Paranoia (34 page)

“Not much longer than a day.”

“A day would get you a shitload.”

“No, it—well, the thing must have malfunctioned,” I lied. “I don’t know what happened.”

Frankly, I wasn’t sure why I was holding back. I guess it was the fact that the bug revealed that Camilletti had been the one who’d leaked to the
Wall Street Journal
, and I didn’t want Wyatt knowing all of Goddard’s private business. I hadn’t really thought it through.

“Malfunctioned? Somehow I’m dubious. I want that bug in Arnie Meacham’s hand by the end of the day tomorrow for his techs to examine. And believe me, those guys can tell right away if you’ve tampered with it. Or if you never put it in the CFO’s office in the first place. And if you’re lying to me, you fuck, you’re
dead
.”

“Adam,” said Judith, “it’s crucial that we’re totally open and honest with each other. Don’t withhold. Far too many things can go wrong. You’re not able to see the big picture.”

I shook my head. “I don’t
have
it. I had to get rid of it.”

“Get
rid
of it?” Wyatt said.

“I was—I was in a tight spot, the security guys were searching offices, and I figured I’d better take the thing out and throw it in a Dumpster a couple of blocks away. I didn’t want to blow the whole operation over a single busted bug.”

He stared at me for a few seconds. “Don’t ever hold anything back from us, do you understand?
Ever
. Now, listen up. We’ve got excellent sources telling us that Goddard’s people are putting on a major press conference at Trion headquarters in two weeks. Some major press conference, some big news. The e-mail traffic you handed me suggests they’re on the verge of going public with this optical chip.”

“They’re not going to announce it if they haven’t locked down all the patents, right?” I said. I’d done a little late-night Internet research myself. “I’m sure you’ve had your minions checking all Trion filings at the U.S. Patent Office.”

“Attending law school in your spare time?” Wyatt said with a thin smile. “You file with the Patent Office at the last possible second, asshole, to avoid premature disclosure or infringement. They won’t file until just before the announcement. Until then, the intellectual property is kept a trade secret. Which means, until it’s filed—which may be any time in the next two weeks—it’s open season on the design specs. The clock’s ticking. I don’t want you to sleep, to rest for a goddamned minute until you have every last fucking detail on the optical chip, are we clear?”

I nodded sullenly.

“Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’d like to order dinner.” I got up from the table and went out to use the men’s room before I drove off. As I came out of the private dining room, a guy walking past glanced at me.

I panicked.

I spun around and went back through the private room to the parking lot.

I wasn’t one hundred percent sure at the time, but the guy in the hall looked a whole lot like Paul Camilletti.

62

There were people in my office.

When I got into work next morning, I saw them from a distance—two men, one young, one older—and I froze. It was seven-thirty in the morning, and for some reason Jocelyn wasn’t at her desk. In an instant my mind ran through a menu of possibilities, one worse than the next: Security had somehow found something in my office. Or I’d been fired and they were clearing out my desk. Or I was being arrested.

Approaching my office, I tried to hide my nervousness. I said jovially, as if these were buddies of mine who’d dropped by for a visit, “What’s going on?”

The older one was taking notes on a clipboard, and the younger one was now bent over my computer. The older one, gray hair and walrus mustache, rimless glasses, said, “Security, sir. Your secretary, Miss Chang, let us in.”

“What’s up?”

“We’re doing an inspection of all the offices on the seventh floor, sir. I don’t know if you got the notice about the security violation in Human Resources.”

Was that all this was about? I was relieved. But only for a few seconds. What if they’d found something in my desk? Had I left any of my spycraft equipment locked in any of the desk or file cabinet drawers? I made it a habit never to leave anything there. But what if I’d slipped? I was stretched so thin I could easily have left something there by mistake.

“Great,” I said. “I’m glad you’re here. You haven’t found anything, have you?”

There was a moment of silence. The younger one looked up from my computer and didn’t reply. The older one said, “Not yet, sir, no.”

“I wasn’t thinking
I
was a target, necessarily,” I added. “Gosh, I’m not that important. I mean anything on this floor, in any of the big guys’ offices?”

“We’re not supposed to discuss that, but no, sir, we haven’t found anything. Doesn’t mean we won’t, though.”

