Conflict of Interest

Later that day he’d presented himself at the reception of Starwear Tower, on Madison, wearing a fresh shirt and tie bought specially for the occasion. Escorted up to executive offices on the penthouse floor, he was met by Cameron in a modern boardroom replete with Starwear iconography and float-framed photographs of major Starwear events. No sooner had Cameron sat him down with a cup of coffee, however, than the Corporate Communications Director had excused himself, returning to the room a few minutes later with Jacob Strauss himself. Mr Strauss would brief him directly, explained Cameron, before wishing North a good day, and bowing out of the room.

Jacob Strauss’s dazzling good looks were, in the flesh, every bit as compelling as when North had seen him on television. It wasn’t only the tanned blondness, the sensual smile, the athlete’s body. It was also the way he held himself, his every movement imbued with as much poise as though he were still on piste; North couldn’t help being bowled over by his charisma. Jay quickly explained how it was he who had asked Cameron to set up this meeting. One of North’s fliers had come to his attention, the one outlining North Media’s services, and showing a photograph of ‘Elliott North, Chairman’. He’d thought the flier was well put together, he told North, and wondered if North Media would consider producing a flier for one of their new trainer lines?

Who was going to say no? From the moment Jay had explained what he had in mind, North suspected there was an ulterior motive; in Jay, he’d seen something of himself. And sure enough, in the ensuing weeks, as the two of them saw more of each other, that initial spark of recognition developed rapidly into a full-blown sexual adventure. North had embarked on the most thrilling journey of his life. Both men, of course, had to exercise extreme care. Jay Strauss was so high-profile that his every appearance in public was a potential media event, and Starwear security men monitored his every move. He was a married man, and the leader, in America at least, of a sportswear firm that put healthy families at the heart of its promotional campaigns. Scandal could not be allowed to touch him.

Over the next two months, things changed dramatically for North Media. During dinner in a private suite at The Plaza, Jay put a proposition to Elliott North which he had no difficulty accepting. Starwear’s long-established public relations agency in New York was Hill Stellar, one of the largest operations in the country. What Jay proposed was that North sell North Media to Hill Stellar. It would look strange, Jay explained, if he was seen to have continual contact with a one-man operation in Brooklyn. Under the auspices of Hill Stellar, however, their level of contact could be as high as they liked without raising the slightest suspicions. What’s more, although he would work out of Hill Stellar’s offices, he would continue to run as an autonomous business unit, working exclusively for Jay. North’s only question had been about Hill Stellar what if they didn’t want to buy North Media? Jay had only laughed.

‘You just leave that to me,’ he’d assured North. ‘We spend so much with those guys every year they’ll do exactly what we tell them to. Besides, one way or another, I’ll be funding the purchase. So, what do you say to a million dollars?’

A short while later, Elliott North bought himself an apartment on the Upper East Side. He also became the proud driver of a Porsche, courte

sy of Hill Stellar, and enjoyed all the benefits of an American Express – Gold Card – expense account. Gone were the days of chasing after business. When he wasn’t involved in an assignment on behalf of Jay Strauss, which soon became most of the time, he was keeping an eye on the other Starwear activities being run out of Hill Stellar. Quickly discovering that his close contact with Jay conferred a special status on himself, he learned that he barely needed to raise his eyebrows about an idea and it was squashed flat. The merest hint that Jay might like something was quickly translated into fully worked-up proposals. For the first time in his life, Elliott North had power; he had truly relished terrorising the staff of Hill Stellar.

This happy state of affairs may have long continued. But there were several security lapses and word began to get out. Rumours started flying about the place, and it was only his own efforts, and that of a privately commissioned firm of fixers, that succeeded in keeping stories out of the media. He and Jay had to adopt a very low profile until the dust settled. After six months, they were still wondering if things were safe when Nathan committed suicide; at an emergency meeting held the afternoon that the news came through from London, it didn’t take them five minutes to decide that Jay should move to London when he was appointed Starwear’s new CEO.

There were complications with North’s transfer. Hill Stellar’s equivalent in London, Lombard, had a strong relationship with Nathan Strauss lasting many years. Jacob Strauss was virtually unknown, and while that had certain advantages, it also meant that Elliott North, as Jay Strauss’s spin-doctor numero uno, didn’t carry nearly so much clout among his PR peers as he had in New York. What’s more, though Jay Strauss had got Mike Cullen to take on his special adviser without much persuasion, it wasn’t quite the same deal he’d struck with Hill Stellar. Now, North was regarded as part of Lombard’s Starwear team – but he’d never been a team player. Not only did he have Cullen breathing down his neck these days, he also had to deal with the likes of that ponce d’Andrea. Then there was the Taylor woman, in it completely over her head.

