by Morris West
‘They’ll be expecting that. They’ll auction you up.’
‘Then we’ll see how good their nerves are . . . Now, tell me some good news! ‘
‘We can buy Raymond Serum Laboratories.’
‘How much of it?’
‘Seventy per cent – and that includes the European subsidiaries.’
‘What will it cost us?’
‘Fifteen dollars a share.’
‘Conditions?’
‘The old man retires. The son gets a five-year contract to head the research division.’
‘It’s too cheap. What’s the catch?’
‘They’re stretched tight on credit. The old man is tired. He’s had one heart attack. He wants to go fishing.’
‘The son?’
‘He’s a biologist, pure and simple. He hates business. He’d like to carry on research with a nice comfortable personal investment behind him.’
‘Wise man,’ said John Spada moodily. ‘He’ll probably die happy at ninety, with the Nobel Prize in his pocket. OK Maury, we’ll buy. Set it up. See you at ten in the morning.’
‘Make it ten-thirty,’ said Maury Feldman cheerfully. ‘I’ve got to see a man about a picture. He swears it’s an Andrea del Sarto. I fear it’s a piece of junk; but I could get lucky.’
‘How can you afford these little luxuries?’
‘I have some generous clients. I’ll pay for this one out of the Raymond deal.’
‘You bastard! . . . Put me back to Kitty. I’ve got some memos to dictate to her.’
‘I was just about to take her out to dinner.’
‘She’s on my payroll. Find your own women.’
‘I love you too, John boy. Get a good night’s sleep!’
Kitty Cowan came on the line again. This time she was subdued and solicitous.
‘John, let me handle the San Diego business.’
‘What’s your suggestion?’
‘Don’t press charges – at least, not yet. Waxman’s got a confession. Let him ask for another document: a voluntary request for psychiatric observation in a recognised institution. I’d also have Waxman continue paying maintenance to the wife and child until we’ve got the whole picture clear.’
‘I love it.’ Spada stifled a laugh. ‘We get ripped off for half a million, and we respond with free psychiatric treatment and maintenance for the villain’s family.’
‘You won’t get the money back, so why not get some free advertising for the human face of Spada Consolidated?’
‘And I thought you were pouring out the milk of human kindness!’
‘I am – but you’re supplying the milk and the pitcher. I thought I’d better sweeten the deal. What do you say, chief?’
‘Do it! . . . Now make a note. Put out buying orders for any Spada stock that comes free in the market. Get me full personal and financial information on Max Liebowitz, his associates and his immediate family . . . Also send a formal invitation to Professor Hugo Von Kalbach to make the keynote address at our Management Conference in New York next month. Call him in Munich and discuss travel arrangements. The fee is fifteen thousand dollars. Find out how and where he’d like it paid. Finally, have an updated list of Spada stockholders on my desk first thing in the morning.’
‘And I’ll also deliver the Hope Diamond and a crate of moonrocks! Relax, chief! . . . This is Kitty, remember? The impossible takes an hour or two longer; but we do it in the end. Anything else?’
‘Yes. Ask Maury where we can find Henson and the Scarecrow Man.’
There was a moment’s pause; then Kitty asked quietly:
‘Going fishing?’
‘Could be. Have a nice evening.’
‘And you take it easy. Give my love to Anna.’
‘Ciao, Caterina!
‘Shalom, John! Sleep easy.
‘Everybody wants me to sleep,’ said John Spada with sour humour. ‘So they put thorns in my bed and itching powder in my pyjamas . . .!’
Long after Anna was asleep and dreaming, he sat up, tense and wakeful, trying to measure the new threat that was being mounted against him. A big international company was a kind of empire whose stability depended on all sorts of treaties and alliances, some written, many more unratified, but all based on mutual trust, shared interest, a precarious balance of situations and personalities. Every expansion, every new venture, meant the introduction of new funds, fresh interests, an extra strain on the original alliances. Friends died. Family rivalries intruded. Parties fell out of favour with electors. Rivals waxed strong. Old enmities, long covered, flared up like fires in a sawdust pile. Shareholders, avid always for more profit, grew restive and fell easy prey to flim-flam men peddling pie in the sky.
