"Sure is. You too, as far as I know?"
"Exactly. Neither of us can afford for anything to go wrong. See to it."
The phone connection went dead, and Buz dropped the receiver onto its cradle from the other side of his desk. He walked across to his coat-stand and carefully hung up his jacket, smoothing a few creases out as he did so. He placed his hat on top of the stand and returned to his desk.
"Jane", he said into the intercom connecting him to his PA outside his office. "Cancel my appointments for this morning, and get me the Director of the FBI on the phone, …and bring me a fresh pot of coffee."
Chapter 27
Day Eighteen
Sunshine Villas
Cherry Hill, New Jersey
11 a.m. E.S.T.
"I could kiss her!" Kerrin shouted loudly so that Dana could hear him from the bathroom.
"Who?"
"Fiona…you know…the Wunderkind! She's done it again…hurry up in there and come and see this."
There was the sound of a flushing toilet, and the bathroom door opened. Dana rolled over to Kerrin, hoisting herself from the wheelchair onto the bed beside him.
"Okay, amaze me then. What has she found?"
"Look, I asked her to look into the Gen8tyx Company and get me information on the directors, the company founders, its stock movement, and to speak to her friends in Wall Street…she knows everybody…and to try and find out what the buzz on the street about Gen8tyx was. Well, look at this!"
Kerrin held up the pile of documents, articles, newspaper cuttings and photographs that Paul had passed on to him from her.
"There's so much here it'll take a while to digest properly, but what do you make of this?"
Kerrin held up a document on the headed paper of the Slateman, Jones and Burney office from New York, one of the largest stockbrokers on the east coast of America. It was a report on the share dealings in Gen8tyx over the past six months. It included several charts graphically outlining the trading volumes in the stock, and the spot price of the shares at the end of each day's trading.
"Looks interesting, but what does it tell us?" Dana asked, holding the document in her hands and scanning through the pages.
"Turn to page four. Okay…that's a list of all the substantial purchases of Gen8tyx stock in the past six months. Look, you can see that five companies had been consistently buying the stock. REW, Purlington Venture Holdings, Small Holdings, Philadelphia Pharma, and Sabre Genetics Inc. Recognise anything? They've all been actively buying into Gen8tyx. Look, here on page four, you can see that about three months ago, the combination of those four companies owned stock which came to about seventy-two percent of the total shares of the company, the rest belonging to the staff and directors. Look, David Sonderheim had started off with thirty percent, but then he sold sixteen percent of his holdings to Small Holdings. According to this he made over sixty million dollars!"
"And he's still working? What for?"
"With these guys, I don't think the money counts. They're motivated to achieve something far beyond any monetary value. Let's see if Martin and his friends sold any of their stock. I got the impression that most of them did very well from stock sales over the past couple of months. Here, you look through these…"
Kerrin handed over a few pages of the document to Dana. They were looking now at a listing of all the major stock movements in the Gen8tyx Company by the directors and senior management. Details of numbers of shares bought and sold, by whom, to whom, and when.
"What about this? Mike Gilbert…$10 million dollars…and here Sam Cohen, sold stock for $7m."
"…And here, look, Henry Roberts made $22m for his share. …Hang on, look at that…all the shares were sold and bought on the same day…two weeks before they started to die…"
"…But, not to the same company. Mike sold to REW, and Sam to Philadelphia Pharma…" Dana interjected.
"…And Henry Roberts to Purlington Venture Holdings. Strange that it all happened the same day though. Did Martin make any money, or sell any stock? See if you can find anything."
It was on the last of the pages that Kerrin had given Dana.
"I know Martin was rich anyway from share options in the last company he used to work for, but according to this, he just made another $15m from Gen8tyx! " Dana exclaimed aloud.
"When?"
"The same day as the others sold theirs."
"Strange, Elizabeth never mentioned it. I wonder if she even knows."
"Maybe Martin didn't tell her?"
"Maybe. Hang on a second…I want to add them up."
Kerrin started jotting down the amounts of shares that had been sold from each person and made a few calculations.
"Yes…that makes sense…the only person who didn't sell his shares was Alex Swinton. He told me he had five percent of the stock and that he refused to sell. I wonder what happens to them now? Would that have been a reason to kill him in itself, I wonder?"
They were both silent for a moment, looking through the rest of the papers. Suddenly Dana spoke.
"Kerrin, I think you'd better take a look at this…"
She handed him the last piece of paper she was looking at, pointing to the transactions in the middle of the page. It was one which gave the details of Martin's dealings.
"REW, Philadelphia Pharma, Small Holdings…they all sold the Gen8tyx stock they had purchased to another company on Thursday 8th!"
"And then the next day Sabre Genetics and Purlington Venture Holdings all did the same…all selling out to exactly the same company!" Dana pointed to the bottom of the page.
"…And look, the next day, even David Sonderheim sold out his remaining stock…and made another $50m…a better price per share than for the first tranche. That guy's loaded!" Kerrin exclaimed, reading the last line on the page.
