Every Breath You Take (41 page)

“What, specifically, does Mr. Wyatt do?”

“I’m sorry,” Sophie said, startled. “I automatically assumed you knew, since your former boss had several meetings with him recently.”

“I was one of the few people who knew Mr. Kenworth wanted to sell the company, and I knew his meetings with Mr. Wyatt were related to that, but he was very secretive about the meetings themselves. They always took place after everyone had gone home, and although Mr. Kenworth had me stay until the meetings were over, the only thing I did was bring files into the conference room occasionally and arrange for their dinners. I have no specific idea what Mr. Kenworth wanted Mr. Wyatt to do for him. I only know I was thrilled—and amazed—when you phoned me last month to say that Mr. Wyatt’s secretary was retiring and you invited me to apply for her job.”

Sophie grinned. “Mr. Wyatt was more impressed with your professionalism and your ‘people skills’ than he was with your boss’s managerial skills and personal habits.”

“Mr. Kenworth tended to be abrupt with people, but he was always under a great deal of pressure from … various directions,” Claire said.

Her diplomatic reply made Sophie’s grin widen. “Yes, well, that’s inevitable when a man has a new French wife who is barely out of her teens, two ex-wives who aren’t getting their alimony checks on time, and a floundering corporation with an angry sales force that didn’t get their commission checks on time. Evidently, Mr. Kenworth felt it was your job to run interference for him on the telephone with all those people. By the way, Mr. Wyatt was amused and impressed by your tactful forbearance with the tearful child-bride’s telephone tantrum. He overheard the conversation when he was leaving.”

Claire was horrified. “I lowered my voice almost to a whisper and spoke to her in French, to make certain he wouldn’t know what was going on.”

“Unfortunately, he has excellent hearing, and he’s fluent in French. Evidently, so are you, which was another reason he decided to consider you for this job—Several of our clients are French, and many of our other European clients are more comfortable with French than English. That brings me back around to the original question you asked concerning what goes on here.” Folding her arms on the desk, she said, “To put it as simply as possible, Mr. Wyatt arranges mergers and buyouts of privately owned companies for our client companies around the globe. Sometimes, our clients already have a specific company—a ‘target company’—in mind that they want to acquire. In that case, Mr. Wyatt initiates the deal and negotiates it for our clients. Sometimes, our clients simply tell him what they want to achieve and they ask him to choose a target company. Unfortunately, not all of these target companies
want
to be acquired at first, and even when they decide
it’s a good idea, there’s always a battle about the money involved. In return for successfully completing the deal, Mr. Wyatt charges an extremely large fee and also receives a block of shares in the company.”

She paused a moment to let that sink in, and then she told Claire with quiet pride, “Your new boss is renowned in his field for his global contacts, his judgment, and his negotiating skills. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that he’s absolutely
brilliant
at what he does.”

Very pleased with that information, Claire restrained the impulse to confess that she’d failed to question Mitchell Wyatt about the specifics of his work during her brief interview with him because she’d been frustratingly disconcerted by his handsome face and dark blue eyes. Rather than bring up an issue she was determined to somehow ignore in the future, Claire picked up a pen and pad of paper lying on Sophie’s desk so that she could make notes. “How many clients does Mr. Wyatt have?”

“Actually, he only agreed to meet with your boss as a courtesy to a mutual acquaintance of theirs. He stopped taking on new clients a long time ago, but the clients he does represent have become very prosperous and very
acquisitive
—thanks to his expertise. I described what he does for his clients, but there are many instances where Mr. Wyatt discovers two or three good companies that aren’t doing well, but that he thinks could thrive if they were merged and put under proper management.”

“When that happens,” Claire speculated, “I assume he contacts one of his clients and recommends that the client let him proceed with the buyout and merger on their behalf?”

“Sometimes he does that, but more often, Mr. Wyatt proceeds on his own. He buys up the companies,
merges them, and creates a new management team out of the best members of the old teams. When the newly formed company shows a respectable profit, he sells it, but he continues to receive a share of the profits thereafter, as a condition of the sale.”

“He never keeps the companies he creates, no matter how successful he thinks they’re going to become?”