“My computer check out okay?” I addressed the young guy.

“No devices or anything like that have turned up so far,” he replied. “But we’re going to have to run some diagnostics on it. Can you log in for us?”

“Sure.” I hadn’t sent any incriminating e-mails from this computer, had I?

Well, yes, I had. I’d e-mailed Meacham on my Hushmail account. But even if the message hadn’t been encrypted, it wouldn’t have told them anything. I was sure I hadn’t saved any files on my computer I wasn’t supposed to have. That I was sure of. I stepped over behind my desk and typed in my password. Both security guys tactfully looked away until I was logged in.

“Who has access to your office?” the older man asked.

“Just me. And Jocelyn.”

“And the cleaning crew,” he persisted.

“I guess so, but I never see them.”

“You’ve never seen them?” he repeated skeptically. “But you work late hours, right?”

“They work even later hours.”

“What about interoffice mail? Any delivery person ever come in here when you’re out, that you know of?”

I shook my head. “All that stuff goes to Jocelyn’s desk. They never deliver to me directly.”

“Has anyone from IT ever serviced your computer or phone?”

“Not that I know of.”

The younger guy asked, “Gotten any strange e-mails?”

“Strange . . . ?”

“From people you don’t know, with attachments or whatever.”

“Not that I can recall.”

“But you use other e-mail services, right? I mean, other than Trion.”

“Sure.”

“Ever accessed them from this computer?”

“Yeah, I suppose I have.”

“And on any of those e-mail accounts did you ever get any funny-looking e-mail?”

“Well, I get spam all the time, like everyone else. You know, Viagra or ‘Add Three Inches’ or the ones about farm girls.” Neither one of them seemed to have a sense of humor. “But I just delete all those.”

“This’ll just be five or ten minutes, sir,” the younger one said, inserting a disk into my CD-ROM drive. “Maybe you can get a cup of coffee or something.”

Actually, I had a meeting, so I left the security guys in my office, not feeling so good about it, and headed over to Plymouth, one of the smaller conference rooms.

I didn’t like the fact that they’d asked about outside e-mail accounts. That was bad. In fact, it scared the shit out of me. What if they decided to dig up all my e-mails? I’d seen how easy it was to do. What if they found out I’d ordered copies of Camilletti’s e-mail traffic? Would that make me a suspect somehow?

As I passed Goddard’s office, I saw that both he and Flo were gone—Jock to the meeting, I knew. Then I passed Jocelyn carrying a mug of coffee. Printed on it was
GONE OUT OF MY MIND—BACK IN FIVE MINUTES
.

“Are those security goons still at my desk?” she asked.

“They’re in my office now,” I said and kept going.

She gave me a little wave.

63

Goddard and Camilletti were seated around a small round table along with the COO, Jim Colvin, and another Jim, the director of Human Resources, Jim Sperling, plus a couple of women I didn’t recognize. Sperling, a black man with a close-cropped beard and oversize wire-rim glasses, was talking about “targets of opportunity,” by which I assume he meant staff they could lop off. Jim Sperling didn’t do the Jock Goddard mock turtleneck thing, but he was close enough—a sports-jacket-and-dark-polo-shirt. Only Jim Colvin wore a conventional business suit and tie.

Sperling’s young blond assistant slid me some papers listing departments and individual poor suckers that were candidates for the axe. I scanned it quickly, saw that the Maestro team wasn’t on there. So I’d saved their jobs after all.

Then I noticed a roster of New Product Marketing names, among them Phil Bohjalian. The old-timer was going to get laid off. Neither Chad nor Nora was on the list, but Phil had been targeted. By Nora, it had to be. Each VP and director had been asked to stack-rank their subordinates and lose at least one out of ten. Nora had obviously singled out Phil for execution.

This seemed to be more or less a rubber-stamp session. Sperling was presenting the list, making a “business case” for those “positions” he wanted to eliminate, and there was little discussion. Goddard looked glum; Camilletti looked intent, even a little jazzed.

When Sperling got to New Product Marketing, Goddard turned to me, silently soliciting my opinion. “Can I say something?” I put in.

“Uh, sure,” said Sperling.

