by Jack Fuller
“Niko will beat us with a leak unless we hustle,” said Harms.
But Joyce did not hear, did not see. He was face into the gale somewhere, longitude and latitude unknown. Lawton slipped into the silence and asked for detail on next steps. Snow wanted to talk about process. What exactly was Greener’s status, and how should it be documented? Sebold joined in. After a few minutes, Joyce returned to shore, pushing aside the crystal goblets and pulling the speakerphone toward him.
“Can we restore the original, undamaged files?” he said.
“It’s already been done,” said Gunderman.
“Keep everyone on deck,” Joyce said. Then he punched out of the call and led Rosten back into the hallway, where he began to dial the chairman.
“Remember,” Rosten said as he did, “they will all be in the room there listening to you. Including Nyström.”
Joyce turned to the elevator before completing the phone number. They passed the security man and rode up one floor to the private office set aside for the CEO. Joyce put the call on the speakerphone. Rosten closed the door. The line hollowed out as it reached toward whatever room at the Ritz Carlton in which the Gnomon team had gathered. The ring came. It came again. And again. The chairman was making them wait.
“Yes,” he finally said.
“I am happy to report that we have completely repaired the damage,” said Joyce. “We truly regret this act of sabotage and trust that it will not be permitted to accomplish its obvious objective.”
Rosten heard this as an accusation of Nyström. He hoped the audience in the Ritz Carlton did not.
“If I did not mistake you,” said the chairman, “you said earlier that you had identified the attacker.”
“We believe we have,” said Joyce.
“My people tell me that this would have been impossible in so short a time,” the chairman said.
Rosten wrote quickly on a notepad and turned it to Joyce: “Careful.”
“We have advanced methods,” said Joyce.
Rosten tore the note into small pieces and put them in his pocket.
“Yes, well,” said the chairman. “We think you knew about your problem long before you called me.”
“I called the moment I learned that your files had been tampered with,” said Joyce.
“But this was not the first incident,” said the chairman.
“Who said that?” said Joyce.
“I assure you that our people know all the advanced methods, as you call them,” said the chairman.
“I resent the implication—” said Joyce.
“We are returning home, Brian,” said the chairman. “Need I say with shaken confidence?”
“You are being precipitous,” said Joyce to a speaker that had shrunk to a single dimension. Rosten knew that it would have made no difference to the outcome if Joyce had used the correct word.
The first bulletin broke on the Bloomberg wire as the senior team’s cars pulled up to the Dome. Lawton was in the backseat with Rosten, getting ready to exit as the limo slowed to the curb. When they heard what Harms was saying, their hands came off the door handles.
“Read it to me. . . . Shit!” she said. “Who’s the source? . . . Read it again.”
As soon as she told them the gist of the story, Lawton knew where it had come from. It reported a conversation described as “angry” between the chairman and Joyce. It quoted a source saying the deal was dead: “Gnomon is not about to pour itself into a black hole.” That had to be Nyström.
“He didn’t leave anything to chance,” said Lawton.
“We need to get out a statement,” said Harms.
“We’d better get to Morrie Berry,” said Lawton. “This is more than public relations.”
“But what the hell do we say?” said Harms.
“We can’t very well deny any of it,” said Rosten.
“Help me,” said Harms.
Rosten dictated: “Day and Domes has determined that the attack was confined to a small group of files, apparently chosen purposefully to sabotage ongoing talks with Gnomon Co. All affected individuals have been notified and their files restored to an uncorrupted state. Day and Domes’s database is accurate and secure. Period.”
“Don’t we need a sentence that says that Day and Domes has taken steps to lock down the system against any further attack?” said Lawton.
“Should it be a small group of files or small number?” said Harms.
“You decide. Just write it,” said Rosten. “We’ll need to run the draft past Joyce. Run being the operative word.”
“He had everything riding on this,” said Lawton.
“He can take us all down with him,” said Harms.
“Let’s try to get everyone into the life raft, OK?” said Rosten, opening his door into traffic.
As Lawton got out on the passenger side, he saw a TV van flashing its headlights as it closed in. Run is the operative word. That he could even do it surprised him. When he reached the revolving door, out of breath, he looked back and saw Harms, still in the limo, speaking into her BlackBerry. He rushed back and knocked on the window, which hummed down as she continued to speak.
“Unless you want to do dictation to the cameras, you’d better take it inside,” he said.
She was remarkably quick in heels.
When Simons got the word, she was still at the deal facility conferring about contingency plans. They hadn’t even gotten to the worst scenario when suddenly they were in it. She immediately began calling the top ten customers to brief them on what had happened and reassure them that it had not in any way affected them. Some said thank you. Others affirmed their confidence, not always persuasively. A few tried to negotiate a lower price.
When she finally reached the lobby of the Dome, she saw that awful lawyer getting into the elevator. With him were two men in suits who should have been in sunglasses scanning a crowd and speaking into their thumbs. She let the elevator door slide shut. Lawyers and security were in somebody else’s silo. What she needed was a plan for reaching out to all of D&D’s clients, face-to-face eventually. It would also be necessary to communicate quickly to the millions of people whose credit history resided on D&D’s computers. This could have been orderly had they gotten ahead of it, but now they had lost that option. She called Margery Strand’s cell phone, wherever in the world she had gone.
