Vodka Espresso

8. drunk

July, 2017

The birthday celebrations couldn't go quite as planned after all.

An investor from Denmark that Ian had been courting since his time in Berlin was coming to London and had launched an invitation to dinner for the same Friday night. Ingrid had been at the forefront of the interactions with all the Danish business partners. This was one dinner she couldn't miss.

"I'll make it up to you," Ian said as he described the situation to her. "I promise. But I need you there."

Ingrid needed no persuading. She perfectly understood the circumstances and was even determined to use her birthday as a negotiation tool. This was the opportunity she'd been waiting for to prove her own set of skills. And with a bit of luck, she might even get to go clubbing afterwards.

Agnes Nielsen represented a renowned Danish corporation, which Ingrid was familiar with since her time in Copenhagen. She'd landed an internship there for a few weeks, but hadn't made the cut. They'd told her it was because of her Erasmus situation – she was a non-permanent Copenhagen resident who hadn't even finished her studies. And they needed someone who could commit full-time in the long term.

But she knew the HR guy had sabotaged her because his girlfriend from office admin, whose existence Ingrid was not aware of until after she was let go, had found out about their hook-up at the company's Christmas party. Ingrid then went on to do a marvellous job at a rival company and heard from a fellow former intern that the HR guy was fired shortly after her departure.

"There's nothing to make up to me for," Ingrid replied. "It's the job. Will we meet straight at dinner or is she coming to the office first?"

They settled all the details of the visit in a special taskforce-only meeting in Ian's office, so each knew what they were going to do. Ingrid volunteered to pick Agnes up from the airport and after Murphy drove Ian and Arthur to work in the morning of Friday, seventh of July, he came back at noon to take Ingrid to the airport.

"Happy birthday, ma'am," he greeted her as he held the car door open for her.

"Thanks, Murphy. I'd buy you a drink, but unfortunately, you're driving."

He chuckled behind the wheel. "Maybe I'll take you up on that later on, if you don't mind."

"I most definitely don't."

They made it to Heathrow in due time, but the flight from Copenhagen had been delayed. Ingrid got coffee for both of them and spiced hers up with whiskey.

"You saw nothing," she told Murphy.

"I never see or hear anything, ma'am."

They smiled at each other.

"How can you be so loyal?"

"Mr Brennan has been very good to me. It's hardly ever easy, getting back into civillian life after years of service. I struggled for a long time before I got offered this position."

"So you basically work for the company, not a third party outsourcer?"

Murphy nodded. "Yes, I'm on the Brennan payroll."

"Cheers to that, then." She took a heavy gulp from her coffee and hissed with pleasure. "I hear you might be coming with us to New York."

"Mr Brennan has asked, yes."

"And?" Her eyebrows rose with the question.

"I'm considering it."

The plane they were waiting for landed and they headed for the arrivals gate. Murphy had his tablet with 'NIELSEN' typed across it. As the moment approached, Ingrid's nervousness increased despite her boozy coffee. Anxiety mounted within her, an irrational fear that she was about to fail painfully hard and drag everybody down after her.