“$200,000 a week plus expenses, payable at the end of each month.”
“I’ll pay five times that if you’ll guarantee no body bags.”
Hap leaned forward continuing to examine Wilson like a therapist. “You need to understand something, Wilson. What we do is anticipate and react. We don’t control anything. If there are extreme measures, we’ll do everything we can to protect you in the short term. After that, we bring in the authorities. If what you want is a guarantee, walk away from this and go to the authorities right now.”
“I can’t.”
“Then your well-being depends on exposing them quickly, before they figure out what you’re doing.”
“Does your involvement automatically increase their concerns?”
“Not necessarily. Based on the fact that we’ve worked together before, a contract with my firm would be a logical next step, especially after the death of your attorney and threats to your mother and girlfriend. They already know you’re worried about the surveillance. Plus you’ve just taken over your father’s firm. They were expecting this, and they let us know a few minutes ago.”
“Any reservations?”
“None. You’re already paying double my usual fee.”
Wilson scanned Hap’s eyes, asking himself again, if he was ready to place the well-being of his family and loved ones in the hands of a man he admired and respected professionally, but with whom he had only a limited personal history. But if not Hap, who? Wilson didn’t know where his feelings of assurance came from as he pondered the question, but he grabbed a hold. “Okay, when do we move my father?”
Hap took his last bite of salad before responding. “We don’t. We have a better chance of protecting him right where he is. I have three people at the hospital working undercover. He’ll have 24/7 protection. You, on the other hand, will have to move. We’re arranging for an apartment near the Fielder & Company building. We can do a better job of protecting you and your family if you’re separated.”
Wilson nodded hesitantly, but decided to trust Hap’s judgment. “I’m planning a trip next with Fielder & Company’s senior executives to tour the firm’s seven offices. After that Emily and I are going to Venice for a week.”
“You’re not going to make this easy are you?”
Wilson didn’t say anything as the waiter cleared their plates.
Hap continued, “I’ll need people here to watch Emily and at least two with you on your office tour. And, I’m afraid you won’t be going to Venice alone. They’ll be discreet, but they’ll be there, watching your every move.”
Wilson nodded his head in agreement. “What about the others?”
“Looks like you won’t be having much contact with them this week or next, which is good. The less contact the better. I’ll be conducting deep background checks on all of them, including Emily.”
“Why?” Wilson said, caught off guard.
“Trust no one, Wilson. It’s safer.”
“I trust these people with my life.”
“Your father probably felt the same way about his circle of intimates.”
Wilson placed his napkin on the table in front of him. “Carter Emerson is the only one who could be a member of the secret partnership, but I’m satisfied that his interests are aligned with mine and my father’s. I have to trust that, otherwise we have no chance of exposing the people who shot my father, killed Daniel Redd, and have been fleecing Wall Street.”
“I hope you’re right, but I can’t rely on it. We never take on this level of risk without knowing everything about the principals, and we never accept anyone’s assumptions about anything. Isn’t that what they taught you at Kresge & Company?”
“You’ve already started the background checks, haven’t you?” Wilson asked, questioning his own fears.
“As soon as you called.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon going over Wilson’s plans for infiltrating the secret partnership, as well as details about each of the people Hap Greene and his associates would be protecting. Having Hap on board was a relief.
Wilson was shocked by the hearty welcome he received when he stepped out of the elevator on the tenth floor of the Fielder Building on Friday. He slowly worked his way through the busy corridors shaking hands and meeting people until arriving at his father’s office, with its impressive vista of the Charles River and MIT campus. Even though his perspective had changed dramatically since the last time he’d been in the office, the actual act of officially occupying his father’s workspace, with the intent to assume his father’s previous mantle of authority, felt weightier than he’d anticipated. Can I pull it off?
Just as he’d requested, Wilson spent the afternoon interviewing each of the firm’s six vice presidents. He’d met them all before, but things were different now that he was their boss, and his life literally depended on knowing them. His first meeting was with John Malouf, the most senior of the vice presidents and head of the corporate restructuring practice. He was an extreme version of his father, both in stature and demeanor, less talkative and more prone to glare, which proved unsettling for Wilson. Malouf seemed perfectly content with his arrogance and enigma. They sat down at the stone table.
