Due Diligence: A Thriller (57 page)

“What’s it about?”

“What have you just been told?”

“What’s wrong with Louisiana Light?”

Bassett raised his hands for silence, then thought better of saying anything else and left the podium, accompanied by the hotel security men. The journalists crowded after him, shouting questions as he headed for the door.

Then he was gone, and the journalists turned. Suddenly the questions were coming at Rob from every direction.

“I have nothing to say,” said Rob, over and over, pinned against the wall along with Emmy. Everywhere he looked, a journalist seemed to be shouting at him or a camera was flashing.

“Come on, let’s let them out, shall we?” bellowed Oliver Trewin, and he pushed his way into the middle of the throng, elbows flailing, and extricated them. He took them out of the room.

They strode down the corridor, heading away from the journalists who had come out of the room and were shouting after them. Trewin kept going with them, down the stairs, across the lobby, and out the door.

Trewin stopped at the top of the steps to the hotel and looked around.

“Typical! Andrew’s taken the car.” He nodded at the doorman, who tipped his hat and walked out into the street to hail a taxi. Trewin looked at Emmy. “I suppose you’re the girlfriend.”

“I don’t know if I like to think of myself as ‘the girlfriend.’”

Trewin nodded. “Well said. My apologies for everything that’s happened to you. I understand you’ve been caught up in this frightful mess we seem to have got ourselves into. Your young man says you were held hostage and threatened with a gun. That’s appalling.”

“Worse things have happened.”

“I understand they have. You must be an incredibly brave young lady. What I saw from you today is evidence enough.”

Emmy frowned. She didn’t know whether the tall, officerlike old man was trying to pay her a compliment in his stiff British way or being extraordinarily condescending. It had been a hell of a few days—she decided to give herself the benefit of the doubt.

“Thank you,” she said.

He nodded curtly. “Ah, here we are.” A cab pulled up. “Don’t suppose I could give you a lift? Anywhere you’d like to go?”

“We can manage,” said Rob.

“Nonsense! Least I can do. Well?”

“How about Heathrow?” said Rob.

Trewin looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Can’t say I blame you.”

*   *   *

Even in Baton Rouge, now, it was obvious that something was wrong. The screen showed Mike Wilson constantly looking around the room. His frown was deep. He had lost concentration and was stumbling over the text.

“What’s going on?” said Jackie Rubin. She glanced at the others. No one replied. Jackie looked back at the screen.

The shot widened back. In the corner behind Wilson, Amanda Bellinger had appeared. She was talking into a phone.

The shot zoomed in on Wilson again. He was in close-up, bemused, uncertain. Noise was coming from the audience. It wasn’t possible to hear exactly what was being said or shouted. Wilson was trying to keep going. Suddenly, uncharacteristically, there was something vulnerable about him. It was painful to see. Jackie Rubin glanced anxiously at the others in the boardroom. They were transfixed by what they were watching on the screen. Doug Earl’s mouth had dropped open.

Amanda Bellinger appeared beside Wilson. As the shot stayed close in on them, she whispered something into Wilson’s ear. In an instant, his face changed. First a look of disbelief, then panic. Utter, naked panic.

Only one person in the boardroom had ever seen a look like that on Mike Wilson’s face.

Lyall Gelb had watched the last few minutes unfold in growing dread. He knew it was over. He knew it, as if he had always known the moment was going to come, right here, right now, just like this, in front of his eyes on a plasma screen in the boardroom.

Doug Earl’s cell phone rang. Doug listened for a moment. “Say
what
?”

There was pandemonium on the screen now. The shot had cut right back. Journalists were on their feet. Wilson was trying to say something.

A banner started scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

BritEnergy delays announcement of Louisiana Light acquisition.

Lyall Gelb watched. Not in horror now, in resignation. Suddenly, he felt calm. The dread had disappeared. The pain in his belly, which had seemed to be constantly with him these last few days, was gone. It was over. All over.

“Is it true?” demanded a journalist who had somehow gotten hold of a microphone. “Has BritEnergy just delayed announcing this deal?”

