George
George was a stargazer. At least that is what you would think he was looking at his face most of the time. That vacant expression, glazed over eyes, you knew he was in another world, lost in thought.
I must admit, his thoughts when verbalized were very creative. And he never stopped asking questions, which of course had its upside and downside. He sure wanted to know every facet of our company.
But that was George. No one got to or wanted to know him. That is until the day the FBI showed up at work and specifically asked for him.
George was escorted by two FBI agents into a vacant office and remained there for over an hour. When they came out of that room, lots of things changed.
First of all, George walked straight into the boss’s office, closed the door, stayed in there for about 2 minutes, then walked out, without acknowledging any of us. That vacant look that I told you about, was gone from his eyes. It was replaced by a determined look. He knew exactly where he was going. I could even see a bit of a knowing smirk on his face. He knew something that we didn’t. And then he just left.
As to the FBI agents, they too went into the boss’s office. They, however, stayed a bit longer. When they left, our boss went with them.
The boss just turned to us on his way out and said, “You can all go home now. Consider yourselves on a temporary vacation until you’re contacted to come back to work.”
It’s been three weeks now and we haven’t received any calls. I get along well with the custodian of our office building, so I gave him a call to find out if he knew anything. He said as no one had given him any time off, he’d been in every day. He said that no one has been in the building except for George.
I asked him what George was doing there.
He said that George spent most of his time in the boss’s office on the boss’s computer. Whatever George is doing, he’s got a flash drive attached to the computer. One would assume he’s downloading stuff…unless he’s uploading something to the computer.
Now my curiosity was even more tantalized.
I called my local police department to find out if there were any crimes committed in or around our office building in the past 3 weeks. They wanted to know who I was and why I was interested. I explained that I worked in the building and since I was on what seemed to be a forced leave of absence, I wanted to know was there anything preventing me from returning to work even though I hadn’t been called.
They responded that nothing had occurred, not to go back to work, that I shouldn’t worry about it, nor bother them again, and then they hung up on me.
Ten minutes later there was a knock at my door. It was George.
In his hand, he had a non-disclosure document for me to sign, which I did.
The bottom line was our chief had been arrested and charged with federal crimes of extortion and drug smuggling. George was an FBI undercover agent who gathered all of the evidence needed to convict him. Oops, I probably shouldn’t have told you that.
The story given to our staff was that our old chief had to leave the company for personal reasons and as he wasn’t going to return I was named to take his place. As it was a personal issue, no further information was needed by the staff.
My first act as the new boss was to accept the resignation of George, who said he found a better job, one which paid more and allowed him to work on a mystery spy novel he was writing.
