BAY OF VENGEANCE

The rays of the rising sun reflected on the dazzling tiles of the large elevated terrace that was facing the bay of San Francisco. Passing through the half-opened glazed door, they irradiated the white walls and designer pieces of furniture of the sleeping room with a delicate spring warmth, giving them in places yellow and cream shades. From the terrace, you could see the harbor with all these berthed yachts, the lighthouse as well. Orienting the glance to the right, you could see the island of Alcatraz barely two miles away. And everywhere the blue, form the sky to the ocean, pure and light, omnipresent. The house was on Marina Boulevard, in the Marina district, one of the wealthiest of the city. It was a modern house. Its architecture was radical. Its cubic shape and its general structure had very sharp angles. It was built a decade ago, during the early eighties. Because yes, we were in 1989, a Saturday of May more precisely. On the first floor, in the bedroom, the landlords, Alan and Claire Anderson were sleeping snuggled together. They were young, handsome, blonde, and tanned. They looked like fitness magazines models. The radio-alarm clock was displaying 5:55 AM. But no need for ringing. Both perfectly coordinated woke up simultaneously. Alan was behind Claire. Keeping the same position, he caressed her long hair and kissed her neck softly. After a few minutes like this without moving, they got up at the very same time. Always as synchronous in their moves, and with saying a single word, they entered the bathroom and faced the double washbasin, perfectly choreographed, they washed their faces and brushed their teeth. This being done, they put on their sportswear, got outside the house, and after a few brief stretches and without forgetting to start their stopwatch, started running.

They were living near the famous Presidio. In just two minutes they got there and entered Marina Gate. Sometimes they ran other paths to get there, like Lyon Street for instance, and then passed in front of the sumptuous Palace of Fine Arts, an idyllic place made of stones and greenery where this superb building of Greek and Roman inspiration with its rotunda and pillars seemed to float on the water. The place exuded a dreamlike atmosphere almost as if suspended in time. No wonder then that it had been used as a filming location for some scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. The Presidio was a very large park. But not just any park. It was the Golden Gate National Park. Located at the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, it was home to a military fort with hundreds of families, but a year before a law was passed that would mean the future dismantling of the military infrastructure. The park was beautiful and had so many places to wander around or be active. Also, it plunged you into a world of adventure and mystery. It had two beaches, one to the north and one to the west, several elevated viewpoints offering wonderful panoramas, such as the Immigrant Point Overlook for example, and dozens of trails, ideal for hiking and jogging. Claire and Alan had been running there every day, summer and winter, rain or shine since they bought the house two years earlier. Finally, at the north end of the park, the emblematic Golden Gate Bridge stood majestically over the bay, dressed in its red-orange robe so often seen in movies, television series, and documentaries, making it without a doubt the most famous bridge in the world.

Alan and Claire were running under the California sun in this early morning. Their stride was long and their breath was good. Their athletic bodies silently moved in unison at a sustained pace without showing the slightest sign of effort. Both wore shorts, a tank top, high socks, and running shoes. Despite the pace at which they ran, barely a few drops of sweat ran down their foreheads. They were seasoned runners. It was clear that they knew the maze of the park by heart, and as if they were telepathic, they would change directions at intersections and take turns without slowing down or even warning each other by word of mouth. The effect of mimicry beyond their movements was greatly accentuated by their striking physical resemblance. Both were tall. Alan was six feet three, Claire five feet eleven inches. Their hair was the color of sunflowers in summer with copper highlights in places. If we didn't know they were married, we would have thought they were brother and sister for sure. Even their facial features were similar, fine, harmonious, and symmetrical. Their eyes, however, were different. Certainly, both had clear eyes, but while Alan had piercing azure blue eyes with a steel grey tint, Claire had deep green eyes between emerald and jade.

