his family's auto repair shop took a trip to Washington, he might even bring back two.
Thomas wasn't angry at the time; he just took back the business card and said a phrase: "Just you wait."
In less than two minutes, a sound of hurried footsteps came from the corridor.
Linda ran back holding a folder, pulled out a somewhat wrinkled sheet of copy paper from inside, and handed it in front of Ray.
It wasn't copied very clearly, and the line with the name was a bit blurry, but Carlyle's logo, Washington's address, and the string of phone numbers below could all be seen very clearly.
Robert Hale, Partner.
Holding that piece of paper, Ray turned and walked toward the office at the end of the corridor.
The chairs behind him rang out in a chorus.
That small office usually could only hold one desk, two chairs, and a file cabinet.
Now seven or eight people were crowded at the door.
Glenn stood at the very front, crossing his arms with an "I'd like to see" look.
Doris stood beside him, still pinching the pen from earlier in her hand.
Bard was big and couldn't squeeze in, so he could only stand in the back, stretching his neck to look inside.
Ray sat down by the desk, spread the copy paper out in front of him, picked up the receiver, and dialed the numbers one by one.
Over in Washington, it was almost noon.
The ringtone rang three times.
"The Carlyle Group, hello."
It was a woman's voice, her tone steady, every word articulated very clearly.
"Hello, I am Ray Mendoza, Assistant Administrative Officer of San Luis Obispo County, California."
Ray cleared his throat, trying his best to make himself sound a bit more formal.
"I would like to speak with Mr. Robert Hale."
"I'm very sorry, Mr. Mendoza, Mr. Hale is in New York today and is not in the office. I am his secretary, how can I help you?"
Ray glanced at the line of faces staring intently at him at the door.
"It's like this. Our county's developer, Mr. Thomas Eden, just called me and said that Mr. Hale took him to meet an investor this morning."
"I want to confirm, is this matter... true?"
The other end of the phone was quiet for a second or two.
Probably judging what could be said and what couldn't be said.
"Mr. Mendoza," the secretary's voice remained polite, "I am not at liberty to disclose the specific content of the meeting."
Glenn's mouth twitched up slightly.
"However, I can confirm to you."
The secretary continued:
"Mr. Hale did indeed visit Miss Saionji together with Mr. Thomas Eden this morning."
Ray's hand holding the receiver tightened slightly.
At the door, Glenn's mouth froze there.
"As for other arrangements," the secretary politely added, "I suggest you confirm directly with Mr. Eden."
"...Alright, thank you."
"You're welcome, have a nice day."
Ray put down the receiver.
He just sat like that in the chair for a few seconds, staring at the copy paper on the desk.
Then, he slowly raised his head and looked toward the door.
"She said, it's true."
No one spoke.
Glenn's crossed arms had been put down at some unknown time. Doris's pen dropped to the ground, and she didn't seem to notice it herself.
Bard in the back pushed aside the people in front and walked to the edge of the desk.
He reached out and picked up that piece of copy paper.
At last month's luncheon, Thomas had placed the original of this business card right in front of him; he picked it up, looked at it back and forth for a long time, and then smilingly tossed it back onto the table.
Now, he stared at the slightly blurry name on it for a very long time.
Then he smoothed out the creases on the copy paper bit by bit, put it back on the table, and pushed it toward Ray again.
"That kid Thomas..."
He said half a sentence and couldn't continue.
When they returned to the conference room, no one sat down.
The television was still on, and the financial anchor had already switched to the weather forecast, saying that the central coast of California would be sunny this weekend, temperatures slightly high, with wind in the afternoon.
Bard walked over and turned off the television.
"So," Doris spoke first, "what do we do now?"
"What do you mean what do we do?" Glenn said. "If they're coming, we host them."
"How do we host them?"
Doris looked at him.
"She arrives tomorrow evening, Glenn. What do we have to host her with?"
Glenn opened his mouth, unable to say anything.
This was indeed a very practical problem.
The committee had been established for half a year, held eleven meetings, and the accumulated things were this stack on the table: a few sets of meeting minutes, an army evacuation schedule, and a draft of preferential policies that had been revised seven or eight times and was still full of "in-principle support."
There was also the copy of the prison site selection brought by Glenn.
Glenn saw it too.
He silently gathered those papers, folded them twice, and stuffed them back into his bag.
"Let's divide up the people first," Bard said. "I'll handle the welcoming part, I can call people from the chamber of commerce. Banners, bands—"
"No banners, and no bands."
Ray interrupted him.
"Thomas specifically instructed that on the phone."
Bard was stunned for a moment: "Why?"
"Because she isn't coming to attend a town fair."
Ray pulled out a chair and sat down, pushing the stack of minutes aside, leaving only the draft of the preferential policies.
"Thomas said that in New York she questioned him for over an hour: whether every piece of land was signed, where the funds for each phase came from, which conditions given by the local government were true and which were just lip service—she asked about all of it."
"She's coming the day after tomorrow, and she'll ask these same things."
The conference room fell silent for a moment.
"Then how much can we answer?" Doris asked.
Ray looked down at the draft.
"Now?"
"Pretty much not a single sentence can be answered."
As soon as these words came out, the atmosphere in the room sank again.
That excitement from just now, which had been turned upside down by the news, seemed to have been half-quenched all at once.
Yeah.
The person is coming, and then what?
Let the eldest lady of the Saionji Family stand in front of the barbed wire fence outside the base, take a look at those empty barracks, and hear them say a sentence: "The people here are very warm and enthusiastic"?
"Where is Thomas's blueprint?"
Glenn suddenly asked a question.
"Didn't the county keep a copy?"
"In the planning department," Linda said quietly. "Placed on top of the file cabinet, it should... nobody has moved it all along."
Several people looked at each other.
Over the past half year, Thomas brought that map to every meeting and talked about it over and over again.
Every one of them had seen it.
Yet it seemed not a single person had truly sat down and looked through it from beginning to end.
Ray stood up.
"There are no materials here, now everyone go to the county government office with me."
"Land, water affairs, roads, planning—call everyone who can be called today. Take out Thomas's blueprint, and check it piece of land by piece of land."
"Today is Friday," someone reminded softly, "many people are preparing to get off work early in the afternoon to spend the weekend..."
"Then tell them, this weekend is gone."
Ray picked up the folder on the table, raised his hand and glanced at his watch.
Nine forty.
From tomorrow evening, there are less than thirty-four hours left.
"She only gave us one day."
"Don't waste it."