Selling the Dream

by Hugh Mackay

  Joanne looked at her watch. ‘Three o’clock. I should probably be moseying back. Do you have to pick up your boys?’

  ‘Oh, no. They’re quite independent. I’ll wander down to Wynyard and get the train.’

  ‘No, don’t do that, Mio. I’m not sure you’re quite up to public transport. I’ll give you an agency Cabcharge voucher.’

  There was a comfortable pause.

  ‘Have you travelled much?’ Joanne asked, knowing what the answer would be.

  Hermione had never set foot outside Australia, though she mentioned that her parents, later in life, had taken a couple of cruises and, both times, experienced violent gastroenteritis from an infection that had spread through the ship.

  ‘Have you ever wanted to travel?’ Joanne persisted, an intriguing idea forming in the back of her mind, too morally complex to unravel – especially after this much wine.

  ‘Not when I was young – no,’ said Hermione. ‘Life was too well planned back then. If I travelled – and I find myself thinking about it more and more – I’d want it to be to somewhere seriously exotic. Definitely not a cruise. As I mentioned, I’ve been rereading Dostoevsky and dreaming of Russia, as a matter of fact. I love being swept along by all that dark passion. One day, I’ll surprise everyone and just take off. It won’t be with Linc, though. He doesn’t believe in holidays, and he certainly doesn’t believe in exploring exotic places.’

  ‘Dostoevsky? St Petersburg?’

  ‘Oh, of course. The Idiot. Crime and Punishment. God! Wouldn’t you love to go there? Or have you already been?’

  ‘I’ve spent a lot of time in Europe but not Russia, no. Not yet.’ Joanne paused and wondered whether to say it, then did: ‘Though, strangely enough, I’ve sort of won a return flight to St Petersburg. I’m going in a couple of months – just for two weeks. Maybe you should think about it.’

  ‘Think about it?’

  ‘Joining me. I’m a very undemanding travel companion – I believe in people being free to do their own thing by day and then talking about it all over a long dinner in the evening. Mind you, it’s been a while since I had that luxury. There’s been far too much nose to the grindstone.’

  Joanne insisted on paying the bill for lunch, and the two women exchanged email addresses and mobile phone numbers.

  As they parted, Hermione said: ‘We’ll keep in touch, then?’

  ‘Love to. How about a movie? Call me. Or text. And I was quite serious about Russia. Do think about it. I’d love a travelling companion. Ciao.’

  ‘Ciao,’ said Hermione, for the first time in her life.

  15

  IT WAS ALL becoming clear to Jhon Kornfield.

  His fundamental error had been to assume that Linc was central to his negotiations with Bravissimo. In fact, he now saw, the reverse was true. All negotiations must downplay Linc’s role. Linc must be excluded; possibly even cut loose.

  Once he had heard Linc say ‘in point of fact’, his world had begun to tilt. It wasn’t just the words, though they were the trigger. Having had two meetings with Smythe himself, Jhon was becoming familiar with the Smythe idiom, the Smythe style, the Smythe lexicon. The more closely he watched Linc, the more he saw signs of Harry Smythe creeping into his persona. Linc, the ultimate chameleon, was gradually becoming a little less Otis and a little more Harry, right down to the clipped British accent he employed when he used certain words and phrases. If he could confirm that Linc was in contact with Smythe, then, since neither man had ever mentioned being in touch with the other, Jhon would know he could no longer trust either of them.

  Following Linc to a meeting with Harry Smythe had been child’s play. Ever since the agency had adopted shared e-diaries, the senior people knew at least the bare bones of each other’s days, even if some of the entries were, as in this case, vague or misleading. On the day when Jhon knew Smythe would be back in town, Linc’s diary showed the morning at GBH, the afternoon at BudJet, and lunch with ‘H’.

  Of course ‘H’ didn’t necessarily mean Harry Smythe, but it was either an amazing coincidence, or a clue worth investigating. So he simply hired a taxi, lurked outside GBH until Linc emerged, instructed his driver to ‘follow that cab’ – a moment he savoured for its candid melodrama – and watched Linc alight from his taxi in Surry Hills, outside the very pub where Jhon had had each of his own meetings with Smythe and was, indeed, scheduled to have another that night. It occurred to Jhon that, for an ex-spook, Smythe was rather reckless in meeting people in the same place each time. Perhaps he didn’t care.

