by Bryan Devore
“Well, Michael,” Falcon began, “I want to get right to the point. I know you’ve already had some meetings about your problems on your past few engagements. Because of these new problems, there has now been a great deal of discussion between the partners regarding your future at the firm.”
He paused to let this last comment sink in before continuing. “It has been suggested that we let you go from the firm. Michael, I don’t know if you realize this, but after we conclude our work this year for Pipco, there’s a very good chance they will begin shopping around for another accounting firm. We could be losing a client that generated substantial revenue for our firm last year. That is not a mistake many people in your position would survive.”
Michael didn’t say anything. He sat in silence, maintained eye contact with the partner, and nodded his head, looking appropriately concerned, aware that the wrong word or gesture could spell the end for him at the firm. You can’t get fired.
“When you joined our firm two years ago, you had scored in the top one percent in the country on the CPA exam. You were one of our most promising young professionals. But over the past six months you seem to have lost interest in your career. Your performance evaluations have gone from ‘exceeded expectations’ to ‘met expectations’ to ‘needs improvement.’ Michael, I don’t understand this. Is this really the profession that you want to be in? You need to tell me what’s going on.”
For what seemed an eternity, Michael looked down at the desk. What would his father think of him if he could hear this? Ernest Chapman, one of the most respected accounting professors in the Midwest, had written textbooks, won national awards, and was practically a deity at Kansas State. It horrified Michael to think of how his father would feel if he knew his son was on the verge of getting fired from this prestigious firm.
He could see the bright image of snow, rising in reflection on the polished desktop as it drifted downward outside the window. Falcon had a point, though—Michael was growing tired of his life in the firm. All he really wanted right now was to go have a margarita with Kurt and Todd. Why should he put himself through this torture? No, just a little longer, he told himself. Just last a little longer and you’ll be free.
He could feel Falcon’s eyes on him. “I’ve been having some personal problems lately,” he lied.
“Michael, we all have problems, but in this kind of environment we need to handle those problems, or we won’t succeed.”
“I know, I know,” he said apologetically.
“Look, we want you to be able to succeed here, but this situation has become so severe that we need to formally place you on our ‘action plan’ program. You need to come up with a detailed plan specifying exactly what areas you need to improve on and how you plan to achieve each of your goals. I need to see some immediate improvements. Traditionally, the time frame for the action plan is thirty days, but because we’re in our second week of busy season, I’ve decided to extend it to sixty days. That should give you the entire busy season to show us if you’re ready to continue your career at Cooley and White.”
A swarm of thoughts surged through his mind, the most prominent being that he still had his job. After everything he had done in the past few months, he had somehow been able to diminish his reputation within the firm without being fired. This last incident had nearly been the end to everything he had worked so hard to achieve, but somehow, after the dust had settled, he was still standing. Glazier was right: he had been way too careless. There would be no more room for mistakes.
“Thank you for this second chance,” he said. “I will get my personal life together and will focus one hundred percent of my energy on improving my performance.”
The partner smiled. “I know you will. Let’s get the plan on paper in the next few days so we can see how we’re going to tackle this. Unfortunately, I’ve had to take you off the Pipco engagement. But we’ll get you scheduled on another client by next week, and then we could . . .” Falcon broke off his sentence as his phone rang. He looked at the number and then back at Michael. “Well, let’s circle back on this tomorrow morning.” He turned and picked up the phone.
Michael flipped open his portfolio and made a quick note. Then, closing the folder, he stood up to leave the office.
“Oh, my God,” Falcon said into the phone. “No, no, Patti. Thank you, but I should be the one to send an announcement to everyone . . . No, I’m okay . . . I’ll take care of it.”
Michael turned back to look at the senior partner after the call ended. Falcon was looking with a bemused face at the receiver.
“Is everything all right?”
Falcon shook his head. “That was my admin. She just received a phone call from Kurt Matthews’s parents. There was some kind of skiing accident. This morning his body was found, frozen in the woods at Vail.”
All his life, Michael had never been good at handling death. He tried to take a deep breath, but the air felt shallow and insufficient in his lungs. He felt as if he were suffocating. The horrible realization was settling into his mind. Not Kurt . . . It wasn’t possible. His eyes focused again on the impressionistic painting of aspen trees—shimmering yellow leaves and a dusting of new snow. His head felt light; the painting seemed to give off a sense of violent chaos. He had to leave Falcon’s office, had to quit the firm. He had to get out. But no matter how badly he wanted to start a new life, he knew that he couldn’t leave Cooley and White . . . not yet—not until the game was over.
3
THE SILVER ELEVATOR doors opened on the eighth floor of the Commerce Building, headquarters of the Denver Post. The young woman with flaming red hair stepped into a hive of activity as various staff reporters and seasoned journalists pounded away on their laptops, scrambling to file their stories before deadline. A small cluster of employees hovered around a mounted television, making snide remarks as a politician spoke into a dozen microphones. But the redheaded woman kept her head low and largely ignored the activity around her.
