Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune

by Jeffrey Archer

  “‘Parfitt. Parfitt.’”

  The company secretary took a long time opening a voting slip which someone had folded and refolded several times.

  “‘Kane.’” Eight votes to seven in William’s favor.

  The last piece of paper was now being opened. William watched Alfred Rodgers’s lips. The company secretary looked up; for that one moment he was the most important man in the room.

  “‘Kane.’” Parfitt’s head sank into his hands.

  “Gentlemen, the tally is nine votes for Mr. William Kane, seven votes for Mr. Peter Parfitt. I therefore declare Mr. William Kane to be the duly elected chairman of Lester’s bank.”

  A respectful silence fell over the room as every head except Peter Parfitt’s turned toward William and waited for the new chairman’s first move.

  William exhaled a great rush of air and stood once again, this time to face his board.

  “Thank you, gentlemen, for the confidence you have placed in me. It was Charles Lester’s wish that I be your next chairman and I am delighted you have confirmed that wish with your vote. I now intend to serve this bank to the best of my ability, which I shall be unable to do without the wholehearted support of the board. If Mr. Parfitt would be kind enough …”

  Peter Parfitt looked up hopefully.

  “ … to join me in the chairman’s office in a few minutes’ time, I would be much obliged. After I have seen Mr. Parfitt, I would like to see Mr. Leach. I hope, gentlemen, that tomorrow I shall have the opportunity of meeting all of you individually. The next board meeting will be the monthly one. This meeting is now adjourned.”

  The directors began to rise and talk among themselves. William walked quickly into the corridor, avoiding Peter Parfitt’s stare. Ted Leach caught up with him and directed him to the chairman’s office.

  “That was a great risk you took,” said Ted Leach, “and you only just pulled it off. What would you have done if you’d lost the vote?”

  “Gone back to Boston,” said William, sounding unperturbed.

  Ted Leach opened the door to the chairman’s office for William. The room was almost exactly as he remembered it; perhaps it had seemed a little larger when, as a prep school boy, he had told Charles Lester that he would one day run the bank. He stared at the portrait of the great man behind his desk and winked at the late Chairman. Then he sat down in the big red leather chair and put his elbows on the mahogany desk. As he took a small leather-bound book out of his jacket pocket and placed it on the desk in front of him, there was a knock on the door. An old man entered, leaning heavily on a black stick with a silver handle. Ted Leach left them alone.

  “My name is Rupert Cork-Smith,” he said, with a hint of an English accent.

  William rose to greet him. He was the oldest member of the board. His gray hair, long sideburns and heavy gold watch all came from a past era, but his reputation for probity was legendary in banking circles. No man needed to sign a contract with Rupert Cork-Smith: his word had always been his bond. He looked William firmly in the eye.

  “I voted against you, sir, and naturally you can expect my resignation to be on your desk within the hour.”

  “Will you have a seat, sir?” William said gently.

  “Thank you, sir,” he replied.

  “I think you knew my father and grandfather.”

  “I had the privilege. Your grandfather and I were at Harvard together and I still remember with regret your father’s tragic death.”

  “And Charles Lester?” said William.

  “Was my closest friend. The provisions in his will have preyed upon my conscience. It was no secret that my choice would not have been Peter Parfitt. I would have had Ted Leach for chairman, but as I have never abstained from anything in my life, I felt I had to support the candidate who stood against you, as I found myself unable to vote for a man I had never even met.”

  “I admire your honesty, Mr. Cork-Smith, but now I have a bank to run. I need you at this moment far more than you need me, so I, as a younger man, beg you not to resign.”

  The old man raised his head and stared into William’s eyes. “I’m not sure it would work, young man. I can’t change my attitudes overnight,” said Cork-Smith, both hands resting on his stick.

  “Give me six months, sir, and if you still feel the same way, I won’t put up a fight.”

  They both sat in silence before Cork-Smith spoke again: “Charles Lester was right: you are the son of Richard Kane.”

