The Fourth Estate (3 page)

“I’ve just come
out of my meeting with Pierson,” she’d said. “it lasted over an hour, but he
still hadn’t made up his mind by the time I left him.”

“Hadn’t made up
his mind?”

“No. He still
needs to consult the bank’s finance committee before he can come to a final
decision.”

“But surely now
that all the other banks have fallen into place, Pierson can’t ...”

“He can and he
may well. Try to remember that he’s the president of a small bank in Ohio. He’s
not interested in what other banks have agreed to. And after all the bad press
coverage you’ve been getting in the past few weeks, he only cares about one
thing right now.”

“What’s that?”
he’d asked.

“Covering his
backside,” she’d replied.

“But doesn’t he
realize that all the other banks will renege if he doesn’t go along with the
overall plan”“

“Yes, he does,
but when I put that to him he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘in which case
I’ll just have to take my chance along with all the others.’”

Townsend had
begun to curse, when E.B. added, “But he did promise me one thing.”

‘What was that?”

“He’ll call the
moment the committee has reached its decision.”

‘That’s big of
him. So what am I expected to do if it goes against me?”

“Release the
press statement we agreed on,” she’d said.

Townsend had
felt sick. “is there nothing left that I can do?”

“No, nothing,”
Ms. Beresford had replied firmly. “Just sit and wait for Pierson to call. If
I’m going to make the next flight to New York, I’ll have to dash. I should be
with you around midday.” -17he line had gone dead.

Townsend
continued to think about her words as he rose from his chair and began pacing
around the room. He stopped to check his tie in the mirror above the
mantelpiece – he hadn’t had time to change his clothes since getting off the
plane, and it showed. For the first time, he couldn’t help thinking that he
looked older than his sixty-three years. But that wasn’t surprising after what
E.B. had put him through over the past six weeks. He would have been the first
to admit that had he sought her advice a little earlier, he might not now be so
dependent on a call from the president of a small bank in Ohio.

He stared at the
phone, willing it to ring, But it didn’t. He made no attempt to tackle the pile
of letters Heather had left for him to sign.

His thoughts
were interrupted when the door opened, and Heather came in.

She handed him a
single sheet of paper; on it was a list of names arranged in alphabetical
order- “I thought you might find this useful,” she said. After thirty-five
years of working for him, she knew he was the last man on earth who could be
expected to just sit and wait.

Townsend ran his
finger down the list of names unusually slowly. Not one of them meant anything
to him. Three had an asterisk against them, indicating that they had worked for
Global Corp in the past. He currently employed thirty-seven thousand people,
thirty-six thousands of whom he hadn’t ever met. But three of those who had
worked for him at some point in their careers were now on the staff of the
Cleveland Sentinel, a paper he’d never heard of.

“Who owns the
Sentinel” he asked, hoping that he might be able to put some pressure on the
proprietor.

“Richard
Armstrong,” Heather replied flatly.

“That’s all I
need.”

“In fact you
don’t control a paper within a hundred miles of Cleveland,” continued Heather.
“Just a radio station to the south of the city that pumps out country and
western.”

At that moment
Townsend would happily have traded the New York Star for the Cleveland
Sentinel. He glanced again at the three asterisked names, but they still meant
nothing to him. He looked back up at Heather. “Do any of them still love me?”
he asked, trying to force a smile ...

“Barbara Bennett
certainly doesn’t,” Heather replied. “She’s. the fashion editor on the
Sentinel. She was sacked from her local paper in Seattle a few days after you
took it over. She sued for wrongful dismissal, and claimed her replacement was
having an affair with the editor. We ended up having to settle out of court. In
the preliminary hearings she described you as nothing more than a peddler of
pornography whose only interest is the bottom line. You gave instructions that
she was never to be employed by any of your papers again.”

Townsend knew
that that particular list probably had well over a thousand names on it, every
one of whom would be only too happy to dip their pens in blood as they composed
his obituary for tomorrow’s first editions.

“Mark Kendall?”
he queried.

“Chief crime
reporter,” said Heather. “Worked on the New York Star for a few months, but
there’s no record of your ever coming across him.”

Townsend’s eyes
settled on another unfamiliar name, and he waited for Heather to supply the
details. He knew she would be saving the best for last: even she enjoyed having
some hold over him.

“Malcolm
McCreedy. Features editor at the Sentinel. He worked for the corporation on the
Melbourne Courier between 1979 and 1984. In those days he used to tell everyone
on the paper that you and he were drinking mates from way back. He was sacked
for continually failing to get his copy in on time. It seems that malt whiskey
was the first thing to gain his attention after the morning conference, and
anything in a skirt soon after lunch.

Despite his
claims, I can’t find any proof that you’ve even met him.”

Townsend
marveled at how much information Heather had come up with in so short a time.
But he accepted that after working for him for so long, her contacts were
almost as good as his.

“McCreedy’s been
married twice,” she continued. “Both times it ended in divorce. He has two
children by the first marriage: Jill, who’s twenty-seven, and Alan,
twenty-four. Alan works for the corporation on the Dallas Comet, in the
classifieds department.”

“Couldn’t be
better,” said Townsend. “McCreedy’s our man. He’s about to get a call from his
long-lost mate.”

Heather smiled.
“I’ll get him on the phone right away. Let’s hope he’s sober.”

Townsend nodded,
and Heather returned to her office, The proprietor of 297 journals, with a
combined readership of over a billion people around the world, waited to be put
through to the features editor on a local paper in Ohio with a circulation of
less than thirty-five thousand.

Townsend stood
up and began to pace around the office, formulating the questions he needed to
ask McCreedy, and thinking about the order he should put them in. As he circled
the room, his eyes passed over the framed copies of his newspapers displayed on
the walls, bearing their most famous headlines.

