Garland looked sour. “We’ve already got some resources on this.”
O’Brien waved Garland down. “No, this is good. I’d rather have two bloodhounds on the trail than one. Tommy, give Don the name and the number.”
Thomas said, “I’ll just flash it to your phone, Don.”
“Sure.”
Thomas added a barb. “Let them know it’s Thomas Steward on behalf of Dennis O’Brien, and you’ll get a lot of traction.” Garland nodded, but scowled.
O’Brien leaned forward. “What else are you thinking?”
Thomas tugged at his lip, cleared his throat. “We have to know whom we’re chasing and not just thrash about blindly. If we don’t have a name, we certainly have characteristics, and those will make the thieves more predictable. It’s like reverse engineering.” He paused. “I don’t know about crime and how to read crime scenes, so I can’t help there.”
LeFarge said, “I know crime.” He looked down his nose at Garland and Thomas and smiled. A tight hard mouth. “Let me think out loud. First, we definitely have enough surveillance, so we have a picture of the thief or thieves recorded somewhere. This is less valuable than you think, except as a link—the guy who did the physical work won’t be your planner and leader. Second, we have a rough idea of how they got into the building, into the vault, and out of the building again—but no idea yet how they got onto the floor or into the suite. That tells me they’re smart, and they don’t work by smash-and-grab. The way one of them finessed his way into the building shows they can grift—they ran a plausible con on Garland’s rent-a-cops downstairs. The vault shows they know traditional safecracking. They had good intelligence to get them the other passwords needed. They knew about the weaknesses in your elevator security. All this requires long lead times, big investment up front, and patience.” He paused and looked around at his audience. “Finally, they knew what they were after. Again great intel, very expensive intel.”
O’Brien wagged his big head and growled. “What are they going to do with my data?”
LeFarge lifted his hands and shrugged. “They maybe planned a sale of the materials for later, maybe an auction, but I don’t think so.”
Thomas brushed the tabletop, and without looking at LeFarge, asked, “Why is that?”
“They’re a crew, not an entire marketplace. They most likely have a buyer up front—and that buyer commissioned this piece of work.”
O’Brien said, “All fine and good, but I don’t feel any closer to my data.”
Thomas watched the corner of LeFarge’s mouth turn up. A wolf’s canine glinted out.
The Governor banged on the table. “Keep going… say something encouraging.”
“There are a limited number of people who could do this thing. That tells us that the thieves—or at least the mastermind—is known in the business. That means we can find him through snitches. Last, their leader has the biggest balls in the world, and he’s willing to take on anything. We look for an arrogant son of a bitch.”
O’Brien smiled, his lips fat, moist. “Good speculation. But I want a name, I want a location, and I want my data back. All of it. Tell me exactly what you think we should do, Egan.”
LeFarge said, “Work the money trail, as Steward said. Work the security footage to find the safecracker as he got in—focus on the footage in your outer office. With faces, we should get one or two names. Hire a security firm that specializes in snitches, both foreign and domestic. Make a list of your enemies who would be this bold. And finally….”
“Finally what?”
“You have to decide whether you want to hand the answers over to the police or bring in your own extraction team.”
The Governor and LeFarge stared at each other. O’Brien said, “Build the team for me, Egan. Don’t involve Don with the set-up; I want his hands clean. Don, you have to handle the basic search for these guys. Get me a name.”
O’Brien took Thomas aside, into the room where the vault sat open and plundered. The Governor positioned his back to his office and faced away from the crowd. Over O’Brien’s shoulder, Thomas kept an eye on the head of Corporate Security and LeFarge, their heads together. LeFarge spoke in a low voice to Garland.
Thomas asked, “Why am I here, sir?”
O’Brien said, “Because of what else they stole. I can’t get it all back without hauling out every trick I have. You’re one of those tricks.”
“Can you give me an idea of what else they took?”
