by Jon Cleary
She settled down in the heavy leather chair opposite him. His office was a man’s room, all timber and leather and sporting prints, though she knew his only sport was hunting money. A grandfather clock stood in one corner, its golden face brightly polished.
“I’ve kept my bank small, I like to work the British way. I’ve got partners, but I’m the boss. I guess I’m like Claudine, I like to run things my way. Like you, too.”
She wondered if she was in for more fatherly advice.
“Stephen Jensen rang me this morning,” he said. “Claudine and Alain approached him yesterday to sell his stock. They’ve offered him ten per cent above the market price.”
She frowned. “That’s quite a bid, isn’t it? What percentage would that give Claudine?”
“It would give her forty-five per cent. Stephen asked her why she wanted to buy. Evidently she was reluctant to tell him at first, but he said he wouldn’t sell till he knew the reason why. So she told him. She wants Alain to take over the running of the paper and they need to be sure of a majority on the board to achieve that.”
“They have a majority now. There’s just you and I against them, except for Stephen. Occasionally he’s backed us, but not always.”
“This is my opinion—” Jerry said carefully. “I think Claudine is not quite certain what some of the other directors would do if you were voted out of the editor’s chair. They may think more of the viability of the paper than they would of loyalty to her—”
“Vote me out as editor? Who would they put in to replace me?”
“Stephen thinks it will be Alain. He asked Claudine point-blank if she had any editorial changes in mind. She hedged, then said yes. But she wouldn’t elaborate. But Alain was there with her and Stephen said he read his answer in Alain’s face. Now he may be fooling himself that he’s perceptive, but it’s a possibility we have to face. You wouldn’t be the first one who’s been fired for being too successful. Alain has been trying to put the skids under you ever since he moved in as associate publisher.”
“He hasn’t succeeded.”
“His mother hasn’t owned the majority of the stock. If she’s approached Stephen, you can be sure she’s been to see the others, Stanley Beaton and the Hargraves family, for instance. They’re old friends. And there’s Roger with his ten per cent. You’re headed for trouble, Cleo. What do you want to do?”
“Fight the bastards.” She was her father’s daughter, she knew he would have said the same thing. “I think everyone of the staff will back me.”
Kibler smiled sympathetically at her naïveté. “Cleo, in takeovers staff loyalty is worth what it is—a barrel of hot air. Nice words, if you like, but still hot air.”
“I could go to the Guild and ask them to back me.” She knew the clout that some Australian unions had, though she was not sure how successful the newspaper unions had been in fighting takeovers.
“Forget it. If you want to fight, you have to do it on your own. With my help,” he added.
“What do I do then?”
“You increase your own stockholding. I’ll raise the money for you. You’ll need another twenty per cent at least.” He looked at some figures scrawled on a pad on his desk. “That will take about seven and a half million dollars, if you’re going to match Claudine’s bid.”
She couldn’t help herself: she laughed, a sound more like that of her throat being trodden on. “Jerry, where the hell do you think you could raise seven and a half million dollars on my name? I don’t even own my own apartment, it’s leased. I have money in the bank—”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. Something around a hundred thousand—it’s drawing bank interest—”
He threw up his hands. Some idiots deserved to be poor. “Why didn’t you come to me? I’d have invested it for you—”
“Jerry, I’ve never been interested in money. I don’t know—perhaps it was my father’s influence. He was always preaching against people whose only concern was making money. Sorry,” she said as she saw his pained smile, “I don’t feel like that about other people. But I’ve never thought much about wanting to be rich. Now suddenly I’m worth seven million and you’re suggesting I go out and borrow another seven and a half. Something I’ve always prided myself on—I got this from my mother—is that I’ve never been in debt. I don’t want to start now when I’m supposed to be rich.”
“Well, it’s either being rich and out of a job or going into hock to save your job. I guess it’s a situation a lot of people wouldn’t have any trouble solving. But being editor of the Courier means more to you than having all that money, right? You like the power and influence it gives you, right?”