“We have a mess,” Simons said.
“I heard,” said Strand. Behind her was the sound of the Klaxon of an emergency vehicle speaking a foreign tongue. “I also heard about all you did for me. Sam Gunderman called.”
“He’s the hero,” Simons said.
“He was all about you.”
“We both owe him a very expensive dinner.”
“I think he would rather have it with you alone,” said Strand.
“How soon can you get back?” Simons said. “I need your help.”
The news popped onto Grace’s BlackBerry as she arrived at a meeting.
Day and Domes hacked. Gnomon deal dead.
She took her place at the table, but the BlackBerry never left her palm. News items arrived in rapid succession. Dow Jones. Reuters. Associated Press. Bloomberg. She did not care whether her colleagues around the table thought she was inattentive. In this business, people were never fully anywhere. She punched up D&D’s stock price every few minutes. Down, down, down. At one point she looked at Gnomon. It had dropped, too, all the acquisition air pfffting out of it. Based on the fundamentals, D&D’s price should have been held up some by the elimination of the risk that it would overpay for Gnomon, but at a moment like this, financial theory gave way to mob psychology.
It was no use sending Tom another e-mail. D&D would be in flood-control mode, and her message would be diverted to a reservoir, probably controlled by Sandra Harms. RE: Old Flame. She wished she’d had enough imagination to get a personal BlackBerry and her own e-mail account. Then if she sent something to him, the algorithms would not treat it as coming from the bank. As if
he would look at it even if it went straight to his queue. As if he gave a thought to her.
“Grace.”
The voice couldn’t have come from the BlackBerry. She looked up. The meeting had ended. The conference room had cleared, except for her boss.
“Sorry,” she said.
“You weren’t in attendance,” he said.
“Did I miss anything?” she said.
“Turn that around,” he said. “Is there something I should know about?”
“Day and Domes.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “Turns out you were smart to walk away. Looks like they screwed the pooch.”
“I think the pooch did it to them,” she said.
“Usually takes two to get this badly fucked.”
When she returned to her cubicle, she used her BlackBerry to dial Tom.
Gail answered on the first ring.
“This is Grace Bondurant.”
“Well,” said Gail.
“I know it’s a bad time,” Grace said.
“He is being awfully selective,” said Gail, “but can you hold a moment?”
Before Grace could tell her simply to give him a message, she found herself locked in a small room with a harpsichord playing. She could not break free, because what if he actually entered the room and she was gone?
Then the music stopped.
“Grace?” Tom said.
“I really only wanted to get a message to you,” she said, “but then I was on hold, and I didn’t want you to think I’d hung up.”
“It’s good to hear a voice that isn’t furious,” he said. “You aren’t furious, are you?”
“I’ve been thinking of you, with all this,” she said.
“I’ve seen worse,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
“I’m afraid I have to go,” he said. “A million fires. Thank you for thinking of me.”
“I wish I could do something.”
“Do you still pray?”
“When I’m scared,” she said.
“Do that,” he said.
Then he was gone and she breathed in his voice, which was incense.
The next complication was a man identifying himself as Special Agent Harold Jansen of the FBI. He said he was inquiring about a potential violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
“I assume the news reports are substantially accurate,” he said. The words did not seem shaped by his own mouth.
“I think you had better speak with our general counsel,” said Rosten.
“I am officially notifying you, as chief operating officer, that you must retain any and all information, documents, and records in any form, including digital, regarding this matter,” said the Special Agent.
Rosten flashed on the games of hide-and-seek with the Sisters on the night streets of Washington, how dogged and predictable they were, but how close they came to catching him.
“Again, Sebold is the one,” he said.
“No, you are the one,” said the Special Agent. “As of this moment, you and Day and Domes are on notice. Any destruction of evidence will be deemed an obstruction of justice.”
When Rosten arrived at Sebold’s office, he heard the agent on the speakerphone, same words. Sebold seemed to be reading scripted responses to the scripted message, but there was nothing on the desk between his flattened, tightly stretched hands.
“We will, of course, cooperate to the fullest appropriate extent required by law,” he said. “We want the person who did this brought to justice.”
When he hung up, the two men drafted an all-hands message to go out under Rosten’s name calling a halt to all file destruction until further notice.
“Should we run this by Berry?”
“He’s with the boss,” said Sebold. “I’ll have Szilard eyeball it.”
“You’d better keep control.”
“You, too, chief,” said Sebold.
Rosten himself did not have much evidence to preserve. He did not believe in memos to file. He tried to avoid saying anything of importance in e-mails. Long ago he had given up confessional poetry. What he did retain was capacitance in his brain. He could not erase any of that, no matter how much he might want to.
A few minutes after 7 p.m. Sebold informed him that the Securities and Exchange Commission had just gotten into the act. Same message, different statute.
“I thought they went home at 5 p.m. sharp in Washington,” Sebold said. “But you would know about that.”
