Due Diligence: A Thriller (26 page)

“Doesn’t matter. I know what’s going to happen.” She looked at him, trying to smile again. “You know, I’ve been at the firm three years, and when they tell me they don’t want me anymore, what am I going to have to show for it? Three years of hundred-hour weeks and quite a large shoe collection.”

“Well, that’s something.”

Cynthia laughed a little, wiping at a tear.

“Is there anything I can do?” asked Rob.

“No.” Cynthia took a deep breath. “You know, the best way to get some money out of this place is to get them to pay you to go away. There was a guy last year, Jeff Estevez, they paid him two million bucks to go. That’s the rumor, anyway. Two million bucks because some of the senior guys had made a bunch of remarks about Latinos and they thought he was going to bring a case.”

“What about Phil Menendez?”

“Menendez was one of the guys who made the remarks!”

Rob couldn’t help laughing. “And I guess no one’s been making anti-British remarks?”

Cynthia shook her head. Rob wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying. Probably both.

“It’s Catch-22,” she said. “Estevez didn’t want to go. If they think you want to go, they won’t give you anything. And if you don’t, like Jeff, what’s a couple of million bucks compared to what you might earn over a career?”

“So why did he go?”

“What else could he do? Bring a court case that he might not win? And who’s ever going to employ him again?”

“Is that what you really want, Cynthia? A career at Dyson Whitney?”

“No, I want a career at Goldman Sachs. But Dyson Whitney would do.” She shrugged. “Anyway, that’s not going to happen. None of it’s going to happen.”

“You never know,” said Rob. “Phil mightn’t kill you in the reviews. I think it’s hard to predict what a guy like Phil’s going to do. All you can do is keep doing your best.”

Cynthia looked at him and smiled. “You’re a nice guy, Rob.” She kept looking at him. Their eyes met.

Rob got up.

She got up as well. She checked her watch. “I told some friends I’d meet up with them if I had time tonight.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

“Looks like you’re going to have to eat by yourself again.” The way she was looking at him, it seemed as much of a question as a statement.

“Forget about it,” said Rob.

Cynthia didn’t reply immediately. “Okay,” she said at last.

They went back to the elevators with the bags.

“So you think I’m doing a great job, huh?” said Cynthia.

Rob grinned. “Best analyst I’ve ever worked with.”

He ate alone in the hotel restaurant. He thought about Cynthia, the way her facade had cracked. She was brittle, way more brittle than he had imagined. And she was probably right about Menendez. Rob didn’t know exactly what you would have to do to get Phil Menendez to support you, but whatever it was, there was nothing to show that Cynthia was doing it.

Afterward he went back upstairs and called Emmy at work. He told her what had been happening with the data room.

“Is this normal,” she asked, “to go all that way and find you can’t do anything?”

“You’re asking me? The deal could be off.”

“What? Just like that?”

“Apparently. I guess we’d be the last to know. Emmy, I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.”

“If it was off,” said Emmy, “what would happen to your team? Do you keep going or do you split up?”

“They’d wind us up. You don’t keep the team together if there’s no deal.”

“Well…” Emmy paused. “Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing after everything that happened. You know, with your boss. You’d get to have a fresh start with some other team. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if this deal didn’t go ahead.”

Rob thought about that. Maybe it wouldn’t. It would solve his dilemma, that was for sure. He wouldn’t have to worry anymore about Louisiana Light and its red flags and what might or might not have been going on there. That was an appealing prospect.

But not as appealing as being on a team that successfully executed a deal, a multibillion, forty-bip deal the likes of which Dyson Whitney had never seen. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. If it were successful, Rob knew, the deal was what everyone would remember, and any little glitches along the way would be forgotten. Anyone on the team that brought that deal home would be a legend. But if it stopped here, he’d be just another guy on another deal that fell through. At best. At worst, he’d be the guy Pete Stanzy almost threw off his team. And that was probably all that anyone would ever want to know about him as they declined to staff him on their projects.

“No, honey,” said Rob. “That wouldn’t be good for me.”

“No?”

“No. We’ve gotta hope this deal keeps going.”

“Then that’s what I hope,” said Emmy. “So, when are you likely to be back?”

