The Inner Sanctum

by Stephen Frey

  “I did okay. But the reason Sagamore was interested in me was that they wanted a token. Somebody they could point to and say, ‘Hey, we take people from different backgrounds.’ ”

  Jesse could see his resentment even though he tried to hide it.

  He inhaled from the cigarette. “I’m reminded of where I’ve come from every day I’m at Sagamore.”

  “Is it really that bad?”

  “Life is simply a menu of trade-offs,” he said, taking another puff. “I liked the money they were offering. I knew none of those people would ever be my friends, but I didn’t care.” He looked straight into her eyes. “Now they’re doing it to you. Presenting you with the same choice. And remember, Elizabeth won’t be at Sagamore forever. She’ll be gone and you’ll have to deal with the rest of them.”

  “So if you don’t like it, why don’t you leave? Get another job?”

  “I told you at dinner. It isn’t that easy.” His expression darkened.

  “You mean because Mohler will blackball you within the investment community if you don’t make it past the fifth year? I’m sure you could get another job. Look, he can’t call everyone in the world.”

  David shook his head. “It runs deeper than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He had said it without even thinking. Suddenly he regretted being so open and pulled back. Being loose with his thoughts might get him in trouble. “Let me take you to dinner. I know a great place down in Little Italy.”

  “I told you, I have to go to school, and . . .”

  “And you think Elizabeth would get the wrong idea if she found out,” David finished the thought.

  Jesse said nothing. Meeting for a beer after work was one thing, but a second dinner would be different.

  David reached into his coat pocket. “Here.”

  “What’s this?” Jesse took the envelope from him.

  “Just read it.”

  Curious, she pulled out the letter and began reading. It was a hand-scrawled note from Elizabeth, thanking Jesse for her interest in Sagamore. After Elizabeth’s signature was a P.S. It read: “David is a wonderful man, but he works too hard. Perhaps you could help him with his problem and show him what it means to relax a bit.” Jesse glanced up at David as she finished the letter. “You probably put Elizabeth up to this,” she said, smiling.

  That was the strange thing. He hadn’t asked Elizabeth to write that. She wanted him around Jesse as much as possible, but when he had pressed her as to why, Elizabeth simply explained again that she didn’t want anyone else preempting a Sagamore offer. It was a ridiculous explanation, but she wouldn’t elaborate. And Elizabeth was the managing partner, so he couldn’t press too hard. “No, I didn’t.”

  Jesse sensed he was telling the truth. So Elizabeth had no problem with them seeing each other. Jesse felt the spark run from her fingertips to the rest of her body. A spark she suddenly wanted to explore.

  “So, how about dinner?” he asked again. “You can miss one little class. It won’t kill you.”

  “I’d like to, but I can’t tonight.”

  “How about when you get out of class?” He conceded dinner.

  She was already very nervous about tonight. God, what if they were caught breaking into LFA? “I can’t. Really.”

  “Why not?”

  “We, um, there’s a study group I have to attend after class.” That was a plausible story. “It’s going to run very late. How about tomorrow night?”

  “Okay.” Finally. Progress. He leaned forward over the table. “Tell me something about yourself, Jesse.”

  “What are you talking about?” The question had taken her off guard.

  “I told you all about me. Now it’s your turn. Tell me something about Jesse Hayes I don’t know.”

  “I’m exactly five feet six inches tall.”

  “I’m not kidding. Something dark. Something no one else knows.” He smiled strangely for a second. “Is there anything like that to know about you?”

  What did he mean by that? Did it have anything to do with Becky’s card? The card she was certain he had taken. Was he fishing for information about that? “If there was anything, why would I tell you?”

  “Because you like me. Because you feel comfortable around me. Because I’m trustworthy.”

  Was he? She still wasn’t certain about that yet. “Something deep and dark, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I’m a double agent from Berlin too.”

