“What do you mean, “It’s possible”? How the hell could anyone even think a firm of our reputation could be involved in such a dastardly act! It makes absolutely no sense! Is this a set up of some sort?”
“I honestly don’t know, Lawton. I honestly don’t know.” The fatigue and fear in her voice were unmistakable.
Lawton cursed silently. “Get on the next plane and come home, Dru,” he ordered. “There’s nothing we can do but wait it out.”
Dru remained silent.
“Do you hear me, Dru? I want you to pack up and get back to New York ASAP!”
“And how would that make us look, Lawton? Don’t you think I should stay around? Try to show them that we’re blameless?”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass how it looks. I don’t want you there a minute longer than the next flight to New York. Do you hear me, Dru?”
She sighed. Certain fights you just did not pick with Lawton Pilgrim.”Yes. Yes, I’ll leave.”
“Okay. You be careful now.” He waited until he heard the phone click on her end, then turned to Featherhorn. “She doesn’t like you, does she? Can’t say I blame her, Grant. In your eyes Dru had two strikes against her when she came into the firm. She was black and she’d essentially told you to go fuck yourself. So you’ve made her life hell at Pilgrim Boone, you heartless bastard.”
Featherhorn sat up, stunned.
“Oh, wipe that asinine look off your face. I know you, Grant. I know all of you. I studied you for years before I brought you into this company and into the Circle, just like I did Dru Durane. I know how each one of you thinks, what each one of you is capable of. Did you really think you could fool me? I knew what that girl was going through with you, but I kept her there because I knew she would fight you. And in fighting you she would become exactly what she became—one of the best in the firm. And that’s all I cared about—what she could do for Pilgrim Boone, being as good as she was. She’s never let me down.”
“Lawton, I…I…”
“Shut up, Grant. Shut up and listen to me!”
Featherhorn shrank back in his seat, his stomach lurching. Lawton had never yelled at him like this. Why now? Did he know about Bernat? Did he know about his clandestine trip to Guyana?
“I’m dying, Grant. Cancer. Doctor says I have no more than three months.”
Featherhorn’s face collapsed in disbelief. He opened his mouth to say something but Lawton held up his hand and stopped him.
He said, “I’ve decided that I want you to take over after me. I don’t have to spell out the reasons why, but I’ll do so all the same. It’s nasty out there. The Big Five are pulling accounts away from us. Those gluttonous bastards are now earning more than half their income from consulting. Christ! Last time I looked, consulting was growing three times as fast as the auditing business they’re supposed to be doing. They’ve swindled the whole goddamned world with their fancy PR and merger gimmicks, hiring armies of Ivy Leaguers who don’t know diddly about consulting!”
He paused. The look on his face warned Featherhorn to keep his silence. “The fact is, Grant,” he continued in a calmer voice, “if it keeps up like this, Pilgrim Boone will be out of the big leagues in less than five years, a distant memory in ten. We both know it. Oh, sure! We could have played the game, merged with Ernst & Young or Price Waterhouse or Andersen when they propositioned us. They all did, as you know. Even Peat Marwick and Deloitte and Touche. A merger with any one of them would have put us at the head of the pack. But we would have become just another rat in that pack and that’s not us, Grant. That’s not our race. Those guys will have a good run. They should enjoy it while they can because my gut tells me they’ll be done in by their own greed. And when that time comes, I want Pilgrim Boone to be there, ready to claim our rightful place. Holding our nose and towering above the shit pile.”
He stopped abruptly at the sound a low chuckle and glared at Featherhorn. The chuckle suddenly turned into a fit of grunts and ahems as Featherhorn struggled to wipe the grin off his face.
“Sorry, Lawton. I know you’re serious, but that’s one hell of an image.” Featherhorn had recovered from his tongue-lashing and was feeling comfortable again, much more than comfortable. He was on top of the friggin’ world. Lawton had just named him heir to the Pilgrim Boone throne! Well, good goddamn! And here he was, worrying for no reason at all. He could afford to banter.
Lawton’s lips began to twitch, then he, too, started to chuckle. “Yeah! I guess it’s one hell of an image,” he said, laughing openly.
