15

Kate Taylor was still furious when she arrived at Lombard on Thursday morning. None of The Ivy’s considerable delectations the night before could compensate for Jim Ritchie’s revelations about North. Her position was intolerable; Mike had to do something about it. Dumping briefcase and handbag in her office, she checked through that morning’s stock exchange announcements before taking the lift up to the fourth floor.

Rosa was behind her desk listening to Dictaphone tapes when she arrived. Mike was having a breakfast meeting at the Savoy, she explained, but was expected in by nine. He had a nine-thirty meeting to prepare for, she continued, then, seeing Kate’s expression, she promised to phone down the moment he got in.

Heading back for the lifts, Kate passed Chris’s office. Glancing in, she saw him behind his desk, surrounded by papers. ‘Hard at it?’ she greeted him.

‘As always,’ he responded, looking up. Then, seeing her expression, ‘You OK?’

One thing she definitely wasn’t was OK. ‘That obvious, huh?’ She glanced at the door leading from Chris’s office to Charlotte’s room.

‘She won’t be in till ten,’ he told her.

Kate walked over to Chris’s desk and sat in a chair opposite him. Then she recounted her conversation of the night before with Jim Ritchie.

Chris sat absorbing Kate’s story, noting the heat in her eyes as she described North’s meddling and attempted bribery. And as he listened to her tirade of indignation, he kept thinking to himself: She couldn’t be connected to the Jacob Strauss cover-up. It just wasn’t possible. As far as she was concerned, North was in the opposition camp. She’d made clear her frustration with North from the start. Now, after the Jim Ritchie dinner, things had developed way beyond frustration. It was clear, from the way she was speaking, this was a resignation issue.

Meeting her eyes, still fraught with emotion, he spoke evenly. ‘All that stuff you sent to Jim Ritchie about Jacob Strauss – it was the press pack I’ve seen, was it? The one issued when he was made CEO, about all his entrepreneurial successes in America?’

She nodded with a weary sigh.

There was a lengthy pause, then, across the grey, morning light of his office, he asked her seriously: ‘Let’s say you had this hypothetical client. And let’s say you found, one way or another, that you’d misrepresented him to the media – not just exaggerated, but actually put out the complete opposite of the truth.’ He swallowed. ‘What would you do?’

She was following him closely, wondering about the recognition she’d sensed in him as she’d been telling him about the night before. There had been a resonance there. More than simply a resonance. Just how hypothetical was this client?

She sat back in her chair. ‘I’d need to know a couple of things first,’ she told him now, trying to be matter-of-fact. ‘For instance, how reliable was the evidence that what the client said wasn’t true?’

Chris nodded. ‘Company accounts.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘And did the client knowingly mislead the agency?’

‘Very knowingly,’ he told her.

There was another pause while she thought awhile. Then she said, ‘You know, the stock exchange has certain rules. Distributing misleading information about a publicly listed company is illegal. For starters, the agency would have to resign this “hypothetical” client.’

He leaned forward on his elbows, his voice just above a whisper. ‘Even if the client was the agency’s biggest – by a huge margin?’

She fixed him with a hard expression, trying to fathom him, before asking outright, ‘What are you saying, Chris?’

What was he saying? If he told her, maybe she could take it up with Mike and that could be a way out for him. It wasn’t as if he’d be breaking client confidentiality. He hadn’t done anything illicit to get hold of the information. It was there, in America, for those who knew where to look for it.

‘What I’m saying,’ he said carefully, ‘is nothing that Madeleine Strauss hasn’t been saying about Jacob to God knows how many people.’

‘There’s no love lost there – everyone knows.’

‘At the art exhibition she told me that Jacob had the anti-Midas touch. Everything he had contact with turned to dust.’

‘Typical Madeleine remark,’ she said with a grimace.

‘She said he’d never been any good at making money. I couldn’t help thinking back to the press pack. I think the words “entrepreneurial genius” were used.’

‘Elliott North’s words.’

‘I couldn’t help wondering – just what’s going on here?’

She was following him intently, hardly bearing to guess where this conversation was heading.

‘It so happens,’ he told her, ‘that I have a friend in the States who runs a desk research operation. If there’s a single sheet of paper that’s ever been generated about a company, he’s the man to find it. Last night I was faxed the company accounts of Ultra-Sports and Trimnasium.’