The New York
Star, 23 November 1963: “Kennedy Assassinated in Dallas.”

The Continent,
30july 1981: “Happily Ever After,” above a picture of Charles and Diana on
their wedding day.

The Globe, 17
May 199 1: “Richard Branson Deflowered Me, Claims Virgin.”

He would happily
have paid half a million dollars to be able to read the headlines on tomorrow’s
papers.

The phone on his
desk gave out a shrill blast, and Townsend quickly returned to his chair and
grabbed the receiver.

“Malcolm
McCreedy is on line one,” said Heather, putting him through.

As soon as he
heard the click, Townsend said, “Malcolm, is that you?”

“Sure is, Mr.
Townsend,” said a surprised-sounding voice with an unmistakable Australian
accent.

“It’s been a
long time, Malcolm. Too long, in fact. How are you?”

“I’m fine,
Keith. Just fine,” came back a more confident reply.

“And how are the
children?” asked Townsend, looking down at the piece of paper Heather had left
on his desk. “Jill and Alan, isn’t it? In fact, isn’t Alan working for the
company out of Dallas?”

A long silence
followed, and Townsend began to wonder if he’d been cut off.

Eventually
McCreedy said, “That’s right, Keith. They’re both doing just fine, thanks. And
yours?” He was obviously unable to remember how many there were, or their
names.

‘They’re doing
just fine too, thank you, Malcolm,” said Townsend, purposely mimicking him.
“And how are you enjoying Cleveland?”

“It’s OK,” said
McCreedy. “But I’d rather be back in Oz. I miss being able to watch the Tigers
playing on a Saturday afternoon.”

“Well, that was
one of the things I was calling you about,” said Townsend.

“But first I
need to ask you for some advice.”

“Of course,
Keith, anything. You can always rely on me,” said McCreedy.

“But perhaps I’d
better close the door to my office,” he added, now that he was certain every
other journalist on the floor realized who it was on the other end of the line.

Townsend waited
impatiently.

“So, what can I
do for you, Keith?” asked a slightly out of-breath voice.

“Does the name
Austin Pierson mean anything to you?” Another long silence followed. “He’s some
big wheel in the financial community, isn’t he? I think he heads up one of our
banks or insurance companies. Give me a moment, and I’ll just check him out on
my computer.”

Townsend waited
again, aware that if his father had asked the same question forty years before
it might have taken hours, perhaps even days, before someone could have come up
with an answer.

“Got him,” said
the man from Cleveland a few moments later. He paused.

“Now I remember
why I recognized the name. We did a feature on him about four years ago when he
took over as president at Manufacturers Cleveland.”

“What can you
tell me about him?” asked Townsend, unwilling to waste any more time on
banalities.

“Not a great
deal,” replied McCreedy as he studied the screen in front of him, occasionally
pressing more keys. “He appears to be a model citizen. Rose through the ranks
at the bank, treasurer of the local Rotary Club, Methodist lay preacher,
married to the same woman for thirty-one years. Three children, all residing in
the city.”

“Anything known
about the kids?”

McCreedy pressed
some more keys before he replied. “Yes. One teaches biology in the local high
school. The second’s a staff nurse at Cleveland Metropolitan, and the youngest
has just been made a partner in the most prestigious law firm in the state. If
you’re hoping to do a deal with Mr. Austin Pierson, Keith, you’ll be pleased to
know that he seems to have an unblemished reputation.”

Townsend was not
pleased to know. “So there’s nothing in his past that . . .”

“Not that I know
of, Keith,” said McCreedy. He quickly read through his five-year-old notes,
hoping to find a tidbit that would please his former boss. “Yes, now it all
comes back. The man was as tight as a gnat’s arse.

He wouldn’t even
allow me to interview him during office hours, and when I turned up at his
place in the evening, all I got for my trouble was a watered-down pineapple
juice.”

Townsend decided
that he’d come to a dead end with Pierson and McCreedy, and that there wasn’t
any purpose in continuing with the conversation.

“Thank you,
Malcolm,” he said. “You’ve been most helpful. Call me if you come up with
anything on Pierson.”

He was just
about to put the phone down when his former employee asked, “What was the other
thing you wanted to discuss, Keith? You see, I was rather hoping that there
might be an opening in Oz, perhaps even at the Courier.” He paused. “I can tell
you, Keith, I’d be willing to take a drop in salary if it meant I could work
for you again.”

“I’ll bear that
in mind,” said Townsend, 11 and you can be sure I’ll get straight back to you,
Malcolm, if anything should ever cross my desk.”

Townsend put the
phone down on a man he felt sure he would never speak to again in his life. All
that McCreedy had been able to tell him was that Mr. Austin Pierson was a paragon
of virtue-not a breed with whom Townsend had a lot in common, or was at all
certain he knew how to handle. As usual, E.B.’s advice was proving to be
correct. He could do nothing except sit and wait. He leaned back in his chair
and tucked one leg under the other.

It was twelve
minutes past eleven in Cleveland, twelve minutes past four in London and twelve
minutes past three in Sydney. By six o’clock that evening he probably wouldn’t
be able to control the headlines in his own papers, let alone those of Richard
Armstrong.

The phone on his
desk rang again-was it possible that McCreedy had found out something
interesting about Austin Pierson? Townsend always assumed that everyone had at
least one skeleton they wanted to keep safely locked up in the cupboard.

He grabbed the
phone.

“I have the
President of the United States on line one,” said Heather, “and a Mr. Austin
Pierson from Cleveland, Ohio on line two. Which one will you take first?”