Blood Brothers

by Rick Acker

  All at once, the Agnes Larsen rolled back to port and then rode level. The noises of wood and ice ceased, but the men still shouted belowdecks. Captain Kjeldaas swore again and hurried down to see how bad the damage was. The Agnes Larsen was too small to carry a lifeboat, so if the ship went down, he and his crew would be adrift in the frigid sea. Hypothermia would kill them a few minutes after they went into the water.

  Water sprayed in from a half dozen leaks, but the hull planks had buckled in only one place—and that was above the waterline. The men had already started the pump and were breaking out the emergency patching kit. The first mate looked up at Captain Kjeldaas with a giddy, relieved grin. “She’ll be dry in half an hour, Captain!”

  The captain surveyed the scene again and nodded curtly. “Good.” He turned and went back to the pilothouse.

  As dawn broke, signaled only by a lightening of the gray sky, the Agnes Larsen limped into Torsknes. Water continued to drip inside the hull, and the pump ran intermittently. The growing light showed that much of her paint had been scraped away on the port side, which also bore several deep gouges. Captain Kjeldaas knew where his share of the vodka profits was going. In fact, he’d probably have to make another smuggling run next week just to cover the cost of repairs.

  The ship cleared the seawall and came into view of the dock. Captain and crew had expected to see a truck waiting at the dock to take their cargo. Instead, they saw a police car. Two Kystvakt launches floated just inside the seawall, lest the Agnes Larsen try to run back out to sea.

  Captain Kjeldaas set his mouth in a hard line and headed for the dock. He’d lose his cargo, of course, and probably get slapped with a stiff fine. That would likely be all, though. There were enough ex-fishermen in the police force and judiciary to ensure some leniency when an old sea captain got caught in the time-honored practice of rum-running. Still, the loss of his cargo, a fine, and the repair bill for his ship would come close to bankrupting him. He’d have to find a way to make a lot of money fast—faster than he could smuggling vodka, and much faster than he could catching cod.

  The evening was a great triumph, Karl decided. A great triumph. He walked over to the living-room window of his palatial sixtieth-floor condo and looked out on the glowing Chicago skyline, replaying pleasant memories from a few hours ago—the interest and applause during his remarks, the enthusiastic questions about his new product from stock analysts and captains of industry, and the jealous bile in his brother’s face and voice. With luck, Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ stock would be up strongly tomorrow as reports of his presentation circulated.

  His satisfied smile faded as he recalled a detail he hadn’t focused on at the time. Gunnar had been talking with a younger man who seemed vaguely familiar, but whom Karl couldn’t immediately place. He also recalled having seen the man with the hostess at some point during the evening. Who was he? And what had he and Gunnar been talking about in the exhibit hall during the speeches? Karl turned as his wife walked into the room. “Gwen, who was that man at the reception with Noelle Corbin?”

  “In his thirties, brown hair, athletic build, good-looking, but a little on the short side?” she responded.

  “You have an excellent memory of him,” Karl replied drily. “Yes, that’s the one.”

  She laughed. Before marrying Karl fifteen years ago, Gwen LaCharriere had been a runway model known for two things: her elegant, raven-haired good looks and her reputation as a flirt—though she had always thought of herself as merely friendly. One thing that had drawn her to Karl was that he was confident enough not to be bothered when she talked to other men. Still, it was fun to tease him. “That’s her husband, Ben Corbin. He was in the papers a while back—something about Russian terrorists.”

  Now he remembered. He stood silent for a few seconds, weighing the significance of this new piece of information. “Chechens,” he said. “The terrorists were Chechens. They bought their weapons from Russian smugglers. Ben Corbin was the lawyer who beat the Russians in court and then hunted down the Chechens, wasn’t he?”

  “That sounds right.”

  Karl began to understand his brother’s interest in Mr. Corbin. He also began to wonder just how much Gunnar knew about Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ activities. This situation bore watching. Close watching. In fact, it bore more than that.