He soon became serious again. “All joking aside, you’re the only one who can take them on, the only one who can keep Pilgrim Boone from slipping into oblivion, Grant.”
He paused to study the effect of his words on the younger man. His eyes hardened as he caught the smirk before Featherhorn fixed his face into its usual mask of propriety. He leaned forward and addressed Featherhorn in a low, cold voice.
“Oh, don’t let it get to your head, Grant. I’m not really paying you a compliment, you know. All I’m saying is that it will take guile to do the job that I want done and that’s what you’ve got. Guile. All the ugliness that word conjures up, that’s the real you. But this is not about you, fella. It’s all about me. With you in charge, I get to go out smelling like a rose, knowing that my life’s work won’t fall apart after I’m gone.”
He leaned back in the chair, holding Featherhorn in a steely gaze until Featherhorn’s eyes veered away. He smiled. “You needn’t worry, Grant. Everyone will go along with my decision. They’ll all want to know that their interests will be protected by any means necessary, and having you at the helm will give them that assurance.”
Pilgrim held up his hand and shook his head as Featherhorn opened his mouth to speak.
“There’s one more thing, Grant. I want to win the Guyana contract for Savoy before I bow out, but I want to win it clean and fair. As I said, I go out smelling like a rose. So you tell me now and tell me straight. What business do you have with Alejandro Bernat?”
Featherhorn’s jaw dropped.
Pilgrim steepled his fingers under his chin and waited, his eyes never wavering from Featherhorn’s face.
Featherhorn’s mind worked frantically. What should he say? How much did the old man know?
He decided to stall. Lawton might inadvertently give him a clue about how much he knew about his relationship with Bernat.
“Alejandro Bernat?” he repeated, tilting his head back and gazing up at the ceiling, as if in deep concentration.
Pilgrim’s eyes glinted.”You’re stalling, Grant. You want to know how much I already know about you and Bernat. You of all people should know better than to try that with me. I want to hear it from your mouth. What’s your business with Bernat?”
Featherhorn knew he was trapped. He’d just have to brass-ball his way out. “Yes, I do know Alejandro Bernat. But why do you ask in that way, as if he’s someone I shouldn’t have anything to do with? Do you know something I don’t know, Lawton?” he said calmly.
Pilgrim smiled. “Oh you’re good, Grant. I’d forgotten just how good you are. Now, for the last time, I want to know what the deal is with you and Bernat.”
The thought came to Featherhorn like the proverbial lightbulb going off. He could tell the truth and there was nothing Lawton would do about it because he could drop dead at any time and he intended to go out—how did he put it?—smelling like a rose. The last thing Lawton would want to do was drag the firm’s name through a scandal, and a scandal is exactly what would break out if, upon hearing the truth, he went to the authorities or did something foolish like alerting Savoy. Pilgrim would be dead before he got a chance to crucify Grant Featherhorn in the press and restore the reputation of Pilgrim Boone.
It took a split second for Featherhorn to figure out all this, to realize that he, not Lawton, had the upper hand. Watching him closely, Pilgrim knew the precise moment Featherhorn gained that hand.
The eyes of the two men met and held
. Featherhorn smiled benignly, acknowledging Pilgrim’s acknowledgement of his own defeat. When he spoke, his tone was superior.
“No, Lawton. There is nothing I can tell you that I’m sure you don’t already know. I have known Alejandro Bernat since you put me in charge of the Latin America division with a mandate to get to know personally all the movers and shakers in the region. That is exactly what I did. Bernat is a wealthy and powerful businessman in Venezuela. It is because of the intelligence we receive from him that we have been able to make the few strides we have in Latin America. That is, before Drucilla Durane came along. But we may yet win Guyana, in spite of her bungling.”
Pilgrim felt himself shrink in his chair and hoped it was more a feeling on his part than an actual change in his physical demeanor. He had no one to blame but himself. He had created a monster in Grant Featherhorn and now that monster was out of control. He had checked out Alejandro Bernat through his Washington contacts. Bernat, he had been told by one of his sources in the DEA, was rumored to be the biggest drug lord in the hemisphere, but no one had any proof. Not even Washington’s high-tech artillery could pin anything on him. Bernat was brutal. People were too scared to talk. Not even a million greenbacks could buy a snitch.
