Due Diligence: A Thriller (13 page)

“Mike, seriously. If I’m going to support you on this thing, you’ve got to be straight with me. Be honest. This is a good deal, right?”

14

Night had fallen in London when Mike Wilson got off the phone with Ed Leary. He looked out the window of the hotel room. There was no moon in the sky. Below him was Hyde Park, a vast, black emptiness, like a huge lake.

He turned around and sat down. The room was overdecorated, too many patterns on carpets, curtains, furnishings. The British idea of old-fashioned luxury. Made him feel claustrophobic.

Wilson thought with satisfaction about the meeting he’d had with Andrew Bassett that afternoon. Bassett wanted the deal almost as much as he did. Wilson sensed that he had gotten the other man absolutely right. He knew exactly which buttons to press. “Sir Andrew,” Bassett could already hear himself being called. He could see himself two years ahead, CEO of a big global company, and that was all he could see right now. Like anyone who wants something badly, thought Wilson, Bassett believed anything that made it seem as if he could get it. But an awful lot could happen in two years.

Doug Earl, the company’s general counsel, had been with him for the meeting. Lyall Gelb was meant to have come, but it turned out that one of his kids had to have an appendectomy and Lyall didn’t want to be away if he could avoid it. Besides, what with the disruption of the kid getting sick and going to the hospital and having the operation, Gelb had lost a lot of time. Normally, he would have worked the entire weekend before a quarterly filing. Wilson had managed at the meeting without him. Lyall had already met the British team anyway, and the offer was so generous that he wasn’t needed to help squabble on the terms. On the contrary, Andrew Bassett could hardly believe the numbers he was looking at.

Wilson smiled to himself. Everyone’s a winner, he thought, and the deal goes through. Wilson had learned that lesson from the master himself, Ken Lay. That was in the early years of Lay’s career, before he took his eye off his business and started thinking he was some kind of statesman, when he was still the smartest operator around. The smartest operator Wilson ever saw, that was for sure.

Mike Wilson had started his career at an Atlanta-based utility called Georgia Electric. After a couple of years he moved to InterNorth, a gas company based in Omaha, where he first met Stan Murdoch. In 1985, both he and Stan were executives at InterNorth. That was the year a certain Kenneth Lay, head of Houston Natural Gas, came knocking. Lay’s proposition resulted in an acquisition and merger of the companies. Within a year, the combined company that resulted would be renamed Enron.

Wilson wasn’t there to see that happen. After the deal, like most InterNorth executives, both he and Stan Murdoch found themselves surplus to requirements. They went their separate ways, Wilson as president of Carolinas Electric, a small Charleston-based operator, and Murdoch to the electricity generator Arrenco. But Mike Wilson was there to see the takeover, and the manner of it left an indelible impression on him. InterNorth was three times the size of Houston Natural Gas, and technically InterNorth, not Houston, was the acquirer. Yet it was Ken Lay and his boys who ended up in charge. Even though he was a victim of Ken Lay’s ruthlessness, Mike Wilson was awestruck by Lay’s efficiency and guile. There were all kinds of rumors about the secret promises he had made to get the InterNorth board to the table. Over and over, in the years since then, Wilson had analyzed the sequence of actions. He had come to two key conclusions. The first was that Lay pulled it off by making all the main players believe they were going to be winners from the deal. The second was that you could make people believe they were going to be winners even when everything else pointed to the opposite, as long as they
wanted
to believe it. The day he was kicked out of InterNorth, Mike Wilson vowed that if he ever did a deal himself, he would do it like Lay.

That was what he was doing now. Andrew Bassett wanted to believe he was going to be a winner. Everything Wilson had said to him at their meeting had been designed to make him believe that he was right.

Wilson got up and poured himself a scotch out of the minibar.

Doug Earl was already on a plane back to the States. Wilson had kept the company jet. He told Doug he had other business to attend to that night. He didn’t. Not Louisiana Light business, anyway.

He glanced at his watch. Almost nine. Three o’clock in Baton Rouge. He thought of ringing Dot. Dot Mendelsson was a society divorcée. As head of the biggest company in Baton Rouge, Mike Wilson was a pillar of local society. Member of the board of Louisiana State, patron of the Baton Rouge Arts and Sciences Museum, trustee of half a dozen charities. Dot and he moved in the same circles. It kind of made sense. The sex wasn’t frequent, and it wasn’t great, but that wasn’t too important. Mike Wilson had a different, more powerful compulsion. It was a relationship of convenience for both of them. Wilson had two ex-wives and five children. He wasn’t looking for any more of either.

