The Insider (20 page)

“And Dennis is just talking about the securities fraud charges,” Mary added. “If this is what we think it is, you can add racketeering and criminal conspiracy. Now is the time to get out in front of this. Because once we start going after a defendant like you, a lawyer at a big firm, the press will get interested and then nobody in the department is going to back off until you're in prison. It becomes a point of pride.”

“Look, you've got the wrong guy, and I'll tell you why.”

“We're listening,” Mary said.

“I've only been on the Jupiter deal for a week. I'll bet that the insider trading started long before I knew that I was going to be assigned to the transaction. And this wasn't a project that I sought out in any way. The assignment came from firm management, so why aren't you talking to them?”

“We're talking to everyone,” Dennis responded.

“I also heard that Ben had burns on his body. Is that true?”

Mary looked uncomfortable. “We aren't going to comment on that.”

“I'll take that as a yes, so someone apparently tortured Ben. Since Ben was the lead attorney on the Jupiter transaction up until a week ago, isn't it fairly obvious that he was the source of the leak?”

“If Ben was involved, and we're not saying he was, we don't think it ended there,” Mary said.

“I don't know what else to say, then,” Will said. “I guess I better hire a lawyer, huh?”

“That would probably be a good idea,” Mary responded, standing up and smoothing her skirt. Dennis stood up like someone who was already tired of being on his feet at nine A.M.

Mary walked over to the window again and gazed out at the sparkling bay and the bridge, still crawling with morning traffic. “I drive over that bridge every morning coming over from the East Bay, but I don't often see it like this.”

As the two agents headed out the door, Mary added, “I hope you think about our offer, Will. It's not too late, but it will be soon.”

The two agents left Will's office. He sat at his desk for a few minutes staring at his papers, trying to calm himself. Of course they hoped that he would simply confess—it would save the government the trouble of preparing a case. Maybe they didn't have any evidence connecting him to the Russians. But if the agents felt confident enough to pressure him so overtly, then they probably had at least enough to charge him with securities fraud. That meant that his life was about to change soon, and for the worse.

Then Will made the connections. Yuri had told him that there would be a terrorist attack on the BART system. Yuri and Nikolai had just attended a meeting at which the terrorist Aashif Agha was present. Agha was known to be acquiring the makings of sarin nerve gas. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that Agha was planning a terrorist attack on the BART system that would involve releasing sarin nerve gas on the trains. The
mafiya
was somehow facilitating the attack. They must be planning something like the Tokyo subway system attack in 1995.

He was startled by a knock at his office door. Without waiting for a response, Don Rubinowski entered, looking anxious.

“You seem to have held up okay under the hot lights,” Don laughed, though he didn't sound so certain. “Do you think we're going to have a problem here? The agents won't talk to anyone except the people they're interviewing.”

“There's been some irregular trading activity in Jupiter, but I don't think they've established any connection to the firm. You know how it goes. It could have come from someone at Jupiter, someone at Pearl. Who knows?”

“Right. Par for the course.”

“Yeah.”

Don paused. “But if this doesn't just go away, the agents will keep coming back to you because you're heading up the transaction for us. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but you should consider pointing them toward Ben. It's looking increasingly likely that he was involved in some fashion.”

“I've already said that to the agents.”

“Good. If they keep digging, you might also want to suggest that there was another person who was working on the deal who now has an ax to grind with the firm. A person who has been behaving a little erratically lately. A person who was recently fired . . .”

“We have no reason to think Claire had anything to do with this.” Will was appalled at the suggestion that the firm might make Claire a scapegoat. It was bad enough that they had fired her.

“No one's asking you to make accusations. The SEC should just know that Claire was working on the deal and that she was fired for performance reasons. That's the sort of thing they'll want to know.”

Will was trying hard to restrain himself from saying something to Don that he would surely regret.

“Tough way to start the day, huh?” Don offered. “Why don't you knock off early this afternoon? You look like you could use some rest.” The fact that Don was actually encouraging him to do something that did not involve billing hours gave Will his strongest sense yet that something was wrong.

Will stopped by Richard Grogan's office to inform him of Claire's discovery of the connection between Jupiter and the NSA, hoping that the disclosure would lead to a halt in the merger negotiations. As the co-chair of the corporate department, Richard would be responsible for ensuring that the firm avoided embarrassing press coverage that might follow if whatever Jupiter was up to became public. Will chose not to approach Sam Bowen with the disclosure because he liked Sam and didn't want to make him directly responsible for his CYA disclosure. If the disclosure to Richard did not stop the deal, then Will was prepared to leak the information anonymously to the press, although he preferred not to take that approach because it would be a clear breach of client confidentiality and professional ethics.

Will conveyed the facts to Richard, focusing on the mysterious board minutes. He left out Claire's speculation that Jupiter was partnered with the NSA in a covert spying program, but he did describe what was publicly known about the Clipper Chip program.

When he was done, Richard sighed unhappily, well aware that this was an exercise in risk shifting.

“What do you propose that I do with this bit of information?” Richard asked.

“You might make a discreet inquiry to a member of Jupiter's senior management,” Will offered.

“And what would I ask them?”

“Well, you could ask them what sort of dealings Jupiter has with the NSA.”

“If Jupiter is doing something that may attract nasty headlines, we need to position the firm so that we won't be viewed as complicit. Clients, even very lucrative clients, come and go, but the firm's reputation can't be tarnished. This could be a sensitive matter, so I'm glad you brought it to me,” Richard said, sounding insincere. “Sam and I will discuss this and let you know how to proceed. Any inquiry should probably come from you—that way it will seem more routine.” This was Richard's way of putting some of the risk back on Will. If things took an ugly turn, Richard could always spin his own version of what Will had told him in their conversation.

