Phoenix Rising

by Nance, John J. ;

  “Sorry.” Jennings rolled his eyes and smiled. “I was thinking of the good old days last year, when we still did own our hardware.”

  Joe Taylor’s eyes bored into Jennings, suspicious of the answer. But that made sense. They had been stupid beyond reason to let the former finance man sell the fleet.

  “Yeah, well, make sure you understand all the details. But as far as I can see, bailing us out is on your shoulders.”

  Chad thought over the loan officers he knew. Probably none of them had ever made a loan for more than a million dollars. He had no network to contact, but there was no way on earth he was about to admit that to Joe Taylor. “So you think I ought to arrange the loan?”

  Taylor nodded. “To hedge our bet. I think Miss Elizabeth’s scheme to get that money is already tits-up. You, however, are male, and the bankers will listen to a male.”

  Thursday, March 16, 5:00 P.M.

  Inverness, Scotland

  Elizabeth Sterling tightened the collar of her black cashmere coat against the stiff north wind and pushed through the door into an ornate interior of dark woods laced with the aroma of beer against a background din of conversation and clinking glasses. Creighton MacRae had been curt and specific: “The Phoenix at five sharp.”

  “Phoenix? Is that a restaurant?”

  “It’s a pub, Miss Sterling. Ask anyone. Bottom of Academy Street.”

  “How will I know you, Mr. MacRae?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find you,” he had said before hanging up abruptly.

  Elizabeth hesitated, letting her eyes take in the small circles of men sitting and standing in various places from the bar to the far corners of the room. The clientele was an eclectic mixture ranging from mackintosh-clad locals to three-piece suits with briefcases.

  There were three women in the room besides the barmaids. Two of them were obviously wives or girlfriends, but the third was out of place: a colorless lump of a woman in her early thirties, clad in a tweed business suit and sitting primly by herself at a table across the room, her briefcase lying open before her. Elizabeth found herself staring at the woman’s owlish glasses and the tightly woven bun at the back of her head.

  But where was MacRae? Elizabeth peered around the corner self-consciously, scanning the faces of the men in the pub, looking for one that might belong to Craig MacRae. A young, foppish-looking male at the bar looked up toward the doorway suddenly, spotted the striking American blonde in the black coat, and returned her gaze with an expectant smile. She looked away, her eyes landing instead on a half-scowling, rough-hewn Scot in his sixties who sat at a table to her left, busily engaged in running his eyes up and down Elizabeth’s body with leering interest.

  No one, however, came forward to greet her.

  She felt uncomfortable and out of place, but she forced herself to move into the room, selecting a small table a few feet from the woman in tweed—a good vantage point from which she could watch the entrance.

  She was exhausted emotionally, but with the immense relief of Clipper Forty’s safe landing in Gander, and the hopeful word from Alastair Wood that the loan had been tentatively approved and papers were being drawn, she had suddenly been left with no reason to stay in London. A meeting with MacRae would probably be a waste of time, but it would be at least a day before Wood was ready to finalize the deal, and she just might learn something in the meantime from the prickly Scot.

  The Danair flight from Heathrow had not been unpleasant—though she’d slept most of the way after formulating her plan: Meet with MacRae, learn what she could, hire him as a consultant if possible, and then spend the night at an Inverness hotel before returning to London in time to finish the paperwork.

  A smiling barmaid materialized before her, and Elizabeth tried to decide what to order. The woman in tweed next to her was nursing a glass of wine.

  “A glass of Watney’s Light, please.”

  The barmaid nodded and left.

  The sudden presence of a neatly groomed man filling the doorway caught her attention. She guessed him to be six feet tall. His dark hair was neatly combed, and his prominent eyebrows seemed to connect across his brow, framing a set of smoldering eyes that captivated her even across the room. Elizabeth could see a glint of deep blue in those eyes, set wide apart over a mouth that seemed to be frozen in a slightly amused expression—one end turning up, the other slightly down. He stood there with confidence, holding a folded umbrella and wearing a tan sports jacket beneath a matching topcoat as he surveyed the room, then moved into it.

