Point of Contact

by Tom Clancy

  “We understand the need for tight security,” Jack said. “We’ll just have to work around your protocols as best we can.” Jack stood. “See you later, Paul. Have fun.”

  “You do the same.”

  Paul spoke to Bai. “Might as well get my feet wet.” He opened up his desktop as Jack headed back to his office.

  Bai pointed Paul to the file containing the general ledger—the controlling document that contained all other subledgers and accounting files pertaining to all financial and nonfinancial data of Dalfan Technologies. Paul’s focus was on the financial side. He opened up the first big file folder labeled “Assets.” There was a lot of work to do, and not much time to do it. But his mind was somewhere else. He sighed.

  “Something wrong, Mr. Brown?”

  “Any chance we can grab a cup of tea before we get started?”

  Bai stood. “Follow me.”

  —

  Jack was looking forward to not being monitored by Lian or anyone else from Dalfan, but just as he sat down in his executive chair, there was a knock on his glass door.

  Jack turned around. Crap.

  “Feng,” the man said, offering a small, crooked smile of yellowed teeth. “I’m the vice president of Dalfan operations.”

  Feng reeked of stale tobacco. He was the oldest employee in the building Jack had met so far. He wasn’t in the conference room earlier. He carried a tablet in his left hand.

  Ryan stood and offered his hand. “Jack.”

  “I’m here to give you a general overview of the corporation. We will review its organization, facilities, and personnel, and I will answer any questions you might have.”

  Jack forced a smile. “Great. Let’s get started.”

  Jack opened up the Dalfan desktop with his passcode fob as Feng tapped on his tablet. They spent the next few hours reviewing organizational charts, personnel records, operating budgets, and facility locations around the city—including an FBO hangar at nearby Seletar Airport. By the time they finished reviewing all of these documents it was lunchtime.

  “Will you be joining us in the dining room?” Feng asked, standing.

  “Not today, but thanks.” Jack stood, too.

  Feng frowned. “That’s disappointing to hear. I’ll let Ms. Fairchild know.”

  Of course you will, Jack thought. “See you after lunch.”

  —

  It had been a long first half of the day for Jack and Paul, but productive. Their biological clocks were still messed up and they were both beat and famished.

  Jack half expected a fight from Lian when he confirmed that he and Paul wouldn’t be eating with the Dalfan employees, but instead she suggested a good local restaurant about ten minutes away.

  Jack asked, “Will you be joining us?”

  “I think you can handle the chili shrimp without my assistance,” she shot back. “But don’t be surprised if you have a few friends nearby.”

  Jack offered to let Paul drive, but the taciturn accountant wasn’t interested in figuring out how to navigate on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car, especially in a downpour. Ten minutes later they found themselves seated in a comfortable, low-lit restaurant populated by locals. They both ordered the house specialty, chili shrimp. For drinks, Jack went for the mango iced tea and Paul ordered a vodka tonic.

  “So, tell me about what you found out,” Jack began, sipping his iced tea. He scanned the room. His eye landed on Park, Lian’s bodyguard, glowering at a menu, sitting by himself on the far side of the restaurant. No doubt there to keep an eye on them.

  Paul frowned. “The first thing I found out was that my assistant is sticking closer to me than a remora on a manta ray. I half expected him to follow me into the john this morning.”

  “You get the feeling you’re being watched?”

  “More like handled. Friendly enough, don’t get me wrong. Happy to answer any questions I had. But the man had no interest in leaving me alone, even for half a second.”

  Paul went on to describe the bulk of his research that day, mostly comparing tax filings against corporate reports going back over the last ten years.

  “Everything lines up. It’s almost too good. Not one decimal point out of place. You know, sort of how an escaped fugitive might drive a little under the speed limit so as not to draw the attention of the traffic cop?”

  “You think there’s a problem?” Jack waved a server over.

