Fog was rolling in like a thick, undulating blanket, propelled forward by the same wild gusts that were playing havoc with Barbara Walters's hair and spitting sand at the camera's lens. At the prearranged spot, Walters stopped, turned her back to the ocean, and started to address another question to Farrell. The camera swiveled, too, but now it saw only the couple framed against a dismal backdrop of gray fog while wind blew Walters's hair across her face.
"Cut!" she called out, irritably shoving hair out of her eyes, trying to free the strands sticking to her lipstick. Turning to the woman who was in charge of makeup, she said, "
Tracy, do you have anything that will
hold my hair down in this wind?"
"Elmer's Glue?"
Tracy suggested with a lame attempt at humor, and motioned to the van parked beneath the cypress trees on the west lawn of the Farrell estate. After excusing herself to Farrell, Walters and the makeup girl headed toward the van.
"I
hate
fog!" the cameraman announced bitterly as he glowered at the thick gray mist shrouding the coastline, obliterating the panoramic view of Half Moon Bay that he'd envisioned using as cinematic background for this interview. "I
hate
fog," he repeated, turning his scowling face up to the sky. "And I hate wind,
goddammit
!"
He had addressed his complaint directly to the Almighty, and, as if in answer, a fistful of sand blew up like a miniature whirlwind at the cameraman's feet and hurtled itself into his chest and face.
The assistant cameraman chuckled. "Apparently, God isn't very fond
of you
either," he observed, watching the irate man dust sand off his eyebrows. He held out a cup of steaming coffee. "How do you feel about coffee?"
"I hate that too," the cameraman muttered, but he took the cup.
The assistant nodded in the direction of the tall man standing a few yards away, gazing out at the ocean. "Why don't you ask Farrell to stop the wind and clear the fog? From what I hear, God probably takes His orders from Farrell."
"If you ask me," Alice Champion chuckled, joining the pair and sipping her own coffee, "Matthew Farrell
is
God." Both men shot an ironic look at the script girl, but they said nothing, and
Alice knew their silence represented their own reluctant awe of the man.
Over the rim of her coffee cup, she studied Farrell as he stood looking out across the ocean—a solitary, somewhat secretive ruler of a financial empire called
Intercorp
, an empire he had created out of his own sweat and daring. A tall, urbane monarch who sprang from the steel mills of Indiana, Matthew Farrell had somehow purged himself of any of the characteristics that might have been identified with his lowly origins.
Now, as he stood on the ridge, waiting for the interview to continue,
Alice thought he absolutely radiated success, confidence, and virility. And power. Most of all, Matthew Farrell emanated raw, harsh power. He was
tanned, suave, and impeccably groomed, yet there was something about him that even his tailor-made clothes and polite smile couldn't conceal—a danger, a ruthlessness that made others try to amuse, rather than annoy him. It was as if his entire being gave off a silent warning not to cross him.
"Mr. Farrell?" Barbara Walters stepped down from the van, clamping her blowing hair down against her temples with
both hands. "This weather's impossible. We'll have to set up inside the house. It will take us about thirty minutes. Can we use the living room?"
"Fine," Matt said, his annoyance at this delay concealed behind a brief smile. He did not like reporters of any kind, from any medium. The only reason he'd agreed to allow Barbara Walters to interview him was that there'd been a long rash of publicity about his private life and amorous affairs, and it was beneficial to
Intercorp's
image for its chief executive officer to be seen in his corporate persona for a change. When it came to
Intercorp
, Matt made whatever sacrifices were necessary. Nine years ago, after he finished working in Venezuela, he'd used his bonus and the additional money
Sommers
put up, to buy a small automotive parts manufacturing company that was teetering on bankruptcy. A year later, he sold it for twice what it had cost. Using his share of the profits and additional money he borrowed from banks and private investors, he formed
Intercorp
and, for the next several years, he continued to buy up companies that were teetering on bankruptcy—not because they were poorly managed, but only because they were under-capitalized—then he shored them up with
Intercorp's
capital and waited for a buyer.
Later, instead of selling the companies off, he began a carefully planned acquisition program. As a result, in one decade, he'd built
Intercorp
into the financial empire he'd imagined during those grim days and nights he labored in the steel mills and sweated on the oil rig. Today,
Intercorp
was a massive conglomerate headquartered in
Los Angeles that controlled businesses as diverse as pharmaceutical research laboratories and textile mills.
Until recently, Matt had made it a practice to purchase only selected companies that were for sale. A year ago, however, he had entered into negotiations to buy a multi-billion dollar electronics manufacturer headquartered in
Chicago. Originally, the company had approached him, asking if
Intercorp
would be interested in acquiring them.
Matt had liked the idea, but after spending a great deal of revenue and many months finalizing the agreement, the officers of Haskell Electronics had suddenly refused to accept the previously agreed-upon terms. Angry at the waste of
Intercorp's
time and money, Matt decided to acquire Haskell with or without their consent. As a result of that decision, a fierce and well-publicized battle ensued. At the end of it, Haskell's officers and directors were left lying crippled on the financial battlefield, and
Intercorp
had gained a very profitable electronics manufacturer. Along with victory, however, Matt also acquired a reputation as a ruthless corporate raider. That didn't particularly faze him; it was no more irksome than his reputation as an international playboy which the press had bestowed upon him. Adverse publicity and the loss of his personal privacy were the costs of success, and he accepted them with the same philosophical indifference that he felt for the fawning hypocrisy he encountered socially, and the treachery he faced from business adversaries. Sycophants and enemies came with extraordinary success, and if dealing with them had made him extremely cynical and wary, that, too, was the price he'd had to pay.
