Chapter 2
Ore
Queens, New York
Two weeks earlier
Ore wasn’t sure how much longer she could scrape by in New York. She had outstayed her welcome at Auntie Laurie’s and after six months she still didn’t have a regular paycheque to show for all her hustling. Freelance journalism was a tough gig. She’d known that, but she hadn’t anticipated quite how hard it would be to watch all her Columbia friends waltz into prearranged internships and then straight into staff jobs, as she chased one late invoice after another. After one too many incidences of her card being declined, she started supplementing her meagre income with a side gig as an office temp.
She’d had dreams of working on the environmental beat but soon realised she’d have to significantly expand her repertoire if she wanted to get anything published. She’d written for entertainment columns, fashion segments, sports blogs, and even penned a story about the Harley Davidson convention for a niche motorsports magazine to pay the bills. Eventually she’d picked up more work doing profiles and hada semi-regular ‘in’ at theNew York Herald. That is to say they would accept around one in every ten of her freelance pitches.
By the time she started looking into Pagonis, and their new expansion into ‘sustainable’ battery production, it didn’t seem like such a stretch that she might also try her hand at tech reporting. Besides, what she was really interested in was Chuck Regas, its elusive CEO. She reckoned theNew York Heraldwould have a hard time turning that away, if by some miracle she could get him to talk to her. She’d typed up a short explainer on why software companies like Pagonis were starting to expand into hardware.
That had been months ago and she’d almost forgotten having fired off that email to their press office, so rarely did she ever hear back from companies like that. It was standard stuff; what she needed was a brief quotable statement, but she had of course asked for an interview, as any good journalist would.
The article had sat unfinished on her desktop, all but forgotten. Then just as she was starting to consider the unthinkable – moving back to the UK and back in with her mum – a reply from Chuck’s assistant, Agatha, pinged into her inbox:
Thank you for your interest in Pagonis. We would love to answer the questions you have submitted to us. Our CEO, Charles Regas, has informed me that he would be keen to speak in person, and he would like to arrange for you to fly out to meet him onLady Thalassa, his yacht, which is currently cruising around the New Caledonian coast. We would of course pay for your transit and cover all other necessary expenses incurred.
She must have reread the email a dozen times. It was unbelievable that a company as impenetrable as Pagonis would even acknowledge a clarification request from a reporter, let alone agree to an interview, in person, with the CEO. For a moment she considered that this could be a hoax, some sort of elaborate prank. She double-clicked on the email address: [email protected]. A quick Google search confirmed that Agatha Horley was indeed an ‘executive secretary’ at Pagonis, whatever that meant.
Ever the investigator, she found herself down a rabbit hole researching Agatha: Oxford grad, economics and computing. What was she doing working as a PA? She looked young. The image results showed her attending a coding competition, where she appeared to have won first prize. Even on the top plinth she only reached the shoulders of her male competitors. Her fine features were set in a stern expression, framed by a sharp ashy-blonde fringe. Ore wondered whether she might be on board and hoped she would be; the people that billionaires surrounded themselves with tended to say a lot more about them than they usually gave up willingly.
She read the email again, noting Agatha’s use of ‘we’. Ore deduced that that either meant she was a nepotistic hire, his niece perhaps, or that he was one of those employers that insisted ‘we’re a family here at Pagonis’ to justify the unsociable hours and unpaid overtime he expected.
She was hooked, her brain fuzzing with adrenaline as she shot an email back.
Hi Agatha, thanks for getting back to me. I’m delighted to hear that. Tell me when and where and I’ll be there. Very much looking forward to meeting Mr Regas.
And then she typed a message for Henry, the profiles editor at theNew York Herald. The subject line read:
EXCLUSIVE: Chuck Regas speaks on the future of clean computing.
That would get his attention. In the email itself she simply wrote:
Regas has agreed to an in-person interview on his yacht in New Caledonia, exact dates TBC. Keep you posted – you interested?
It was ten o’clock at night but Henry’s reply was almost immediate.
Impressive stuff, Ore. We’ll take it.
And then thirty seconds later, another ping. It was from Henry again.
FYI, staff position coming up at the end of the month. If you can pull off this Regas story, it’s yours.
Ore could hear her heart pounding in her ears as the words sunk in: ‘staff position’ for theNew York Herald! She marvelledat how quickly her luck had turned. Over the course of one evening and a few emails, she gone from zero prospects to a luxury holiday on a multimillion-pound yacht, the scoop of a lifetime and the chance at bagging her dream job.
She squealed into her pillow, giddy with the sense that things were finally working out, and then researched flights to Sydney into the early hours of the morning.