“I’m not sure about that,” Wilson said. “I’m hearing … I’m afraid you’re ahead of me on that…”

Amanda Bellinger stepped up to the microphone on the podium, virtually shoving Wilson aside. “We’re bringing this press conference to a close. Thank you very much for coming and we’ll give you further information as…”

In Baton Rouge, no one was listening. They were all staring at a second banner scrolling at the bottom of the screen.

Louisiana Light is next Enron, says investment banker.…

“Is that true?” demanded Jackie Rubin in disbelief, and she looked around at the others.

“Can’t be,” said Doug Earl. “It’s just … it’s wrong.”

Lyall Gelb and Stan Murdoch didn’t say a word. Lyall could feel Stan’s eyes on him.

The scene on the screen continued.

Quietly, Lyall got up.

“You okay, Lyall?” said Doug.

Gelb nodded.

Doug turned back to the TV. The screen was showing Amanda Bellinger ushering a shocked-looking Mike Wilson out of the room. After he was gone, the Bloomberg reporter talked into the camera, a roomful of frenetic journalists behind her. The banner at the bottom of the screen kept rolling.

It was like some horrible, macabre thing you just can’t take your eyes off for as long as it keeps going. Doug and Jackie watched it, transfixed. Stan couldn’t bring himself to move.

“This would have to be one of the most extraordinary press conferences I have ever attended, Dave,” the Bloomberg reporter was saying to the anchor, wincing against the noise behind her. “There’s utter confusion here. We were given the text of an announcement before the press conference started, but no one seems to know whether—”

Lyall Gelb’s office was barely twenty yards away. Close enough for everyone in the room to hear the gunshot.

64

Oliver Trewin came with them in the cab all the way to Heathrow. It was awkward. It felt as if Trewin wanted to say something, but didn’t know how to start. He pointed things out on their way through the city, sights here and there, like he was some kind of tour guide. A concert hall. Some kind of museum. Harrods. Just a sentence or two, a snippet of information, and then his voice would peter out. Then they got onto the highway that leads to Heathrow and there wasn’t anything else of note. For twenty minutes there was only the rumble of the cab’s engine.

At last the turnoff for the airport came into view.

“Which terminal?” said the cabdriver from the front.

Trewin looked questioningly at Rob. Rob shrugged. “We came in on American.”

“That’d be terminal three,” said the cabbie. “Right you are.”

They swung off the highway. Ahead of them, in the distance, were the airport buildings. In another couple of minutes they’d be there.

“I always knew there was something wrong with this deal,” said Trewin at last. He shook his head reflectively. “Everything about it was wrong. Should’ve known, eh? Should’ve done something about it while I could.”

Rob didn’t reply. He didn’t think that did Oliver Trewin much credit.

“Empty my desk this afternoon, I expect.” Trewin smiled ruefully. “Thirty years. What a way to end it.” He took a deep breath. “Well, there we are,” he murmured.

At the airport terminal, he dropped Rob and Emmy off.

“Good luck,” he said after they had gotten out.

Rob shrugged. “Thanks.”

“I admire you, Mr. Holding. And you, Ms. Bridges. There was a time when I would have done the same. Youth, perhaps. Eh?”

“Maybe,” said Rob.

“Well…” Trewin paused a moment longer. “Good-bye.”

He pulled the door closed. The cab headed off.

Rob and Emmy went inside.

They got seats on the next flight out and went through passport control. In the waiting lounge, a large-screen TV was showing the BBC news channel. They watched it as they waited for the flight to board. Eventually the business wrap came on.

“In extraordinary scenes today, electricity company BritEnergy first announced and then distanced itself from an acquisition offer by Baton Rouge–based Louisiana Light. Details remain confused, but in what appears to have been an agreed bid, BritEnergy was to have…”

It was surreal. Behind the announcer the screen showed the logos of the two companies. Apparently the BBC didn’t have visuals of the press conference yet. There were no further statements from either of the companies involved. The report ran for maybe thirty seconds and the announcer moved on to something else.

*   *   *

The flight home was strange, both too long and too short. Time seemed to move slowly, and yet there didn’t seem to be enough time to get anything straight. So much seemed to have happened since Greg died. Rob thought about Greg. The feelings were unfreezing, coming out, everything he had locked away.