“Oh, my God, Sarah, you poor thing! What are you doing here?” a veteran copyeditor said, getting up from her desk and rushing toward her.
“Mrs. Adams,” the young woman said, “is Jack around?”
The copyeditor reached forward and gently grabbed the woman’s shoulders as if she had just returned unharmed from some perilous journey. “Oh, Sarah, I’m so sorry. Come here, child.” She pulled the woman close and hugged her. “You shouldn’t have come in. You know you don’t have to be here—everyone would understand.”
“Is Jack around?” Sarah Matthews asked again in a quiet voice.
The copyeditor gently released her. “Honey, he’s in his office.”
Sarah nodded. “I’m okay. Really. I just need to ask Jack a question.” And taking a deep breath, she nodded briefly before sidling around the woman and heading to the senior editor’s office.
Her knuckles made a hollow dinging sound on the glass door. Jack Bayman looked up from his phone and waved her in. He sat hunched over his desk, tie loosened, sleeves up. Barking some final words into the receiver, he hung up.
“Sarah, you shouldn’t be here,” he said, standing up and sending his chair rolling backward. “I want you to take the week off.”
“Jack, I have a story I want you to put me on.”
“A story? Jesus, what are you trying to do to yourself! You’re in no condition to investigate anything right now.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Go home, Sarah. Please, take some time off. That’s not a suggestion; it’s an order.”
She stood her ground. “Jack, after I broke the McCleery story, you said I could pursue anything I wanted for my next major piece—you promised.”
“And you can. But you oughta give yourself some time off right now? I don’t know of any journalist who would be back at work after what you’ve been through. Take a week off, and we’ll discuss any story you want once you come back.”
Sarah was getting frustrated now. She hadn’t expected this resistance from her editor. She
knew he was just trying to help, but she also knew she didn’t have a choice.
“This story can’t wait,” she said with a crackle of frustration in her voice. “I’ve already started on it. If you don’t support me, I’ll just quit and freelance it to the Tribune or the Times when I’m finished.”
“Come on, Sarah . . .” Her boss stepped around from behind the desk, studying her determined expression. “You’re the best rookie reporter I’ve seen in years. I’m not going to lose you. You know this paper’s behind you all the way. I just think it’s too early for you to be back here. I’ve seen too many good journalists burn out in this job just as their careers were reaching their prime. It’s a tough business. You’ll learn that in time, but meanwhile you should learn to take it easy when your editor tells you to.”
“Jack, this story’s a hell of a lot bigger than a slimy city manager.” She walked forward and grabbed the copy of the Post’s morning edition on his desk. Picking up a red pen, she scrawled something in the margin of the front page.
Jack leaned in to read it, and his eyes shot up to her. “That’s crazy.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “What could you possibly have?”
“I can’t tell you—not yet.”
Jack turned and walked to the outside window. He stared out at the vast lawn, turning brown in the early winter weather, that stretched between City Hall and the Capitol. Pedestrians moved between the two buildings, past park benches where a few homeless people lounged in the sunshine.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll let you look into it. But you sure as hell better keep me informed on this one. No more of that cloak-and-dagger crap like with the McCleery story. If you really do find something, we’ll discuss running it. But it better be airtight, understand?”
When he turned around to look at Sarah, he saw only the glass door swinging to and a flash of red hair bobbing around the corner.
* * *
Michael walked into Falcon’s empty office Thursday morning. The partner’s laptop sat on the other side of the desk, and its whisper fan told him the man couldn’t be far away.
“Morning, Michael,” Falcon said as he walked into the office. “Glad you could make it.”
“Morning.”
“Michael, this is regarding Kurt Mathews. I know the two of you were good friends. Kurt was also one of my five senior associates, just like you are. He was supervising one of my biggest clients.”
“X-Tronic,” Michael said, referring to the largest software company in Colorado and the fourth largest in the country. They specialized in large-scale business application software that rivaled Oracle, Microsoft, and Cygnus International.
“Yes. Well, as difficult and shocking as his death is, we still have business in the firm that needs to be done. We’re right in the middle of our three-month scheduled work for their year-end financial audit. My team’s been working at X-Tronic for the past six weeks, and Kurt was running the engagement in the field. We’re in a real bind with scheduling, so you’ve been assigned to replace him until we complete the engagement. I know it must seem awkward to take over for a coworker and friend so soon after his death, but we have to get this done. Now, despite the terrible circumstances that brought it about, you should recognize this as the golden opportunity it is: you can get off the probation you’ve been placed on.”
Michael was speechless. Yesterday his neck was on the block, and today he was being handed the lead of the X-Tronic audit team. He could scarcely believe his luck. During graduate school at Kansas State, he had written extensively about X-Tronic and its ambitious founder, Don Seaton, in his thesis examining the correlation between ambitious corporate leadership and innovative financial growth strategies. Mr. Seaton had become a legend in the world of high-tech executives, rising from a humble upbringing in New York City to become a self-made billionaire through the success of X-Tronic. There was no businessman in the world whom Michael respected more.
