Selling the Dream Read online

  ‘Status,’ said Markus. ‘I think he’s more interested in status than money or power.’

  ‘Can’t separate them,’ said Bob. ‘All of a piece, with Linc. I’ll bet he wouldn’t settle for status if he couldn’t get his hands on money and power as well.’

  ‘Okay – anyone got any better addictions in mind? Don’t tell me drugs or booze. Linc’s not the type – he needs a clear head so he can keep track of which lies he’s told to whom.’

  Silence fell on the room. No one could think of anything better than sex. ‘Alright, how do you get such a deeply unsexy guy addicted to sex? And how does the agency come into it, anyway?’ asked Bob.

  Markus jumped to his feet and began pacing.

  ‘What if he thought sex was somehow tied to status and power? Here’s a guy in the absolute grip of the blindest of blind ambition, right? He’ll do anything to achieve his goals. Anything. Haven’t you noticed that he’s the world’s greatest conformist when it comes to playing the part of the alpha male? He adopts any turn of phrase he hears from a powerful figure, long before the rest of us realise it’s going to become fashionable. Remember “the thing of it is”? He heard GBH’s global marketing chief say that in a meeting in the agency on a Monday afternoon and he was saying it to everyone by the Tuesday morning. Not because he thought it sounded terrific, but because he heard GBH’s top dog say it. He was starting every sentence with “look” long before the rest of us realised what a good tool it was for grabbing the conversational initiative and sounding authoritative. But he only started saying it because he heard some prospect he was wooing at the time say it.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Bob Kelman. ‘Linc is a great copyist. You know that strange look he gets when he tilts his head to one side and sort of half frowns, and taps the tip of his nose with his finger? The keeping-an-open-mind-but-still-sceptical look? That came from the head of Cocky. I met the guy at a conference not long after we hired Linc and I immediately recognised the look. I thought it was a Hunter trademark but no, he’d purloined that one, too.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Markus, still pacing. ‘All we need to do is convince Linc that most great and powerful men have mistresses, and then find him one. Right here in the agency. Right in my office, as it happens. Believe it or not, Jo fancies him.’

  ‘Markus, stop right there. This is fucking outrageous. You’re not going to recruit poor Joanne to –’

  ‘Relax, Jhon. I said she fancies him, unlikely as that may sound to you and me. I won’t have to recruit anyone. I’ll just have to plant a particular idea in the head of The Hunter and let nature take its course. Nothing unseemly. Nothing sleazy. He’s a free agent. So is Jo.’

  ‘Except he isn’t a free agent, of course. We all know he’s driven.’

  ‘His problem, Jhonno. Not ours.’

  ‘And you’d use Joanne? Who says she’ll agree to be used?’ Bob Kelman was squirming uncomfortably in his chair.

  ‘You haven’t been paying attention, Bob. No one’s going to use Jo. This will only work if Jo is a willing participant. And she will be, believe me, especially if I give her a bit of a nudge in the general direction of Linc. And there’s something else – if this works out the way I think it will, she might find herself in a position where she could pass on to us any useful insights she might have into the mind of the great man. She’s very loyal to the agency, you know. Anyway, the point is she’s already halfway to where we want her to be. I’ve seen her giving Linc the kind of come-on that would have had anyone but him drooling. He’s been oblivious, of course, because his compass hasn’t been set that way. But what if we reset his compass? That’s all I’m saying. And don’t look shocked, Jhon. You’re the one who said we need to get him addicted to the agency.’

  ‘I think I’ll deny this fucking conversation ever happened, if I’m ever asked.’

  ‘You won’t be asked. Look, Jhon, do you think anyone ever asks the GBH product development people whether they have any moral qualms about what they’re doing? Deliberately trying to get consumers hooked on shit products everyone knows are addictive and probably damaging – including the people who are in the very act of consuming them? To say nothing of the agencies – including ours – who flog them so artfully. Let’s keep things in perspective, mate. We’re not going to torture anyone. No waterboarding. No renditions. No lethal injections. We’re not cooking the books – at least, I hope you’re not.’ He glared at Jhon, who avoided eye contact. ‘You’d better not be, you slippery bastard.’