She had never put the question to herself. Now she did, as bluntly as Jerry had put it to her, and the answer didn’t surprise her. “Yes.”
“Okay, then you better decide what you’re going to do. Do you want to go home and talk it over with Tom?”
“I don’t think that would help.” She knew at once that she was going to make her own decision. She was shocked at her selfishness, but it seemed the natural thing to do. “What do I need to do to be able to borrow the money?”
“I think I can raise two-thirds of the cash if you put up your own stock as collateral. These days bankers are more cautious with newspapers than they are with other ventures. I’ll guarantee another two million. That means we have to find someone who’ll lend you a million. That’s not much.”
She had to smile. “Jerry, please talk in my terms—”
“Forget your terms. We’re dealing with a woman who’s worth two hundred million or more.”
The thought frightened her and suddenly she wanted to give up. She was out of her league on the money battlefield; in her own field it was like a first-year cub reporter trying to take over the editorship of the New York Times. Claudine, who seemed never to have lost a battle in her life, would win this one.
Jerry Kibler recognized the surrender in her face. “Don’t give up, Cleo. We’ll manage it somehow. I’ll see you at the board meeting this afternoon. Be prepared for anything.”
III
The boardroom, Cleo thought, had the atmosphere of a wood-panelled bear garden. But claws were gloved and Claudine greeted her as she might an old friend, one old enough to be buried.
“I hear you and Tom Border are married. There hasn’t even been an announcement in our own paper.”
“We didn’t think it was news.”
“Surely it was worth a line or two on the back pages?” Her own wedding had been on Page One news, at least in the old Courier. “But perhaps you’re right. Marriage shouldn’t be such a public thing, unless it is being held up as an example.”
“Ours is a little too new for that.”
Roger came up, handsome and beautifully dressed; Cleo had never seen him less than that, as if he were continually on civilian dress parade. But he sounded sincere, which is not a military habit: “Congratulations. I hope you and Tom will be very happy. I liked him, that week I spent with him in Cairo.”
Claudine had taken her seat at the head of the table, was calling the meeting to order. “Some of you may be wondering why this meeting has been called—”
Jerry Kibler, arriving late, slid into his seat beside Cleo. He patted her arm, winked at her and then gave his attention to the chairwoman.
“It is to announce that certain stock transactions have taken place. It is better that you learn of them here than read about them in the Wall Street Journal. Or even in our own paper.” She smiled down the table at Cleo.
“We’re touched by your sensitivity,” said Jerry and from the tone of his voice Cleo knew at once that he was ready for an argument. For good strong argument: when he had none, he had the wit to remain quiet.
“It’s in one’s breeding,” said Claudine. “We want no repetition of the way Lord Cruze bought into the Courier.”
“All open and above board then,” said Jerry. “Good. Tell us what you know or have done, Claudi
ne.”
For a moment Claudine seemed to waver, as if her throne had been placed on water. It had shaken her when she had learned Jack Cruze had left all his Courier stock to Cleo; she had known the mistresses of a number of men but none of them, as far as she knew, had ever been so richly rewarded for their services. Somehow it made her feel she had not done enough to merit her own inheritance.
“Stanley Beaton has consented to sell me his seven per cent of the stock—that will make my holdings forty-two per cent. I have also made an offer, at a similar price, for the stock owned by Stephen Jensen and the Hargraves family. I have talked to Mr. Parsons, who represents the Galloway family.” The Galloway holding was not represented on the board.
“Have you accepted the offer?” Jerry looked at Jensen.
“Not yet.” Jensen appeared the calmest person at the table, having nothing to lose. He was dressed in a navy blazer and checked shirt and looked as if he had dropped into the wrong room, or the wrong club. “I should be out sailing this afternoon, not sitting here. Let’s say I’m waiting to see which way the wind blows.”
