Paradise

by Judith McNaught

  He was also as loyal as he was daring and, ten years ago in South America, those traits had caused him to risk his life dragging Matt to safety when the truck Matt was driving lost its brakes, plunged down an embankment, and caught fire. For his efforts, Joe had received a case of his favorite whiskey along with Matt’s unending gratitude.

  Strapped over Joe’s shoulder, beneath his jacket, was a .45 automatic that he’d bought years ago when he first drove Matt across the Teamsters’ picket lines at a trucking company he’d just bought. Matt privately thought the gun was unnecessary. Although only five feet ten, Joe was 225 pounds of solid muscle with a pugnacious face that verged on ugly, and a scowl that was distinctly menacing. He was better suited to the job of bodyguard than chauffeur: He looked like a sumo wrestler. He drove like a maniac.

  “Here we are,” Joe called, managing to brake the car to a smooth stop near the private elevator beneath the building. “Home sweet home.”

  “For a year or less,” Matt said, closing his briefcase. Normally when Matt bought a company, he remained on the premises for only a month or two—long enough to meet with his own men while they evaluated the management staff and to make recommendations. In the past, however, he’d bought only well-managed companies that were in trouble because they were short of operating capital for one reason or another. The changes he instituted at those companies were mostly minor and done simply to tune up their operation and make it fit in with Intercorp’s. Haskell was different. Old methods and procedures would have to be discarded in favor of new; benefits redetermined, salaries adjusted, loyalties altered, a vast new manufacturing facility constructed in suburban Southville, where he’d already bought land. Haskell needed a major overhaul. Between the shipping company he’d just bought and Haskell’s reorganization, Matt was going to be working long, arduous days and nights, but he’d been doing that for years. In the beginning, he’d done it out of some desperate compulsive desire to succeed, to prove he could. Even now, when he’d succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings, he kept up his exhausting pace—not because he enjoyed it or the success anymore, but because it was habit. And because nothing else gave him any more satisfaction either. He worked hard, and when he took the time to play, he played hard. Neither was particularly meaningful or gratifying. But streamlining Haskell, making it into all the things it should be, was a challenging goal. Maybe that’s where he’d gone wrong, Matt decided as he put his key into the lock of the private express elevator that went to the executive floors of the building. He’d created a huge conglomerate by buying desirable, well-run companies that needed Intercorp’s financial backing. Maybe he should have bought a few that needed more than that. His takeover team had been here for two weeks, making their evaluations. They were upstairs, waiting to meet with him, and he was eager to get started.

  On the sixtieth floor the receptionist answered her telephone and listened to the information being imparted to her by the uniformed guard who also acted as a receptionist in Haskell’s lobby on the ground floor. When she hung up, Valerie went over to the secretary seated to her right. “Pete Duncan said a silver stretch limo just turned into the garage,” she whispered. “He thinks it’s Farrell.”

  “Silver must be his favorite color,” Joanna replied with a meaningful glance at the new six-foot-square silver plaque with the Intercorp insignia which had been hung on the rosewood wall behind her desk.

  Two weeks after the Intercorp takeover, a band of carpenters had arrived, supervised by a man who identified himself as Intercorp’s interior design manager. When he departed two weeks later, the entire reception area on the one hundredth floor, as well as the conference room and Matt Farrell’s future office, had been completely redecorated. Where once there had been time-worn Oriental carpets and dark wood furniture gently scarred with age, there were acres of silvery carpet covering every inch of floor and modern burgundy leather sofas arranged in groups with Lucite coffee tables in front and beside them. It was a well-publicized idiosyncrasy of Matt Farrell’s that every division and acquisition of Intercorp’s was immediately redecorated to look like all his other holdings.