  Markus looked to Bob for support, but Bob was intent on removing a bit of loose skin from his thumb, alternating between scratching it and sucking it.

  ‘Look, guys, really. This is no big deal. We’re not even romancing a prospect with excessive inducements – and don’t tell me you’ve never done that in your life, Bob. All I’m going to do is concoct some research data that might be of particular interest to our Linc, email it to Otis and see what happens. That’s all. Half the research that crosses my desk is phony, anyway. People pushing barrows. I can do a convincing bit of cut-and-paste. I can even create a journal masthead. No worries. Let’s see. The Journal of Translational Socio-Economics. How does that sound for starters?’

  ■

  ‘Sit down, Jo. I have a little proposition for you.’

  ‘Really? At last?’

  ‘Settle down. I’m serious.’

  ‘Oh, I’m serious, too, Markus. Life is a bit boring in the bloke department at present. I rather fancied that young Boris but we never seemed to find the time to play before he was frogmarched into oblivion.’

  ‘You wanted to play with him?’

  ‘Don’t make it sound so manipulative. I didn’t mean exploit him. I just meant play. You know – playtime?’

  ‘I thought you always kept your sex life and your working life separate. Don’t I recall you saying that was one of your – what’s the word – principles?’

  ‘I might have. Yes – it used to be. Times change. A starving woman is less fussy about what she eats. You wouldn’t know that, Markus. You’re far too well looked after.’

  ‘Are you saying that you and I might . . .?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. No way. We could never have worked together all these years if we’d become playmates as well. You know that as well as I do. Oh no – I do have some rules. Even now.’

  Markus smiled a wan smile – whether of relief or disappointment Joanne couldn’t decide. Nor did she care. She found skinny Markus one of the least sexually attractive men she’d ever met, even though she admired him in most other ways and was fiercely loyal to him. She could never quite get past that prominent Adam’s apple of his, particularly when it rose and fell as he swallowed. But it was true she was feeling starved of male companionship. At this stage of her life, she felt she had finally mastered the business of managing a relationship with a man that wouldn’t be allowed to dominate her life or distract her from all the things she preferred to do alone. She had noticed that men usually didn’t put up with this kind of arrangement for more than a couple of years, max, and that suited Joanne just fine.

  But, if she was honest, she had to admit she was missing sex. She enjoyed sex. She enjoyed almost everything about the art of seduction. She had long since accepted she was not the marrying kind (her deceased husband notwithstanding), but she did enjoy being pursued, flirted with, taken out to lunch and perhaps even bedded . . . on her own terms. And she realised that she was playing in a rapidly dwindling field of possible playmates. Older men wanted a wife to replace the one who had died or left them; younger men wanted younger women; fifty-year-old men – her own contemporaries – were too often caught up in the messiness of unsatisfactory marriages, wayward or expensive children, or faltering careers.

  Was Joanne a cynic? She often asked herself that. The answer she usually gave was: yes and no. In most aspects of her life, Joanne saw herself as sceptical rather than cynical, but when it came to sex, she freely admitted that s
he was the complete cynic. Through and through. Was she exploitative, then? Possibly, she sometimes thought, but it was always hard, in the matter of lust, to decide who was exploiting whom. Was she helplessly devoted to the pleasure principle? No – not at all. But she did like to have some reliable sources of pleasure on tap – movies, galleries, leisurely Sunday lunches, travel – and none was more intense than sex. Which made it a dangerous place to visit, she realised. She was wary of addiction to any of her pleasures.

  ‘So what about Linc?’ Markus was saying.

  Joanne became aware that her mind had wandered.

  ‘Linc? Sorry – what about Linc?’

  ‘As you know, Linc is our problem boy, just at present. He’s acting restless just when we need him to be settled and secure.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You fancy Linc.’

  ‘I assume that’s a statement, not a question, and just as well. I’d never answer a question like that. What the hell are you driving at, Markus?’

  ‘Say something about Linc.’

