Moroccan Traffic (21 page)

Perhaps prime fattened pigs cut their throats when they swim, but feral boars don’t. She knew it, of course. She struck across the water like a bluebottle fazed by a fly-spray, and the boar wallowed after her. We saw them as we rushed to the edge. Morgan, seizing anything he could lay hands on, began wildly pelting the beast. Reed, flinging himself to the end of the pool, plunged in, arms driving, and made for the resolute streak that was Rita. For a moment, it seemed as if Rita, Rolly and boar would all meet in the middle. And then something flashed in the air, and the boar squealed, and a fountain of blood rose and sank, staining the water like claret. Rita and Rolly looked up. We all, in our various ways, stared and turned.

Sir Robert Kingsley stood on the balcony immediately above us, his hands gripping the rail, his face scarlet. ‘Get out!’ he said. ‘You silly fools, they don’t die as quickly as that. Get out while you can!’

And Rita and Reed, splashing, hauled themselves out, just as the boar began to froth and thresh, with Sir Robert’s boar-spear in its body.

The critical meeting between Kingsley Conglomerates and MCG plc took place, a little late, in the small dining room immediately afterwards.

By then Gerry Owen, uneasily disdainful, had been hauled off by the management for what promised to be a long, cold interview in the office, followed by a heated exchange with his fellow ralliers which ended with his sullen retreat to his room.

A similar fate was expertly avoided by Miss Rita Geddes who, bundled into a robe, announced herself a certified idiot, and disarmingly offered to pay compensation up to any sum the hotel cared to calculate for having let out their poor bloody monkeys. The hotel, already brainwashed by Morgan, accepted a very large cheque and forgave her.

Through it all, I sat in a corner and trembled. I didn’t expect to be noticed, but Sir Robert himself found me and sat down. He said, ‘Wendy? That silly young man, on top of yesterday. Are you all right? Would you like to go back to Marrakesh?’

Of course, he knew I wouldn’t leave, but it was nice that he cared. Until he put his hand lightly on mine, and then felt for and held out his handkerchief, I hadn’t known I’d been crying. I hadn’t known he knew about pig-sticking, and he laughed off insistent efforts to thank him. He’d pulled the spear from the wall of the restaurant. He said it reeked of couscous.

The hotel had left a buffet lunch in the room set aside for our meeting. We helped ourselves and sat down with our briefcases. Sir Robert, still in his immaculate cashmere, was flanked by me in my ruined resort wear, and Mr. Morgan in the wreck of his laundry. The monkeys had burst his rubber band and picked out his pigtail, and he hadn’t had time to replait it.

Opposite, in pink towelling robes and bare feet sat the Accountant of the MCG Company and his Chairman, their hair like shredded wheat. On either side of Rita Geddes’s positive nose, the spectacles glittered like melamine saucers. Walking into the room, a Career Clothing Consultant would have despaired.

‘So,’ said Sir Robert. ‘Let us put the last hour aside, and talk about something of mutual benefit to our companies.’

What followed, naturally, was double-talk.

MCG batted first, with the intermediate-level figures we’d agreed on. My notebook out, I scribbled as Reed first read them out, and then passed round some supplementary papers. Placing them on the table, MCG didn’t run very much risk. They were international, certainly, but small compared with Kingsley Conglomerates.

Of course, they kept something back. We didn’t get anything like the facts we’d expect at the next stage. We didn’t get the past trading performance, or the debt situation, or the discounted cash flow to an optimum ten-year horizon. And, of course, they’d have done a lot more homework than that. Their managers, like ours, would have sweated over their SWOT analysis: strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. They would have examined the size of their market, and totted up their debts and their assets.

The time would come for all that. All they were doing at present was indicating their own view of their value. They gave us as much as they had promised, and I knew it bore out what Sir Robert expected.

The tricky point was how far Kingsley’s could go along the same road, and the answer was, not very far. To begin with, our figures were much more complex, dealing with different divisions with different expectations. But the other factor was secrecy. If the deal should break down, MCG could freely take what they knew to a firm whose goodwill they wanted, and that firm might quite easily transfer its predatory attention to us. The figures Pettigrew had sent were therefore guarded and weighted. Yet they had to conform, at least broadly, with the figures Johnson had seen at the airport. A lot of hard work had, indeed, gone into making them roughly compatible. MCG consequently should have been satisfied. But clearly, they weren’t.