O’Brien breathed twice. He hemmed. “Just the data is bad enough. You already know about the memory device that holds my total finances. Every bank, every offshore account, every password, years of books and shadow books, fraudulent tax returns, deals I’ve made that I don’t mind being in the daylight, and the midnight deals I’ve made that should stay in the dark.”
“Enough for most people to go all out to get it back.”
“It’s worse. The rest of the memory devices are purely political. They document who I own and how much I paid, files on everyone I ever pressured, dirty tricks and illegal activities, what payoffs I got as Governor, and what we did for it. A real bitch’s brew.”
“All in one place… all pure poison.”
“I can’t have anyone—FBI, enemies, blackmailers, journalists—I can’t let it stay in anyone else’s hands. Christ, I spent a bloody fortune to protect it, and now here I am spending anything—anything—to recover it.”
“You’ve got a good team with great backing.”
O’Brien waved his hand dismissively. “There’s another thing they stole. I want you to take personal responsibility for recovering this one. I don’t want anyone else, inside or outside of this building, to know what it is.”
Thomas waited.
“They stole a device, the greatest artifact our civilization has ever produced. There are only three, and until last night I controlled all three. It’s a new form of data storage that can map the brain. It can be used to store all those things that make up a man.”
“Huh.”
“As technology advances, it could be downloaded into new computers to form an artificial intelligence based upon a man. It could be used to archive and search the greatest minds of the world. It could be used to download a man’s mind into another human host—and very soon at that.”
Thomas thought about that. “And who is stored in the stolen device?”
“You don’t think I would waste this on anyone else, do you? They’ve got my soul, Tommy, and I want it back.”
Thomas opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it.
O’Brien gripped Thomas’s arm and looked into his face. “You’re my boy, Tom. You’ve always been lucky as well as smart. You go along for the ride, and if these other guys can’t get this Artifact back by accident, you get it back on purpose.”
Thomas said, “Dennis, this isn’t finance. You don’t need a Wharton graduate for this; you need trained investigators.”
“I’ve got those already, and we’ll see how they do. You’re my dark horse, Tommy.”
This was all so wrong. “Oohkay. I’ll give it my best shot.”
O’Brien beamed. Got what he wanted without committing anything. “Of course, you tell anyone—I would be very unhappy.”
So, he was basically doomed—to secrecy, and probably to failure.
“Good boy. I knew you would understand.”
“I have to operate independently of Security and of LeFarge. I would have no purpose in their teams, and they won’t accept oversight from me.”
“Agreed.”
Maybe he could make it easier. “I’ll need access to you and to reports from the two teams, night and day. And I need any resource I ask for. I want Ryan Haevers to come in behind me to take over the acquisition I’m doing now while I go onto this full time.”
“Agreed.”
“I’m new at this—I’m bound to screw it up.”
“No you won’t. I trust you. You and your luck. Just remember, don’t
betray my trust. Get my soul back.” The bear gripped Thomas’s bicep. Hard.
Chapter Three: Cracks
Poking around, that’s what Robko called it. A hot shower didn’t help. Gazing in the refrigerator, the door hanging open until the stainless box talked to him—that wasn’t any better. Anyway, the grapefruit juice had turned a suspicious brown and smelled like rotting peaches. He checked the news and saw nothing of interest. He internetted talk radio, and within a minute clicked it off. Eight hours before, life had been sweet; now it ran... flat. No high this morning.
About eleven, he wandered out for coffee and a roll. He browsed the Daily on his pad for a while as he sat on a tall stool on the street outside Bennie’s. He added two packs of sugar to the coffee and dropped in one of the bitter pills, a sodie, to get a little cruze on. In a couple of minutes, Robko began humming the theme from “Dragnet.” He first checked the paper’s front page, then turned to the crime section and scanned through it. No mention of his boost.
He powered off the pad and slipped into unthinking vacancy, gazing off down the avenue. The waiter popped up at his table and jarred him back to attention. His name was Kevin, and Robko had a soft spot for him. Robko knew it was narcissistic. Kevin came off as a second edition of Robko. Like him, the waiter was short but muscled. He was languid because he took the same drugs. He had a face full of flat planes, a duskiness in his skin, eyebrows like a thicket, and cheap-dyed blond hair. And a nice ass.
