I was betraying him, and I felt bad about it.
‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘It was with a management consultancy. They’re looking to start some operations in Russia.’
‘Oh, which one?’ asked Jamie.
‘KEL,’ I said. ‘It’s only a small one.’
‘Oh, I know KEL! Christian Deerbury works there. He was at Oxford with us. Do you remember him?’
Damn! I did vaguely. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ I replied.
‘Well, I could give him a call. Get him to put in a good word.’
‘No, don’t bother. I’m sure they don’t want me. Consulting’s too much like banking anyway. I should never have gone.’
I felt uncomfortable, and Jamie and Kate could sense it. But I couldn’t tell them what I was really doing.
They realized I didn’t want to continue with the conversation, and fell silent.
I took a deep breath. ‘Perhaps I ought to leave soon. I should start looking for a place of my own.’
‘No!’ said Jamie and Kate together.
‘Stay here, Nick. Please,’ Kate said.
I looked at Jamie. He nodded his own encouragement. ‘OK,’ I said, and smiled weakly.
I sat up at my desk that night, looking out over the shallow valley, illuminated by a full moon. Should I stay? It was very pleasant, and I had nowhere else to go. The estate agent had successfully let my flat. Kate’s eagerness for me to remain was evident. Why? I wondered. I suspected it had something to do with Jamie. Perhaps she thought I could change him or, rather, prevent him from changing. I sighed. I feared there was little chance of that.
But, if I stayed, how would they react when they found out about the takeover, as they surely would? Well, Kate would probably approve. She thought as little of Dekker as I did. She was as angry as I was over the way they had treated me.
And Jamie?
It would be a shock. But it shouldn’t be too bad for him. One of the main attractions of Dekker to Bloomfield Weiss was its employees, and Jamie was an important one of those. And continued employment with them would be preferable to Dekker going bust.
So that was how I persuaded myself that I wasn’t letting down my friends.
And I would be giving Ricardo exactly what he deserved.
Stahl himself called me back at about eight the next morning.
‘We’re gonna go for it,’ he growled. ‘Be at our office in Broadgate at ten forty-five. We’re gonna see Lord Kerton.’
I waited for him in the Bloomfield Weiss lobby. He was flanked by two besuited bankers. Although they were both of average height, they towered above him. In fact, as he swept out of the office with one each on either side and slightly behind him, he looked like a Mafia boss with his two heavies in tow.
And these guys were heavies. Bloomfield Weiss had a reputation for aggression that applied to its corporate-finance dealings as well as everything else. These two had personally been involved in the dismemberment of dozens of corporations throughout the world. Technically the activity was known as mergers and acquisitions, or M and A. But some of the jargon gave a better idea of the flavour of what actually happened: ‘downsizing’, ‘giving value back to shareholders’, ‘shedding non-core activities’, ‘squeezing cash out of the business’. And then there was another set of phrases that dealt with the other side of the coin: ‘golden parachute’, ‘executive incentive scheme’ and especially that little three-letter word, ‘fee’.
Stahl introduced me as ‘the kid I was telling you about’. The bankers’ names were Schwartz and Godfrey. We hurried across the paved squares in the centre of Broadgate to a cab that was waiting for us on one of the side-streets that adjoined the complex. Dekker Ward’s office was in a small street just behind the Bank of England. It took us fifteen minutes to crawl there through the City traffic. It would have taken five minutes to walk.
Of course, I had never been to Dekker’s City office before. It was where the traditional, non-Ricardo business of the firm was carried out: trading in British and ex-colonial stocks, some private client business, a small fund-management group, and corporate finance. At least, that’s what I thought went on there. Sitting high up in the air three miles away in Canary Wharf, Ricardo’s team neither knew nor cared much what anyone else at Dekker did.
The façade was an elegant Georgian four-storey building, painted light grey. We walked into what could have been the entrance hall of a country house. The man at the reception desk was more like a butler than a security guard. After having our credentials respectfully taken, we were ushered into a lift and led into a boardroom one floor up. There, an assortment of Victorian financiers stared down at a long, polished table. I wandered over to look at the names. There was a Dekker, and a Ward, but most of them were Kertons.
Stahl, too, looked closely round the room. I could tell he liked it. He liked it a lot. ‘Hey, Dwight, do you think we could fix up the thirty-eighth floor like this?’
I glanced at the two bankers and only just managed to suppress a smile.
‘I dunno, Sidney,’ said the one called Dwight. ‘We’d need some old photos of your folks. I’m sure we could find an artist to add the necessary touches.’
Stahl laughed. ‘I’d get them to put up my old grandma. You know she was a matchmaker? One of those babushkas who arranged marriages? Boy, did she know how to create a deal out of nowhere.’
Just then the door opened, and Lord Kerton strode in. With his tall frame, longish fair hair and his elegant suit, he was all poise and self-assurance. ‘Morning,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Andrew Kerton.’
Stahl shook it. ‘Sidney Stahl. This is Dwight Godfrey and Jerry Schwartz. And Nick Elliot I believe you know.’
‘Actually, I don’t think I do,’ he said, but he shook my hand and smiled in a friendly way.
Stahl glanced at me strangely. ‘Nick used to work for Dekker Ward until recently.’
Kerton frowned.
‘In the Emerging Markets Group,’ I added quickly. ‘We did meet once.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I do know many of the people over there but I couldn’t quite place you. Jumped ship, have you?’
‘You could say that, sir.’
Kerton’s cool blue eyes studied me for a moment, and then he turned back to Stahl. ‘Have a seat, gentlemen.’ There was a knock on the door and a butler-type man brought in coffee. ‘As you requested, I’m here alone. I haven’t told anyone else in the firm about your visit, but I must admit I’m curious to know what it’s about.’
‘OK Mr... er...’ Stahl hesitated, caught uncharacteristically off-guard. ‘Andy OK?’ he said.
Kerton smiled. ‘Andy’s fine, Sid.’ I caught Dwight Godfrey stiffening a touch. I suspected Stahl preferred Sidney to Sid.
‘OK, Andy. It’s real simple. We’d like to make an offer for your company.’
Kerton leaned back in his chair. ‘I’m flattered,’ he said, looking it. ‘But Dekker Ward is growing very strongly, and we expect this growth to continue. I don’t think we’re too keen to sell at the moment.’
‘OK,’ said Stahl, and waited.
‘All right,’ Kerton said, a pleased smile on his face. ‘You’ve intrigued me. What price were you thinking of?’
‘Ten million pounds.’
Kerton snorted. ‘Ten million! That’s absurd. I’m sure you’ve discovered we keep our results confidential, but our annual profits are substantially more than that. In fact our monthly profits are several times that.’
‘Oh, we know,’ said Stahl, fixing Kerton with his brown eyes. ‘The thing is, we know you got a problem down there with your emerging-market guys. But we don’t know whether you know how big a problem it is.’