The Protégé (29 page)

“What do you mean?” Gillette could tell that Casey was getting exasperated. “What’s he done?”

Casey grimaced. “His people went too far with one of our important friends, a guy who helped us for many years.”

“What do you mean, they went too far?”

“They killed him.” Casey held up a hand. “Don’t get me wrong, this guy was no angel. But he didn’t deserve to die, and it really smacks our reputation.”

Boyd’s people were killers after all.

“They were interrogating him,” Casey continued, “and they went too far.”

“Was this guy someone you were close to?”

“No, I wasn’t his handler. And you didn’t hear all this from me,” Casey added sternly. “I’d never admit I told you anything. I’d never admit we had this meeting. Anyway, that’s why I told Hughes to stay away from Boyd. As far as I’m concerned, he’s crazy.”

Casey seemed believable enough, but he was CIA. Was anything he said believable? “Any question about Boyd’s loyalty to the U.S.?” Gillette asked.

“None,” Casey replied firmly. “Boyd bleeds red, white, and blue. But there is one thing I heard about him,” he said, his voice dropping.

“What’s that?”

“He’s got a chip on his shoulder about how much money he could have made outside the government. He feels like he sacrificed a lot by staying in all these years, and he wants something for it. Something big.” Casey snorted. “ ’Course, so do all of us.” Casey picked up the water bottle from the cup holder. “There was a rumor that he was trying to move something out of one of his projects and into a private shell so he could sell it later on and make big bucks. But I haven’t heard anything more about that for a while.”

18

“
CHRIS.
” Debbie’s voice crackled over the intercom.

Gillette was sitting behind his desk, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. He’d only gotten two hours sleep the previous night. There’d been construction on the Jersey Turnpike—causing a twelve-mile backup—after his meeting with Ted Casey in Washington. A meeting that had gone longer than he’d expected. He hadn’t gotten to his apartment until three o’clock this morning—just four hours ago.

“What is it?” he answered, his voice scratchy.

“Nigel wants to see you.”

“Let him in.”

“Since when do I need to be announced?” Faraday blustered, bursting into the office.

“Calm down.”

“Where were you yesterday?”

“Out.”

“Come on, Chris, I’ve got to know where you are—”

“What do you want?”

Faraday stood in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, fuming. “I need to tell you something.”

“Okay.”

“It’s about Allison.”

Gillette’s eyes narrowed.

“She called a few more of our investors yesterday,” Faraday explained, “trying to buddy up to them. They said she made it sound like she was running Everest Capital. Or would be soon.”

“I’ll talk to her.” Gillette wanted to believe it was just an error of enthusiasm. “She’s young and aggressive, like David. That’s all.”

“I don’t trust her.”

“I know.”

“She was going crazy yesterday trying to find you.”

Gillette already knew that. She’d left five messages on his cell phone.

“By the way, I found out something very interesting about our NFL franchise and the bid process,” Faraday said.

Gillette had been thinking about his trip west. Meeting Marilyn and seeing Lana. “What?”

“We weren’t the highest bidder.” Faraday hesitated. “By a long shot.”

Somehow that didn’t surprise him. Of course, not much did anymore. “By how much?” Gillette asked.

“Fifty million.”

Gillette’s mind flashed back to his lunch with Kurt Landry. He’d gotten a strange vibe about the whole deal that day. “Somebody was willing to pay five hundred million and they didn’t get the deal?”

“Yup.”

“How did you find out?”

“A little bird told me.”

“Nigel, I have to know.”

“I can’t tell you, I really can’t, but he’s credible. He’s an investment banker, a senior member of the team who put a bid together for a very wealthy family. Not
Wallace
wealthy, but wealthy.”

“Did you tell him what we bid?”

“No.” Faraday moved closer to Gillette’s desk. “I think that’s pretty strange, Chris.”

“I hear you.” Suddenly, there were a lot of strange things going on.

“Chris.” It was Debbie on the intercom again. “Now Allison wants to see you.”

Gillette met Faraday’s eyes.

“I guess I better get out of here,” Faraday muttered, turning to go.

“Let her in,” Gillette said.

Faraday and Allison passed at the doorway, giving each other their standard quick nod.

“You never phoned last night,” she said.

Gillette glanced up. “Was I supposed to?”

“I wanted an update on your day.”

“I didn’t get home till late.
Very
late.”

Allison plopped down in the chair on the other side of his desk. “Well, I’m right upstairs now,” she said, smiling widely. “That ought to make Faith happy.”

Faith still hadn’t called him back again. Problem was, maybe she was right this time. Maybe he shouldn’t have invited Allison on the cruise while Faith was in London. Nothing had happened, but he could see how it would aggravate her. “You moved in yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

“How did it go?”

