The Insider (19 page)

“Because we need to keep you alive so you can help us. Nikolai thought it was too risky to tell you this, but I disagree. I think you are smart enough to know not to fuck with us.”

That's where you're wrong
, Will thought. Yuri's drunken slipup was just the opportunity that Will had been waiting for, a glimpse of the Russians' larger plan. If Yuri thought that he would remain silent while they enabled some sort of terrorist attack, then Yuri had misjudged him. Will would do everything that he could to stop the BART train attack, even if it meant sacrificing his career or his life.

On the stage, it was becoming apparent that the stripper needed to work on her conditioning. Her act, which had begun with crisp, dancelike movements, now looked more like the cooldown of an aerobics routine, her feet shuffling wearily forward and back, her arms vaguely swaying from side to side, the electronic surveillance bracelet bouncing on her ankle.

As they lurched up from the table and headed for the door of the club, Will thought he knew just how she felt.

Tuesday morning. It had been more than a week since Ben Fisher had plummeted to his death on the sidewalk below. Will's stomach turned over as the elevator made a rapid ascent to the thirty-eighth-floor offices of Reynolds Fincher. As soon as he entered the reception area, he detected a subtle disturbance in the daily routine of the law office. Was it the fact that no one said hello to him in the hallway? The way the receptionist skipped her customary smile? Perhaps it was just the queasy hypersensitivity of the hangover.

When he reached his office, Maggie's worried expression confirmed his suspicions.

“What?” Will blurted. “What is it?”

“There are two people here to see you.”

“Okay. Who are they?”

“They're from the SEC and the Department of Justice.” Will felt the sudden urge to throw up all over Maggie's desk.

“How long have they been here?”

“About fifteen minutes.”

“You should have put them in the reception area, or a conference room.”

“They asked to wait in your office. They seemed so official, I just didn't know how to say no to them.”

“Okay. I'll just go see what they want.”

“They've been interviewing everyone who's been working on the Jupiter deal. It's not just you, so there's no need to worry.”

“I'm not worried, Maggie.”

Will took some small solace from the fact that Detective Kovach from the SFPD wasn't joining the welcoming party in his office. From that, Will assumed that the SEC and DOJ were not yet aware that he was also the prime suspect in Ben Fisher's death.

He decided he needed coffee to stimulate some activity in his alcohol-sodden brain. He wished that he had stopped at the coffee shop downstairs and bought a creamy latte that might have settled his stomach. Instead, he was forced to rely on the firm's house brew, known to the associates as Black Acid.

When he entered his office, coffee mug in hand, a man and a woman in suits were standing at the window with their backs to him, admiring the view of the Bay Bridge.

“Hello there,” Will said.

“Oh, hi. I hope you don't mind us making ourselves at home,” the man said, extending his hand. “I'm Dennis Tyler, Securities and Exchange Commission.”

Dennis looked more like a young lawyer than a federal agent in his dark gray suit, white button-down shirt, and red power tie. Dennis was medium height and weight, with dark brown hair and regular, plain features, accented only by a neatly groomed mustache and an outsized square jaw. He looked like something that the federal government was capable of producing in mass quantities, like metal desk chairs.

The woman stepped forward and shook his hand. “Hi, Will. Mary Boudreaux, Department of Justice.” When Mary said
Hi
, the tiny word elongated to embrace a multitude of vowels. Will guessed that she was from Mississippi. She handed him her business card. Will registered only an elaborate government seal and the word
Enforcement
.

Mary was slender, with shoulder-length brown hair and the slightly doughy complexion of a girl of the Deep South who had been cultivated in air-conditioned rooms. He felt a small shock, like static electricity, when he looked into Mary's eyes and realized that they were processing information about him at a very rapid rate.

“We were just admiring the view,” Mary said. “It's a whole lot nicer than what we've got over on Geary Street. How's it compare with your view over at the SEC, Denny?”

“It's better,” Dennis said, grudgingly.

“Please, have a seat,” Will said.

“Will, we're here to talk to you about the Jupiter-Pearl Systems transaction,” Mary said. “We understand that you're heading up the team of attorneys here.”

“That's right. Is something wrong?”

Dennis smiled grimly. “I think this is where we say, ‘We'll ask the questions.'”

“He thinks he's funny,” Mary said. “We'd like to know what you do to protect the confidentiality of a transaction like this one.”

“The usual drill for deals involving public companies. We used a code name. We—”

“What was the code name for the deal?” Mary asked.

“Zeus.”

“The Greek name for Jupiter. Cute, but not too difficult to figure out. What else?”

“I gave a short talk to the attorneys working on the deal about the importance of confidentiality, the dangers of insider trading. Standard procedure.”

“Has everybody been following the rules? Anyone seem a little too interested in how the market is going to react to the announcement?”

“No. Not to my knowledge.”

“Not to your knowledge. Nice. I can tell someone's been to law school.” Will wondered if Mary smiled with such unrelenting cheerfulness at everyone.

Despite the mild needling, Will was growing more comfortable with the interview. If they had anything incriminating, they wouldn't be asking such mundane questions.

Then Dennis leaned forward in his chair and asked: “You wouldn't happen to know any Russians, would you, Will?”

It took a second for the panic to begin rising. “Russians?”

“Yeah, you know. Citizens of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They drink vodka. Play hockey.”

Did they know about his night with Katya? Worse yet, did they know about his connection to Nikolai and Yuri?

“Why Russians? There are no Russians involved in this deal.” The stupid question would buy him at least a few more seconds.

“Remember what I said about the questions?” Dennis looked over at Mary to see if he could get a smile out of her, but her attention was fixed on Will.

