Elizabeth scheduled meetings with different department heads every day. Not all were hostile. Some were predatory. A beautiful girl sitting behind the president’s desk was a challenge to the male ego. Their minds were easy to read: If I can fuck her, I can control her.
Like the grown-up version of the boys in Sardinia.
The men went after the wrong part of Elizabeth. They should have gone after her mind, because in the end that was where she controlled them. They underestimated her intelligence, and that was their mistake.
They miscalculated her capacity to assume authority, and that was another error.
And they misjudged her strength, and that was their greatest mistake. She was a Roffe, with the bloodline of old Samuel and her father in her, and she had their determination and spirit.
While the men around her were trying to use Elizabeth, she used them. She tapped the knowledge and the experience and the insights that they had accumulated, and she made them her own. She let the men talk, and she listened. She asked questions, and she remembered the answers.
She learned.
Every night Elizabeth took home two heavy briefcases filled with reports to be studied. Sometimes she worked until four in the morning. One evening a newspaper photographer snapped a picture of Elizabeth walking out of the building with a secretary carrying her two briefcases. The photograph appeared in the newspapers the next day. The caption read: “Working Heiress.”
Elizabeth had become an international celebrity overnight. The story of a beautiful young girl inheriting a multibillion-dollar corporation and then taking command was irresistible. The press jumped at it. Elizabeth was lovely, intelligent, and down-to-earth, a combination they rarely came across in celebrities. She made herself available to them whenever possible, trying to build up the damaged image of the company, and they appreciated it. When she didn’t know the answer to a reporter’s question, she was not afraid to pick up a telephone and ask someone. Her cousins flew into Zurich once a week for meetings and Elizabeth spent as much time with them as possible. She saw them together, and one at a time. She talked to them and studied them, searching for a clue as to which one of them had allowed innocent people to die in an explosion, had sold secrets to competitors, and which one of them was trying to destroy Roffe and Sons. One of her cousins.
Ivo Palazzi, with his irresistible warmth and charmth.
Alec Nichols, a correct and proper gentleman, and gentle man, always helpful when Elizabeth needed him.
Charles Martel, a dominated, frightened man. And frightened men could be dangerous when cornered.
Walther Gassner. The All-German boy. Beautiful-looking and friendly on the outside. What was he like on the inside? He had married Anna, an heiress, thirteen years his senior. Had he married for love or money?
When Elizabeth was with them, she watched, and listened, and probed. She mentioned the explosion in Chile and studied their reactions, and she talked about the patents that Roffe had lost to other companies, and she discussed the impending government suits.
She learned nothing. Whoever it was, he was too clever to give himself away. He would have to be trapped. Elizabeth recalled Sam’s marginal note on the report. Trap the bastard. She would have to find a way.
Elizabeth found herself becoming more and more fascinated by the inside operation of the pharmaceutical business.
Bad news was deliberately spread. If there was a report that a patient had died from a competitor’s medication, within half an hour a dozen men were placing telephone calls all around the world. “By the way, did you happen to hear about…?”
Yet on the surface all the companies appeared to be on the best of terms. The heads of some of the large firms held regular informal get-togethers, and Elizabeth was invited to one. She was the only woman present. They talked about their mutual problems.
The president of one of the large companies, a pompous, middle-aged roué, who had been following Elizabeth around all evening, said, “Government restrictions get more unreasonable every Goddamned day. If some genius invented aspirin tomorrow, the government would never okay it.” He gave Elizabeth a superior smile. “And do you have any idea, little lady, how long we’ve had aspirin?”