None of that bothered him; what did bother him was that he no longer derived much gratification from his successes. The exhilaration he used to feel when he faced a difficult business deal had been missing for years, probably, he'd decided, because success was virtually a foregone conclusion now. There was nothing left to challenge him—at least there hadn't been until he'd decided to take over Haskell Electronics. Now, for the first time in years, he was feeling some of the old adrenaline and anticipation. Haskell was a challenge; the huge corporation needed to be completely restructured. It was top-heavy with management; its manufacturing facilities were antiquated, its marketing strategies outdated. All of that would have to change before it could begin to realize its full profit potential, and Matt was eager to get to
Chicago and get started. In the past whenever he acquired a new company, he'd sent in the six men who
Business Week
magazine had dubbed his "takeover team" to evaluate the organization and make recommendations. They'd been at Haskell for two weeks already, working in the sixty-story high rise that Haskell owned and occupied, waiting for Matt to join them. Since he expected to be in
Chicago off and on for the better part of a year, he'd bought a penthouse apartment there. Everything was in readiness, and he was eager to leave and get started.
Late last night he'd returned from
Greece, where negotiations to acquire a shipping fleet had taken four long, frustrating weeks, instead of two, to bring to fruition. Now the only thing that was holding him up was this damned interview. Silently cursing the delay, Matt turned toward the house. On the east lawn, his helicopter was already waiting to take him to the airport, where the Lear he'd bought was ready to take off for
Chicago.
The helicopter pilot returned Matt's brief wave, then gave the thumbs-up sign that the chopper was fueled and ready to fly, but he glanced worriedly toward the wall of fog closing in on them, and Matt knew his pilot was as eager as he to be airborne. Crossing the flagstone terrace, he entered the house through the French doors that opened into his private study. He was reaching for the telephone, intending to call his
Los Angeles office, when the door across the room banged open. "Hey, Matt—" Joe O'Hara poked his head into the opening, his gruff, uncultured voice and unkempt appearance a jarring contrast to the almost antiseptic grandeur of the marble-floored study with its thick cream carpet and glass-topped desk. Officially, O'Hara was Matt's chauffeur, unofficially, he was his bodyguard, and far better suited to that role than the role of chauffeur—for when O'Hara slid behind the wheel of an automobile, he drove as if he were jockeying for first place in the Grand Prix.
"When're we
leavin
' for
Chicago?" O'Hara demanded.
"As soon as I get this damned interview over with."
"Okay. I phoned ahead and the limo will be
waitin
' for us on the runway at Midway. But that's not what I came in here to tell you," O'Hara continued, walking over to the window and parting the draperies. Gesturing for Matt to join him, he pointed toward the wide, curving drive that wound through the cypress trees at the front of the house. His weathered face softened and his voice became low, lustful. "Take a look at that sleek sweetheart out there," he said as Matt walked over to the window. Someone else would have expected the sweetheart to be a woman, but Matt knew better. After O'Hara's wife died, cars became his only remaining love. "She belongs to one of the cameramen who came out here with the Walters broad."
The sweetheart was a 1959 red Cadillac convertible in mint condition.
"Will you look at them globes," O'Hara said, referring to the car's headlights in the awed, lascivious voice of an adolescent looking at a
Playboy
centerfold. "And those curves! Sleek, Matt, real sleek. Makes you want to run
yer
hands across '
em
, don't it?" He nudged the silent man beside him with an elbow. "Have you ever seen anything prettier
than
that?"
Matt was spared the need to reply by the arrival of the script girl, who politely said they were finished setting up in the living room.
The interview had been proceeding along predictable lines for nearly an hour, when the door suddenly opened and a woman hurried into the room, her lovely, unsuspecting face wreathed in a smile. "Matt darling, you're back! I—" Every head in the room swiveled, the ABC crew gaped, the taping session forgotten as Meryl Saunders rushed forward wearing a red negligee so transparent, so suggestive, that it would have made the lingerie buyer at Frederick's of Hollywood blush.
But it was not Meryl's body the ABC group was staring at, it was her face—a face that graced movie and television screens all over the world; a face whose girlish sweetness and outspoken religious beliefs had made her
America's darling. Adolescents liked her because she was so pretty and looked so young; parents liked her because she set a wholesome image for their teenagers; and producers liked her because she was one hell of an actress and because any movie she was in was guaranteed to gross in the mega-millions. Never mind that she was twenty-three years old with a strong sexual appetite—in the pulse beat of shocked silence that greeted Meryl's arrival, Matt felt as if he'd been caught in the act of seducing Alice in Wonderland.
Like the valiant little trooper she was on the movie set, Meryl smiled politely at the speechless group, made a pretty apology to Matt for interrupting him, then turned and walked out with all the modest dignity of a pinafore-clad student in a girls' convent school—which was a true tribute to her acting skills, since the little red G-string and the cheeks of her fanny were clearly visible beneath the fiery red negligee draping her lithesome body.
Barbara Walters's face was a mirror of conflicting reactions, and Matt braced himself for the inevitable barrage of prying questions about Meryl, sorry that her carefully constructed public image was about to be demolished. But Ms. Walters merely asked if Meryl Saunders was a frequent houseguest of his. Matt replied that she enjoyed staying at his house whenever it was unoccupied, as it often was.
To his surprise, the journalist accepted his evasive answer and returned to the topic she'd been discussing before Meryl's arrival. Leaning slightly forward in her chair, she asked, "How do you feel about the growing number of hostile corporate takeovers?"
"I think it's a trend that's bound to continue until such time as guidelines are set up to control it," Matt replied.
"Is
Intercorp
planning to swallow up any more?"
A leading question, but not unexpected, and he sidestepped it smoothly. "
Intercorp
is always interested in acquiring good companies in order to further our own growth and theirs."