The Consultant

by Little,Bentley

  “What about Dylan?” Angie said worriedly. “It doesn’t seem like he’s safe.”

  “Isn’t he? No one’s touched him. He’s been scared, yes. We’ve all been scared. But no physical harm has come to him. Or any of us. And, believe me, that’s not true for everyone.”

  “I know,” Angie said softly, and he knew she was thinking of Pam.

  He held her shoulders, looked into her eyes. “I think we’re going to get through this.”

  Angie breathed deeply. “I hope so.”

  Craig got himself a can of Coke out of the refrigerator and went out to find Dylan. He tried giving his son a big hug, but the boy squirmed out of his grip. “Leave me alone, Daddy!” he objected, eyes on his computer screen. “I’m about to be eaten!”

  Smiling, Craig sat down on the bed and watched Dylan play until Angie called them for dinner.

  Halfway through the meal, the phone rang. Angie didn’t want him to answer, but he had to, just in case. “Hello?”

  It was Phil.

  Craig was relieved it wasn’t Patoff, but he knew his friend wouldn’t be calling just to chat, so it was with a sense of trepidation that he said. “What’s up?”

  Phil spoke carefully, obviously worried that someone was listening in to their conversation. “I was wondering if you could come over for a few minutes. We just got a new flat screen for the bedroom, and I need some help installing it.”

  That was a lie. Phil had talked about buying a new TV, but he was far handier than Craig, and even if he had just purchased a new flat screen, he’d need no help hooking it up. As for mounting the set on the wall, his wife Josie, a fitness freak, was twice as strong as Craig and would be of much more assistance.

  No, Phil wanted to talk.

  About CompWare.

  “Sure,” Craig said. “I’ll be over after we finish dinner.”

  “Thanks.”

  “See you soon.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  The cadence of their conversation was stilted, and anyone listening in would know that something was off, but if they were being monitored by a computer using word-recognition software, nothing would appear amiss, and the call would not be red-flagged.

  “You need to read to me!” Dylan said when he put the phone down.

  “I will,” Craig told him. “And don’t worry. I won’t leave until you’re in bed asleep.”

  “Will you check on me when you come back?”

  “I always do.”

  Dylan happily dug into his enchiladas. Angie shot Craig a worried look, and he tried to smile reassuringly, but he could tell that she was still concerned. “I don’t know what it is,” he told her honestly.

  “Do you have to go over there?”

  “I’ll make it quick.”

  An hour later, Dylan was in bed, and Craig was off. Phil lived a good fifteen minutes away, but there was no traffic on the freeway, and on the street he hit a string of green lights, so he made it there in ten. His friend had obviously been watching for him because Craig had not even knocked on the door or rang the bell when Phil called out, “Come on in! It’s open!”

  In the center of the living room floor was an unopened box containing a 60-inch plasma TV. Phil sat on the rug before the box, an X-Acto knife in his hand. He had not started cutting open the box, and he glanced up as Craig entered.

  The house was still and silent. “Where’s Josie?” Craig asked.

  “I sent her out. Told her to have a girl’s night with her friends. She’s a civilian. I don’t want her involved.”

  Craig would have talked everything over with Angie even if BFG hadn’t consulted for the Urgent Care, but he understood that Phil and Josie had a different sort of relationship. He nodded.

  Phil took a deep breath. “Something’s been bugging me. For a long time now.”

  Craig smiled. “Only one thing?”

  “His name. It never seemed right to me, never seemed real. It was familiar, somehow, but I couldn’t seem to place it.”

  “It sounds like it might have a Russian origin.”

  “It’s not his name,” Phil said quietly.

  “Regus or Patoff?”

  “Both.”

  “How do you—”

  Phil pointed, his finger touching cardboard.

  Craig looked closely at the side of the box, at the small words beneath the name of the product that indicated it was registered with the U.S. Patent Office: Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.

  Regus Patoff

  He suddenly felt cold.

  Who the hell was this guy?

  What was this guy? That’s what he really wanted to know, and he looked over at Phil, who was nodding grimly. “I saw that when I was getting ready to open the box.”

  Craig said aloud what, until this point, he had only thought. “I don’t think he’s human.”

  It should have sounded absurd, laughable dialogue from a bad horror movie. But in this place, at this time, with everything that had happened, it sounded eminently reasonable and frighteningly true.

  The house around them suddenly seemed too dark, a perception that Phil obviously shared because he stood and started turning on lights, moving from the living room to the dining room to the kitchen to the hall. “How hasn’t this come up before?” Phil wondered aloud as he returned. “BFG’s consulted for companies far bigger than CompWare. Name corporations. Are you telling me that none of them did their due diligence and conducted a thorough background check? This is something that should have come up.” He shook his head, exhaled deeply. “Jesus.”

  “What do we do?” Craig asked.

  “I don’t know. If this were anyone else, we could call the attorney general’s office, but…” He left the thought unfinished.