  David smiled. But he had seen the momentary sadness. There was something here, and the answer probably lay with Rebecca Saunders. If Jesse wouldn’t tell him, there were other ways to find out. And Elizabeth had said she wanted to know everything.

  The elevator doors opened onto the fifteenth floor of the Hughes Building. David stepped through them and moved into Sagamore’s deserted reception area toward the large mahogany double doors leading to the inner offices. He swiped his magnetic identification card through the security system, then checked his watch. Almost midnight. The security system would now give management a record of his late-hour visit to the firm, but that was all right. He had come here late on many occasions to finish research, so no suspicions should be aroused.

  The lock clicked open after a five-second delay. David walked into the inner offices and made a quick check of the entire floor. There was no one else working. The place was empty tonight.

  Sagamore’s incredible investment record. The fact that the firm’s performance always outpaced the Dow Jones index. It just didn’t add up. There were a few down years with all portfolios. Everyone experienced them. The probability of an investment management firm such as Sagamore maintaining the kind of performance it had for so long was small. No, closer to infinitesimal, he thought to himself as he flipped on his office light. At least not without an edge. Like the edge they had with the GEA play. The thoughts had been nagging at him since joining the firm four years ago, but he had never followed up on his suspicions. Now he was finally going to at least try to get some answers.

  David threw his suit coat down on his desk and headed for what the portfolio managers called the hall of records—a room filled with rows of files detailing every stock trade anyone at Sagamore had ever made. A room kept under tight security. He stopped outside the door to the large room. It was only a hunch, but Jack Finnerty’s words had kept haunting him. Things weren’t always what they appeared. Perhaps the answer lay behind this door.

  The lock pad protecting the hall of records beeped as David keyed in a long sequence of numbers. Only the executive committee and one administrative assistant had the code. But he had seen a string of numbers on a piece of paper atop the administrative assistant’s desk one day during his first month at Sagamore and memorized them as he flirted with her. Then he had hurried back to his desk, written the numbers down, stayed late that night, and inputted the code after everyone had left. It had worked perfectly, but as he stood in the doorway that night, he had decided not to enter. Someone might come back, and he didn’t want to be caught there. And he had really just wanted to see if the code worked.

  He had gone to such lengths to acquire the code because he felt that if someone was trying so hard to keep something from you, it was probably worth having and someday would prove valuable. Tonight he was going to find out if he was right.

  To check a record of a past trade, portfolio managers had to submit a written request for the file to the administrative assistant. It might take hours for the woman to retrieve it from the hall of records, and no copies were ever made.

  Management claimed to have implemented the cumbersome system for two reasons. First, in keeping with Sagamore’s high standards, they wanted meticulous records of all activity maintained on-site, not just at the broker shops that executed the trades. Brokers were known to be lax in their attention to detail, and Sagamore did not want to be unable to provide trade records if the SEC requested them.

  The second reason the executive committee
gave for the security surrounding the hall of records was that it did not want portfolio managers inspecting the investments made by other Sagamore portfolio managers. It wanted diversity and original thought within the firm. It was really a tacit admission that the firm didn’t trust its own employees, but that admission was not greeted as resentfully as it might have been in other industries. People in the financial world were conditioned not to be trusted.

  The small light atop the keypad flashed from red to green, and the lock snapped open. David pulled the handle up and pushed. The door swung open, and he switched on the overhead lights. It was as if he had suddenly gone back in time. Rows of file cabinets stretched back to the wall, filled with trade records arranged by company in alphabetical order. He almost laughed aloud. A single laptop computer could easily have stored all the information in this entire room of file cabinets. However, the executive committee had considered the computer option and rejected it. The members of the committee were older and less familiar with computers, and therefore less trusting of a computer’s security. They worried that the information might be too easily accessible to too many people. They were too worried, David thought to himself. There was something in here they didn’t want people to see.

