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Bulgarians’, noted Brian Cole, Maxwell’s fixer in that country, ‘did not trust Maxwell. They just wanted his money.’ Among those travelling to Sofia as part of the team to invest MCC’s money was Helen Liddell, a future Labour member of parliament, employed as director of personnel and public affairs at the Scottish Daily Record, part of Mirror Group Newspapers. Maxwell, with Liddell in attendance, paid out millions but received little more than a royal welcome in return.

      Maxwell’s reveries about international stardom were disturbed by Kevin, who was about to fly with Anselmini to Zurich on a mission to reassure the bankers that new anxieties about the empire were groundless. Kevin’s solution was radical. More of the empire needed to be sold, he urged, despite the poor prices they might earn. The recent sale of their shares in TFI, the French television station, had prompted, a temporary rise in MCC’s share price – the market had not realized that some of the shares were in fact owned by the Maxwell pension funds. More sales were needed. His father agreed and added another ploy: ‘We’ll have to buy more shares.’ By 19 February, Maxwell officially owned 68.1 per cent of MCC, an increase of about 5 per cent over three months. A genuine market for the shares had practically ceased to exist.

      Among those scenting a profit from the dismantlement of the empire was Robert Pirie, the Rothschild Inc. banker blamed by many for his part in the crisis after he had advised on the $2.6 billion purchase of Macmillan. Although Maxwell had insisted in the glory hours of winning the battle that he would never sell any Macmillan asset, the American publisher’s break-up was inevitable. He had begun selling Macmillan assets in December 1989, although the $131 million he received in a public offering for 44 per cent of Berlitz had been a disappointment. This remedy in any case bore a sting: each sale after the Berlitz disposal would attract tax, reducing the proceeds.

      On a recent Saturday morning, Pirie had drunk coffee with Maxwell in London. ‘A client wants to buy Pergamon Press,’ he smiled, asking the Publisher whether he would sell.

      ‘Yes,’ said Maxwell, agreeing that Rothschilds could investigate Pergamon’s accounts on behalf of their client. But before the bank completed their investigation Maxwell told the banker that he was out of the running. The sale of Maxwell’s jewel, the foundation of his fortune, was already under way – codenamed ‘Project Tokyo’ – convincing the dispirited founder of the empire that it was time to contemplate retirement. The purchaser was Elsevier, a Dutch competitor of Pergamon.

      The arguments seemed incontrovertible. MCC was suffering from the ‘Max Factor’: his own presence was devaluing his company’s value. Recent resignations had compounded his troubles, and window-dressing was no longer a sufficient cure. Only his retirement would improve the image and the share price.

      Kevin’s proposed successor as MCC chairman was Peter Walker, the Conservative member of parliament and former cabinet minister who had earned his millions in the 1960s with Jim Slater. Their controversial partnership had introduced a new era of unit trust investments in Britain, only to culminate in disaster and scandal long after Walker had departed. Walker, however, had secured his fortune and went on to become a successful politician.

      The idea of recruiting Walker had first been mooted by Sir Michael Richardson, MCC’s new stockbroker and the chairman of Smith New Court, which also employed Walker. Richardson, who had willingly accepted MCC as a new client after Maxwell had dismissed Laing & Cruickshank for failing to puff his shares, had first dealt with Maxwell twenty-five years before, when he had floated Pergamon shares on the stock exchange. In the decade after the Pergamon scandal in 1969, he had enjoyed only occasional contact with his erstwhile client, but that changed during the 1980s with Maxwell’s resurrection. During those boom years Richardson had established himself in the City’s higher echelons, reputedly becoming close to Margaret Thatcher, and switching to N.M. Rothschild, the bankers, where he earned a fortune. Like so many in the Square Mile, he wanted to believe, when MCC became a client in 1989, that Maxwell was ‘squeaky-clean’. Sensitive, obliging and knighted for his polished performance in the City, Richardson would plead gullibility in the face of Maxwell’s self-salesmanship, coupled with his promise of enormous fees. In recognition of that special relationship, Richardson had given the speech of thanks in 1988 at Maxwell’s grandiose sixty-fifth birthday party for 500 of the great and the good in Oxford – it was ‘the party of the decade’, Richardson had declared extravagantly, before claiming that their relationship with Bob had ‘enriched’ all his guests’ lives.

      Peter Walker’s introduction to the Maxwells was undertaken by Richardson, whose admiration for the politician, as for Maxwell, was unconditional: ‘He’s as tough as they come.’ The result had been an invitation for Kevin to dine, on 21 November 1990, at Walker’s home in Cowley Street, Westminster. That evening, Kevin had propositioned the politician to become MCC’s chairman. The notion appealed to Kevin because, as he observed his father’s increasingly erratic performance, he had, with his mother’s encouragement, developed the desire to run the whole show himself. Walker was seriously interested. The two men had found they had enough in common: lean, mean, ambitious, self-admiring and brutally self-interested.

      Three months later, at nine o’clock on 12 February 1991, Richardson and Walker visited Robert Maxwell to discuss the terms for what Sir Michael called ‘an ideal solution’. The outline was blessed by Maxwell and, over lunch two days later, Kevin and Walker settled more details. To Kevin, one of the empire’s problems seemed to have been resolved. Walker would be paid £100,000 per year and would, in addition, benefit from the executives’ ‘incentive’ scheme. He was promised, over the following three years, 605,380 MCC shares in three instalments, and he would receive them free. At that date the shares were worth £1,350,000.

      Kevin’s thirty-second birthday fell on 20 February. As a treat, he chartered a Falcon jet and invited three other couples to fly at 7.30 in the morning from Heathrow to Venice for lunch, staying overnight at the Pensione Accademia. The cost could be charged to the company because he would briefly attend a board meeting of Panini, a sticker manufacturer which his father had bought in an expansionary fit and which was losing money.

      While his son took a break, Robert Maxwell flew to the American southern states, to relaunch his Central European Fund. Within two days he had tired of the seven-day programme, which was costing £140,000 and flew instead to Miami to inspect the Lady Ghislaine after her repairs. Once there, he decided that the new captain was unsuitable. Summoned to the bridge, the American seafarer was fired for dereliction of duty: he and the first officer had been absent from the boat shortly after Maxwell arrived.

      Adding to the army of those dismissed caused Maxwell no concern. Once he had tired of people, their departure was convenient. No one, he believed, other than himself, was entitled to any security of employment, an opinion which he probably did not discuss over lunch with Norman Lamont at 11 Downing Street on 27 February – a meeting which the new chancellor of the exchequer could not subsequently find in his diary.