  Craig plunged in. “I think we might be safe,” he said. “I mean me and you. Personally.” He explained his lunchtime revelation, how he suspected that the consultant had to work within boundaries and couldn’t just do whatever he wanted, how he thought the man could physically harm only those employees the company no longer needed and how anyone else was off limits. “It fits,” he said. “It makes sense. And it explains why we’re still here.”

  Phil looked thoughtful, and Craig realized what a relief it was to have his friend thinking again. That stunned and passive Phil who’d been sitting blankly in front of his TV box had frightened him, and he felt better knowing that it was once again the two of them against Patoff.

  “Maybe we can use this,” Phil said. “Not to stop him, of course. We can’t do that. But maybe we can mitigate the damage.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet. But we have the list. And we know something he doesn’t want us to know, doesn’t know we know.” He pointed to the words on the box again. “That’s valuable, that’s ammunition.”

  Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.

  “We’re still in the game.”

  THIRTY SEVEN

  The announcement was made over speakers throughout the building at four forty-nine, eleven minutes before quitting time: “All senior staff please report immediately to the third floor conference room for a mandatory meeting. This includes all vice presidents, department heads, division heads, managers and supervisors. Repeat: a mandatory meeting for all senior staff in the third floor conference room.”

  Craig’s phone buzzed, indicating an incoming text message, and when he looked at it, he saw: “Senior Staff Meeting. Third Floor Conference Room. 4:50.”

  The same message popped up simultaneously on his computer.

  It was bad enough that he was coming in on weekends, that his lunch hour had been co-opted and he had to spend the entire day within this building. Now he had to stay late for some pointless meeting?

  The third floor conference room wasn’t even big enough for that many people. How were they all going to fit into such a small space?

  He shut off his computer, gathered up his stuff and made his way to the elevator, where he encountered Scott Cho, waiting in front of the closed metal doors. “
Thought you were going to look over the new updates,” Craig said. “I sent them to you two days ago, and you haven’t even opened the email.”

  “I have a lot more on my plate than just proofreading the fixes to your screw-ups,” the department head snapped. “I’ll get to it.”

  Elaine arrived, and Craig talked to her until the doors opened, ignoring Scott. Sid Sukee ran up at the last second, sliding in just before the doors closed. “Anyone know what this is about?” he asked.

  “No,” Craig said.

  “Well, it better be fast. I have things to do. Got a hot date with one of your programmers.” He grinned.

  “Huell?”

  Sid frowned. “Asshole.”

  The doors opened, and the four of them made their way toward the conference room, which, Craig noticed immediately upon arriving, was now entirely devoid of furniture. All chairs, tables and equipment had been removed. One of the walls had been pulled aside to reveal a floor-to-ceiling window, which was a surprise to him because he hadn’t known that the walls could move or that the room had a window.

  The place was crowded already, and within the next few minutes, it filled completely. Craig faced the front of the room where Matthews stood next to Patoff, the CEO appearing drained and drawn, as though he’d recently survived a life-threatening illness. From their body language, the relationship between the two did not look like one of employer and contractor, or even equals. Rather, Craig realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, it appeared to be one of master and servant, with Patoff definitely the former and Matthews the latter.

  Without so much as glancing at the CEO, the consultant raised his hands for silence, though the room was already quiet and very few people were talking. “We’ve called you here,” he announced, “because you will be going on a management retreat this evening.”

  “Another retreat?” Branford Weiss from Legal said. “In the mountains?”

  Patoff gestured outside. “No. Here. On the campus.”

  Craig peered out the window and saw that, on the grounds below, high temporary walls had been put up. From this angle and altitude, it looked like a rat’s maze. When had this happened? He’d been busy all day, hadn’t gone outside or had an occasion to look out the window, but when he’d arrived this morning, the campus had been clear; there’d been no sign of any of this.

  People were glancing at each other in confusion, no one really sure what to make of Patoff’s announcement.

  “How long is this going to take?” Elaine asked.

  “It’s a two-day retreat.”

  “And we’re going to be, what, camping down there?”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Starting tonight?”

  “Starting now.”

  “Then we need to be able to go home and get our things. Our clothes, our toothbrushes…”

  “You won’t need any of that.”

  Parvesh Patel took out his cell phone. “I’ll call my wife, have her…” He frowned. “There’s no signal.”

  “That is intentional. The whole point of the retreat is for you to get your priorities straight, to make you aware of how much more important your job is than your home life.”

  “And I thought you wanted us to be married,” Phil said sarcastically from the far corner.

  The consultant turned on him. “Indeed, we do, Mr. Allen. But there is a time and a place for everything, and if you are spending sixteen hours out of every twenty-four at home, and only eight hours at work, you need to make sure that those eight hours count for something, that you are not distracted, that home and family time doesn’t bleed into your work hours. You need to remain focused, which is why all phone signals have been blocked.”

  Now there was a lot of conversation. Supervisors were appealing to their managers, who were complaining to department and division heads. The consultant remained above the chaos, smiling serenely, seeming to take particular joy in watching Matthews flounder about, ineffectually trying to justify enforced attendance of the suddenly announced retreat to all of the employees who were pleading with him to postpone it.

