The Aspen Account (30 page)

Seaton whirled clumsily around from the window. “What the hell!” he yelled as Michael fell into the room, rolling over one shoulder and springing to his feet. His attacker jumped through the doorway and knocked him to the floor with a blow to the solar plexus. The pain all but paralyzed him, and he curled into a defensive ball like an injured animal.

“Marcus . . . !” Seaton yelled, looking to his bodyguard for an immediate explanation.

“He snuck onto the property and then entered the mansion through the servants’ passageway in the kitchen,” the bodyguard replied.

“Who is he?” Seaton demanded.

Marcus stepped toward Michael and kicked him in the midsection, then reached down and took his wallet. “Name’s Michael Chapman,” the bodyguard said, flipping through the contents. “Hey, he works for Cooley and White!” He held up a business card.

Groaning, Michael sat up, and Marcus leveled a gun at his face. “Stay down,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Michael looked first at the gun, then at the man. He was about to answer when he noticed something unusual: a twitch at the corner of the left eye. A few seconds later, it twitched again.

“It was
you
!” Michael exclaimed.

“What?”

“It was you. You’re the man that visited Dr. Speer the week before I did—the man asking questions about how Kurt Matthews died.”

“I’m going to ask you once more: what are you doing here?” Marcus growled.

“Mr. Seaton,” Michael said, ignoring Marcus, “I’m a federal agent for the U.S Treasury Department. I’m working undercover at Cooley and White as part of a prototype operation created by a Senate oversight committee three years ago. I was the senior auditor on the X-Tronic engagement this year. When Kurt Matthews was killed, I was placed on the engagement. I’ve discovered a fraudulent conspiracy between certain high-level employees from both X-Tronic and Cooley and White. I believe the conspirators planned to inflate profits illegally for personal gain from stock options and an aggressive bonus system, as well as for career security in case the Cygnus takeover was successful. Kurt Matthews was murdered because he discovered the fraud. And your sons are involved.”

Marcus held the gun steady but glanced toward Seaton for instructions.

“Wait,” Seaton said. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

Michael nodded, fighting nausea from the blows to the midsection. “In a break room at X-Tronic. We both arrived to work early one day. That was more than a month ago.”

“Would you like a drink?” Seaton asked.

The man’s composure surprised Michael. It seemed almost as if he had
expected
to hear such things about his company and his sons.

“Now that you mention it, I could use a drink, sir,” he replied.

Seaton splashed some of the Glenury-Royal into the last two unbroken glasses and gave him one. Michael took a drink to help ease the pain in his ribs. He glanced at Marcus, who did not have a drink.

“Oh, don’t worry about Marcus,” Seaton said. “He doesn’t drink. Now, I believe you want to tell me the details of your investigation at X-Tronic.”

Michael still could not find even a hint of surprise on the billionaire’s face. “You knew something was wrong at the company?” he asked.

“Please,” Seaton insisted. “First tell me everything you know.”

Michael nodded and then proceeded to tell everything that had happened since he was first assigned to the X-Tronic engagement. He told of his discovery of the revenue overstatements from the illegal recording of software contracts. He then described his growing suspicions surrounding Kurt’s death, and how everything tied in with the pending acquisition talks with Cygnus.

But it wasn’t until he began detailing the individual roles of the key managers and officers involved in the conspiracy that he felt a scrutinizing glare from Marcus. Although Seaton was focused on the details of Michael’s findings, Marcus seemed suspicious that he was holding something back. And he was. Because considering all that he was about to ask of X-Tronic’s billionaire CEO, he did not know how he could possibly tell the man that he had been the cause of Lucas’s death.

51

DON SEATON APPEARED exhausted as he slouched down in the leather chair by the fireside. Michael had never imagined how the billionaire might look without the glowing confidence that had exuded from his photos and media interviews during the past twenty-five years. Now he saw the exhaustion in the man’s face, as if he was suddenly on the very brink of death.

