Saturday's Child

By Phil Merrick

Saturdays Child is set in 2006 at the time of the World Cup in Germany.

The City International Bank of New York is looking for a foothold in Europe and has targeted the Bank of St Andrew, an Edinburgh based bank in need of investment and some new management.

But things arent what they seem. The Bank of St Andrew has some secrets and some very dubious customers who will stop at nothing to protect their business. Including the British Government and an Italian called Gio Bartolo.

The England team have their best chance of winning the World Cup since 1966, City International need the USA to win, Gio Bartolo is determined for Italy to win and the British Government have a secret that they need to protect at all costs.

And in the World of International Banking money talks and everyone has a price.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 18, 2009
• ISBN: 9781496980137

Book preview

Saturday’s Child

Phil Merrick

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AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.

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© 2009 Phil Merrick. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 12/15/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8013-7 (eBook)

Contents

Prologue

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter 4

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter seventeen

Chapter eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter twenty

Chapter twenty one

Chapter twenty two

Chapter twenty three

Chapter twenty four

Chapter twenty five

Chapter twenty six

Chapter twenty seven

Chapter twenty eight

Chapter twenty nine

Chapter thirty

Chapter thirty one

Chapter thirty two

Chapter thirty three

Chapter thirty four

Chapter thirty five

Chapter thirty six

Chapter thirty seven

Chapter thirty eight

Chapter thirty nine

Chapter forty

Chapter forty one

Chapter forty two

Chapter forty three

Chapter forty four

Chapter forty five

Chapter forty six

Chapter forty seven

Chapter forty eight

Chapter forty nine

Chapter fifty

Chapter fifty one

Chapter fifty two

Chapter fifty three

Chapter fifty four

Chapter fifty five

For my girls

Sunday’s child is bonny and gay,

Monday’s child is fair of face,

Tuesday’s child is full of grace,

Wednesday’s child is full of woe,

Thursday’s child has far to go,

Friday’s child is loving and giving,

Saturday’s child loves football.

The Target

The Executive Board of the Bank of St Andrew

Sir Callum Stevenson – Chairman

Donald Patterson – Chief Executive Officer

(Kirsty McKinley – PA to CEO)

Sebastian Simpson – Company Secretary / Director of Risk

Harry McMillan – Director of Finance

Eddie Webster – Director of Marketing

Ronald Jackson - Director of Sales

Mark Davidson – Director of Operations

Tom Greig – Director of Human Resources

James Grayson – Director of IT

The Acquirer

The main characters, City International Bank of New York

Walt Devine – Chairman

Marcia Moss – Global President

(Suzie Denton – PA to Global President)

Kurt Baumann – Vice President Finance

Larry Baxter – Vice President Change

Terence Morgan – Vice President Human Resource

The Advisors

Danny Stein – Whytes & Prentice New York Office

Victoria Saunders – Whytes & Prentice London Office

World Cup Finals, Germany 2006 Groups A – D (and odds to win)

Group A

Poland (126/1)

Costa Rica (751/1)

Germany (9/1)

Ecuador (301/1)

Group B

England (8/1)

Sweden (41/1)

Paraguay (201/1)

Trinidad & Tobago (1501/1)

Group C

Argentina (9/1)

Holland (13/1)

Ivory Coast (81/1)

Serbia & Montenegro (81/1)

Group D

Mexico (51/1)

Portugal (23/1)

Iran (751/1)

Angola (751/1)

World Cup Finals, Germany 2006 Groups E – H (and odds to win)

Group E

Italy (10/1)

USA (81/1)

Czech Republic (29/1)

Ghana (301/1)

Group F

Brazil (7/2)

Croatia (67/1)

Australia (126/1)

Japan (301/1)

Group G

France (12/1)

Switzerland (126/1)

South Korea (251/1)

Togo (751/1)

Group H

Spain (15/1)

Ukraine (67/1)

Saudi Arabia (1001/1)

Tunisia (301/1)

World Cup Finals, the stadia – Germany 2006

Olympiastadion, Berlin (capacity 74,176)

*Signal Iduna Park, Dortmund (capacity 67,000)

*Allianz Arena, Munich (capacity 66,016)

*Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion, Stuttgart (capacity 54,267)

*Veltins-Arena, Gelsenkirchen (capacity 53,804)

*AOL Arena, Hamburg (capacity 51,055)

*Commerzbank-Arena, Frankfurt (capacity 48,132)

*RheinEnergieStadion, Cologne (capacity 46,134)

*AWD-Arena, Hanover (capacity 44,652)

Zentralstadion, Leipzig (capacity 44,199)

Fritz-Walter-Stadion, Kaiserslautern (capacity 43,450)

**EasyCredit-Stadion, Nuremburg (capacity 41,926)

* Called ‘FIFA World Cup Stadium (and name of town)’ during the tournament because FIFA prohibited sponsorship unless the stadium sponsors were also official FIFA sponsors.

