Due Diligence: A Thriller (17 page)

“Go back and fuck him.”

Sandy rolled her eyes.

“You already fucked him?”

“This is all we’ve got, Marvin.”

Marvin Koller glanced at Sandy, evaluating her. For once, not in the usual way. Why would she make this up? She wouldn’t know enough to make this up. Koller thought about it. Word it carefully. Report it as a rumor. Age-old journalistic technique. Set the hare running and see what comes out of the trees to chase it.

“I want to work on this with you, Marvin,” said Sandy.

Koller shrugged. How long would it take to work on a ten-line piece of innuendo?

“Marvin?”

“Okay. Jesus, relax. It’s not like we’ve got Hitler’s diaries.”

“I want a byline.”

“You want a byline now? On rumor, lady, we don’t do bylines. Trust me, I’m protecting you.”

“I want a byline!” said Sandy.

“I’ll give you a credit on the page. Additional reporting.”

Sandy thought about it.

“Take it or leave it, honey.”

“I’ll take it.”

The
Herald
’s first edition hit the streets at three
A.M.
By seven, Reuters and Bloomberg were both reporting the story. At nine-thirty, the New York Stock Exchange opened for business.

17

TRICKY SWITCHES

Hearts were aflutter yesterday as electricity generator and distributor Louisiana Light turned in its best quarterly earnings in two years. Michael T. Wilson, CEO of the company, is the darling of the markets again. Or is he? A little birdie tells me that the folks at investment bank Dyson Whitney have their doubts about those earnings, and they should know, now that Louisiana Light is one of their clients. Tricky switches in the Baton Rouge control room? Is everything quite as picture perfect as it seems? Just where did those extra earnings come from, Mr. Wilson?

Mike Wilson froze. The fax showed part of a page from a newspaper and the article had been circled in black. It had come through from Amanda Bellinger, senior partner at the PR firm Hill Bellinger, and Stella had left it on his desk. It was the first thing he saw that morning as he opened his briefcase.

The stock price, he thought. What would this do to the stock price?

The phone rang.

“It’s Ms. Bellinger,” said Stella. “She wants to know if you’ve seen the article yet.”

“Tell her I’ve just seen it. I’ll get back to her.”

Wilson slammed the phone down. He scanned the article again. Who’d written it? No byline, obviously. Not man enough to sign his name.

The phone rang again.

“What?”

“Ms. Bellinger won’t take no for an answer, Mr. Wilson.”

“Put her through.”

Amanda Bellinger came on the line. “Mike, this is outrageous!”

“What’s going on?” demanded Wilson. “I put out our best results in two years and pay you guys to get the message out and what happens? Huh? What happens? Look at this!”

“Obviously this didn’t come from us.”

“Who did it come from?”

“Is there any truth in it?”

“Of course not!” snapped Wilson. “It’s innuendo! It’s slander! We’ll sue the motherfuckers.”

Amanda Bellinger coughed.

“Did you hear me, Mandy? We’ll sue the motherfuckers!”

“I heard you, Mike. Listen. It’s the
New York Herald
.”

“So?”

“No one believes anything in the
Herald.
They’ll assume it’s garbage.”

Where there’s smoke there’s fire, thought Wilson. That’s what everyone would assume.

“We need a strategy to deal with this,” said Amanda. “‘Contain, control, consign to history.’ That’s my motto when it comes to things like this. In a week, it’ll blow over.”

A week, thought Wilson. In a week, a lot of other things might have blown over as well. A lot of other things might be consigned to history.

“Mike?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Work out a strategy and get back to me. I’ve got things to do.”

“Mike, we’ll handle this. I’ll call you later.”

“Yeah.”

Wilson put down the phone. He switched on his computer and stared impatiently at the article as the machine booted up. Someone had talked to the newspaper, he thought. There was just enough truth in it. Someone must have talked.

The bankers?
“A little birdie … at Dyson Whitney…”
Maybe it was the bankers. But what did they know? How could they know anything?

He typed in his password. Finally the computer was on. He turned to the screen and checked the stock price.

“Jesus Christ!”

Wilson sat back in his chair. It was someone who knew something. Must have been. He frowned in thought. Who?

Mike Wilson picked up the phone.

“Stella?”

“Yes, Mr. Wilson.”

“Get Stan Murdoch in here.”

