52
David and Malin arrived at the conference center early on Monday. They stood on a glassed-in balcony overlooking the enormous lobby. Lake Mälaren and the Stockholm inlet glittered outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. Below them security personnel from two different companies, wait staff, and conference hosts were all scurrying around.
It was a big facility, the biggest in Stockholm apart from the sports venues. David had known there would be a lot of interest in this shareholders’ meeting, but this . . . the RSVPs had poured in.
“What if there’s still not enough room?” Malin said, echoing his own thoughts. “People will go nuts if they can’t get in.”
Tom Lexington, whose company was in charge of Hammar Capital’s security, came over to them. He gave David one of his firm handshakes and then did the same to Malin, who managed not to make a face at his tight grip.
“How’s it going?” David asked.
“I think they’re getting backed up again out there. Is it usually like this?”
“No,” David said with a shake of his head. “Most shareholders’ meetings are quiet, sleepy affairs.”
“This doesn’t look like it’s going to be one of those,” Tom noted.
“No, this one is going to be more like a gladiator match,” David agreed. “Can they set up any more seating?”
Malin nodded, her cell phone plastered to her cheek. “I just talked to Investum’s communications director”—she made a face to show what she thought of him—“and he says they can accommodate seven hundred people in there.”
David gave Tom a questioning look, and Tom nodded and said, “That ought to be enough.”
Malin excused herself and walked off.
David caught Tom’s eye and asked, “Is everything quiet at the hotel?”
He’d succeeded in convincing Carolina not to come to the shareholders’ meeting after all. She’d been pale and resolute, but had agreed to send her lawyer as proxy. Maybe she’d realized it would be too much for her, but she’d seemed distracted, and he was worried.
“I have a man over there,” Tom said. “Just as a precautionary measure,” he added. “We don’t foresee any threat against her.” He smiled joylessly. “Unlike you. There’ve got to be at least a hundred people here today who’d really like to see you have a stroke or a heart attack on stage. This is like a reunion for everyone who’s ever wanted to see David Hammar’s head on a stake.”
David laughed. “This is the finance world. Most of them are civilized.”
“Yeah, right,” Tom said sarcastically, scanning the lobby, where the first of the attendees were starting to be let in. They were meticulously checked off. Then they funneled in and were served appetizers. So far the chaos was quite organized.
Michel, wearing unusually subdued colors, came up to them and said, “This place is besieged outside. The police are setting up crowd-control fences. It’s starting to get a little crazy.”
“The media is the worst,” Tom said, his eyes narrowing. He had started growing a beard since they’d last seen each other, and he looked downright intimidating.
“Try not to enrage the fourth estate too much,” David said, knowing that in Tom’s world the mass media came just a hair above white supremacists and rabies-infected rats. Tom muttered something inaudible. He was wearing an earpiece and now nodding at something only he could hear. “I have to do a circuit,” he said. Then he gave David a look and said, “You don’t go anywhere without my knowing, got it?”
Michel watched Tom go. “Am I being silly if I say that guy scares me?”
“Nah, Tom is scary when he’s in this mood, maybe in all moods. But he knows what he’s doing.”
The volume of the din below the balcony was constantly rising. The Investum personnel bore the overall responsibility for the event since they were the hosts, but David had demanded to have his own personnel there. Malin and her staff were focusing on everything that had to do with Hammar Capital—press and information—and Tom and his people were responsible for their security.
Malin came rushing back. “Do you think you could give a few quick interviews?” she asked with a stressed glanced at her watch.
“Just tell me where you want me,” David said.
“Great,” Malin said. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”
Meanwhile, Michel’s eyes were locked on a point outside the window where Åsa Bjelke had just stepped out of a taxi. It was overcast; the weather had changed overnight, and in the gray daylight, Åsa practically glowed, dressed all in white. Her platinum-blond hair bounced around her shoulders as she balanced confidently on sky-high white shoes.
“She looks like a movie star,” David commented.
“She looks like trouble,” Michel muttered.
Yeah, that too.
“Here they are,” Michel said.
A black Mercedes had stopped. A chauffeur got out and opened the rear passenger door, and Gustaf De la Grip stepped out. Gustaf straightened his conservative jacket and even more conservative tie as he waited for his wife to get out.
No one else got out of the car. Was Natalia coming, or would she send a proxy? And did it really matter?
A couple of journalists spotted the familiar car and came running. Even from this distance they could tell that Gustaf was making a show of ignoring them, walking into the conference center with Ebba at his side.
