“What if Wilson comes back to defend himself?”
“Then, we’ll play hardball.”
“What are you thinking?” Tate asked, making Quinn specify exactly what he was willing to do.
“We’ll sue Kresge & Company for gross mismanagement of the project and demand damages of ten times their two million dollars in fees,” Quinn said with anger.
Tate pushed further, “What if Wilson decides to play hardball?”
“Then, maybe his family will have to suffer again,” Quinn said, standing up once more and turning around to face Tate. “Nothing physical you understand, just some ugly gossip. A few damaging rumors with enough manufactured evidence to make the family seem out of control.”
Tate raised his eyebrows, feigning surprise. “You’d actually go that far?”
“It’s not something I’d enjoy doing. But if I had to, I would. This arrogant little prick tried to destroy me and everything I built at Musselman,” Quinn said, his eyes like beacons. “The gloves came off after Fielder told MacMillan that I should step down. The brass knuckles went on when he recommended the company’s breakup.”
The room turned dead silent except for the sound of hissing steam.
Tate couldn’t help chuckling to himself. The dual threat of being ousted by the board and having his company broken into pieces was enough to make Quinn vulnerable to a melody of manipulations. Maybe David Quinn wasn’t yet ready to cheat on his wife or trade on insider information, but he was willing to defame Wilson Fielder in order to keep Kresge & Company from forcing a breakup of Musselman. It was time to set the hook.
“Okay, David. We’ll take care of it,” Tate finally said. “I’ll track down MacMillan and express my concerns about Wilson Fielder. You can count on Kamin and me replacing Kresge & Company at next week’s board meeting. One way or another, we’ll make it happen.”
“Thank you, Wayland. You’ve just taken a big load off my mind,” Quinn said.
“Oh, we’ll do more than that, David. Just wait until the launch of America’s Warehouse. By the way, Kamin is anxious to meet with you about Musselman’s next stock offering. He arrives tomorrow morning. Let’s plan on having a private dinner tomorrow night.”
“Marvelous,” Quinn said. His reason for coming to St. Moritz was well on its way to being realized. All he had to do now was let Wayland Tate perform his magic.
“Have you set your schedule for tonight and tomorrow?” Tate asked.
“I think I’m going to retire early tonight. Catch up on some sleep. Andrea has me scheduled to hit the slopes first thing in the morning.”
“Perfect,” Tate said with his infectious smile. “Jules and I will be ready for you tomorrow night.”
Tate – St. Moritz, Switzerland
After spending the evening with clients, Tate returned to his room to make a few international calls. He started with Jules Kamin. It was midnight in St. Moritz, six o’clock in Boston.
The secure cell phone buzzed in Kamin’s pocket as he walked to the small conference room that had become his office at KaneWeller’s Boston offices. At age fifty-five, Kamin looked like a young and trim Henry Kissinger, which Tate attributed less to heredity and more to the rigorous regime he’d convinced Kamin to adopt several years earlier. Kamin’s face, however, looked more weary and aged than his years when he answered Tate’s call. He’d just returned from the Fielder & Company closing.
“How did things go?” Tate inquired as soon as the ringing stopped and he heard Kamin’s voice.
“The closing went as planned, but we may have a problem,” Kamin said resignedly.
“Fielder?” Tate said annoyed.
“No. Our attorneys want to conduct a second round of inquiries into some of Fielder & Company’s client relationships.”
“This could scuttle the entire deal, Jules,” Tate said, beginning to pace back and forth in the sitting area of his suite. “Who’s behind it?”
“Cheryl O’Grady has been working Winthorpe behind the scenes, trying to convince him that Fielder & Company’s consulting practices may have involved conspiring to manipulate company stock prices.”
“Every company conspires to manipulate its stock price. That’s what free enterprise is all about,” Tate said, feeling his blood pressure rising. “What’s motivating O’Grady?”
“She doesn’t like me. Never has. She knows this is my deal. I think she would jump at any chance to keep me from taking over when Winthorpe retires next year,” Kamin said. He, too, began to pace back and forth in the conference room.
“You should have fired her when you had the chance,” Tate said, turning off the lights in his suite to look at the moonlit mountains surrounding the resort.
“You know why I didn’t. There were too many rumors that I was out to get her. Letting her stay was the only way to stop the rumor mill,” Kamin said.
