Conflict of Interest

e back seat, he met her eyes grimly. ‘It’ll be all right.’

Inside the airport terminal they’d looked for telephones – and were relieved to find a calling centre, where phones were available in private booths, payable by credit card. In minutes he’d got an outside line, had dialled up Lombard, and was through to Rosa. ‘I need to speak to Mike.’

‘He’s in a meeting right now.’

‘Well, interrupt it. What I’ve got to tell him is extremely important.’

Responding to the urgency in his tone, Rosa put him on hold for a few moments before there was a click and Mike was on the line. ‘Mike, I’m calling from Bombay airport,’ Chris began. ‘I have to tell you something, and I need your help.’

Forty minutes later, they emerged from the centre. Over the past half hour, a dazed-sounding Mike Cullen, reeling from Chris’s revelations, had been to-ing and fro-ing, with Rosa on the other line, trying to work out the best way to get them out. Lombard had a correspondent agency in Bombay, and Mike knew the Managing Director there. He’d spoken to the MD who would come out to the airport and arrange payment of the tickets. After they’d checked in they were to let Mike know what flight they were on; he’d come out to Heathrow personally to collect them.

It would be more than an hour until Mike’s Bombay contact arrived. Chris had arranged that they’d meet him outside the International Departures gate, under a prominent billboard for Cathay Pacific. Meantime, the only comfortable place in the whole airport was the upstairs bar.

‘I could do with some anaesthetic,’ Chris said wearily, as they made their way inside.

‘Mine’s a double,’ ordered Judith.

Soon, they were perched on bar stools sipping gin-and-tonics, discussing in low voices what exactly they’d do next. It was only when they’d been there some time that they became aware of the signature tune of Sky News being played. The barman told them there was a TV lounge next door. Both wanted to know about the Textiles Bill amendment; picking up their drinks, they went through to the other room.

Conflict in Afghanistan dominated a bulletin which carried very little in the way of domestic UK news. If the Textiles Bill was going to get a mention, it would only be near the end. But although they watched the bulletin right through, there was no mention of the Bill. It was only when international weather came up that Chris glanced at his watch – and realised they had less than five minutes to go until their rendezvous.

Whether it was the combination of alcohol and blood loss, or the effects of his bullet wound, Chris suddenly found it harder to walk. His whole right side was stiff and he felt depleted of energy. His progress down the stairs from the bar was painfully slow – he found himself having to swing his right side with his left. When they got to the bottom, Judith fetched him a baggage trolley to give him extra support. As they made their way across the airport hall, he checked his watch again. ‘We’re going to be late.’

Judith looked over at his worried expression, before glancing at her own watch. ‘Not by much. He’ll wait.’

Eventually they came out of the International Departures hall and were making their way towards the Cathay Pacific poster. There was the usual airport hustle about the place – porters, taxis, travellers and buses all intent on getting somewhere else. By the Cathay Pacific poster, they noticed, stood a European couple about their age. Cause for confusion, thought Chris, trying to move faster.

Then a taxi came screeching round a corner, heading directly towards the rendezvous point. There was a sudden burst of automatic gunshot. Then screaming as people fled inside the terminal. The European couple were covered in blood, the woman writhing in pain, the man clutching her to him. Then another burst of rounds from the back of the taxi. This time the force of it blasted the couple off their feet, slamming them hard against the billboard four feet behind. They slid to the ground, collapsing in a heap like bleeding rag-dolls. The taxi was already speeding away.

Judith and Chris stood, frozen with horror, witnesses to their own execution. It was only after a long while that Chris turned, hollow-eyed, to Judith, and managed in a dry whisper: ‘Is he in on it too?’

Mike Cullen replaced the telephone receiver on his desk with a look of grim satisfaction. Kuczynski had just been on the line.

‘Confirmation from my Bombay operative,’ he’d said. ‘You won’t be hearing further from the two problem children.’

‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’ Cullen had pressed him.

‘Completely sure,’ Kuczynski reassured him. ‘finito.’

Cullen had paused a moment before saying, ‘Congratulations, Sol. Another job well done.’

He got up from his desk now, and walked across to the floor-to-ceiling windows with the most expensive view in London. Getting what he wanted hadn’t turned out to be easy. But making a hundred million pounds cash was never going to be. With Treiger and Laing out of the way, however, he’d removed the final obstacle. Soon he’d be savouring the fruits of his Four-Point Plan. He’d soon be selling the considerable shareholding he’d secretly amassed in Starwear, through Zillion, Kraton and Quivelle. With Starwear shares trading at their highest price ever, the deal would amount to £104.5 million. The proceeds were to be sheltered in a Liechtenstein trust fund, well beyond the reach of the taxman’s grasping fingers.

