One from Without

by Jack Fuller

  “Do you think he bought it?” she said.

  “I made him the smartest man in the room,” said Gunderman, smiling. “Who wouldn’t buy that?”

  “Only a fool would,” said Lawton.

  “He needs to thinks we’re all the fools, especially me,” said Gunderman. “I’m the one who got him displaced.”

  “How long do we have to string the little shit along?” said Lawton.

  “There are certain turning points in the life of a corporation,” Joyce said to Rosten the evening before the final negotiations. “The founding. The completion of the Dome. The day they rang the bell at the stock exchange to mark the initial public offering of shares. Next Monday will be another.”

  There would be long banks of phones ready to connect with the key stakeholders the instant the announcement went out on the wire. There would be a conference call before the start of trading. Harms would preside over the preliminaries, waiting as the operator reported the number of people who had dialed in. The number would grow very large. When the time came, Harms would welcome everyone and give the usual boilerplate disclaimers. Then she would introduce Brian Brady Joyce, the man who just redrew the map.

  “I have a very good feeling about this,” Joyce said.

  11

  Shouldn’t you be rehearsing?” Sam stood in his doorway, which opened onto a messy hall and a flight of muddy stairs, at the top of which Megan brooded in her room.

  “Corporate is running the show,” Sara said. “It’s all about Joyce.”

  “I’m sorry everything is such a clutter,” he said. “It’s a teacher training day at the high school. I stayed home to spend time with Megan, which isn’t working. I should have tidied up. You’ll have to forgive me.”

  “Sorry is my territory today,” she said.

  “Let me at least clear off the sofa.”

  “Do stop.”

  “May I take your coat?”

  “I won’t be long,” she said, sitting down, but barely. “I came to apologize.”

  “Look, all you really knew about me is that I could fix your computer,” he said.

  “And your shirt size. Don’t forget that,” she said.

  “Can I get you a glass of water or something?”

  “I’ve been with D&D for twenty years,” she said. “I made myself fit in. Some of its ways I didn’t like so much, but you get used to them, and eventually its ways aren’t things apart from you anymore.” Her fingers touched her face. “They’re like blemishes you cover up with makeup. On good days you don’t even think about them. You never notice what’s become of you, because it happens so gradually. All you feel is that you are bigger in the world. But then all of a sudden everything turns. When they accused Margery, I realized I wasn’t part of the large thing at all. I was an outsider, like Margery, and I didn’t recognize myself anymore.”

  He did not know what to do about his left hand. Hide it in his pocket? He started to fold his arms, hands under, but somebody had told him that put people off.

  “I swept you into my problem, Sam,” she said. “I made you into Day and Domes, but you’re an outsider, too. Maybe we all are. Do you know what I thought to myself when I was feeling betrayed? ‘Gunderman is a German name.’ That’s what I thought.”

  “Dutch,” he said. “My family thought Gurman sounded too much like German. So of all things they came up with Gunderman.”

  “I am so sorry for what I thought about you,” she said. “I really don’t know how to say more.”

  She stood. He was terrible at things like this.

  “I have some whiskey,” he said. “I don’t think it’s very good.”

  “I will if you will.”

  “I take mine straight, like medicine.”

  “Perfect.”

  The bottle had been untouched for so long that the cap felt cemented on. She watched as he poured quite a lot into her glass, not wanting to seem stingy. Then he poured the same amount into his.

  “Well,” she said, looking through the lens of clear, dark liquid, “you must think I need quite a dose.”

  “Or I do.”

  “We really don’t know each other at all, do we,” she said. “My father taught me that you can never get information about a customer when you need it, and you can never get a relationship when you need it. You have to do it before. You have to figure out what each person needs, really needs, no matter what they may say or do. Needs for herself: To be liked. To be admired. To be feared. You don’t suppose Chase had anything to do with this, do you?”

  “He did push Greener,” said Sam. “But no. I don’t think so.”

  “Doing things in secret isn’t his way,” she said. “He needs to be seen.”

  “What did your father say about people like him?”

  “On Maxwell Street the technical term was schmuck.” Her ease with the word surprised him, her ease with him.

  She told him her father’s story, how he had never thought of himself as anything more than a peddler, how he had worked himself into a state when he was trying to become a member of the Standard Club.

  “But it’s open, isn’t it?” he said. “I mean to Jewish people.”

  “I’ve applied for membership,” she said, “if they’ll have me.”

  Their glasses sat empty on the coasters she had slipped under them. He raised the bottle. She raised her eyebrows. Then she used her finger to show him how much to pour. He took the same amount, even though he was feeling numb around the nose.

  “And what about you, Sam Gunderman?”

  “I’m kind of a mess,” he said and took the medicine for it.

  “Can I help?”

  He heard Megan thumping down the stairs and realized that they were sitting in the dark. It took two attempts before he managed to switch on the floor lamp, which oscillated dizzily when he let it go.

  “Have you met my daughter?” he said, trying to rise but dropping back into the cushions.

  “Megan,” said Sara.

  “This is Ms. Simons,” he said. “From the office. We were talking about work. Forgot to turn on the light, we were so deep into it.”