“Do people ever mistake you for my father?” Wilson said.
“Sometimes,” Malouf said, deadpan.
“Are you as good as he is?” Wilson asked, deciding to be equally direct and to the point with this man who was still glaring at him.
“Yes and no,” he said without blinking an eyelash.
“Tell me about the no part,” Wilson said.
“Like every good student, there are some things you learn to do better than your teacher and other things you don’t. I still haven’t acquired his social adeptness or consciousness,” Malouf said.
They stared at each other for several moments until Wilson asked him to describe the corporate restructuring practice at Fielder & Company, which Malouf did for the next twenty minutes in a rather cryptic, matter-of-fact fashion. When Malouf was finished, Wilson said, “I look forward to getting to know you, John.”
Malouf shook Wilson’s hand without another word. As he left the office, Wilson asked him to send in Leigh Tennyson, the firm’s newest vice president. She directed the strategic change practice. She reminded him of a former professor—tall, brunette hair pulled back in a French roll, uneven facial features with a piercing look of confidence in her hazel eyes. Reportedly she had the highest IQ of the six vice presidents. Wilson liked her style, and it didn’t hurt that she was a Harvard Business School alum.
When she was comfortably seated on one of the French sofas at the less formal end of the office, Wilson asked her if she enjoyed working at the firm.
“I was, until your father’s coma. He was the reason I left the Boston Consulting Group,” she said. Then she took the next several minutes to tell Wilson what she’d been doing to strengthen the firm’s strategic change practice.
When she finished, Wilson asked her what the firm had been like in his father’s absence.
“Tense. Confused. Lots of positioning for power, especially from Malouf.”
“Do you have a problem with Malouf?”
“Yes I do. Not only is he secretive and arrogant, he doesn’t want to be a team player.”
“You don’t hold anything back, do you?”
“Only when it’s productive to do so,” she said without changing the serious look that defined her face.
As they stood up and shook hands, Wilson realized that as much as he liked her, she was as enigmatic as Malouf, only less cagey. He followed her out of the office and asked Anne to send in Frank O’Connor. Wilson then stepped into the concealed bathroom and dressing room, thinking about what Tennyson had said about Malouf. When he returned, Frank was sitting on one of the French sofas. He was a Ph.D. psychologist who managed the firm’s organizational effectiveness practice. O’Connor instantly made Wilson feel as though he were talking to a personal therapist. There was something about his warm, inviting eyes and bald head that caused Wilson to feel comfortable enough to be open and candid.
“How are you feeling about taking over your father’s firm?” O’Connor asked.
“Anxious and apprehensive.”
“Perfectly normal for someone in your situation. Are you disappointed that KaneWeller backed out?”
“Part of me is. But the rest of me has accepted it. Sometimes I even feel grateful.”
“Good sign. Your father would appreciate that response,” he said. “I like it, too. You’re going to do just fine here, Wilson.”
“I hope so.”
Just as Wilson was feeling as though he’d found a confidant among the vice presidents, O’Connor said, “This is no ordinary firm, you know. There are a lot of things going on beneath the surface.”
“Such as?”
“Hidden agendas, special services for preferred clients, affiliations with other firms, and lots of turf issues,” O’Connor said, raising his eyebrows and causing his forehead to wrinkle up to where his hairline used to be. “Your father pretty much gave us a free hand, and we each did what we wanted with it.”
Wilson wanted to probe further, but he couldn’t, not until he knew more about O’Connor and the rest of the vice presidents. As he did every day, Wilson reminded himself that his first moves to crack the partnership had to be the right moves. Instead, Wilson asked O’Connor to tell him more about his own practice area, which he did for the next half hour.
When Wilson escorted O’Connor to the door, Corbin Ashford was standing outside talking to Anne.
The firm’s VP of finance and administration walked into the office and immediately began extolling the virtues of Wilson’s father. Ashford was handsome, smooth, and articulate. He recited the firm’s impressive growth record before taking a seat. As he continued telling Wilson everything he must have assumed Wilson wanted to know about the firm and its financial situation, Wilson grew more and more uncomfortable with Ashford’s blatant egotism.