Roland Reed queried almost every figure Sir Robert produced.

Increasing in number, his civil interventions began to take on the style of an inquisition. We hadn’t expected it. At the same time, we had no right to resent it. We, after all, were the suitors. The top management of MCG had once already indicated their lack of interest in our offer. If they were here at all, it was either because they were playing for time, or because they wished to be convinced that Kingsley’s were equipped for secure and successful future trading.

Sir Robert, attempting to move away from raw figures, was gently compliant when checked but you could see, if you knew him, the slightest trace of heat in his broad cheeks. He was concerned to explain the international importance of Kingsley’s, the excellence of its products and management and the benefits it had to confer on all associated with it. He then set out to show the potential areas of synergy.

He put it all in his own words, which being Chairman he could do, but he really gave a textbook presentation. He dealt with the integration of planning and marketing; with the sharing of management skills; with improved physical distribution (PDM); and better material requirements planning (MRP). He made a point of referring to tax benefits and a glancing reference to what I recognised as performance tables and a two-by-two matrix of product/market divisions. And he said it all in a way that was formal but comfortable, using sensible words and putting in the merest trace of humour now and then. He was perfect.

During all this Mo Morgan was silent and so, too, was Rita Geddes. She rose from time to time, as the rest of us did, and put her empty plate to one side, and collected another. Once, when the head waiter tapped on the door with a question, she got up and called just as Sir Robert was sending him off. ‘Oh, you!’ she said. ‘Listen! I don’t know your name, and I hope it isn’t a trade secret or anything, but come in and tell me what’s that I could taste in the galantine? Jimmy, it was ten-out-of-ten brilliant. Fennel. I knew there was fennel. But there’s another thing, son. . .’

And as the rest of us waited, our discussion suspended, she and the waiter bent over the table, talking vigorously. Eventually, smiling, she straightened and led the man like a friend to the door. He was smiling as well. Sir Robert wasn’t. He said, ‘Forgive me. I was making a point.’

‘No, it’s me. I’m really sorry,’ said Miss Rita Geddes cheerfully, sitting down with a heaped platter of something. ‘But I never like losing a recipe. You were talking about extra cash generation for the divestiture of underperforming or unwanted assets?’

‘Was I?’ said Sir Robert after a moment. ‘I don’t really think so.’

‘Oh well. We’ve all lost the thread, and it’s my fault,’ said Miss Rita Geddes. ‘On you go. We’re enjoying it.’

After that, of course, it was more difficult for him, even though Mr. Reed interrupted less and less and Mo Morgan never uttered a word, apart from a slight sound during the talk about fennel. But Sir Robert, as you’d expect, had no trouble keeping his head or his style, dividing his glances equally between the two of them although his argument, of course, was directed at Reed. He knew very well when it was time to draw his case to a close, which he did with a smile. He said, ‘Am I convincing you with every word, Mr. Reed, or is there something I’ve omitted? Whatever it is, I think we’ve now gone over the territory, and it remains to see whether we have reached common ground. Can Miss Helmann help you, Miss Geddes?’

‘No, no. I’ll be Mother,’ said his opposite number, turning with the coffee pot in her hand. Unpainted, her face looked freckled and healthy, and all her movements, it occurred to me, were surprisingly deft. She came round, pouring. ‘And while we’re at it, your mother’s well, Wendy? Just a ploy to get you here, very sensible. You bring her to see me. Johnson says she’s the best news since Golda Meir. So what made you buy Mr. Morgan’s business, Sir Robert, seeing that you hadn’t the cash or the prospects to back it with?’

The stream of coffee continued to flow and she never even looked up, although Roland Reed did. I saw Sir Robert’s foot shift under the table. Rather little had been said about Mo Morgan’s division. Nothing at all had been said about Mo Morgan being buried a K.

Sir Robert said, ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps I said rather less than I should about Mr. Morgan’s work since it is so highly technical.

Perhaps, first, he would allow me to give you a summary, and then he may wish to talk to you himself. Do you know anything about electronics?’

‘I’ve got a washing machine,’ said Rita Geddes. It was a depressing reply. It reduced the status of Mr. Mo Morgan to the sort of handyman he’d been in our house, and I didn’t like it. I intervened for him.

