Chapter 4. Several Years Ago
9.
 Lee Collwood VI was 35 years old and sweating about his inherited corporation in the desert of Southern California.
Lee sat in his corner office overlooking the unchanging desert as he awaited the arrival of his unlikely new business partner. Anaconda Chemical, founded and successfully nurtured by generations of his forebears, had missed a few vital turns on Lee's watch and was tens of millions of dollars in debt, with the spiral deepening month by month. In plain English, not enough money was coming in, and tons of money was leaking out from myriad holes. Loosening the collar around his prickling neck, he thought: Today is the day I will stop the slide and get the ship back on an even keel.
He was a tall, lean man with very dark glossy hair and a naturally pink cheeks. He generally wore dark suits that he had especially tailored in ultra-conservative Santa Barbara County, where he had a 7,000 square foot mansion with horseshoe driveway and white-pillared porch, on five acres near a country club he partially owned, not far from the former Reagan Ranch. For three or four days each week, he spent the day at work in the family's main industrial plant. He owned a Lear Jet that took off from Santa Barbara Airport and landed on Anaconda's company airstrip. This airstrip was built and maintained by the U.S. Air Force for contractual reasons involving the Department of Defense, because Anaconda Chemical not only made substances that went boom, but in recent decades had become heavily involved in pharmaceuticals and silicon-based computer parts. The Air Force had recently sent notice of intent to pull the plug. It was like that on all fronts.
Lee awaited a special box of papers, being driven from San Diego to his plant by a young man and his father. They were the Robertsons, and right now they seemed about the only saving grace in Anaconda's dismal looking future.
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