The Guyana Contract

by Rosalind McLymont

  “Tay-who?”

  “Theron.”

  Theron walked quickly toward Eastern Parkway, hoping he would soon find a taxi that would take him back into Manhattan. He was furious with Dru and at the same time afraid for her. She had gone into hiding. That much was clear.

  Theron suspected that she had done something foolish, like blurting out what she knew to Featherhorn, or saying something to Pilgrim, who might have taken it right back to Featherhorn. He wouldn’t put it past Pilgrim to protect Featherhorn, even if he had to hold his nose to do so. In the world where Pilgrim Boone dwelled, who was more important—Drucilla Durane or Grant Featherhorn? Featherhorn, of course. Why should Lawton Pilgrim turn his back on Featherhorn—endangering the reputation of his firm in the process—based on accusations made by an ambitious young woman who was probably on the verge of losing the contract she was negotiating for a valued client? Worse, they were accusations that she couldn’t back up with a shred of concrete evidence.

  But Dru wouldn’t see it that way, Theron fumed. Oh, no! Dru would view it all in terms of right and wrong. She would march into a futile battle against the odious Featherhorn, throwing herself like a shield in front of Lawton Pilgrim and her precious Pilgrim Boone. She was so smart and yet she could not see that the Pilgrim Boone she revered and was so proud to be associated with was not driven by what was right or wrong. She could not see that the man who was her mentor, but who above all else belonged to the tiny elite of a heartless universe, that man had not gotten to the top by virtue of moral stances. Was she really that naïve? For a moment, Theron wished Dru were beside him so that he could grab her by the shoulders and shake her hard. What the hell will it take for her to see the light when it comes to Lawton Pilgrim and Pilgrim Boone? he asked himself.

  Theron tried her cell phone again. The call went through this time but it went straight to voicemail. He left a terse message. “Dru, it’s Theron St. Cyr. Please call me as soon as you get this message. It’s urgent.”

  He pocketed his phone. He could feel his anxiety mounting despite his anger. He forced himself to remain calm. He had to keep a clear head. He had to think rationally. What if Dru hadn’t said anything to anyone? He wrestled with that question, all the while keeping his eye on the traffic for a taxi. If it wasn’t something she herself said or did, then something else or someone had spooked her, he reasoned. Why else would she run away?

  And how long would she be safe where she was hiding?

  Theron could think of only one person who could answer his questions: Dru’s nemesis, Grant Featherhorn.

  Theron glanced at his watch. At this hour he’d be better off taking the subway back uptown if he wanted to confront Featherhorn. It was already close to rush hour. Traffic would be deadly by the time he got to the Brooklyn Bridge in a taxi, and it would be far worse on the FDR Drive or the West Side Highway.

  His mind worked nonstop as he rode the Seventh Avenue train uptown. He was certain that Dru was in trouble, certain that Featherhorn had everything to do with that trouble, and that the trouble itself had everything to do with Guyana, Savoy, and Bernat. He had to find a way to talk to Featherhorn without revealing his own connection to Dru, but how should he approach him? What should he say to him? Scenarios came and went in a discordant sequence of mental images, like raw footage in the hands of an editor who had suddenly gone insane.

  The tangle of scenarios revived his headache. Questions hammered him mercilessly. Could he get Featherhorn to admit to an involvement with Bernat and at the same time reveal what he knew about Dru’s disappearance? Even if he got Featherhorn to talk, he would have to find a way to record their conversation to use as evidence for MacPherson. Would he be able to do so? Could he even risk showing his face to Featherhorn? What if Featherhorn knew of his relationship with Andrew Goodings? What if whoever killed Andrew had seen them together, had photographed them and sent the pictures to Bernat?

  And yet, all through his mental tossing and turning, Theron had the strangely comforting feeling that Dru was physically safe, at least for the moment. From what the old man at her apartment building had said, her departure was planned.

  The train pulled into the Wall Street station in Manhattan. Suddenly, it began to buck and groan, jolting Theron out of his musing. A few of the passengers who were standing lost their balance and grabbed frantically at the overhead bars or at each other to keep from falling.

  Sounds of annoyance flooded the car.

