‘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-w
ithout-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.’