  “Not necessarily. Only that the fact that the books are perfect—at least so far—isn’t proof that everything is on the up and up.”

  The young server flashed her lovely smile. “Sir?”

  “That man over there? By the window?” Jack nodded at Park, then pointed at the drink menu. “Send him one of these on me, will you?”

  She giggled. “Right away, sir.”

  Paul tapped his vodka tonic. “And another one of these, too, please.”

  She nodded and scurried off.

  “Sorry, Paul. You were saying?”

  “I already said it. Everything looks good so far, but I’ll keep digging. What did you find?”

  Jack outlined his research for the day, including going over the personnel files. “Just trying to get a handle on employee retention, hiring practices—the usual. Started digging into their benefits program, too. Turns out most of the senior management have stock options. They’re going to make out like bandits when Marin Aerospace swoops in and pays twice the current price per share.”

  “No wonder those people in the conference room were so glad to see us today.”

  Jack watched the server deliver a tall red drink to Park’s table. He examined it, his eyes frowning with confusion.

  “Our boy Park just got his delivery,” Jack said.

  Paul turned around just in time to watch Park flip them both the bird.

  “What did you send him?”

  “A Shirley Temple. I figured he wasn’t allowed to drink liquor while on the job.”

  Paul cracked a smile. “I don’t think you want to mess with that guy.”

  “What else is there to do?”

  The server arrived bearing platters of sizzling-hot shrimp, steaming bowls of rice, and crisp stir-fried vegetables. They dug in.

  Paul enjoyed the sweet and fiery spicy chili sauce and the crunchy stir-fried shrimp, but his mind was still on Rhodes’s USB drive. He was glad he had run his little experiment today with the dummy drive. He assumed their protocols would catch something like that, but he wasn’t sure. If that really had been Rhodes’s drive the guard had discovered in his bag today, he might be sitting on a plane right now flying back to the United States, or pacing in a cramped Singaporean prison cell. The good news was that they didn’t do a body search. Dalfan was serious about their security but not paranoid. A mistake on their part, he told himself.

  He chewed quietly, working the puzzle. Even if he’d been allowed to keep his dummy USB drive, he never got the chance to try and load it on his Dalfan computer today for a test run, and according to Bai, it wouldn’t have worked anyway, since it wasn’t loaded with the Dalfan encryption code.

  Bai himself was a security barrier, Paul decided. If he was going to stay that glued to him, he’d never get the opportunity. Odds were he was going to fail the mission, and quite possibly get caught in the attempt. Neither scenario appealed to him. Rhodes even said there probably wasn’t a problem to begin with—this was all just precautionary. Sitting here, it suddenly didn’t seem worth the risk. Time to try a third option. Maybe get the mission canned altogether.

  “So, if you didn’t find anything and I didn’t, either, maybe we should just sign off on this thing and go home early,” Paul said.

  Jack laughed. “Why? Are you as bored as I am?”

  “Something like that. Dr. Fairchild wouldn’t care if we wrapped this thing up.”

/>   “Rhodes seemed to want us to do some serious digging while we’re here.”

  “But he still wants us to sign off in the end.” Paul drained the rest of his glass. He didn’t want to seem too eager or oversell it. “I mean, you never seemed big on this assignment anyway and I need to get back, so, whatever you want to do, I’m up for it.”

  Paul hoped to God Jack would take the bait. He didn’t think his nerves could stand this for another four days. If they were sent home early by Fairchild, then he really couldn’t be blamed for failing the mission, could he?

  “I don’t know. We’re here, we might as well do the job right. Let’s keep painting by the numbers and see what turns up.”

  “Okay. Sounds good to me.” Paul fought the panic welling up inside his chest. When he saw his server rush by, he held his empty glass up high at her and jiggled the ice. “Another one of these.”

  She nodded and headed for the bar.

  Paul sighed. It was going to be a long week.

  19

  Mind if I ask you a question?” Jack asked.

  “Sure.”