“Depends what happens.”

“I miss you.”

Rob laughed. “It’s only been a day.”

“I can still miss you.”

“True. I miss you, too.”

They talked a while more. As he hung up, Rob looked at the time. Eleven o’clock. Six in New York. He wasn’t sleepy. It would be hours before he could get to sleep. He turned on the TV.

At about the same time, to the northwest of London, the lights of a Learjet appeared out of the darkness of the night sky. The plane was on its final descent. Shortly afterward it roared low over a highway, crossing the white and red streams of moving car lights, and landed. The airfield where it touched down was RAF Northolt, the military airfield where the body of Princess Diana, on a sultry day in 1997, was brought back after her death in a Paris motor tunnel. Northolt also offered commercial landing facilities, noted for their efficiency and discretion, which were popular with celebrities and anyone else with a private jet and a reason to avoid the congestion of Heathrow, six miles to the south.

The jet taxied. When it stopped, three men got out. A drizzle was falling, and an official led them briskly to a low office block where they presented their passports. The three men then exited the office block. A car was waiting for them. They got into it and the car headed for the gate. It swung onto the highway over which their plane had landed and turned toward London.

The night receptionist at the Mandarin Oriental on Hyde Park didn’t see too many guests checking in on his shift. He tended to remember them.

“Mr. Brown,” he said. “Back again? And Mr. Leopard?”

Mike Wilson nodded.

“And your name, sir?” asked the receptionist, glancing up from the screen at the third man.

“This is Mr. Green,” said Wilson. “You should have a room for him.”

“Mr. Green … Mr. Green … ah! Here it is. Mr. Green. Will you be staying for just the one night like the other gentlemen?”

Stan Murdoch nodded.

26

Mike Wilson had made the decision as soon as Gelb left him that morning, even before Andrew Bassett rang. There was only one way to handle the situation. You couldn’t expect to win a game of poker without being able to see your opponent’s face. When it came to talking turkey with Andrew Bassett, Wilson didn’t want to be listening to some disembodied voice on the other end of a phone, and he didn’t want Bassett to be doing that, either. He wanted the other man to feel his presence in the room. He wanted to be looking straight into Bassett’s eyes.

When Bassett called at nine o’clock, the Englishman gave no sense of wanting to talk turkey. He talked about the stock price as if he really was concerned by the volatility, as if that weren’t so much baloney to cover up what was really going on. His board was nervous about taking an offer to the shareholders, he said, when there was so much stock in it and the stock price was bouncing. Wilson listened. But it was nothing like being in the room with the man, being able to see his expression, forcing him to say those same things to his face. That’s when his real agenda would show through. It just confirmed what Wilson had already decided. Talking over the phone like this was making it too easy for Bassett.

“All right,” said Wilson at last.

“You understand my position?”

“Sure, Andy. It’s a tough one. I apologize again for putting you in it. The press in this country … what can you do?”

“Oh, we’re no better over here, Mike. I assure you.”

“Say, Andy, we need to get this figured out.”

“Absolutely,” said Bassett. “I thought we might just wait a couple of weeks and—”

“I’m coming over.”

Silence. Wilson liked that. Exactly the effect he wanted.

“I’ll be there tonight,” he said. “You have your guys ready to meet with us tomorrow.”

“Mike, I’m not absolutely sure that’s—”

“Andy, I am.”

Wilson could hear the silence again, Bassett trying to think. Wilson didn’t want to give him time to do that.

“My secretary will be in touch with the details. See you tomorrow, Andy.”

“Yes. All right. You don’t think—”

Wilson put the phone down.

He had already decided he would be taking Lyall Gelb with him. If the discussion got deep into numbers, he’d need Lyall there. But that was only part of the reason. Every time Wilson saw him, Gelb worried him more. He needed to keep him fully committed. Gelb had to be in that room.