  Jhon paid the driver, donned an Akubra and dark glasses not unlike the pair Linc himself was wearing, and climbed the stairs to the bistro entrance. Hanging back, he watched Linc walk in and join Smythe at his table by the window. The two greeted each other with the ease of men who were already acquainted.

  Too easy.

  Jhon melted away, his heart racing from the thrill of the chase and from having had his suspicion of treachery confirmed. So Linc was in on the negotiations. Which negotiations? Why did Smythe need to see Linc when Jhon was moving forward with quite detailed discussions and was, indeed, preparing to introduce Smythe to Bob and Markus – albeit reluctantly – during this very visit? Smythe had asked about Linc, and Jhon had acknowledged that his new-business record was second to none, and was already regretting having so readily agreed with Smythe’s assessment that Linc was central to the agency’s relationship with GBH.

  Jhon pondered these matters anew in the light of what he had just seen. There were two obvious possibilities, both unpalatable. One was that Linc was positioning himself as indispensable to the deal and trying to secure some special favours in the process. Perhaps he even imagined himself as Bob Kelman’s successor – over Jhon’s dead body – though Smythe had made it clear that if the deal went ahead, if the deal went ahead, it would be an Italian taking the reins.

  The other possibility was more chilling. Linc might be trying to steal a march on the agency by convincing Smythe – and Jhon could imagine how smoothly he’d go about it – that Bravissimo could save itself the cost of buying KK&C by starting its own local agency from scratch, with Linc at the helm. Linc’s pet clients – GBH at the top of the list, but Cocky and BudJet close behind – would follow him to the new shop and become the foundation of the business. That would be Linc’s line.

  Was Smythe naïve enough to entertain that idea? Surely not. Then again, money would be a significant factor, especially as Jhon was pushing for a price as close to outrageous as he dared go.

  It was time to alert his partners.

  ■

  It was all becoming clear to Markus Craven.

  If he didn’t act quickly and decisively, the Ripper presentation would be hijacked by Linc, and the boys from Bravissimo would get entirely the wrong impression. Markus didn’t care so much about the local GBH people – Weisbrot was in the palm of Linc’s hand anyway, and there wasn’t much to be done about that. But Bravissimo was a different matter altogether. If Jhon was only half-right, Linc was endangering a deal that could propel Markus into a whole new orbit, with Europe at its gravitational centre.

  Markus knew what The Ripper needed: drones. And he knew what Linc needed, too: to be stopped dead in his tracks. To be brought down a peg or two, or three. To be hung out to dry. To be exposed as just another self-serving glory-seeker.

  Joanne would know how best to approach this, Markus thought, so he called her in and explained the problem. As usual, she was full of good ideas.

  ‘We’ll have a little Project Cry Havoc of our own,’ he said, when their plans had been laid. ‘“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.” Come here, Jezebel, my sweet. How would you like to be a dog of war for a day? Eh?’

  Joanne did not share Markus’s confidence. The dog thing was not foolproof. The more time she spent with Mio and the more she learnt about the ways of Linc, the more convinced she was of the need for a back-up plan.

  ■

  It was all becoming clear
to Bob Kelman.

  The tension between Markus and Linc was more than he could reasonably be expected to bear. They should have been able to patch it up between them, like a pair of grown men. But in Bob’s long experience, grown men often didn’t.

  It was upsetting Bob’s equanimity, as well as affecting the running of the agency, all these games about Markus not telling Linc his plans for the Ripper presentation and Linc not telling Markus his. In meetings with Linc, Markus continued to complain that Linc was neglecting the mainstream media, there had been no TV bookings, why was it all being played so close to the chest, blah, blah, blah, while in private he had assured Bob he was putting the finishing touches to a top-secret commercial that would stun GBH and Bravissimo, and there were heavy TV bookings in the media schedule, starting on day one.

  So childish. So unprofessional. So wearing.

  Linc was no better, putting all his energies into devising Ripperman stunts while undermining Markus’s work on BudJet and ridiculing his focus on traditional media.

  Like a pair of schoolboys.

