by Rick Acker
She also knew that he had started going to church most Sundays and reading religious books. She’d gone with him a couple of Sunday mornings and listened politely when he felt the need to talk about religion. The topic didn’t particularly interest her, though, and she tolerated it in much the same way that she tolerated his obsession with the Bears—and the way she suspected he tolerated her interest in women’s winter sports.
His dark moods had become less frequent as the attack receded into the past, and she had thought that his fascination with religion would also fade. Apparently, it not only hadn’t faded, it was pulling him away from her. The initial shock of that discovery began to wear off, and she realized he was still speaking.
“. . . and how we would raise our kids. I mean, not only is the most important thing in my life not important to you, you don’t even believe it’s true. I love you, Elena. I really do love you. I want us to work, but I’m not sure we can. Not like this.”
“Are you really saying that you would leave me just because . . . just because I don’t have the same religious opinions as you?” she asked incredulously.
“This isn’t just an opinion I have; this is something I believe from the depths of my soul. It’s changing my life. It can change yours too.”
“I don’t want my life changed. Can’t you love me the way I am?”
“I do love you,” he insisted.
“But you won’t marry me.”
He looked at her with the I’m-trying-to-let-you-down-easy expression that most singles recognize instantly by the time they reach thirty. “I’ve been praying about this a lot and—”
Suddenly she couldn’t bear to hear any more. “Stop! Just stop!” She felt sick to her stomach. “I can’t believe this is happening.” Her voice shook.
Sergei reached across the table and put his hand on her arm. “Elena, I don’t want—”
She pulled her arm away from him and wiped her eyes. “I have to go,” she said as she got to her feet and grabbed her coat. Half-blinded by tears, she turned and walked out of the restaurant as quickly as she could.
Sergei rose to follow her, but didn’t. He stood awkwardly for a few seconds, watching her go. Then he slowly sat back down, avoiding the curious eyes of the other diners.
That Saturday, like all Saturdays, the Gunnar Bjornsens gathered for a family dinner. Sometimes they ate in and sometimes they ate out. Regardless of where they ate, dinner always began by six thirty, as Gunnar believed in punctual meals. And dinner always ended by eight, as Markus and Tom did not want to spend their Saturday nights with their parents. They took turns coming up with scheduling conflicts that prevented the dinners from running too long.
Tonight the family had gathered at Gunnar and Anne’s house, an imposing Victorian mansion with a neoclassical facade located in the tonier part of Hinsdale, an old town on the Burlington Northern rail line west of Chicago. Gunnar had bought it two decades ago as a peace offering to Anne, who resented the fact that he was almost never home.
The family sat around a polished mahogany table in the formal dining room. Gunnar was at the head of the table, of course, and Anne sat opposite him. The boys were seated across from each other, with Tom on Gunnar’s right and Markus on his left. Tom had come straight from a meeting with a potential client and was dressed in a well-cut gray suit and tailored white shirt. Markus had come from nowhere in particular and was wearing jeans and an old sweater that had sprouted several stray strands of yarn.
Tom was talking about his job as assistant branch manager for a brokerage house, a topic that usually interested his father. “And so, with more and more research available online, we figured that flat-fee accounts were really the way to go for our more sophisticated investors. So far, it’s been a big success; revenues for last quarter were up ten percent, and I’ve been given the budget to add a new broker to my team.” He paused for a moment for his father’s reaction, but none came. “You know, Dad, you and Mom are pretty active investors, and you do most of your own research. One of our flat-fee products might be best for you.”
“What was that?” asked Gunnar.
“I was saying that you might want to switch over to one of our flat-fee accounts.”
“Why would we do that?”
Tom was about to repeat his explanation when Anne cut in. “Why don’t you send us the paperwork. We can look it over and set up a time to meet with you next week.”
“Uh, no problem. You’ll have it by Monday afternoon.”
They ate in silence for several minutes, during which time Markus and Tom both surreptitiously checked their watches. It was 7:25. Anne broke the silence. “Markus, how is your production coming?”