  “Will you continue to serve this bank, sir?”

  “I will, young man. There’s no fool like an old fool, don’t you know.”

  Rupert Cork-Smith rose slowly with the aid of his stick. William moved to help him but was waved away.

  “Good luck, my boy. You can rely on my total support.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said William.

  When he opened the door, William saw Peter Parfitt waiting in the corridor. As Rupert Cork-Smith left, the two men did not speak.

  Peter Parfitt blustered in. “Well, I tried and I lost. A man can’t do more,” he said, laughing. “No hard feelings, Bill?” He extended his hand.

  “There are no hard feelings, Mr. Parfitt. As you so rightly say, you tried and you lost, and now you will resign from your post at this bank.”

  “I’ll do what?” said Parfitt.

  “Resign,” said William.

  “That’s a bit rough, isn’t it, Bill? My action wasn’t at all personal. I simply felt”

  “I don’t want you in my bank, Mr. Parfitt. You’ll leave by tonight and never return.”

  “And if I say I won’t go? I own a good many shares in the bank and I still have a lot of support on the board. What’s more, I could take you to court.”

  “Then I would recommend that you read the bank’s bylaws, Mr. Parfitt, which I spent some considerable time studying only this morning.”

  William picked up the small leather-bound book that was still lying on the desk in front of him and turned a few pages over. Having found a paragraph he had marked that morning, he read aloud. “‘The chairman has the right to remove any office holder in whom he has lost confidence.’” He looked up. “I have lost confidence in you, Mr. Parfitt, and you will therefore resign, receiving two years’ pay. If, on the other hand, you force me to remove you, I shall see that you leave the bank with nothing other than your stock. The choice is yours.”

  “Won’t you give me a chance?”

  “I gave you a chance last week at dinner and you lied and cheated. Not traits I am looking for in my next vice chairman. Will it be resignation or do I throw you out, Mr. Parfitt?”

  “Damn you, Kane, I’ll resign.”

  “Good. Sit down and write the letter now.”

  “No, I’ll let you have it in the morning in my own good time.” He started walking toward the door.

  “Now—or I fire you,” said William.

  Peter Parfitt hesitated and then came back and sank heavily into a chair by the side of William’s desk. William handed him a piece of the bank’s stationery and proffered him a pen. Parfitt took out his own pen and started writing. When he had finished, William picked up the letter and read it through carefully.

  “Good day, Mr. Parfitt.”

  Peter Parfitt left without speaking. Ted Leach came in a few moments later.

  “You wanted to see me, Mr. Chairman?”

  “Yes,” said William. “I want to appoint you as the bank’s overall vice chairman. Mr. Parfitt felt he had to resign.”

  “Oh, I’m surprised to hear that, I would have thought …”

  William passed him the letter. Ted Leach read it and then looked at William.

  “I shall be delighted to be overall vice chairman. Thank you for your confidence in me.”

  “Good. I’ll be obliged if you will arrange for me to meet every director during the next two days. I’ll start work at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, Mr. Kane.”

  “Perhaps you will also be kind
enough to give Mr. Parfitt’s letter of resignation to the company secretary?”

  “As you wish, Mr. Chairman.”

  “My name is William—another mistake Mr. Parfitt made.”

  Ted Leach smiled tentatively. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,”—he hesitated—“William.”

  When he had left, William sat in Charles Lester’s chair and whirled himself around in an uncharacteristic burst of sheer glee till he was dizzy. Then he looked out of the window onto Wall Street, elated by the bustling crowds, enjoying the view of the other great banks and brokerage houses of America. He was part of all of it now.

  “And who, pray, are you?” said a female voice from behind him.

  William swiveled around and there standing in front of him was a middle-aged woman, primly dressed, looking very irate.

  “Perhaps I may ask you the same question,” said William.

  “I am the chairman’s secretary,” the woman said stiffly.

  “And I,” said William, “am the chairman.”

