Because he'd opened the conversation, Miss Stern evidently felt required to participate. "Someone should have done something for him."

"The man beside me volunteered to smother him," Matt said, "but the baby's mother was no more amenable to that solution than she'd been to mine."

"What was your solution?"

"A shot of vodka with a brandy chaser." Closing his briefcase, he said, "How good is the clerical staff up here?"

"Some of them are very conscientious. However, Joanna Simons, whom you passed on your way in here, is barely adequate. Rumor has it that she was more than a secretary to Mr. Morrissey, which I am inclined to believe. Since her skills are nonexistent, it stands to reason her talents lie in some other area."

Matt barely noticed her sniff of prim disapproval. Tipping his head toward the conference room that adjoined his office, he said, "Is everybody in there?"

"Of course."

"Do they all have copies of the agenda?"

"Of course."

"I'm expecting a call from Brussels sometime during the next hour," Matt said, already starting for the conference room. "Put that one through to me right away, but hold any others."

Six of Intercorp's most talented vice presidents were seated on a pair of long burgundy suede sofas that faced each other across a large glass and marble coffee table in the conference room. The men stood up as Matt came forward, each of them shaking his hand, each of them studying his features for some indication of the outcome of his trip to Greece. "It's good to have you back, Matt," the last man said as Matt shook his hand. "Well, don't keep us in suspense," Tom Anderson added. "How was Athens?"

"Extremely pleasant," Matt replied as they all moved over to the conference table. "Intercorp now owns a fleet of tankers."

Triumph, full-bodied and sweet, swept through the room, and then voices rose as everyone began discussing plans to utilize Intercorp's newest "family branch."

Leaning back in his chair, Matt observed the six high-powered executives who were seated before him. All of them were dynamic, dedicated men, the best in their individual fields. Five of them had come from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale; from UCLA and MIT, with degrees in fields ranging from international banking to marketing. Five of them were wearing $800 custom-tailored business suits, discreetly monogrammed Egyptian cotton shirts, and carefully chosen silk ties. Grouped together, as they were now, they looked like a four-color ad for Brooks Brothers—something headed: When you've reached the pinnacle, only the best is good enough. In contrast to them, the sixth man, Tom Anderson, was a jarringly discordant figure in his green-and-brown-plaid jacket, green trousers, and paisley tie. Anderson's passion for loud clothes was a source of great amusement among the other impeccably dressed men on the takeover team, but they rarely jibed him about it. For one thing, it was difficult to sneer at a man who stood six feet four and weighed 245 pounds.

Anderson had a high school equivalency degree, no college at all, and he was aggressively proud of it. "My degree is from the school of life," he would announce whenever he was asked about his education. What he left unsaid was that he possessed an uncanny talent no school could provide: He was instinctively, intuitively sensitive to the nuances of human nature. He knew within minutes of talking to a man what motivated him and made him tick, whether it was vanity, greed, ambition, or something much different.

On the surface he was a plain-spoken, giant bear of a man who liked to work in his shirt-sleeves. Beneath that unpolished surface, Tom Anderson had a gift for negotiating—and a knack for getting to the crux of a problem that was invaluable, especially when he was dealing with the unions on Intercorp's behalf.

But of all his attributes, Matt prized one the most: Anderson was loyal. He was, in fact, the only man in the room whose talents were not for sale to the highest bidder. He'd worked for the first company that Matt had bought. When he sold it, Tom elected to take his chances with Matt rather than the new owners who'd offered him an excellent position and a better salary.

Matt paid the other men on the acquisition team enough to ensure they would not be tempted to sell out to a rival corporation; he paid Anderson even more because he was completely dedicated to Matt and to Intercorp. He never regretted what they cost him because, as a team, they were the best—but it was Matt himself who channeled their energies in the right direction. The master plan for Intercorp's growth was his alone, and he altered it as he saw fit. "Gentlemen," he said, interrupting their discussion about the tankers. "We'll talk about the tankers another time. Let's talk about Haskell's problems."

Matt's post-acquisition methods were unique and effective. Rather than wasting months trying to sort out the company's problems, find the causes and cures, and weed out the executives who weren't performing to Intercorp's standards, Matt did something much different: He sent in the group of men gathered in the conference room to work side by side with the existing vice presidents of the acquired company. Each of the six men was an expert in a particular corporate area, and in a matter of weeks they could familiarize themselves completely with their individual division, assess the talents of the vice president of that division, and locate the weaknesses and strong points of that division.

"Elliott," Matt said to Elliott Jamison, "let's start with you. Overall, how does Haskell's marketing division look?"

"Not bad, but not great either. They have too many managers here, as well as in the regional offices, and too few sales reps out in the field selling the products. Their existing customers get lavished with attention, but the reps don't have time to open up new accounts. Considering the high quality of Haskell's products, Haskell should have three or four times the number of customers they have now. At this point I'd tentatively suggest adding fifty reps to their sales force. Once you have the Southville plant constructed and operating, I'd suggest adding fifty more."

Matt jotted a note on the yellow legal pad on the table in front of him and returned his attention to Jamison. "What else?"

"Paul Cranshaw, the marketing vice president, will have to go, Matt. He's been with Haskell for twenty-eight years and his marketing philosophy is antiquated and foolish. He's also inflexible and unwilling to change his ways."

"How old is he?"

"His file says fifty-six."

"Will he take an early retirement if we offer it to him?"

"Possibly. He's not going to quit on his own, that's for sure. He's an arrogant son of a bitch and openly hostile about Intercorp's takeover."