  Karl considered what to do next. When he and Gunnar had been boys, one of their favorite pastimes was to spar with long sticks. At first, Gunnar always won, because he was older and had a longer reach than Karl. But Karl eventually learned that if he could strike the first hard blow, he could put his brother on the defensive and control the fight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE FIRST HARD BLOW

  Shortly before ten in the morning, Ben arrived at the offices he and Noelle shared and found five phone-message slips waiting for him. Two were from other lawyers in cases he was handling. Two were from a Field Museum board member who wanted Ben to run for alderman, an idea that Ben had no interest in, but Noelle did. And one message was from a “Gooner Boornson.” Ben laughed and walked back out to the reception area. “Susan, do you think this might be ‘Gunnar Bjornsen’?”

  Susan Molfino, the Corbins’ receptionist and all-purpose office administrator, looked at the slip critically. “Sure. Actually, it could be pretty much any funny name that sounds more or less like that, if the guy saying it has an accent and hangs up before I can ask him how to spell his name.”

  “Oh, is that what happened? Did this guy have a deep voice?”

  “Yeah. He sounded like a German James Earl Jones.”

  “That’s him,” Ben replied.

  Ben had been half expecting a call ever since the reception at the Field Museum three nights ago. In the exhibition hall, he had suspected that Gunnar had wanted to talk about something other than Viking art—and it was clear that the Bjornsen brothers were on the brink of open war. With a pretty good idea of what to expect, Ben walked back to his office and dialed the number on the slip. “Gunnar Bjornsen,” said the rumbling voice at the other end of the line.

  “Hello, Gunnar. This is Ben Corbin returning your call. What can I do for you?”

  “I need a lawyer to defend me. My brother, Karl, sued me. He claims I stole trade secrets from the company.”

  That was a surprise. Ben had been expecting Gunnar to be the one doing the suing. “I think I could help you with that. Would you like to sit down to talk about the case sometime soon? I’m free for about an hour this afternoon at one o’clock.”

  “I’ll see you at your office at one,” replied Gunnar.

  “Great. In the meantime, could you e-mail me a copy of the complaint? My address is bcorbin at bcorbinlaw.com.”

  “I’ll send it to you now.”

  While he was waiting for the complaint to arrive, Ben called Noelle, who had been at a client’s office since eight thirty going over draft financial statements. For the year and a half since she and Ben had struck out on their own professionally, her accounting practice had mostly consisted of doing telecom reconciliations for her former employer, which took about ten hours a week. But her practice had mushroomed since she’d started doing pro-bono work for the Field Museum. Board members, donors, and other wealthy friends of the museum regularly hired her or referred work to her. She now had so much work that she was considering hiring another accountant. After three rings, she picked up her cell phone. “Hi, Ben. What’s up?”

  “I’ve got some good news,” he reported. “It looks like I might be landing a high-profile trade-secrets case today.”

  “That’s great!” she replied. “I’m going to be busy until about two thirty. Can you tell me about it then?”

  “Sure, just call me when you’re ready and we’ll meet at the Mud Hole.”

  At exactly one o’clock, Ben’s intercom line rang. “Mr. Bjornsen”—Susan pronounced the name slowly and correctly—“is here to see you.”

  “I’ll be right out.” Ben walked out into the lobby and ushered Gu
nnar into the conference room. It wasn’t big, but it had comfortable leather chairs, a hand-carved round oak table, and a pleasant view of Grant Park and Lake Michigan. Ben and Noelle had designed the room to be a relaxing and informal place that put clients at ease and took the edge off of difficult negotiations with opposing counsel or auditors. Normally, the room felt cozy, but Gunnar’s size and tension made it a little claustrophobic.

  “Sit down,” encouraged Ben. “Can we get you something to drink?”

  Gunnar sat down, moving with surprising grace for a man of his bulk. “No. Have you read the complaint?”