  For the next two hours David systematically reviewed several specific files he believed might fit the pattern. Each time he identified the pattern he was searching for, he pulled the buy order—a yellow piece of paper on which was the name of the company in whose shares Sagamore was investing, the number of shares purchased, the date purchased, the brokerage house with which the trade was executed, and the portfolio manager who had ordered the trade—and walked down the hall to the office equipment station and made a photocopy. Then he quickly returned to the hall of records, replaced the original in its file, and moved on to the next trade.

  When he closed the last file, he had accumulated forty-two trades that could potentially confirm his suspicions. He placed the copied pages in a small box, carried it out of the hall of records, carefully relocked the door, and headed to his office.

  It was after two a.m. and he was fighting sleep. He had been awake since six yesterday morning, and the three beers he had consumed after Jesse left for school were working against him as well—of course, they had also given him the courage to do this. He considered fixing coffee in the firm’s executive kitchen but decided against it. It would take too much time, and he wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.

  The Bloomberg machine on the credenza behind his desk beeped to life as he flipped the power switch. Bloomberg was a worldwide financial news network that provided real-time prices on stocks, bonds, and currencies in any market around the globe. It also provided historical stock price information as well as significant news on the subject company.

  David entered his password into the machine, then reached for the first trade record from the top of the box. For another two hours he researched price fluctuations of the specific stocks around the dates Sagamore had invested in them and searched for any news stories about the subject companies for those dates as well.

  Finally, after he finished researching the forty-second trade, he took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. So that was how they had done it. Elizabeth Gilman and Art Mohler weren’t geniuses after all. They were simply master manipulators with connections to die for. No wonder they shunned publicity like the plague. They didn’t want the SEC observing these same patterns.

  David rose from the desk chair, put the trade records and the price and news histories he had printed from the Bloomberg machine into the box, then put the box into a sports bag he had brought from the trunk of his car. In seconds he was back out into the reception area, sports bag over his shoulder, waiting for the elevator.

  As David waited, he leaned back against the wall next to the elevator bank and shut his eyes. It was after four in the morning and he was almost out on his feet. But the research had proved invaluable, and now he was glad Jesse hadn’t been able to go out tonight.

  He shook his head and opened his eyes. What they were doing at Sagamore should have been obvious to him long ago. He should have figured it out as soon as they set him up with the GEA investment. However, the money and the pressure to perform had blinded him. But now what was he going to do with the information? As Finnerty had pointed out last week in Middleburg, David had bribed a senior government official and committed fraud at Doub Steel. If he went to the authorities, things could get messy. And a district attorney might not necessarily find what was in the box to be proof positive of what was going on.

  The bell chimed and a red arrow over the far doors illuminated. David moved slowly to the doors as they opened. As he turned into the elevator he bumped into a man coming out. David stepped back, staring at the long sandy blond hair, beard, and mustache. Instantly he recognized this man as one who had been in Art Mohler’s office several times over the past few months. But for what?

  “Hello,” the man said. He reached down to the car’s control panel and turned off the power.

  David took another step back. After ten at night the elevators would not leave the lobby unless you punched in a specific code. Clearly the man knew the code for this floor. But what was he doing here at this hour? “Can I help you?” he asked.

  Gordon Roth didn’t respond immediately. He glared at David for several moments, then glanced down at the sports bag hanging from David’s shoulder. “Maybe. What’s in the bag?”

  “Jimmy Hoffa’s remains.” David put his hand down on top of the bag as if to protect it.

  “Very funny.” The .44 Magnum hung from Roth’s shoulder holster inside his windbreaker. He pressed it against his chest with his arm. “What’s in the bag?” His tone turned unfriendly.

  “None of your business. Who are you, anyway?” David demanded.

  “I work for Mr. Mohler.”

  “Doing what?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Okay. Then it sounds like we’re even. I’m leaving.” David stepped toward the car, but Roth blocked his path.

  “Let me see the bag.” Roth’s voice was ice-cold. He moved toward David as if to grab the strap from his shoulder, but David stepped back again.