** called Frankenstadion during the tournament.

Prologue

Saturday 30th July 1966

The doctor lifted his green mask, wiped the beads of sweat from his face with the back of his hand and braced himself for the task ahead. A task he hated. He’d done it a hundred times and every time it felt as difficult as the first. Which he still remembered, the prettiest little girl he’d ever seen, but stillborn. He still had night mares. Everyone assumes he can cope. Everyone assumes his heart is hardened to the pain. But nothing is further from the truth.

He pushed open the swing door to the waiting room and the tanned, gaunt unshaven face in a sweat stained blue cotton shirt stubbed out the last breath of a Marlboro and stood to hear the news. But he knew already. The doctor’s face was stern and apologetic even though he had done everything possible to save the man’s wife. He pressed a cream button on the top of a small transistor radio to stem the tinny commentating coming live from Wembley Stadium as the England football team attempted to beat West Germany. For a second it was deathly quiet. It was a time for respect.

It should have been a happy occasion. A birth. The quietness was quickly replaced by the noise of a sobbing man. His adoring wife had wanted children all her life and now at last she had given birth to beautiful twin babies. Sadly she would never see them. She had unselfishly swapped her own life for theirs. He put his head in his hands and wept. Helpless and heartbroken.

Chapter one

I’ve been dead for over twelve months now. I can remember my wife’s face as if it was yesterday, her pale beautiful skin, her blonde shoulder length hair, and the horror etched in her bright green eyes as she realised that she would never see me again. I thought about her always, but of course she would never know. I can’t call her, I can’t go and see her – it’s not physically possible and it just isn’t allowed.

As far as I know she still lives in the house that we bought together on the edge of the Hudson River, pale green paint with a white door and a large oak tree in the garden where we used to sit in the shade and plan our future together. We were together for just two years and were very happy – very, very happy.

I was jolted from my day dreaming by the deep throaty voice of Donald Patterson.

‘James – I will need to speak to you after the meeting, I’d like your input into our approach on this.’

I looked up and nodded as if I had been listening and quickly rewound what had been said only minutes earlier. I had that ability. I could listen to conversations and recall what was said almost word for word – even if I had not been tuned in and actively listening at the time. It’s something that’s proved to be extremely useful over the years.

Donald was the Chief Executive of the Bank of St Andrew, or BoSTA as it was known in the finance industry, and today was an extra-ordinary meeting of the executive team, called at extremely short notice. It was now 720 on a Tuesday morning and I’d caught the last flight up to Edinburgh from Heathrow last night. Not happy because I had an urgent meeting in Whitehall that had to be cancelled, not happy because I was tired and hung over from a night of drinking Macallans back in the hotel bar and not happy because I already knew in advance what was going to be discussed in the meeting.

I looked around the room. The long, highly polished board table, probably oak, was protected by green leather blotters – everyone had a blotter, a note pad with the name of the bank on it and a pencil, recently sharpened by the person who had prepared the room earlier. Everything in its place. Kirsty McKinley, Donald’s young PA was typing all the intricate detail of our discussions into her lap top without looking up at anybody, ironically as if trying to mind her own business. Kirsty didn’t do eye contact. She was female and more junior than the others and knew her place.

I was being stared at by the last ten Governors, yes I’d counted them at a previous meeting during my many hours of boredom, hung in oils for posterity, all rather portly, all grey haired, all with dark suits, all with glasses. It was strange how they all looked alike. I can’t believe that they all looked alike as small boys so I surmised that they had been morphed into archetypal bankers over time, with archetypal looks and I guess archetypal behaviours.

The walls had been painted a pale yellow, the ceilings and ornate cornices pure white, and the lighting, a strange mix of stainless steel and curved glass hung precariously from the ceiling. Unnecessarily all the lights were controlled by a central system over on the far wall as you walk in – protected by a large brushed metal cover. The designer had obviously struggled with the brief to combine modern technology with the old bank charm of a building which was over two hundred years old. A strange mix of the old and the new – sadly not like my board colleagues who were just old.

Donald Patterson had been with the bank since his first day sorting coins and making tea in George Street branch as a skinny sixteen year old. He had managed to get to be CEO through a modicum of talent but mainly through managing his network of contacts, in particular some of the key shareholders and especially the Chairman, Sir Callum Stevenson. They had been in school together, they had been in university together and they were members of the same club – the Royal Bavarians, a secret society that does great things for charity and even greater things for its members.