He reached into his top drawer and pulled out a sheaf of fax paper which he handed over the desk to Kate. ‘Jim Ritchie was being very generous when he questioned the relevance of Jacob Strauss’s previous experience …’

For a few moments she flicked through the pages in silence. Reading company accounts was second nature to her, but these she had to double-take. She could scarcely believe them. For the past God knows how many weeks, she’d been sending out press packs to her closest journalist contacts, positioning Jacob Strauss as the great sporting icon and entrepreneurial wunderkind. Meantime …

‘If this gets out—’ She was shaking her head. ‘It explains Elliott North. But if this gets out …’ She put down the pages and stared at him. ‘This changes everything,’ she said. Then, glancing back at the pages, ‘I’m going to have to tell Mike. This,’ she shook the pages, ‘this is a hostage to fortune. It’s only a matter of time before it blows up in our faces.’

Pushing his chair back from his desk, he got up and walked to the window. He hadn’t planned to do what he’d just done. But what had he planned to do? He was sure he could trust Kate. So where was the problem?

‘I don’t want to be the guy with the smoking gun,’ he said when he turned back to Kate. ‘I’ve already had trouble with North over Project Silo.’

He decided not to tell her about child molestation and the kid at St Stephen’s. About the faceless drivers following him. About having his house swept for bugs. ‘I’m still the new boy here.’

‘I’ll see to it,’ she reassured him. ‘I won’t mention where I got this.’ She glanced at the fax ID number, ‘I could have had it faxed over by IfB myself.’ Then, meeting his worried expression, ‘Trust me, Chris. I won’t even mention your name.’

An hour later, when she stepped into Mike Cullen’s office, she closed the door behind her and looked over to where he was going through the morning’s e-mails.

‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ she said when he looked up. ‘I’ve just discovered Jacob Strauss is a crook.’

Mike Cullen’s usually untroubled features were clouded as he stood motionless at his office window, deep in thought. Kate’s revelations had presented him with a problem, the full implications of which he was still working through.

From the very first time he’d met Jacob Strauss, during a trip to New York, he’d known Jacob wasn’t cut from the same cloth as his older brother. At the time, Jacob had been in trouble over the implementation of the Quantum Change programme. Instead of transforming the fortunes of Starwear, Quantum Change had knocked a gaping hole in productivity figures, and seen the company’s share price slump to its lowest level in eight years.

Back then, the thought of digging about in Jacob’s past hadn’t even crossed Mike’s mind; he’d had far too many more urgent problems to deal with. But he’d immediately been suspicious of Jacob’s heavy reliance on Elliott North, some nickel-and-dime PR merchant who’d worked out of the back streets of Brooklyn before Jacob had leaned on Hill Stellar to acquire his ‘company’, on pain of losing Starwear’s business. What exactly was North able to provide, Mike kept asking himself, that Hill Stellar couldn’t deliver in spadefuls?

When Nathan had died, it had been much more, to Mike, than a mysterious tragedy. Starwear was Lombard’s biggest client, but its significance to him personally went much further. He thought of Starwear as his foundation, the rock on which he had built his agency, and on which he was to build his personal fortune. All his dealings with Nathan had been congenial, stimulating, rewarding. But, under the new regime, all that had changed. From the very beginning, Jacob’s assumption had been that the arrangement he’d enjoyed with Hill Stellar in New York would continue with Lombard in London. Elliott North was to be his special adviser, his spin-doctor-without-portfolio, to be accommodated and generously remunerated by Lombard.

Almost immediately, things had gone wrong, throwing Mike’s meticulously developed plans into turmoil. The ‘bull in a china shop’ cliche, he reflected, was barely adequate as a description of Elliott North’s impact since his arrival. It was bad enough that he had instantly upset Mike’s staff. Once he’d embarked on his crass campaign, demanding universal adulation of Jacob Strauss by senior national journalists, Mike had found himself spending increasing amounts of time fire fighting. Soothing journalistic egos and restoring dented pride had always been one of his specialties, but lately he’d become exhausted by the constant need to dampen down the trail of havoc left by North in his wake.

These latest revelations about Jacob Strauss’s early career provided yet another, unwelcome twist to the whole, unsavoury affair. Mike couldn’t say they surprised him. He’d never rated Jacob’s business acumen – errors of judgement were why he’d found himself in such a mess over Quantum Change. But the discovery of yet more skeletons in the cupboard created a new difficulty. Lombard, like any PR agency, traded on providing journalists with access to clients, and credible information on their activities. Take away the credibility, and you were left with nothing. And if Kate had uncovered the company accounts of Ultra-Sports and Trimnasium, it was only a matter of time before any number of journalists did too.

Not only did he have to act, swiftly and decisively over Starwear, he also had to do something about Kate. During the past year or so he’d become increasingly concerned about her. Having been a close working colleague for the past twelve years, he knew her every turn of mood, and it seemed to him that she had become more and more jaded. This latest turn of events seemed like the last straw – there was no telling what she might do next.