  Bob would have to step in, for the good of the agency . . . for the good of the deal. And for the good of his own health: he wasn’t at all sure he could stand another twelve months of this.

  He would put Markus unequivocally in charge of the Ripper presentation, and Linc would just have to lump it. So would Jerry.

  ■

  It was all becoming clear to Jerry Weisbrot.

  A former colleague at GBH Australia, now rising to great heights in Dayton, had called to say that Lincoln Hunter had been in touch with her boss, explicitly canvassing the possibility of replacing Jerry as head of marketing in Australia.

  16

  JOANNE DARBY WAS leaving nothing to chance. She had personally supervised the preparation of GBH’s auditorium for the Ripper presentation. Laptop and projector for Delia’s PowerPoint: check. Video monitor for Markus’s launch commercial: check. Product sample packs ready for distribution: check. Poster mounted on an easel and shrouded in a black dustcover, ready for the big reveal: check. Three padded armchairs in the front row for the three visiting executives from Dayton: check. Two lecterns on the stage, one for Jerry, as MC, with all the lighting, audio and video controls built in, and Jerry’s notes in place: check. The other for Delia, Markus and Linc to share: check. Markus’s notes in a folder on his chair: check. A bottle of Downpour (‘Relief for Throat Drought’), GBH’s premium rainwater product, cradled in the armrest of each chair in the auditorium: check. At the very last moment, Joanne placed a glass of water on the table beside each speaker’s chair, having filled Linc’s from a flask in which, after some careful experimentation over the past week, she had dissolved exactly seven pellets of The Ripper in iced water.

  A few minutes before two o’clock, the audience filed in. On the dot of two, Jerry, Markus, Delia and Linc walked onto the stage and sat in their designated chairs. Waiting in the wings, only Delia had seemed prepared to make eye contact with Linc. There was a strong smell of vaguely familiar perfume – a bit like the stuff Hermione often wore, Linc thought. He assumed Delia had rather overdone it in her desire to impress Dayton. She’d overdone the mascara, too, in his opinion.

  Linc felt uneasy. He was disturbed by Hermione’s uncharacteristic insistence on attending the presentation. He was surprised by the size of the crowd – half the agency seemed to be here, plus a very large contingent of GBH people. And he was not at all confident that, when it came to the point, the two students he had recruited would throw themselves into their Ripperman role with sufficient gusto.

  Worse, it was all beyond his control. Under instructions from the whisky-soaked Bob and the faithless Jerry, arrangements for the entire event had been wrested away from him and handed to the idiot Markus. The Darby had warned him of what was to come, during an unexpected moment of intimacy she had granted him at lunchtime, when she had very kindly taken his trousers away ‘to run an iron over them’. She was sure Linc would be outraged, she had said, when he saw the commercial Markus was planning to screen. Knowing how agitated he was becoming over all this, she had promised to put one of her magic calming potions into Linc’s glass of water on the podium. What a woman! He did need calming: he could already feel the anger rising like bile. He took a sip of water.

  After what Linc later described as ‘Jerry’s opening unpleasantries’, delivered with grovelling references to ‘our guests from Dayton’, Delia ran through her PowerPoint presentation for the umpteenth time. Jerry then called Markus to the lectern with an introduction so hyperbolic, Linc was practically sick on the spot. His uneasiness deepened and he took a generous swig of water from his glass.

  Linc tried to attend to what Markus was saying, but it was just Craven’s usual vainglorious drivel. Linc was now feeling distinctly queasy, so he took another sip of water. It tasted odd, as The Darby had warned him it might. Some herbal thing or other, no doubt: The Darby was into all that.

  Markus finally reached the climax of his interminable presentation, in which he had stolen all Linc’s material – well, Otis’s material, if you wanted to split hairs – about the shadow matrix, the frontal lobes, myelin . . . the lot.

  ‘And now,’ he said, his arms spread wide, ‘I want to show you how we intend to introduce The Ripper to the waiting world.’

  The thirty-second launch commercial appeared on a large monitor behind him. It featured a squadron of black drones, surging over the horizon in a menacing mass, coming closer and closer, until the sky overhead was darkened and the drones dived onto their target. Over the CGI conflagration that followed appeared the message, ‘The Ripper is coming’, fading to a full-screen pack shot. The words ‘It won’t kill you’ were nowhere to be seen or heard.