  During the next few weeks William moved his family to New York where they found a four-story house on East Sixty-eighth Street. It had everything Kate needed, even a small garden in the back. Settling in took longer than they had anticipated. For the first three months William wished, as he tried to extricate himself from Boston in order to carry out his job in New York, that every day had forty-eight hours in it, and he found the umbilical cord was hard to sever completely. Tony Simmons was most helpful, and William began to appreciate why Alan Lloyd had backed him to be chairman of Kane and Cabot. For the first time he was willing to admit that Alan had been right.

  Kate’s life in New York was soon fully occupied. Virginia could already crawl across a room and get into William’s study before Kate could turn her head, and Richard wanted a new windbreaker like every other boy in New York. As the wife of the chairman of a New York bank Kate was expected to give cocktail parties and dinners regularly, subtly making certain that directors and major clients were always given the chance to catch the private ear of William to seek his advice or voice their opinions. Kate handled all situations with great charm, and William was eternally grateful to the liquidation department of Kane and Cabot for supplying his greatest asset. When she informed William that she was going to have another baby, all he could ask was “When did I find the time?” Virginia was thrilled by the news, not fully understanding why Mummy was getting so fat, and Richard refused to discuss it.

  Within six months the clash with Peter Parfitt was a thing of the past, and William had become the undisputed chairman of Lester’s bank and a figure to be reckoned with in New York financial circles. Not many more months had passed before he began to wonder in which direction he should start to set himself a new goal. He had achieved his life’s ambition by becoming chairman of Lester’s at the age of thirty-three although, unlike Alexander, he felt there were more worlds still to conquer, and he had neither the time nor the inclination to sit down and weep.

  Kate gave birth to their third child at the end of William’s first year as chairman of Lester’s, a second girl, whom they named Lucy. William taught Virginia, who was now walking, how to rock Lucy’s cradle; while Richard, almost six years old and due to enter the first grade at the Buckley School, used the new arrival as the opportunity to talk his father into a new baseball bat. Lucy, unable to make an articulate demand, nevertheless became the third woman who could twist William around her little finger.

  In William’s first year as chairman of Lester’s the bank’s profits were slightly up and he was forecasting a considerable improvement in his second year.

  On September 1, 1939, Hitler marched into Poland.

  One of William’s first reactions was to think of Abel Rosnovski and his new Baron on Park Avenue, already becoming the toast of New York. Quarterly reports from Thomas Cohen showed that Rosnovski went from strength to strength, although his latest ideas for expansion to Europe looked as if they might be in for a slight delay. Cohen continued to find no direct association between Henry Osborne and Abel Rosnovski, but he admitted that it was becoming increasingly difficult to ascertain all the facts William required.

  William never thought that America would involve herself in another European war, but he kept the London branch of Lester’s open to show clearly which side he was on and never for one moment considered selling his twelve thousand acres in Hampshire and Lincolnshire. Tony Simmons in Boston, on the other hand, informed William that he intended to close Kane and Cabot’s London branch. William used the problems created in London by the war as an excuse to visit his beloved Boston and have a meeting with Tony.

  The two chairmen now met on extremely easy and friendly terms since they no longer had any reason to see themselves as rivals. In fact, each had come to use the other as a springboard for new ideas. As Tony had predicted, Kane and Cabot had lost some of its more important clients when William became the chairman of Lester’s, but William always kept Tony fully informed whenever an old client expressed a desire to move his account and he never solicited a single one. When they sat down at a corner table of Locke-Ober’s for lunch, Tony Simmons lost little time in repeating his intent to close the London branch of Kane and Cabot.

  “My first reason is simple,” he said as he sipped the imported burgundy, apparently not giving a moment’s thought to the strong likelihood that German boots were about to trample on the grapes in most of the vineyards in France. “I think the bank will lose more money if we don’t cut our losses and get out of England.”

  “Of course, you will lose a little money,”said William, “but we must support the British.”

  “Why?” asked Tony. “We’re a bank, not a boosters’ club.”