He knew that now there would be time to grieve, time to think of him. To speak to his parents. To pay him his due. Or to make a start, anyway.

There were other things. Lots of things. There’d be explaining to do to the police. In New York, in London. And at Dyson Whitney. He thought about that. Pete Stanzy … Phil Menendez … the Shark … Rob shook his head, it was so absurd. The way Phil terrorized them. The way they let themselves be terrorized. Over what? Rob was pretty sure there was no place for him at Dyson Whitney anymore. He wasn’t sure he wanted it, or at any firm like it. Did he want to end up another Pete Stanzy in ten years’ time? Was that the best he could aim at? He had started to get an idea. Maybe there was something else he could do. Something better.

Emmy glanced at him. She took off her earphones. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Greg, I guess.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay.” She rested her head back. Then she put the earphones on.

He touched her arm.

She took the earphones off again.

“Actually, there is something I’d like to say.”

Rob looked around. The plane was about three-quarters full and there was no one else in the row with them. The lights had been dimmed. The people he could see were dozing or watching movies.

“You know you said to me it was all or nothing? Do you remember?”

Emmy nodded.

“I never really thought about it like that. I never really thought about it the way you said until that morning.”

“You want to be careful what a woman says when you wake her up at four o’clock.”

“I’m serious, Emmy. It was like I got it, for the first time. You need to know, don’t you?”

“Yes, Rob. I need to know. So do you. You need to decide. Not just for my sake, for yours.”

“Yeah. I’m not very good at talking about this kind of stuff.” He paused. “It’s all, Emmy. The whole lot. Forever.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”

Emmy smiled. She leaned toward him. Their foreheads touched. “Hell of a place to tell me, Robert Holding.”

“You think I shouldn’t have?”

“Oh, no. I think you should have. I definitely think you should have.” She kissed him, her eyes moist. “Okay,” she said, and she settled back in her seat, holding his hand. She closed her eyes. “Okay,” she murmured again, a smile on her face.

By the time they landed at JFK, the story had moved on. On a TV screen in a bar off the concourse, Rob saw Lyall Gelb’s face. It was the picture from the directors page in the annual report. There were words under the face:
BUSINESS SUICIDE
.

“What is it?” said Emmy.

Rob nodded toward the screen. He felt sick.

The segment cut to a shot of Mike Wilson being hurried off a podium by a thin, nervous-looking woman. Rob went closer to hear what was being said.

“Rumors of an Enron-style collapse of the company began to circulate as CEO Michael Wilson was announcing a bid for British-based BritEnergy. In London, a simultaneous press conference was disrupted by a man claiming to represent New York–based investment bank Dyson Whitney…”

And there he was! Him. The TV showed him shouting at Andrew Bassett from the side of the Raleigh Room. Behind him, as he called out to Bassett, the man in the turtleneck who had assaulted him slipped out the door.

Rob looked around, thinking that everyone would be staring at him. But people were walking past. No one on the concourse was taking any interest in him.

Suddenly it occurred to Rob that the shot he had just seen on the TV, of the guy in the turtleneck slipping out the door, was going to be pretty important. It might help track down whoever it was who had been after them. Might even lead to the guys who had killed Greg.

The anchor was on the screen now. “Dana, what’s the latest?”

The picture cut to a woman standing in front of an office building. It was dark, and she was lit by camera lights. A caption on the screen said
BATON ROUGE
.

“Dave, I’m here in front of the headquarters of Louisiana Light. Employees who were coming out of the building earlier today looked understandably shocked. So far there’s no further word on the allegations about the company’s financial state. However, about an hour ago, Corporate Affairs chief Jacqueline Rubin issued a statement describing CFO Lyall P. Gelb as a wonderful colleague and family man and said his death was a tragedy the company would take some time to come to terms with. Dave.”

“Any word from CEO Michael Wilson?”

“Officially, Dave, all we have is the statement from Ms. Rubin. Michael Wilson himself has been unavailable for comment. However, we are hearing rumors that Lyall Gelb, the CFO whose death has just been announced, has left a note to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Dave.”