  Elizabeth watched him, his eyes scanning in her direction but never quite landing on her as he moved with forceful agility across the room. She felt slightly confused, like a little girl calculating the power and authority of her father walking resolutely toward her.

  Yet this man had to be only in his late forties or early fifties, if she read the lines in his face correctly. So why was his approach stirring visceral feelings deep within her that were anything but daughterly or businesslike? Elizabeth forced the startled look from her face and reminded herself who she was and why both of them were there. He was ten feet from her table now, and Elizabeth squared her shoulders and lifted her head in anticipation just as he stopped at the table to her left, his eyes focusing on the dowdy woman in tweed.

  His sonorous voice carried merely a hint of the growling male she’d dealt with by phone from London, but his words confirmed his identity.

  “Miss Elizabeth Sterling, I presume?”

  The woman in tweed looked up in confusion as Elizabeth realized what was happening and held her tongue.

  “I beg your pardon?” the woman replied, startled.

  “If you expect me to call you Madame Vice-President, you’ll have a bloody long wait, lass,” the man said, shifting the umbrella to his left arm and abruptly extending his right hand like a perfunctory peace offering.

  The woman looked down at his hand, and back to his face. “Whatever are you talking about?”

  Elizabeth struggled to keep from grinning as the man withdrew his hand and cocked his head.

  The woman folded her hands on the edge of the table before her and cleared her throat before looking back up at him. “You’ve obviously mistaken me for someone else,” she said.

  MacRae stepped back a half-step and prepared to apologize as his eyes noted Elizabeth at the same time slowly rising to her feet, keeping a neutral expression, and bobbing her head in his direction.

  “Mr. MacRae … I presume?”

  The various expressions moving across his face were a mural of confusion as his eyes locked onto the attractive blonde to the left of the woman in tweed, his mind suddenly registering the fact that she’d spoken his name, and therefore must be …

  “Miss Sterling?” he managed.

  Instantly he turned his back to the other woman and muttered an apology as he moved toward Elizabeth, his eyes never leaving hers.

  Elizabeth extended her hand, feeling amused and slightly overwhelmed. He was nothing like she’d expected, and it was obvious he was equally startled. There was almost friendliness in his voice before he resumed his authoritative, slightly irritated air.

  But for a second she had glimpsed someone else beneath that frosty façade, and she was intrigued.

  Elizabeth spent half an hour explaining the perils of Pan Am, drawing a detailed picture from memory of the changed loan agreements, the fleet sale, the strange appearance of Irwin Fairchild in the equation, and the apparent sabotage campaign that had even imperiled her own daughter and mother.

  She made no mention of Brian. Somehow it didn’t seem necessary.

  MacRae seemed to be listening carefully to every word with his eyes probing hers, but occasionally she saw his eyes flicker over the rest of her body, and in those fleeting moments it was obvious he found her more acceptable physically than she had intended.

  Lloyd White had warned her of this very thing, but she hadn’t expected MacRae’s instincts to lock onto her so obviously and so soon—and sh
e certainly hadn’t expected herself to respond to his interest, as she felt herself doing.

  His frosty manner on the phone had been a sneer—as if he regarded the term businesswoman as an oxymoron—and Elizabeth had been determined to rise to the challenge by choosing her clothes with calculated care: a very feminine, deep-cut ruffled blouse, a suede jacket, and a matching skirt.

  But now, without her coat, she found herself wishing she’d worn something more severe—something more like the lifeless clothes of the sexless woman in tweed who had departed soon after MacRae sat down. The Elizabeth Sterling who sat before him was in total contrast to what Creighton MacRae would have expected from a woman who could discuss bonds and loans and other serious things that men had traditionally arranged with each other in the parlor—while their women hovered at a respectable distance.