  So he wanted to get right down to business. That was fine with Ben. “I have,” he said, sitting down as well. He took out two copies of the pleading and handed one to Gunnar. “I’d like to go over some of the key allegations with you. First, were you the head of new-drug development at Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals?”

  “I was. I was also the president.”

  “Okay. Did you have access to all of the company’s product-development information?”

  “I did,” Gunnar answered without hesitation.

  “Including the formulas for the Neurostim product?”

  “That was Karl’s name for it, not mine,” said Gunnar. “I never liked ‘Neurostim,’ and I think someone else is already using it. But I know what he’s talking about, and yes, I did have access to the production processes for it. In fact, I developed most of them.”

  “Did the company take any steps to keep those processes secret?”

  Gunnar nodded. “Absolutely. We had a secure lab, nondisclosure agreements signed by all our workers, a password-protected computer system, and a number of other security measures.”

  Ben crossed a potential defense off the list he had jotted down a few minutes before Gunnar arrived. “And did those measures work?”

  “Yes. As far as I know, no sensitive information ever leaked out of the company.”

  Ben crossed off another potential defense. His list was getting short. “All right, did you take the Neurostim-production processes with you when you left the company?”

  Gunnar shrugged. “I didn’t take any documents with me, but I didn’t need to. Everything is right here.” He tapped his temple.

  “Unfortunately, that counts, for purposes of the Illinois Trade Secrets Act,” responded Ben. “You were the head of new-drug development, and you developed a new drug. As a general rule, that means it belongs to the company—even if you didn’t take anything except memories of how to make it. Is there any argument that this drug is not economically valuable?”

  Gunnar shook his head. “It’s very valuable. It’s probably worth billions of dollars.”

  “Billions? How many billions?”

  “It’s tough to tell this early in the development process, but”—he started ticking points off on his thick fingers—“the potential market is huge, the drug is probably impossible to copy, and there won’t be any competition until the patent expires. The Department of Defense orders alone should be enormous; they’re very interested in the drug and have said they’ll probably want five to ten million doses every year. So the upside is basically unlimited, assuming the trials go well and the drug gets FDA approval.”

  “And assuming they have the formula to make it,” added Ben. “This litigation is going to be World War III.” He looked down at his list of potential defenses, each of which he had crossed off over the course of their meeting. He paused to look over the complaint one more time to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. He hadn’t. He looked up at Gunnar. “Mr. Bjornsen, I have to tell you that these are not good facts. Based on what you’ve told me, there’s a strong possibility that the company’s lawyers will be able to convince a judge and jury that the information in your head is a trade secret.”

  “So?”

  “So you can’t use it or disclose it. Basically, that billion-dollar formula has to stay permanently locked in your head.”

  Much to Ben’s surprise, Gunnar relaxed and smiled broadly. Then he broke into a deep laugh. After a minute or so, his mirth subsided and he said, “Thank you, Ben. That’s the best news I’ve had in weeks.”

  “Uh, great. Why is that?”

  “Because I don’t want to disclose it.”

  “And you don’t want to use it?”

  “Not while my brother is running the company. When he’s gone, I’ll be perfectly happy to go back and help them develop products based on this compound. Until then, I’ll keep my trade secrets secret.”

  “Okay,” said Ben slowly. “And does the company know all this?”

  Gunnar looked at Ben oddly. “Yes, of course. That’s why they sued me.”

  “I . . . I didn’t see anything about that in the complaint,” replied Ben as he leafed through the pleading. “Could you explain what you mean?”

  “I’m the only one who knows how to grow the plants that they need to make it; without me, there is no new wonder drug. Karl wants to force me to tell him how to do it.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t put any of that in the complaint,” said Ben. “This is pretty obscure. The closest they come is in the prayer for relief, where they ask the Court to order you to ‘return all documents or materials containing or constituting trade secrets of Plaintiff Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals.’ But you don’t have anything like that, do you?”

