«That’s not very comforting».
She paused again. «No, it isn’t. There are lots of stories I could tell you, but there’s a dramatic one that’s been making the rounds. About six months ago, Maxwell was on his private jet in Tampa, Florida. The plane was taxiing toward the runway and he asked his assistant for a pen to sign some documents. When she handed him a Biro ballpoint instead of his usual Montblanc, he became furious. He demanded to know how she could be so stupid not to have the right pen. She didn’t have a good answer and he fired her on the spot. She was literally deposited right onto the tarmac. This poor little twenty-six-year-old secretary from Essex had to find her way back to London all on her own».
I found three more ex-Maxwell employees and got three equally outrageous and colorful anecdotes, all with one common denominator: everyone was getting fired. One banker, a friend at Goldman Sachs, said to me, «The probability of you lasting a year there is zero, Bill».
I considered these stories carefully as the interview drew nearer, but they never succeeded in scaring me off. So what if I got fired? I had a Stanford MBA and BCG on my résumé. Surely I could find another job if I needed to.
I did the interview, then two more. Within days of the last one I was offered the position.
Against all the warnings, I accepted it.
I started my new job in March 1991. With my higher salary, I moved into my own place, a nice little cottage in Hampstead, North West London. From there I walked down a narrow road and got on the Northern Line to Chancery Lane, where I made my way to Maxwell House. Robert Maxwell had purchased this building in part because it was one of only two in all of London that allowed helicopters to land on the roof. This enabled Maxwell to commute from his home at Headington Hill Hall in Oxford to his office by helicopter, avoiding the traffic.
The idea of the boss arriving in such style sounded impressive until I experienced it for the first time. With windows open on a warm spring day, I heard the staccato whirl of a helicopter approaching. As it got closer, the sound became more intense. By the time it was directly overhead, papers in the office started to fly everywhere. All telephone conversations had to stop because of the noise. Things returned to normal only when the helicopter had safely landed and the rotors were switched off. The whole ordeal lasted four minutes.
On my first day of work I was told that I could pick up a copy of my employment contract from Maxwell’s secretary. I headed up to the tenth floor and waited in the reception area for his secretary to get around to dealing with me. As I flipped through an annual report, Maxwell himself burst out of his office. His face was red and the underarms of his shirt were soaked through with dark circles of sweat.
«Why have you not yet got me Sir John Morgan on the telephone!» he shouted at his assistant, an unflappable blond woman in a dark skirt who was neither surprised nor offended by this outburst.
«You didn’t tell me that you wanted to speak to him, sir», she said calmly over the top of her glasses.
Maxwell barked, «Look, missus, I haven’t got time to tell you everything. If you do not learn to take the initiative, you and I are going to fall out».
I slunk into my chair and tried not to be noticed, and as quickly as Maxwell appeared, he lumbered back into his office. The assistant finished what she was doing and then handed me an envelope with a knowing look. I grabbed it and made my way back to the eighth floor.
Later that day, I mentioned the incident to one of the secretaries near my desk. «That’s nothing», she huffed. «A few weeks ago he shouted so loudly at someone from his Hungarian newspaper, the poor man had a heart attack».
I went back to my desk, my contract suddenly heavy in my hands. That evening, as if to confirm what everyone really thought of Maxwell, as soon as the whomp-whomp of his helicopter could be heard, indicating that he was leaving, loud cheers rose across the office floor. I couldn’t help but wonder, Have I made a big mistake by coming here?
On the Monday of my second week, I arrived in my office and found a new addition, a fair-haired Englishman a few years older than me, sitting at the spare desk. He stood and offered his hand. «Hello, I’m George. George Ireland. I’m going to be sharing this office with you». His English accent was so upper-crust and pronounced that at first I thought he was faking it. George wore a dark, three-piece suit and had a copy of the Daily Telegraph on his desk. A tightly furled, black umbrella leaned against his filing cabinet. He struck me as a caricature of the perfect English gentleman.
I found out later that George had previously worked as Maxwell’s private secretary, but unlike the others in that position, he had quit before he was fired. As he was a close childhood friend and Oxford roommate of Maxwell’s son Kevin, another place was found for George. Whatever humiliations Maxwell inflicted on his staff, he had a strange and well-developed sense of family loyalty, which he had extended to George.
But as soon as I met George, I was suspicious. Was he going to report back to the boss everything I said?
After our introduction, George and I settled at our desks, and a few minutes later he asked, «Bill, have you seen Eugene anywhere?» Eugene Katz was one of Maxwell’s financial-bag carriers who sat nearby.
«No», I said offhandedly. «I heard that Maxwell sent him to do some due diligence on a company in the US».
George sneered incredulously. «Due diligence on a company! That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Eugene knows nothing about companies. You might as well send your local publican[3] to do this due diligence», he said, inflecting the last two words for effect.
Over the course of our first day together, George proceeded to destroy the possibility of my feeling deferential toward anyone in the organization. He had such a keen eye for absurdity and hypocrisy — and such a razor-sharp wit — that I had a hard time not laughing anytime one of Maxwell’s top lieutenants was mentioned in conversation.
That was how I learned that George was not spying on me.
From George’s running commentary, it became obvious that Maxwell managed his company more like a corner shop than a major multinational corporation. Everything about it reeked of nepotism, dysfunction, and bad decision making. Yet, I still felt that I’d landed the best job in the world. I’d achieved my goal of being an investor in Eastern Europe. Maxwell was the only person making investments in the region, and if anyone in Eastern Europe wanted to raise capital, they had to come to us. Since I was the one who vetted all the deals, I was effectively the gatekeeper for every Western financial transaction in that part of the world — all at the tender age of twenty-seven.
By the fall of 1991 I had reviewed more than three hundred deals, I had traveled to nearly every country of the former Soviet Bloc, and I was responsible for making three significant investments for our fund. I was exactly where I wanted to be.
But then, after returning from lunch on November 5, I switched on my computer and was greeted with a red Reuters headline: «Maxwell Missing at Sea». I chuckled and swiveled in my chair. «Hey, George — how did you do that?» George was always organizing pranks, and I figured this was one of them.
Without looking up from his work he said, «What on earth are you talking about, Bill?»
«This thing on my Reuters screen. It’s really convincing».
«What’s on your Reuters screen?» He rolled his chair to my desk and we stared at it together. «I… he said slowly. That’s when I realized that it wasn’t a joke at all.
Our small office had glass interior walls and I could see Eugene, white as a ghost, running toward the elevators. Then a few senior executives rushed past, struck with similar looks of panic. Robert Maxwell was indeed missing at sea. This was horrible news. Maxwell may have been a bastard, but he was also the undisputed patriarch of the organization, and now, for better or worse, he was gone.