  Valerie and Joanna, along with several of the other secretaries on this floor, were now very familiar, not only with Matthew Farrell’s reputation and quirks, but with his ruthlessness. Within days after Intercorp acquired Haskell, the president—Mr. Vern Haskell—had been forced to take an early retirement. So were two of the senior vice presidents, one of whom had been Vern Haskell’s son, the other his son-in-law. Another VP refused to resign and was fired. The offices of those loyal VPs—which were situated on this floor, but on the opposite side of the building—were now occupied by three of Farrell’s henchmen. Three more of his men were stationed elsewhere in the building—spying on everyone, according to rumor, asking prying questions, and making out lists, undoubtedly of whom to fire next.

  To make matters worse, it wasn’t just the senior executives who’d been squeezed out of their jobs; Mr. Haskell’s secretary had been given her “choice” of either working for some minor executive or leaving with her boss, because Matthew Farrell insisted on sending his own secretary in from California. That had caused a fresh furor of fear and resentment among the remaining executive secretaries, but that was nothing compared to how they felt about Farrell’s secretary when she actually arrived: Eleanor Stern was a stick-straight, skinny, wire-haired tyrant/busybody who watched them like a hawk and who still used words like “impertinence” and “propriety.” She arrived at the office before anyone else, left after everyone else, and when the door to her office was open, which it wasn’t now, she could hear the quietest feminine laugh or word of casual gossip. When she did, she would get up and come to stand in her doorway like an irate master sergeant until the recreational chat came to its inevitable and awkward end. For that reason Valerie resisted the impulse to call several of the secretaries and tell them Farrell was about to arrive, so they could come over on some invented excuse and at least have a look at him.

  The movie magazines and tabloids made him sound like a handsome, sophisticated hunk who dated movie stars and European royalty. The Wall Street Journal said he was “a corporate genius with a Midas touch.” Mr. Haskell said on the day he left that Matthew Farrell was “an arrogant, inhuman bastard with the instincts of a shark and the morals of a marauding wolf.” As Joanna and Valerie waited for a glimpse of him, they were already predisposed to despise him on sight. And they did.

  The soft ding of the elevator bell struck the reception area like a hammer on a gong. Matthew Farrell strode out, and the very air suddenly seemed to crackle with the suppressed energy of his presence. Deeply tanned and athletically built, he stalked swiftly toward them, reading a report and carrying a briefcase, a beige cashmere topcoat looped over his forearm. Valerie stood up uncertainly. “Good afternoon, Mr. Farrell.” For her courtesy, she received a daunting glance from cool gray eyes, a curt nod, and then he swept past like the wind—powerful, unsettling, and completely indifferent to mere mortals like Valerie and Joanna.

  Matt had been here once before to attend an evening meeting, and he walked with unerring certainty into the private suite of offices that had belonged to Haskell’s president and his secretary. Not until he closed the door of the secretary’s office did he tear his attention from the report he’d been reading in the elevator, and then it was only to glance perfunctorily at his own secretary, who’d worked closely with him for nine long years. They did not greet each other or indulge in small talk; they never had. “How is everything going?”

  “Quite well,” Eleanor Stern replied.

  “Is the agenda ready for the meeting?” he added, already starting toward the tall rosewood double doors that opened into his private office.

  “Of course,” she replied, matching his brisk manner perfectly. They’d been an ideal match from the very first day she’d arrived at his office along with twenty other women, most of them young and attractive, who’d been sent over to Matt by an employment age
ncy. Earlier that same day, he’d seen a picture of Meredith in a copy of Town and Country magazine that someone had left in the cafeteria. She was lying on a Jamaican beach with a collegiate polo player. The caption said she was vacationing with school friends. More bitterly determined to succeed than ever as a result of that picture, he had begun interviewing the applicants. Most of them were airheads, or openly flirtatious, and he was in no mood to tolerate either stupidity or women’s wiles. What he wanted, needed, was someone smart and reliable, someone who would keep pace with his newly reinforced drive to make it to the top. He’d just tossed the last applicant’s résumé in the wastebasket, when he looked up and saw Eleanor Stern marching toward him in her stout-heeled shoes, plain black suit, her gray hair in a prim bun. She thrust her résumé into his hand and waited in stoic silence while Matt read the pertinent facts which included the information that she was fifty years old, unmarried, and that she could type 120 words per minute and take shorthand at 160 words per minute. Matt had glanced up at her, intending to question her, only to have her announce in a frosty, defensive voice, “I am not unaware that I’m twenty years older than those other applicants out there, and twenty times less attractive. However, because I have never been a beautiful woman, I’ve had to develop and rely upon my other qualities.”

