Michael Ridpath - Final Venture

Sir Gordon Ayot (Bart) had never known his own father, my grandfather, who had died on the road to Arnhem. He had inherited a small estate in Devon, a baronetcy, and a desire to join the family regiment, the Life Guards, which he duly did. He did everything that a dashing cavalry officer was supposed to do. He gambled, entertained lavishly, womanized, found a beautiful wife, and learned to drive armoured cars round godforsaken parts of the world. Women loved him, and he loved women. This was clear to me from when I was quite a young boy. My parents did their best to keep the state of their marriage from Helen and me, sending us first of all to bed, and then to boarding school, but of course they didn't succeed. My father's expenditure easily exceeded his income, and the estate shrank until only a small cottage was left. My father felt let down, too. My mother was supposed to be rich, but her father had carelessly gone bust in the property crash of 1974. She tried hard to ignore her husband's recreations, and their expense, but when I was ten, they divorced.

I hated my father for hurting my mother. But I also admired him. Throughout my teenage years he used to take me off on a series of unplanned trips: scuba-diving in Belize, rock-climbing in Canada, and later when I was at university to nightclubs in London and Paris. Where the money came from for all this, I had no idea, and my mother could never find out. Then one morning at Cambridge I was called to my tutor's rooms. He told me that my father had died peacefully in the night, of a heart attack. He was only forty-five. I subsequently discovered that he had been drinking heavily the evening before, and there were two women half his age there to witness it.

Against my mother's wishes, I joined the Life Guards after Cambridge. I did it partly out of a sense of loyalty to my father and grandfather, but also because I thought soldiering would be fun. It was, and I was good at it, but in the end the layers of constricting tradition got to me, and I left.

I bitterly regretted my parents' divorce, and my father's part in it. At ten I had solemnly resolved never ever to do the same thing myself. And now, here I was, six months into my own marriage to a woman I loved, and my father-in-law was suggesting I was going the same way. It wasn't just that he was wrong: he had hurt my pride.

Lisa's parents were also divorced, of course. Frank had walked out from his wife when Lisa was fourteen. Lisa had never been given a satisfactory explanation, and like me, had never quite forgiven her father. But there the similarity ended. Although her mother quickly remarried and moved to San Francisco, taking Lisa and her brother with her, Frank had stayed single.

I wanted to make quite sure that neither one of us followed in our parents' footsteps.

I looked over my shoulder and saw the Union Boathouse speeding nearer. My arms and shoulders ached. It had been a good outing.

Gil's office was the largest in the firm. The walls were oak-panelled, the furniture antique. Pride of place was given to a portrait of a weak-chinned colonial nobody by Gilbert Stuart, after whom Gilbert Stuart Appleby had been named. The portrait had only arrived a year before. Gil no doubt liked visitors to assume that the picture had been hanging in the family home for generations. But Daniel had pretty good evidence that it represented the first premature expenditure of a chunk of the BioOne millions.

'Now, have you decided what to do about Net Cop?' Gil asked with quiet concern.

'I'm going to try to save it.'

Gil raised his eyebrows. 'How?'

I smiled. 'I'm not sure yet. But I'm not going to give up. I'll get the two million back somehow. And I'm going to try to make more.'

Gil watched me closely through those thick glasses. Then he smiled, the wrinkles rearranging themselves on his face. 'I admire your perseverance. Do what you can. But there won't be a cent more from Revere.'

I returned his smile. 'I understand that.'

Gil pulled out his pipe and began to stuff it with tobacco. The only place he smoked it was in his own office. These days in America you couldn't smoke a pipe in any semi-public place, even if you did own your own firm.

'You know the mistake you made, Simon?'

Plenty of responses leaped to mind, but I settled on 'No?'

'It wasn't suggesting the follow-on. That was just a matter of judgement. Nor was it your desire to keep your word. Despite what Art says, I find that admirable. It was making a promise that boxed yourself in. As a venture capitalist, you always have to leave a way out. Circumstances change, the unforeseen always happens.'

I wasn't absolutely sure of this. It seemed to me that if an entrepreneur had put his life savings, his house, his dream into a venture capitalist's hands, at the very least he should expect some sort of commitment back from the venture capitalist. But Gil had written the rule book.

So I nodded.

'Well, I'm glad you haven't decided to do anything rash. Good luck with Net Cop. Oh, one other thing.'

'Yes?'

'Is John Chalfont OK?'

'I think so. Why?'

'It's just he was pushing very strongly for that wind-power deal the other day. He should have been here long enough to realize we've turned down a dozen of those.'

'Just a temporary loss of perspective,' I said. 'Happens to all of us.'

Gil didn't look convinced. 'Hmm. Thank you, Simon.'

Encouraged that my career at Revere seemed intact, I left the room, ignoring the feeling that my doubts hadn't disappeared, but had only been suppressed.

Daniel was looking at the stock quotes on his computer. BioOne had edged up to forty-four dollars. I'd already checked. John was out.

Daniel glanced up. 'Do you still have a job?'

'I do.'

'Gil talked you out of it, huh?'

'Lisa did, if anyone,' I said.

'I'm glad one of you has some common sense.'

I grunted. 'Gil did ask me whether John was OK. I think that wind-power deal worried him.'

Daniel laughed. 'John's such an airhead.'

'Oh, come on, Daniel. He's not that bad.'

'Of course he is. Sure he's a nice guy. But what's the point of that? It's worth zero. He's a loser. He's going nowhere in this firm, it's obvious. You know he's only here because of his father.'

I shrugged. Perhaps Daniel was right. But I liked John and had no intention of writing him off as a loser.

Daniel noticed my reticence, and changed the subject. 'So what are you going to do with Net Cop?'

'Find it some money'

Daniel raised his eyebrows. 'How?'

'God knows. Any ideas?'

It was always worth asking Daniel for ideas. Despite his cynicism, he could be very creative.

He paused for a moment. 'What about Jeff Lieberman? He invested in BioOne, didn't he? He might have a go at Net Cop.'

I thought about it. Jeff had been at business school with us. He was an able student, and he and I had had a lot of time for each other. He had headed off for Bloomfield Weiss, a big investment bank in New York, but he had watched my progress at Revere with interest. I had told him about BioOne, with Lisa's reservations, and he had made a significant investment in the Initial Public Offering.

'It's worth a try,' I said.

I looked up his number and dialled it.

'Jeff Lieberman.'

'Jeff, it's Simon Ayot.'

'Simon! How're you doing?'

'I'm fine.'

'And how's my little BioOne? The price isn't going down any further, is it?'

'Forty-four this morning. Way above where you bought it.'

'That's true. I can't complain.'

'Jeff, I was actually calling about another company we're involved in. If you thought BioOne was risky, you should see this one. But the pay-off will be huge if the company makes it.'

'Tell me more.'

So I told him all about Net Cop.

The deal caught his interest. It had those magic words 'The Internet' attached to it. I told him the risks, that Revere had backed out, and we would need more money to keep Net Cop afloat, but that just seemed to whet his appetite. For him, though, there was one important question.