“Yeah, right.” Will knew that a lie to federal agents could be as bad as the offense itself, but he could see no other way out. “No, I don't think I know any Russians,” he said.

Dennis narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure? That was kind of fast. Why don't you take a second to think about it.”

They clearly knew something, but how much? He suddenly understood why so many criminal defendants confess—he felt an overpowering impulse to tell the two agents everything. He managed to resist the urge because he realized that they hadn't really said anything that suggested they knew what he'd done.

“Yeah, I'm sure. Of course, I don't know the family history of everyone who's working on this deal.”

“Will, you understand that we can't tell you much about what we're doing here, because that could compromise our investigation.” Dennis looked over at Mary to confirm that she concurred with this new tack. “But we're going to tell you a little so that you understand what the stakes are.”

“I'm certainly curious.”

“Uh-huh,” Dennis said. “We've detected some unusual trading activity in Jupiter. It's occurring here in the Bay Area, which suggests that someone directly involved in the deal is talking.”

“That's very troubling.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you think that the leak is coming from the firm?”

“We'd rather not tell you what we think about that right now.” Now Dennis and Mary were both making hard eye contact with Will, neither smiling.

“The thing is,” Mary added, “a lot of the people purchasing the stock have Russian names.”

Will tried to control his expression. “What do you think that means?”

“We're not sure,” Mary said. “But we ran the names and found that several of them have connections to the Russian mob. Nobody who has an actual criminal record in this country, but a few who are known associates of
mafiya
members. Weren't you curious about why a DOJ agent was here along with the SEC?”

“You told me not to ask questions.”

“I'm with the Department's Corporate Fraud Task Force,” Mary said. “We're running a parallel investigation with the SEC because this appears to be more than just insider trading. Whoever is responsible for the leak may be dealing, directly or indirectly, with members of the Russian
mafiya
. That person is in a great deal of danger.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Mary inched her chair closer to Will's desk. “You're leading the team of attorneys. We thought that you would be in a good position to spot someone who might be involved if you knew what to look for.”

Mary removed a series of six wallet-size photos from a leather portfolio and laid them on the desk one by one like playing cards. “Do any of these faces look familiar?”

Will immediately recognized a candid shot of Valter that was probably taken with a telephoto lens, followed by mug shots of four other similarly thuggish-looking Slavic types. The last was a photo of a police sketch artist drawing. There was no mistaking that it was Aashif, Valter's guest that night at Dacha.

“Who are they?” Will asked.

“Five of them are
pakhan
, midlevel members of the city's Russian
mafiya
. Mary pointed at the photo of Aashif. “Homeland Security tells us that this guy is a terrorist who they think has been meeting with local
mafiya
.”

“A terrorist? What's this got to do with the merger I'm working on?”

“We don't know. Maybe nothing. But if you recognize any of these faces, or if you see any of them later in any context, we need to know about it immediately.”

Will made a show of examining Aashif's photo. “What sort of terrorist is he?”

“His name is Aashif Agha. He's the leader of a radical Muslim cell based in North London. Could be al Qaeda, we don't even know that much. DHS was getting ready to take him down for buying the makings for sarin nerve gas when he went to ground. Now they think he's here in the Bay Area.”

“I don't think I've ever seen any of these men,” Will said. “But I will certainly let you know if I do.”

“Take your time—now is your best chance to speak up.”

“I'm sorry. I wish I could be of more help.”

“I'm also supposed to tell you that amnesty might be available on a securities charge if you helped us make a case against the Russians,” Mary said.

“Why are you supposed to tell me that?”

Protecting his regulatory turf, Dennis interjected, “You understand that was not a formal offer of amnesty, but it would be seriously considered for anyone who came forward with useful information.”

Mary placed the fingertips of both hands on the edge of Will's desk, a gesture that was probably intended to be reassuringly intimate. “Would you like to take a few minutes and think about what we've just said?”

As Will returned Mary's attentive gaze, he realized that she and Dennis really did believe he was the one who had leaked the information. Mary was giving him a few minutes to consider the merits of asking for a deal and confessing.

Some clouds parted over the bay, and sun streamed through the windows, blanching the colors of the room. As his blood pressure rose, he could almost feel his heartbeat throbbing irregularly behind his bloodshot eyes. As the bright sunlight filled his office, he felt claustrophobic, a whiteness engulfing his vision, the sense of falling away from his surroundings.

Will was tempted to tell them that he wouldn't say anything more without a lawyer present, but he knew that would be tantamount to designating himself as the focus of two federal investigations.

“There's no need for that,” he finally responded, hoping that he hadn't hesitated too long. “I can't think of anyone working on the deal who has any Russian connection. But if I run across anything, I'll call you.”

“Will, you seem like a nice guy,” Mary said. “I could definitely see someone like you getting in over his head without really meaning to violate any laws. We're going to be straight with you.”

“Yes, I'd appreciate that.”

“We think you've been lying to us today. We believe you're involved with the insider trading in some way.”

“You've got it wrong,” Will said, aiming for an indignant tone. “Why would you think that?”

“You can't expect us to tell you everything that we know today,” Mary said. “That's not how this process works. But you're going to know soon enough if you don't start cooperating.”

“Do you know what a Wells notice is?” Dennis asked.

“No.”

“It's a letter that you'll receive from the SEC stating that you're the subject of a securities fraud investigation. You'll have the opportunity to provide a statement refuting the charges in the letter. When you get a Wells notice, it means that the commission has authorized us to file a case against you. It's the first step in a process that, for you, would probably end in a criminal trial.”