All In (38 page)

“We've secured the premises,” Tom said after he finished listening to his earpiece. “But if you're attacked, I'll try to extract you.”

“You're kidding, right?”

Tom looked him straight in the eye and asked, “What do you think?” Then he pulled out a sleek cell phone that was vibrating noiselessly and looked down at it, furrowing his brow. “I have to take this,” he said, moving away just as Michel walked over.

“What?” Michel asked.

“Tom,” David replied laconically.

“Oh, yeah, he's hilarious. The way a tax audit is hilarious.”

 

“Yes?” Tom said into his phone as soon as he'd stepped away from David and Michel.

“She had a visitor,” said the man on the other end, the man Tom had assigned to keep an eye on Carolina Hammar.

“Who?”

“A man.”

Shit, David wasn't going to be happy about this. “Do you have a picture of him?” Tom asked.

“I'm sending it now.”

“Where is he right now? Can you see him?”

“In her room.”

Fuck. Tom was just about to give the order for his guy to knock on Carolina's door—screw it if he was overreacting—when the man said, “He's coming back out.”

“Can you see the woman?” Tom asked just as a text message chimed in. He plugged in his headset and studied the image that arrived as he was wondering whether he should tell his guy to knock on her door to make sure she was alright. The slightest little anomaly and he would order him to storm her room to secure her, and the Grand Hôtel could send him the bill. He wasn't about to let anything happen to David Hammar's little sister. Tom had had to work with the Russian mafia and the most radical of radical al-Qaida factions in North Africa. He would far rather do that again than take the retribution that David Hammar would unleash if anything were to happen to his sister.

Tom studied the image more closely and identified the man who'd visited Carolina Hammar as Peter De la Grip. He had no idea what that could mean. He thought about it, and then he heard a shout and a scream. He looked up, distracted. A journalist was trying to force his way in. Tom shoved his phone into his pocket and went to settle the disturbance.

He approached the journalist. They were all scum, if you asked him.

And a desk jockey and daddy's boy like Peter De la Grip could hardly constitute a serious threat to Carolina Hammar, Tom thought as he yelled at the journalist.

He decided to hold off.

53

P
eter walked out through the lobby of the Grand Hôtel.

He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window, but he looked the same as always. So weird that what he'd done didn't show from his outward appearance.

He didn't know what he felt. Guilt, relief, or maybe regret? No, not regret, strangely enough.

Maybe it would just take a little while for what he'd done to sink in?

It was so monumental.

Now he was late for the board meeting.

He hopped into a cab.

He would just make it.

54

D
avid stood off to the side below the stage, hidden in the shadows. He listened to the low murmur in the hall, scanning the rows of seats, which would soon be completely full. Men dressed in suits shook hands with each other, laughed loudly, and discussed the current hunting season and their sailing vacations. A few female voices broke in now and then, but the front few rows were overwhelmingly male. No journalists were permitted in here, but a few people were taking flash photos with their cell phones.

Up on the stage there was a podium with a lectern and a microphone. Next to the podium there was a table with chairs, microphones, and mineral water.

The seats in the front row, just below the stage, were reserved for members of the owning family, labeled in black letters by name and title. Peter De la Grip's chair was still empty, as was Natalia's, while Eugene and Alexander sat next to each other conversing in low voices. Ebba De la Grip sat, looking reserved and somber. Åsa was next to her, chatting with a young man in a suit. Gordon Wyndt, who'd arrived on the morning plane from London, sat down behind Eugene.

When there were just a few minutes remaining, Gustaf De la Grip and the six men on his current board walked in the door. The two bodyguards positioned themselves on either side of the doorway. People in the front rows stood up to greet Gustaf. Several shook hands. Some even bowed or curtsied. David remained standing while Gustaf took his seat, apparently unaffected by his deplorable performance during the press conference moments earlier.

He should probably go sit down too, David thought, but he was so amped up that he broke with the rules of etiquette and remained standing. Michel sat at the very end of the second row, silent and tense. David couldn't see Tom anywhere, but he sensed his presence. The digital clock on the wall turned to 12:59. Soon the doors would be closed and locked. No one would be admitted after the designated start time. David sensed movement, and Peter De la Grip hurried in. Natalia followed just behind Peter, wearing an elegant suit and a prim hairstyle, and David lost his composure for a microsecond.

Then the doors were closed. Spotlights were aimed at the stage and the lights went down in the rest of the room. The red digital numbers turned to 1:00. David clenched his fists in his pants pockets, preparing mentally and physically.

The next few hours would determine his entire future.

Gustaf stood and climbed onto the stage.

Spontaneous applause and a few cheers broke out. Gustaf nodded seriously, almost graciously. The applause and murmuring died down as Gustaf gazed at the audience. Small shareholders with as few as five votes to big shareholders with over a million peered back.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Gustaf began, “my dear shareholders, I hereby welcome you to this extraordinary general meeting.” Calmly and gravely, his eyes swept over the audience of seven hundred. “The first item of business is to select a chairman for the shareholders' meeting.”

David listened to the various formalities. The chairman of the shareholders' meeting, an attorney from one of Stockholm's most prestigious law firms, took a seat at the table along with his secretary. Gustaf stepped down off the stage, and a motion was passed to adopt the agenda. Since electing a board was the only thing on the agenda, it didn't take long.

“We note that there are two proposals for the composition of the board,” the lawyer said in such a dry voice it practically crackled. “One proposal is to reelect the current board. The other proposal, which was presented by Hammar Capital, calls for a board consisting of the following people ...” He listed David, Michel, and the remaining people that Hammar Capital had nominated. “First, I'll open the floor to Count Gustaf De la Grip, Investum's chairman of the board, to share with us his vision of where the board should go with the company.”