“My agency didn’t keep regular hours,” said Rosten.
“Berry has arranged for Greener to be arrested,” said Sebold. “Media has been notified so they can broadcast the perp walk out the front door live on the last news show. Harms is coordinating. Why weren’t you at the meeting?”
“What meeting?” Rosten said.
The harpsichord took the Fugue much too fast. Donna did not recognize who it was. Ordinarily, Marcia would call back when Brian was ready. But today Donna said she would rather go on hold. She wanted to ask Marcia how he was holding up, but there was not much point. Even Marcia could not penetrate what Brian called the mask of command. “This mask,” she had asked him once, “is it you?” “It’s shaped to my skull,” he had said, “otherwise people wouldn’t be able to recognize me. But it’s also shaped by my will. In that sense the mask is more mine than the face I was born with.” Sometimes she wondered how often he wore a mask with her.
He came on the line.
“Only have a second,” he said.
“I was worried about you.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“Can you still complete the deal?”
“Right now that’s way down the to-do list.”
“I hate not being there with you right now,” she said. “Just know that I love you always.”
She did not know at what point he had rung off.
“Harms is about to make a statement to the cameras. It’s all over the Admin News Network,” Gail said as Rosten came out of his office.
“Nobody’s here,” he said, looking down the corridor.
“They’re all down in the lobby,” she said. “Take a look out your window.”
On the street below he saw a tangle of cameras, cables, and reporters. There was a single mic stand and a scrimmage line in a ragged semicircle around it. Harms was not there yet. When he reached the lobby, he pushed through to Au Bon Pain, which had stayed open and was doing quite a business. From its windows he got a good look at the situation, which he soon realized also gave the situation a good look at him. He returned to the lobby, where he positioned himself near the revolving doors, barely visible to the street. Maurice came to stand next to him.
“Never thought I’d see something like this,” he said. “It’ll damp down though, won’t it?”
“You won’t need your umbrella for quite a while, I’m afraid,” said Rosten.
The crowd turned and hushed. Rosten looked toward the elevators. It was Greener, armless, supported by faceless men. Somebody shouted, “You!” Rosten saw that Greener’s hands were bound by a plastic band, like something cinched for shipping. Not as smart as he thought; nobody was.
They took him out the handicapped door under the mosaic of Jean Baptiste Point du Sable at the mouth of the Chicago River. The crowd began to rustle and talk again as soon as he was gone. Whenever an elevator door opened, heads turned, but Harms did not appear.
Rosten had been working all evening in a bubble with his team of analysts, preparing a presentation that he and Joyce could take on the road to try to talk the stock price back up. At one point he put a call to Joyce. It made sense for them to be operating on separate tracks, of course. So much to be done. Joyce was concentrating on the public stuff and legal issues, so there was no need for Rosten to. He must have been in touch with Sabby Chandrahari and Teddy Diamond. But there would have to be a full and formal communication with the board as soon as possible, so Rosten wanted to touch base before getting started on the preparat
ions. Joyce never called back.
The noise level quieted again. Rosten looked toward the elevators and saw Harms, dressed in a jacket and skirt the color of her eyes. Her hair looked as though she had just had it done. As he drew close to the revolving door, she spotted him and looked away.
Lawton stayed in his office and listened to it live on news radio. Harms handled herself just right until she said, “Day and Domes guards its numbers with its life.”
The first question was “Then why did the guard abandon his post?”
She probably should have seen that coming, but it was easy to get a little funny in the head when the stakes are mortal.
The media people vanished as quickly as they had gathered, and after a certain period of recapitulation among the crowd in the lobby, the Dome finally began to empty into the night. Rosten returned to his office and had barely sat down when Gail buzzed to say that Joyce wanted to talk with him before he went home.
“Tell Marcia I’ll be right up.”
“It was Mr. Joyce himself who called.”
“Since when is he mister?”
“Since things got scary, Mr. Rosten,” she said.
Joyce was standing as Rosten entered. His shirt was fresh, his chin shaved, and there was a memory of familiar perfume in the air. He led Rosten to the table. Marcia offered a tray with a pot of coffee, two cups, and four cookies on a china plate.
“It’s decaf,” she said then left.
“Quite a day,” said Joyce.
“Not the one we prepared for,” said Rosten.
“Von Moltke says no plan survives the first contact with the enemy,” said Joyce. “I don’t suppose at the Central Intelligence Agency you studied the great Prussian strategists.”
“If the enemy got even a whiff of contact, we failed,” Rosten said.
“I want you to know that I appreciate your pursuit of our mole,” said Joyce.
“Gunderman deserves the credit.”
“The man on the bridge is responsible for what his subordinates do, good or bad,” said Joyce. “Gunderman flowered under your command. I was this close to letting him go, more than once.”
“I want to make sure I’m playing the role you need me to,” Rosten said.
“Getting the public piece right was critical today, but that’s not your added value,” said Joyce. “Harms was all over it. She had a draft of the first release written even before she left the limo. She was very protective of you, by the way. She had to remind me a number of times not to pull you away from the operational side.”