“There’s a name on here, Phil Bohjalian. He’s been with the company something like twenty, twenty-one years.”

“He’s also ranked lowest,” said Camilletti. I wondered whether Goddard had said anything to him about the
Wall Street Journal
leak. I couldn’t tell from Camilletti’s manner, since he was no more, or less, abrasive to me than usual. “Plus given his tenure with the company, his benefits cost us an arm and a leg.”

“Well, I’d question his ranking,” I said. “I’m familiar with his work, and I think his numbers may be more of a matter of interpersonal style.”

“Style,” said Camilletti.

“Nora Sommers doesn’t like his personality.” Granted, Phil wasn’t exactly a buddy of mine, but he couldn’t do me any harm, and I felt bad for the guy.

“Well, if this is just about a personality clash, that’s an abuse of the ranking system,” said Jim Sperling. “Are you telling me Nora Sommers is abusing the system?”

I saw clearly where this could go. I could save Phil Bohjalian’s job and jettison Nora, all at the same time. It was hugely tempting to just speak up and slash Nora’s throat. No one in this room particularly cared one way or another. The word would go down to Tom Lundgren, who wasn’t likely to battle to save her. In fact, if Goddard hadn’t plucked me out of Nora’s clutches, it would surely have been my name on the list, not Phil’s.

Goddard was watching me keenly, as was Sperling. The others around the table were taking notes.

“No,” I said at last. “I don’t think she’s abusing the system. It’s just a chemistry thing. I think both of them pull their weight.”

“Fine,” Sperling said. “Can we move on?”

“Look,” said Camilletti, “we’re cutting four thousand employees. We can’t possibly go over them one by one.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Adam,” Goddard said. “Do me a favor. I gave Flo the morning off—would you mind getting my, uh, handheld from my office? Seem to have forgotten it.” His eyes seemed to twinkle. He meant his little black datebook, and I guess the joke was for my enjoyment.

“Sure,” I said, and I swallowed hard. “Be right back.”

Goddard’s office door was closed but unlocked. The little black book was on his bare, neat desk, next to his computer.

I sat down at his desk chair and looked around at his stuff, the framed photographs of his white-haired, grandmotherly-looking wife, Margaret; a picture of his lake house. No pictures of his son, Elijah, I noticed: probably too painful a reminder.

I was alone in Jock Goddard’s office, and Flo had the morning off. How long could I stay here without Goddard becoming suspicious? Was there time to try to get into his computer? What if Flo showed up while I was there . . . ?

No. Insanely risky. This was the CEO’s office, and people were probably coming by here all the time. And I couldn’t risk taking more than two or three minutes on this errand: Goddard would wonder where I’d been. Maybe I took a quick pee break before I got his book: that might explain five minutes, no more.

But I’d probably never have this opportunity again.

Quickly I flipped the worn little book open and saw phone numbers, pencil scrawlings on calendar entries . . . and on the page inside the back cover was printed, in a neat hand, “
GODDARD
” and below that “62858.”

It had to be his password.

Above those five numbers, crossed out, was “
JUN
2858.” I looked at the two series of numbers and figured out that they were both dates, and they were both the
same
date: June 28, 1958. Obviously a date of some importance to Goddard. I didn’t know what. Maybe his wedding date. And both variants were obviously passwords.

I grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper and copied down the ID and password.

But why not copy the whole book? There might well be other important information here.

Closing Goddard’s office door behind me, I went up to the photocopier behind Flo’s desk.

“You trying to do my job, Adam?” came Flo’s voice.

I whipped around, saw Flo carrying a Saks Fifth Avenue bag. She was staring at me with a fierce expression.

“Morning, Flo,” I said offhandedly. “No, fear not. I was just getting something for Jock.”

“That’s good. Because I’ve been here longer, and I’d hate to have to pull rank on you.” Her stare softened, and a sweet smile broke out on her face.

64

As the meeting broke up, Goddard sidled up to me and put his arm around my shoulder. “I like what you did in here,” he said in a low voice.

“What do you mean?”

We walked down the hall to his office. “I’m referring to your restraint in the case of Nora Sommers. I know how you feel about her. I know how she feels about
you
. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for you to get rid of her. And frankly, I wouldn’t have put up much of a struggle.”