*   *   *

“Sit down, Stan,” he said.

Stan sat in one of the armchairs on the other side of the office. Wilson got up from behind his desk and joined him. He hadn’t talked to Murdoch since the board meeting two days earlier. There had been too much to do. The previous day had been taken up with calls to press and analysts, puffing the results. But it had been a mistake to neglect Stan. Mike Wilson saw now how big a mistake it had been.

“Coffee?”

“You pulled me out of the production meeting, Mike.”

“Okay. I get it. I’m sorry. This is important, Stan.”

Stan waited.

“Interesting times, huh?” said Wilson, looking for a way in.

Stan watched him. He was a taciturn kind of man. Never said much at the best of times.

“You know the old Chinese proverb? ‘May you live in interesting times.’”

Stan’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“You know, interesting times … trouble…” Wilson glanced around for a moment, trying to figure out what to say next. “I guess it was a surprise for you, the other day.”

“The fact that we’re buying a company that’s bigger than us? Yeah, I’d say that’s a bit of a surprise.”

“You’re not too happy about it, are you, Stan?”

Murdoch shrugged. “Don’t know too much about it.” He shifted in his seat. “Lyall seemed to know about it.”

“He was the only one, Stan. Secrecy … you know.”

“Doug knew about it.”

“Hell, Stan! Of course Doug knew about it. He’s the general counsel.”

“You don’t trust me, then?”

Wilson laughed. “Stan, how long have we worked together?”

“Long enough,” muttered Murdoch.

Stan Murdoch was a tall, lean man with tanned, leathery skin and blue eyes. Looked as if he spent all his days physically out in his plants. He didn’t, of course, not nowadays, but he looked like it. Probably would have if he had the chance. Stan was an operations guy. He was a great operations guy, as Wilson knew from their time together at InterNorth, which was why Wilson’s first move when he took over at Louisiana Light had been to headhunt him and bring him over to head up operations. He was a guy who took orders and executed them. Mike Wilson had assumed that’s what he’d do this time around, as he’d always done in the past.

Wilson got up. He went to his desk and came back with the
Herald
article. He gave it to Murdoch and sat back in his seat.

“You seen our stock price?” he asked as Stan read the article. “I just checked. We’re six bucks down.” Wilson scrutinized him closely. “You know anything about this, Stan?”

Murdoch shook his head. He put the article down. “Where’s it from?”

“The
New York
Herald
. Some fucking scut sheet.”

“Why are you worried then?”

“Because…” Wilson stopped. The quickest way to kill the deal was to bring down the stock price. Even Stan must know that. “You don’t want this deal, do you?” he said.

“I told you, Mike, I don’t know too much about it.”

“Listen, Stan, we had to give them Europe. Hell, it just … it makes sense, Stan. They’re in Britain. They get to run Europe. You get to run everything else. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s wrong with that.”

“Talk to me, Stan.”

Murdoch shrugged. “That’s what you’re saying, so that’s how it is.”

“Let’s see what we can do.”

“What can we do? This is what you’ve agreed to, right?”

“Jesus Christ, Stan! It’s not like we’re talking about prize assets. They’re crap. You’ve been busting your butt for years to get them up.”

“I
have
got them up! Give me more time, and I’ll get them up even better.”

“Stan, come on. Get real.”

“What about the numbers we posted yesterday, Mike? Weren’t they real? Where did they come from?”

Wilson narrowed his eyes. Was that a threat? Or was it possible that Stan really didn’t know?

Was it possible, thought Wilson, that Stan didn’t know what kind of contracts Louisiana Light had signed in order to get hold of plants in places like Hungary and Poland, how little flexibility they had in setting prices, no matter what happened to the cost of oil and coal? Was it possible he didn’t realize how much they had borrowed in order to pay for them, or that no matter how well Stan pushed up performance in those plants, it had been clear for a long time now that it was never going to be enough to service the debt? Much less provide the kind of earnings growth the market had come to expect from Louisiana Light and which Lyall Gelb, until now, had managed to make the market believe they were delivering.

Maybe, thought Wilson. Maybe it was possible. Stan was an operations guy. A straight-down-the-line operations guy. Focused on efficiency, effectiveness, output. He didn’t know anything about finance. Maybe he really did think it was his plants, and the improvements he had managed to eke out of them, that had delivered Louisiana Light’s growth trajectory.