He could do without having to deal with the Lombard lot all the more because, as he found out soon after arriving, British journalists were far more likely to run around printing hugely damaging stories than their American peers. Unlike America, where the dollar was Almighty, and success to be worshipped, he discovered that in Britain, success was a source of resentment, and tall poppies were there to be cut down. If the risks involving Jay and him were big in New York, they were ten times bigger in London. All of which meant that their affairs had to be conducted with the utmost secrecy and vigilance. A point that Jay, judging by his increasingly wild demands, had completely failed to understand.

Now, as he sat in the sitting room of his Onslow Gardens flat, the laptop resting on his velvet-gowned knees, North scrolled through incoming e-mails. Part of his vigilance was to keep close tabs on individual journalists who could cause trouble, and deal with them if they got out of line. It was the strategy which had protected Jay – and him – in New York, and which was imperative here, although d’Andrea was less than enthusiastic about seeing through the results of his monitoring – as the de Vere exercise had shown. That time, he’d had to take matters into his own hands.

Reaching an incoming e-mail from Monitoring Services, North noted the subject title: Judith Laing. He quickly opened it. Following that week’s traffic meeting, the alarm bells ringing in his ears the moment Tim Wylie had mentioned Judith Laing’s activities, North had gone straight to Monitoring Services to demand a biographical update.

As he scrolled down the information they’d sent him, he became even more perturbed. Judith Laing was trouble, there was no doubting it. First of all she was very smart – North knew you didn’t get into the British equivalent of an ivy-league university without serious intellectual fire power. Second, she was anti-establishment. Reading through a list of articles she had penned while at The Guardian, including the scoop for which she’d won an investigative journalism award, North decided she was a hardened leftist. Big business was her natural enemy. All her important pieces had been about environmental disasters, or third-world exploitation or discrimination in the workplace – she was no armchair commentator, or newsroom hack. But worst of all was her commitment. As he scrolled through her earlier associations at Oxford, he groaned loudly; Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Women First, NUSEA – she’d been involved in them all at some time. According to d’Andrea’s note,she’d even had an affair with the President of NUSEA who was in her year.

The idea of her sniffing around Starwear was a nightmare made real. Cullen’s charm offensive might be enough to see her off, but he doubted it. He’d had to deal with a dozen Judith Laings in his time. And if she kept on digging, as she probably would, he wouldn’t be left with any choice but to bring a permanent end to her enquiries. D’Andrea would go ballistic, just as he had over de Vere. He’d fiddle and fret and talk about having Laing transferred to some other remit at The Herald. But North felt no compunction at all about ordering the final solution. There was simply too much at stake to risk anything different; as long as Judith Laing remained alive, she could surface from nowhere and blow them all out of the water.

He was mulling this over when the telephone rang. ‘You’re ready?’ asked Jay, as always dispensing with preliminaries.

‘Sure.’

‘Half an hour?’

‘I’ll put the champagne on ice.’

‘You do that, sport.’

‘I’ll be waiting for you …’

8

Chris’s office was in darkness apart from the pool of light thrown by his desk lamp. That had been burning till midnight, and usually after, every night this week, and the week before, including Saturdays. In the hours after seven p.m., with the support staff mostly gone and the phone no longer ringing, he’d devoted more concentrated energy to Project Silo than he had to any report in his entire career. Subsisting on a diet of strong, black Brazilian from the percolator in Charlotte’s office, and hastily snatched burgers from a nearby Burger King, Chris had never worked so intensely in his life.

But he reckoned he’d got the results. Five and a half weeks after joining Lombard, he’d pulled together more comprehensive profiles of Sportex PLC and Active Red than had ever existed. He’d picked over analyst reports, he’d mined Companies House and scrutinised the two companies’ financial records in forensic detail. There was the original research among market commentators, the brand analysis, the in-depth market segmentation, and the biographical detail on Bob Reid and Ed Snyder distilled from a dozen sources.

Chris reckoned he’d spent two hundred and forty hours on Project Silo. At his charge-out rate of £300 an hour, that equated to a project fee of seventy-two grand – plus all the research expenses passed through with a twenty per cent mark-up, which would push the project well over a hundred and fifty grand. The final result of which now sat on the desk in front of him, two inches thick, complete with Executive Summary,

Appendices and final amendments. Lotte would input his final commentary in the margins tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon, Friday, he’d hand in the report to North and Cullen. Then it was the weekend. Bernie’s party. Time to play.

He glanced at his watch – nine-fifteen p.m. He’d take a half day, he thought wryly. He cleared his desk, beginning with the Project Silo report which he took through to Charlotte’s lock-up filing cabinet – Level Two security. Then there were all the other papers that had to be secured in his own filing cabinet, leaving his desk in a state of vacant anonymity. After shoving the remaining desk-top items into a drawer, he was finally unhooking his jacket from its hanger and slipping his arms into it, when he heard voices coming down the corridor outside.

Strange. Since Mike had left, an hour ago, he’d thought he’d been on his own on the fourth floor. Now he recognised one of the voices as North’s.

‘ … later than I thought,’ No

rth was saying, as Chris appeared at his office door. ‘I’ll have to get you back right now.’

‘Not before you get him his new tracksuit.’