  Taken aback, Matt had asked, “What are those qualities?”

  “My mind and my skills,” she’d replied. “In addition to my typing and shorthand skills, I am also a paralegal and a full-charge bookkeeper. Furthermore, I can do something that very few twenty-year-olds can do anymore—”

  “And that is?”

  “I can spell!” The remark with all its prim superiority and implied disdain for anything less than perfection appealed to him. She had a certain aloof pride that Matt admired, and he sensed in her the same rigid determination to get the job done that he felt. Based on that instinctive belief that she was right for the position, he said bluntly, “The hours are long and the salary isn’t great now. I’m just getting started. If I make it to the top, I’ll take you with me. Your salary will go up according to your contribution.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I’ll be traveling a great deal. Later, there may be times when you’ll have to accompany me.”

  Amazingly, her pale eyes had narrowed. “Perhaps you ought to be more specific about my duties, Mr. Farrell. Women undoubtedly find you an extremely attractive man; however—”

  Dumbfounded that she apparently thought he was planning to make a pass at her, and angered by her censorious, unsolicited opinion of his appeal to other women, Matt had replied in a voice even colder than hers, “Your duties would be purely secretarial, and no more. I’m not interested in an affair or a flirtation; I don’t want cake on my birthday, or coddling, or your opinions on personal matters that pertain to me alone. All I want is your time and your skills.”

  He’d been much harsher than he’d ordinarily have been, which owed itself more to that picture of Meredith than to Eleanor Stern’s attitude, but she didn’t mind in the least. In fact she seemed to prefer the sort of working arrangement he’d described. “I find that completely agreeable,” she announced.

  “When can you start?”

  “Now.”

  He’d never regretted his decision. Within a week, he’d realized that like him, Eleanor Stern could work at a ceaseless, killing pace without ever wearing out or wearing down. The more responsibility he gave her, the more she accomplished. They never bridged the barrier that had been erected between them when she expressed alarm over his intentions. At first they had simply been too absorbed in their mutual work to give it thought. Later it didn’t seem to matter; they had fallen into a routine, and it worked magnificently for both of them. Matt had made it all the way to the top, and she had worked day and night beside him, without complaint. In fact, she was a nearly indispensable asset to his business life, and, true to his word, he had rewarded her loyalty and efforts liberally: Miss Stern’s salary was $65,000 a year—more than many of Intercorp’s mid-level executives were paid.

  Now, she followed him into his office and waited as he laid his briefcase on the polished rosewood desk that had been delivered recently. Normally he handed her at least one microcassette filled with instructions and dictation for her to transcribe. “There’s no dictation,” Matt explained, unlatching his briefcase and handing her a stack of files. “And I didn’t have a chance to go over the Simpson contract on the plane. The Lear had an engine problem, so I had to take a commercial flight here. The baby in front of me was evidently having problems with his ears, and he screamed for the entire flight.”

  Because he’d opened the conversation, Miss Stern evidently felt required to participate. “Someone should have done something for him.”

  “The man beside me volunteered to smother him,” Matt said, “but the baby’s mother was no more amenable to that solution than she’d been to mine.”

  “What was your solution?”

  “A shot of vodka with a brandy chaser.” Closing his briefcase, he said, “How good is the clerical staff up here?”

  “Some of them are very conscientious. However, Joanna Simons, whom you passed on your way in here, is barely adequate. Rumor has it that she was more than a secretary to Mr. Morrissey, which I am inclined to believe. Since her skills are nonexistent, it stands to reason her talents lie in some other area.”