  Feeling even more agitated, and even more nauseated, Linc took another gulp of The Darby’s magic potion.

  The locals squirmed with embarrassment. Recycling ideas was all very well, but this was nothing more than Markus’s award-winning bird flu commercial with a Ripper pack shot tacked on. The GBH heavyweights from Dayton didn’t know that, though, and neither did the men from Bravissimo. They jumped out of their seats, cheering and applauding loudly. Gradually, others felt obliged to stand as well, until the auditorium delivered Markus something he had never before received but often craved: a standing ovation.

  He dabbed his eyes and sat down.

  When the members of the audience had also resumed their seats, Jerry rose to introduce Linc.

  ‘And now, to wrap up the proceedings,’ he said, with a noticeable absence of warmth in his voice, ‘we’re going to give you a glimpse of a little promotional idea that will support the launch campaign. Linc?’

  At that moment, two things happened: a military strategist might have called it a pincer movement. Following The Darby’s instructions to the letter, Linc drained the glass of calming fluid she had prepared for him. And one of Markus’s young copywriters, eager to please her boss by following his instructions to the letter, opened a side door and unleashed the dog she had been restraining on a leash. Jezebel ran into the auditorium, sniffed the air, yelped with delight, and tore like a heat-seeking missile straight to a concentrated source of her very favourite perfume, apparently located in the vicinity of Linc’s ankles.

  Linc was not just unnerved; he was shocked. All his attempts to fend off the dog were futile: Jezebel was intoxicated by the heavy fragrance and was going nowhere. Panic rising, Linc caught sight of the two students in their Ripperman costumes, waiting in the wings to spring onto the stage before moving among the audience with product samples. This was his moment; now or never. He gamely rose to speak, with the dog’s jaws firmly fixed around one ankle. But the words simply wouldn’t come. He had been robbed of the power of speech. He was also experiencing the rising nausea he recognised from a Ripper taste test he had reluctantly participated in. (‘We have to live the product, as well as the dream,’ Jerry had insisted, quoting some fool from Dayton, Linc assumed.) To all but one of the onlookers
, it seemed that Linc had been rendered speechless by fear, but no one was later able to explain the point of the dog stunt, entertaining though it had undoubtedly been.

  Into the vacuum leapt the two students in their Ripperman outfits, one from each side of the stage, shouting words that were lost in the general melee and would have been drowned out, in any case, by INXS’s ‘New Sensation’, now booming over the PA system.

  ■

  When the hubbub had died down, Markus’s young assistant, as puzzled as everyone else by the turn of events, dragged Jezebel away. Linc remained alone on the stage, humiliated, defeated, and throbbing with pain where the wretched pooch had sunk its teeth into his ankle. Linc’s voice still refused to function, and the characteristic Ripper nausea was threatening to overwhelm him. He reached down to feel the spot where the dog had clamped its jaws around him. Thinking there might be some blood, he inspected his fingertips and then sniffed them. There was a strong smell of the perfume he had detected earlier. So it had been on him, not on Delia. The Ripper-flavoured water; the perfumed trouser cuffs. It was all becoming clear to Lincoln The Hunter.

  Through tears of rage and frustration, he watched Harry Smythe hurry from the room, his mobile phone clamped to his ear and Jhon Kornfield hard on his heels. He was followed by the three black-clad figures from Bravissimo, chatting and laughing with Markus Craven. Behind them, arm in arm in a display of alarming intimacy, were Joanne and Hermione, neither of them giving Linc so much as a backward glance. The trio from Dayton, two women and a man, all looking perplexed, were being hustled out a side door by Jerry, followed by Bob Kelman, who glanced anxiously in Linc’s direction as he left. Linc could think of only one word: perfidy. Perfidy. He mouthed it, meaning to shout, but no sound came.

  He checked them off on a mental list. KK&C: gone (but he would fight to hang on to the Aston). Bravissimo: gone. GBH: gone. The Darby: gone. And Hermione? Going, he assumed, though a moment’s reflection led him to suspect she had been on the way out for some time.