"The question is who bought them? Some company called 'C.C.' …What do the initials 'C.C.' stand for?…Okay, help me look through the rest of the stuff Fiona gave me. We want to find out anything we can about 'C.C'. " Kerrin said, handing over half the remaining bundle of documents lying on the pile beside him on the bed.
"That makes C.C. the majority owner of Gen8tyx, with ninety five percent of the stock." Kerrin said, while flicking through the other pages. "It makes sense now. Maybe that's what Henry Roberts knew…he would have to know that they were being swallowed up by this other company, ‘C.C’, and maybe that's why he changed his mind about going to California…"
"Or maybe Sonderheim changed it for him. Maybe the new company didn’t need him after all?"
"Possibly…and then he called the meeting to tell the others, because he was so pissed off?"
"Could be. But why move the whole company to California?"
"Maybe the C.C. company, whoever it is, has its headquarters there?"
Another thought occurred to Kerrin.
"There's something else that makes sense too…the C.C. company and Sonderheim and Roberts must have been talking…a takeover just doesn't happen like that. One of the things that had puzzled me was why Sonderheim started to hire lots of new people…okay, Alex Swinton told me that he had guessed that it was because the move to California had long been anticipated, so Sonderheim was bringing in new staff and training them up before the move was announced. He knew the core team wouldn't go. What if Sonderheim didn't want the core team to go? Maybe he wanted them out of the company, right from the start!"
"And what if the new company, the C.C. company, had started to put its own people into Gen8tyx ahead of the acquisition…do you think that Sonderheim and the C.C. guys were in cahoots, bringing in C.C. people ahead of the game?" Dana suggested excitedly. She was enjoying all this.
"It would make sense…I wonder if it's illegal though…"
"What?"
"All this talking, corporate discussions ahead of the actual deal, without the other shareholders knowing? You know, Martin and Alex and the rest?…"
"Maybe…but I'm beginning to get the impression that these guys
don’t really care about what's legal or not. If anything, they seem to be able to manipulate the law to their own advantage." Dana reached forward and touched Kerrin on the arm, suddenly quite serious. "Kerrin…this is scary stuff…maybe we're not meant to know all this?"
"I think it's too late to worry about that. These guys are already after us. We just have to get them first."
"How can we do that? I mean, realistically. I don’t know if you've noticed or not, but there's only two of us…and these guys are everywhere. Look at the money that's being thrown around here! It's enough to buy a small country. How are we meant to win against people with that much wealth?"
"Have you ever heard the expression 'Information is power'. We need to find out everything we can about these guys, we need to find out what it was that Gen8tyx discovered that made them so valuable, and we need to establish just what 'C.C.' stands for, what they do and who they are…"
"…and then?"
Kerrin was silent for a moment.
"That's a good question, …but if we get that far, then I'm sure we'll be able to think of something. One step at a time, okay?"
He leaned forward and kissed her, then wrapping his arms around her, he hugged her tight.
"Okay…" She whispered in reply over his shoulder, a small tear running down her cheek.
Chapter 28
Day Eighteen
Fiona sat at her desk in the Washington Post, her eyes rapidly trying to digest the latest information she had been able to dig up on the Gen8tyx Company. She looked at the phone. She was nervous. Her cousin in the State Department should have called her back by now. Hopefully she would have been able to find out something for her on who 'C.C.' were. It seemed that no one else in the world had ever heard of them. It was almost as if they didn't exist. Calling her cousin was a last ditch attempt at trying to find something out. She knew she couldn't hassle her too much, or it would place her cousin at risk. But Sheryl owed her one, and Fiona needed a favour.
She hadn’t heard from Kerrin yet, but she knew, just knew that the first question he would ask when he eventually called her would be, 'Who are the "C.C" company that bought Gen8tyx? Can you find something out on them?' She could almost hear his voice in her head.
She munched on another chocolate chip cookie, and washed it down with some more Coke. For all the junk food she ate, it was amazing she wasn't fatter than she was. Still, at 78kg, she knew that she was far too overweight for her height of only five foot six inches. She would have to do something about it soon.
She looked at the clock on the wall again, and then took off her black glasses and polished the thick round lenses. She breathed on the lenses and held them up to the light, checking that she hadn't missed any dust. Placing them back on the bridge of her nose, she reached up to her hair and took off one of the hair bands that held her hair in two pigtails on either side of her head. She smoothed the hair together again and rewound the band around the hair, so that it was tighter and more secure.
The combination of the pigtails and the heavy black glasses made Fiona look a little odd, maybe even geeky, but what she lacked in beauty she more than made up for in natural exuberance and vitality.
Fiona bubbled with energy, was always full of jokes, and laughed louder than anyone else in the office. Most important of all, people liked her, and in the past two years she had been working at the office, she had become a key part of the office life. Without her, her department would just not be the same.
She had just begun to start thinking of going home and maybe going jogging for an hour, when the phone saved her and begun to ring. She picked it up.
"Fiona, hi it's Sheryl. I've got something for you…it's not much, but it's all there is. Ready?"
"Go for it…what have you got?"
