Requiem (37 page)

‘I hope they’re doing more than looking into it,’ Schenker said with considerable irritation.

‘Oh, sure. They’ve obtained some more medical opinions. No sign of chemicals in the blood, run-of-the-mill diseases: that sort of thing. And of course the results of the new toxicology trial are due fairly soon – ’

‘Soon? I thought they were due yesterday!’

‘Technical problems at TroChem.’

‘
Technical
problems?’ He let his voice rise sarcastically. ‘I thought these people were meant to be hyper-efficient. Why the hell can’t they deliver?’

‘They’ve given firm assurances that the results will be out within two weeks.’

‘
Two weeks?
That’ll be too late! Get through to Research while we’re in the meeting. Tell them
today
. It has to be today. Or I’ll phone McNeill myself.’ Perhaps he’d phone McNeill anyway. An opportunity to wave Research’s inefficiencies in front of McNeill’s nose was not to be missed.

Cramm looked doubtful.

Schenker turned on him. ‘You’re not trying to tell me there’s some kind of problem?’

‘No, no. I – ’ He faltered uncharacteristically. ‘I just thought you should be forewarned.’

Ominous remarks like that had the power to unsettle Schenker. ‘About
what
?’

‘The environmentalists. The press. Like I said.’

‘Not the results?’ He examined Cramm’s face. ‘Not the toxicology trials? God, if McNeill’s been holding out on me …’

‘No, no. Research say the results are going to be fine. As of last night, that is. Shall I check with them again?’

‘You do that.
You do that
.’ With the launch coming up, any sort of uncertainty frightened Schenker rigid. It took only the smallest scare to rattle the Stock Markets.

By the time they entered the gleaming portals of the advertising agency Schenker’s mood was sombre.

Normally he made a point of avoiding advertising agencies, preferring to leave the control of their slick machinations to his executives, but on this occasion he’d been forced to make an exception. The marketing policy at Morton-Kreiger International (US) had been showing less than adequate results for some time and he’d pressed Gertholm into making some big changes in Chicago. The result was a new marketing team who, faced with the challenge of getting Silveron into the three top sellers within two years, had provisionally chosen this Madison Avenue agency for the Silveron account. They had chosen – but were they right? The team was too new, the decision too important for Schenker entirely to trust their judgement.

Advertising agencies, like public relations companies, rubbed Schenker up the wrong way. They always looked too affluent, too polished by half, and he could never quite forgive them for deriving their plump incomes from clients like him.

The agency people and the MKI marketing team were standing in stiff groups, coffee cups in hand, when he sped into the room. Conversation faltered, cups were abandoned as, without breaking his stride, Schenker shook a couple of hands and sat himself rapidly in the centre of the front row, staring pointedly ahead. The account director slipped into his welcoming spiel. The mixture of subservience and arrogance irritated Schenker beyond measure and, without removing his gaze from the screen ahead, he interrupted coldly: ‘Let’s go.’

There was a stir, a sense of having got off to a bad start, which was precisely what Schenker had intended, and the account executives lurched hastily into their opening routine.

Following normal practice, the presentation began with a summary of Silveron’s market strategy, of which Schenker was well aware, but which the agency felt they had to regurgitate to show how brilliantly they understood the product. Finally they came to the proposed selling point: Silveron offered the broadest most cost-effective protection against pests yet.

It was to be a press campaign, the agency said, using saturation coverage in all the major target magazines, starting with a six-page pull-out section in the foremost growers’ journals. This campaign would coincide with a free sampling operation, five Hawaiian holidays for the most successful wholesalers, and a $200,000 prize draw.

So far so obvious. Schenker waited to see how they intended to get the message across. The agricultural and forestry journals were bulging with ads, each indistinguishable from the next, each cluttered with facts, exhortations to purchase and glowing testimonials.

