Paranoia (30 page)

“You know, you go from wearing jeans and sneakers to wearing suits and fancy shoes. You become more refined, more socially adept, you’ve got more polished manners. You change the way you talk. You acquire new friends. You used to drink Budweiser, now you’re sipping some first-growth Pauillac. You used to buy Big Macs at the drive-through, now you’re ordering the . . . salt-crusted sea bass. The way you see things has changed, even the way you
think
.” He was speaking with a terrifying intensity, staring at the highway, and when he turned to look at me from time to time his eyes flashed. “And at a certain point, Adam, you’ve got to ask yourself: are you the same person or not? Your costume has changed, your trappings have changed, you’re driving a fancy car, you’re living in a big fancy house, you go to fancy parties, you have fancy friends. But if you have
integrity
, you know deep down that you’re the same ship you always were.”

My stomach felt tied up in knots. He was talking about
me;
I felt this queasy sense of shame, embarrassment, as if I’d been caught doing something embarrassing. He saw right through me. Or did he? How much
did
he see? How much did he
know?

“A man has to respect the person he’s been. Your past—you can’t be a captive to it, but you can’t discard it, either. It’s part of you.”

I was trying to figure out how to respond when he announced breezily, “Well, here we are.”

It was an old-fashioned, streamlined, stainless steel dining car from a passenger train, with a blue neon sign in script that said
THE BLUE SPOON
. Beneath that, red neon letters said
AIR CONDITIONING
. Another red neon sign said
OPEN
and
BREAKFAST ALL DAY
.

He parked the car and we got out.

“You’ve never been here before?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Oh, you’ll love it. It’s the real thing. Not one of those phony retro-repro things.” The door slammed with a satisfying thunk. “It hasn’t changed since 1952.”

We sat at a booth that was upholstered in red Naugahyde. The table was gray fake-marble Formica with a stainless steel edge, and there was a tabletop jukebox. There was a long counter with swiveling stools bolted to the floor, cakes and pies in glass domes. No 1950s memorabilia, fortunately; no Sha-Na-Na playing on the jukeboxes. There was a cigarette vending machine, the kind where you pull on the handles to make the pack drop down. They served breakfast all day (Country Breakfast—two eggs, home fries, sausage or bacon or ham, and hotcakes, for $4.85), but Goddard ordered a sloppy joe on a bun from a waitress who knew him, called him Jock. I ordered a cheeseburger and fries and a Diet Coke.

The food was a little greasy, but decent. I’d had better, though I made all the right ecstatic sounds. Next to me on the Naugahyde seat was my workbag with the pilfered files in it from Paul Camilletti’s office. Just their presence made me nervous, as if they were emanating gamma waves through the leather.

“So let’s hear your thoughts,” Goddard said through a mouthful of food. “Don’t tell me you can’t think without a computer and an overhead projector.”

I smiled, took a gulp of Coke. “Well, to begin with, I think we’re shipping way too few of the large flat-screen TVs,” I said.

“Too
few?
In
this
economy?”

“A buddy of mine works for Sony, and he tells me they’re having serious problems. Basically, NEC, which makes the plasma display panels for Sony, is having some kind of production glitch. We’ve got a sizeable lead on them. Six to eight months easy.”

He put down his sloppy joe and gave me his complete attention. “You trust this buddy of yours?”

“Totally.”

“I won’t make a major production decision on rumor.”

“Can’t blame you,” I said. “Though the news’ll be public in a week or so. But we might want to secure a deal with another OEM before the price on those plasma display panels jumps. And it sure will.”

His eyebrows shot up.

“Also,” I continued, “Guru looks huge to me.”

He shook his head, turned his attention back to his sloppy joe. “Ah, well, we’re not the only ones coming out with a hot new communicator. Nokia’s planning to wipe the floor with us.”

“Forget Nokia,” I said. “That’s all smoke and mirrors. Their device is so tangled up in turf battles—we won’t see anything new from them for eighteen months or more, if they’re lucky.”

“And you know this—from this same buddy of yours? Or a different buddy?” He looked skeptical.

“Competitive intelligence,” I lied. Nick Wyatt, where else? But he’d given me cover: “I can show you the report, if you want.”