" 'C.C.' stands for the Chymera Corporation. There are no files on it, nothing. No list of directors, no annual reports, nothing, nada…zip. But there are a few rumours about it. Best I can make out, the company is registered in Buenos Aires. The company funds some of the government officers down there, and basically, they can get away with murder…the whole company is shrouded in secrecy, operates as a law unto themselves…It doesn't post results, or record their interests. The government there doesn't challenge them. I bet they don’t even pay any tax. I can't find out anything about what they do, or who runs it. Total information shut-down. It's very weird."
"Well, that's a lot more than we knew before."
"There is one thing though. I heard that about a year ago a reporter across at The Post was trying to run an article on the Chymera Corporation. Apparently he died before the article was finished…There was even some speculation that maybe his death wasn't a coincidence…"
"Who did you hear that from?"
"Sorry, Fiona. I can't say. I shouldn't even have told you what I did…" There was a pause at the other end of the line…"Anyway, does that help? I have to go now…"
"Yes, it does. What can I say, except that you’re a star! I owe you one …see you at Thanksgiving. "
There was a pause at the other end of the line.
"Fiona, I think it would be better if you don't mention this to anyone. And you never heard this from me, okay?"
"No problems. I protect my sources too…"
Fiona stood up, and walked across to Katie O'Connel's office, head of Human Resources for the Washington Post. The Washington Post was a pretty informal place to work. Hectic, high-pressured, but informal. She loved working there. As she walked through the throng of people working late, she wondered so many people like her were willing to work so many long hours for such poor wages. What was it about the newspaper industry?
She smiled to herself knowingly.
Once bitten by the newspaper bug, few people could give it up.
"Katie?" Fiona stuck her head round the HR Manager's office door, knocking lightly as she did.
"Fiona isn't it? Sure come in…I'm just about to leave, but I've got a minute. How can I help?"
"You've been with the paper a few years now, haven't you?"
"Too many to mention. Why?"
"I'm just trying to research an article. Someone told me that there was a reporter at the paper last year who might have been working on something similar to my current project, but apparently he died before he finished the story. Can you think who that might be? Maybe his notes are still around, and they could help me. "
Katie sat back in her swivel chair, her hands in her lap.
"Wow…that's a good one…let me think. As far as I can remember, there were two deaths last year…no, three, counting old Willie…but that was after he retired…I would guess it would either be Rob Daines or Mat O'Brian. Can this wait until tomorrow or…"
"Probably more of the 'or'…it's important." Fiona replied, the corner's of her mouth turning up at the edges and her eyebrows lifting, pleadingly.
"Okay, give me ten minutes. Take a seat. I'll go get their files."
Fiona sat down and looked around the office, playing with the executive toy on Katie's desk. One day Fiona would have a room this big, with her own executive toys to play with, and her name on the door just like Katie.
Five minutes passed before Katie returned carrying two files and a big box.
She sat down at her desk, and opened up the files, looking through the contents and removing some HR documents and personal material.
"Here, you can have the rest, but please bring them back when you've finished, okay?"
"Thanks, Katie. "
She scooped up the box and the files and returned to her desk. She looked at the clock. It was 7 p.m. Three hours later she had just finished going through the last of the second file.
She had immediately been able to discount the first person. Rob Daines had died from cancer, an unfortunate but natural death, and he had only worked in the printing department of the newspaper. He was not a journalist.
Mat O'Brian, on the other hand, showed great potential. He had been a junior reporter on the pa
per, and had been with The Post for three years when he died in an unfortunate car accident in Spain. According to the file he had been trying to write an article on the founder of Trueman Enterprises, the Venture Capital Group and industrial empire founded by Buz Trueman, one of America's most secretive business leaders. No one had ever been able to interview him before, but on a reliable tip-off, Mat had followed Mr Trueman down to Spain, where he was apparently meant to have been attending some conference or another.
The box contained the personal effects from Mat's desk, letters and folders of the stuff he had been working on when he had died. Being an only child, with both parents now dead and no recorded next of kin, the HR department hadn't known where to send his personal effects, so it looked like they had put them in storage until such time as someone claimed them. Which no one ever had.
She emptied it onto her desk and started sifting through the contents. Apart from a few photographs, and a naughty postcard sent from somewhere in Europe, the only interesting thing in the box was a large brown parcel. It had been delivered to the office but never opened. Fiona guessed that it had arrived after he had died and someone from HR or the mail room had just added it to the rest of his stuff in the box.
She ripped the parcel open. Inside was a used disposable instamatic camera and two rolls of undeveloped 35mm colour film. The instructions on the outside of the camera were in Spanish, and looking at the stamps on the front of the parcel, Fiona saw that it had been posted from Spain. The post mark was from Madrid, January 8th. Fiona looked back at the file on Mat O'Brian. According to the official HR file, Mat had died on the 8th of January, in Madrid.
"Ouch…" Fiona said to herself, under her breath. A sixth sense told her that the instamatic camera and the undeveloped films were important. The rest of the parcel was empty. No note. Nothing. The address on the outside looked as if it had been written hurriedly, the handwriting almost illegible. He had probably posted it to himself just hours before his death.
The Orlando File Omnibus : (Omnibus Version-Book 1 & Book 2) Page 22