Enemy In the Room

by Parker Hudson

  David took a sip of his drink and looked out across the backyard. “That would be fine. Why not?” He took a deep breath. “Now, I have some news closer to home that’s not good.” He told her about his meeting with Callie and Alex, and about their living arrangement. He did not mention their internet posting. As Elizabeth’s face registered her dismay, he ended with “Did you have any idea that they were living together?”

  “No. I knew she was excited about him and wanted us to meet him, but not that they were living together.”

  “Well, they are. And I told her that we could not support her if that is her choice.”

  “You mean, cut her off financially?”

  “Yes, and in every other way.”

  “Wait. She’s our daughter. We shouldn’t just abandon her.”

  “She has abandoned us. It’s clear. She has chosen Alex over us.”

  Elizabeth was silent for a moment. “David, this isn’t the Middle East.”

  He turned to her. “I was waiting for that. Elizabeth, I grew up in a nominally Muslim home, but today I’m about as Muslim as you are Christian. This isn’t about geography, politics or religion. It’s about family and the consequences of bad choices. Plenty of American Christians and Jews would do the same thing. I’m not going to have her stoned. I do love her and want her back. But not with that creep. And, by the way, she runs a good chance of dishonoring our family. What if someone told my mother? Callie has chosen this course, not us.”

  “But it sounds like you made it a choice between him and us.”

  “How can we send money, when we’re also trying so hard to pay off our debt, to support this outrageous behavior?”

  Elizabeth paused again. “I hate what you’ve told me. But it’s not fair to mix Callie’s education and the bad investments we made.”

  He started to speak, but she raised a hand. ”Let’s not talk about our debt right now, David. It will be there, but Callie may not be. And think about it. Doesn’t similar outrageous behavior help support us?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you say that you were just out looking at adult movie studios, and isn’t USNet into video sites, X-rated television, internet gambling—all that?”

  “That’s business. Callie is our family.”

  “Yes. But we, in essence, live off other people’s less than perfect behavior. Maybe we should try to understand Callie and keep talking.”

  “What other people may do is not our business. But Callie and Rob are. And I’m glad to keep talking—but she has to dump Alex. That’s the choice she has.”

  “Parents or boyfriend.”

  “Yes. And please don’t call her.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve given her a choice, and I want her to understand it. Things are not the same. We can’t give in.”

  “I can’t talk to Callie?”

  “Not for a while. She has to feel the difference, and we have to be united on this.”

  “You didn’t ask me.”

  “You weren’t there. It just came out of the conversation. But now we have to stick by it.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or she’ll continue to use us to support a boy and a life-style that go against everything I believe in.”

  “I understand your anger, but where did the ‘belief’ suddenly come from?”

  He paused. “I’m not sure. But you know what I mean. Basic right and wrong. Growing up in a church in the South someone must have told you that it’s wrong for unmarried people to live together. And I think it says somewhere that you’re supposed to honor your father and your mother, not take their money and live with your boyfriend.”

  “I don’t think living together was a major topic then. But they did mention the back seats of cars.” She was silent for a while. “OK, I get it. I’ll go along for a while, but I’m not agreeing to cut Callie off forever. She means too much to me—to us. At some point I’m going to call her and talk about all this. She needs us.”

  The sound of children playing outside two houses away punctuated the silence.

  He turned to her. “You know I don’t want there to be problems. Rob is just going through a phase. Hopefully Callie will figure it out soon about Alex. I just want you and them to be happy.”

  “Hmm. I’m pretty happy, or I was until this conversation. I’ll give Callie a week to think about what you said, but then I’m going to call her. She’s our daughter.”

  “If you have to.”

  “I do.”

  “Hey, the grill should be hot enough now for the steaks. How are the potatoes doing?”

  “Wait about ten minutes. I almost hate to ask, but did anything else happen today?”

  “Yes, as usual, given all our projects. But one thing just blows my mind.” He gave her a summary of the Capital Tower situation with Bill Porter.

  When he finished, she asked, “What will Trevor Knox think? I bet he’ll be angry.”

  “He’s due back from Mexico tomorrow. I’ve briefed Paul, and tomorrow we’ll have a real estate meeting with Trevor. He doesn’t like to lose, particularly to a rigged deal. He will not be pleased.”

  There was a loud crash upstairs. The first time it had happened, months earlier, they had rushed to find the problem; now it happened frequently enough that they were no longer concerned. Rob became so involved in his virtual reality games that he would contort himself into difficult positions to “fire” around virtual rocks or to hide in difficult spots. So occasionally he simply slipped and fell on his virtual reality floor plate, usually with a crash because he protected his equipment.

  “He’s going to break a bone,” Elizabeth muttered, looking up at his window. David shook his head and took another sip. She continued, “Actually, I think he’s already broken something, but not a bone. David, Rob is ‘off’ somewhere. I mean really, and I mean almost all the time. No, listen, it’s not just a ‘stage’. Even when he’s unplugged from that stuff, you can tell that he’s thinking about it. He can’t wait to get back to it. It’s taken over his life. Look at his grades. Look at us. We never see him except when he passes through and occasionally eats. David, it’s not right. We need to unplug that equipment and get rid of it!”

