Conflict of Interest

‘That’s never been in dispute. What’s in dispute are the tactics employed. What works in America doesn’t necessarily do in Britain.’

North pulled an expression of amused disdain. ‘Oh, really? Exactly what alternative did we have with de Vere?’

‘We could have had him switched from the manufacturing brief at J. P. Morgan,’ d’Andrea wearily repeated an evidently much-rehearsed argument.

‘And how long would that have taken?’

The other shrugged.

‘It’s all about timing, and time is something we don’t have much of.’ North rose, about to leave the office. At the door he turned and asked, ‘Tell me about Treiger?’

‘What about him?’

‘Precisely.’ North fixed him with a baleful stare.

After a pause, d’Andrea shrugged. ‘Squeaky clean.’

‘You told me that a fortnight ago. What have you got on him in the meantime?’

D’Andrea leaned back in his chair. ‘Chris Treiger is a hard-working young man with a keen desire to impress you all. He’s been telling all his friends he expects to work twelve to fourteen hours a day at Lombard.’

‘What about his personal life?’

‘We’ll make sure he doesn’t have time for one of those.’

‘He told Cullen he’s not in a relationship, but I can’t believe he’s not balling someone.’

‘It happens.’ D’Andrea pursed his lips.

‘I need to be sure. What level of monitoring have you got him under?’

‘Standard.’

‘Extend it. Pick up his home phone calls. Have him followed weekends. Get me some dirt – I might just need it.’

‘If you tell me where to start digging—’

‘Just watch him.’ North gestured impatiently. ‘Keep close tabs on his every move. If you told me he gets shit-faced with his mates every Friday and has a bit on the side I’d be a lot happier.’

Then, pausing reflectively, he said, ‘It’s always the quiet ones, you know, that end up causing the most trouble.’

4

A fortnight into the new job, Chris’s feet had scarcely touched the ground. Every morning had been early and every evening late. Very late. For someone whose job function had never existed prior to his arrival, he’d found it hard to believe the demand for his services. Who’d done all the research and planning around here before? Not that there was any question of him passing up on any projects. He was still the new boy with everything to prove.

Every morning he’d get out of bed at five forty-five, take a shower, get dressed and be in the office by seven. Breakfasts and lunches were snatched affairs on the run; bagels and Danish pastries from the Lombard kitchen, sandwiches from the Prêt a Manger round the corner, all eaten in the brooding semi-darkness of his office while he worked at his computer. Days would end at eight, nine, ten o’clock – on several occasions, way past midnight – six days a week. Sundays he might take some work home with him, or go into the office for a few hours in the afternoon. It didn’t matter when he arrived or when he left, however, there was always someone else in before him and someone who’d be staying later. Downstairs in the Lombard basement car park, there was always a handful of Saabs, Porsches and BMW coupes, whatever the time of day or night. Always a hostile takeover bid to support or fend off, a merger or corporate restructuring to sell or, at the very least, a results announcement to get covered.

At M

IRA Chris had been through busy periods, times when the scheduling of client projects meant there’d be weeks of analysis and report-writing without respite. But during those times there had always been an end to it, a cut-off point, at which time normality would be resumed. At Lombard, however, there was no end. Lombard existed to feed the relentless, hungry maw of the twenty-four-hour global media machine. It was an integral part of the editorial equipment of every major national and international newspaper, television and radio station. Lombard was that part of the media machine that manufactured the news. And money was what fuelled its frenetic activity.

Chris soon discovered that the kinds of retainers Lombard charged its clients made the figures he’d been used to bandying about at MIRA look like small change. The agency wouldn’t countenance taking on a client paying less than £10k a month, and most were on £20k plus. What’s more, all the contracts were open-ended so that if Lombard consultants spent more time on an account than was covered by the monthly retainer, every additional hour was charged. Charge-out rate denoted status within the agency; junior consultants were charged out at £100 an hour, Account Directors at £250, Board Directors at £350 and the ultimate spin-doctor himself, Mike Cullen, weighed in at a hefty £1,500 an hour – the highest rate charged by any PR man in the country. Chris’s own charge-out rate was £300, to be reviewed after his probationary period. On his very first day, Charlotte had, with customary efficiency, tutored him on the vagaries of electronic time sheet keeping, and had told him that he would be expected to record at least fifty chargeable hours a week. Ten hours a day of billable time seemed an ambitious figure to Chris, but he soon discovered that most consultants clocked up far more than that; sixty and seventy hours a week were common, and hundred-hour weeks were by no means unusual. During results seasons, the consultants in Kate Taylor’s Financial PR team frequently worked round the clock, ignoring weekends and handing in time sheets in the hundred and twenties.

Time sheet keeping, as Chris soon learned, wasn’t just some administrative chore. It was Lombard’s Holy Grail. Consultants were expected to input the hours they worked each week by the Tuesday of the following week. Then every Friday, the total schedule of hours worked was reviewed by Lombard’s directors, listed against each of their names. The arrangement wasn’t overtly to encourage competition, but in reality the different directors at Lombard were perpetually trying to outdo each other in their bid to clock up more man hours per week, with bigger teams of consultants hiking up higher average charge-out rates. Financial competed with consumer, political was pitched against environmental as each of the Lombard directors vied for a bigger share of the fee income – to which their personal profit share was directly linked.

Pay-out time came twice a year and was always a big event, according to Charlotte. Twice a year, always on a Friday morning, every Lombard director would go up to the fifth floor to listen to the Finance Director report on company results. Total revenue, operating costs and company investments were reviewed. But the real interest was how big a bonus each of the directors was going to collect.

In the past five years, no Lombard director had earned less than a £100k bonus for any six-month period. Often it was way above that figure. Kate Taylor had herself collected £450k after a particularly gruelling but lucrative half year, in which three of her clients had, with Lombard’s advice, successfully fought off hostile takeovers. After each of the directors had been told how much money they had made, staff bonuses were decided over a sumptuous lunch prepared by a former royal chef. No expense was ever spared at these celebrations where the freshest of wild Scottish salmon, the most succulent scallops of veal and the most orgastic of pavlovas were all washed down with copious quantities of Louis Latour claret, Californian White Grenache and, of course, the ever-proffered Bollinger.