Pilgrim knew that Featherhorn had flown to Guyana for a secret meeting with Bernat, but Featherhorn did not know this. Pilgrim paid Featherhorn’s pilot a handsome retainer to inform him of every move Featherhorn made in the jet. The pilot could not say what the two discussed, but, instinctively, Pilgrim knew they were up to no good. Proof or no proof, Bernat was bad news.
So now Featherhorn had him in a corner and he had no fangs with which to fight back. He would not live long enough to bring the battle to a close. The one comforting thought was that Featherhorn would do everything in his power to keep his illicit dealings secret, for he was a man who craved public approval. Now that he knew he was about to take the helm at Pilgrim Boone, there was no way he would jeopardize that approval. Pilgrim Boone’s reputation would remain intact after all, and he, Lawton, would go out smelling like a rose. His name would be given glorious mention in the annals of American business.
And yet—
How different it would have been if Maggie had borne him a son, he thought ruefully. But his poor wife had died childless, her spirit shattered. He had received a call once from a woman with whom he had had an affair shortly after he found out that Maggie could not conceive. What was her name? She was one of his assistants in the Paris office. A beautiful mulatto. She had said she was pregnant. Pilgrim refused to believe it at first. They had gotten together only once. He remembered the occasion well. He had been drinking. Everyone had been drinking. They had just closed one of their biggest deals in France.
But the woman insisted. She said she hadn’t dated anyone for a year before her encounter with him. Everyone he queried about her, under the guise of considering her for a promotion, confirmed her propriety. She had been widowed a year earlier, they all repeated. Heart attack. Such a young man. Promising future in law. She was devastated, never dated since.
But he had known all this. He knew everything about everyone who worked for him.
Ashamed, panicking at the thought of what it would do to Maggie if she found out, he had sent the woman a money order for five thousand dollars, with a letter stating that she should do what she knew was necessary. He’d sent it to her home. He had never heard from her again. She left the company less than a month later and disappeared. He had thought of her often, wondering if she had had the child. There were times when, lonely and miserable, he would daydream of a son appearing out of the blue, an educated, accomplished man, with a lovely wife and beautiful children, his grandchildren. His skin would tingle with excitement, so real did the dream seem.
Once, only once, he had tried to track down the French woman. But for once his clout and immense wealth got him nowhere. The lips of the French were sealed. It had taken him years to accept that his father’s bloodline would end with the death of Lawton Pilgrim, his parents’ only child.
He returned Featherhorn’s smile.
§
Le Meridien Pegasus is Guyana’s premier hotel, a five-star delight rising nine floors above Seawall Road just off High Street, about half a mile from downtown Georgetown.
Seawall Road takes its name from the wide stone wall running parallel to the road along the Atlantic Coast. The wall keeps the ocean’s waves at high tide from overwhelming the city and towns farther east. Started in 1870 and completed in 1882, the seawall is to Georgetowners what Central Park is to Manhanttanites. It’s the place to walk, jog, fly a kite, eat parched channa or pop peanuts from a paper cone, steal a kiss, lose your virginity, feel the breeze, watch the tide, pass the time.
It’s the city’s signature Saturday or Sunday lime, the term Guyanese use for “hanging out.”
The Pegasus was built almost a hundred years after the first brick was laid for the seawall. The hotel offers a breathtaking panorama of the city. From its roof you can follow the mud-brown sloth of the Demerara River until it disappears over the horizon, or watch “the great Atlantic, blown into a fury or asleep,” as described in Valerie Rodway’s song O Beautiful Guyana. The trade winds roll off the Atlantic and linger around the hotel. They are not too strong, nor too cool. They are just the perfect breezes to temper the blistering heat of the day.
When Pilgrim Boone began negotiations with the Guyana government on behalf of Savoy Aerospace, it chose the Pegasus to lodge staff members traveling to Georgetown, shunning the venerable Tower Hotel and its claim to being the businessman’s hotel. Away from the throb of the city, the Pegasus seemed the safer of the two. Tower, in the heart of the city, on Main Street, was too close to the thick of things, too readily accessible to any and everyone.