“Should I call someone?” Marcus asked, also noticing Seaton’s pallor. Indeed, the bodyguard seemed more concerned about the billionaire’s health than the man himself was. 

“Because of the merger talks,” Don began, “we have a shareholders’ meeting in Denver this Thursday. I can’t keep this news of the fraud from the public.” He stood looking into the fire. “This will destroy X-Tronic,” he continued. “It will become the next Enron or WorldCom or Rockwood Corporation. And everything I’ve spent the past thirty years building will be destroyed.” He took another drink of Scotch.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Michael said.

“What other possibility is there?”

Michael swirled the liquor in his glass, stalling a moment before answering the question. He was terrified at what he was about to ask of Mr. Seaton. But everything he knew about the man told him he just might go along with it. He merely prayed he hadn’t miscalculated. Finally he said, “How much does X-Tronic mean to you, Mr. Seaton?”

Seaton turned to face him. “It’s my company! I built it! It’s
everything I am
!”

“No abstractions, please. I’m asking a very specific question. How much are you willing to pay to save X-Tronic and the people who work there and have their lives invested in it?”

Seaton looked at him in surprise. “My heart lies with my company. My wealth is only a cloak that I have been given to wear.”

“Then use your wealth to save the company,” Michael said. “Do what no one would do for Enron. Do what no one else
could
do . . . Mr. Seaton,” he continued, “if you want to save X-Tronic from financial collapse, you need to use the shareholders’ meeting next week to tell the world about the discovered fraud within the company. They need to hear it from you first.”

Seaton looked at the floor and frowned. “It will still create a panic.” He shook his head, causing the orange firelight to slide back and forth across his face. “People will be on their cell phones, selling their shares immediately after the words leave my mouth. It will flood the market with rumors and drop the stock price to the floor. Our credit rating will be downgraded to junk status and will threaten to force X-Tronic into bankruptcy before the end of the day.”

Michael glanced over to Marcus, walking toward the splintered doorway. The bodyguard didn’t seem to be listening, but Michael knew better. In a steady voice, Michael said to Seaton, “You could contact the SEC commissioner and the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange this weekend. Insist that on the day of the shareholders’ meeting they suspend trading of X-Tronic shares for twenty-four hours. This would buy you some time, give you a chance to calm the investors. Demand that they give you their undivided attention during the meeting.”

“I don’t think the Exchange would allow such a move,” Seaton said, staring into the fire. He seemed unwilling to look at Michael when thinking through a problem. “But even if we were able to suspend trading temporarily, what could I possible say to the shareholders that would prevent a panic?”

 “There is nothing that will prevent some form of a major financial slide in the market price—especially with all the hype around the better-than-expected earnings release and the analysts’ speculations that the merger will occur. By suspending X-Tronic’s trading, you’re going to allay the onslaught of people selling before the crisis can be explained to investors. Our only argument here is that suspending trade will give people time to evaluate the true impact the fraud may have on future earnings at the company. It’s no different from issuing a major press release after trading closes on Friday, giving investors the weekend to analyze the stock value before the markets open Monday morning.”

“Then why don’t we move the shareholders’ meeting a few days to the following weekend?” Don asked.

“We can’t change the meeting or there will be speculation that something’s happened at X-Tronic.”

The windows shook from a strong gust of wind. The winter storm was approaching, and Michael wondered just how much of the Rocky Mountain region had been shut down.

Seaton stood up from the chair and moved slowly away from the fireplace, as if the storm were calling him. “My son’s funeral is Tuesday—Jesus, I shouldn’t even be having the shareholders’ meeting next week at all! I should cancel it altogether . . .” His voice faded to little more than a whisper. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Michael stood up, too. “Look, Mr. Seaton, the shareholders’ meeting has to happen Thursday as planned. And you need to make the announcement then. The difficult decision for you is going to be how you want to respond once trading begins the next day.”

“What are you suggesting?” Seaton asked, turning to meet Michael’s eyes for the first time in several minutes. He seemed to have made a decision to move on to the next phase of whatever Michael was proposing.