  “Elizabeth, I’m concerned, too. But we’ve got cutting edge equipment that cost a lot of money. There must be another way. Maybe we can limit his hours.”

  “Fine,” she said with an edge to her voice. “Do it. I don’t see how we’ll enforce it. But we’ve got to do something. If Callie is going to have to live with consequences for her bad choices, then Rob needs them, too. We’re losing Rob to all that ‘stuff’. I’m very serious. We have no idea what else he sees or does on the internet. It scares me.”

  “OK. I’ll think about a solution.”

  She touched the armrest with her index finger. “David, I…”

  He raised his hand. “Really. I understand.”

  She stopped and looked at him. “All right. But, this is not good. I want you to talk to him.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  8

  TUESDAY, APRIL 19TH

  Trevor Knox was at the console at the front of the cabin in his corporate jet as he re-crossed the Atlantic from a USNet Europe meeting early the next Tuesday morning. He had read through his RTI messages via encrypted satellite link. Using a headset to reduce the airplane noise, he was talking on the secure radio/ video link to Akbar Kamali.

  “Akbar, the demonstration of the NovySvet technology as reported by Simon North exceeded my expectation. They have the nucleus of an incredible weapons system which in a year or two can be deployed against targets anywhere in the world. “

  Kamali nodded on the screen. “And we may have a lead on a cruise missile in Russia.”

  “Yes, I saw that in the messages. How good that would be, with NovySvet right there.”

  “We will figure out who is involved.”

  Knox continued, “Also, we should move to purchase the controlling interest in E
zon Communications. Send an email to Cleve Danforth to set up a meeting with them tomorrow to explore our purchase. Of course Cleve won’t know what we know about their problems, but eventually we’ll offer to cover the undisclosed ‘accounting irregularities’ in their CFO’s emails.”

  Kamali smiled. “Cleve must be happy with his success each time he gets an email from his special anonymous client that sends him to negotiate with a company that’s not even for sale, and he walks away controlling the board. He probably thinks he’s an incredible negotiator.”

  “He is. But our extra information certainly gets him to the right targets.” Knox put down one note, picked up another and tapped the desk with his gold pen. “Let me ask you about our campaign against President Harper. It looks like Senator Pritchard is ready to take a fall with those gambling payoffs. And you have ten other congressmen and senators on Harper’s team ready for surprises this week. But what about this Sullivan situation? How could you have missed that the woman her husband was seeing now works for us?”

  Knox could see Kamali grimace. “There is no good explanation, other than we just missed it. We were focused on Richard Sullivan and the affair he had several years ago, not on the other woman.”

  “But a simple check would have told you.” The plane banked slightly to the left.

  “I know. Sometimes we just have too much information to sort through. We have the ability to check virtually everything about everyone for the past fifteen years. The problem is, where do we stop? In this case, we knew we had them on the old cell phone intercepts, and we knew it would embarrass the Congresswoman, so we stopped there and moved on to others.”

  “Well, it’s embarrassing to have USNet even tangentially in a story like this, since we work so hard to keep RTI separated. You should search all of these upcoming revelations for any connections to us.”

  “Yes. The woman, Kristen Holloway, is in real estate. We’ll focus the media through our usual sources on the Sullivans, and away from the Holloway woman.”

  “Good. I think that’s it. And you’re probably right that we need to expand the number of duty officers. There is a lot of information flowing through our system now, and we don’t want to miss anything important. You and Victor should start putting together a list of people with the motivations we need as duty officers. I’ll take a look when you’re ready. And now I’ll try to get a little rest before we land.”

  “Yes. Good night, sir.”

  Knox turned off and locked the console, then swiveled in his chair and pushed buttons that turned it into a comfortable recliner. He noted the time and thought through his meetings scheduled for Tuesday, then dropped off to sleep.

  That Tuesday morning David was behind his desk preparing the real estate briefing for Trevor Knox and Paul Burke, scheduled for right after lunch.

  As he finished reviewing the agenda for their meeting, David glanced over to his credenza at the picture of Elizabeth and their children taken two years earlier. He placed the agenda in his outbox and took out a legal pad. At the top of two pages he wrote,“Callie”, then “Rob”. Below each name, as appropriate, he wrote “Alex, Money, Porn, Drugs, Sex, Internet, Bad grades and Other?”

  On each page he wrote “Solutions and Action Steps.” He looked at the pages on his desk, pen in hand, ready to create a plan of action to help each child, just as he did with business issues. He was still staring at them when the phone rang. “Mr. Sawyer, it’s Phyllis Jordan. Mr. Knox has had to change his schedule and wonders if you can do the real estate briefing at twelve instead of two?”

  “Sure, Phyllis. We’re almost ready.”

  “Thank you.”

  He pushed the pages together and started to throw them away. But instead he opened a desk drawer and put them in a file marked “Personal.” He closed the drawer and turned his attention back to their meeting.

  An hour later he and Paul Burke took seats at Knox’s conference table.