Finally they came to the bottom line: the treatment. The advertisement was to be a three-page spread, extended over successive right-hand pages. The first page was to be a tease, a page of solid green bled off at the edges, with just four words in small type in the lower right-hand corner:
Silveron covers almost everything
. Turning over, the reader was then hit by another almost totally green page with a list down the right-hand side, set in equally small type, a restrained, factual catalogue of Silveron’s potential targets:
Spruce moth, Tussock moth, Boll weevil, Beauty moth …
The list was fifty bugs long. It looked good, Schenker had to admit. Finally, on the third page, came the hard sell: Silveron’s cost-effectiveness, on a par with its main competitors; its persistence; the infrequency of application.

‘Very good,’ Schenker said. They were all watching him, trying to work out if this remark was as promising as it sounded. After a moment, he added: ‘But will people really understand what a breakthrough Silveron is?’

The account executive made a show of looking mildly puzzled. ‘A breakthrough?’ he asked politely. ‘We understood it was more of a development of existing products.’

‘An
important
development,’ Schenker corrected him. ‘And we need to tell people that. Perhaps on that first page. Along with
Silveron covers almost everything
. Something to announce it’s special. You know – It’s new, it’s special – something like that.’

There was a silence. They didn’t like that, not at all. He’d forgotten how touchy these people got when it came to their words, as if they were Hemingway or Fitzgerald or somebody who could really write.

‘Well …’ the account executive said uncertainly. ‘We could certainly examine the feasibility of that.’

‘We also need to tell people it’s safe,’ Schenker continued. The agency people exchanged glances. No one seemed keen to take that one up. It was finally left to the copywriter to offer an opinion. ‘Safety’s a difficult one,’ he said. ‘There isn’t enough to say.’

Schenker placed his hands in an attitude of prayer and pressed his fingers to his lips. ‘Not enough? But Silveron has been cleared – or is about to be cleared – for sale in every country we’ve applied to market it. What do you mean – not enough?’

‘We couldn’t make the message sufficiently strong to make it worth saying. To use what you’ve just suggested would sound defensive. I mean, the consumer will know the product’s been cleared by the EPA, otherwise we wouldn’t be allowed to sell it in the first place.’

‘Morton-Kreiger spends more on safety trials per product than any other major agrochemical company,’ Schenker said calmly. ‘We should make something of that.’

‘That might be a useful selling point in corporate advertising, very useful,’ the account executive said smoothly, ‘but for a single product – well, it might be thought to imply that the product is in some way safer than its competitors – and that might cause problems.’

Schenker wasn’t terribly fond of being told his own business. He said sternly: ‘Might it?’

‘Problems at our end I mean,’ said the executive hastily. ‘It would take time to get it past the advertising standards people. They’d want corroborative evidence.’

The copywriter chipped in: ‘Even then it would only take one smidgen of bad publicity to make the whole campaign backfire.’

The account executive flinched visibly, as if he’d been stabbed in the back, which, in agency terms, he had. ‘Of course that’s not likely,’ he said hurriedly.

‘No one has ever been adversely affected by Silveron,’ Schenker said.

Everyone nodded to show they had known this all along.

‘Perhaps we could get the safety angle checked out by our legal department?’ the account executive said, trying to paper the cracks. ‘And if there’s anything we
can
say, we’ll find a way of saying it. In an effective and meaningful way, of course.’

This was the usual advertising agency flannel. ‘But it should have been a selling point from the beginning,’ Schenker argued. ‘The company has a fine safety record. We should use it.’ He stood up. Those who’d been sitting quickly followed suit. There was a general air of expectancy. The agency were wondering if they’d got the account.

He made for the door. ‘Oh, and the teaser,’ he said. ‘
Silveron. It’s the greatest yet. It covers almost everything.
That should do it, don’t you think?’ He flashed a quick smile to demonstrate that, given sufficient grounds for benevolence, he was capable of showing approval, and sped from the room with Cramm at his heels.

Back in the limo Schenker sat staring silently out of the smoked-glass windows. As they neared Wall Street and their next appointment, he said abruptly: ‘Those rumours about the Aurora plant, Cramm. They could really hurt us.’

Cramm nodded.

‘They have to be stopped.’

