No one was surprised when Mike Burns resigned on February 11, but what happened next shocked the ad world. At 5:30 P.M. on February 14, seventeen of Burns’s disciples on the General Mills account quit en masse. The choice of Valentine’s Day was a special fuck-you to Roberts, who had turned the holiday into a Lovemarks-related day of Saatchi-and-Kevin celebration. Within days, Interpublic, a Saatchi rival, collectively hired the seventeen at an estimated cost of $3 million a year in salaries.

Rumors swirled that General Mills’s business would move with the Saatchi 17, as the trade press dubbed the renegades. A stunned Roberts ordered a company lawyer to query some of the remaining General Mills staff in hopes of finding out what they knew, and when they knew it. Later that week, Roberts flew to Minnesota and asked the same questions of the General Mills brass. He says he confronted Steve Sanger, the company’s CEO.

“Were you party to this?” Roberts says he asked Sanger.

“No,” said Sanger.

“Will you keep the business with us?” Roberts asked.

“Yes, but you gotta perform,” said Sanger. “Make sure no balls get dropped.” (Sanger did not return New York’s calls regarding the conversation; in February, General Mills issued a statement reaffirming its relationship with Saatchi, but has otherwise refused to comment on the Saatchi 17.)

Although Burns was never offered a job at Interpublic, Roberts didn’t believe that the Saatchi 17 would have left the agency without Burns’s counsel and blessing, and he feared that Burns might join them at a later date (this despite the fact that Burns had a clause in his separation agreement that prevented him from working for or soliciting business from General Mills for one year). Roberts instructed Saatchi lawyers to sue Burns for $3 million. The suit accused Burns of fiduciary neglect by urging General Mills to defect while still on the Saatchi payroll.

It’s hard to overstate the impact the defections had in the ad industry. Trade reporters staked out Saatchi’s offices in the February cold, asking anyone who was leaving if he was part of the Saatchi 17. Ad Age hired paparazzi—they surprised Burns outside his apartment one evening. “Hey Mike, Saatchi’s going to screw you on that lawsuit,” one shouted, trying to goad Burns into an angry reaction.

Four months later, Mike Burns has spent tens of thousands in attorneys’ fees and remains unemployed. Back at Saatchi & Saatchi, Kevin Roberts has tried to rally the troops, but a pall has fallen over the agency’s remaining General Mills staffers as they confront the reality that they may be asked to testify about their longtime mentor. (Last week, Saatchi received five Effie Awards, a coveted industry honor. Current staffers were credited for three of the winning campaigns; members of the Saatchi 17 were cited for two.) Initial motions in Saatchi’s lawsuit against Burns have already been filed. If the case comes to trial, Saatchi insiders loyal to Burns say that General Mills may be unamused when it finds out how much of Saatchi’s profit line is supported by the margins on General Mills’ accounts. The Saatchi 17, meanwhile, have named their new Interpublic venture Project Pilgrim, a jab at what they perceive to be Roberts’s management-by-persecution style. So far, they have no known clients. Which raises a still-unanswered question: Did Mike Burns and the Saatchi 17 leave the agency because of their clash with Kevin Roberts, or was it part of a master plan to pull off the biggest heist in advertising history?

On a recent Monday morning, Kevin Roberts sits behind his sleek modern desk in the Saatchi & Saatchi offices on Hudson Street, near Canal, a giant movie poster from Gladiator, signed by Russell Crowe, looming behind him. Roberts’s chair is elevated; visitors sit a time zone away. The office aesthetic mirrors that of his Tribeca apartment, a minimalist condo without doorknobs or levers of any kind (the lack of an obvious flushing device so baffled Saatchi staffers during one dinner party that the toilet backed up).

Roberts is on the phone when I come in. Soon, he’s smiling and pumping his fist. “Hey, can I tell a reporter?” he asks. The other voice says no, and Roberts’s face falls a bit. Then he hangs up and the smile returns. (Tomorrow it would be announced that Saatchi & Saatchi had won a $55 million account from American Express Financial Advisors.) “We would have never got this account under our old team,” says Roberts, offering me an aggressive handshake.

Roberts quickly detours from my first question. “I doubt you’re at your best, dressed so sharply, wearing this beautiful tie,” he says. “I just doubt it. I look at your hairstyle and I see incongruency here. You have a free-flowing, radical haircut, and you’ve got this suit on. I bet you’d be a better interviewer when you’re in your casual clothes, whether Ralph Lauren or Armani.” Roberts then tells me about a company-sponsored tsunami-relief contest. The young staffers who raised the most money won the grand prize of a dinner with Roberts (another prize was an oil painting of Roberts). “Kids today aren’t looking for careers,” he says, pounding his fist into his hand. “They are looking for experiences. I like that.”