“No. He says that in order for a privately owned company to continue to thrive and grow, the owner needs to have a physical presence there, at least periodically.”

“And he’s not willing to do that?”

Sophie shook her head, remembering the night almost three years ago when she asked him about this issue. He’d just returned from his brother’s funeral in Chicago and was preparing for a two
A.M.
teleconference with a Swiss client who was trying to buy a company that Mitchell had created by purchasing and merging three small, financially embattled French manufacturing companies. He’d shored them up with his own money, restructured them, and handpicked the new management team, several members of which he came to like especially well. When the newly formed company began reporting sizable profits in a very short time, he’d been particularly proud, and since he flew to France frequently, Sophie had asked him why he didn’t keep the company for himself, instead of selling it to the Swiss client.

In a rare, unguarded moment undoubtedly caused by fatigue and the convoluted nightmare of his brother’s murder, his brief smile and nonchalant tone failed to disguise an underlying emotion that darkened his eyes and hardened his jaw.
“I’m a nomad at heart,”
he said. The following week he accepted an offer from a wealthy tourist who’d seen his partially completed house in Anguilla and had been trying to buy it.
“I have
apartments in four cities,”
he told Sophie when she expressed her amazement at his decision.
“I’ve decided that owning a house is a tether I don’t want.”

Rather than revealing that very personal discussion, Sophie said simply and truthfully, “He likes to maintain as much flexibility as possible in his work and in his living style, so be prepared for sudden, last-minute changes in his plans.” Deftly switching the conversation back to business, she continued, “I mentioned that when Mr. Wyatt sells a company he’s created, he’s contractually entitled to a share of the future profits made by that company. To make certain those profits are accurately calculated by the new owners of the companies, we employ two full-time auditors who travel from company to company, examining their books.” To help Claire understand the necessity of that, Sophie said, “Occasionally, the new owners decide to try to reduce their profit figures—and therefore, reduce the amount they owe Mr. Wyatt—by disguising personal expenses as business expenses and using company money to pay for them.”

“You mean personal expenses like a family vacation?”

Sophie laughed. “No, I mean personal expenses like a country estate near St. Petersburg and a Rolls-Royce!”

Claire started to smile, but a sudden eruption of infuriated, foreign voices from inside the conference room made her turn and glance uneasily in that direction.

“Don’t worry, both those men are thousands of miles away,” Sophie said with amused resignation. As she spoke, the men’s voices suddenly dropped below hearing level, and she added, “Mr. Wyatt just turned the volume down on the speaker system.”

“Oh, you mean they’re having a conference call?” Claire said with evident relief.

“They’re having a three-way teleconference,” Sophie
clarified. To stop Claire from thinking that belligerence and shouting were a normal occurrence in the way Mr. Wyatt conducted business, Sophie added, “The voices you just heard belong to Stavros Konstantatos in Greece, and Alexi Radkov in Moscow, and the
only
reason Mr. Wyatt is involved in what’s going on in there is because Stavros asked him to act as a … well … facilitator.”

“Facilitator, or referee?” Claire asked wryly.

“You’re very astute,” Sophie said with a chuckle. “Alexi owns a large Russian trucking company, which he offered to sell Stavros. The two men agreed on the price and terms, and the preliminary documents were signed, but Alexi has started stalling, and Stavros is furious. Mr. Wyatt knew nothing about the deal until yesterday, but he’s superb at making things work out for Stavros when Stavros’s temper gets in the way of his reason. Stavros and Mr. Wyatt have been friends for a very long time,” Sophie added.

Claire, who’d heard of the reclusive Greek tycoon, had jotted down his name on her pad, and in shorthand she wrote next to it, “bad temper—close friend of MW.” She jotted down the Russian’s name and a notation that he owned a trucking company.

Sophie waited until she finished writing; then she pushed back her chair and stood up. “While we’re waiting for Mr. Wyatt to finish up in there, I’ll show you around the office, although there isn’t much you haven’t seen already.”