  “Thanks for changing the time, gentlemen. I find that I have to leave for Brazil this afternoon. David, I know we have a lot going on, but can you keep it to fifteen minutes today? Hopefully we’ll have more time next week.”

  “Sure. I’ll hit the high points.” He passed copies of the agenda to the two men and began working his way down the list.

  Ten minutes later he was on the next to last subject, Capital Tower. He explained that it appeared that the listing agent bettered their offer by a small percent after reviewing all of the other bids.

  “Who is the marketing agent?” Knox asked, pulling out his pen.

  “Bill Porter.”

  “Give me a sense of the magnitude of what he is doing to us, assuming this is true.”

  “If we could borrow virtually all of the purchase price, which is below replacement cost, at today’s low rates, and values continue to increase downtown as they have for the past two years, the difference to us over a typical ten year hold could exceed fifty million.”

  “You mean this guy is going to steal the building and fifty million from us, and we’re just going to let him do it?” Knox asked, his voice rising, the pen pointing.

  “No, not at all,” Sawyer replied. “I’m meeting at four today with our attorneys, and we’ll figure out a course of action.”

  “Fine. But keep me informed. Send me an email after your meeting. I hate losing, and particularly to a thief.”

  “I will. Now, our last subject is Los Angeles. Here is a separate report I prepared after touring the target facilities with local agents. Paul, it gives you an idea of the values that we assign to the real estate in each company, and whether we recommend to use or sell each facility.”

  Knox and Burke looked at the package Sawyer handed them. It contained a summary by company, with pictures and maps of each facility and its probable value.

  “This looks quite comprehensive, David. Thank you. I’ll read it on the way to Brazil and get back to you. Paul, this should be a big help with your financial analysis.”

  The agenda had been covered, and the meeting was coming to an end. David’s stomach turned, and, thinking of Callie, he said, “Trevor, about Los Angeles. The company’s strategy for XXXtra Cinema. Is it to grow that operation?”

  Knox, who had been making a neat stack of his papers, stopped, looked puzzled, and asked, “Why wouldn’t we, David? It’s enormously profitable.”

  “I know. But, well, I’m just not sure that these movies are the best use of our money and our people.”

  Knox smiled. “David, as you’ve just seen, the people at XXXtra Cinema are a group unto themselves. Other than the kind of planning you’re doing with them right now, they stand alone. If most of them weren’t doing that stuff with us, they’d be doing it with someone else. That’s the kind of people they are.” Knox smiled, but Sawyer did not respond.

  “And as for our money, what else has both the current returns we’re seeing there and the opportunity for almost unlimited growth? What those folks do is a very common language.” He and Burke chuckled, and David nodded. “So what’s the problem?”

  David was silent as he stood and finally shrugged a bit. “I don’t know. You and I are both from traditional Muslim backgrounds, and while I understand our legal rights, I’m just not sure that pornographic movies are the image that’s best for USNet.”

  “David, this is America. Americans want these movies, and making money is a great image for USNet. And most people don’t link us to our movie subsidiary. Anyway, American law says that they’re not pornography. They’re adult movies. They’re art. Protected by the Constitution. Surely you haven’t been listening to the lies that our esteemed President makes up about our industry. Trust me, David, these movies are great for America.”

  Picking up his papers, David retreated. “OK. I just thought I’d ask. Have a good trip to Brazil, and I’ll email you about Porter later this afternoon.”

  After his meeting with their attorneys on the Porter situation, David was still playing catch-up from his trip to L.A. So
mehow he had to get it all done, and prepare for Moscow. Meanwhile, it would be another “dinner is in the oven” evening for him, and dark when he got home. He had left a voicemail for Elizabeth, letting her know that he would be home late. Callie and Rob had been jumping into his mind all afternoon, and he pushed deeper into his work in order to block out thoughts of them.

  As he finished a review of the space they were about to lease in London, his phone rang. Kristen’s cell phone.

  “David. Hi. I’m meeting a cabinet installer at my apartment this afternoon. Any word on Porter?”

  “I’m about to write an email to Knox and Burke, whom I briefed earlier, and I’ll copy you. Other than having Terrell call and generally threaten Porter with legal action, there doesn’t appear to be much we can do.”

  “Not what we hoped. Well, OK. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Have a good evening.”

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  Tampa, FL (USNet). April 19. In a stunning upset, Hassan Farrahi won Tuesday’s special election and becomes the first practicing Muslim to win a seat on Tampa’s City Council as the new representative for District 8.

  “This election proves that the American Dream is alive and well for everyone,” Farrahi said tonight in his acceptance speech. “We must all come together as Americans, whatever our backgrounds or faiths. I will serve my district, but I will also serve all of the people of this great city, and of this great country.”

  Farrahi, born in Iran, has lived in Tampa since childhood and was an honors graduate of the University of Central Florida. For the past ten years Farrahi has been a community organizer in the growing, predominantly Muslim sections of Tampa. Known for his work to improve the school system, Farrahi narrowly defeated Frazier Morris, a businessman who campaigned primarily for fiscal responsibility.

  Farrahi will be sworn in at next week’s city council meeting.