It was a tough decision to make, but in the end he knew he had no alternative. He called through for Rosa on his intercom. When she arrived he told her, ‘I’m going to have to set up a full agency meeting for eight-thirty a.m. tomorrow week, and I’ll expect everyone to attend.’

She raised her eyebrows fractionally. Full agency meetings were rare enough – Lombard had grown too big to summon all its consultants together with any frequency, and the last full agency meeting had been two years ago. But compulsory attendance – she had never known it before.

‘I have an important announcement, and I want everyone to hear it directly from me.’

‘Shall I make arrangements to use Reception?’

He nodded. ‘Good, thanks.’

Suppressing her burning curiosity beneath her customary brisk efficiency, she turned to leave the room.

‘Oh, and Rosa?’ He caught her on the way out. ‘Elliott North. I want him in my office. Now.’

Mike Cullen looked up, his face like thunder, as North came into his office. ‘This came to my attention early this morning.’ He wasted no time on pleasantries, handing over instead a copy of the Ultra-Sports and Trimnasium accounts. He studied North’s reactions carefully, as the other man sat opposite him and, after scrutinising the first few pages in detail, flicked through the accounts with the casualness of familiarity. ‘Where did you get these?’ he asked, without looking up.

‘You might well ask.’ Cullen’s tone was loaded with anger. ‘Kate Taylor gave them to me. She got them by telephoning a research company in New York and asking for them. Something which any journalist, sufficiently provoked, might decide to do.’

North looked across the desk at him wordlessly, eyes steely behind their lenses.

After a pause, Cullen continued, ‘For the past several weeks, my agency has been distributing press packs on Jacob Strauss like confetti, telling all who care to listen about his “entrepreneurial genius”,’ his lips curled in distaste, ‘and all the while—’

‘You’ve always known that Jay is no superman—’

‘Damned right I have. I know what a total cock-up he’s made of everything he’s done since Nathan gave him the job.’ Cullen’s fury was controlled, and all the more devastating for it. ‘What I didn’t know and, quite frankly, didn’t want to know, was anything about his pre-Starwear activities. I had assumed, from your phrase “entrepreneurial genius” that he’d been at least solvent. This’, he prodded the report with his forefinger, ‘shows Trimnasium was a no-hoper from the start, and Ultra-Sports a virtual basketcase.’

North regarded his furious expression for a while, before leaning back in his chair with a shrug. ‘Shit happens,’ he said.

Cullen slammed his right hand on to his desk. ‘Not at Lombard!’ His voice was heavy with rage. ‘It may surprise you to know that there’re plenty of Jacob Strausses who’ve passed through my hands in the past twenty years. Head honchos who’ve been promoted beyond their ability; overpaid fat cats trading on borrowed glory. Sooner or later, heads roll. You can’t hide from the market. That’s why we never lie about our clients. We might draw a discreet veil, but we never lie.’

‘I don’t see the difference.’

‘There’s a lot of things you don’t see, Elliott.’ Cullen was devastating. ‘In fact, the only thing that matches Jacob Strauss’s incompetence as a businessman is your own spectacular incompetence in media relations.’

‘I don’t have to take this crap from you.’ North was getting up.

‘You’re wrong there, too.’ Cullen looked up at him. ‘If you don’t get back in your seat, I’ll have you escorted off the premises. I can pull the plug on Jacob Strauss and you. One telephone call and you’re history. Don’t forget that.’

North slouched back to his chair.

‘Quite apart from compromising the credibility of my agency,’ Cullen continued, mighty with anger, ‘your interference has become intolerable. You’ve been getting under the feet of Kate Taylor, one of the finest practitioners in this agency. Showing up at client interviews – what’s the matter with you? Are you trying to make us the laughing stock of the national press? And if that isn’t bad enough, I hear you’ve been making cack-handed attempts to bribe a senior reporter.’

‘That was a misunderstanding,’ barked North.

There’ve been too many misunderstandings, haven’t there? Like the Chris Treiger misunderstanding. Here you have an intelligent young man, one of the best planners in the industry, and you blast him out of the sky.’

‘I only did that—’

‘1 know why you did it. But you were wrong.’ Cullen pointed across his desk. ‘Since you arrived, you’ve screwed with my staff, you’ve screwed with the national press, and you’ve screwed with our four-point strategy for Starwear.’

For a long while Cullen glowered across the desk at North who sat, hunched, in his chair.

Eventually, North found his voice. ‘So, what d’you want done?’ He spoke in barely a whisper.

‘That,’ Cullen was severe, ‘1 can sum up in a single word.’