“Not now. You should know that Guru’s run into a production problem so serious the thing might not even ship.”

“What kind of problem?”

He sighed. “Too complicated to go into right now. Though you might want to start going to some of the Guru team meetings, see if you can help.”

“Sure.” I thought about volunteering again for AURORA, but decided against it—too suspicious.

“Oh, and listen. Saturday’s my annual barbecue at the lake house. It’s not the whole company, obviously—just seventy-five, a hundred people tops. In the old days we used to have everyone out to the lake, but we can’t do that anymore. So we have some of the old-timers, the top officers and their spouses. Think you can spare some time away from your competitive intelligence?”

“Love to.” I tried to act blasé, but this was a big deal. Goddard’s barbecue was really the inner circle. Given how few got invited, the Goddard lake-house party was the subject of major one-upsmanship around the company, I’d heard: “Gosh, Fred, sorry, I can’t make it Saturday, I’ve got a . . . sort of barbecue thing that day. You know.”

“No salt-crusted sea bass or Pauillac, alas,” Goddard said. “More like burgers, hot dogs, macaroni salad—nothing fancy. Bring your swim trunks. Now, on to more important matters. They have the best raisin pie here you’ve ever tasted. Their apple is great, too. It’s all homemade. Though my favorite is the chocolate meringue pie.” He caught the eye of the waitress, who’d been hovering nearby. “Debby,” he said, “bring this young man a slice of the apple, and I’ll have the usual.”

He turned to me. “If you don’t mind, don’t tell your friends about this place. It’ll be our little secret.” He arched a brow. “You can keep a secret, can’t you?”

54

I got back to Trion on a high, wired from my lunch with Goddard, and it wasn’t the mediocre food. It wasn’t even that my ideas flew so well. No, it was the plain fact that I’d had the big guy’s undivided attention, maybe even admiration. Okay, maybe that was overstating it a little. He took me seriously. Nick Wyatt’s contempt for me seemed bottomless. He made me feel like a squirrel. With Goddard I felt as if his decision to single me out as his executive assistant might actually have been justified, and it made me want to work my ass off for the guy. It was weird.

Camilletti was in his office, door closed, meeting with someone important-looking. I caught a glimpse of him through the window, leaning forward, intent. I wondered whether he’d type up notes on his meeting after his visitor left. whatever he entered into his computer I’d soon have, passwords and all. Including anything on Project AURORA.

And then I felt my first real twinge of—of what? Of guilt, maybe. The legendary Jock Goddard, a truly decent human being, had just taken me out to his shitty little greasy-spoon diner and actually listened to my ideas (they weren’t Wyatt’s anymore, not in my mind), and here I was skulking around his executive suites and planting surveillance devices for the benefit of that sleazeball Nick Wyatt.

Something was seriously wrong with this picture.

Jocelyn looked up from whatever she was doing. “Good lunch?” she asked. No doubt the admin gossip network knew I’d just had lunch with the CEO.

I nodded. “Thanks. You?”

“Just a sandwich at my desk. Lots to do.”

I was heading into my office when she said, “Oh, some guy stopped by to see you.”

“He leave a name?”

“No. He said he was a friend of yours. Actually, he said he was a ‘buddy’ of yours. Blond hair, cute?”

“I think I know who you’re talking about.” What could Chad possibly want?

“He said you left something for him on your desk, but I wouldn’t let him into your office—you never said anything about that. Hope that’s okay. He seemed a little offended.”

“That’s great, Jocelyn. Thank you.” Definitely Chad, but why was he trying to snoop around my office?

I logged into my computer, pulled up my e-mail. One item jumped out at me—a notice from Corporate Security sent to “Trion C-Level and Staff”:

SECURITY ALERT

Late last week, following a fire in Trion’s Department of Human Resources, a routine investigation uncovered the presence of an illegally planted surveillance device.

Such a security breach in a sensitive area is, of course, of great concern to all of us at Trion. Therefore, Security has initiated a prophylactic sweep of all sensitive areas of the corporation, including offices and workstations, for any signs of intrusion or placement of devices. You will be contacted soon. We appreciate your cooperation in this vital security effort.