Dublensky sat at the kitchen table and drank his after-breakfast coffee. Under the new routine he allowed himself no more than ten minutes for this indulgence before getting into the den and starting work. But today he let the time spin out a bit, not only because it made a change, but because, for all his self-discipline, a minute here or there wasn’t actually going to make any difference. Also there was the matter of the mail. He had checked the box but it still hadn’t arrived, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to settle down to anything else until it did.

He could never get used to being home at this time of day, just as he couldn’t accustom himself to the quiet of an empty house. It seemed strange that Anne and Tad should hurry out of the door each morning, leaving him to all this silence. Worse though was the bald unavoidable fact that he had nothing to keep him occupied. In the weeks since the Allentown Chemical Company had dispensed with his services he’d fixed the guttering, the kitchen faucet and Tad’s bicycle, none of which had taken more than an hour or two even when he’d spun them out. The other household jobs, like painting the exterior and rehanging the damaged garage door, required money, thus relegating themselves to indefinite postponement.

When his ten-plus minutes were up he washed his cup, dried it carefully, put it away, and went out to the mail box. It was still empty. Returning to the den he started his fifth perusal of the latest issue of
Practical Scientist
. In the first few days of his unemployment he’d applied for nothing but the cream of jobs, but then, as the doubts began their relentless siege on his confidence, he’d started to glance over a few of the lesser jobs, positions he would not normally have considered. Even then it wasn’t until he failed two interviews in succession that he began to write a second wave of applications.

The first turn-down hadn’t surprised him too much – the job really wasn’t his bag – but the second had been a definite surprise. In fact, it would be more accurate to describe it as one helluva jolt. He’d had every reason to think he was in with a good chance: the CV–job specification fit had been excellent, the interview had gone well, he’d established an immediate empathy with the chief executive, but when the answer finally came it had been a flat inexplicable no.

Anne took the news with narrowed lips, knowing eyes and a dark expression. For the first time in his marriage Dublensky avoided discussion with his wife, not only because he had a good idea of what she was going to say but because he wasn’t sure he was ready to hear it. The hiatus left him isolated and dejected, yet oddly determined, and when he won an interview with a small corporation in Maryland, he made the decision not to tell Anne until he had the result. He wanted to surprise her. The salary was significantly lower than he’d been used to and he was most definitely overqualified, but it was a position which would allow him to sink into a peaceful kind of obscurity.

The mail man finally appeared, making his way fitfully up the street, and Dublensky ambled down the path to meet him.

There were two letters for him; the one from the Maryland corporation lay on top. He did not open it immediately, but took it into the den and laid it on the desk in front of him. Even then he did not open it immediately. The crisp white envelope seemed charged with all the might and inescapable power of the agrochemical industry. As he reached forward to run his finger under the flap his sense of doom deepened and he realized that, whether from a subconscious need to prepare himself or a sudden faith in his own instincts, he had already accepted the worst.

The realization did not stop his heart from taking a sharp turn as he pulled the single sheet from the envelope.

Position filled.

‘They’re nailing you,’ Anne said as they lay in bed that night.

‘Honey, how could they?’ he argued despite himself. ‘I mean, this last company, they’re only a small outfit. They’ve no contacts with Morton-Kreiger.’

‘Oh no? The references, what about the references? Don’t tell me these corporations don’t follow them up. Don Reedy may have said some okay things on paper – though they were no more than
okay
, were they? I mean, just
adequate
– but what does he actually say when they call him, huh? Don’t tell me a quiet word doesn’t get whispered in their ears. You know – Dublensky’s a good man but
difficult
. Competent, sure, but slow. I mean, they wouldn’t have to say much, would they? They wouldn’t have to call you totally incompetent.’

‘But why would they bother?’ he asked, knowing the answer perfectly well but wanting to hear her say it.

‘I’ll tell you why,’ she said. ‘To squeeze you out. To make sure you don’t get any kind of position again. To make people think you
are
incompetent. So that if you decide to spill the beans, they can say, well, he’s just pissed off, isn’t he? Got promoted beyond his abilities. Can’t accept his own limitations. Disgruntled employee out for revenge. Who’s the world going to believe then?’ After a minute or two she added harshly: ‘You should have sent that dossier to EarthForce straight away.’