Out of oblivion

"You don't exist."

"And yet, here I am."

O ~ o ~

The first time I met him I was working in London as a business reporter for the Financial Times. It was 1999. I had started to get all sorts of strange calls about the millennium bug, about the end of the world, the end of humanity and about climate change. This wasn't one of them. It was a regular call from one of my regular PR contacts. One of the more reliable PR firms in a business not noted for its reliability.

"Charles, there's someone I'd like you to meet," he said without preamble.

"Oh, Jonny, it's you. Good morning. How are you? Nice of you to call."

The approach didn't surprise me. For a PR man, Jonathan Lambert was no-nonsense, straight down the line and uncharacteristically lacking in bullshit. The first time I met him was at a technology trade show in the 1980s. He introduced himself, then introduced his client, before pulling a sheaf of press releases out of his briefcase. Nothing unusual in that. Until he went on to talk through each of the announcement in turn, telling me to disregard them. Not what I had come to expect from a public relations rep.

"Ignore this one," he said "this is old news... this one is complete crap... this is a new version of last year's product, throw these two in the bin..."

The client stood there, wide-eyed, wondering why he was paying this guy to represent him. I soon found out, as did he, if he had any real business sense.

"... this is the important announcement. This is what you need to know. I can get you an interview with the CEO if you want one, but the head of research and development will provide a better explanation."

Needless to say I made the call to the head of R&D and later interviewed the CEO. Jonny's client got the coverage they needed, I got the stories I wanted, much of the material being exclusive, and everyone was happy. From that day on, Jonny and I became firm friends, regular drinking buddies and never, to this day, has he tried to sell me a lemon of a story. He has always kept his clients firmly in hand, curbing their natural enthusiasm for making stuff up.

Then, I was a feature writer for a trade rag, before moving to the FT. He was an established but largely freelance trade public relations representative. He soon moved on to become a founding partner with what is now one of the City of London's most prestigious financial communications firms. We continued our regular lunchtime and evening dining and drinking sessions.

So that when he told me there was someone I should talk to, I knew that the advice was genuine.

"Who is it?" I asked, wondering what new client Jonny or his firm had landed and why it might be of interest for me.

"Well..." he said, "It's a bit difficult to say over the telephone."

"Where is he from?"

"Look, Charles, I would like you to do this as a favour for me. Meet the guy. Indulge me. Just this once. I think you will consider it worthwhile."

"So, let me get this right. You want me to have a meeting with someone without knowing his name, what he does or who he works for?"

"Yep, that's about it."

"Can you give me any kind of reason why?"

"I can give you 50,000 reasons."

"What?"

"You heard what I said, Charles."

"Jonny, I can't believe this is an attempt at a bribe. And £50,000?”

"If I thought it would help, I would have no hesitation, but I know damn well it wouldn't."

"So what on Earth do you mean?"

"Charles, you are going to find this hard to believe but, this morning at exactly 8am, we had a call from an unknown person asking us to arrange a meeting with you. The caller said that a deposit of £50,000 had been made into our bank account in the hope that this payment would cover our fee and expenses for arranging the meeting but that, if it did not, could we remit an invoice for the difference?"

"£50,000 for a meeting with me? Are you winding me up?"

"I wish I were Charles."

"Were you planning to cut me in on this meeting fee?"

"I'd be happy to, if I thought you would accept a percentage, but I am pretty certain that you wouldn't."

"Well, obviously, I couldn't, particularly not knowing where the money was coming from and what it was supposed to buy."

"That's what I thought. Equally, we explained to the mystery caller that we could not possibly take on a client without meeting them, undertaking an appropriate level of due diligence and being completely clear about what the brief entailed. The caller told us there was no brief. The assignment was simply to arrange the meeting. Once arranged, the assignment was complete. At this point the caller hung up."

"So you agreed to take on the assignment."

"Well no, not exactly. I called the bank and asked where the credit had come from. The bank said that it was a small private bank located in Switzerland. They said that they could not identify the sender of the money. The Swiss bank told them that they, the Swiss bank, were under strict instructions not to reveal the identity of the person or persons who remitted the money."

"This is all sounding very shady, Jonathan."

"Indeed, and we tried to reverse the transaction until we knew more about the source of funds but the Swiss bank wouldn't have any of it. So we decided to credit the full amount to one of our charity partners. The Finance Director is arranging it as we speak."

"So why are you setting up the meeting, then?"

"I'm not. It's already arranged. We got another call from Mr Mystery who said that if you agreed to meet, you should be at the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall for 11 am today. I told them that we wanted to refund the money and do you know what he said?"

"No, what?"

"He said that he fully expected us to say that and that they would not accept a refund, so that we could either keep the money or remit the full amount to the charity of our choice."

"This gets weirder and weirder as the morning wears on."

"Well, it's only 8.35 now and it's weird enough. So what are you going to do about it?"

"What am I going to do about it? This really is none of my business, Jonny. If you have rejected the 'assignment' why are you even making this call?"

"I thought you would want to go along. Don't you? Don't you want to know why it is worth £50,000 for someone to have a cosy chat with you?"

"Put like that, how could I possibly refuse?"

"What I thought, Charles, what I thought."

O ~ o ~

Who is the mystery man and why does he want to speak to Charles and why is he willing to pay £50,000 to do so?

Read: Oblivion two