No Way Back

by Matthew Klein

  NO WAY BACK

  Matthew Klein graduated from Yale University in 1990. He founded several technology companies in Silicon Valley. Today he lives in Westchester County, outside New York City, with his wife Laura, his two sons and a whippet named Zeus.

  In addition to writing novels, he runs Collective2, a financial technology company. He can be reached at matthewklein.org.

  Published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2013 by Corvus,

  an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © Matthew Klein, 2013

  The moral right of Matthew Klein to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978 0 85789 858 6

  E-book ISBN: 978 0 85789 859 3

  Typeset by carrdesignstudio.com

  Printed in Great Britain

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  For Mom

  (Just skip over the sex scenes, please)

  I tell you a truth. No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.

  John 3:3

  Things are not what they appear to be. Nor are they otherwise.

  Surangama Sutra

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  How long could the victim last?

  That was always the question, when he tortured someone. Over the years, he had developed some rough rules: women lasted longer than men, blacks longer than whites. Smart people lasted longer than dumb ones, rich longer than poor. He had long ago given up trying to find reasons for these apparent truths: did the rich fight longer because they had more to lose? Were blacks better physical specimens than whites, as the racists suggested? Were men cowards and women strong?

  His tools varied. Knives were effective, particularly when used to amputate, rather than stab. Stabbing was messy, but more than that, it made people frantic, unable to concentrate on the question at hand. For him, torture was about getting answers. When a victim focused on the knife hilt in his gut, his answers were incomplete.

  So he would chop a finger right away, to prove his seriousness, and then another while the victim still couldn’t believe the first was gone. He’d leave the stubs on the floor, in front of the victim, little talismans of bone and skin, a testament to his power and their doom.

  Even with his rough-hewn rules, he could be surprised. People he thought would break quickest often fought longest. The confident, muscular man – the former cop, the rival gang boss, the ex-Marine – might give up in minutes, after the loss of just one eye, or one testicle – and become a whimpering, snot-dripping mess. In contrast, the weak Jew, or the wispy Chinaman, or even the coked-up whore, might astound him, and last for hours, unafraid, stoic, dignified.

  So how long would this one last? This victim was bound to a wooden chair, in the middle of a rude shack. Near him, a video camera stood on a tripod, recording the events with a dull unblinking eye. Black wool blankets – moth-eaten and horrid – were taped across the windows. In the corner, water dripped into a rusted sink. The victim’s ankles were wrapped with electrical tape to chair legs, a sock stuffed in his mouth. His face was frantic, breathless – but not yet resigned. There was still more work to do.

  The torturer held a finger to his own lips, and said, ‘Shh.’ He said it gently, the way a nurse comforts a patient. ‘Now, shh. We can make this all stop. All of this can stop.’

  The victim whimpered and nodded. He did want it to stop. He did indeed.

  ‘I need to know certain things. I have questions. You must answer them honestly, yes?’ The torturer spoke with an accent, which the victim knew was Russian.

  The torturer reached out, grabbed the sock in the victim’s mouth. ‘I will take this out. Do not scream. No one can hear you. Yes?’

  The victim nodded. Tears wet his cheeks.

  The torturer removed the sock. The victim breathed hard through his mouth, in great gulping relief, as if – for the last hour – the problem had been the sock in his mouth, and not the fact that five of his fingers had been removed with a hunting knife.

  ‘This is better, yes?’ the torturer said.

  ‘Yes,’ the victim agreed, weakly.

  ‘You know who I am, of course.’

  More a statement than question. The victim had made a point not to look at the tormenter’s face – in forlorn hope that this somehow might spare him – and even now he continued to look away. But the truth was that he did know. He knew his tormentor’s name.

  ‘You think,’ the torturer said, ‘that if you don’t look at my face, I will let you live. That is what you think, yes?’

  ‘No,’ the victim said. But he was dismayed. How had the man known his thoughts?

  From outside the log walls of the shack came the sound of lapping water – the gentle sound of ocean, of pebbles skittering into surf.

  ‘Please,’ the victim said. ‘Please let me go.’ But his voice was a whisper, without hope, because he knew now that no words would save him.

  The victim was nearly ready, his tormentor knew. Hopelessness was key. Soon answers would pour forth, unbidden. A surfeit of facts, and details – so much information that it would be hard to capture it all. It would break over them both like long-awaited rain over hard-packed earth, flooding dry gullies; and the torturer would drink it down eagerly. He would tell his victim to slow down – slow down, please – go back to the begi
nning, and tell him again, and focus on just one moment. The first time the victim met his wife, for example, or that summer night they listened to music under the stars – please, go back to that time again, and tell me every fact you remember – every detail: what she wore, how she smelled, what her mouth tasted like when you kissed. He needed to know everything. No detail was too small, nothing that happened unimportant.