Kevin also sulked in front of the customers, practiced rudeness, and slouched a lot. You couldn’t have everything. “Kev, how’s the play going?”
“What play? The dead play?”
“C’mon, can’t be that bad.”
“I got a hall for performance, but it’s a real dump and needs a lot of TLC. The audience will have to stand up, not sit down—how frickin’ off-Broadway is that? I got a friend who agreed to direct it, as long as it doesn’t interfere with his day job. We’ll try casting, if we can raise a little money. Phuttin’ actors all insist on scale, even if they never been on the boards.”
“How much you need?” Robko glanced offhandedly down the street and pretended disinterest.
“Four grand buys me a week. Then we either fold, or the gate takes care of the next week.”
“Huh. Success sounds as rough as failure.”
Kevin stared at him from under that black fence of eyebrow and batted his lashes. “Don’t tell the cast, but I just want it on my résumé.” He appeared downcast, but the corners of his mouth turned up in a secret grin.
“I can give you the four flip. Anonymous. But I get an invitation to the cast party.”
“Kram, man! That would be great!” Kevin reached over and rubbed the back of Robko’s wrist. Robko took Kevin’s hand in both his hands.
Kevin slipped his hand away. “Oops, got a customer.” He slunk off, smirking as he wove between the tables. Robko was pretty sure he’d been played. He looked down in his hand, as if surprised to see Kevin’s watch there.
Back to crime and fame. A search on the newsosphere didn’t turn up any mention of the rack. O’Brien might not report the crime, but it should come out anyway. There weren’t many secrets in a big office. One of the rags should have picked it up from a gossiping employee and made a splashy to-do. Maybe tomorrow. As he swallowed the last of the coffee and stood up, the store across the way, or at least the graffiti on its lockdown, shouted for his attention, “Luck Gonna Run You Over.” The signature was complexly unreadable, its own glyph. Robko decided it was a wanna-be-artist’s statement, a step above the other vandalism. But he thought it wasn’t a very hip saying, was it, and it wasn’t applicable to him. He was on top of the world. Or should be.
The black man squatted on his heels in the alley mouth, the paper bag of spray cans at his feet, watching the world roam by. His face was hidden by huge sunglasses.
***
In the acquisition’s palatial conference room, where splendor couldn’t disguise abject corporate failure, Thomas Cabot Steward spoke at length while Ryan Haevers took notes with pen and paper and recorded him with an iMob. This marathon session with Ryan included narratives for all the executives from the acquired company—the boys and girls for the chop. Thomas summarized his thoughts for Haevers, “Watch the COO. He’s the dick who ran this company into the ground to get his hyped-up stock price. The VP in charge of new-store startups is okay. VP Sales is a joke. The CFO should go back to her job in advertising—or go away. It’s all up to you now. I won’t second-guess you. O’Brien does that enough for all of us.”
“Thanks for the chance, Thomas.”
“What chance?” Thomas reached for his coat, snapped his briefcase shut.
“I know you gave me the step.”
“Not me. Good luck, Ryan. Move fast; don’t get stuck.” He left his fifth takeover in someone else’s hands and descended to the street. The car tooled him down to Manhattan.
He worked in the car again, glad to leave the confines of the take-over’s depressed, angry office. All the way, he turned over ideas—where to start?
As he strode back into O’Brien’s empire, it felt like home. The acquisition’s office had smelled of a combination of flop sweat and basement air—not this place. Success had a smell made up of good aftershave and cinnamon. Again a secretary met him in the lobby, nodded, and charged off for the elevator. He followed her. No nymphet like the anorexic crane who had brought him up yesterday. This one marched fast, eating up the marble floor.
