Jamie had always envisioned meeting Green at a small hotel or obscure restaurant, but now that he had left Telegraph, he had no problem going directly to the Greenwich offices. In fact, it was something of a relief to be out in the open.

When Jamie arrived for the meeting, he half expected Green to be waiting at the front door of the building. He went upstairs and announced his arrival to the receptionist, and sat down to read the Wall Street Journal as he waited.

Spotting Jamie from across the room, Vince noticed immediately that he seemed to have aged since he had seen him just a year earlier. That place must have worked the guy over, he thought.

“Hello, Jamie.” Vince interrupted Jamie’s reading.

With a level of confidence that Vince had not remembered, Jamie returned his greeting. “Well, hello there, Vince. It’s good to see you again.”

Vince invited Jamie into his stylish office and motioned for him to sit in one of the leather chairs that afforded a view of Alcatraz and Angel Island.

Jamie couldn’t help but marvel at the difference between the two executive offices, and Green seemed to know what he was thinking. “Yes, I’ve heard all about the austerity of O’Connor’s office. If I hear one more thing about how frugal they are over there . . .”

Jamie joked, “I’ll make sure to leave that part out.”

Green laughed and searched for something to say. “Right. Well, it’s good to see you again, Jamie, although I have to tell you I was pretty disappointed last year when you turned down our offer.”

Jamie smiled sheepishly. “What can I say? We all make mistakes.”

Green was an easier target for Jamie’s wiles than Rich. “Lessons learned.” Even Vince thought his response sounded like a ridiculous cliché.

Jamie broke the ice. “So, how is your VP of HR working out? Is there a chance that I might be helpful around here?” He had done enough research to know the answer to that question. Vince and his staff were looking to make a change.

“Listen, we’re always looking for good people. But I would be surprised if you were legally free to come to work here for a while.”

Jamie smiled. “Nope. Telegraph placed no restrictions on my ability to work with a competitor.”

Vince was surprised. “Well, that’s good news.” He felt that the moment was now right to set the moral stage for the discussion that was about to take place. “But of course you know that if you did join us, I would insist that you not bring any proprietary information about Telegraph with you. And that goes for today’s meeting too.”

Jamie reacted with feigned astonishment. “Absolutely. I am a fanatic about ethical details.”

Vince thought his response was a little too strong. But with the moral and legal dances out of the way, he was dying to dive in. “So, what exactly happened over there, anyway?”

Jamie took a deep breath and smiled. He had rehearsed this line: “That is one bizarre company, let me tell you.”

Vince felt the need to begin the conversation with intellectual integrity, and so he challenged Jamie. “Well, they must be doing something right.” Even he couldn’t believe that he was defending Telegraph, but he would not let his need for consolation overwhelm his desire to know the truth.

Jamie knew how to spot a man’s anguish, and so he offered his potential boss a bone. “Yes, they are, but that’s the thing. I’ve looked beneath the covers, and there isn’t much to see. They’re not doing anything that you couldn’t do tomorrow.” Jamie decided to exaggerate a little to keep Vince on the hook. It worked.

“What do you mean? And again, I’m assuming you’re not talking about confidential . . .”

Shaking his head, Jamie responded before Vince could finish the sentence. “No, nothing like that. It’s really very simple. Embarrassingly so, if you ask me.”

Vince was ready to burst with curiosity, but he tried hard to conceal his desperation. With a sense of detached interest, he pursued the issue. “Really? Tell me about that.”

“Well, it all has to do with a yellow sheet of paper that Rich O’Connor keeps on his desk. It’s really just a checklist of sorts, a few concepts that he calls his four disciplines. And from what I could tell, the man is obsessed with them. He uses those disciplines to run his life.” Jamie seemed to be mocking and admiring his former boss all at once.

“A checklist?” Vince was intrigued, and suddenly lost any sense of subtlety that he had tried to maintain before. “What’s on it?”

Jamie decided to play with the desperate executive for just a minute. “Well, very few people actually know much about it.” Immediately he could see Vince begin to panic at the thought that Jamie did not know the contents of the list. Not wanting to alienate a future employer, he let him off the hook. “But I do.”