But Michael’s excitement was soon eclipsed by the reality of his situation. He felt a twinge of guilt at the thought of finishing the project Kurt had begun. It had been less than twenty-four hours since he first heard of his friend’s death, and now he would have to sift and scavenge through his friend’s computer files and work papers, searching for any information relevant to the audit engagement. He felt ashamed. How could he just start working on X-Tronic as if nothing had happened? How could he just brush aside his friend’s death?
“When do you want me to go out to X-Tronic?” Michael asked, hoping he would be given some time to digest the news.
“Right away,” Falcon said without emotion. “I’m e-mailing you the contact information and directions now. Kurt’s work papers are in the audit room they set up at the company, and I’m having the IT department scrub the files from his laptop for anything related to X-Tronic. You should have those by this afternoon.”
Michael stood and turned to leave the room, but Falcon stopped him. “Oh, one more thing—I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep a close eye on you during this engagement. I don’t have to tell you this is your last chance to succeed at this firm. If you do exactly what I ask, we won’t have any problems. We just need to get through the next month; then the project will be done.”
Michael nodded, but he had concerns. There weren’t a lot of good reasons for Falcon to put him on an audit of one of the firm’s largest clients. Sure it was possible that the scheduling committee had found no better options because of Kurt’s sudden death. But getting assigned to a large client after repeated mistakes was a scenario Glazier had warned him about. His instincts were now on high alert.
4
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER leaving Falcon’s office, Michael arrived at the Denver Tech Center high-rise that would be his workplace for the next two months. Stepping out of his silver Audi, he slung his computer bag over his shoulder and looked up at the impressive twenty-story glass building in the center of the corporate suburbs. So this was the headquarters of X-Tronic. The software company had acquired fame fifteen years ago when it bought up three smaller companies and beat a hostile takeover bid from a larger competitor during the same twelve-month period.
Over the past four years, he had kept up with developments at X-Tronic. On the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the company had continuously beaten analysts’ earnings expectations, just as it had been one of the few stocks whose price continued to rise even during the sluggish financial markets of the dot-com collapse many years earlier. He found it hard to believe that he was now in charge of auditing their financial statements—the same statements that would have the attention of the financial wizards of Wall Street.
The lobby, floored with a harlequin pattern of elegant red and black marble slabs, was the size of a basketball court. A few expensive couches in the center divided the entrance from the security desk at the far end. He walked across the marble floor toward the security officer, who was already eyeing him.
“I’m here to see Jerry Diamond,” Michael said. “I’m one of the auditors from Cooley and White.”
“Is this your first time at X-Tronic?” the guard asked in a bored monotone.
“Yes.”
“One moment, please.” The guard flipped around to his computer. “Your name, please?”
“Michael Chapman.”
“Yes, here it is. Looks like you’ll need an extended pass.”
“I plan to be here for two months.”
“Follow this corridor down to the elevators. You’ll need a security pass to go up into the building, but you don’t need anything to go down. Just go to the basement and follow the yellow line on the floor. It leads from the elevator to the main security office. They’ll check your identification and issue you a pass. Then come back to me, and I’ll tell Mr. Diamond you’re ready.”
Michael wasn’t surprised at the tight security; after all, programming codes and other intellectual property were any software company’s lifebl
ood. If the wrong person ever got access to sensitive information in the building, it could cost the company its competitive advantage and billions of dollars in future revenues.
Michael spent the next fifteen minutes getting his security pass. Afterward, waiting in the lobby for Mr. Diamond, he gazed up at the eighteenth-century French painting that covered much of one wall. An ancient Roman in a red cloak offered swords to the extended arms of three warriors while, at the far right side, a small group of women huddled in an archway, weeping in each other’s arms.
“It’s very powerful, isn’t it?”
Hearing the friendly baritone voice behind him, Michael turned to find a man in his mid-forties, wearing a tailored suit. He was big: six-four and 250, most of it muscle. And his square jaw and shaved head made him look like a battle-hardened field general transposed into a life requiring tailored business suits instead of razor-creased uniforms.
“Have you seen it before?”
“The Oath of the Horatii,” Michael answered, “but not the original.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because I saw it in the Louvre three years ago.”
The man smiled. “Do you know what is happening in the painting, or did you just memorize the name in Paris?”
Michael realized he was being tested, and saw little reason to hold back now that the challenge had been extended.
“The three brothers, the Horatii”—he gestured with his eyes at the three men receiving the proffered swords—“were chosen by Rome to challenge the Curiatii, champions of the town of Alba. In this scene, as they receive their weapons from their father, they are taking an oath that they will either win or die.”
“Win or die?”
“Yes. It symbolizes courage in the face of risk—and the desire for dominance.”
“And the women?”