Michael walked toward the heavy mahogany desk. “You need to liquidate as many of your other investments as possible and be prepared to put all your eggs in one basket.”

“A basket that’s about to break!” Seaton reminded him.

“Yes,” Michael replied seriously, more than willing to admit the risks involved. “You need to have the funds set aside so that you can start buying as many shares of X-Tronic as you can once trading begins the day after the shareholders’ meeting, when the price begins to drop after the public learns of the fraud.”

Seaton listened carefully, pondering Michael’s strategy. “You want me to buy large volumes of the shares to prevent the price from falling.”

“No. I want you to let the price fall. The market will need to see a large drop in the company’s share price because of the news. What I want you to do is help the company weather the storm. If you start buying the shares in low volumes when it begins to drop, then increase the volume of shares you purchase as the price continues to drop, it will show Wall Street that not everyone in the world is trying to dump the stock. In theory, it’s no different from a massive corporate buyback of common stock. It will show some hope, some future, for the company.” 

Without moving his head, Michael looked up and left, as he always did when performing advanced calculations in his head. He continued. “The price closed today at a hundred and one dollars a share. I would think that it could drop to ten dollars in one day—after your announcement—and then continue to drop to less than a dollar a share over the next few days. If it goes below a dollar, there’s a very good chance it will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, which would further encourage the board to declare bankruptcy. But if you purchase shares slowly during the decline, it will slow the collapse of the price. Then, when the price hits thirty-five a share, you buy everything that’s offered below that price until you run out of money.” His eyes came level and locked back on to Seaton. “You’re a very wealthy man, Mr. Seaton, and I know that this will probably be the biggest risk—financially, anyway—that you’ve ever taken in your life, but you’re the only one with the funds
and
the desire to save this company. If the price holds at thirty-five a share, there is a real hope that you can smash out market concerns and begin to turn X-Tronic around.”

Seaton’s face saddened as he listened to Michael’s words. He inched around his desk during the explanation and poured himself another Scotch. Then he walked to the window and looked at his dark reflection.

“How could my sons do something like this to my company?” The billionaire turned to look at him, revealing the deep, rheumy eyes of an old man finally broken by the years. The look Michael saw on his face was the summation of a lifetime of betrayals and broken dreams, as everything that Seaton had in his life—his family and his business—seemed to be vanishing before his eyes.

“I wasn’t much of a father to them, but I always made sure they had every advantage they could in life: the best education, world travel, experiences that I could only dream of when I was their age. I gave them
everything.
I was consumed in my work when they were boys. Too busy building my empire. When their mother died, I thought the best thing would be to send them to prep school out east.”

He took another drink of his Scotch and turned to look deeper into his reflection, as if discerning something in himself he had never seen before. “Perhaps I hated them a little after their mother died. They had her eyes. They only reminded me of her, of how much I had lost.” His eyes fell away from his reflection and held steady on the melting ice cubes in his glass. “And now look what I’ve turned them into. I gave them independence in their childhoods, hoping that it would make them into strong men, but they only grew to hate me. Oh, but they loved each other. I heard stories that even in college they were inseparable. Twins are often like that, I’ve been told.”

“The truth is,” Seaton continued with a sudden coldness, “once I began to suspect they had betrayed me and my company, I lost any love that I may still have been reserving for them.” He looked Michael in the eyes. “It nearly broke me when I heard Luke had died, because I knew it would have destroyed my wife if she were still alive. But I don’t consider either of them my sons anymore.”

Unable to look upon the sorrow in the old man’s face, Michael let his eyes stray past him, to the bookcase behind the mahogany desk. There was a long silence between the two men; Seaton seemed to believe the conversation over, but Michael knew there was something left that he needed to say.

“Mr. Seaton, I was with your son when he died . . . I caused his death.” He stared at the bookcase while listening to the father’s reaction behind him. He heard nothing but the old man’s breath and the crackle of the fire. Michael closed his eyes and waited.