Trojan Horse

by David Lender

  “Interesting,” Yassar said, his tone neutral. “Who do you believe are the attractive parties with whom to combine?”

  Daniel sat up straight. He focused, knowing if he slipped up here he might blow his chance. He tightened his abdomen. Okay. Show him something. “Frontier Oil seems like a long-term player. They’re aggressive and they built their business by cutting costs. They’re small, but you could build them through more acquisitions. And then of course there are three or four smaller independents like Gelco, Majestic and…”

  “I like you, Daniel, and I like your ideas. I think we can do business together,” Prince Yassar blurted out.

  Daniel was thinking he was just getting started, but if Yassar was already sold, he should keep his mouth shut and listen. This was getting good, just when it had seemed to be turning bad. Shut up and close.

  “I’m reflecting on all my final visits and will be considering my options over the next week,” Yassar went on. “At this stage I will, however, ask you to put together your thoughts on an engagement by the Saudi government and OPEC and get it to me for my consideration.”

  “Absolutely,” Daniel replied. Damn. Thought he was ready to commit today. Play it cool, don’t push him. “It would be my pleasure, Prince Yassar. I’d very much enjoy working with you. I’ll fax something to your office by tomorrow.”

  “Send me an email,” Prince Yassar said, “we stopped living in tents ages ago.” He smiled.

  Daniel realized it was over. Time to put on a client smile. He wasn’t sure where he stood and knew he wouldn’t get another shot. One of 10,000 pitches, 268 deals and, maybe or maybe not, 152 clients.

  “Thank you for coming,” Daniel said.

  “Thank you for seeing me. And thank you for being so personal and genuine. I can see you’ll get along with my cousin, the Saudi Oil Minister, Prince Naser. It was good to hear someone speak so spontaneously and enthusiastically, and to allow me to see something of yourself after so many pompous fools.”

  Daniel brightened at that. Maybe I did land him.

  We chose wisely, Prince Yassar thought as he stepped into his limo. Honest and forthright, smart and capable. Undoubtedly Christian, but you share our ethics. We’ll need to keep you happy and in the business long enough to complete our program. Four to five years. We’ll have to think that through.

  CHAPTER 7

  JULY, THIS YEAR. NEW YORK City. “Well, Dr. Fauchert, what do you advise?” Daniel sat on a cedar lounge chair, his head in Lydia’s lap. She’d returned from Milford, bags in tow—including enough odd-shaped containers and cases containing her photographic equipment to convince Daniel she was a member of a traveling circus—and established herself at Daniel’s insistence as his houseguest for the two weeks until she was to return to Europe. They were on the roof of his building, 10 stories above Park Avenue. She stroked his hair. The lights of New York City glowed around them against the night sky. Taxis honked and screeched on the street below. A hot breeze carried the scents of exhaust fumes and tar.

  “I suggest you be a little coy, don’t let him think you’re ready to crawl over broken bottles to get his business.”

  How did she know so much about this stuff? She’d only heard his description of the luncheon with Yassar, his uncertainty about how it had really gone, and she was advising him to play it as cool as he would in a negotiation where he’d read the other side’s briefing memo. And she understood finance, because she was able to respond to the business side of what was going on as well as his description of the interpersonal nuances. She’d probably be a secret weapon in a negotiation. Who knew what she could do in reading body language? He rolled his head to the side and looked up at her face. “That’s easy for you to say. You forget I’ve got twenty- or thirty-odd million bucks riding on this engagement. Even more: it’s my ticket out.”

  “And I think you forget you possess the stuff that got you to where you are.” She bent over and kissed him. “The steel to keep your poise in a nervy negotiation. And the man I know you to be isn’t afraid to show his soul, either. His humanity. Perhaps this Yassar needs to see that, too. Stand back from it for a minute. Remember who you are.”

  How could he argue with that? Particularly with those black eyes drawing him into the depths of her being, framed against the stars, telling him she meant it, that she believed in him. He smiled and nodded to her. She was good for him. He didn’t need six months or a year of being with her to tell him that. She made him feel confident. The battered gladiator being reminded to use all his resources: heart as well as experience and skill.

  Lydia looked down at him and smiled. “Besides, he likes negotiating.”