  Gunnar shook his head with a pleased grin. “Like I said, it’s all in my head. I didn’t write any of it down while I was there, either. If I had, Karl wouldn’t have sued me.”

  “I see,” said Ben thoughtfully. “And now that I think about it, I also see why his lawyers drafted the complaint the way they did. Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ stock is up twenty-three percent since Karl announced this new product. It would probably drop by at least that much if word got out that they couldn’t actually manufacture the drug.”

  “It certainly would be an embarrassing press release to write,” agreed Gunnar.

  “So let’s write it for him,” suggested Ben. “We can put together a draft press release, send it to him, and threaten to give it to Bloomberg and the Journal unless the company drops its lawsuit.”

  Gunnar pondered Ben’s idea for a moment but then slowly shook his head. “No, let’s not. The press will probably find out quickly in any event, but I don’t want to be the one who tells them. Issuing that press release could damage the company—and I don’t want the company harmed more than necessary. What I want is to win this lawsuit and get back in charge.”

  “Winning this lawsuit won’t get you back into control of the company,” said Ben.

  “No, but winning the countersuit you’re going to file will.”

  Sergei Spassky sat behind a cluttered desk in his North Loop office, his long legs resting on a battered side table. His boyish face wore an amused look as he pored over the criminal record of Dr. Timothy Lesner, a prominent local oncologist. One of the doctor’s partners had begun to suspect that he did not have an entirely pristine past and had hired Sergei to investigate. The detective quickly discovered that Dr. Lesner’s past was in fact perfectly clean: no record of professional discipline, no criminal convictions, no outstanding IRS liens—not even so much as a parking ticket. Indeed, Sergei couldn’t see how things could have been otherwise, given that Timmy Lesner had died fifty-three years ago at the age of two. Frank Waboda—who was using Timmy’s name and long-dormant Social Security number—was a different story, however. A very different story.

  Sergei had finished the criminal file and was about to start writing a report to his client when the phone rang. “Spassky Detective Agency, Sergei Spassky speaking.”

  “Hello, Mr. Spassky. My name is Karl Bjornsen. I’m interviewing private investigators for a job, and Aaron Wiederman gave me your name.”

  “That was nice of him,” replied Sergei, making a mental note to thank Wiederman for the referral. “What’s the job?”

  “Right now, all I need is background research and possibly some surveillance on an atto
rney. His name is Ben Corbin.”

  Chris and Brett Giacolone, the two brothers who owned and operated the Mud Hole, liked to refer to it as a coffee studio rather than a coffee shop. They were artists, not mere baristas. Their customers forgave this vanity, partly because the Giacolones were from the West Coast and therefore were expected to be a little eccentric, but mostly because their coffee was really, really good.

  Ben arrived first and ordered for both himself and Noelle. She walked in just as their order came up. “Hi. I got you a decaf cinnamon latte.”

  “No fat?” she asked. She’d put on a little more weight than the baby books projected and had started watching her diet more closely.

  “No fat. And light on the raw sugar.”

  “Good job,” she said with an approving smile. “Let’s find someplace to sit.” She looked around the narrow, dimly lit “studio” for a free table.

  “Actually, let’s go for a walk,” said Ben. “I’d rather not talk in a room full of people.”

  She looked at him curiously. “Okay, let’s walk.”

  They sipped their coffee as they strolled through the Loop, the downtown office district that got its name from the loop of elevated rails that bordered it. The skyscrapers edging its busy streets came from every decade from the 1890s to the 2010s, forming an open-air museum for architectural students. They also formed excellent wind tunnels, channeling and sharpening the lake breezes into blustery winds that whistled down Chicago’s streets. Noelle shivered and snuggled in closer to her husband’s side. “So, what’s up?” she asked.

  “Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals has sued Gunnar Bjornsen for trade-secret theft, and Gunnar has asked me to represent him,” Ben announced with a modest smile.

  Noelle looked at him openmouthed. “When you say Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals sued him, you really mean Karl Bjornsen, don’t you?”