John Spada knew – or thought he knew – every gambit in the game. Helped by relatives and friends on the Continent, he had managed to stay in the saddle for twenty-five years, holding in his own two hands the reins of power. Now, suddenly, he was at risk; because a man who, living, would never have dared to oppose him, was mocking him from beyond the grave.
When Carl Channing’s bank was in trouble Spada had baled him out with cash and then bought him out with Spada stock. The transaction had turned Channing from a near-bankrupt into a wealthy man. But, apparently, to make a man rich was not to make him a friend. It was not the favour Channing remembered, but the humiliation of having to wed an old WASP name to that of an upstart Italian from Rome. So he had allied himself with Max Liebowitz who, in the old days, had written off Spada Consolidated as a fly-by-night enterprise, probably financed by Mafia funds – and had been biting his nails ever since.
Even so, the equation was not yet clear to Spada. Even if Liebowitz could win his proxy fight, he had still to propose a management superior to the present one; and, so far at least, there was no obvious candidate in sight. The right man would have to be diplomat, financier, politician, administrator extraordinary – with a dash of the adventurer as well. Spada himself, having no son to succeed him, was constantly combing the market for such a talent, and finding that it was very thin on the ground.
So, it seemed he would have a little breathing-space before the big battle was joined. But he would have to use every moment of it, test every ally, watch for any hint of defection from the ranks of his supporters. He would have to tread warily for other reasons as well. He was a man living a double life: openly as President of Spada Consolidated, secretly as Proteus, head of a clandestine organisation, involved in the dark and dangerous game of underground politics.
Any hint of his covert activities would damn him utterly in the eyes of the stockholders, who regarded him as the trustee of their financial interests and gave him no mandate at all for a private crusade. They would be happy for him to endow a foundation, found a ballet company, promote cancer research: but to involve himself in moral issues, in political activism – unthinkable!
But he, John Spada, had to think of it every day. What do you do when your man in Frankfurt calls and says: ‘The police tell me I’m on a Baader-Meinhof list. I need bodyguards for my children when they go to school, alarms in my house, a bullet-proof car to drive me to the factory.’ What do you say to the man from SAVAK when he says: ‘You have a hundred technicians working in Teheran and some of them talk too freely about the way the Shah runs his country. Incidentally, we’d like you to replace Baraheni as office manager, because we’ll be pulling him in for a chat very soon.’ How do you react when your man in Chile is commanded to write political profiles on his staff and report to DINA any union activity on the shop-floor? How do you answer the veiled request for contributions to the police fund in Rio when you know the Squadrons of Death are out, riding the highways, and gunning down suspected dissidents? What will you do if the police raid your daughter’s house in Buenos Aires because her husband has written an editorial that they find intolerable?
John Spada was no genius; but he spoke six languages and his roots were still planted deep in the Latin culture of Europe. How would Max Liebowitz respond? Max
was a great fund-raiser, a potent lobbyist for Israel, an eloquent rememberer of the holocausts. But Max still talked about the goyim and the schwartzers and the chicanos. What would he do when they dumped a dead Bantu on the company doorstep in Cape Town and said he fell down drunk in a police cell? Maybe he would do very well. Maybe he would ignore it all, on the principle that you drove down the road you could see, and to hell with the barbarians killing themselves in the wild country on either hand . . . Maybe, maybe, but whichever way you read him, Max Liebowitz was a hell of a risk.
Suddenly Spada was desperately tired. He switched off the light in the study, made the last round of the apartment, tested the alarms, and crept quietly into bed. He reached out to touch Anna. She murmured in sleepy affection and drew close to him. He laid a gentle arm across her body and held her quietly until she slept again. Then he locked his hands under his head and lay a long time, staring into the darkness.