Wilson didn’t call her. Maybe later.

He sat and sipped the scotch. A certain kind of pressure was building up inside him. For a while he just sat there, feeling it grow. He knew what it was. He sipped his scotch in minute portions, barely letting the fluid touch his lips. It was a kind of tantalizing, agonizing pleasure to resist the impulse, to tell himself that he might not give in. That this time, for once, he might just withstand the temptation. To let the pressure build and build, even, as he did, knowing he wouldn’t resist in the end. He knew it from the moment he had sent Doug Earl off in a cab to Heathrow. He knew he would succumb. That only intensified the pleasure of resisting.

But first, there was a phone call he had to make.

Wilson put down the scotch and dialed a number in New York. He waited as it rang.

“Yeah?” The voice was high-pitched, nasal.

Mike Wilson had never met Tony Prinzi and had no desire to. It was only through a voice on the phone that he knew him. He had been told that Prinzi was a short man, squat, almost a Danny DeVito lookalike.

“Tony?” he said. “It’s Mike. Mike Wilson.”

“Mike Wilson. This is a pleasure. How are you, Michael?”

“Not bad, Tony.”

“How did you make out the other night?”

“Not so great.”

“No luck?” There was a chuckle. “So I heard.”

“Tony,” said Wilson, “I just wanted to let you know, that deal we talked about, it’s on track. I don’t want you to have any doubts on that account.”

“I appreciate you telling me, Michael. Not that I was worrying, but … one does wonder from time to time. The clock ticks. You understand me?”

“I thought I ought to let you know. The cut I get will cover everything. It’s more than enough.”

“That’s very good, Michael. Thank you for calling. You’ve set my mind at rest. Not that I don’t trust you. If I didn’t trust you, both your legs already would be broken.”

There was silence.

“That’s just talk, Michael.” There was another chuckle. “Don’t worry about it. Is this why you’ve called, to tell me this?”

Wilson hesitated for a moment. “Actually, I was wondering, Tony … you might get a call.”

“Where from might I get this call?”

“London.”

Another chuckle. “Michael, always on the move. I never know where I’m going to hear of you next.”

“I wonder if you could oblige,” said Wilson.

“You tell me your deal’s on track?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then it would be a pleasure.”

“Thank you, Tony.”

“Michael, don’t thank me. Thanking is for friends.” There was a last chuckle, and the line went dead.

Wilson put down the phone. He tried to put the last remark out of his mind. And the one about his legs.

He refilled his glass, sat down again, sipped, tried to rediscover the mood. Soon it was back. Now that the call was out of the way, he could truly savor it. The futile resistance, the knowledge that he would succumb, the game that he played with himself in pretending that he mightn’t. There it was. His skin prickled with the exquisite agony of it.

He wanted to gulp down the drink, but he forced himself to sip. Slowly.

Slowly.

At last he finished the scotch. He grabbed his jacket and headed downstairs.

The doorman flagged down a cab for him.

*   *   *

It was a tall, stucco-coated terrace building in Knightsbridge. Mike Wilson had been there before.

He paid the cabbie and got out. A doorman in a top hat was standing at the top of the steps. He opened the door. Inside was a hallway, black-and-white tiles on the floor, wood panels on the walls, with an open doorway on the other side.

“Good evening, sir,” said a young woman in a black dress, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She got up from a small desk. “Are you a member?”

Wilson couldn’t remember seeing her before. “Why don’t you tell your manager Mr. Wilson’s here,” he said quietly. “Mike Wilson.”

The woman glanced at a black man in a suit who was standing on the other side of the hall. “Would you wait here a moment?” she said to Wilson, and disappeared through a door in the wood paneling behind the desk.

Wilson glanced at the black guy and smiled. The black guy smiled back at him. Mike Wilson walked farther into the hall, conscious that the black guy was watching him. He stopped at the open doorway.

