The telephone console resting on a gargantuan round table boasts 90 buttons, and the man seated before it seems bent on using all of them at once. His plump fingers, the nails freshly manicured with clear polish, poke impatiently at the instrument. Visitors flow into the office in a steady stream, yet all the while the man continues a separate dialogue with the console. "He wouldn't be a bureaucrat unless he was in a meeting," he booms into the speaker in a British-accented baritone that is powerful yet velvety. "I want the man, not the message." Poke. A button away, he barks in German, "Cease offers. It is 400 million locked up for the duration." Poke. In French, he issues a command for his son Ian, 31, in Paris: "Call him at the restaurant. Tell him to get on the Concorde." Poke. Now, in English, he asks another son Kevin, 29, a workaholic like his father and heir apparent to the empire, "How is the market?"
Despite the world map branded with a giant M, the London headquarters of Robert Maxwell's communications empire is conservative by U.S. corporate standards. Yet there is nothing modest about the man at the round table, his command central. "Captain Bob" coined by the press -- is a boulder of a man: easily 250 lbs., and 6 ft. 2 in. tall. His ruddy face is a cross between Leonid Brezhnev's and Robert Mitchum's. His abundant hair, dyed black, is slicked back '30s style to counterpoint bushy black eyebrows that can appear deceptively clownish.
At 65, Robert Maxwell is a whirling dervish whose hyperkinetic activity seems designed to distract and confuse. In seconds, he can switch from a jaunty Brit to a ruthless schoolyard bully and back again. He is said to be worth $1.4 billion. Yet despite the colossal Mont Blanc gold pen he wields | like a fat cigar, the enormously expensive Lord & Stewart suit, the butter- soft cashmere overcoat, the private jet, the helicopter, the yacht with a crew of 14, the personal chef, the Rolls-Royces, the thing Maxwell really values most is time. Whether dealing with family, managers or minions, Maxwell is constantly ordering, pushing, scolding and hectoring, much like a nagging parent.
Five managers from his newspaper, the Daily Mirror, a working-class tabloid housed in the adjoining Mirror Group building, surround him at the table. Though they are accustomed to the constant interruptions, the lightning shifts in ideas, deals, languages, Maxwell knows they are growing impatient and holds them in check with his translucent amber eyes, which he uses like headlights to paralyze his prey. Punching a button on the console, Maxwell purrs, "You are up, good. It is 5 a.m. Find out how much they want for the National Enquirer." The citizens of Maxwell's empire know no time zones. Finally he is off the phone just long enough to address a problem with the Mirror's presses. "Fight, negotiate," Maxwell tells one manager. "I observe the master," the manager quips in response, noting that Captain Bob's spirits are high this morning.