“Okay. Okay. It’s water under the bridge. How do we deal with her?”
“Something’s given her new hope.”
“Or someone. Who?” Tate asked, becoming more agitated by the second.
“I don’t know. Maybe Redd,” Kamin said.
“Not likely.”
“He hasn’t been the same since Charles was shot.”
“No one has!” Tate said emphatically.
“I’m not suggesting Redd did anything intentionally. An offhanded comment or a hint of uncertainty might have been the only excuse O’Grady needed to intensify her probing.”
“You think she baited him?” Tate asked.
“Redd’s too smart for that. But she may have convinced him …”
Tate interrupted, “… to tell her what’s really going on? Forget it.”
“No,” Kamin said, his voice rising. “She may have convinced him to admit his own growing uncertainties.”
Tate fell silent. He slid open the balcony door and walked out into the cold, hoping it might help drop his blood pressure.
“Redd’s vulnerable, Wayland,” Kamin continued. “Has been since White Horse. And if he is, we are.”
Bristling at the comment, Tate watched a red fox chase a snow rabbit across the blanket of white into the dark pines. The more unpredictable the fox, the more rabbits it snares. He smiled and walked back into his suite. “Maybe it’s time to kill the KaneWeller deal.”
“We can’t …”
“Easy, Jules,” Tate said. “I know you’ve been waiting a long time to assume the helm at KaneWeller, but Musselman will give us the resources to acquire Morgan. Anything you want to do at KaneWeller you can do at Morgan or another investment house, and that includes acquiring Fielder & Company. You may be right about Redd, and O’Grady is clearly a threat. It’s time to move the game to a new playing field,” Tate said, knowing it would be brutal for Kamin to leave KaneWeller after so many years of patiently positioning himself for the top spot. But there was no other alternative, Tate mulled. Not if we expect to preserve the partnership. O’Grady had always been a free spirit. She should have been removed from the equation when Kamin had the chance. Now, it was too late. Control had been lost. And Kamin knew it. If there was any lesson Tate had learned from history, it was that control belonged to the ruthless. Whenever it was lost, it had to be retaken immediately, no matter the cost.
“How do we kill it?” Kamin asked wearily.
“Leave that to me. Contingency plans are already in place,” Tate said. “Right now we need to focus on Musselman. It’s time to start buying as much stock as we can.”
“You’ve confirmed Quinn?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll put things in motion before I get on the plane. Buying can start first thing Monday morning,” Kamin said with a deepening resignation in his voice. He’d learned a long time ago that it never paid to disagree with Wayland Tate—not once he’d made a decision.
“How many entities do we need?” Tate asked.
“At least thirty,” Kamin said.
“I’ll let Swatling know. If you have any reservations about Quinn tomorrow night, you can call it off,” Tate said, attempting to appease Kamin.
“The stock was selling at ten percent below book value at today’s closing,” Kamin said, just having pulled up Musselman’s stock report on his screen.
“Perfect. If Quinn is as hungry as he seems, we’ll be able to generate several billion on Musselman.”
“I look forward to meeting him,” Kamin said, a slight glint returning to his eyes.
“Needless to say, he’s very anxious to meet you. The depressed stock price is driving him crazy. We’re scheduled for dinner tomorrow night at eight.”
“Have you talked to our new investors?” Kamin asked.
“Not yet, but I will. Opportunities like this don’t come along everyday,” Tate said, feeling invincible. Things were coming together on Musselman just as he’d planned. The advertising campaign alone could double the company’s stock price within thirty days of its launch. Even if the America’s Warehouse strategy turned out to have no long-term sustainability—as Wilson Fielder and his Kresge team were predicting—Musselman’s stock price was projected to quadruple by the end of summer. Tate and his partners were not only poised to harvest a financial windfall from J. B. Musselman, they were insulated against all downsides. Any implementation failures would be laid at the feet of David Quinn and his management team. It was exactly the sort of scenario Tate relished.
When Tate said good-bye to Kamin, he walked to the closet and retrieved another cell phone—one of the encryption phones he would use and discard. He punched in the number and waited for his personal assassin. Within seconds the call was received in Boston by a similar phone. “This is Marco.”
“It’s Wayland. I want you to go ahead as planned. Tonight.”