  The train finally came to a halt and the doors slid open. Theron watched absently as the few exiting passengers fought their way through the throng on the platform. The people outside were already closing in on the doors. Profanities flew back and forth. Some of them were directed at the Metropolitan Transit Authority for causing yet another rush hour screw-up, but most bounced between the exiting passengers and those waiting to board. Above the cacophony, a loudspeaker squawked something about a delay in service due to police activity at 14th Street, and then gave the MTA’s formulaic apology for any inconvenience caused. This provoked even more profanity, hissing between teeth, and sardonic outbursts of “Yeah, right!” Theron’s thoughts began to drift back to Dru. Suddenly, he sat up straight. Wall Street.

  He sprang from his seat and bolted toward the closing doors. From among the bodies jammed tight against each other, hands with New York subway reflexes shot out and held the doors back, long enough for Theron to squeeze through. On the platform, he turned to wave his thanks to whoever had held the doors, but all he saw were the backs of the subway riders pressed against the doors as the train screeched away.

  33

  Alone in his office, the door closed, ribbons of vermilion from the late afternoon sun undulating playfully on the walls, Lawton Pilgrim felt oddly at peace.

  The world was what it was, crap and all.

  He could think of several colleagues who, were they in his position, would be stricken with panic, anger, fear—all of the crippling emotions he had shied away from for as long as he could remember.

  At least two of those colleagues—in his mind’s eye he saw their faces clearly—would seriously contemplate suicide. One of them might even go all the way. That would be Frank Taubin, CEO of Global Development Advisers, a no-account firm Taubin’s father-in-law had set up for him when he married his ugly-as-sin daughter and made her cup run over with happiness.

  Pilgrim’s lips curled in contempt. Frank had been a jelly belly since high school but he was a crafty son of a bitch. In a situation like this he would kill himself out of sheer fear that his father-in-law would kill him first if he got the chance. But in his final moment of life—Pilgrim could not help chuckling as he thought of it—Frank would glean satisfaction from the misery his death would bring to the old man in the end, for Ari Rosensheim would be left to cope with his hopelessly spoiled, and now inconsolably bereaved, daughter.

  Pilgrim himself would have nothing to do with suicide. He had come to terms with the fact that the world into which he was born was no more. The fierce independence with which he had built and sustained Pilgrim Boone mattered little these days. Merger mania was rampaging through the accounting industry, as it was in just about every other industry. The Big Eight had become the Big Six, then the Big Five. The survivors were reptiles with voracious appetites, puffed up with victory in their war against Levitt’s campaign to stop them from consulting for their audit clients.

  Their victory was no surprise, really. Hadn’t they poured tens of millions of dollars into the election campaigns of the politicians they had co-opted to their dastardly cause? Hadn’t they hired a pack of bulldogs to further spread their propaganda on Capitol Hill?

  And spread it those bulldogs did. The fat cats in that namby-pamby Congress told Levitt that if he didn’t cool it they would cut off funding for his SEC. Even the CEOs of some of the Big Five’s biggest clients were pressuring Levitt to back off. What could the poor man do under that kind of assault?

  Pilgrim uttered a loud sigh. Oh, well! I won
’t be around when it all comes crashing down.

  And it was bound to crash, he kept telling himself. Would Pilgrim Boone go down with the whole stinking pile? Could Grant keep the firm from being sucked into the death hole, when Grant himself believed that the new values, that the new way of doing things, was, how did he put it? “Simply wonderful?” Not that the old ways were saintly. Power and profit had always been the great motivators.

  But I had my limits. There were lines I would never cross.

  Today there were no limits. The pursuit of profit had run amok. Simply besting the competition was no longer enough. You had to control the marketplace. And in order to do that you had to kill the competition. That’s really what this merger mania was about: killing off the competition to control the marketplace. And that meant controlling everything that fed the marketplace: resources, and whoever had those resources; the people who you wanted to buy your products or services, by planting the “right” messages in their minds; the lawmakers who made the laws that affected your profits; even control of the way money moved. Business—big business, not the little guys in the neighborhoods—had become a Reich of its own, incestuous relationships and all.

  It’s not fun anymore.