Sweat immediately broke out on my forehead, under my arms.

They’d found the device I’d stupidly planted during my aborted break-in at HR.

Oh, Christ. Now Security would be searching offices and computers in all the “sensitive” areas of the company, which for sure included the seventh floor.

And how long before they found the thing I’d attached to Camilletti’s computer?

In fact—what if there were surveillance cameras in the hallway outside Camilletti’s office that had recorded my break-in?

But something didn’t seem right. How could Security have found the key logger?

No “routine investigation” would have uncovered the tricked-up cable. Some fact was missing; some link in the chain hadn’t been made public.

I stepped out of my office and said to Jocelyn, “Hey, you see that e-mail from Security?”

“Mmm?” She looked up from her computer.

“Are we going to have to start locking everything up? I mean, what’s the real story here?”

She shook her head, not very interested.

“I figured you might know someone in Security. No?”

“Honey,” she said, “I know someone in just about every department in this company.”

“Hmph,” I said, shrugged, and went to the rest room.

When I came back, Jocelyn was talking into her telephone headset. She caught my eye, smiled and nodded as if she wanted to tell me something. “I think it’s time for Greg to go bye-bye,” she said into the phone. “Sweetie, I’ve got to go. Nice catching up with you.”

She looked at me. “Typical Security nonsense,” she said with a knowing scowl. “I’m telling you, they’d claim credit for the sun and the rain if they could get away with it. It’s like I thought—they’re taking credit for a piece of dumb luck. One of the computers down in HR wasn’t working right after the fire, so they called in Tech Support, and one of the techs saw something funny attached to the keyboard or something, some kind of extra wiring, I don’t know. Believe me, the guys in Security aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer.”

“So this ‘security breach’ is bogus?”

“Well, my girlfriend Caitlin says they really did find some kind of spy thingy, but it’s not like those Sherlock Holmeses in Security would’ve ever found it if they didn’t catch a lucky break.”

I snorted amusement, went back to my office. My insides had just turned to ice. At least my suspicions were correct—Security got “lucky”—but the bottom line was, they’d discovered the Keyghost. I’d have to get back into Camilletti’s office as soon as possible and retrieve the little Keyghost cable before it was discovered.

On my computer screen an instant message box had popped up while I was gone.

To:
Adam Cassidy
From:
ChadP
Yo Adam – I had a very interesting lunch with an old friend of yours from WyattTel. You might want to give me a call
– C

Now I felt like the walls were closing in. Trion Security was doing a sweep of the building—and then there was Chad.

Chad, whose tone was definitely threatening, as if he’d learned just what I didn’t want him to learn. The “very interesting” part was bad, as was the “old friend” part, but worst of all was “You might want to give me a call,” which seemed to say, I’ve got you now, asshole. He wasn’t going to call; no, he wanted me to squirm, to sweat, to call him in a panic . . . and yet how could I not call him? Wouldn’t I naturally call him out of simple curiosity about an “old friend”? I had to call.

But right now I really needed to work out. It wasn’t as if I could exactly spare the time, but I needed a clear head to deal with the latest developments. On my way out of the office, Jocelyn said, “You wanted me to remind you about the Goddard Webcast at five o’clock.”

“Oh, right. Thanks.” I glanced at my watch. That was in twenty minutes. I didn’t want to miss it, but I could watch it while I was working out, on the little monitors on the cardio equipment. Kill two birds and all that.

Then I remembered my workbag and its radioactive contents. It was just sitting on the floor of my office next to my desk, unlocked. Anyone could open it and see the documents I’d stolen from Camilletti’s office. Now what? Lock them in one of my desk drawers? But Jocelyn had a key to my desk. In fact, there wasn’t a place I could lock it where she couldn’t get in if she wanted.

Returning quickly to my office, I sat down at my desk, retrieved the Camilletti documents from my briefcase, put them in a manila folder, and took them with me to the gym. I’d have to carry these damned files around with me until I got home, when I could secure-fax them, and then destroy them. I didn’t tell Jocelyn where I was off to, and since she had access to my MeetingMaker, she knew I had no meeting scheduled.