Markus had been eyeing the wine bottle and wondering whether his father would comment if he had a third glass. “Fine, just fine. We’re beginning rehearsals for The Gamester. It’s an eighteenth-century play written by Edward Moore. I’m going to be understudy to Jim Kennison, who’s playing—”
Gunnar looked at his watch. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got some things I need to take care of this evening. Thanks for coming. Have a great week.” He stood, shook hands with his bewildered sons, and strode from the room.
“Couldn’t take even two minutes of theater talk, huh?” Markus muttered as he refilled his wineglass.
Gunnar disappeared into his den. “It’s not the theater,” replied Anne. “Dad has been preoccupied lately. He spends a lot of time on the phone and the computer.”
“I would too if I’d been sued,” said Tom. “I’d want to know everything about the legal issues and the judge and . . . well, and about anything else having to do with the lawsuit.”
“But you wouldn’t get up in the middle of dinner to go do research,” observed Markus. “Especially if someone was talking.”
“Dad has some rough edges,” Tom conceded, “but I can understand why he’s distracted. After all, he’s being sued by Uncle Karl.”
Anne smiled and turned the conversation back to more comfortable territory. “Markus, you never finished telling us about your new play.”
Half an hour later, Markus and Tom sat in Tom’s Mercedes, driving back into Chicago. Night gathered in front of them, and the last rays of the vanishing sun lit planes flying into and out of O’Hare like gleaming fireflies. Markus sprawled on the passenger’s seat, watching the sky absently as Tom drove and the two of them talked about the Cubs.
Suddenly, Markus asked, “Do you remember when the company almost went bankrupt when we were in high school?”
“Vaguely,” replied Tom. “What I really remember was that Mom took me shopping for a new Lexus for my sixteenth birthday. Then, a week later, she told me in sort of an offhand way that I wouldn’t be getting a car that year—but she wouldn’t explain why. No one told me about what was going on. I just heard you guys talking about it, like a year later.”
“Nobody heard about it when it happened,” replied Markus. “Not even Mom. Dad didn’t say anything; he was just really moody and distracted for about half a year and wouldn’t let her spend any money. Then he was back to normal. And then, about a year after that, he started talking about the whole thing like everybody had known about it all along.”
Tom looked at his older brother. “He didn’t tell Mom?”
Markus shook his head. “He never tells her when something is seriously wrong. He never tells anyone. He just clams up and deals with it on his own.”
They drove in silence for a while, and Markus leaned against his window and started to breathe evenly.
“At least Dad has a good lawyer,” said Tom.
Markus stirred. “What’s that?”
“Dad’s hired a good lawyer, so at least he’s not dealing with the lawsuit all alone.”
“Yeah, but he needs more than good lawyers,” replied Markus.
“What do you mean?”
“The real problem isn’t that Dad and Uncle Karl are fighting. The real problem is that both of them care more about that company than an
ything else in their lives. That’s not healthy.”
“So says your shrink?”
“Yeah, and so say I. You think it’s not true?”
“I don’t know,” said Tom. “Dad put a lot of time and effort into the company. He should be proud of it, and it should be important to him.”
“He’s not just proud of it,” replied Markus. “He’s addicted to it.”
Night had fully fallen in Hinsdale. A cool breeze blew through an open window at the Bjornsen home, carrying in the sound of a few early crickets and the high squeak of bats hunting mosquitoes and moths. Anne sat in the family room, listening to the night sounds and reading. Gunnar finally emerged from his den. “Markus was talking to you,” she said.
Gunnar stopped suddenly and jerked his head around. “What? Oh, I didn’t see you there.”
“Your son was talking to you when you got up from the table.”
“Was he? I didn’t notice.”
“He did. And so did I. It hurts him when you ignore him like that.”
Gunnar sat down heavily. The armchair he chose was sturdily built, but it nonetheless creaked under his bulk. “If he wants me to notice him, he should do something worth noticing. He’s my firstborn, but he spent the last twenty-five years rejecting everything I’ve ever given him. Except my money. He’s not like his brother.”