Donald was seen by just about everybody in the industry as a safe pair of hands. BoSTA was the last bastion of Scottish Banking, formed by an act of parliament in 1695, and had survived by being prudent. It had dallied with the English corporate market and over the last twelve months had expanded its property portfolio onto the continent but the bank was seen as boring, devoid of all entrepreneurial ambition, lacking in leadership and ripe for a takeover. A small, safe bank run by a board that won’t take risks, with a CEO that you can trust. At least that’s what everyone thought.

Today’s meeting had been called to tell us of a proposed takeover. A takeover that was in its final stages, a takeover that we’d read about in the press, a takeover that had obviously had senior discussions that hadn’t had our involvement and a takeover that we were told months ago was not going to happen. A takeover by City International Bank of New York, a global institution that wanted a foothold in the UK.

I watched as Donald struggled to get the message across. A nice man out of his depth, kind creases round his eyes, he wore glasses but always took them off to speak. He was struggling. With the words, with the questions from his aggrieved colleagues, with the concept of a takeover, with the thought of what might happen to his beloved bank.

For a senior executive with years of experience of addressing far more difficult audiences than this one, Donald Patterson was unusually a very nervous man. And I knew why.

I glanced round the table and watched the faces take in the news. Clockwise from my left shoulder there was Eddie Webster, Products and Marketing Director, short with receding dyed black hair swept back off his large forehead, staring out pensively through large round glasses. Harry McMillan, Finance Director, grey beard, dark brown hair and heavy smoker asking questions about synergies between coughing, angry because he hadn’t been involved in any of the discussions. Next there was Ronnie Jackson, Sales Director, only been on the board about six months and didn’t say a lot, especially for a salesman. He’d made a name for himself by growing the European business and was the closest I had to a friend having both joined the board at more or less the same time.

Across the table from me was Sebastian Simpson, the Director of Risk. Boring as hell, looked about eighty and also combined the role with being Company Secretary. He went to Edinburgh University and liked the city so much that he decided to stay. He was left handed which irked me a little because I was left handed and thought it special. Anyway he couldn’t do mirror handwriting like I could – I’d been able to do it since a child and did it all the time, especially when I was doodling. I looked down at my green leather blotter and wrote the word ‘reknaw’.

Moving on clockwise there was Mark Davidson, Operations Director, overweight and ineffective, bit younger than the others and then Tom Greig the Director of Human Resources. Deep red hair, about fifty, who today seemed genuinely concerned about the staff, which I thought was refreshing because nobody else had mentioned them. Then came Donald, now sweating profusely, Kirsty his PA, her pretty but somewhat hard features still staring intently at her screen and then back to me, James Grayson, IT Director.

I’d been watching my board colleagues carefully for some time. I knew their routines and I knew their habits. I knew about their private lives. Their body language today would be worth more to me than their words.

The meeting lasted less than an hour and petered out with Patterson sounding very flat. He obviously couldn’t give any assurances to his colleagues but he could have at least said he would try and work closely with people and keep them informed. Today we needed leadership but we certainly weren’t going to get it from Patterson. He looked and sounded a very worried man.

We agreed to meet again in a week’s time to discuss progress and in the meantime the due diligence process would start with initial meetings between the bank’s Directors and representatives of Whytes & Prentice, the firm of accountants hired to oversee the acquisition.

Patterson’s parting shot at trying to be a leader was to tell us how good this deal was for BoSTA. City International was a global player, they understood the property market and they would be using BoSTA as a launching pad to attack Europe. They were already huge in the subprime market in the States and would be aggressively marketing their products in the UK and across the continent. With a somewhat forlorn expression he said we should all be very excited. Thanks Donald.

The board left their seats in relative silence, partly due to the shock of the announcement, partly because they just didn’t know what to say. BoSTA’s board knew full well that their days were numbered – as a bank, and as individuals.

So what about me James Grayson, the IT Director?

Well… A fake CV and a boss who could pull strings with Sir Callum Stevenson, the Chairman, quickly secured my position after my hurried departure from Manhattan Bank, my last proper job, where things hadn’t exactly worked out as planned. Fortunately for me cultural diversity was becoming a hot topic in the UK and so I became the token Englishman on an all male Scottish board. I guess they should really have found a woman so they could tick two boxes.   

I was disillusioned by the way Manhattan Bank was being run but my main issue was with the Head of Sales and Marketing, a guy called Jimmy Sciarrillo who loved himself and was useless at his job. He lied time and time again to cover his back and in one meeting went one step too far by trying to blame me for something that he’d done himself. I don’t normally bear a grudge and I don’t normally go looking for revenge but the feeling of injustice was so strong that I decided to teach him a lesson.