Their physique would have easily opened the doors of the world of show business to them. In fact, during their studies, they did a few modeling photoshoots. It was during these years that they met on the campus of Stanford University and never left each other. But their common passion, already at a very young age, was quite different and very well defined: entrepreneurship, in computer science to be precise. They fell in love with each other at first sight, one could say, it was a real revelation. This same ambition, this common determination coupled with mutual admiration ended up sealing their love and to this day was the cement that consolidated their couple. A deep and ardent passion, and trust too. They formed a fusional couple based on communication. They knew exactly where they were going together. Their goal from the beginning was very clear, to build together an empire in the computer world and to rule it together. They had been together for fourteen years already. They were both the same age, thirty-four years old, and were born in 1955.

Immediately after graduating from university, they got married. Although they both came from wealthy families, to say the least, they made it a point of honor not to rely on them and climbed the ladder to success together. In total symbiosis and very complementary in their skills and perspectives, their roles were very well defined within their company and combined perfectly. Although they shared many skills and their respective sensibilities were similar in many ways, if one had to put it in a nutshell, Alan represented the right hemisphere of the brain related to imagination and intuition and functioned more in terms of visions. Claire, on the other hand, represented the left hemisphere, analytical, logical, and mathematically minded. However, they never walked on each other's toes, but on the contrary, they knew how to listen to each other and always found a common ground to reach their goals together. One of the watchwords of their philosophy of life and work was "discipline". Their schedule was laser beam precise. Everything in their lifestyle was optimized for ever greater efficiency. Improvisation was rare and wandering was not allowed. Despite this, their lives were far from boring and neither of them felt the slightest frustration. On the contrary, they loved their lives.

Their company, Hygeia, took up most of their time. It owes its name to Greek mythology. Indeed Hygeia was the goddess of health. They developed management software for hospitals and healthcare professionals. They were one of the three world leaders and were planning to become number one and rule the sector without sharing. The war with their competitors was raging. Apart from work, their lives were full of many activities. Sports, of course, running and tennis mainly. But Alan's great passion was surfing. He had been surfing since he was a child and had introduced Claire to it early on in their relationship. He didn't believe in God, but surfing was almost religious to him. It was through it that he expressed a certain form of spirituality in his way. San Francisco and its surroundings were full of many spots with powerful waves that were perfect for surfing. These were places where he would come to meditate, empty his soul and find inspiration. Claire, although less assiduous, also loved to surf and excelled.

They were also excellent chess players. They played chess regularly. In their living room, with its minimalist furnishings and decoration, next to the long white Rolf Benz sofa and between the two matching armchairs of the same brand, there was a superb chess table. The wide foot-supporting it was made of marble. The board was made of ebony and ivory marquetry, just like the pieces of the game. It was a real work of art that they had acquired for a fortune in an antique shop in the Inner Richmond District. Although they were millionaires and did not deny themselves anything, they did not lead a pharaonic lifestyle for all that. They did not gamble, drink, smoke, or do drugs. But everything they bought, from their houses to their furniture to their socks, was of high quality and expensive. "Quality rather than quantity" could have been their motto.

If one had to define the things they spent lavishly on, then one could have said that for Claire it was the dresses and suits of great couturiers as well as fashion accessories. Her wardrobe had nothing to envy to that of a Hollywood star. And for Alan the sports cars. Beyond even these, he loved everything that was motorized and fast. He had just obtained his helicopter pilot's license. When they arrived at the office in the morning, the energy and elegance they exuded were considerable. They were natural-born leaders, charismatic and visionary. They were admired by their 200 employees, and their success in integrating Hygeia was seen by many as the Holy Grail among programmers, engineers, and sales teams not only in California but throughout the United States. They were looking forward to diversifying and conquering many other sectors besides the medical field. When they were just over thirty, they were already unavoidable, living legends even for some, and the perspectives of growth and evolution for the next twenty years seemed limitless.

Although far from a life of excesses and eccentricities, and therefore from the highly publicized scandals experienced by some of the golden boys of the IT industry at the time, the press and television wanted them. They had an image that was both glamorous and healthy. And although for the moment the range of software they were developing was not accessible to the mainstream market, they were regularly appearing in newspaper columns or on TV sets for interviews. They already had a plan in mind, to make it known, to be identified given the day when they would switch soon to programming and selling consumer applications.