Dru shoved open the door to her suite and marched in, not bothering to hold the door open for St. Cyr. The door almost hit him in the face.
Dru kicked off her shoes in the airy, elegantly appointed living room, threw her briefcase into the nearest chair, and strode into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. She was more furious with herself than with St. Cyr. She hated not being in control of a situation and twice in one day—no, three times—she had lost it.
And as if that weren’t annoying enough, she was beginning to believe she might be wrong about St. Cyr, and she hated being wrong about her assessment of someone. She felt compromised when she failed to size up a person accurately. Wasn’t she being paid the big bucks to be in control, to correctly assess the players in a negotiation? How else could she close a deal?
She scowled at her reflection in the mirror above the sink.
Outside, St. Cyr stood stiffly with his back to the French doors that led to the balcony, his jaw set, eyes glued to the door as he waited for Dru to emerge. The effort to keep up this stony façade kept his mind away from the deep hurt he felt. Dru still believed he had tried to kidnap her in France all those years ago. Why else would she grow ice cold in his presence on the plane, or even before that, when he contacted her on the phone?
And now, compounding that—rather, because of that—she believed that he had had something to do with Andrew’s death. In her eyes, he was evil, she hated him, and she was afraid of him, her bravado aside.
Well, if that’s the way she felt, so be it. Tant pis pour moi. Too bad for me. There was nothing he could do about a hatred that was so old, so deep, so determinedly misplaced. He would warn her about the danger she might be in and leave.
Dru emerged from the bathroom just as the phone rang. She grabbed it impatiently.
It was a call from Pilgrim Boone. Lawton Pilgrim himself. Even though she kept her back turned to St. Cyr and kept her voice low, she knew he could hear every word she exchanged with Lawton, especially with Lawton shouting.
She remained standing for the entire conversation. When it ended, she slumped down heavily on the sofa and stared at the floor for a long moment.
All of a sudden she seemed to remem
ber that St. Cyr was in the room. She jerked her head up and looked at him resentfully.
St. Cyr stared back, the expression on his face indecipherable.
After a few moments, Dru blinked and sighed. “Well? What do you want to say to me?”
Her voice was so hollow, so devoid of fight, that St. Cyr was taken aback. He forced himself to keep his tone brisk. “Things have gotten ugly over this contract you’re negotiating for Savoy, Dru. Andrew Goodings was killed because he stood in the way—”
Dru sat up sharply and cut him off. “How do you know about Savoy?”
“Andrew told me. He told me everything about their proposal to the government through Pilgrim Boone. He wanted me to check it out. He invited me to Guyana to talk about it. Not that he had proof of anything untoward. He just wanted to be sure Guyana wouldn’t be compromised in any way, be stuck with a something nasty if the government decided to accept the proposal. Small, vulnerable countries like Guyana bear too many scars from their relationships with giant corporations, he said.”
Dru flicked her wrist impatiently. “The man was paranoid. This is a Pilgrim Boone client we’re talking about. If they had ulterior motives, they wouldn’t be our client.”
“Then why was Andrew killed?”
“What makes you so sure he was killed?”
“Oh, come off it, Dru. I know you believe he was killed.”
“You’re flattering yourself again, Mr. St. Cyr. You don’t know what I think. You don’t know me.”
“Yes, I do, Dru. I do.” He ignored the “Mr. St. Cyr.” Dru looked away, uncomfortable.
He continued. “But that’s neither here nor there. The point is, you may be in danger. Lawton Pilgrim is right. Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing. You should leave the country.”
Dru’s head whipped around. “Why should I be in danger? I’m on the right side as far as this alleged killer is concerned, aren’t I? I want this deal. And fast!”
“You’re not on the right side if the killer thinks you’re going to start asking questions about Andrew Goodings’ death, even if only to make sure no suspicions fall on Pilgrim Boone and sully its reputation. And you definitely won’t be on the right side of the killer once word get around that you’re talking to me, hostile or not. You’re a smart woman, Dru. Whoever killed Andrew knows that by now you’re wondering about the convenience of his death. Wondering leads to snooping.”
The Guyana Contract Page 21