There were about ten tables in the room ahead of him. Roulette, blackjack, craps. Croupiers stood behind them. The room wasn’t crowded. Slow night, perhaps. But it made no difference to Wilson. His pulse raced. His throat was dry.

He watched. He was in the last, most delicious stage of resistance. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he could still turn around and leave. He would hold on to that thought for a little while yet, intensifying the pleasure, heightening it, like holding off an orgasm, before he abandoned himself. It was better than sex.

“Sir?”

Mike Wilson turned with a start. The young woman had come back. A man in a tuxedo was with her.

“Mr. Wilson,” said the man, oozing an unctuous smile.

Wilson nodded impatiently.

“Lovely to see you back, sir. Awfully sorry about the delay. Melanie’s new.”

The young woman smiled apologetically.

“Well, we can’t blame her for that,” said Wilson.

“Very understanding, sir.” The man motioned Melanie away and she went back to her desk. “Come this way, Mr. Wilson.”

The man led him into the room beyond the hall. They walked briskly between the tables. On the other side of the room they went through a door and came to a staircase. The manager led the way up the stairs. At the top, there was a door on each side. The manager opened the door on the left.

“After you, Mr. Wilson. I’ll just make a phone call, shall I?”

Wilson nodded. “Make it two hundred.”

“Sterling?”

Wilson nodded again. He went inside. The room was large, with two tables. There was a bar, and a couple of women circulating with drinks, and a couple of men standing to the side and watching the tables. Most of the players at the tables were men. One was a woman who was wearing a white trouser suit. She glanced at him. Wilson met her eyes, then kept looking around the room.

The manager returned. “Mr. Prinzi was very happy to oblige.” He placed a pile of chips in Wilson’s hand. “Two hundred thousand pounds, Mr. Wilson.”

Wilson nodded, eyes on the tables.

“Just ask someone to let me know if I can be of further service, sir. Any of the staff, Mr. Wilson.”

The manager waited a moment, then left. Mike Wilson gazed at the tables. He felt the chips in his hands, cool, smooth. The woman in the trouser suit glanced at him again, but now he was utterly unaware of her.

The last shred of resistance tore away.

15

The sideboard was stocked with coffee, juice, pastries, and fruit. Between eight-thirty and nine on Wednesday morning, the members of the Louisiana Light board of directors arrived in the boardroom on the sixth floor of the company headquarters in Baton Rouge. Mike Wilson greeted them genially, exchanging a word with each one about family, business, golf, laughing warmly at the pleasantries. There was nothing to show that he was a man who, thirty-six hours earlier, had lost the equivalent of a hundred and eighty thousand dollars of borrowed money in a London casino.

At nine they took their seats. The board consisted of eight members. Mike Wilson, Lyall Gelb, and Stan Murdoch were the executive directors. Ed Leary, the chairman, headed the five non-execs. Dave Ablett was CEO of Ventura, a Boston-based software company. Gordon Anderton was managing partner of Anderton Doolittle, the international recruitment firm. Mal Berkowitz was CEO of Tufts Engineering, in civil engineering and construction. And Imogen DuPont was a former Louisiana Secretary of Environment, now a senior partner in Molyneux, Garth, Porter & Cabel, the biggest law firm in Baton Rouge. Everyone, with the exception of Imogen DuPont, would have described himself as a personal friend of Mike Wilson. Every one of them, including Imogen, had benefited from some kind of consultancy or business arrangement with Louisiana Light, and confidently expected to continue to do so.

Doug Earl, the company counsel, attended the meetings and took the minutes. Donald Lepore, the sales and marketing director, and Hannah Grainger, the head of personnel and corporate affairs, were other nonboard members who usually attended, but the previous day Wilson had asked Stella to let them know they wouldn’t be needed at this one.

Ed Leary called the meeting to order, then handed over to Mike Wilson.

“When you look at the agenda,” said Wilson, “you’ll notice there’s been a slight change since the board papers were sent out to you.”

A couple of the directors had already opened the files in front of them. Now everyone else did.

“We have a very exciting development to discuss today. Ed has kindly allowed me to adjust the agenda to be sure we cover it, right, Ed?”

Ed Leary nodded.

“You’re not trying to get out of showing us the results, are you?” said Mal Berkowitz, and he grinned. Every board has a joker. Mal Berkowitz was Louisiana Light’s.