“How’s the firm’s cash flow?” Wilson asked, interrupting him.
“We haven’t missed a beat. The firm’s cash flow is stronger than ever,” Ashford said as he stood up again and walked toward the wall of windows overlooking the Charles River.
“No setbacks?”
“None. And I don’t expect any,” he said, arrogantly.
“What problems do we face?” Wilson asked.
“To tell you the truth, everything’s running smoothly. We’re ahead of our profit projections—revenues are up and operating expenses are down.”
Wilson wouldn’t hear about any problems from Ashford. Never tell the boss bad news. Just what I need from a CFO, Wilson said to himself sarcastically. He wondered how his father had handled Ashford.
Before Ashford left, he returned to extolling the virtues of Wilson’s father and his financial genius. “The world actually knows very little about your father’s contributions to creating wealth and humanizing capitalism. Thanks to him, billions of people will someday be accessing capital, investing in themselves, building businesses, and spreading the wealth more than ever before.”
Wilson was quietly stunned as he listened to Ashford espouse his father’s philosophy. He couldn’t decide whether Ashford was trying to impress him or opening a door into the secret partnership. Either way, Wilson wasn’t ready to commit himself. He quickly thanked Ashford for the information and said he’d have more questions later. He asked him to send in Joel Spivey, vice president of human resources.
Spivey was a cynical and witty ex-marine sergeant and Stanford MBA who looked like Spike Lee and was by far the most decidedly extroverted of the vice presidents.
“It’s great to have you here, Wilson,” Spivey said as he walked into the office with an air of cool.
“How are the people handling all this?” Wilson asked.
“Like victims, just as you’d expect,” he said, laughing. “But don’t get me wrong, they’re definitely survivors. We pick our people well and they don’t disappoint us when times get tough.”
“Anyone planning to leave?”
“Everyone’s planning to leave sooner or later, that’s the nature of our business. Five to ten years on the Fielder & Company learning curve and they’re ready for a cushy senior executive position with a client company.”
Wilson smiled, but only slightly. He didn’t want to encourage Spivey too much. “Are there any personnel issues I should know about?”
“Nothing pressing,” Spivey said.
“What about the vice presidents?”
“You’ve probably already heard complaints about Malouf and Ashford,” he said.
“Malouf, yes, but nothing about Ashford,” Wilson said.
“They’ve been trying to take charge in your father’s absence.”
“Anything I should be worried about?”
“Only mutiny,” he said, grinning.
Wilson forced a smile. He asked Spivey to tell him about the firm’s website and how it was used in recruiting staff and marketing services. For the next twenty minutes, Spivey took Wilson through a brief demonstration on the computer, explaining that all the programming and design work had been done by Fielder employees. When he finished, Wilson was convinced that Fielder & Company’s website not only represented state-of-the-art interactive programming, but the work of an in-house IT team capable of anything.
As Spivey left, he answered one of Wilson’s lingering questions. “The technology nerds report to Ashford, and believe me, you don’t want them against you.”
Wilson took another bathroom break before meeting with the last of the vice presidents, Bob Throckmorton, who headed the operational redesign practice. He was short, stocky, curly headed, and had eyes that seemed ready to burrow into anything. But as soon as Wilson asked him what he was working on, Throckmorton became oblivious to everything outside his area of responsibility.
“We’re re-engineering one of GE’s appliance businesses, but Immelt’s decision to sell the division has everyone covering their rear ends, which is unusual for GE. They all know fifteen percent of them will get the axe from Immelt, that’s normal operating procedure from the Welch era. But now they’re expected to cut another fifteen percent, before the sale. It’s produced a victim-hunting culture that’s not only compromising productivity but also creating more victims. I’m going to the company’s management training center at Crotonville to discuss the issue with a group of business heads. It’ll be fine in the end, because GE prides itself in firing those managers who make people feel like victims. Anyway, we’re trying to minimize the trauma so we can get the re-engineering completed.”