  “Hey, easy.” In the faint light David spied the gun protruding from inside the man’s windbreaker. He swallowed. This was no time to be a hero. “If you want to see it, I have no problem with that.” Slowly David dropped the bag to the carpet, knelt down, and unzipped it. “Here, take a look.”

  Roth pulled a flashlight from his pants pocket, flicked it on, bent over, and glanced inside the bag. It contained three tennis rackets, several cans of balls, and tennis clothes and shoes. Beneath the athletic equipment was the box with the copies of the trades and the Bloomberg information David had spent the last four hours compiling.

  Blood pounded through David’s veins. What the hell was he going to say if the man saw the box, opened it, and found the copies?

  “Why did you bring all of this stuff up to the office?” Roth wanted to know.

  “One of the other portfolio managers wanted to see that Wilson racket. He was thinking of buying the same model.” David’s heart skipped a beat as the man reached into the bag and touched the racket.

  But the man looked no farther. “What were you doing here tonight?” Roth stood up. “It’s after four in the morning.”

  Relief coursed through David. “I was doing some research on a company I’m thinking about putting Sagamore into. It’s a time-sensitive project. There are rumors in the market that the company is about to be taken over, and I want to get in before the price goes up.” The man seemed satisfied with the explanation. “Wall Street never rests, and if you want to play on it, you have to live by its rules. Which sometimes means you work at odd hours.” David zipped the bag shut again, slung it over his shoulder, and rose, hoping the man wouldn’t notice the unnatural sag in the bottom. “But I’m not certain why I have to tell you all this.”

  “Because I ask
ed,” Roth hissed.

  “I see. Well, I’m going home to get some sleep. It’s been wonderful chatting with you.” David moved for the elevator, but still Roth would not allow him to pass.

  Finally, Roth moved to the side. David walked deliberately into the car, trying not to seem too eager to leave, pressed the button for the lobby, and watched as the long hair and beard disappeared behind the closing doors. As the car began to descend, his shoulders sagged heavily.

  For a long time Roth stood in the reception area not moving. David Mitchell hadn’t seemed nervous, but the tests they had administered before offering him employment at Sagamore had indicated that he was extremely strong psychologically. Which was, of course, why they liked him, why they wanted him. Roth turned and slowly began moving toward the double doors. He would report this incident to Mohler in the morning.

  Thirty minutes later, David staggered through his apartment door, threw the sports bag on the sofa, and walked to his bedroom. He was about to undress when he noticed the light on the answering machine flashing. He walked wearily to the night table, sat down on the edge of the bed, and pushed the message button.

  “David, it’s Johnny. I’ve got the information you wanted on those two accounts. It certainly wasn’t difficult to find.” Johnny’s voice became sharper. “And hey, if this was some kind of joke, I don’t appreciate it. The name on both those accounts is yours. David J. Mitchell. There isn’t any money in the accounts now—in fact, in both cases there hasn’t been much activity. Just one deposit and one withdrawal.” Johnny’s voice paused for a moment, then laughter crackled from the machine’s speaker. “But they were pretty large deposits. The first was for one million, the second for two million. I knew you were getting paid well out there at Sagamore, but I had no idea it was that kind of money. Anyway, give me a call tomorrow. It was good to see you.” The voice paused once more. “I hope you’re all right. Bye.”

  The machine clicked off. For several minutes David sat on the bed, staring into the darkness. He had taken the account numbers from Finnerty and sent the money out to the Caymans, supposedly to his godfather, Senator Webb, the man who had arranged for the A-100 contract to be awarded to GEA under cover of the black budget. Supposedly in exchange for three million dollars—one at contract signing and two when production began. But the money hadn’t gone to Webb at all. David had unwittingly sent it to himself. Now it was gone. They had swept the accounts clean so that on the off chance David did discover what they had done, he wouldn’t be able to return the money to Doub Steel. The whole thing had been a setup after all.