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  He lurched from side to side as he stumbled down the narrow corridor, pausing when he reached the staircase which led up onto the deck. He then slowly began to climb the steps, clutching firmly onto the rope on both sides. When he reached the top he stepped out onto the deck, checking quickly in both directions. There was no one to be seen. It was a clear, cool night, no different from ninety-nine in every hundred at that time of year.

  Armstrong padded silently on until he was above the engine room—the noisiest part of the ship.

  He waited only for a moment before untying the cord of his dressing-gown and allowing it to fall to the deck.

  Naked in the warm night, he stared out into the still black sea and thought: isn’t your whole life meant to flash before you at a time like this?

  2.

  The Citizen

  5 November 1991

  TOWNSEND FACES RUIN

  “Messages?” was all Keith Townsend said as he passed his secretary’s desk and headed toward his office.

  “The President called from Camp David just before you boarded the plane,” Heather said.

  “Which of my papers has annoyed him this time?” Townsend asked as he sat down.

  “The New York Star. He’s heard a rumor that you’re going to print his bank statement on tomorrow’s front page,” Heather replied.

  “It’s more likely to be my own bank statement that makes the front pages tomorrow,” said Townsend, his Australian accent more pronounced than usual. “Who else?”

  “Margaret Thatcher has sent a fax from London. She’s agreed to your terms for a two-book contract, even though Armstrong’s bid was higher.”

  “Let’s hope someone offers me $6 million when I write my memoirs.”

  Heather gave him a weak smile.

  “Anyone else?”

  “Gary Deakins has had another writ served on him.”

  “What for this time?”

  “He accused the Archbishop of Brisbane of rape, on the front page of yesterday’s Truth.”

  “The truth, the whole truth, and anything but the truth,” said Townsend, smiling. “Just as long as it sells papers.”

  “Unfortunately it turns out that the woman in question is a well-known lay preacher, and has been a friend of the archbishop’s family for years. It seems that Gary suggested a different meaning each time he used the word ‘lay’.”

  Townsend leaned back in his chair and continued to listen to the myriad problems other people were facing all around the world: the usual complaints from politicians, businessmen and so-called media personalities who expected him to intervene immediately to save their precious careers from ruin. By this time tomorrow, most of them would have calmed down and been replaced by another dozen or so equally irate, equally demanding prima donnas. He knew that every one of them would be only too delighted to discover that it was his own career which really was on the verge of collapse—and all because the president of a small bank in Cleveland had demanded that a loan of $50 million be repaid by the close of business tonight.

  As Heather continued to go through the list of messages—most of them from people whose names meant nothing to him—Townsend’s mind drifted back to the speech he’d given the previous evening. A thousand of his top executives from all over the world had gathered in Honolulu for a three-day conference. In his closing address he’d told them that Global Corp couldn’t be in better shape to face the challenges of the new media revolution. He had ended by saying: “We are the one company that is qualified to lead this industry into the twenty-first century.” They had stood and cheered him for several minutes. As he looked down into the packed audience full of confident faces, he had wondered just how many of them suspected that Global was actually only hours away from going bankrupt.

  “What shall I do about the President?” Heather asked for the second time.

  Townsend snapped back into the real world. “Which one?”

  “Of the United States.”

  “Wait until he calls again,” he said. “He may have calmed down a bit by then. Meanwhile, I’ll have a word with the editor of the Star.”

  “And Mrs. Thatcher?”

  “Send her a large bunch of flowers and a note saying, ‘We’ll make your memoirs number one from Moscow to New York’.”

  “Shouldn’t I add London?”

  “No, she knows it will be number one in London.”

  “And what should I do about Gary Deakins?”

  “Phone the archbishop and tell him I’m going to build that new roof his cathedral so desperately needs. Wait a month, then send him a check for $10,000.”

  Heather nodded, closed her notebook and asked, “Do you want to take any calls?”

  “Only Austin Pierson.” He paused. “The moment he phones, put him straight through.”

  Heather turned and left the room.

  Townsend swiveled his chair round and stared out of the window. He tried to recall the conversation he’d had with his financial adviser when she had phoned him in the private jet on his way back from Honolulu.

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

  The Globe, 17 May 1991: “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 titbit 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 c
ontinuing 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, “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?”

  FIRST EDITION

  Births, Marriages and Deaths

  3.

  The Times

  6 July 1923