  “I need to let my wife know where I am,” Craig said, addressing Patoff directly. “She’ll be worried. So will my son.”

  The consultant shook his head. “No, they won’t.” He smiled. “I’ll stop by and tell them where you are.”

  Panic welled within him. “No ,” he said, “you don’t need to.”

  Patoff’s smile widened. “I want to.”

  Objections and complaints had reached a cacophonous pitch, and once again the consultant raised his hands for quiet. “Enough!” he shouted. The room lapsed into silence. “This is the beginning of your two-day retreat. It has already started, and in a moment we are going to start with the team-building exercises. But first, let us bow our heads and give thanks to Ralph.” He clasped his hands together in prayer, and though no one followed suit, the room remained respectfully hushed, and the consultant’s voice rang out clearly. “Dear Ralph, bless our efforts and make them successful. Amen.”

  There were actually a few scattered “amens” in return, though Craig suspected that those saying the words had shot off some kind of prayer to the Judeo-Christian God (probably to get them out of this) rather than asking “Ralph” to let them have a successful retreat.

  Patoff clapped his hands. “Speed Conversation!” he announced. “Places!”

  It had been awhile, and getting into position was awkward, but eventually they stood once again in two concentric circles that covered most of the conference room. This time, Matthews did not participate but remained next to the consultant.

  Craig was staring into Scott Cho’s hostile face as the whistle blew.

  “I fucked your wife’s dirty asshole,” Scott said. “And she came.”

  Craig laughed. The taunt was so stupid and childish that he could have no other response, and he was still laughing when the whistle sounded again and the outer group moved on.

  “When I French kissed your wife, her mouth tasted like penis,” said Neal Jamison from Finance. “She must suck a lot of cocks.”

  So this was going to be a theme. The only question Craig had was whether the consultant had fed the game’s participants their lines or whether he had manipulated them into thinking the ideas were their own. He looked over at Patoff, but the man was gazing off in another direction, a blank expression on his face.

  The taunts continued, and he was tempted to respond in kind. But, he reasoned, that was probably what the consultant wanted, so he made an extra effort to stay above the fray. The truth was that the relentless insults began to wear him down after a while, but soon it was his turn to speak his mind as the conversational circles turned, and he used the opportunity to repeat, “We don’t work for BFG. We work for CompWare.”

  The speed conversation ended.

  “Downstairs and outside!” the consultant ordered.

  Within ten minutes, they were all gathered on the sidewalk border between the parking lot and the campus on the side of the building. A funneling entrance that started wide and narrowed as it went in to the grounds had a big white Welcome painted on the left wall and CompWare Management Team! painted on the right.

  A man emerged from within, blinking against the weak late afternoon sun like a person who’d been held in captive darkness for weeks.

  It was Dash Robards.

  The guide looked far different than he had at the camp, as though he had aged decades in the past months. His haggard face was thin and pale, his clothes torn and ragged. “Come on,” he said tiredly, one limp hand beckoning them forward. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Craig, Phil and Elaine happened to be near the front of the pack, and they stepped up. Patoff, Craig noticed, had disappeared, though he had no idea when the consultant had left or where he’d gone.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Elaine asked Robards as they approached. This close, the guide looked in even worse shape than he had from a distance. There were
visible cuts on the backs of his hands, and poorly healed burn scars on his worn face. His straw-like hair was an ill-fitting wig.

  “Just continue on in,” Robards said. “You’ll know what to do.”

  The three of them, followed by a line of other management personnel, pressed past Robards, through the opening between the Welcome and the CompWare Management Team! On the other side of the temporary wall was the maze they had seen from above, though the three passages leading outward from the entrance each looked wider from this vantage point. They picked the middle one and walked in.

  Craig did not recognize any landmarks of the CompWare campus. He didn’t see the sidewalk that passed through the center of the grounds nor the fountain to which it led. Instead, they marched over grass between walls that looked like marble rather than plywood and on which grew ivy, morning glory and other vines.

  “I thought he said we’d know what to do,” Elaine said.

  “Keep walking,” Phil told her. “And be thankful we’re not hunting dog for our dinner.”

  No one was behind them. Had everyone else chosen the other pathways?

  The maze seemed bigger than the campus, though that was not physically possible, and they continued on, down long straight stretches, around corner after corner after corner. Fifteen minutes in, it was Craig who suggested that they turn around and retrace their steps. “This is going nowhere,” he said. “And no one’s following us. I think we picked the wrong way.”

  “Who cares?” Phil said. “You want to participate in one of Robards’ pre-planned activities? If we’re off the radar, so much the better.”

  “Yeah,” Elaine agreed. “Let’s see where this goes.”

  Craig shrugged. “All right.”

  Ahead, the path branched off. They chose the right fork, which ended at a small meadow that Craig didn’t recognize and had never seen on CompWare property. It was surrounded by the maze wall, and in the center was a picnic table topped with at least a dozen bottles of spring water. Phil immediately walked over, sat down, picked up a bottle, unscrewed the top and started drinking. Craig and Elaine did the same.