Ithaca (31 page)
He finishes the piece, picks up a coffee at his neighbourhood Timothy’s and takes the subway to Caryn’s place. The house is in darkness and there is no car in the driveway. He wanders around the neighbourhood for half an hour or so, but when he returns there is still no sign of activity at the house. An hour later he calls it quits, and posts the story online.
In Sydney, several hours ahead of Toronto, Zach reads the story and is knocked sideways by it. The irony, he thinks, the crowning achievement of his life undone by a nincompoop with an unfulfilled fixation on the hostess of a sushi bar. He phones Rachel on her mobile, and without apologizing for waking her up asks her to quickly find copies of the Eileen Keane books Prescott is referring to and compare them to
Storm of Angels
to make sure the claims are inalienable. He tries calling Caryn in Toronto and gets her voice mail; he keeps trying but after leaving her five messages he gives up.
A few hours later he is talking to his boss in London. Hayley Caldwell hears him out, and says the allegations will have to be brought to Mortimer’s attention; the crisis is too big for the London office to handle. He spends a couple of tense and anxious hours, and then phones Caryn again. Still no reply, she is probably on holiday. He has no idea what he is going to say to Mortimer. He supposes he could say, plausibly enough, that no one could have read every book on angels there is; that the author, or in this case the translator, warranted to them that the book was an original work and that they had had no option but to take her at her word. Publishing lacks the resources to undertake independent fact-checking, it’s a business that has historically been based on trust, and if there are a few rotten apples who breach that trust from time to time, that’s just plain bad luck – there is little anyone can do to prevent or anticipate such deception. He recalls his slight concern about the difference in style between this manuscript and the preceding books in the series and wonders if he should share that bit of information with Mortimer. Would Globish’s president pin the blame on him? Zach dismisses the concern; they are all in it together, and no matter what people have said to him about Mortimer’s reputation for letting his people down, and his initial misgivings at their meeting at Frankfurt, the Globish boss has been nothing but supportive in the past few months. He will share his suspicions with him about
Caryn. What made her do it? Vengeance for being cheated out of what was rightfully hers? A fanatical desire to carry on the Seppi legacy at any cost? An attempt to show that she was a creative artist in her own right? Although he is extremely upset with her, the more he thinks about it, the more his anger is mixed with sorrow. He remembers the charm and the wry sense of humour that emerged from behind the iron veneer she presented to the world. How lonely she must be feeling right now, how besieged, he must not be too harsh on her!
But no matter how humane his and the company’s treatment of her, she will have to be held to account; reparations will have to be made. Caryn and Giuseppe did sign contracts vouching for the authenticity of the work, but if Litmus sued, how much money would they be able to recover? And if any members of Eileen Keane’s family sued for copyright infringement, who would pay? And what of all the publishers Litmus has sold rights to? It can return the advances, and not all forty-eight have published yet, but still … And that doesn’t even start taking into account the Seppi fans who have bought the book, close to two million of them already. Will any of them sue? What of Litmus’s reputation? His head aches from the sheer immensity of the problem, the myriad ramifications that he is sure haven’t occurred to him yet. While waiting for New York to wake up, he calls the airline and books a flight back to London that evening.
His phone call to Mortimer is uneventful. Mortimer tells him, his voice neutral, that he too will fly to London as quickly as possible so they can plan a strategy to deal with the fallout of the plagiarism.
Mortimer seems calm when they meet in the office he uses when he is in London. Hayley is present but Morty does all the talking. He asks Zach to take him through the entire situation, from the time he met Caryn in Toronto, all the way to the first intimation that something was very wrong. When Zach comes to the end of his account, he says quietly, “We’ll have to find Caryn as soon as possible; I’ll talk to our office in Toronto. We will also have to get in touch with all the publishers we have licensed rights to, say that we will repay every cent of every advance paid to us. If necessary we will make a public apology to all Seppi fans, hopefully that will mollify them. We will say we feel as aggrieved as any of them but we must stress that we acted in good faith. For now, I would like you to hand in your resignation to Hayley. I’m sorry, we have given this a lot of thought, but for an error of this magnitude we have no choice but to let you go.”