Gustaf came back up onto the stage and made a half-hour-long statement. David and Michel exchanged glances.

“Now I give the floor to David Hammar,” the lawyer finally said.

It was time.

The room went silent.

The lawyer stared at the rows of seats.

And then everything went black.

 

David walked up onto the stage. The room was pitch-black, yet another of Malin's dramatic ideas, which had seemed better when she'd first described it than it did now since David could hardly see his own hands in front of him. But he made it up onto the stage without any mishaps and hoped he was standing at the podium and not too close to the edge of the stage.

And then a single spotlight came on.

It shone straight on David, and at first the light blinded him—he couldn't see anything. The audience whispered. He waited as his eyes adjusted to the light and he started to be able to make out shapes in the audience. He spotted Alexander De la Grip, Eugene Tolstoy, and Natalia's mother.

Natalia sat straight-backed beside her mother. David felt a wave of emotions that he really couldn't explore right now. He blinked and gazed out at the enormous room, full of shareholders, taking them all in and letting them look at him.

A projector came on, and a Twitter stream was projected onto a screen behind him. The tweets, hashtagged #HC and #Investum, rolled by faster and faster, and David had to admit that the effect was impressive. But then Malin had always had a flair for the dramatic.

A sound technician said into his earpiece, “Go ahead and begin.”

David took a step forward.

The lighting technician swept the spotlight over the audience in quick bands of light.

David spotted Malin, who was standing and watching him nervously from the side. She gave him a brief, encouraging—or maybe it was a warning—nod.

He nodded to the chairman of the shareholders' meeting.

He pushed aside all thoughts of Natalia.

He took a deep breath.

So.

It was time.

55

N
atalia had arrived late on purpose because she hadn't wanted to mingle or chat with anyone, especially not her mother, who had greeted her with just a quick nod and then went back to staring straight ahead, which was what she was doing now in the chair next to her.

Natalia pushed aside the hurt with determination. Actually she shouldn't have been all that surprised. Her mother normally used silence and emotional distancing to deal with conflict. And there were other crises to cope with at the moment. For example, David, who was standing on stage, his charm almost electric. He was wearing a black suit, a slim dark-gray shirt with no tie, dark cufflinks, and a dark belt that looked expensive under the spotlight. He was so handsome—no, so
magnetic
—that it hurt the eye. For a brief moment it had felt as if he was looking right at her, but it had happened so quickly that she might have been imagining it. She realized she was holding her breath. And then he began to speak.

He introduced himself in a loud voice, and little shivers ran over her skin. She knew David from informal settings. Their meetings had been relaxed and private, and that was the David she'd gotten to know. She had never seen him in his role as a self-confident business leader, never suspected how different it would be. Because, oh my God, what an impression he made.

Natalia literally had goose bumps all over her body. His voice mesmerized the entire auditorium. No one whispered, no one tinkered with their cell phone, no one even fidgeted impatiently in their chair. Everyone sat upright, wide-eyed, and listened as David Hammar told them what he would do if they voted for him and his board. Step by step David went through the shortcomings he and Hammar Capital's analysts had identified. Unhealthy perks. Incompetent leadership. Bad investments and poor decisions. Undervalued assets. Outrageous compensation packages. Point by point he hacked away at pretty much everything Investum had done in recent years.

Natalia was almost having difficulty breathing. She hadn't been involved in any of the abuses he described, and she'd never suspected there were so many irregularities. She didn't dare look at anyone in the family as she listened to how he thought the subsidiaries should be broken up, how various offices and ineffective divisions should be shut down and the work outsourced.

And that wasn't even the worst of it.

After David had spoken uninterrupted for almost an hour and gone through PowerPoint presentations about how to reorganize—or obliterate—Investum, he moved on to hidden assets that should be realized. There was land to be sold, assets to be auctioned off, things that had been in the family for eons but which were technically owned by the company. Their worth should be realized and their value passed on to the shareholders. She could see the business side of his plan, was able to see how it made sense. But then sense fled.

“And naturally the family estate, Gyllgarn Castle, northwest of Stockholm, will be sold,” David said from the stage. “It would not be fiscally responsible not to sell it.”

Gyllgarn, oh my God. Because although the estate had belonged to the De la Grip family for centuries, apparently it was owned now, from a purely technical tax and bookkeeping perspective, by the Investum company. She'd had no idea. Peter and her father must have worked that out together when Peter took over the property. She could picture them—conspiring over the deal. Had her mother known? Had Alexander? Or had they been excluded too? It didn't matter, because now it would be lost. So stupid.

She wondered who could even afford to buy it. But David might have it parceled off and sell the woods and the acreage and the furnishings individually. She looked down at her hands on her knee, didn't want to cry. It was all just stuff. But it hurt her so much, it was like a physical ache.

David kept going. There was a seemingly endless list of actions that would increase the stock price—if he had his way.

She kept listening, in a shocked fog, to David outlining in broad brushstrokes what Investum's future would look like under his leadership. The board would be filled with skilled people. All the improper perks and bonuses would be gotten rid of immediately. Compensation and severance packages would be reviewed and torn up. And so on.

Natalia was so thirsty she could hardly swallow. Around her the shocked silence slowly started to become an agitated murmur. On the white screen behind David, Twitter screamed about hostile takeovers and megalomania. The level of excitement in the room was tremendous.

But if Natalia were to be completely honest with herself, this was a sound plan. The business and finance part of her saw that. At the same time, however, David's plan meant totally destroying a traditional empire. If he won this vote, he would take apart a power hierarchy and disrupt a world order that had lasted for generations. It was almost unbearable. Natalia straightened in her seat. She simply refused to fall apart. This wasn't over yet. She had a few aces of her own up her sleeve. She was no debutante.

She had said she would fight.

And that was exactly what she meant to do.