  “Britain’s not a baseball team, Tony; it’s a nation of people to whom we owe our entire heritage——”

  “You should take up politics,” said Tony. “I’m beginning to think your talents are wasted in banking. Nevertheless, I feel there’s a far more important reason why we should close the branch. If Hitler marches into Britain the way he has into Poland and France—and I’m sure that is exactly what he intends to do—the bank will be taken over and we would lose every penny we have in London.”

  “Over my dead body,” said William. “If Hitler puts so much as a foot on British soil, America will enter the war the same day.”

  “Never,” said Tony. “FDR has said all aid short of war. And the America Firsters would raise an almighty hue and cry.”

  “Never listen to a politician,” said William. “Especially Roosevelt. When he says ‘never,’ that only means not today or at least not this morning. You only have to remember what Wilson told us in 1916.”

  Tony laughed. “When are you going to run for the Senate, William?”

  “Now, there is a question to which I can safely answer ‘never.’”

  “I respect your feelings, William, but I want out.”

  “You’re the chairman,” replied William. “If the board backs you, you can close the London branch tomorrow and I would never use my position to act against a majority decision.”

  “Until you join the two banks together, and it becomes your decision.”

  “I told you once, Tony; that I would never attempt to do that while you are still chairman.”

  “But I think we ought to merge.”

  “What?” said William, spilling his burgundy on the tablecloth, unable to believe what he had just heard. “Good heavens, Tony, I’ll say one thing for you, you’re never predictable.”

  “I have the best interests of the bank at heart, as always, William. Think about the present situation for a moment. New York is now, more than ever, the center of U.S. finance, and when England goes under to Hitler, it will be the center of world finance, so that’s where Kane and Cabot needs to be. Moreover, if we merged we would create a more comprehensive institution because our specialties are complementary. Kane and Cabot has always done a great deal of ship and heavy-industry financing, while Leste
r’s does very little. Conversely, you do a lot of underwriting and we hardly touch it. Not to mention the fact that in many cities we have unnecessary duplicating offices.”

  “Tony, I agree with everything you’ve said, but I would still want to stay in Britain.”

  “Exactly proving my point, William. Kane and Cabot’s London branch would be closed, but we would still keep Lester’s. Then if London goes through a rough passage, it won’t matter as much, because we will be consolidated and therefore stronger.”

  “But how would you feel if I said that while Roosevelt’s restrictions on merchant banks will only allow us to work out of one state, a merger could succeed only if we ran the entire operation from New York, treating Boston as nothing more than a holding office.”

  “I’d back you,” said Tony and added: “You might even consider going into commercial banking and dropping the straight investment work.”

  “No, Tony. FDR has made it impossible for an honest man to do both, and in any case my father believed that you could either serve a small group of rich people or a large group of poor people, so Lester’s will always remain in traditional merchant banking as long as I’m chairman. But if we did decide to merge the two banks, don’t you foresee major problems?”

  “Very few we couldn’t surmount given goodwill on both sides. However, you will have to consider the implications carefully, William, as you would undoubtedly lose overall control of the new bank as a minority shareholder, which would always make you vulnerable to a takeover bid.”

  “I’d risk that to be chairman of one of the largest financial institutions in America.”

  William returned to New York that evening, elated by the discussion with Tony, and called a board meeting of Lester’s to outline Tony Simmons’ proposal. When he found that the board approved of a merger in principle, he instructed each manager in the bank to consider the whole plan in greater detail.

  The departmental heads took three months before they reported back to the board, and to a man they came to the same conclusion: a merger was no more than common sense, because the two banks were complementary in so many ways. With different offices all over America and branches in Europe, they had a great deal to offer each other. Moreover, the chairman of Lester’s had continued to own 51 percent of Kane and Cabot, making the merger simply a marriage of convenience. Some of the directors on Lester’s board could not understand why William hadn’t thought of the idea before. Ted Leach was of the opinion that Charles Lester must have had it in his mind when he nominated William as his successor.