Robert Maxwell of course understood the impropriety. Later that week, he signed documents promising not to use the Berlitz share certificates brought back by Ghislaine in any manner without Macmillan’s explicit agreement. His indecipherable scribble would adorn many such documents over the next year. In each case, after he had signed, he would more or less forget the deception. Dishonesty did not trouble him. Throughout his life, he had ignored the norms of morality. Indeed his fortune had been constructed, lost and rebuilt by deliberate transgressions, outwitting and outrunning his opponents regardless of any infringement of the laws. According to the ethics he had learnt as a child, watching smugglers in his Ruthenian border town, the goal was survival and profit, and the consequences to the losers were irrelevant. For Maxwell, the Berlitz transaction had been a minor sideshow at the beginning of another hectic week, working in a moral vacuum within a surreal world.
The atmosphere in the citadel of his empire, the £2 million penthouse apartment on the tenth floor of Maxwell House, was suffocatingly imperious. Polished, double doors led across marble floors into a high-ceilinged hall supported by brown marble Doric columns and lit by glass chandeliers. Beyond, the spectacle of a huge living area decked out with expensive mock-Renaissance tapestry-covered furniture and with carpets patterned in a vast ‘M’ design cautioned any visitor who might be contemplating criticism or challenge. Access to the apartment, in common with all the buildings on the Holborn site, could be gained only by coded plastic cards. Even between neighbouring offices movement was monitored by video cameras. Rigorous security was imposed to protect Robert Maxwell’s secrecy and cushion his paranoia.
The twenty-two-stone proprietor, clothed in bright-blue shirts and dazzling ties, intimidated visitors by his gestures as much as his words, his gargantuan performance humbling those physically and financially less well endowed. The theatricality, the egocentricity and the vanity of the man were unsurpassed. Servile staff offered refreshments, earnest secretaries announced incoming calls from the world’s leaders, and bankers, lawyers and accountants did everything they could to please their client, while his deep, gravelly voice issued curt instructions, allowing no questions. Those who attempted to understand his psychology invariably failed, because both his motives and his reasoning were unique. Utterly consumed by his own self-portrayal as a great man, he was certain of his invincibility, sure that his abilities would overcome the natural consequences of any decision he took. ‘Bob believed he was bigger than the City,’ lamented Johnny Bevan, one of his many brokers. To Maxwell’s gratification, enough of his visitors accepted his self-appraisal. Even his most bitter enemies used the sobriquet ‘Cap’n Bob’ – thereby recognizing, as he saw it, his supreme importance.
On the floor below, the communications centre of his universe, other compliant men and women toiled in the service of the Publisher, otherwise known as the Chairman or RM. Visitors knew that, as in a medieval court, the official job descriptions of these employees often bore little similarity to their actual task. And, again as in a medieval court, dozens of those visitors and employees waited patiently for the opportunity of an audience. From outside, invitations arrived hourly. Most were rejected with the standard computer-template reply that the Chairman regretted that his diary was full for two years. The world’s newspapers, television and radio were constantly monitored for every mention of the man, the precise words faithfully reported in regular faxes. Constantly updated handbooks listed the telephone numbers of every employee, business contact and powerbroker across the world – town home, country house and office – and the speed-dial numbers of those included on a special list. The Publisher delighted in calling employees at the most inopportune moments, demanding not only their attention but their immediate presence. Television screens displayed the trade of MCC shares in seven stock exchanges across Europe and Canada – and were the object of his intense scrutiny. The image was intended to match the substance: not a second could be wasted as the workoholic billionaire controlled his worldwide enterprise.
The empire was run on similar lines to those of Nicolae Ceausescu and Todor Zhivkov, the autocratic communist presidents of Romania and Bulgaria whom Robert Maxwell expensively nurtured. His employees knew only a small part of the scenario, unaware of the implications and the background to the letters and telephone calls flowing to and from their master in those nine languages he claimed to speak. None of the secretaries was allowed to remain employed too long – not even the very pretty ones whose employment the Publisher had particularly requested. No one would be permitted to learn too much, despite the effect on the office’s organization. Nevertheless, their loyalty, devotion and discretion were bought by unusually high salaries, and by fear: fear of Maxwell and fear of losing their jobs and being unable to find similarly lucrative employment. Verbal brutality crushed any opposition. In return for exceptional remuneration, they agreed to sing to their employer’s song sheet. The sole exception, and only a partial one, was Kevin. Fear of Robert Maxwell had been instilled in him from childhood, but by November 1990 his father’s passion for secrecy had been offset by the need for an ally. Kevin had become the cog in the machine essential for his father’s survival.
Bankers, brokers and businessmen in London and New York almost unanimously agreed that Kevin was clever, intelligent, talented, astute and, most importantly, not a bully like his father. Eschewing tantrums and verbal abuse, he had at a young age mastered the intricacies, technicalities and jargon of the financial community. But, with hindsight, the perceptive would be struck by the image of a dedicated son: of medium height, thin, dark, humourless, ruthless, efficient, manipulative, cold and amoral. Kevin acknowledged the source of other qualities in a written appreciation sent to his father: ‘You are my teacher and all my life you have tried to demonstrate the principles underlying every action or inaction even if we were playing roulette or Monopoly … you have given me the sense of excitement of having dozens of balls in the air and the thrill of seeing some of them land right.’ Willingly submitting to the Chairman’s daily demand to vet both his diary and his correspondence for approval and alteration, Kevin would tolerate anything from that quarter for the chance to indulge his love of the Game based upon money and power. ‘I don’t think anyone would ever describe me as being a member of the Salvation Army,’ he would later crow, echoing his father’s statement to truculent and threatening printers in the early 1980s.
For the previous three years he had worked under his father’s supervision, accepting his rules as gospel, not least the injunction never to give up. ‘He enjoyed fighting and enjoyed winning,’ Kevin admiringly observed of Maxwell’s achievement in creating an empire within one generation, while Rothermere, Sainsbury and Murdoch had relied upon inherited money. Kevin positively glowed, relishing both his own family’s wealth and the servility shown towards him.
Yet, despite his power and privilege within the organization, Kevin shrank in his father’s presence. Conditioned by the beatings – psychological rather than physical – which he had received as a child, his eyes would dart agitatedly around, nervously sensing his father’s approach, and sometimes at meetings he would slightly raise his hand to stop someone interfering: ‘Let the old man finish.’ Kevin may well have thought that he could manage the family business honestly, but within recent months either he had veered towards dishonesty or his remaining scruples had been distorted by Robert Maxwell. Many would blame his father’s lifelong dominance for that change, while others would point to his mother’s failure to imbue her youngest son with the moral strength to resist her husband’s demands.
Robert Maxwell had become a collector rather than a manager of businesses. Size, measured in billions of pounds, was his criterion. The excitement of the deal – the seduction, the temptation, the haggling, the consummation and the publicity – had fed his appetite for more. By November 1990, he owned interests in newspapers, publishing, television, printing and electronic databases across the world estimated to be worth £4.2 billion. But the cost of his greed was debts of more than £2.2 billion, and the coffers to repay the loans were