  “What made you want to become a fraud examiner?”

  Paul stabbed another glistening shrimp. “Well, I was always pretty good at numbers and my mother said that accountants could always find work, so I decided to go that route in college. In my junior year I had a professor who was a JD and a CPA and he had retired from the FBI before going into teaching. He told us all kinds of great stories from his time in the Bureau—he described it like being a detective or a spy hunter, but instead of using guns, he used numbers. So what’s a fat kid from Iowa gonna do? He’s going to become a forensic accountant.”

  “And you were in government service?”

  “Briefly.”

  Paul’s clipped answer told Jack to not probe further—at least right now. He changed subjects.

  “And you enjoy fraud examination?”

  “It’s really interesting. Never a dull moment.”

  Jack fought the urge to roll his eyes. Was he kidding? The thought of drilling down into accounts-receivable ledgers and hunting for misplaced decimal points made him want to shove his chili-stained chopstick in his eye. “Interesting . . . how?”

  Paul’s drink finally arrived. He said, “Chili’s pretty hot, isn’t it?” as if that was the reason he was about to take a sip from his third vodka tonic.

  “Hot but good. I’m glad we came here.”

  “Me too. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah. Why the job is interesting. Well, for me it’s interesting because in the end it’s never about the numbers, it’s always about the people. People are creatures of habit and pattern. Turns out numbers are pretty good at revealing habits and patterns, and the kinds of fraud people commit generate habitual patterns of numbers and data sets, too.”

  “Is there a certain kind of person more likely to commit fraud?”

  “From what I’ve read, there’s no one exact trait or indicator that the psychologists can agree on—maybe they’ll find a gene for it someday, but I doubt it. But when people do commit fraud, they’re generally one of four types.” Paul paused and took another bite of rice.

  Jack picked up another shrimp and plopped it into his mouth.

  “A fraud expert named Allan characterized them as the bully, the egoist, the control freak, and the mouse. People who commit fraud either crave approval, demand control, are territorial, or want to keep things the way they’ve always been.”

  “Where’s the mouse in that lineup?”

  “The mouse is interesting. That’s the gal or guy who is quiet, doesn’t make any waves, and doesn’t draw any attention to themselves—except that they stand out as the perfect employee.”

  “Perfect—as in too perfect?”

  “Yeah. Extra-long hours, taking on extra projects, never complaining, never asking for a raise. Of course, all that means is that they’re trying to hide the bad stuff they’re doing.”

  You never know about people. Ding’s words on the deck of the fast-attack boat rang in Jack’s head.

  “So those are the kinds of people that commit fraud. I suppose their motivation is just greed?”

  “Not necessarily. There’s an acronym—MICE. Have you heard of it?”

  Only about a million times, Jack said to himself. “Remind me.”

  “Money, ideology, coercion, and ego. So, yeah, sometimes it’s about money, but as often as not it’s those other motivating factors, and usually a combination of them.”

  “I think I read somewhere that terrorists and traitors fall under the MICE paradigm.”

  “That’s right.”

  Jack shrugged. “Makes sense. If you’re committing fraud, it’s kind of like an act of terror or treason against the company’s management and stockholders.”

  “I never thought of it that way. I suppose you’re right.”

  “So how do you go about finding these fraudsters? I’d think if they were smart enough and motivated enough to cook the books, they’d be smart enough to cover their tracks.”

  Paul offered a rare smile, then took another sip. The ice tinkled in his glass. “Oh, believe me, they try.”

  “So what’s your secret weapon?”

  “I have a bunch of them, but data analytics is my best one. In the old days I’d break open some dusty old ledger book and run my fingers down the columns. Now I let the software do all the work. I’ll give you one example—it’s really interesting.”

  Paul pulled a mechanical pencil out of his pocket and snagged a napkin.

  “Hey, wait a second, I have one of those.” Jack reached down and pulled up a pen he kept clipped to the inside of his pants pocket. “That’s a Zebra F-701.”