  Lawton settled himself more comfortably in the custom-made leather sofa, stretched out his legs, steepled his fingers on his six-pack stomach and closed his eyes. No sounds came from the corridors outside. The telephones, fax machines, his secretary’s buzzer—all were silent. It was well after six and the administrative staff was long gone. In fact, as far as he knew, the place was empty. It was the eve of the July Fourth holiday and the staff had begun to bail out at noon.

  As was his custom, at 4 P.M. he had walked every floor of the firm to wish whoever was still around a happy holiday. He had encountered less than a handful of his employees and they were packing up to go. If anyone remained on the premises at this hour it would be Grant. Lawton had not bothered to check Grant’s office during his rounds. He had no desire to run into the younger man.

  His thoughts lingered now on Grant, the newly announced CEO-to-be of Pilgrim Boone. Although he had not shown it then, Lawton had been deeply shaken by Dru’s outburst that Grant was consorting with Alejandro Bernat to use Savoy’s project in Guyana—if Savoy got the contract—as a cover for a drug trafficking operation. Not for a moment had he doubted Dru. That she had no proof did not matter. He knew Grant, and he was well aware of his clandestine meetings with Bernat. Besides, Grant himself had confirmed Dru’s story.

  Lawton recalled the events of that day, the day he had undertaken the invidious task of informing Dru that Grant would be his successor. After Dru had left, he and Grant sat in silence for several minutes. He had studiously avoided Grant’s eyes, but he could feel Grant’s eyes drilling into him, daring him to question, to accuse, as Dru had done. He had done neither. And the silence, stretching out until it had lost its awkwardness and become a declaration of the way things were, was all the proof he needed of Grant’s guilt.

  He knew from that silence, too, that he no longer had a place at Pilgrim Boone. Chief executive emeritus, the industry and the press would politely label him. He could show up every day if he cared to, occupy the same office, make phone calls, give his personal staff this or that to do. But effectively he would be the proverbial fifth wheel and Grant would make sure everyone knew it.

  It was then he had begun to see his cancer as a blessing. He would be gone long before the crap hit the fan. His eyes had met Grant’s only briefly when they rose in unison from their respective seats, Grant’s eyes clearly mocking what must have been the reflection of resignation in his.

  “Well, Grant,” he recalled saying in a voice that showed he clung stubbornly to his pride, “I guess it’s time to make the announcement.”

  Grant had smiled his cocky smile. “After you, Lawton,” he had said grandly, executing a small bow as he allowed Lawton to step ahead of him.

  That was the last time he and Grant had been alone in the same room, the last time, in fact, that Grant had come to his office.

  Lawton shook his head and sighed. Chief executive emeritus. Me. Imagine! In that moment of absolute aloneness, Lawton realized that he wanted no part of that title. That, in fact, there was nothing more that he wanted of his life. Whatever covenant his being had made with God when it entered this world, well, that covenant had no meaning now. Expired, he chuckled, surprising himself.

  Yes, he was ready to—how did the young folks say it?—check out.

  §

  Theron crossed Broadway and headed toward the East River end of Wall Street.

  He moved quickly. He had a plan.

  Suddenly, he stood still, causing the clone of a Brooks Brothers magazine ad walking behind him with a cell phone glued to his ear to collide with him. The clone cursed, straightened his jacket with a hump of his shoulders and stepped off to the right. Without making eye contact with Theron, he strode away, lobbing “Asshole!” over his shoulder, the cell phone reglued to his ear.

  Theron waved his hand vaguely at the man’s back. He was having second thoughts about his plan. The plan had seemed infallible on the train, but now he wasn’t so sure it would work. It could backfire. Featherhorn could simply refuse to play ball and admit to nothing. In fact, Featherhorn could have him thrown out and/or arrested for trespassing, breaking and entering, impersonating a federal officer. Featherhorn could bring up any number of charges. If any of that happened, and if Featherhorn subsequently checked his identity with Bernat, his life, and certainly Dru’s, would be lost.

  Lost in concentration, he moved forward at tortoise’s pace, his gaze fixed on a horizon he did not see, his hands plunged deep into his pockets. He chewed his bottom lip absently, oblivious to the rush of pedestrians headed in the opposite direction; oblivious to their querulous stares as they swerved to avoid him.

  Think harder, Theron. What’s your backup? What are your precautions?