He’d set up the three offshore entities to protect his anonymity soon after his first meeting with Jacob Strauss in New York. Nathan’s younger brother had, single-handedly, taken the entire Starwear empire to the brink of commercial suicide with his failure to implement Quantum Change. Every other major sportswear manufacturer had succeeded in setting up primary production centres in developing countries, but even with the highly paid help of Forbes, Jacob Strauss, through a combination of overwhelming arrogance and colossal stupidity, had ensured the programme was a disaster for Starwear.

When Cullen had met him, Strauss had been desperate. He needed a quick fix. And Cullen had given him one; subcontract on a massive scale until Quantum Change is sorted out. Use the cheapest possible suppliers. That meant the sweatshops of India, Thailand and Indonesia; it meant eighteen-hour days for a bowl of rice; it meant exploiting women and kids. All of which couldn’t be further removed from big brother Nathan’s ethical stance. But what Nathan didn’t know couldn’t hurt him, and ethics were a luxury the company couldn’t afford.

While bargain-basement producers were being set up, Cullen had taken advantage of Starwear’s collapsed share price. He’d bought in at rock-bottom, borrowing money against his ownership of Lombard to buy twelve per cent of the company. Using Zillion, Kraton and Quivelle to conceal his identity – the names had been chosen, one at a time, by his Liechtenstein-based lawyer, using a telephone directory and a Mont Blanc Meisterstück – Cullen had derived droll amusement from watching both Strauss brothers run around like headless chickens at the prospect of seeing the family firm taken out.

Over time, their fears had receded. They’d decided that future profit-taking, rather than corporate control, was the motive behind the substantial buy-up of shares. Cullen had watched productivity figures soar and the share price recover. He’d bided his time, waiting to pick the best moment to sell, but it hadn’t been straightforward. When the rumours about child slaves came out, Nathan had given Jacob the third-degree. Jacob had stuck to his line – there was no truth to the rumours at all. Nathan’s public statement denying the child slaves had been as forceful and conclusive as you could get – Cullen had written it himself. Such was Nathan’s moral authority that his denial had squashed the rumours more effectively than if there’d been a DTI investigation. Then Nathan had discovered the truth – and been unable to live with himself. It was Nathan, after all, who had appointed Jacob to the Starwear Board – at the behest of their dying father to whom he’d always felt a powerful sense of filial duty. Just as it was Nathan who’d saved Jacob from his failing businesses by setting up Sprintco offshore and buying out Ultra-Sports and Trimnasium for a dollar apiece.

Nathan’s suicide had been a huge inconvenience. Nathan was the perfect CEO, eminently capable and credible. His lack of media savvy seemed only to underline his guru-like status in the corporate world. Jacob, on the other hand, PR’d well, but his incompetence couldn’t be hidden for ever, which was why Cullen had come up with his Four-Point Plan: an intensive PR campaign with one single objective – to drive up Starwear’s share price in the short term.

Getting the amendment in the House of Commons had been a key part of the plan. Blocking the prospect of opening up competition would give the share price a major boost. Analysts had already marked the company down on the basis that the Textiles Bill would go straight through. Late this afternoon, when George Thannet’s amendment had been accepted by the House, Starwear’s price had rocketed by ten per cent. Project Silo had done the business, though not quite as Cullen had planned. He’d hoped Treiger would have dug up some dirt on the operational inadequacies of Sportex and Active Red, but both companies had seemed clean as whistles. So he’d decided to go after personal stuff to bomb the bastards out of the water – and it had worked.

He’d had even more difficulty keeping alive the myth of Jacob Strauss – the ‘entrepreneurial genius’, as North had described him in a fit of excess. He’d decided to eliminate William van Aardt long before, to stop stories of Strauss’s personal life circulating through the media. Then Merlin de Vere had got hold of Strauss’s early track record and he’d had to be silenced too. But the worst of it had been Judith Laing, who’d rapidly whipped up the most lethal of cocktails, and involved Treiger in it too. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Kate Taylor had been sucked in; Kate, for whom he really had had big plans. He’d had to get rid of her, of course, but not before carefully distancing himself from the operation by promoting her twelve hours earlier.

It had all been very messy – not his style – but it needed to be done. Jacob Strauss’s reputation would remain intact for another week from now. Which w