  ‘Of course no one who sees my face, or hears my voice, lives to see the sun again. You’ve heard that about me? You’ve heard the stories they tell?’

  The man in the chair whimpered and nodded.

  ‘But there are other considerations. Family, wife, friends. Their children. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have so many questions,’ the torturer said, taking a deep breath, as if steeling himself for new exertion. ‘More questions than you have fingers left, I’m afraid.’ He held up his knife, and laid the blade gently against the victim’s cheek. ‘Should I remove your eyes?’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Will you answer my questions?’

  ‘Yes. Anything. Anything you want.’

  ‘You must think carefully. I will ask you for so many facts! You will be tempted to ignore some details. You will think them unimportant. But details are what I care about. The smallest details. I love them, and I want to hear them. Every single one. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ He lifted the knife from the victim’s cheek.

  The victim exhaled, relieved at the apparent reprieve he was being granted.

  When the next scream came, it was so loud that someone standing outside the shack would have heard it. Someone standing as far away as the edge of the beach would have heard it, muffled through the log walls – that long despairing wail of horror, rising and falling, that scream of pain and shock and disbelief.

  But no one did hear that scream. No one was standing outside the shack. No one was walking on the beach. The torturer and his victim were alone.

  When the screaming subsided, and turned into quiet whimpering, the torturer said, so gently that his words could have been a caress, ‘Should I take your other eye too?’

  ‘No, no, please,’ the man whispered. ‘I’ll tell you everything. Everything you ask. Everything.’

  ‘Every detail?’

  ‘Every detail! I promise.’

  There. Now he was ready, the torturer knew. Now the man would reveal everything.

  The torturer would learn everything he needed to know. He would work slowly. He had all night.

  He had all the time in the world.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  On Monday morning, at one minute past nine o’clock, I sit in a Florida parking lot, counting cars.

  It’s an old trick, the easiest way to take a company’s pulse: arrive at the beginning of the business day – on the dot – and see how many employees have bothered to show up. You can tell a lot about a company from its parking lot.

  This Monday morning, in this parking lot, at this company, there are twelve cars.

  Twelve cars would be a healthy number for a company with fifteen employees.

  Twelve cars would be an acceptable number for a company with thirty, or even forty, employees.

  But Tao Software LLC – the company that I have been hired to rescue – has eighty-five employees. That’s eighty-five full-time employees. That doesn’t include contractors or part-timers – people like the masseuse who comes in twice a week to give back-rubs, or the guy who maintains the two cappuccino machines in the kitchen.

  Twelve cars. Eighty-five employees.

  Even before I’ve walked through the front door – before I’ve studied the Balance Sheet or the P&L – I have all the numbers that I need. They are: twelve and eighty-five. Investigation complete.

  I’m conducting my inquiry from the front seat of a rental Ford, its air conditioner blasting. I study the cars around me. They differ in hue and upkeep, but what they share is the same relentless grinding economy: a Taurus, three low-end Hondas, a couple of Nissans, and a beat-up Chevy truck with dings in the door. Nothing showy, and, more importantly, nothing that indicates that the company’s highly-paid executives have yet arrived.

  I check my watch one last time, to make sure I haven’t made a simple mistake, and perhaps arrived on a Saturday, or maybe an hour too early. I’ve done both those things, once even showing up for a Board of Directors meeting on a Sunday, and then proceeding to place outraged phone calls to the homes of the other board members who were so rudely late. But I was high on coke at the time, and everyone knew it, and so we all had a good laugh.

  But no, today really is a Monday, and it really is nine o’clock. There really are only twelve cars in the lot. This really is the company I have been hired to save.

  I kill the ignition and open the door. The Florida heat backhands my face. My suit wilts. What was once crisp wool pinstripe has been transformed, magically, into dark wet chamois, like a rag held aloft by a Mexican when he’s done detailing a BMW at the car wash.

  I trudge across the parking lot to a low-slung office. It is one of those nondescript buildings that dot industrial parks across America, an undistinguished shell behind which the actual dirty biological processes of capitalism take place, hidden from view. It is a building that reveals absolutely nothing about its occupant, save for the cheap plastic sign at the door that says: ‘Tao Software LLC’ with a swirled gust-of-air logo that, I suppose, is meant to indicate a majestic wind, sweeping aside all competition. Or it could just be a fart. Based on what I know about Tao Software LLC, I’m guessing more fart than wind.