Malin came to get David for the interviews. She had set up an enormous Hammar Capital logo and showed him where to stand in front of it. David gave her an amused look.
Malin smiled and whispered, “Is it too much?”
“Maybe a little,” he said. But he obediently stood in front of the black logo, took the microphone, and started answering the questions that rattled at him like hail, interspersed with flashbulbs going off. From the corner of his eye, he spotted Tom, who had joined them and was standing so that he had an overview of the room and was able to glare at the journalists.
Someone yelled, “There’s a rumor that this has to do with some kind of private vendetta between you and the De la Grip family. Would you confirm that?”
David smiled and ambiguously responded, “Of course not.”
“What do you want with Investum?”
“The company isn’t reaching its full potential.”
“Why do you want all the De la Grips off the board of directors?”
“Investum needs a board that can meet the challenge of doing business in a volatile, global marketplace,” he responded, managing to imply that the current board consisted entirely of outdated old farts without actually saying as much.
“Hammar Capital has been investigated by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority.”
He nodded. They had been really irritating. “But they haven’t actually found us guilty of any wrongdoing,” he said. Although they’d tried really hard.
He went on answering questions while Tom Lexington kept a watchful eye from the side. The noise level in the space grew louder by the minute. And then a ripple began at the edge of the bank of journalists. It spread like a wave through the entire crowd. David saw Gustaf De la Grip approaching him, followed closely by a couple of assistants and what looked like actual bodyguards.
Tom had also spotted them, and he took a step forward, giving David a questioning look, a look that said, “Give me a clear sign, and I’ll make mincemeat out of these wimps.”
David shook his head. He wanted to see what was going to happen. Normally Gustaf carefully avoided public confrontations, particularly in front of the press. His leadership style was usually more passive-aggressive, based on ignoring and belittling people. He spewed abuse in private boardrooms and behind closed doors but displayed a polished exterior in public. The question now: was he under enough pressure to deviate from these strategies?
Gustaf’s bodyguards kept pushing people aside, as if the sea of journalists wasn’t letting him through fast enough.
David’s face adopted a neutral expression as he felt his pulse increase. He stood completely still, one hand nonchalantly in his trouser pocket as silence settled over the press corps. No one wanted to miss any of what was going to come. It was the working-class boy versus the king of Swedish industry and commerce.
New money versus old.
And then Gustaf was there. He looked out at the journalists before glaring at David as if he were something disgusting stuck on the sole of his shoe. And after all these years, after all his success, David still remembered that look. He remembered how Gustaf had come to the boarding school after the rape. How he had taken charge and called the shots, as if Skogbacka and its staff were just an extension of his turf. How he’d denigrated David and his mother to anyone who would listen, told them exactly what sort of lowlife family the Ham-mars were. And even today David remembered how powerless he’d been, forced to remain silent. The shame he’d felt at having given up in the face of that superior power. They had bullied and beaten him, attacked Carolina, whipped him bloody, gradually broken his mother, and believed that right was on their side the whole time. A certainty that Gustaf and his ilk had taken as their birthright for centuries.
And at this moment in front of the crowd of reporters and next to an outraged Gustaf De la Grip, David knew it had been worth it.
All his sacrifices had paid off.
He would do this without showing any mercy.
Because they had all—Natalia, Michel, and Carolina—been wrong.
Revenge could be good.
He was finally going to do what he’d been fantasizing about ever since he’d cowered before Skogbacka’s headmaster, his back whipped into an irreparable network of scars, and been informed that if he did not immediately stop harassing the De la Grip family, they would call in their attorneys, who would make sure that low-class lowlifes like David and his retarded sister and whore of a mother were crushed like the vermin they were. The headmaster had bellowed that last part. The same headmaster who hadn’t had any qualms about having an affair with Helena Hammar a few months before all the hell broke loose. The same headmaster whom David had financially destroyed a few years ago. A few years before that he had dealt with the other two men who had raped Caro, and had left their finances in ruins. The things Natalia had read about him had been exaggerated in places, but were basically true. Those men had been made to pay for what they’d done. He’d dealt with them, learned from his mistakes, and moved on.
Only Investum was left now.
Gustaf and Peter De la Grip.
Something inside David let go. He looked straight at Gustaf, saw all the flashbulbs going off, and smiled.
He was really going to enjoy this.
“Gustaf!” a TV reporter cried.