Kibler looked at John Stabler, the lawyer who represented the Hargraves family. He was a bony, bald-headed man on whom the patina of age had been spread too thickly and prematurely. He turned a sour eye on Cleo and gave her, not Jerry, his answer.
“The Hargraves have agreed to sell to Mrs. Roux.”
Stabler had never liked her, but then he had never appeared to like Claudine; women had no place in business, they were too emotional. Which was something that could never be said of him. Cleo looked past him and up the table at Claudine.
“That gives you forty-eight per cent of the stock. I’m surprised you haven’t made me an offer.”
“If you wish to sell, I shall buy you out at the current market price.”
She would not give the girl (for she still thought of her as a girl) a windfall. Jack Cruze had already given Cleo more than she deserved. When Alain had come to her at the weekend with the suggestion that she should buy up enough stock to give her the controlling interest in the paper she had been surprised the idea had not occurred to her first. She must be slowing up, a thought she put out of her mind at once before it could take hold.
She had still asked him, “Why?”
“I want to be editor.”
She admired candid ambition, so long as it was kept in the family. Outside the family it was vulgar. “I don’t think you would be as good an editor as Cleo.”
He didn’t admire her candour. “I think I deserve the chance to show that I could be. It’s still the Brisson paper. But it won’t be if we let her go on the way she’s going. People talk about her and the Courier now, not about you.”
“I hadn’t heard that.” She had a conveniently deaf ear.
“Who would mention it to you but a loving son?”
She loved him, though he could be annoying. “Have you discussed this with Simone?”
“Why should I? She’s not interested in business.” Simone having married more money than she had ever dreamed of, was no longer thrifty.
“Because I suspect you’re using your knife on Cleo for more than just business reasons. Revenge isn’t always sweet, Alain.” She had tried it once, on her husband, and it had turned sour in her mouth. She had had to wait till he was dead before the taste had sweetened.
“It’s not revenge,” he said, though he thought she might be right. “It’s just that I can’t spend the rest of my life working with her. And the Courier is my life.” He had become convinced of that, knowing he had no other way to power. He was his mother’s son and he wished she would recognize the resemblance without having to have it spelled out for her. “I want to make it our paper again.”
“We can always get rid of her as editor.”
“I don’t think so. Stephen Jensen would vote to keep her on. So might Stanley Beaton and even Roger. I don’t know about Stabler and Bill Warburg. While the paper’s making money they probably wouldn’t want to rock the boat.”
“It would cost a great deal of money.”
“We have it.” Actually, he had very little of it; but heirs give themselves airs. “The paper is a good investment now.”
“Thanks to Cleo.”
But she had said it reluctantly. One did not like to learn that something one had always taken for granted as one’s own had been commandeered. She set her mind to being the Empress again.
Now she looked down the table at Cleo and said, “The offer stands till Friday afternoon. There’ll be another board meeting then at three o’clock.”
“We won’t be selling,” said Jerry Kibler before Cleo could reply.
“I think it only fair to warn you,” said Claudine, “that there will be certain changes under the new set-up. You might well be advised to sell.”
Roger, sitting next to his sister, had said nothing so far. He had not been made privy to what Claudine was up to and he resented his exclusion. He had begun to feel lately that his presence on the board was barely tolerated by Claudine, as if she thought he was out of his element out of the army. But now he recognized a small war when he saw one.
“I think we’d all like to know what changes,” he said.
“They’ll be announced in due course,” Claudine told him in a voice that implied she was giving him a lesson in tactics.
Jerry said, “Will you be selling, Roger?”
“Not at present,” he said and was pleased to see his sister look at him sharply, as if she suspected treason.
“Your stock is part of the family’s holding,” she said.
“But in my name,” he said.
Jerry Kibler turned to the man beside him. “What about you, Bill?”
Bill Warburg was a big, shambling man with a pleasant face and the air of a man who had always found life pleasant. He was another of those whom Cleo thought of as old money. He was an amiable hedonist and he did not like anything that disturbed his routine. He would sell, if it meant avoiding any fighting.