  Megan was not looking at either of them. Her eyes were on the bottle. What kind of example?

  “We just resolved something,” he said. “Decided to toast.”

  “It’s OK, Daddy,” Megan said. “You both have IDs.”

  “Won’t you sit down with us?” said Sara. “I want to hear about your hockey.”

  “Mine is the same as everybody else’s.”

  “Let’s start with your plus/minus,” said Sara. “You’re a forward, aren’t you?”

  Megan finally looked at her and gave her the statistic.

  “What line?” said Sara.

  “First,” said Megan. “And the power play.”

  “A real shooter then,” said Sara.

  “Do you play?” said Megan.

  “God, no,” she said. “No agility, no balance. But I’m good on my butt in the stands. My father used to take me to the old Stadium, the original Madhouse on Madison. That was before your time. It was so loud that he put cotton in my ears.”

  Sam had not dared to touch his drink since Megan had appeared, but Sara sipped hers as she asked about college, Division 1 scholarship prospects, and then even boys. They agreed that girls grew up faster.

  “And stay ahead,” said Sara.

  “Not in everything,” said Megan. “We could still beat them as freshmen. Not anymore.”

  “That’s just bulk,” said Sara. “Luckily, in business there isn’t any checking, at least not the physical kind. Look, I’ve intruded too much on your time together.” She rose, her glass empty on the table. “I only came to thank your father for helping me with something. He is a very strong man. But you know that.” Sam felt Megan’s eyes on him as he stood. He wasn’t sure whether he was moving or the floor was. “It was great meeting you, Megan. I’ve wanted to ever since I heard about your skill on the ice. Get your dad to take you to a Haw
ks game sometime. I know somebody who can get you tickets right behind the glass.”

  Megan stood and put out her hand. Sara stepped forward and gave her a hug, which Sam was afraid was too much. Then he saw that Megan was hugging back.

  He walked Sara to the door.

  “Thanks for everything,” she said, leaning in as she did. Maybe it was no more than always, but he found himself leaning away. She smiled. Then she was gone.

  Back in the living room Megan was still sitting on the couch. He picked up the glasses, choked the bottle, and took the mess to the kitchen. When he returned, she had not moved.

  “Do you like her?” she said.

  “She’s very good at what she does.”

  “I like her.”

  “I’ll tell her that.”

  “I think she likes you.”

  “She’s grateful.”

  “Yeah, that, too.”

  Joyce had decided to hold an early dinner for Gnomon at the law firm’s deal facility, which would be both sides’ prison until something either happened or didn’t. It was located a few blocks from the firm’s regular offices, heavily secured, extremely well appointed, complete with a dedicated kitchen and wait staff, all of whom had been vetted for discretion. Its executive chef had earned a Michelin star before going into semiretirement. They said that some companies decided to merge just because it was the only way to get a table.

  Rosten did not fully trust the arrangements. Nothing prevented the Admin News Network from drawing a conclusion from the mass senior-level absence. It would not take much stealth for some newspaper reporter to follow one of the executive assistants as she carried documents from the Dome to the office listed on the building directory as HLC Trading Co., which did not show up in Dun and Bradstreet. But at least time was a friend. The damage a leak would do was greatest before the week’s market close, only a few minutes from now. After that they had sixty-five and a half hours to get to yes before the market opened again.

  If not Agency-grade in its security, the facility did provide what Gnomon’s chairman might have called an ecosystem: banks of phones; conference rooms with long, long tables to accommodate the throng of lawyers who would go over endless documents line by clotted line; two smaller, more elegant spaces stocked with food, soft drinks, and coffee, where the senior teams could meet separately; a grand dining room, down one floor, guarded by a large deltoid in a suit.

  The menu for the opening dinner was going to feature PowerPoint with pear salad, lamb, and chocolate mousse with Q and A. Rosten would handle most of the presentation. He’d had to do some selling to get Joyce to agree to Simons doing the incremental revenue opportunities.

  “Can’t trust her,” Joyce had said.

  “She was right about Strand,” said Rosten.

  “And wrong about everything else,” said Joyce.

  When Simons finally arrived, Rosten thought he smelled whiskey behind the perfume, but she showed no signs of impairment. The team went to the dining room as a group. They passed the security man, his eyes as empty as a Greek statue’s, shook the hand of the executive chef, who responded with the hauteur of a royal and then disappeared back into his realm. Every member of the team but Joyce paused upon seeing the sparkle of the crystal, the deep white of the linen, the perfect arrangements of low flowers that would block no one’s view. Rosten walked everyone through the agenda, then Sebold briefed on the logistics. After each course, the wait staff would vanish, to reappear only when Joyce summoned them by pushing a button on the underside of the table at the captain’s place, which was at the precise center of the long side.

  It turned out that they could not even begin the final run-through until someone solved the inevitable problem with the computer–video screen interface. The techie, of course, was not in the room. This caused a delay, but even after having to wait for Simons, they had plenty of cushion.

  “This kind of glitch must not happen at H hour,” said Joyce.

  “Nothing will go wrong,” said the techie.

  “Be there when it does,” Rosten said.

