Enemy In the Room (23 page)

“You mean another job?”

“Well, sort of. You’d stay where you are at
USNet, and no one would ever know about what we’ve just been
showing you. And several hours a week you’d do this other
thing.”

“Several hours a week can make half a
million a year?”

“Yes, in addition to your USNet salary. By
the way, I think you’d have to stop taking Mike Campbell’s
bribes—someone else might find out about them, which would be bad
for you. And they might not have an alternative to prosecution,
like we do.”

“So you’re offering to ‘forget’ about the
situation with Mike—I can keep that money—and you’ll give me a way
to earn a lot more?”

Martin nodded. “Yep. That’s it. That’s your
choice. If you’d prefer, we can send all this stuff out in the
morning to the people we mentioned.”

“Who’s behind the intelligence work?”

Martin shook his head. “You’ll learn more
later. No need to know everything at once. Just some smart folks
who know how to make a lot of money.”

“I see. I guess I don’t have a choice.”

“Sure you do. In fact, why don’t you sleep
on it, and call us tomorrow with your answer. Here’s a phone that
will only call one number once, so be somewhere that you can talk.
If we don’t hear from you tomorrow, we’ll let this information out
on Wednesday. Understood?”

Todd nodded. “Yes.”

Martin extended his hand, and Todd’s right
arm was released. “Well, it’s been a real pleasure meetin’ you.
Sorry for the way we started, but I guess you can see that we
couldn’t just call you on the phone about this.”

They shook hands, and Stan opened the side
door.

Todd got out slowly, his knees sore from the
floor. He unlocked his car’s door, got in, and drove off.

Taylor Martin took out a phone and pressed a
button. The voice at the other end answered with a slight accent.
“Yes?”

“I think your boy will be all right. He’s
going to let you know tomorrow.”

“Good. I hope that the others are as
cooperative.”

TUESDAY, MAY 10TH

The elevator door was about to close when
Kristen saw Todd approaching, so she held the door, and they began
the ride up to the thirty-third floor.

“Thanks,” he said, shifting his
briefcase.

“Hey, wasn’t that a new version of your old
ride I saw you in yesterday afternoon?”

He smiled. “Yeah. I guess so. Really
nice.”

“I bet. Looks great.”

“Thanks.” The door opened. They walked
through the reception area and down the hall to their offices.
Kristen booted her laptop into the network, quickly checked her
email and voicemails, and then headed to get a cup of coffee. Ten
minutes later, her cup half finished as she emailed final
instructions to their brokers in the Far East, her phone rang.

“Hello, Kristen, it’s Claudia Coleman. How
are you this morning?”

“Uh, fine. But, actually, pretty busy. I’m
getting ready for a trip to Singapore and Japan in two days. How
can I help you?”

“I won’t be long.” She repeated the story
she’d heard about XXXtra Cinema’s major expansion around Los
Angeles. “And since it’s primarily a real estate matter, I thought
that you might be able to help me.”

“How?”

“By either confirming or denying it, for
starters.”

“Well, our boss spent some time out there
about a month ago, and I believe our goal is to expand those
facilities, but I’m not directly involved myself, so I couldn’t
say.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“About what?”

“As a woman, and one with traditional
values, as you have portrayed to me. What do you think about your
employer, USNet, taking over a large portion of the adult movie
business?”

Kristen turned from her desk and looked out
the window. She took a deep breath and leaned back slightly in her
chair, trying to pull her thoughts away from the Far East.

“Ms. Coleman, we could talk about that for a
long time. But it would have to be totally off the record. I don’t
make policies here. I love my work, which is basically evaluating
and executing real estate transactions. But I don’t usually decide
which markets, or which product types. You’ll have to ask the
people who make those decisions.”

“But you support President Harper’s
initiative, which is trying to rein in the adult entertainment
industry, and you’re in the real estate department of a large
company that is expanding in this same industry. Doesn’t that seem
a little strange?”

“Do you believe that pornography is good?”
Kristen asked.

“What?”

“I asked whether you think pornography is a
good thing. Should we as a nation encourage it?”

“Well, I would never indulge in it myself,
of course, but it’s a free country, so I guess if we start
censoring stuff, where does it stop? Next thing they’ll be
censoring the
Journal
.”

“I didn’t say censor. I just asked whether
our nation as a general rule should support and encourage
pornography, so that it’s literally available on every TV and
computer, and at every newsstand and movie theater in the land? Or
should it be put back in the sleaze bag that it used to travel
in?”

“What I think isn’t important. I’d like
your
opinion, since it’s USNet that’s expanding in this
area.”

“What about the women—and men—who work in
porn? Should it be legal for eighteen year olds to act in these
movies? Do you think anything else goes along with that kind of
job? As a woman, are women’s rights in general advanced by holding
up an absurd proposition to men—and to boys—that sex is just free
entertainment? Just a commodity. No consequences. And that women
instantly consent to every imaginable sex act with occasional men,
with beaming smiles on our faces?”

There was a pause. “I guess I can’t say that
I’m pleased about those aspects of it.”

“Well, when was the last time the
Journal
or any other mainstream news organization—print or
TV—did any sort of balanced piece on pornography?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“I’ve never seen one. Never. That’s
your
industry. But it’s the sort of thing I grapple with in
my
industry, Ms. Coleman. I’m doing my job, and trying to do
it well. But my company may be doing some things I don’t like. What
do I do? Quit? Try to change it? Forget it? I don’t know. And I
guess my point is that I’ll think about giving you an on the record
answer about my personal beliefs when you tell me that you’re
writing a stand-up piece on the true ramifications and victims of
pornography. And even then they will only be my personal thoughts.
I don’t make USNet policy, and I won’t comment on it as long as I’m
here.”