“Smooth as silk. The movers took care of everything. We’re as good as roommates now.”

Gillette didn’t want to get into this now, but he owed it to Faraday. “Have you been calling our investors?” he asked, trying to figure out if her expression was registering shock that he’d found out so fast or fear that he was going to be angry. Either way, she’d clearly been taken by surprise.

She didn’t answer right away. “Yeah,” she finally admitted. “So what?”

“Why’d you do it?”

“To tell them I’d joined the firm as a managing partner,” she said nonchalantly, regaining her composure. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Do me a favor and talk to Nigel before you do that again. That’s his turf, and he’s very sensitive about anyone stomping around on it.”

“Fine,” she agreed, rolling her eyes. “So, where were you last night?”

“You’re not going to like my answer,” he muttered. “Nobody does.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“I’m so sick of this,” she snapped. “Were you with Faith?”

“No. Not that it’s any of your business if I was.”

“Then where were you?”
Allison put both hands up. “I know, I know. Something came up. Look, I’m getting really tired of this,” she said loudly. “I mean, I invest a ton of money in this place, find a great deal in Veramax, and offer to buy Beezer Johnson at a very nice price. I’m going the extra mile here, but I’m not getting anything in return.”

Gillette stood up. “I appreciate—”

“Were you in Richmond again?”

He didn’t answer.

She put her head back and groaned. “Is this how it is with you? Mystery after mystery?”

“Maybe.”

“Was I an idiot to invest so much money in Everest?”

He wanted to come back at her with a flip remark, but discretion won out. “You’re going to be very happy with your investment.”

“Have you at least set up a meeting with that FDA guy?” Allison asked. “Jack Mitchell called me
again
yesterday.”

Gillette nodded, satisfied with her surprised expression. “I’m meeting with Rothchild in Washington two weeks from tomorrow. Has Mitchell written his apology letter?”

“I don’t know, I—”

“Find out, and while you’re at it, make sure he’s doing everything he can to get Rothchild into the Racquet Club. Like he said he would. I’m going to call a friend of mine who’s on the membership committee to see if he can help. If Jack hasn’t done anything on that, tell him to get off his ass fast.”

“I’ll call him right now,” she said, rising from the chair.

“Good. And Allison?”

“What?” she asked, turning back around.

“I haven’t seen that analysis on Beezer Johnson yet. The one that shows how great the combination of it and your family’s company would be.”

“I’ll get right on that, too.”

Once Allison was gone, David Wright wanted time.

Wright moved into Gillette’s office carrying two copies of a Hush-Hush presentation, a summary of the due diligence he’d done so far. “Over there,” Gillette said, covering the phone with one hand and pointing toward the couches and the coffee table. “Give me a second.”

By the time Wright had spread out the materials, Gillette was off the call. They sat together and reviewed the material for several minutes.

“Did Cathy do any sensitivity analysis on the exit multiple?” Gillette asked after scanning the financial projections.

“Doing it as we speak.”

“I want to see what the return is if we can’t flip Hush-Hush quickly to the French. If we have to hold it for a while.”

Wright rose from the couch and headed for Gillette’s desk.

“Where are you going?”

“To get your calculator so we can crunch that return,” Wright answered. “Top drawer, right?”

“Yeah,” Gillette said, noticing that Wright’s wallet was lying on the table in the middle of the Hush-Hush due diligence material. He spotted a familiar-looking piece of paper sticking out of it. “Do me a favor after you get the calculator, will you?” he called. “Go see if Debbie has my daily planner. I think I gave it to her yesterday. I want to go over next week’s schedule with you.”

“Sure.”

When Wright was out of the office, Gillette quickly pulled the slip of paper from the wallet. It was a toll receipt from the New Jersey Turnpike. He checked the date. Yesterday.

When Gillette was finished with Wright, he headed for Cathy Dylan’s office. “Cathy.” He knocked on her door as he leaned into the office. He’d gotten her message from Debbie. “What’s up?”

She motioned for him to come in and close the door. “I spoke to Dr. Davis, and he needs to talk to you as soon as possible. He says it’s urgent.”

Gillette stared at her intently. “Not a word of this to anyone.”

“I know.”

He turned to go, then stopped. “Do something else for me, will you?” For the first time, he thought he saw fear in her eyes. “Check the Internet and see if there were any small plane crashes in western Pennsylvania in the last couple of weeks.”

“
DR. DAVIS.
”

“Christian? Glad you called so quickly.”

Gillette was at a pay phone in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel. “Cathy said it was urgent.”