“Do brothers have to be alike?”
Gunnar smiled ruefully. “I suppose they don’t.” He paused and stared into the middle distance. “We used to go fishing every Saturday.” He smiled again. “No matter how late we had been up on Friday night, we would get up early and be out on the water by six, when the fishing is best. We’d take bread and cheese wrapped in wax paper and a big canteen of lemonade. We would freeze the canteen the night before and drink the lemonade as it melted. Those were good days.”
Anne gave her husband a quizzical look. “I don’t remember you ever taking Markus fishing.”
“Maybe I should have. No, I was talking about Karl and me. We were never all that much alike, but we were close.” He paused. “We were close once.”
It was Monday morning at Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals, which meant Karl Bjornsen was in meetings. He had found that meetings tended to make him unproductive both before and after they occurred, so whenever possible he scheduled them one right after the other and put them all on Monday mornings, which was his least-productive time of the week anyway. “There’s a Mr. Geist here for you,” announced Karl’s receptionist.
“Thanks, Michele. Bring him in.” Thirty seconds later, she appeared with a man of medium height, bland face, and carefully unremarkable clothes. He was somewhere between forty and sixty, but his age was difficult to pinpoint. He was rarely given a second look, if he was noticed at all. But Karl could see that he was extremely physically fit and had hard, perceptive eyes that missed nothing. “Hello, Alex. All right, Michele. Please close the door on your way out.”
“Good morning, Mr. Bjornsen.” They shook hands and Karl motioned Geist over to his guest table.
“That was quick,” Karl said as they sat down. “So, what did you find? What can you tell me about Ben Corbin?”
Geist reached into his briefcase and produced a one-inch-thick Velo-bound report titled Full Background: Benjamin S. Corbin. It had tabs marked “Executive Summary,” “Personal,” “Professional,” “Assets,” “Criminal/Regulatory,” and “Other.” He handed it to Karl. “There aren’t a lot of pressure points. Corbin has no civil or criminal convictions and no record of professional discipline. He and his wife collectively have investments with a total market value of roughly one and a half million dollars, which probably generate an annual income of around forty thousand. They also receive roughly one hundred thousand dollars a year from a large structured settlement in which Corbin shares under a contingent-fee agreement. They have no debt aside from credit-card balances, which they pay off monthly.”
“No debt at all?” interjected Karl. “That’s unusual.”
“It is,” agreed Geist. “That settlement I mentioned also paid Corbin a two-million-dollar lump sum six months ago. He and his wife paid off their mortgage and all their other loans and invested the rest.”
“That’s also around the time he won that case involving the Chechens, right?”
Geist nodded.
“Were those flukes?” Karl continued. “What’s his reputation as a lawyer?”
“Corbin practices law alone. He shares offices with his wife, and the two of them use a single secretary. He has a good reputation, but he has handled mostly nickel-and-dime cases. One partner at a large firm said that Corbin didn’t have the resources to handle a major case.”
“That’s useful to know,” replied Karl. He jotted down a note to pass this information along to his lawyers. “What about his personal background?”
“He’s the third child of a Chicago banker and grew up moderately well-off. He played football in high school and made good grades there and in college. He got mostly Bs and Cs in law school, but he got straight As in courses like trial advocacy and moot court.
“He met his wife, Noelle, in college, and they married after his second year in law school, while he was a summer associate at the law firm of Beale & Ripley. They offered him a job when he came back from his honeymoon, and he took it.
“After seven years at Beale & Ripley, he went out on his own last year. Shortly after that, he took on a case involving biological weapons. It received extensive media coverage and led to the breakup of a large terrorist cell.”
“I’m familiar with it,” replied Karl, who had run a Google News search on Corbin. “Anything else I should know about Mr. Corbin?”
“If there is, our searches didn’t uncover it.”
“All right, what about his wife?”
“As you already know, she’s an accountant, who shares offices with her husband. She may have chosen her profession because she comes from a financially troubled family. Her father went through bankruptcy twice, and the family moved frequently because of money problems. Her mother worked two jobs, and both Noelle and her brother went to work when they reached sixteen, probably to help support the family.”