But you cannot please everybody. So, of course, beyond the amazement and enthusiasm that this seemingly perfect couple aroused in most people, some of them, with the same intensity, felt jealousy or even hatred. The best attack was the surprise, lurking in the shadows, they were waiting for their time to go on the offensive. But Claire and Alan were anything but naive, and they knew that there is no mercy in business, especially at this level of responsibility and ambition. They had been preparing for a long time to swim among sharks, they were part of it. They both came from families where business and competition were paramount.

Claire came from a powerful rural family of large landowners in central California. The Cravens had made their fortune in mining, oil drilling, and livestock. Surrounded by an aura of secrecy, their name was associated with harshness, if not brutality. They were much feared and had the reputation of being a very closed clan led with an iron fist by Patriarch Andre Cravens, an icy man who had the physique of Clint Eastwood and the expression and bearing of an SS officer. Raised the hard way, like her brothers and sisters, Claire had to fight from an early age to make her place in this family with its harsh upbringing methods, where only victory counted, even if it meant crushing the adversary by any means possible. With the Cravens, everything had to be earned, nothing was given and it was not uncommon for blows to fall. The only sporadic demonstrations of tenderness came from the mother, although she lived in a permanent feeling of fatalism tinged with fear and submission. Once she had left the Spartan training camp to come here to study, the San Francisco of the seventies had seemed to Claire like Disneyland. Everything was gentle, slow, and easy. She was hungry. She was a lioness trained to kill. Her ambition and thirst for success were simply insatiable. Nevertheless, her outstanding self-control and patience always allowed her to keep it from showing in her relationships with others. She was certainly ambitious and made no secret of it, but she was never cold or haughty with others. On the contrary, she had a rare positive and unifying energy. Having grown up among siblings, she knew how to integrate into a group, team up with others, and share. She was very popular at Stanford and this was still true today at the head of Hygeia. A born seductress, although often wearing her most beautiful commercial smile, she sometimes had a look of implacable hardness, that of her father. The smooth skin of her beautiful face was lightly speckled with freckles and bore the mark of the memory of one of her childhood wars, an oblique scar above the right side of her upper lip. It was the final icing on the beautiful cake, the little finishing touch that looked so good on her and gave her a sexy yet hard-boiled, wild look.

Alan was an only child. His older brother had died in infancy seven years before he was born. His coming into the world had been experienced by his parents as a gift from heaven. He was in their eyes the long-awaited child of redemption. They adored him, cherished him, and spoiled him, but they did not brood over him more than they should. As members of the Anderson lineage, they had a duty to give their heir the education he deserved. More than a family, the Andersons were a true dynasty, an institution whose illustrious predecessors were Scottish immigrants who came to San Francisco in the 1850s during the gold rush. They prospered and became wealthy notables, merchants, politicians, and judges. From an early age, Alan was programmed to win. More precisely, everything had been set up to stimulate him intellectually and physically to develop in him the thirst for learning. At a very early age, his parents taught him to read, write and draw. By the age of ten, he was fluent in four languages. As soon as he could walk, he received his first swimming lessons. This past as a baby swimmer certainly conditioned his immoderate love of water sports. His room was both a treasure cave and a creative workshop. Painting equipment, musical instruments, a library with hundreds of books on art and science. He was particularly fond of the electric guitar and played it very well to this day. His parents had provided him with all the necessary tools, the only expected compensation was a success. But for Alan, it was never burdensome. For him, the will to learn and win was always associated with pleasure. His parents never had to sermonize him, they set an example for him and he followed it. As an adult, Alan was a calm and thoughtful man, very sure of himself, his personal qualities, and his values. The victory was in his DNA. He didn't even have an inner wish to become a great man, it was innate to him. What thrilled him was to create, to innovate.

Although the form of their education was very different, in essence, the goal was the same, to achieve excellence and to carry the family standard to the highest level.

After an hour, Alan and Claire had completed their jogging. They had returned home. Standing face to face in their room, they hugged and kissed each other fiercely. They ran to the bathroom and filled with adrenaline, ripped off their clothes, and went into the shower together. They passionately made love under the jet of hot water.