She led him to a conference room off the executive row and swept open the door. “We don’t have any office I can give you, but you can use this space for the interim. Here’s your in-house phone.” She handed him a tiny wireless and an earbud with mike. “I’m your support, and my TinyURL is Pound Six.” She took his phone back, showed him “#6 enter,” and dropped it back into his hand.
“What’s your name, Pound Six?” He smiled a disarming preppie smile he had practiced over and over.
“Angie. Angelina Tommo.”
Thomas appreciated Italian; it was so different from the white Protestant landscape he had grown up in. “Angie, call me Thomas. Come back in ten minutes. I’ll have a list of the documents and feeds I want.”
“Ten minutes… got it. Would you like coffee?”
“That would be great. Latté if it’s available. And, Angie?” She turned back to him in the doorway. “Doing anything after work? Want to catch a drink?”
She grinned and shook her head. “Maybe.” He watched her draw the door shut, and she watched him watch.
Thomas sat at the table figuring angles. Angie represented a chance to find out who were the winners and losers around O’Brien. She might be difficult to crack open—she wouldn’t have gotten where she was by telling tales. The losers would be more interesting than the winners. One of them might be an insider who had sold the layouts and the passwords. He would take an approach of drinks and flirtation with Angie. There might be something else in there between them, something personal.
He also needed his own information feed, not just the ones used by Garland. A feed tuned to the way he thought. He talked to his pad, his finger adding a period, a colon where needed. “New note. O’Brien’s active enemies: Carstairs, Thurgall. O’Brien’s successor: Gallagher, Tuerno. O’Brien’s children: Allison, Dennis Junior, maybe others from previous marriages that I wouldn’t know. O’Brien’s VPs in central office: too numerous to count. Copy the Executive VPs file in here. O’Brien’s accomplices in the state house, Search Local Knowledge to list top three.”
Thomas leaned back in his chair and cocked an elbow up behind his head. He caught a whiff of perspiration and looked down at his shirt to find it was losing some of its crisp edges. Small damp spots in his armpits betrayed his humanity. He’d have the town car run him home for a shower and a change before lunch.
He touched his iMob, said, “Call Brent.” The vidi complied. “Brent, Thomas Steward here. How’s the political blog going?—I can’t s
ee you. The video is blanked.—Oh, subway?—Listen, I need you to check out political activities and financial aspirations of ten or so people for me, people associated with my boss.—Uh-huh. Indeed, usual fee.—Also, you can use the stuff for the blog, but not right now—wait till I tell you. The other bloggers will be watching you search around, so leak it that you think O’Brien might want to make a run for the Senate.—No, I don’t think it’s true, but your heat-up might make him think about it, and you’d be first in if he decided to come back into politics.—I’ll flash my names here over to you now. I need you to start feeding to me as you get it. Don’t wait to package it all up; I’ll take it raw.—All right, bye.” He emailed the padtop to his source. Where was Angie with his latté?
Irritated, he jumped up and started pacing around. What about O’Brien’s in-house resources? There should be some useful feed there that no one else would think of. A knock on the door interrupted him. Angie stuck her head in. “You should hear this, Mr. Steward. There’s a report that just arrived, and it’s causing some excitement. They’re in O’Brien’s office.”
Grabbing his coat, he strode past her, tossing flattery over his shoulder. “Great, thanks for looking out for me, Angie. I owe you.” Screw the wait for coffee; this was more important. He had a spy on board.
***
O’Brien sat ponderous behind his desk and three men stood before him, facing the executioner. Thomas strode in as if it was his meeting and took a place at the end of the desk, away from the guys on the carpet. Two of the men up in front were Garland and LeFarge.
Thomas cast his eyes over the Governor. A beast, a bear. Even his bespoke suit looked inadequate for the task of holding in all the fat, those huge shoulders, those bulged-up arms. His big bullet head with its ring of gray hair hung forward, his whole face a glower of disappointment. Probably an act. O’Brien shot Thomas a grin, swept his gaze over the other three, and said, “You remember Tommy Steward.” His voice, a growl, rumbled right over the three in front of him.
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