Jerry knew it, too. “Never mind, Bill. Ride downtown with me when this is over.”
Claudine saw that she had been out-foxed; short of kidnapping Warburg, she could not keep him away from Kibler. Abruptly she closed the meeting, determined to get to Stephen Jensen before the other side could. Strategic points had to be taken.
As the meeting broke up Jerry put a hand on Warburg’s arm. “Wait here a moment with me and Cleo.”
Warburg looked reluctant, but he was a polite man and he did not know how to be rude. Cleo, on a nod from Jerry, moved up and sat on the other side of Warburg. The others filed out, Claudine the last to go.
“My offer stands, Cleo. Till Friday afternoon.”
“No, thank you,” said Cleo, though Jerry had not yet told her how much money he had raised to fight the battle. “I’ve never been for sale, Claudine, despite what you think.”
Claudine whirled and went out. Warburg looked pained and embarrassed; he liked women to be ladies. Jerry smiled appreciatively at Cleo. He liked a fighter, of any sex.
“Things are just starting to warm up.”
“That’s what I don’t like,” said Warburg.
“You can be out of it, if you like, Bill. Cleo has the money to offer you the same price for your stock as Claudine has been offering.” He glanced at her and nodded: the money was available. “If you don’t like the rough water, now’s the time to get out.”
Warburg, like Jensen, belonged to the New York Yacht Club; he smiled at the metaphor used by Jerry, the non-sailor. “Sailors don’t necessarily always like smooth sailing—it can be dull. But I don’t like sailing through muck. Let’s talk going downtown.” He took Cleo’s hand between his huge paws. “If you want to buy my stock, Cleo, you’re welcome to it. But I hope you’re not biting off more than you can chew.”
“Jerry is my adviser. I trust him.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the money end. If you take control of the Courier away from Claudine—well, personally I’d r
ather be out in a one-man Finn in a force-nine gale than face up to her.”
“They always name hurricanes after women. Maybe it needs a woman to face up to one.”
He smiled, patted her as if she were mentally ill. “Good luck.”
Cleo went back downstairs to the news floor, arriving late for the afternoon conference. Alain, sitting at the head of the table, looked up as she took her seat, but she gave him no hint of what had gone on upstairs. Instead she asked at once, “How much have we done?”
“It’s practically wrapped up,” said Joe Hamlyn. “I’m running the hostage story over on to Page Two. But for the first few days I’m afraid we’re going to lose out to the goddam TV wonder boys. All those mobs in the streets are made to order for their cameras.”
“Perhaps we should buy a TV station.”
Cleo had meant it only as a joke, but she saw Alain’s head come up as if she were stating a new policy. He made a note on his pad and she determined then that for the next week or two she would be very careful what she said. She was not going to manufacture ammunition for the other side.
When the conference broke up she avoided Alain, then called Joe Hamlyn and Carl Fishburg into her office. “I have a war on upstairs. I’m having to buy more stock to keep my job.”
The two men listened quietly while she told them what had happened so far and what, she guessed, might happen if she lost out.
Then Joe said, “I could talk to the staff, if you like. I don’t know how much there is in the pension fund, but it might help. It wouldn’t be the first time a newspaper’s staff has bought a paper to save its jobs. The Kansas City Star did it some time back in the Twenties. I, for one, wouldn’t want to work with Alain as the editor. In no time at all he’d have us sounding like that guy Loeb up in New Hampshire, campaigning to have Cal Coolidge raised from the dead.”
“Me, neither,” said Carl. “We’ll talk to the guys in finance, see what’s in the kitty.”
Cleo shook her head, touched by their loyalty. “No. This is my fight. I don’t want you risking your money on me. I have faith in Jerry Kibler, he’ll raise everything we need. If he doesn’t, then I’ll stay on till they kick me out. Which they’ll have to do physically.” Which, she remembered, was what they had almost had to do with Jake Lintas.