Mortimer’s decision slams into him, terrorizes him briefly; his job is one of the two most important stanchions that support his life. But there is nothing to be said; the firing has taken him completely by surprise, and he could not have mounted a defence even if he were thinking lucidly. It is clear the meeting is over. He gets up, as does Mortimer, who walks him to the door. They do not speak. As the door closes behind him, he thinks Gabrijela wouldn’t have hung him out to dry; she would have stood by him, fought through the
crisis with him. But Gabrijela is no longer here; he will need to deal with the situation as best he can. To his surprise, even though the worst thing he could think of has taken place, after the initial moments of panic he is calm; although he isn’t thinking clearly yet, he believes he can handle the situation. And he certainly isn’t going to get down on himself because of someone like Morty.
Fuck him
, he thinks, and walks down the corridor to the bank of lifts.
After Zach and Hayley have left, Mortimer sits at his desk for what seems to him a long time but is only about five minutes, looking out the window, not particularly focusing on activity in the street outside. Firing Zach hasn’t left much of an impression on him, to be honest he hardly knew the guy; Zach was a means towards an end, he screwed up therefore he had to go. Mortimer didn’t even have to practise his sad face before the mirror, something he usually does before firing someone. He makes a few notes on his laptop about practical matters that will have to be acted upon immediately: he will draft the press release announcing Zach’s resignation; Hayley should be the point person for the media and the publishers they have licensed rights to; he will get Frank to take charge of the hunt for Caryn. He closes the computer and thinks about what else will need to be done to contain the situation. This is a blow that he will not find it easy to recover from, he had taken a big gamble when he overpaid for Litmus. Now it will be difficult for Globish to make its numbers over the next two quarters and, more worryingly, the media storm will have an effect on the parent company’s
share price. He has done what he can to protect himself – the firing of Zach, the attempts to head off lawsuits – but these actions will not be enough when he is called to account by his boss, because in the world of business, as he knows only too well, any prolonged downslide of performance, especially in times like these, will not be tolerated. Unless he has a killer Plan B up his sleeve, which he does not have, he might survive for a little while but he will have to start looking for his twelfth job soon, unless by some miracle Globish turns in a stellar performance this year or at least the next. Except Mortimer does not believe in miracles. He picks up the phone to call Monterey.
When Zach gets home, Julia meets him at the door. He isn’t expecting to see her, he thought she would still be at work where he had phoned her with his news, but he is enormously glad she is here, for the strength she gives him by just being around. Nothing is ever lost, he thinks, when you have someone you love and trust to fight your corner.
The news of the Seppi fraud makes the front pages of every US and UK paper the day of Zach’s meeting with Mortimer. Unusually, the story makes the front pages the next day as well, because of a tragic update: the body of a forty-four-year-old woman identified as Caryn Bianchi, a Montreal
native, has been found in an upscale Bermuda hotel room. Preliminary investigations rule her death to be suicide from an overdose of sleeping pills. There is no suicide note.
Within forty-eight hours of the story breaking worldwide
Storm of Angels
begins to slide off the bestseller lists, and within a week it has fallen off the Amazon Top 100 and keeps heading downwards. Globish’s reps countrywide in the US, and other major markets are besieged with phone calls from all their accounts seeking to return stock earlier than usual for full credit. All requests are acceded to. The media refuses to let go of the story, despite the best efforts of the in-house marketing and publicity department and of the high-powered spin doctors Mortimer has hired. The share price of Globish’s parent company, Amadeus, starts to slip almost immediately, losing a dollar and a half, before rebounding slightly to settle at a full eight points lower than its level before the scandal broke. Mortimer flies to Monterey for an unpleasant meeting with Greg Holmes; he is not fired as he was expecting but he is put on notice that unless the company posts increases in both revenues and profits throughout 2011, he should not expect his contract, which comes to an end that year, to be renewed. It is better than he had hoped for, certainly better than the treatment he has meted out to Zach. He has time to come up with something and he is sure he will.