I said, ‘It’s really valuable business, electronics, Miss Geddes. It offers world-class opportunities in every field. Electronics supply the armour that gives modern military systems their new winning edge.’

I had read it somewhere. Or really, my mother had read it somewhere and quoted it to me. There was a short patient silence and then Mo Morgan said, ‘Well, it beats selling budget-priced tights to the grocery trade. What do you want to know about it, Miss Geddes? If it’s the business angle, Sir Robert’s better at it than me.’

It turned out to be the business angle. We had been warned by a previous encounter, and we should have taken note. Mr. Reed merely laid the bricks. Rita walked over them. She did it quite briefly. She said, sitting down with her coffee, ‘I just wanted to know why you bought him. I know why he needed to sell. Technology’s dear. Needs extraordinary cash resources to reach viability. Private, he’d be selling his patents and getting his royalties, but how far would that help him towards new development? Zilch. So he sells and you buy all his problems. Long term development eating up cash. As now expenditure needed to defend and exploit patents. And globally, the high-tech sector in crisis: the John Does and Japs got it buttoned up. No returns from Mr. Morgan for how many years? Yet you buy him.’

‘You haven’t heard of the European market?’ Sir Robert said mildly. He would never lose his aplomb. Only I could see his foot tapping.

‘You need cash now,’ said Rita Geddes. ‘Hence us. And you do need us, or you’d never be trying so hard. Know the cost of a hostile bid in this game? Of course you do. Three point four per cent of the expenses if you win: and that’s how many millions? And the City doesn’t like EPS dilution one bit. You’d be given three to four years to restore it – could you make it? I wonder. And if you fail, you’re a sitting duck for a predator.’

‘So are you,’ Sir Robert said.

‘Not if we burn the crops,’ said Rita Geddes. ‘Scorched earth tactics, they call it. Sell off all the stuff that someone like you might have stripped, and use the money to keep a core business that random raiders wouldn’t quite kill for. If we allowed you to buy, what guarantee do we have that you wouldn’t be taken over tomorrow?’

‘No one could afford us,’ said Sir Robert.

‘Bullshit,’ said Miss Geddes. ‘But do you know what I’d do? I’d consider your offer if you agreed to one clause. A form of capital restructuring that gave me first right of refusal to any new raiding company.’

Sir Robert’s foot stopped. The silence was so absolute that I could hear the men’s voices outside, and the sound of tables and chairs being righted, and paving swept. Then Sir Robert said, ‘But, Miss Geddes, you are talking of the options open to two companies who agree to become allies in a strategic joint venture. We are Kingsley Conglomerates. You are an excellent but small single company in need of help.’

‘Then I think,’ said Rita Geddes, ‘that maybe we can find help elsewhere.’

Sir Robert smiled. He said, ‘We have hardly begun to discuss the issues. Why don’t I call for more coffee, and we can really talk about what we’ve been saying?’

Rita Geddes got up. She didn’t even glance at her accountant and Roland Reed, a strange look on his face, gazed at his hands and didn’t attempt to look at her. She said, ‘We have talked. I have listened. Sir Robert, I wouldn’t touch you even with the pole you stick pigs with. I did enjoy the galantine. Goodbye.’

She was actually walking to the door. Sir Robert sprang to his feet. Mr. Reed, an apologetic look on his face, rose also. Morgan remained where he was and so, uncertainly, did I. Sir Robert said, ‘Do I understand that, without even the courtesy of a discussion, you have turned down my offer before you have heard it?’

Miss Marguerite Geddes turned. Her hair had dried in a mess.

Her bathrobe drooped. Her face, shining with health, held some vestigial streaks of mascara and rouge. She said, ‘You’re the firm in trouble. You’re the Chairman who fucked it. I don’t like anything at all of your package, and neither will a single one of my shareholders. The answer is no. You probably saved our skins today, and thank you, but no.’

‘Wendy?’ said Sir Robert. He wasn’t looking at me.

‘Yes?’ I said. I got up.

‘And Mr. Morgan. Leave us,’ said Sir Robert. ‘Never mind your things. Leave us, and shut the door behind you.’

I obeyed without thinking. I realised, outside the door, that Morgan had taken longer to yield to his Chairman. When he walked through the door to join me, his expression was not just thoughtful, it was stunned. I grasped his arm. ‘It’s all right. Come downstairs. He does this.’