  Daniel wondered what on earth she was talking about, how she could possibly know what Yassar did and didn’t like.

  “That’s just their way, you know.”

  “You know this guy?”

  “Of course not, but I know their—the Arab—mind. He’s dancing, making it feel to himself you’re worth doing business with. Give him a little more time. Ever buy a rug?”

  “Yeah, well, if it makes him feel good, I guess I’ll show him a helluva time.” He’d had long dances before, he could play it out for as long as it took. Maybe she was right. But what was all this about ‘knowing the Arab mind’?

  He looked out at the New York skyline, felt his mind drift. “I haven’t been up here for years. I used to come up here a lot and just think, dream. This goes back a long time, just after I bought the place. Even before Angie, before we bought the south apartment, knocked out the walls and took the whole floor. Up to that time this apartment was my crowning achievement. Penthouse Looking North Over Park Avenue. It was after my first five-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus at Goldman. I was different in those days.”

  “How so: different?”

  “I could do anything. I was relentless. Focused on getting where I wanted to be, in every part of my life. I can remember feeling I was pissing my life away if I was just looking out the window during a cab ride instead of reading Businessweek. Now I think I understand some of the things my father said, like, ‘It’s just as important to read the Arts and Leisure section of The New York Times as it is to read the Wall Street Journal.’”

  “Feed your soul.”

  “Exactly.” The lights of the city showed the creaminess of Lydia’s skin. He matched his breathing with hers, relishing a few moments of it, as though they were singing together.

  “I could use more of this,” he said. “You’re good for me.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way.”

  “And you understand things, too. At least in my life. But you know that’s only a small part of it.”

  Lydia said, “I know. The other part of it’s that you’re good for me, too. Even in the short time since I met you I’ve started to wish I could talk to a client without constantly ‘selling’ my perspective. God, it would be nice to simply tell an advertising agency art director on a shoot to get out of my way for three hours and let me do my job, instead of ‘positioning’ it with ‘Well, that’s an absolutely brilliant idea that I’d never have thought of, but what if we tried it like this first?’ That’s not something I was even aware of until I met you.”

  “I’m not sure I’m doing you any favors, then. Sounds like I’m making your life miserable.”

  “Au contraire, mon cheri.”

  They sat in silence like that for a few minutes, Daniel soaking in the sense, scent, and feel of her. “It’s funny, though,” he said. “A few weeks ago I felt like an overage ballet dancer, like I didn’t have it anymore. Now all of a sudden I’ve got the spring back in my legs again.” And you’re a major part of that.

  “Sometimes you need to just stay in the game long enough to see what comes after what comes next.”

  Daniel looked up at her. He said, “You keep saying your hard knocks have been worse than mine. The more you talk, the more it sounds like you can teach me a thing or two.”

  Lydia didn’t respond.

 
; “Maybe we’ll both figure it out together,” he said.

  Daniel sat in the den off his master bedroom. He bent over his walnut-inlaid desk, reading documents for his meeting the next morning. He could see Lydia moving back and forth in the bedroom, gliding in and out of his view in the dim light as she folded her clothes and laid them in her bags. She sang to herself in the lilting tones in which she spoke, and now Daniel recognized that the musical cadence and eighth tones had an Eastern influence. He put his papers down and watched her as she passed in and out of his vision, savoring her singing.

  Am I really going to simply let her waltz back out of here and off to Europe again?

  He watched her for another minute, then stood up and walked into the bedroom. She seemed to sense him and turned to receive him as he crossed the floor, arching her head backward. Her eyes were moist. He kissed her, softly at first, then firmly, feeling her embrace him as urgently as he held her.

  Then he stepped back, holding her hand, and walked the few steps to the bed where her bags lay open. Without a word, he picked up her clothes, one by one, and placed them back in the drawer. She watched with her hand on her hip, until he was finished with the large bag, then pressed herself against his back and stopped him.

  “I’ll need to pack at least the small bag. I’ve got two shoots in Paris and I can be back by Thursday.”

  “I’ll leave the light on.”

  She turned him to face her and looked into his eyes. “Tell me what this means.”

  “It means I’d like you move in, at least if you want to.”

  “Yes.” She said it quickly and with self-assurance.