Claire got up and followed her out of her office and across the reception area, a large room furnished with a modernistic sofa upholstered in soft beige leather and two pairs of matching chairs, all of which faced the windows. Behind the sofa, against the back wall of the room, was a large chrome-and-glass desk with a phone and chair for the use of busy visitors. A thick beige carpet
with occasional random swirls of dark honey covered most of the reception area’s unpolished travertine marble floor, and a framed, impressionist landscape in shades of green hung on the wall above the desk. A few large ferns on travertine pedestals provided the only other decorative touches. The furnishings were sleek and expensive-looking, and the overall effect was intentionally minimalist, so that nothing competed with the dramatic view of Manhattan through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“These are the auditors’ offices,” Sophie said, pausing at a pair of doors that opened off a short hallway just behind the desk in the reception room. “As I explained, John and Andrew are rarely here.” Claire peeked inside both offices, each of which contained a wall of built-in file cabinets, a desk, and a pair of chairs that matched those in the reception area. From there, Sophie led her to the next, and last, door in the hallway. She swung it open to reveal a small but well-equipped kitchen with stainless steel appliances, a table, and four chairs. “Feel free to use this anytime you like,” she said.

As they walked back through the reception area, Sophie glanced at her watch. “Mr. Wyatt was supposed to be done with that teleconference fifteen minutes ago. He’ll be running out of patience any minute now,” she predicted with cheerful certainty. “In the meantime, let’s go into his office and see if there’s anything on his desk that I can give you to get started on. I know he has a file full of work somewhere that he’s saved to go over with you.”

A wide squared-off archway with travertine columns separated the reception area from Sophie’s and Claire’s offices, which faced each other across a pathway leading to Mitchell Wyatt’s office and the conference room. His office door was closed, but Sophie opened it and
walked across the room to his desk. Claire had already seen his office when he interviewed her for the position two weeks before, and had been a little surprised that it wasn’t fancier. The room itself was just large enough to be spacious, and it was furnished in the same understated, minimalist style as the reception area. His office, however, occupied the corner of the building, which gave him an uninterrupted, breathtaking view of Manhattan in two directions, and she surmised that, to him, the view was always paramount.

His desk was clear except for a large crystal “fist” on a short pedestal at one corner and a sheaf of papers lying in the middle of the desk. Sophie picked up the papers, leafed through them, and laid them back down; then she turned to the credenza behind it, where a laptop computer was open, its bright screen lit up with the same Outlook program that Claire had used for her boss’s e-mails, business contacts, and calendar. Next to the computer was a wooden tray with more documents in it, which Sophie flipped through and then put back. “There’s nothing here to give you,” she said wryly. “Let’s go back to my desk, and I’ll tell you the names of the people who call him most frequently and I’ll give you a little background, so you’ll know who you’re talking to when they call.”

Claire nodded and followed her out, but halfway across his office, the cell phone lying on his desk began to ring. “Should I answer that for him?” Claire asked.

“No,” Sophie said. “He handles calls that he receives on his cell phone.” When Sophie closed the office door on the ringing phone, Claire said, “Does he prefer to keep his door closed at all times?”

“No. As a rule, I close it if he had it closed before, and I leave it open if it was open before.” As she walked back into her office with Claire behind her, the telephone on her desk gave out a low, distinctive double
ring. “That’s Mr. Wyatt’s private line. He answers it himself if he’s in his office, but if he isn’t, we always answer it,” she explained as picked up the receiver and pressed a flashing white button at the end of a row.

“Mr. Wyatt’s office,” she said; then she listened a moment and replied in a friendly tone, “Yes, he’s here, Mr. Farrell, but he’s in the midst of a three-way teleconference. He should be finished very soon though, and—” The man on the phone evidently interrupted her, because she stopped talking, listened for a second, and then she said, “Yes, of course. I’ll bring him a note right now.” She put the call on hold, picked up her pen, and Claire watched her jot two sentences on a small pad that read, “Matt Farrell is on the phone—It’s
urgent
. He needs to talk to you
now.”
She underlined the words “urgent” and “now” twice; then she straightened, and with an unperturbed smile, she gestured for Claire to follow her. “You might as well have a glimpse of the faces that belong to the shouting voices you heard earlier.”