Another pause. “Well, I appreciate your
insight—and even your questions.”

Kristen turned back to her desk. “It’s not
easy, having values and beliefs. Knowing where to draw the line. To
say ‘enough is enough’.”

“I understand. And I’ll think about that
piece on pornography you suggested.”

“You’d better check first to see if the
Journal
will publish it.”

“Of course they will.”

“I’ve talked to a couple of our own
reporters about it. And trust me, you’d better check.”

“OK. Well, I’m sorry you wouldn’t comment,
but thanks for confirming that your boss has been working on it. At
least I know to keep digging.”

“Sure, any time. But my comments were
totally off the record, and now I’ve got a lot to do.”

“Understood. Thanks. Have a great trip.”

“Thanks.”

She hoped she had said the right things this
time—nothing--and that the Coleman woman would never call
again.

Todd Phelps closed the door to his office
and stared out the window.

Half a million dollars a year or more. Think
what Mary and I can do with that. Out of debt—forever. Almost
anything Mary wants, I can get it for her. Remodel the house.
Trips. Our boys can go to college anywhere they want.

I guess I’ll have the other thing hanging
over me, but maybe there’ll be a way to get out of it, once I
understand who these people are.

Seems like a no-brainer. Disaster and jail,
or lots of money.

He picked up the phone that the man with the
country accent had given him and pushed the Call button. Someone
with a foreign accent answered and asked if he had made his
decision. After Todd accepted the offer, he was given an early
morning appointment a week later to begin his training.

A few hours later, Victor Mustafin was in
his office at the Real Time Intercepts command center, housed in
the back half of an old bank clearing house. The main RTI
operations center was half a world away in Pakistan. There, in one
large room that resembled a computerized trading floor, twenty-five
people at a time monitored the flow of information and passed
interesting intercepts to two on-site decision makers. These men,
all of whom had business experience in the West, usually decided
how to use the stolen data.

But years earlier Knox had realized that
this was not enough—to get the most from what they harvested every
day from emails and calls, they needed oversight by trusted
business people in the U.S., who could make the right decisions
based on history, current news, subtleties of language—nuances that
only native-speaking business people would understand.

So RTI had a small group of trusted duty
officers who stood duty on a rotating basis in the U.S., Europe and
Asia 24/7, to make decisions when an issue could not be resolved in
Pakistan.

After extensive individual training by
Victor Mustafin, each duty officer was on call, monitoring RTI
activity from one of the three control centers, making decisions
and occasionally referring issues to the unspecified “Council”,
which was actually Mustafin, Kamali and Knox. With this isolated
security structure, the duty officers did not know most of their
counterparts, except by code names. These men were paid extremely
well—a share of the monthly profits. But they were also the most
difficult to select—many came from USNet’s ranks, simply because so
much could be known about them. Still, they were monitored for
loyalty; and the consequences for divulging any part of the
operation was clear.

The small US command center consisted of an
office, a conference room, and the former massive bank vault, now
converted to the control room, complete with two walls full of
monitors. Here each duty officer served his hours when on
watch.

Kamali and Mustafin administered the
operation, though Kamali never visited the office in person—only by
remote access. In fact, the two lieutenants made a point never to
be seen together in public. There were therefore no visible
connections to USNet, and only Kamali and Mustafin knew that the
ultimate decision maker was Knox.

The operation was complex, but it had been
successful for years. The problem was how to evaluate the ever
increasing amount of information which was supplied to them daily
by unsuspecting USNet subscribers.

Mustafin had just approved a profitable sell
order for their holdings in a German pharmaceutical company that
was about to be the target of a lawsuit—they were reading the
emails between the attorneys and several unhappy witnesses—when a
special phone rang next to his console. He pushed a button to
answer on his headset and immediately recognized his boss’s voice;
a moment later Knox’s image flashed on one of the nearby monitors.
He was in their West Coast office, and the two men spoke for
several minutes about that afternoon’s RTI intelligence.

When finished with that list, the lieutenant
said, “I’ve got some good news, Mr. Knox. Todd Phelps called and
said that he wants to join us.”

“Excellent. From what you’ve told me, he
should make a good addition. He seems to like making money more
than worrying about technicalities. When will you start his
training?”

“In a few weeks. Two others just started,
and I don’t want to overextend.”

“Now that he knows about the potential
money, he’ll be impatient.”

“That’s good. It’ll keep him focused. We
have to walk all these new guys in, one layer at a time. We can’t
tell them everything in the first month.”

“I know. Now, what about our special program
for the President?”

“Everything we discussed appears to be
doable. We’re making plans, though of course we haven’t told anyone
the target. This operation is obviously way too restricted for
anyone to know why we want to have a grand opening for our new
office in Moscow.”

Once again Kristen called Callie, but got
her voicemail. “I’m not in now. Please leave your message and I’ll
call you back.”

“Callie, hey. This is Kristen Holloway. You
may remember me from a couple of real estate group get-togethers at
your parents’ home. And a service project we did at the overnight
women’s shelter before you left for school. Anyway, I’ll be coming
back from the Far East through L.A. in about a week. I need some
R&R, and I really like southern California. Your dad told me
you’re living out there now, so I thought I’d call you when I know
my exact schedule. I’d love to get together—take you to dinner. Or
maybe we could go shopping—or whatever suits. Anyway, I’ll call you
from Singapore when I know what I’m doing, and I hope we can get
together. See ya.”

Callie did not answer her apartment phone
because she was at her desk that morning at her uncle’s office. He
called her on the internal intercom.

“I’m on the phone working on a listing, and
I need the address of that comparable property that Yusef is
working on. Do you know where he is?”

“He went outside to use his cell phone.”
Callie had noticed that her cousin spent considerable time several
days a week, walking and talking in their parking lot.