“How was she able to afford college?” Karl said.
“She was valedictorian of her high school class and received a partial scholarship. She also worked part time all four years.”
“I’m impressed. Say, Alex, how much would it cost to have you say no if someone ever asked you to investigate me?”
Geist smiled. “I get that question a lot. I’ll send you my standard fee chart.”
Half an hour later, Sergei’s phone rang.
“Hello, Sergei,” said a man’s voice—familiar, but Sergei couldn’t quite place it. “It’s Alex Geist.”
“Hello, Alex,” Sergei replied in surprise. “What can I do for you?” He hadn’t spoken to Alex the Ghost for several years. Geist was an international intelligence and counterintelligence specialist who had worked for the CIA and military intelligence for decades before retiring and entering the half-life of consultancy. He had advised several foreign governments and a number of multinational corporations, including two that Sergei had investigated while he was at the Bureau. The Ghost’s advice must have been good, because the FBI had come up dry in both investigations, despite the strong suspicions of the investigating team. Sergei had dealt with Geist regularly at the time, and the two had shared a cordial respect despite Sergei’s certainty that Geist’s clients were crooks.
“Are you doing any work involving Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals?” Geist asked.
“You know I can’t tell you that. Why do you ask?”
“And I can’t tell you that. All I can say is that if you’re working on something related to that company, I suggest you be careful.”
Sergei sat in stunned silence for a moment. “Alex, are you threatening me?”
“Of course not. In fact, I don’t think your investigation—if you’re conducting one—will bring you into conta
ct with anyone who will threaten you. However, you may meet people who don’t bother to threaten.”
CHAPTER FOUR
SPLIT THE BABY
“This is Bjornsen,” Gunnar’s voice announced from Ben’s speakerphone.
Ben picked up the receiver. “Hello, Gunnar. It’s Ben Corbin. I just got an interesting call from Karl’s lawyers.”
“What did they have to say?”
“They’re offering you a deal. If you will tell them how to make the Neurostim product, they’ll drop the lawsuit and pay you a two-percent royalty on all gross sales. You would also have to drop your countersuit. If not, they start a full-court press—reams of discovery requests, motions, and so on. Basically, anything they can think of to drive up your legal bills and pressure you to settle.”
“I’m not interested,” replied Gunnar without hesitation. “I want my company back. I’m not interested in anything less.”
“That’s what I figured,” said Ben. “Do you want to make a counteroffer?”
Gunnar thought for a moment. “Tell them . . . tell them that if Karl resigns as president and agrees never to be active in Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals again, I’ll make as much of the drug as the company needs. I’ll also drop my countersuit. I’ll even give him a two-percent royalty on the drug to keep him comfortable in his retirement.”
“That’s actually more generous than I expected you to be.”
A low chuckle rumbled across the phone line. “If I thought there was any chance he’d accept, I’d take a harder line.”
“Since the negotiations are likely to be short, I’d like to wait a few days before delivering your response. There are some things I’ll need to do first.”
The courtrooms at the Daley Center courthouse are strictly functional. They have none of the marble and polished brass of the federal courts, nor the ornate dark-wood elegance of old county-seat courthouses. They are windowless boxes decorated in various shades of easy-to-maintain brown and gray. Low-pile, durable carpet covers the floors, and utilitarian wood benches stand in rows behind the bar, a metal railing that separates the spectator gallery from the rest of the courtroom. In front of the bar sit two benches for witnesses and support personnel, and in front of those are two plain oak counsel tables, one for the plaintiff’s attorneys and one for the defendant’s. The jury box is along one of the sidewalls. The judge’s bench, at the far end of the courtroom, is a massive and complex wood structure that contains a raised desk for the judge, slightly lower workstations for the court reporter and the clerk, and the witness stand, which is on the side of the bench nearest the jury box. The bailiff sits off to one side, though the task of keeping order is usually less demanding in civil courtrooms than in their criminal counterparts.