He had decided to take Stan Murdoch as well. Wilson was satisfied he had taken the sting out of Stan’s opposition by the severance offer he had made. And he had decided that Stan would be leaving. Wilson had had a word with Gordon Anderton about doing a search for Stan’s replacement, and Gordon already had a couple of names on the short list. Good guys, too, operations guys Wilson knew about. Since seeing their names on the list, Wilson had begun to think that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a change anyway. Bring in some fresh thinking, not have someone who hankered after a bunch of plants that had been taken away from him. But it was still critical to keep Stan happy until the deal was done. The best way to do that, Wilson figured, was to get him involved. Let him sit in on some of the discussions. Ask him to handle some of the due diligence. Make him feel important. Make him think it would still be up to him whether he left when the deal was done.

The meeting was scheduled for nine-thirty the next morning. A few minutes before that time, Andrew Bassett arrived at the Mandarin Oriental. Two men were with him, Oliver Trewin and the company secretary, Anthony Warne. Bassett asked for Mr. Leopard’s suite.

“Who shall I say is here?” inquired the receptionist.

Bassett felt like a fool saying it. “Mr. Bison.”

“Buffalo,” said Trewin quickly.

Anthony Warne poked his head around from the other side of Bassett. “No, I think Andrew’s right, Oliver. I think Mike’s secretary said it was ‘Bison.’”

“It was Buffalo,” said Trewin.

“Oliver, you’ll find they call it Bison in the States.”

“No, Anthony,
we
call it Bison. They call it Buffalo.”

“I suspect you’ll find it’s Bison.”

“Buffalo,” said Trewin.

The receptionist raised an eyebrow.

“Buffalo Bill,” said Trewin to Warne. “What about that? It’s not Bison Bill, is it?”

“Who’s Buffalo Bill?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of Buffalo Bill?”

“Buffalo Bill?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” snapped Bassett impatiently. He turned to the receptionist. “Just ring Mr. Leopard. I’m sure any bovine will do.”

*   *   *

One of the rooms in Mike Wilson’s suite had been fitted out with a conference table. The usual niceties were exchanged as they milled around it, how lovely it was to see one another again, how nice it was to meet Stan Murdoch at last, jokes about the tedium of crossing the pond, which they would all soon be doing a lot more often, ha ha! Bassett was an overweight man of below middle height, with remnants of thin, sandy hair and a red complexion. He lamented the loss of “poor old Concorde.”

“We came in the jet,” said Wilson curtly, and with that, the niceties stopped. The air was tense. Exactly as Wilson wanted it. He wanted these guys under pressure. He wanted these guys to realize what they were about to lose.

Wilson noticed with satisfaction the uneasy, questioning glances that the BritEnergy executives exchanged.

“Gentlemen, shall we sit?” he said.

They sat, leopards on one side of the table, buffalo on the other. Wilson waited for everyone to settle. Then he let the silence go on just a little longer.

“Let me summarize the position as I understand it,” he began.

Warne, BritEnergy’s company secretary, got ready to take notes.

“Gentlemen,” said Wilson. “We made you an offer last week that you agreed to take to your board. Twelve-point-five billion dollars, eight-point-three billion in Louisiana Light stock at a swap ratio of five-point-one to two, and four-point-two billion in cash. Our board approved the deal, as did yours. Due diligence was due to start yesterday, with a joint announcement in two weeks presuming all was found to be in order. Our data room in New York is now open and available for your use. Over the weekend, however, you decided to put a stop on the due diligence from your side. I am unaware how long this stop lasts or what needs to happen before you lift it. If this deal is to go ahead, we need to clear these things up right now. That’s why we’re here.” Wilson paused. “Is that a fair summary?”

Bassett looked right and left at Trewin and Warne. Then he turned back to Wilson.

“Mike,” he said, “the first thing I’d like to say, again, is to apologize for the way you found out. We didn’t make the decision until early on Monday morning, which would have been the middle of Sunday night for you. I was planning to call you as soon as you got into the office. Unfortunately, your people were already on the ground and they beat me to it.”

“Accepted,” said Wilson. “That’s not the issue. I understand that.”

“Still, I just want it to be clear,” said Bassett. “That’s not how I do business. That’s not my style, and I want you to know that.”

“Okay,” said Wilson. “Let’s put that behind us. Where are we now?”

“Well…” Bassett paused. “This is rather delicate for both of us. I don’t know how to put this nicely…”