“I tried tracking down those names you gave me from your meeting in Minneapolis. No luck. No one knows them, which is strange. You’re right, the nanotech research community isn’t that big. I thought someone would have recognized at least one of them. Usually, somebody went to school with somebody.”

Gillette had anticipated this. Boyd didn’t seem like the type to throw around crucial information haphazardly. “Well, thanks. I appreciate your help.”

“Don’t go so fast. That’s not the only reason I called.”

Gillette perked up. “Oh?”

“Maybe this is nothing, Christian, but you never know.”

“Go on,” Gillette urged.

“One of the people I called to check the names out with is a guy named Nathaniel Pete. Nate’s in Boston. Runs with that whole Cambridge crowd. He’s a biochemist graduate school professor at Harvard, and very into nanotech. He could be running one of these government nanotech programs, but he’s a little flaky. Great credentials, but he wouldn’t pass the gut check test. Right out of the sixties. Long hair, tie-dyed shirts. Not somebody you’d trust one of your most important projects to. But trust me, he’s brilliant.”

“What did he say?”

“Said the wife of a friend of his called him yesterday, very upset. She said her husband has been working on a highly confidential project for the government over the last two years, and suddenly he can’t see or call her. He’s going away and he’s not sure how long it’ll be. She said they had a two-minute conversation a few days ago, and that was it. She hasn’t seen or heard from him since.”

“What’s his name, Doctor?”

“Matt Lee.”

“
GILLETTE’S GONE!
” Wright shouted into the phone. “And I have no idea where he went.”

“Calm down, Davey.”

“There’s only so much I can do before he gets suspicious. I can’t follow him around every second.”

“Easy, easy. We know that.”

Wright swallowed hard. “I mean, Christ, I went all the way to Richmond yesterday in a damn cab for you guys.”

“And we all appreciate that, the man you met with in Las Vegas particularly. He wanted me to tell you of his thanks. You’ve done a good job.”

Wright started breathing a little easier. His mind had gone wild with possibilities. They’d shoot him on the street, kidnap his wife. Awful things he had no way to stop.

“Davey?”

“Yes, sir?”

“From now on, you don’t need to worry about following him. All you need to be is his friend. Someone he confides in all the time.”

Wright took a long breath. That I can do, he thought.

GILLETTE SPED
north on I-95, toward Boston, toward Matt Lee’s home. Dr. Davis was to have called Lee’s wife, Mary, to prepare her for Gillette’s knock on the door.

Gillette’s cell phone rang. “Hello.”

“Christian, it’s Cathy.”

“Hi.”

“There was only one plane crash in western Pennsylvania in the last two weeks. The plane went down about twenty miles north of Pittsburgh last Wednesday.”

“Fatalities?”

“One,” she said, reading off an article on the Internet. “The other four people on board were okay, broken bones but nothing serious. It looks like the guy who died was thrown from the plane, and that’s what killed him.”

“Who was he?”

“A senior executive of Three River Bank. They were all TRB people on the plane.”

Three River Bank was headquartered in Pittsburgh. No way that crash had anything to do with Boyd. “That’s it?”

“Yup.”

“Thanks, I’ll talk to you later.”

Gillette checked the rearview mirror as he ended the call. He’d made certain Wright was in a meeting behind closed doors before he’d left—which didn’t mean somebody else wasn’t back there. So he’d taken a couple of quick turns on his way out of Manhattan, and it didn’t look as if anyone were following him.

He slid a disc into the CD player and tried to relax, but it was no use. He started thinking about everything that was happening. About how he was going to have to wait until Monday morning to confront Wright about the New Jersey Turnpike toll receipt. He was flying to the West Coast this afternoon, then there was Stiles’s memorial service on Saturday, and he had to head to that Chatham town meeting right after the service. Besides, Wright was leaving the city with his wife for the rest of the weekend after the service. So Monday would be his first chance to talk to Wright face-to-face. He couldn’t wait to hear that explanation. The stamp on the receipt registered the same time he would have been going through the same toll.

It was afternoon and the sky was a blazing blue when Gillette pulled the SUV to a stop in front of a quaint house in Concord, Massachusetts, a residential neighborhood outside Boston. He was on his cell phone, calling for the larger Everest jet, and he was using the same drill. There was a QS agent sitting beside the pilot as he relayed the destination. Gillette didn’t care if somebody figured out he’d gone to Boston after the fact, when the plane landed at Logan. They’d never be able to figure out he had visited Mary Lee by that time. And he didn’t care if anyone knew he was going to the West Coast—that trip was about family, not business. Nothing he needed to be careful about.