  And it was dividing his attention. Though he appeared to be listening, his obvious enjoyment of her femininity made her wonder how much he was absorbing of what she was saying.

  The mention of sabotage, however, changed all that.

  MacRae began talking in urgent and angry terms about the battle to destroy his airline. He described the detective work that had drained his resources as he traveled the world for two years trying to find out who his enemies were, trying to document who had participated in bringing him down financially, and preparing the monumental lawsuit he had eventually won, and which had left him wealthy if bitter.

  “I knew, you see, that no one person or firm could have done the coordination necessary to deny me credit worldwide. I knew there were banks and companies that were innocent, influenced by others who wanted me out, but finding them was quite a trick. I came to know computerized banking and communications systems very well. It’s amazing what you can find out when you know where to look.”

  “Do you still have that network?”

  MacRae smiled and nodded. “Aye, I do.”

  “Would you help us? As a paid consultant, of course?”

  He sat back and looked at her as if seeing the executive under the exterior for the first time, his eyes studying hers, making it hard for her to concentrate. At last he leaned forward.

  “I had no intention of doing this, but you were right to think this would arouse my anger. It has. I don’t know what I can do for you, but I’ll try.”

  “Your fee?” she asked.

  He smiled. “Ever the financier, eh? Very well, I’ll charge you what the best of the bunch I dealt with charged me. Two thousand pounds per day, plus expenses, and no nitpicking on the expenses.”

  He smiled at her, eyes half closed, studying her reaction.

  She suddenly extended her hand and gave his a firm shake.

  “Done. Ten days in advance, whenever you want it.”

  He raised those magnificent eyebrows in surprise and nodded with grudging respect at her decisiveness. “I’ll bill you later.”

  Elizabeth had made it clear she wasn’t planning to return immediately to her hotel, but MacRae excused himself and left her to dine alone. She had a sandwich before beginning the fifteen-minute walk back through the heart of Inverness to the Craigmonie Hotel, chilled by the cold wind but enchanted by the aromas and atmosphere of the Highlands of northern Scotland.

  A taxi slowed at one point, the polite driver inquiring if she needed his services, but she declined. Walking and thinking were synonymous for her, and she needed the time to sort out what had just happened. It was a lifelong habit she’d learned from her father. Beaches were the best place for long walks, but Inverness would do as a chilly substitute.

  Craig MacRae had seemed confident that whoever might be orchestrating a financial sabotage campaign against Pan Am could be discovered and neutralized. That was the most important task, he had told her. Until the poisoning of the airline’s financial prospects was halted at the source, there would be very few institutions willing to risk their money. “It doesn’t take much,” he had told her, “to destroy the financial prospects of a small company. There were only six people ever directly involved in killing my company, but they were bankrolled by larger entities. In your case, we’ve got to find out who’s doing it as well as who’s bankrolling the effort.”

  “How about why?” she’d asked.

  “If I find the who, you’ll know the why automatically.”

  The memory of his deep, resonant voice triggered another small twinge, and her mind strayed from business to their mutual attraction, surprised more by her feelings than by his.

  The thought of Brian interjected itself at that moment, and she found herself bewildered. She had always assumed that being in love would insulate her from being attracted to another.

  Am I really in love with Brian?

  This is silly. I don’t even know MacRae. I was just intrigued by the challenge, that’s all. The challenge and those eyes!

  She resolved to shake off all thoughts of Creighton MacRae except those concerned with business—and instantly broke her resolution.

  His abrupt, almost rude, departure still puzzled her. She felt perversely cheated that he hadn’t at least asked her to dinner, or invited her to visit his farm near Forres, to the east. He had mentioned it briefly, and it sounded warm and inviting. She could imagine him back there now, sitting before a coal fire with a glass of Scotch, or whatever he drank.