  ‘Something like what?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Unrivalled new business record? Totally consumed by personal ambition? Not a team player?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Say something else. Linc the man.’ Markus didn’t want to lead the witness.

  ‘Perfect teeth. Remarkably firm bottom for a man of his age. Quite cute and appealing, in fact, even though there’s something missing.’

  ‘Missing? What’s missing?’

  ‘Oh, you wouldn’t understand. A certain lack of spunk. Bedroom eyes – hasn’t got them. His blue eyes are gorgeous, of course, but they’re too calculating. He’s dynamic and attractive, but he’s like a thoroughbred stallion that has a blind spot where mares are concerned. Sort of unnatural, somehow. Still, he’s a fine Aryan specimen – no wonder he and Otis get on so well. Otis is a boy, Markus, in case your mind is edging in that direction.’

  This was better. But Markus needed more.

  ‘And?’

  ‘What is this, Markus? I think you’d better come clean. This isn’t Doug Beatty all over again, is it?’

  Markus flinched. Doug Beatty had worked for Jhon Kornfield and Jhon had come to suspect he was up to something naughty with the books. Maybe no more than a minor fiddle with the petty cash – but possibly a sign of something not quite right with the guy. A bit unreliable. A bit of a depressive, maybe. Doug had developed the habit of dropping into Joanne’s office at the end of the day, his sad eyes appealing for some kind of comfort.

  At Markus’s instigation, Joanne had invited Doug to lunch. Markus and his partners wanted to get a bit more inside information on Doug, and thought Joanne was best positioned to obtain it for them. They liked Doug but felt they could no longer trust him. Joanne’s brief was to see whether there was something shifty or perhaps even sinister about him.

  They lunched on Wednesdays for a few weeks, a bit of innocent flirting on Joanne’s part gradually leading Doug to feel he could confide in her. He started to tell her his life story. And what a story it was! Having sworn Joanne to secrecy, he confessed that he had served a brief jail sentence for a series of minor embezzlements, that his ex-wife was a convicted drug dealer, that one of his grown-up children had an AVO out on the other, and that both of them were living on welfare.

  Doug himself, he declared, was going straight, except for one recent minor lapse when he had needed a bit of cash urgently. It was a tale of unrelieved misery, starting with a deprived and violent childhood, and Joanne was sympathetic.

  At the fourth lunch, Doug declared that being able to talk to Joanne had changed his life; that he had finally found someone he could trust; that he was helplessly, hopelessly, deliriously in love with her.

  ‘Now what?’ Joanne had said to Markus when she had utterly betrayed Doug’s confidence by laying out the whole story.

  ‘We’ll fire him forthwith. We should have done a much more thorough background check on him, but it was a pretty lowly job he was applying for. Actually, that did ring a warning bell for Bob, as I recall. He wondered why a guy of Doug’s age and experience was looking for such undemanding work. Jhon assured him that a lack of ambition could be a good thing in some cases.’

  ‘Fire him? For what?’

  ‘He’s admitted to raiding the petty cash. Jhon thinks he’s done a bit more than that. We won’t call in the cops. We’ll be generous. Don’t give it another thought. Jhon might present it as a redundancy. He’ll make it painless, I’m sure, but Doug will be left in no doubt about the need to vanish.’

  ‘He won’t go quietly, Markus. He’s in love with me.’

  ‘He’ll be gone before you know it.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘He’ll be too embarrassed to contact you. You’ll see.’

  In fact, Doug went without a murmur, not suspecting for a moment that Joanne had spilt the beans, and grateful for Jhon’s discreet handling of the termination. But he pursued Joanne with the relentlessness of a stag in the mating season. She had been just flirtatious enough for him to imagine that his passion might be reciprocated. Flowers, phone calls, emails, letters, endless text messages. In the end, Joanne was forced to change her email address and her mobile number, and all calls to her office were channelled through the receptionist.

  Eventually, Doug dropped away, but Joanne never quite forgave Markus.

  Now Linc.

  ‘Totally different case, Jo,’ Markus assured her.