“Done,” Marco said, before ending the call and dismantling the phone. He dropped the pieces into a frog pond in Boston Common.
Cheryl O’Grady was waiting when Daniel Redd arrived at the bar of the Exelsior, a swank New American-style restaurant overlooking Boston Public Garden. The maître d’ escorted them to a table in one of the restaurant’s secluded alcoves. Cheryl had called Daniel after the merger closing and asked for a private meeting. He’d quickly decided that a public meeting would raise fewer questions than a private encounter. When they sat down in the Queen Anne wing chairs, Daniel casually placed a small surveillance-nullifying device in the middle of their table.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.
“Depends on whether you’re thinking like KaneWeller or Fielder & Company.”
“Both, and I’d say it’s a counter-surveillance device, not a recorder.”
“Correct.”
“You know what I want to talk about, don’t you?”
“I think so.”
“Can I see them?”
“We agreed they would remain in our custody,” Daniel said. “It was all spelled out in the documents we signed a few hours ago. Remember?”
“Let me make this simple, Daniel. Either I get access to those files or I scuttle the merger.”
Daniel searched her eyes. They looked no more sympathetic than an attacking Doberman’s. She was not about to back down. “I’ll let you see the files under my supervision—in our offices—on one condition.”
“What’s the condition?”
“You can only use the information as background. None of it can be copied or shared with your colleagues. And none of it can be used in any way to justify your scuttling of the merger.”
“Agreed. My only interest is to understand exactly what we’re walking into—so we know what to avoid going forward.”
“Let’s have a drink,” Daniel said. “Then I’ll take you back to our office.”
After sharing a bottle of Shiraz and a platter of imported goat and sheep cheeses along with professional small talk, Daniel and Cheryl exited the restaurant onto Boylston Street. They walked to the intersection of Arlington and Boylston across from the Boston Public Garden and waited for the light to change.
Daniel hoped he wouldn’t regret bringing Cheryl to the office to examine the fifty-two files. But all things considered, he had little choice. As Deputy General Counsel for KaneWeller, Cheryl certainly had the power and influence to scuttle the deal if she were so inclined. Allowing her to review the files with an opportunity to explain their true purpose, he told himself, might well be the only way to save the merger and distance Wilson from Fielder & Company. Hopefully, it would also avert any negative press that might compromise liquidation of Charles’ other assets.
When the traffic light changed, Daniel and Cheryl began crossing Boylston Street. They walked past the center island, commenting on the beautiful budding elms and maples that lined the edge of the Public Garden.
Suddenly, without warning, a car swerved out from behind a lane of stopped traffic, crashed through a street construction fence, and headed directly for them at high speed. As soon as the two attorneys grasped the horrifying reality that the car was targeting them, they changed directions and began to run, but it was too late. The car struck them in the crosswalk before crashing into the back of a parked delivery van and exploding into flames. Their bodies were crushed instantly, hurled from hood to windshield and into the air. Cheryl’s body hit the asphalt like a ragdoll, twisting and rolling for fifty feet until it came to a stop beneath a parked car. Daniel’s was thrown against the back of a parked SUV, shattering the vehicle’s windows before dropping lifelessly to the street. Both of them had died instantly.
Later that evening,
The Boston Globe
posted a preliminary online report of a fatal Back Bay accident:
Boston Globe City & Region Desk
By S
USAN
K
ITE
.A car racing at high speed hit two pedestrians in Boston’s Back Bay earlier this evening. The car swerved from behind a lane of stopped traffic and struck attorneys Daniel Redd of Boston and Cheryl O’Grady of New York City, who were walking in the crosswalk at Boylston and Arlington. Both were killed instantly. The car continued through the intersection and crashed into a parked delivery truck before exploding into flames. Remains of the driver have not yet been identified.
Even though the publicly reported details were sketchy, it was sufficient confirmation for Marco. No one had seen or heard anything unusual. It was a clean remote hit. The remains of the driver would soon be identified as a drunken street bum who’d gotten behind the wheel of a stolen car. The remote control equipment inside the car had exploded into a million indiscernible pieces, a method he’d employed for a dozen other hits. Marco’s two million dollar fee, with another million for no loose ends, would be wired to his Nevis account within twenty-four hours, as promised. Doing business with Tate was truly a pleasure.