  Matt barely noticed her sniff of prim disapproval. Tipping his head toward the conference room that adjoined his office, he said, “Is everybody in there?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do they all have copies of the agenda?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m expecting a call from Brussels sometime during the next hour,” Matt said, already starting for the conference room. “Put that one through to me right away, but hold any others.”

  Six of Intercorp’s most talented vice presidents were seated on a pair of long burgundy suede sofas that faced each other across a large glass and marble coffee table in the conference room. The men stood up as Matt came forward, each of them shaking his hand, each of them studying his features for some indication of the outcome of his trip to Greece. “It’s good to have you back, Matt,” the last man said as Matt shook his hand. “Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” Tom Anderson added. “How was Athens?”

  “Extremely pleasant,” Matt replied as they all moved over to the conference table. “Intercorp now owns a fleet of tankers.”

  Triumph, full-bodied and sweet, swept through the room, and then voices rose as everyone began discussing plans to utilize Intercorp’s newest “family branch.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Matt observed the six high-powered executives who were seated before him. All of them were dynamic, dedicated men, the best in their individual fields. Five of them had come from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale; from UCLA and MIT, with degrees in fields ranging from international banking to marketing. Five of them were wearing $800 custom-tailored business suits, discreetly monogrammed Egyptian cotton shirts, and carefully chosen silk ties. Grouped together, as they were now, they looked like a four-color ad for Brooks Brothers—something headed: When you’ve reached the pinnacle, only the best is good enough. In contrast to them, the sixth man, Tom Anderson, was a jarringly discordant figure in his green-and-brown-plaid jacket, green trousers, and paisley tie. Anderson’s passion for loud clothes was a source of great amusement among the other impeccably dressed men on the takeover team, but they rarely jibed him about it. For one thing, it was difficult to sneer at a man who stood six feet four and weighed 245 pounds.

  Anderson had a high school equivalency degree, no college at all, and he was aggressively proud of it. “My degree is from the school of life,” he would announce whenever he was asked about his education. What he left unsaid was that he possessed an uncanny talent no school could provide: He was instinctively, intuitively sensitive to the nuances of human nature. He knew within minutes of talking to a man what motivated him
and made him tick, whether it was vanity, greed, ambition, or something much different.

  On the surface he was a plain-spoken, giant bear of a man who liked to work in his shirt-sleeves. Beneath that unpolished surface, Tom Anderson had a gift for negotiating—and a knack for getting to the crux of a problem that was invaluable, especially when he was dealing with the unions on Intercorp’s behalf.

  But of all his attributes, Matt prized one the most: Anderson was loyal. He was, in fact, the only man in the room whose talents were not for sale to the highest bidder. He’d worked for the first company that Matt had bought. When he sold it, Tom elected to take his chances with Matt rather than the new owners who’d offered him an excellent position and a better salary.

  Matt paid the other men on the acquisition team enough to ensure they would not be tempted to sell out to a rival corporation; he paid Anderson even more because he was completely dedicated to Matt and to Intercorp. He never regretted what they cost him because, as a team, they were the best—but it was Matt himself who channeled their energies in the right direction. The master plan for Intercorp’s growth was his alone, and he altered it as he saw fit. “Gentlemen,” he said, interrupting their discussion about the tankers. “We’ll talk about the tankers another time. Let’s talk about Haskell’s problems.”

  Matt’s post-acquisition methods were unique and effective. Rather than wasting months trying to sort out the company’s problems, find the causes and cures, and weed out the executives who weren’t performing to Intercorp’s standards, Matt did something much different: He sent in the group of men gathered in the conference room to work side by side with the existing vice presidents of the acquired company. Each of the six men was an expert in a particular corporate area, and in a matter of weeks they could familiarize themselves completely with their individual division, assess the talents of the vice president of that division, and locate the weaknesses and strong points of that division.