  Precautions! He had to take precautions. The way to do that came to him almost immediately. He stopped cold again and looked at his Rolex. No one bumped into him this time. The business day was far from over in California, he realized as he noted the time.

  He looked around quickly. He needed to find a quiet place to work. Some of his acquaintances had offices nearby that any one of them would gladly allow him to use. He would have all the privacy he needed. But he could not be sure those offices weren’t bugged. He wasn’t being paranoid at all. This was Wall Street, the nucleus of high-stakes finance. He knew at least two CEOs who not only recorded everything said in their own offices, but who also had the offices of all their subordinates bugged.

  He turned around and headed back to Broadway. He would swing right on Broadway, make a left on Dey to Church, then a right on Church to The Millennium Hilton. The bar in the lobby would be crowded and noisy, but he knew he could find a quiet corner in the coffee shop upstairs.

  He quickened his pace. He had to finish what he was going to do in time to get back to Pilgrim Boone before Featherhorn left, if he hadn’t already done so. From the profiles he had read while he was in Guyana, he knew that neither Lawton Pilgrim nor Grant Featherhorn left their offices before 7:30 P.M. They devoted most of the late hours to making personal calls to their biggest West Coast clients who were three hours behind New York. But they might break their routine for the holiday weekend. Theron experienced a moment of panic. What if they had made plans to go to their respective getaways: Pilgrim to his private island in the Bahamas; Featherhorn to his bungalow on Fire Island?

  Resolutely, Theron pushed the thought away. Featherhorn wasn’t going anywhere, not with Guyana on the brink. Not when he was dealing with a man like Bernat. The thought assuaged his fears. He found the quiet spot he was looking for at The Millennium, settled himself in and ordered coffee.

  The moment the waiter left, he pulled a PDA from the breast pocket of his jacket and flipped it open. It fit comfortably in the palm of his hand. The device was the ultimate
in personal digital assistant technology and spared him the encumbrance of the laptop computer he carried when he traveled to countries whose IT infrastructure did not have the capacity to support PDAs like his. Slim, weighing less than six ounces in a casing of the latest plastic, it provided phone, Internet access, a range of audio/visual functions, including video conferencing, all the functions of a personal computer, and several specialized applications. It was not yet sold in the United States, but it was already in use in Japan. He had procured his a few months earlier in Tokyo, where he had gone to formalize a partnership with a research firm that specialized in business intelligence.

  In no time, he was accessing the information he sought, again using the passwords and databases that Sanspaix had created for him. He studied the data on the screen grimly, committing it to memory. He hoped he would not have to use it, but doing so would be the only way to get through to the person he needed to speak to if a secretary or some other gatekeeper gave him a hard time.

  He flipped the device shut and saw that the waiter had already placed his coffee on the table. He caught the waiter’s eye and nodded appreciatively, thinking that whoever said menial workers did not know the meaning of discretion had never met this particular waiter or the old man in the building where Dru lived.

  He looked at his watch. He didn’t have much time to make that call.

  34

  Dru bolted up in the bed and stared into the blackness, mouth agape, eyes wide in horror.

  She covered her face and groaned. What have I done?

  She had gone to bed early, exhausted after a full day playing vacationer with Lance and Phil. It was their third day on the island and it had been a day of sightseeing, socializing, dining on gourmet soul, and a long lazy stroll on the beach in Oak Bluffs, where wealthy blacks owned gorgeous Victorian gingerbread mansions. The villa that Lance and Phil owned was one of the newer, more modest homes. Built of gray stone in the 1990s, it was a picturesque, spacious four-bedroom Cape Cod tucked behind a brace of tall pines at the end of a secluded road, half a mile from Oak Bluffs Town Beach and less than that to downtown Oak Bluffs. There was white wicker furniture with cushions the color of sunshine on the porch. A grill and a wrought iron table that seated six on the huge deck at the back promised pleasant dining experiences. The house was surrounded by a lush green lawn interrupted here and there by dogwood trees and patches of fragrant bushes and low, flowering plants. Inside, it was tastefully furnished for maximum comfort, without succumbing to clutter or froufrou. Dru had sighed with delight when she saw the beach stone hearth in the living room, imagining how cozy it must be when lit in the winter.