Gustaf gave him a cool look, but the reporter wasn’t deterred. The mood in the room was heated, and they smelled blood. “How does this feel? What’s going to happen to Investum?”
Gustaf didn’t manage to hide his grimace. “It’s nice of Mr. Hammar to take such great interest in our company,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Of course absolutely anyone is free to buy and sell shares on the stock market.”
“But what would it mean if David Hammar were to get a seat on the board?” another reporter called out. “What do you think about David Hammar? Honestly?”
Gustaf made a face, as if he really shouldn’t have to answer such questions. David looked on with amusement. The pompous Gustaf obviously hadn’t planned on answering questions from a bunch of everyday, sensationalist business reporters.
“Ultimately it’s the shareholders who will decide,” Gustaf half choked.
“We talked to a representative of one of the national pension funds. He didn’t seem all that opposed to David Hammar being on the board. How do you feel about that? They’re usually loyal to you. Do you think they’re going to vote for David?”
“That would be a disaster,” Gustaf scoffed.
“What do you think about David Hammar proposing a board without a single representative of the owning family on it?”
“It’s completely irresponsible,” Gustaf hissed. “An upstart like him doesn’t know anything about the real world, about how the financial sector really works.”
“What do you say about the high percentage of women on David Hammar’s proposed board? How was he able to find so many competent women while you haven’t been able to find a single one to date?”
“That’s an obvious attempt to sway public opinion,” Gustaf responded. “We take our responsibility seriously and make our choices based a little more on expertise.”
That wasn’t a particularly smart response, David thought. On the whole, this interview was actually proving to be a disaster for Gustaf from start to finish. Gustaf wasn’t used to this kind of lack of respect from the press and had allowed himself to be lured into saying what he actually thought, not what he ought to say.
The reporters kept calling out questions, and an increasingly stressed Gustaf snarled his answers. David would actually have loved to let him keep putting his foot in his mouth, but he nodded subtly to Malin.
“Thank you, everyone,” Malin said loudly, thus concluding the improvised question-and-answer session. “We’ll be starting at the designated time, so please head in and find your seats. Make sure your name tags are visible; otherwise you won’t get in.”
Gustaf pushed his way through the throng of reporters.
“What a delightful guy,” Tom said dryly and pushed his finger against his earpiece. The motion caused his jacket to flap open, and David saw something that looked like a holster by his armpit. He really hoped Tom had a license for that.
“We’ve secured the premises,” Tom said after he finished listening to his earpiece. “But if you’re attacked, I’ll try to extract you.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Tom looked him straight in the eye and asked, “What do you think?” Then he pulled out a sleek cell phone that was vibrating noiselessly and looked down at it, furrowing his brow. “I have to take this,” he said, moving away just as Michel walked over.
“What?” Michel asked.
“Tom,” David replied laconically.
“Oh, yeah, he’s hilarious. The way a tax audit is hilarious.”
“Yes?” Tom said into his phone as soon as he’d stepped away from David and Michel.
“She had a visitor,” said the man on the other end, the man Tom had assigned to keep an eye on Carolina Hammar.
“Who?”
“A man.”
Shit, David wasn’t going to be happy about this. “Do you have a picture of him?” Tom asked.
“I’m sending it now.”
“Where is he right now? Can you see him?”
“In her room.”
Fuck. Tom was just about to give the order for his guy to knock on Carolina’s door—screw it if he was overreacting—when the man said, “He’s coming back out.”
“Can you see the woman?” Tom asked just as a text message chimed in. He plugged in his headset and studied the image that arrived as he was wondering whether he should tell his guy to knock on her door to make sure she was alright. The slightest little anomaly and he would order him to storm her room to secure her, and the Grand Hôtel could send him the bill. He wasn’t about to let anything happen to David Hammar’s little sister. Tom had had to work with the Russian mafia and the most radical of radical al-Qaida factions in North Africa. He would far rather do that again than take the retribution that David Hammar would unleash if anything were to happen to his sister.
Tom studied the image more closely and identified the man who’d visited Carolina Hammar as Peter De la Grip. He had no idea what that could mean. He thought about it, and then he heard a shout and a scream. He looked up, distracted. A journalist was trying to force his way in. Tom shoved his phone into his pocket and went to settle the disturbance.
He approached the journalist. They were all scum, if you asked him.
And a desk jockey and daddy’s boy like Peter De la Grip could hardly constitute a serious threat to Carolina Hammar, Tom thought as he yelled at the journalist.
He decided to hold off.