  ‘I think you’d better come clean, Markus. I don’t like the sound of this one little bit.’

  Markus was unsure how to proceed. The Doug thing was obviously a problem. He put his elbows on the desk, his chin in his hands and looked straight into Joanne’s rather startling green eyes.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you might find that Linc is about to become a bit more, shall we say, attentive. A bit more aware of your rather obvious – if I may say so – interest in him. You’ve hardly disguised it, Jo.’

  ‘He’s a babe in the woods when it comes to everything except winning business and schmoozing clients. I’m surprised he ever got married and had two kids. He’s a kind of innocent, in some ways. Quite charming, though. Quite appealing.’

  ‘And quite a challenge?’

  ‘You’ve crossed the line again, Markus. What goes on in my head stays in my head. Same for my bed.’

  ‘Anyway, there’s no question of Linc having done anything wrong. It’s just that he’s . . .’

  ‘Restless. You already said. What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘Oh, weighing his options. Considering his future. Contemplating a move into the wide and wonderful world of self-employment.’

  ‘And you want him to stay right where he is.’

  ‘Of course. Not forever. Just until The Ripper is successfully launched and the GBH account feels a little more secure than it does right now.’

  ‘You want me to cosy up to Linc and . . . what? Keep him engaged? Make him feel like one of the family?’

  ‘Exactly. Very good. Engaged is a good way of putting it. One of the family. That’s nice.’

  ‘Anything else, you slimy bastard? I assume you want me to spy on him as well?’

  ‘Nasty word.’

  ‘Get him to confide in me.’

  ‘Better. Yes, that would be desirable. Not the main game – I need to stress that – but a welcome collateral benefit, certainly. Let’s just call it a watching brief.’

  ‘So you know where his head is at?’

  ‘That would be the collateral benefit I’m referring to, yes.’

  ‘So you get early warning of any looming disturbances to the balance of power?’

  ‘That would be helpful.’

  ‘Is it worth a trip to Russia?’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘I’m being recruited as a spy. Russia comes to mind. I’ve always wanted to go to Russia. I have quite a lively and long-standing interest in Russian literature, in case you’ve forgotten.’
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br />   ‘Russia? What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘When this little episode is over, when the appalling Ripper is safely launched, when GBH is solid, when Linc has served his purpose . . . I’ll want a return airfare to St Petersburg – business class.’

  Markus sighed and, for a moment, Joanne thought he might actually shed a trademark tear or two.

  ‘St Petersburg, Russia?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Well . . . okay. I guess I can run it past Jhon.’

  ‘Business class.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Jhon will kill me.’

  ‘No he won’t. You can give me some research to do. Make it a legitimate business trip. I could write you a paper on the future of advertising in a corrupt oligarchy.’

  ‘Very funny. But, hey, that’s actually not a bad idea. Not that topic, necessarily, but the concept.’

  ‘I’m full of good ideas. You know that. Oh, and I’ll need the ticket in my hand before we embark on this little enterprise. I’ll consult my diary and let you know the dates. I’m due for a holiday.’

  5

  KK&C’S ADLAB WAS Bob Kelman’s pride and joy. Having such a facility in-house was a strong selling point with clients. The viewing room for focus groups rivalled a corporate box at a sports ground for comfort and style, with clients observing the operation through a glass panel that worked as a mirror on the group’s side, and a window on the clients’ – a set-up not unlike observation rooms used during the interrogation of police suspects.

  Though the industry was in the throes of a massive shift to online research – even including online group discussions – Bob insisted that the agency persist with these group-watching events. He regarded them as incomparably effective bonding sessions with clients, spiced with a bit of light entertainment.

  Otis kept telling him this was such an artificial environment that these group sessions hardly qualified as research at all. ‘Strangers in a strange place say strange things,’ Otis repeated like a mantra. If he’d had his way, all his group sessions would have been conducted in people’s homes, out in the ’burbs and beyond, using natural groups of friends and neighbours. Observing consumers in their natural habitat – that was Otis’s preferred modus operandi. He saw himself as the David Attenborough of consumer research.