Game of Greed by Charlotte Larsen

Author:Charlotte Larsen [Larsen, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781718131781
Publisher: BUOY MEDIA
Published: 2018-09-09T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

The party is well underway. People are mingling, gossiping, and enjoying themselves, or at least pretending to have a good time. Francis bides his time during dinner, waiting until the perfect opportunity arises. Bernard Ferguson, the second person on Francis’s list of exposure-challenged senior partners at Smith, Turner, and Stevenson, seems to be the center of attention in a small cluster of distinguished-looking people. Gorgeous women in long gowns are laughing with him, showing their smooth necks and bleached teeth in the process. Men of authority slap his back.

Francis is standing at the periphery of the group surrounding Ferguson, observing his time of glory and the pleasure he evidently takes in it. Here is a man who needs to be center stage, Francis thinks, who lives and breathes for being loved and worshipped at the altar of power. And who will probably do close to anything to maintain his current position of reverence including sanctioning a series of phone hackings of politicians and celebrities for one of his major clients, The National Times. Francis’s research team hasn’t been able to find out just how long the scam has been going on, but the duration has been sufficient for Schwartz and his own team to have found out about it.

The whole issue of the public’s right to know and the individual’s right to privacy is tricky, once one is dealing with people like politicians who determine our lives. Or for that matter, celebrities who thrive on the public’s interest in them. In recent years, that line has changed. What used to be considered privacy is not necessarily so any longer. Nevertheless, Francis has no doubt that most people would agree with him that tapping phones and answering machines is taking the public interest one step too far.

And that is exactly what Ferguson has done. Not by himself, of course, but by supporting his client in articulating the contracts and terms and agreement with the five or so subcontractors who carried out the actual surveillance. And nobody, except Schwartz’s team and Francis’s team, that is, has so far wondered why The National Times recently has had more breaking news stories about celebrities and politicians than its usual share of breaking news would indicate.

The phone hacking has produced a significant number of scandals involving cabinet members, a supreme court judge, an ambassador, and a number of well-known actors and actresses, leaving individuals exposed to public ridicule and private grief. What may have been aberrant or even deviant private behavior suddenly has become public knowledge for dissection and opinion. Privately, Francis holds the belief that any person who seeks public office of any kind should behave accordingly, in private matters as well as publicly. But he realizes that his definition of behaving properly does not necessarily coincide with those of other people and that the standard he holds for himself is higher than most people’s. Nevertheless, he has little if any respect for any person, in public office or not, who exercises greed

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