  He glanced at the mound of black-composite, steel-trimmed boxes of her photographic equipment. He laughed to himself. “You taking all that with you?”

  “Not if I’m staying—living—with you.”

  He looked into her eyes. “I’ll clean out a closet for you, so you’ve got some personal space.”

  “Mmmm.” She leaned forward, put her arms around him, rested her head on his shoulder.

  “You want some space in the Milford house, too?”

  She pulled back and looked into his eyes, excited now. “Elsie’s room, in the attic?”

  “Yours,” he said. Whatever makes your old soul happy.

  She kissed him.

  July, This Year. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Ali, the only name by which Sheik bin Abdur knew his computer hacker, stared at the computer monitor on his desk. He sat erect in his seat, neatly dressed in a Ralph Lauren polo shirt and khakis, and his customary Nikes. Tonight he was clean-shaven and his hair smelled faintly of soap. Ali had showered after dinner before performing his evening prayers and sitting down to his computer.

  A tangle of three-inch-wide flat cables, half-inch round cables, optical fibers, patch panels, and wires scrambled from behind his computer. Telephones, modems, computers, servers and hard disk storage units filled the room in a jumble of interconnectivity. He finished typing a message on his screen:

  WE ARE IN. BIN ABDUR’S CONSULTANT HAS FINISHED HIS REVIEW. MY HACKING SESSIONS IMPRESSED HIM. HE HAS GIVEN ME THE ALL-CLEAR AND BIN ABDUR HAS GIVEN ME HIS FIRST ASSIGNMENT. HE WISHES TO HACK INTO SAUDI ARAMCO’S COMPUTER NETWORK. GO TO IT. ONCE YOU ARE IN HE WILL ADVISE FROM THERE. HE HAS OFFERED $25,000 DOWN AGAINST $100,000 SUCCESS. I TOLD HIM I WOULD THINK ABOUT IT. AGREE?

  ALI

  Ali loaded the letter into an encryption program. The encryption program spat out the note in its gobbledygook of scrambled letters and numbers only translatable by his hacker correspondent at the other end using the same program:

  Ahr thc 2divv ghtyui ctypelmtnedht 74etrihgnv dhf h cnfjtiye qprotiyunv Protmg nb njgot ahdot e dhfogutyr cbvngh 009wuetrbva frityen ejduyt djfnxbzms 79 77gi vnh gH e1 wyughdnvbv xnckflgotoe 689dnfngot sarwregdhf 335ghtow0 shdg gf tt x sndhfr a87 torpdlfkg JjfkgkgotownsNh 63 fkgjhytu sPro alsoptej34mcnv dmvko Dkfjri 2300t sgge toyiujh sjsfotp sjsapqpritn adjghto skfdjgyt T dhforowj XX orohgit 7sjflgotn sjfoenuvyt pwprotjs, mkho nb hgot7 akskfjg105 Ajkdfote lakdoroea jdkcnGjgpwpr qoworpfjsmncWI vnj dd357owhhs 0T4bcs8

  He off-loaded the note into a separate file, exited, then dialed into Eastnet, an Egyptian-based digital, high-speed common carrier computer data line, and had his call routed through to a modem in a rented Eastnet location in the basement of a retail store in Detroit’s South Side. The Eastnet station housed 100 dial-in modems. It was one of thousands of Eastnet’s local links around the world.

  His call went in, then out through one of the modems to one of fifty modems linking the University of Michigan’s computer system to the world. Under the username “Lindbergh” and password “Gracie,” which he had stolen two days earlier, he logged on to one of the university’s ten Unix systems running on IBM hardware. He had located Professor Grace Lindbergh’s account under the expected username and simply guessed her password would be a variant of her or her husband’s or her children’s first names. Grace Lindbergh was a professor of mathematics who was on vacation for two weeks and wouldn’t notice what happened to her account until she returned. Ali transferred his encrypted file into Gracie Lindbergh’s account, then logged off and closed down his link through Eastnet to wait for a response.

  Once he logged off, the link was untraceable.

  An hour later he got his answer. Alica, the name by which he had known his hacker colleague since they started doing business together a week earlier, sent:

  TRIPLE THE PRICE. $75 AGAINST $300. AND TAKE THE DEAL. AND TELL THEM WHATEVER THEY WANT YOU TO DO ONCE YOU’VE CONVINCED THEM YOU’RE IN IS GOING TO COST THEM A LOT MORE. A LOT, LOT MORE. REMIND THEM THEY’RE HIRING THE BEST.