  But inside, everything changes. The reception area is chilled to the temperature of fine Chardonnay. The space is decorated like an interior design showroom. There is expensive grey felt wallpaper on the walls. Pinpoint spots highlight carefully selected furniture: a green Camden sofa; a high-gloss mahogany coffee table; a convex reception desk, chest high, gently curving across the open space like a relaxed letter S.

  In my corporate travels, I have seen a lot of reception desks. I have developed a very general, but highly accurate, rule. The more money and attention lavished on the desk where the receptionist sits, the crappier the company, and the more incompetent the executives that hide behind it.

  Behind this stylish and attractive reception desk sits a stylish and attractive woman. She wears a feather-weight telephone headset. She has long red hair pulled into an elaborate chignon. She wears far too much grey eye shadow, which makes her look like a very strung-out, but very chic, heroin addict. ‘Good morning,’ she says, with a voice indicating either exhaustion or severe ennui. ‘Can I help you?’

  From her look, she doubts very much that she can. Perhaps it is my crumpled suit, or the sweat glistening on my face. Or the bags under my eyes. Or the paunch I’ve been cultivating for the last five years – ever since I turned forty-two and decided that working out in the gym was a hobby for younger men.

  I lean over her desk, try to get into her face. ‘My name is Jim Thane.’

  When the name doesn’t register, I add: ‘Your new CEO.’

  She stiffens. ‘Mr Thane. I didn’t know that was you.’

  Meaning: You don’t look like a CEO. Which is true. The image people conjure when they hear ‘CEO’ – a silver-haired gentleman with an imperious air and a steely gaze – surely doesn’t fit me. I’m more of the cuddly teddy-bear type. The ex-alcoholic, ex-meth addict, ex-rehab cuddly teddy-bear type. Not the first thing that comes to mind, when you hear ‘CEO’, I bet.

  I twinkle my fingers around my face, like Ethel Merman singing a show tune. ‘Surprise,’ I croon.

  Suddenly Miss Strung-Out is all stutters and nervousness. ‘Oh my Lord, Mr Thane. I didn’t know you were coming today. I didn’t get your office ready. Should I get your office ready? I can do that right now.’ She rolls her chair back and stands, forgetting the telephone cord still attached to her ear. When she rises, the ph
one yanks across her desk, skidding on rubber feet. The cord tugs her ear down sharply, as if she’s being scolded by an invisible schoolmarm. ‘Ouch,’ she says. She leans down, fiddles with her ear, and extracts herself.

  Finally, she looks up and smiles.

  I say: ‘And you are... ’

  ‘Embarrassed.’

  ‘Hello, Embarrassed. I’m Jim.’ I offer my hand.

  ‘Amanda,’ she says.

  ‘Do you have an intercom, Amanda?’

  She nods.

  ‘Make an announcement. All-hands meeting. Where do those usually take place?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she says. Meaning the company never has meetings. Then again, how could they, when no one comes to work? She adds, helpfully: ‘Maybe in the lunchroom?’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I say. ‘All-hands meeting in the lunchroom.’

  ‘What time would you like it, Jim?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘Now?’ She’s taken aback. ‘Should we—’ She peers past me, into the main office. The room is still dark, the desks mostly empty. ‘Should we wait for more people to get here?’

  ‘No.’

  I walk through the building as if I’m a prospective buyer deciding how much to pay for a fixer-upper. Alas, this is just an act. I have already taken title, and there’s no backing out now. And I have already determined – ten yards past the reception area – that the company now in my possession is steaming corporate turd.

  But, of course, that’s why I’m here. I’m a turnaround executive. A restart man. I get hired only at places that are falling apart. You won’t see me at a well-run company minting money. But if you work at a company where management has taken a mental sabbatical, where the company is burning cash like coal in a Dickens novel, where customers are as scarce as July snow, then you might see a man like me walk through the front door. If you do, by the way, it’s probably not a bad idea to start polishing your résumé.

  Here’s how it works. Imagine you are a venture capitalist who invests $20 million in a Florida software company. Months go by without any obvious success. The CEO telephones you breathlessly, and announces that a few huge sales deals are just weeks from closing. But those deals never seem to materialize. The new version of the company’s software product is perpetually ‘a month away’. The old version is buggy, virtually unsaleable. Meanwhile, the company’s cash is dwindling. What do you do? Do you shut down the place, fire all the employees, eat the loss of everything you have invested so far? Do you shovel more money into the firm, and hope the incompetent CEO suddenly grows a brain?