The headquarters of Spada Consolidated Holdings was a tower of concrete and glass on Central Park West. In the forecourt was the emblem of the corporation: a giant crusader sword, plunged into a block of rough-hewn granite. There was an arrogance in the symbol which now, in his later years, he regretted. It was a celebration of personal strength, of corporate might, of the military precision with which John Spada directed a vast variety of enterprises spread around the globe: in Australia, Taiwan, the Philippines, India, Japan, the United Kingdom, South Africa, South America and Europe.
‘You name it,’ the knowing ones said. ‘Spada is there, in one dress or another: arms, electronics, real estate, hotels, oil, metals, minerals and banking. It’s a goddam colossus and he controls it. If he sneezes on a rainy day he can put thousands out of work and cause a run on the stock market. When he started, they wrote him down as just another fast operator who would be winnowed out by the first cold draught. No way! He proved out solid as that chunk of rock in front of his building. He runs his organisation like an army and he’s a better statesman than half the boys who are warming their backsides in the Senate . . .’
On the topmost floor of the tower there was a conference room which looked like a battle headquarters with a vast electronic screen on which, at any moment of any hour, the status of every Spada operation could be punched up – the movement of bulk cargoes, the amount of ore at any rail-head, the state of the futures market, cash flows, inventories and currency dealings in a dozen capitals.
‘We have to know!’ Spada’s edict was as immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. ‘Good news and bad, we want it all. Never give me a surprise. If we take risks, we take them on known odds. I want daily book-keeping, not past history. Make one mistake and I’ll forgive you. Make the same mistake again and I’ll have your head on a dish.’
It was no idle threat and his staff knew it. The Man paid well for service and discretion; the Man looked after his own; but his angers were swift and cold – and there were bones bleaching in the undergrowth to prove it.
Yet, for all the stringency of his rule, Spada was a cool and relaxed administrator. With his immediate staff he was considerate and urbane. He never forgot a birthday. There was always a personal gift for high feasts and family occasions. His directives were clear. In discussion he was open and reasonable. Once a decision was made, he himself assumed full responsibility for its consequences.
Among his peers he had another kind of reputation: a witty companion, a generous host, a good friend when the bad times hit. His handshake was as good as a contract; but, come to an adversary situation, then – by God! Lord Harry! – you’d best be up early and know the fine print backwards. His business entertainments were lavish; but no one had ever managed to pin a scandal, personal or financial, on his door. As to his family, there was one inviolable rule: John Spada’s home life was private; entry was by invitation only; don’t call us, we’ll call you.
In his business life, only two people were privy to all his secrets. One was Maury Feldman, the other was Kitty Cowan, raw-tongued, protective as a mother hen, loyal as the Light Brigade. With the pair of them in his office he could unbutton and relax, curse and argue happily and come out refreshed for the next encounter. This morning, however, there was an air of urgency and unease about the meeting. Kitty Cowan began with a report from the brokers.
‘They say there’s very little Spada stock on offer. Most people are hanging on for the half-yearly dividend and the rise in share value.’
Spada frowned unhappily and turned to Maury Feldman who was doodling an erotic miniature of Leda and the Swan on his note-pad.
‘What’s Liebowitz got to sell? We’re riding high. In the middle of a recession we’re doing better than most corporations on the big board. How can Liebowitz justify a change of management? Who’s his candidate?’
‘Max isn’t saying. I’m just guessing that it’s Conan Eisler. He’s done a good job with Allman Electronics; and Max thinks he’s a financial genius.’
‘Balls!’ said Spada flatly. ‘I checked him out months ago. He’s a systems man, pure and simple. Even his bedsheets are made of graph-paper. Politically, he’s a babe in arms!’
‘We know, John,’ said Kitty Cowan with a grin. ‘You’re the one who’s got to persuade the stockholders.’
Spada was still terse and snappish.
‘So, let’s talk about persuasion. We can’t make a move until Max Liebowitz shows his hand.’
‘I disagree.’ Feldman added some fanciful strokes to Leda’s anatomy. ‘Why hang around until the rapist starts unzipping his pants? I say we start lobbying the voters right now. Kitty’s got the list. I’ve marked the ones who could swing either way and, therefore, need steady personal attention . . . You’ll note, for the record, that most of them represent Jewish capital.’