  ALICA

  Ali smiled at the letters blinking on his screen, typed:

  WILL DO, PARTNER.

  Alica typed back:

  I’LL TRY TO GO IN THROUGH THE INTERNET RATHER THAN TRYING TO CRASH THROUGH DIRECTLY. I’LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN I’M IN, OR IF I HAVE TROUBLE GETTING IN. CHECK GRACIE’S MAILBOX EVERY DAY.

  Ali sat with his perfect posture gazing at the computer. He wondered who and where Alica was.

  “You really don’t know anything about Lydia,” Brenda Cello said to Daniel. Brenda was his friend and also the girlfriend of Michael Smits, his best friend and partner at Ladoix Sayre. So that was it. The agenda that was shimmering beneath the purposeful look on Brenda’s face. Daniel had even heard it in her voice when she’d called to invite him to dinner because Michael was out of town. They were seated in the clang-bang center room at Raoul’s in Soho, in one of the booths jammed in amid the bistro’s simple white china and silverware crammed onto utilitarian stainless-steel racks. Waiters darted back and forth in the aroma-filled room just off the kitchen—garlic, frying pomme frittes, grilling steaks, and bouillabaisse hung in the air. Clattering china, shouts, and sizzles from the kitchen rose and fell as the swinging doors whirred in and out.

  “Don’t beat around the bush, Brenda, just spit it out.” Daniel was thinking that Michael would be chuckling softly right now if he were here, enjoying the fact that Brenda was in somebody else’s face for a little while. He glanced across to a booth on the other side, where he and Brenda had dined not two years earlier in those awful months following Angie’s death, the dinner in which Daniel broke, leaned forward and almost literally cried into his soup.

  “Well, I may not be smooth but I at least get it out on the table,” Brenda said. She was an authentic blonde, a lithe northern Italian beauty. With striking blue eyes that could either seduce or scald you. “I mean, how long have you known her now, a month?”

  Definitely scalding tonight. “A little longer.”

  “So you don’t even know for sure where she’s from. She just parachutes in here from—”

  “—jet-setted in here, I believe—” Daniel interrupted, smoothing his hair back.

  “—okay, jet-setted in here from God knows where—”

  “—it was Europe.”

  “—okay, so she jet-sets in here from Europe—don’t be a smartass
. I’m talking to you. Michael and I are concerned.” Brenda looked Daniel in the eye, held it. “Don’t you think you should just slow down?”

  There was no hiding from Brenda. Yet he averted his eyes, glanced at the booth across the way, the scene of the almost-in-his-soup dinner. He tried to think of going home to nobody. Not Lydia. Nobody. Like after Angie passed away. He couldn’t imagine it now, couldn’t feel it. All that was left of that immeasurable anguish he’d experienced after Angie died was a numbness. Was it the anesthesia of Lydia’s thighs? Emotional Novocain? Or was he really happy? He remembered now that Brenda had said ‘we’: both Michael and Brenda. Were they right or was he? Or were they just concerned as good friends are? It was the first time he’d questioned his feelings for Lydia. So far it had been blissful, passionate.

  He glanced at his wine glass, thinking. Then he locked eyes on Brenda’s, it seemed for a long time. He noticed her eyes were misty. “Okay. Message received.”

  CHAPTER 8

  JULY, THIS YEAR. NEW YORK City. Not one cantankerous conversation with a client—or colleague—had as yet intruded on Daniel’s repose on this, a quiet summer Friday. He had time to reflect on the major unexpected pleasure of his summer, Lydia, who made each day a polyphonic experience. But he eventually lowered his gaze to the draft engagement letter on his desk, and the tenseness in his scalp was there again. Yassar’s making a holy crusade out of this thing. It seemed like they’d been one draft away from signing up for weeks. It wasn’t helping the rest of his business. Two busted deals and one assignment lost to a competitor. Bob Kovarik at his new boutique, Kovarik & Co., of all people. He glanced out to the doorway to make sure no one saw him festering in his anxiety.