After leaving Richard's office, Will disregarded Don's suggestion and continued to work through the afternoon on the Jupiter transaction. Will reviewed summaries of due diligence findings, looking for additional clues to Jupiter's connection with the NSA or the existence of the Clipper Chip program.

That evening Will returned home, his satchel full of due diligence documents for review that night. In his mailbox, he found a manila envelope with no return address. Inside the envelope was a cell phone, with no note or explanation.

Will awakened from a deadened, sweaty sleep to the ringing of a cell phone. He sat up in bed and took a few groggy seconds to orient himself, his brain commencing its morning reboot. Yes, it was seven A.M. and he should be getting in the shower. Yes, he felt a little better. The pounding headache from yesterday's hangover was gone. And he was fully awake when he remembered that, yes, agents from the SEC and the Department of Justice had interviewed him yesterday, and it had not gone well.

Will lurched across the bed and grabbed the ringing cell phone off the nightstand.

“Turn on the television.” It was Nikolai.

“Why are you calling me here?”

“Turn on the fucking TV. Channel fifty-three. Financial News Network.”

“You shouldn't be calling me at home. I'm under investigation.”

“This is not your phone, remember?”

“So you sent me the cell phone?”

“Of course. It's clean. No one is listening. Now wake the fuck up and turn on TV.”

On channel 53, a woman reporter was standing against the teeming backdrop of the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. “One of the big stories this morning is the rapidly spreading rumor that computing giant Pearl Systems is planning the acquisition of the leading maker of encryption software, Palo Alto's Jupiter Software,” she said with carefully modulated urgency. “There has been no confirmation from Pearl or Jupiter regarding this rumor, but the market seems to be buying it. And they don't like what they're hearing. Pearl stock has dropped six percent or one dollar sixty-eight cents this morning in heavy trading.”

Cut to the anchor, a courtly gray-haired man in a dark suit, who asked, “Christine, why do you think the market doesn't like this deal? This would be a merger of two industry leaders. What's not to like?”

“Well, Mort, an analyst report issued last week by Kincaid & Company criticized Pearl's plans to offer sophisticated encryption products to consumers with their home computers.”

“With the growing concerns about identity theft, doesn't the average person want encryption?”

“Perhaps. But the Kincaid analyst questioned whether Jupiter's suite of encryption products for businesses can be offered to consumers in a way that is easy to implement and cost-effective. Consumers may say they're interested in protecting their privacy, but Kincaid believes that they aren't interested enough to pay substantially more for their PC.”

“Even many large businesses continue to complain that installing encryption is too costly and difficult.”

“That's right. Kincaid believes that Jupiter's strategy is misguided and will allow some of Jupiter's competitors to cut into its market share by offering less expensive computers without encryption features.”

“Christine, I can understand why Pearl's stock price has taken a hit. But what about Jupiter, which is down a whopping forty-seven percent? How can a merger with a giant like Pearl not be a good thing for Jupiter shareholders?”

“Investors seem to believe that Jupiter is moving away from its strength and embarking on a speculative strategy that may not work. They seem to agree with the pessimistic outlook offered in the Kincaid report.”

“This will be a story to watch this week, Christine.”

Christine and Mort moved on to other news from the morning's trading. Will slowly brought the phone receiver closer to his ear.

“You said this deal was sure thing,” Nikolai said, somehow sensing that Will was listening again.

“Well, it would have been a sure thing if someone on your end hadn't leaked news of the merger. Besides, it was your decision to invest.”

“That is not what Boka thinks.”

“What?”

“They were more interested in the opportunity than we thought. They decided to put real money into Jupiter.”

“How real?”

“Nine hundred thousand dollars.”

“How much have they lost?”

“More than a half million.”

“FUCK!”

“Yes, fuck. You appreciate the situation. You are fucked, my friend.”

“Look, I did what you asked. I can't control the stock market. There's nothing else I can do for you.”

“Calm the fuck down. Stay where you are. Yuri and I will come over.”

“Okay, but I have to go to work. When will you be here?”

“Half hour, maybe less. Do not go anywhere.”

The phone went dead. Now Will was not only awake, he was in a panic. If, as he had said himself, he was no longer of any use to them, and they had lost more than a half million dollars, then they would surely kill him. Like a housecat laying a bird at its owner's doorstep, Nikolai and Yuri would murder him in a misguided attempt to win their bosses' approval.

Will pulled on a Cal sweatshirt and a pair of jeans and grabbed his wallet and keys from the dresser. He turned on the TV again, still tuned to the Financial News Network, and left it blaring as he stepped into the hallway. Perhaps that might buy him a few extra seconds when Yuri and Nikolai were outside his door.

His breath came in short, ineffectual gasps. He considered whether to take the elevator or the stairs and decided on the stairs, which emerged in the lobby close to the front doors. Will ran down the four flights, taking them two and three at a time. When he reached the door that led to the ground floor, he opened it a crack and surveyed the lobby. It was empty.

He strode through the lobby, shoved open the front door, and took a quick left, forcing himself to walk until he was away from the building.

After a block, and just before he was about to start sprinting, he heard a voice behind him. “This is not respect that you are showing us, Will.” It was Yuri. “I've got a gun, so don't even think about running.”

Will stopped and turned to see Nikolai and Yuri standing on the sidewalk about five yards behind him. Yuri had a bad case of bed head, his black hair sticking up in tufts. Balding Nikolai was immune to such problems, but his eyes were bloodshot and his clothes rumpled. Yuri's hand was buried in the pocket of his leather jacket, presumably holding a gun. Will guessed that they had also been awakened by an angry call from someone who had been watching the financial news.