“I’m going to ask you straight,” said Wilson at last. He pointed at the article on the coffee table between them. “Did you leak that, Stan?”

Stan Murdoch stared at him. For so long that Wilson began to feel uncomfortable.

“Did you talk to that newspaper? Did you give them the information in that article?”

“Are you telling me it’s true?”

“I’m not saying it’s true,” retorted Wilson quickly. “But I want to know whether you said it.”

Stan whistled softly. “You sure do want this deal, don’t you?”

“Just tell me, yes or no.”

“You sure are hot for it.”

“Yes or no?” demanded Wilson.

“No.”

“Good.” Wilson shook his head. “Why couldn’t you just say that?”

“Because I don’t know how you could ask me,” replied Murdoch, and he gazed directly into Wilson’s eyes.

Wilson looked away.

The phone rang. Wilson got up. It was Stella.

“I’ve got Dave Bracks on the line from Merrill Lynch,” she said.

Wilson rolled his eyes. Dave Bracks must have seen the article. Now he was calling to find out what was going on with Dyson Whitney. Bankers! Like they owned you.

“Tell him I’m busy. I’ll call.”

“Yes, Mr. Wilson.”

“And hold everything.”

“Yes, Mr. Wilson.”

Wilson put the phone down. He stood for a moment, thinking.

Everyone was getting what they wanted out of this deal—or thought they were getting what they wanted—except Stan. Ed Leary thought he was going to be chairman of a $23 billion company. Andrew Bassett thought he was going to be the CEO in two years, with a knighthood. So did Lyall Gelb, without the knighthood. The BritEnergy director of operations thought he was going to get all of Europe. Only Stan Murdoch thought he was losing.

But in a deal, everyone has to be a winner. Everyone who matters. A single person who feels aggrieved, if he’s senior enough, is capable of spiking the whole thing. If there was one lesson Wilson had learned at InterNorth, that was it. And right now, Stan Murdoch didn’t think he was a winner.

Did Stan have the power to spike the deal? How much did he know about what Lyall Gelb had been up to?

Nothing, probably. He was an operations man, not a finance guy. He took no interest in that stuff. But as an executive director, he had seen certain documents, occasionally he had even been required to sign things. One had to assume, thought Wilson, that if he put his mind to it, he knew enough.

Wilson went back to his seat.

“Okay, Stan,” he said. “Let’s see what we can do here. The European assets … I just don’t think that’s negotiable. The Brits are in the EU. Hell, Hungary, Poland—half those countries are in the EU as well. Makes sense from every angle for the Brits to manage it.”

Stan didn’t say anything.

“Come on, Stan. I didn’t mean that before. I know you wouldn’t leak some ugly lie like that. I just had to ask, you know. I’ve got a responsibility. I’m asking everyone.”

“I wouldn’t leak anything,” muttered Stan. “How many plants have we bought? Have I
ever
leaked anything?”

“I’m sorry, Stan. I had to ask. I’ve said it, I’m sorry, all right?” Wilson paused. “Come on, Stan. What can we do?”

Stan shook his head. “We could have discussed this thing.”

“Is that it? I’m sorry. Maybe I should have. It’s just … the secrecy and all. Maybe I got a little carried away. Besides, I know you, Stan. I know the kind of guy you are. You’ll do whatever’s best for the company. You never put yourself first.” Wilson paused, trying to gauge what effect this appeal had.

“You’ve got me reporting to this Andrew Fassett,” said Murdoch.

“Bassett. Is that a problem?”

“He’s some English guy.”

“English guys are good,” said Wilson.

Murdoch grimaced.

“Stan, come on. That’s only on paper. Hell, you’ll always have an open line to me. You know that.”

“Funny. When I came here, I knew exactly what the deal was. I’m your head of operations. I report direct to you. Who is this Fassett guy?”

“Do you want to meet him? Would that help?”

Murdoch smiled sardonically.

“Stan,” said Wilson, “do you want to leave?”

Murdoch didn’t reply. Wilson tried to read his face. Maybe that was what he wanted. Maybe that was what all this was about.

“If you can’t live with this, and you want out, I respect that.” Suddenly, Wilson thought he could see how to make Stan Murdoch a winner as well. “Stan, how much is your severance package?”