  There was no wife in his life, according to Lloyd White. But was there a girlfriend? Elizabeth’s mind searched the ethereal image of his castle for evidence of another female, and could find none. He was the closest thing to a Henry Higgins she had ever met. Single, crusty, and …

  Maybe he’s afraid of me! The thought came unexpectedly, and with it, Elizabeth’s composure began to return. She’d let herself get so wrapped up in the surprising effect of MacRae’s overpowering masculinity, she hadn’t focused on what he might have been thinking.

  Straighten up, girl. You’re not over here to be bowled over by a gruff, sexist Scot! You’re trying to save an airline!

  Head clear for the first time that evening, Elizabeth was almost whistling as she approached the entrance to her hotel. She had every right to be happy. After all, Brian and her mother and Kelly were safe, it looked as though the loan she had sought in London would come through, and she had succeeded in enlisting Creighton MacRae to their cause.

  Only the remembrance of Ron Lamb’s stroke broke the spell. She’d been thinking of calling him, forgetting for a moment the lonely personal battle he was fighting back in Seattle.

  Elizabeth returned to her room and picked up the phone. When she’d left London, Joe Taylor was in charge and mulling over whom to appoint as interim president. It was time to find out whom she should be reporting to—and to do just that.

  21

  Friday, March 17, 7:45 A.M.

  Inverness, Scotland

  The flight back to London departed at ten, but the phone by Elizabeth’s bed rang at 7:45 A.M. She found an agitated Alastair Wood on the other end.

  “It’s bloody well coming apart, Elizabeth. Someone’s got hold of a list of my people, and the bugger’s been faxing a devastating little packet of information to each of them, implying that you and Pan Am are lying about your performance and prospects. My phone was ringing off the hook late last night at home.”

  There was no time for cobwebs, and she forced her head to clear in an instant. Whoever had pursued her down the concrete canyons of New York had obviously discovered her mission to London. Craig MacRae had warned her it would happen. It had happened to him.

  “What’s being said? And by whom?”

  “I don’t know who’s responsible, but I have copies of what he’s sending, and I’ve already faxed copies to your hotel. They should already have shoved them under your door.”

  “Hold on,” she told him, fumbling for the switch on the lamp by the bed and finding it. She looked at the rug beneath the door, spotted the papers, and leaped out of the bed to get them.

  “Hold it, Alastair, I’m looking.”

&nbs
p; There were four pages to the fax, two of them appearing to be purloined Pan Am interoffice memos, and two purporting to be financial summary sheets for the previous four days. One memo was supposedly a note from chairman Joe Taylor recommending to Ron Lamb a rapid Chapter Eleven bankruptcy filing as the “only way out”; the other was supposedly from Elizabeth’s assistant, Fred Kinnen, pleading with Ron Lamb against any corporate admission that the load factors were less than forty-eight percent. “If the financial community discovers this,” the memo said, “they’ll never lend us a cent. We’ve got to let them believe everything’s all right.”

  Of the two financial summaries, one was the current weekly cash flow through Thursday, a litany of declining prospects that, if representative of the average week, showed an airline in deep and potentially fatal trouble. It was accompanied by a list of available cash in various bank accounts and available credit, which seemed to show a company on the verge of insolvency.

  For a split second even Elizabeth was taken in, her stomach knotting at the possibility that she had been lied to and these papers told the truth. She couldn’t help but remind herself that she’d never had a moment to get familiar with the current financial state of affairs, and Ron Lamb had conveniently omitted several key problems before she came aboard. She had trusted Ron’s summaries, though, as well as a quick summary prepared by her staff vice-president—the same Fred Kinnen whose name appeared on one of the memos.

  But she had seen nothing to indicate that the company’s situation was anywhere near this bad.

  “These are all fraudulent, Alastair! I’ll have my office provide the true ones in an hour. They’ll show a totally different picture.”

  “I’m sure they will, but the problem is, they’ve already poisoned the waters. I’ve got two of my key participants ready to bolt.”

  “Are they in London?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Can you get them to come in for a meeting this afternoon? Can I talk to them? Can you keep them from reneging before I talk to them?”