  The run-through was reasonably smooth, other than a little issue with salad. Should it be on the table when the guests arrived or, more elegantly, delivered as soon as everyone was seated? This drew in the executive chef, who feared for the vitality of the lettuce.

  “It’s not about another Michelin star,” Joyce said.

  Rosten would have preferred not to spatter the chef’s whites, but there it was. Hauteur a bit diminished, the great man withdrew.

  Joyce’s summary of his opening remarks was perfunctory. This caused looks among the members of the team, but Rosten was confident the boss was saving it for H hour. As the time neared and the waiters brought out the salad under the concerned eye of the executive chef, Gail appeared in the doorway. People turned, even the waiters. She was not in the script. Rosten went to her.

  “This had better be important,” he said.

  “Trust me,” she said.

  “Can’t it wait?” he said.

  “The hacker is back,” she said.

  Rosten quickened her into the hall.

  “We just got a call from Gnomon’s IT Department,” she said.

  “Gnomon’s,” he said.

  “And its law firm. And its investment bank,” she said. “They did not like what they found when they checked their names in our database.”

  “What does Gunderman say?” he said.

  “He’s on his way to the Dome now.”

  “Someone needs to check the data on every person coming to dinner tonight.”

  “I believe that’s being done.”

  Joyce was clipping his nails when Rosten returned and whispered into his ear.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Joyce said. Every face in the room looked as if he had stricken them with a curse.

  “We have a problem,” Rosten announced. “The hacker has struck at Gnomon.”

  “Their system?” said Lawton.

  “Their personal files in our database,” said Rosten.

  “I thought we caught the bastard,” said Joyce.

  Lawton took out his BlackBerry to make a call. Rosten turned to Joyce.

  “You need to get on the phone with the chairman,” Rosten said.

  “Niko did this,” said Joyce. “It’s been that little prick all along.”

  Snow did not tell him to be careful. Careful was not an option. Careful was the executive chef in his kitchen.

  “Right now this is about us, not them,” said Rosten.

  “What exactly do we know?” Joyce said.

  “Not much,” said Rosten. “The data on Gnomon personnel has been altered. Gnomon informed us. Apparently they got an e-mail.”

  “Who the hell from?”

  From Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. From the gremlin in the interface. From places unseen where hides a man without a shadow.

  “We can only guess,” said Rosten.

  Joyce told Lawton to get his team on a conference call ASAP.

  “Make sure Gunderman is there,” Joyce said. “He seems to be the only one around here who knows anything.”

  He took Rosten by the elbow and led him into the hallway. The security man was there near the elevator, watching the opposite wall.

  Joyce dialed. Rosten stood, as he often did, an audience of one.

  “Yes,” Joyce said. “I have just been informed,”

  Rosten would not be able to testify to what the Gnomon chairman had to say, if it came to that. All he could swear to was that it was a lot.

  “We think we’re on top of it,” said Joyce. “We believe we know who is responsible. And needless to say—”

  The chairman did not give him the opportunity to say what he did not need to. Joyce stood silent in the onslaught.

  “Give me a half hour,” he was finally able to interject. He looked past Rosten toward the kitchen door, which emitted the scent of lamb.

  “That is fair, yes,” said Joyce. “Is this the best number for you
? OK, then.”

  Joyce took the BlackBerry from his ear and looked at it for a long moment before killing it with his thumb.

  “He’s inclined to abort,” he said. “But he says he can be persuaded. We have twenty minutes.”

  “The call to the Dome should be ready,” Rosten said.

  The techie had rigged up a speakerphone on the linen in the center of the table. Rosten brought the team to order and asked Gunderman to report. The attack had neatly coincided with the arrival of Niko and the others at O’Hare, Gunderman said. The corruption of data seemed to have been confined to the Gnomon board, senior management, and close affiliates involved in the deal. They had all been transformed into deadbeats. In order to make sure Gnomon discovered this before the deal discussions began, the attacker had made the system send messages to each of the victims. The Gnomon deal team had probably learned of the attack by airphone somewhere over the Great Plains. This meant they had known before Joyce did. The chairman must have been counting the minutes until Joyce called.

  “Do you believe Niko could have done this?” said Joyce.

  “Low probability,” said Gunderman.

  “On what basis?”

  “Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is usually the right one,” said Gunderman. “We know who attacked the system before. It is highly likely that he’s the one who did it this time, too.”

  “I thought you people were supposed to be guarding the straits,” said Joyce.

  “I’m guessing he had put the code into the system quite a while ago, before we got onto him, and armed it to lie dormant until he was ready,” said Gunderman.

  “Where is the motherfucker now?”

  Nearly everyone looked away.

  “I have him working the problem,” said Gunderman.

  “That’s nuts,” said Joyce.

  “He’s in a dummy system, and we’re tracking every keystroke,” said Gunderman.

  “You’re a little late,” said Joyce.

  “Let’s not go too far into hindsight,” said Rosten. “Nobody will look very good.”

  So far, Gunderman reported, there had been no unusual customer or consumer complaint levels.

  “This was not a bomber,” he said. “It was a sniper.”