I downloaded his precious, highly confidential customer data on to my PC and was in the process of transferring it to a competitor when the system crashed and I was rumbled by security. I discovered that the data contained details of some rather dubious private banking clients - international fraud rings, terrorist cells, money laundering networks and drug dealers. It was deadly information, literally.

I suddenly found myself with information that would make me a dead man if anyone knew I had it – and worryingly of course, someone did.

But I was lucky, really lucky. Manhattan Bank had been on the radar of the CIA and was under surveillance at the time I inadvertently stepped right into the middle of the intelligence agency’s secret project. The CIA was close to uncovering serious fraud and money laundering at the bank and my unwitting intervention had forced them to speed up their investigations. The CIA managed to get me out of the way and with their help I fled to the UK with a new identity.

So James Grayson is an alias, and I know nothing about IT, as I proved in Manhattan Bank. My real name is name Harry Blainey and the CIA’s way of ‘getting me out of the way’ was to kill me off. My death was faked, with a fake funeral, a fake body but sadly with a real grieving widow, the gorgeous Mrs Blainey with bright green eyes.

And I’ve worked in Intelligence ever since, as an agent for the British Secret Service.

Chapter two

26th March 2005

Gio Bartolo was dressed in his lightweight beige linen suit, with a white shirt, blood red tie and tonight a matching handkerchief peeping out of his top left hand pocket. His dark hair was swept back and flicked up at the collar. A tanned handsome man in the prime of his life, he was slim and athletic and rather untypical of someone who liked his food and who wined and dined regularly at the best restaurants in Rome. A daily work out at the gym was all that was needed to combat the excesses of his busy social life.

Tonight he was entertaining at one of his favourite locations in the World, the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in Milan. There was nowhere better to meet and greet than at a football match. And this was not just any football match; this was a World Cup qualifier, one of the group matches to see who would ultimately be going out to Germany to play in the World Cup Finals in just over twelve month’s time. Tonight’s opponents were Scotland who had just replaced their unsuccessful German manager with Walter Smith; a Scot who had all the right credentials to get some pride back into Scottish football. And this would be a good test for Italy, Scotland played the British way, fast paced and aggressive.

He greeted his guests warmly, nodding politely and shaking their hands, looking them in the eye and repeating their names, showing obvious pleasure in their arrival. Gio Bartolo was always the most gracious of hosts. He was accompanied by his wife Gina, looking beautiful in a stylish long, brown sleeveless Armani dress to match her deep brown eyes and long tousled hair and there were just four other guests, the property developer Ricardo Brunelli and his wife Tina, and Bank of St Andrew Director Ronnie Jackson and his wife Susan. Brunelli, easily in his sixties, had broad shoulders and grey, greasy, thinning hair. His black suit was creased and he carried too much weight which showed when he spoke breathlessly. His wife was of a similar age, and of a similar build. Pale skinned, she was obviously attractive a few years ago but was suffering from the heavy amount socialising brought on by her husband’s business. Her plunging neckline did nothing to compensate for her ill fitting but expensive velvet dress. Her dark hair was up, revealing long trailing diamond ear rings, purposely showing her husband’s success.

Ronnie Jackson and Susan were generally more subdued. Ronnie wore a plain dark blue suit and tie, his wife Susan a rather strange flowery number of greens and reds, which actually complemented her dark red hair. Ronnie was forty-three, had short grey hair, spiked on top and brushed forward which made him look like someone trying to look younger. His wife Susan was a plain thirty something, with no makeup and no jewellery. She was quiet and shy, and didn’t take easily to these occasions, so she was very nervous.

The four invited guests had not met before but after ten minutes or so, helped by a few glasses of champagne, the conversations flowed easily and everyone settled into what was planned to be a very special evening. A large oval table with a gleaming white cloth, adorned with silver cutlery and a trio of tall cathedral candles, was in the centre of the room, a small bar draped with Italian flags was against one wall and directly in front of them was a full length glass window overlooking the fine stadium. The bright red seats gleaming in the floodlights looked amazing through the wall of smoked glass, especially from the subdued lighting of the private suite.

Over a light but sumptuous dinner, Bartolo regaled his guests with his knowledge of Italian culture. The early conversations were about high renaissance art, Michael Angelo and Etruscan architecture but soon drifted to more boyish subjects such as the design features of Pininfarina’s Ferrari Testarossa and of course his beloved ‘Azzurri’, who tonight were expecting to get a step closer to the World Cup finals.

The time passed quickly. A young dark waiter dressed entirely in black who had cleverly managed to be inconspicuous and yet extremely attentive, served coffee and then left the room with a simple flick of Bartolo’s right hand.

Gio Bartolo asked his guests to join him at a long table over in the corner of the room. He ceremoniously pulled back a dark blue cloth to reveal