‘So now we’re involved in a race issue?’
‘No, but we’re selling a hell of a lot of stuff to the Saudis and the Kuwaitis; and Max Liebowitz is an ardent Zionist . . . Which reminds me. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have Von Kalbach speak at the management conference.’
‘Why not?’ Spada was nettled. ‘He’s an important thinker and an impressive speaker. He’ll get a big press coverage.’
‘Which could make us look like hypocrites,’ said Maury Feldman. ‘Von Kalbach talks eloquent sense about repression and violence, while we’re shipping weapon systems to Iran, and you’re photographed skiing with the Shah in St Moritz.’
‘For God’s sake, Maury I You know the reason for that.’
‘I know, but the public doesn’t.’
‘So what am I going to do – blow the whole Proteus network to prove I’m a great humanitarian?’
‘Maury’s right, John.’ Kitty Cowan added her own blunt comment. ‘The President’s talking up human rights. Spada Consolidated is making big profits trading under dictatorships. In this town, at this time, that hurts you.’
‘It would hurt a hell of a lot more if I joined any partisan group.’
‘Sure, but. . .’
Spada cut her off with a gesture.
‘Let’s talk Proteus for a moment. Von Kalbach wants us to help get Lermontov released from that nut-house in Moscow. I’m committed to the project. Any ideas?’
‘You know,’ said Maury Feldman, ‘there’s going to be a formal protest at the world conference on mental health next month. The Russians are worried. They’ve instructed their delegates to walk out if the protest is tabled.’
‘But they won’t let Lermontov out?’
‘No. The KGB have dug their heels in. No interference with internal security.’
‘What about a private deal?’
‘You’ve got something in mind?’ Maury Feldman stopped his doodling and looked up.
‘I thought I’d talk to Anatoly Kolchak in Washington. He’s a first-rate diplomat and in high favour with the Politburo.’
‘But even Kolchak can’t buck the KGB.’
‘No, but he can propose a situation. The Soviet Trade Mission has been negotiating for mon
ths to get manufacturing rights on Spada Body Scanners. So far, we’ve stalled the deal because we think they’re good for another one per cent royalty. Suppose we agree their bid, and make a free gift of one unit to the Moscow General Hospital – provided Lermontov is released and given an exit visa.’
‘Then,’ Maury Feldman did his famous parody of Earl Warren, ‘then you are up to your hocks in sewage. You are using shareholders’ funds to deal in human bodies.’
‘Not if I pay for the gift myself.’
‘Then some smart-ass asks whether the royalty contract is the best that could have been secured by open market trading. In other words, how much discount for one beat-up Jewish intellectual ?’
Spada grinned and asked amiably:
‘Who’s to know about it except us three?’
‘Anatoly Kolchak – and all the boys in the Politburo and the KGB.’
‘But they can’t tell – unless they want to admit they’re in the ransom business.’
‘Then there’s Liebowitz, who right now will be scrutinising every goddam document he can lay his hands on.’
‘What’s he going to say? We could have held out for another one per cent and let Lermontov die? No, Maury, it’s your job to demonstrate the risks. It’s mine to accept or reject them. I’ll talk to Kolchak.’
‘By me, that’s great,’ said Kitty Cowan.
‘By me,’ said Maury Feldman, ‘it’s like Leda and the Swan. It’s an anatomical impossibility but it might be fun to try.’
Kitty Cowan consulted her note-book and brought up the next item.
‘You asked about Henson and the Scarecrow Man. Henson’s in Rome, working on a kidnap case for Risk Consultants Limited. The Scarecrow Man is in Teheran, brushing up his Persian and keeping an eye on Azudi. But if you want him, he’ll move.’
‘Get him to New York,’ said Spada. ‘Tell him I want to brief him for twenty-four hours. Then he’ll go down to Buenos Aires. Tell Henson not to accept another assignment until he’s heard from me.’