  Paul grinned. “I didn’t know you had one, too.”

  Jack clicked his. “Mine’s ink, not lead like yours.”

  Paul held his Zebra between his two hands, admiring the iconic shape of the solid stainless-steel barrel. “I’ve been using Zebras for decades.”

  “I started using these the day I graduated from college—my dad gave me a set of them. Told me my Zebra would never let me down.”

  “Small world,” Paul said. He pulled the napkin closer. “Have you ever heard of Benford’s law?”

  “No.”

  “This is pretty cool stuff.” Paul stopped. “Wait, am I boring you?”

  “No, it’s interesting. Really.”

  Paul smiled, grateful for Jack’s white lie. “Benford was a physicist who began noticing a pattern in numbers. So one day he took a bunch of random figures—numbers he found in a magazine, the surface area of bodies of water, molecular weights—a whole series of uncorrelated data sets, and then he analyzed the numbers, and what he discovered is fascinating and, frankly, hard to explain.”

  Paul sketched out a two-by-two graph, with percentages listed on the y-axis and numerical digits 1 through 9 on the x-axis. He plotted his graph out as he spoke.

  “Turns out, no matter where you look in nature, there’s a uniform pattern in numbers. What Benford discovered was that the first digit of any number is going to be the number one about thirty percent of the time.” Paul marked an X at the intersection of thirty percent and 1.

  “The number two will occur in the first position almost eighteen percent of the time, the number three about twelve-point-five percent, and so forth.” Paul filled in the rest of the graph. “The number nine will be the first number less than five percent of the time.”

  “So . . . if you find patterns of numbers that don’t correspond to Benford’s law, you think you’ve found fraud?”

  “If I find a break in the Benford’s law pattern, then I know it’s something worth looking into. But then again, there are lots of reasons why it can be broken. For example, if a company has a regular purchase of an item that costs $97.86, and if that’s the most purchased item
on their books, well, that’s not going to conform to Benford, is it? There are many other patterns and incongruences my software can check for besides Benford, but you get the idea.”

  “So I take it your Benford template hasn’t pulled up anything?”

  “I haven’t run it yet. It would take several weeks to do a decent audit of Dalfan’s books, so all I’ll be able to do is a few random spot checks.”

  “I still think we need to keep at it.”

  “I get paid either way.” Paul swallowed his disappointment as he drained his glass. He fought back a monstrous yawn. “Mind if we grab a cup of coffee before we head back? I’m beat.”

  “Sure.” Jack waved at the pretty server. She smiled and came over.

  “A coffee for my friend here.”

  “Of course. Cream and sugar, sir?”

  Paul nodded. “Please.”

  Jack nodded over at Park again. “And be sure to give me his check. I think the two of us got off on the wrong foot.”

  —

  After lunch, everyone got back to work, including Jack and Feng. Feng pulled information about the two small manufacturing plants they operated in the city not far from where Jack was sitting, the only other buildings that Dalfan owned on the island. Jack quizzed him about working conditions in those places, security protocols, and production schedules. Anything Feng couldn’t answer he made notes about and promised to get back to Jack with the answers as soon as possible.

  Jack’s analytical brain absorbed all of the information, but he also took copious notes on his laptop. He enjoyed this kind of work, pulling all of the puzzle pieces out of the box and trying to fit them back together. But he still hated being here. Less than two weeks ago he was fighting for his life on an oil rig in the North Sea in the middle of a blizzard.

  His biggest risk right now was a paper cut.

  While the rest of The Campus was on a training mission in the Colorado Rockies, he was sitting at a desk, sifting through leasing contracts, employee benefits plans, and production reports.

  “I need to stretch my legs, Feng. How about you show me the outside of this place?” Jack figured the old smoker was craving a cigarette pretty badly by now. Feng brightened at the prospect. “Glad to.”