She nods, satisfied. All is well.
A young girl, phone in hand, yells out, “Francis is on his way. Get ready for a progress meeting, guys!” Chaos breaks out. Had Jo not seen this before, she would have wondered whether they are at all ready for any kind of progress reporting. But she knows well the culture of the data miners. They are perfectly ready but thrive on the adrenaline. And Francis calling a progress meeting is just an excuse to get them all hyped up and in touch with their own significance. She shakes her head fondly. She loves these guys. They are so dedicated. Leaving them to whatever they are doing, she walks into the conference room. Its only claim to the name is the sheer size of it. There is nothing corporate about this room, which contains a huge table but no chairs, a wall-to-wall whiteboard on one end, and an equally large plasma screen on the other. Embedded in the table are various geeky-looking appliances, only a few of which she actually understands the use of, despite her training. She crosses the floor to the tinted window, looking out on brick wall after brick wall. Nobody can see her from the outside, but the view does not inspire. She stays there, though, waiting for him to enter.
“Like your new look!” Francis crosses the room and kisses her on the cheek. “You managed to shake them?”
“Quite easily. Mona is taking them for a tour of Copenhagen as we speak.”
“Well done. But let’s not get cocky; these people know what they’re doing. Most of them have trained in the same places as our agents. So, it will just be a matter of time before they figure it out. But until then…let’s get on with it.”
Francis turns to Angela, who is still standing at the door. Jo greets her with a sense of apprehension. The feelings between the two women are not easy. There is a kind of mutual respect, but also a wariness, which Jo guesses comes partly from her own annoyance that another woman is so familiar with her love life, but also because Angela is torn between her loyalty to Francis and her dislike of the cavalier way he habitually treats women. But perhaps there are other reasons as well.
Chapter 11
The research team is seated around the conference table, each member having brought his or her laptop and chair. Francis and Jo are at opposite ends of the long table, Thomas midway between them. Angela is seated in a corner, away from the table.
“All right, boys and girls, let me just give you a short rundown of the kind of cooperation we are dealing with here.” Francis looks around the table, his eyes resting on each face in turn. “Schwartz Corp. It’s a two-tier organization. Their front is the respectable management-consulting firm that is snapping at McKinsey’s heels. But their real business, the heart of their operation, is a thirty-man unit, secret to everybody else. This unit works directly for Schwartz, and the ambition seems to be to dismantle the competition of any company that can pay them and is not burdened by ethical imperatives about fair play. This includes more companies than you would think.
“The way they work includes blackmail, manipulation, setups, bribery, slander, kidnapping, and” Francis pauses “murder. We are not sure how many or even who. But we do know that the reason Schwartz has clients in the global multinationals is that he gets the job done, regardless. I needn’t impress upon you that these guys are not to be trifled with. A number of them are ex-military, the heavy-handed part; some have spent time inside, while others are just like you: brilliant analysts picked from the best schools across the country. A mottled lot, they are.”
Some of the kids are listening attentively to Francis; others are bent over iPads or small laptops, tapping away. But nobody interrupts Francis, even when he pauses and looks around the room as he does now.
“But we do have two advantages over them: we seem to be stronger technologically, and we’re the good guys!” Francis smiles. “We’re going to take them on. Welcome to the challenge, everyone!” He nods at a young man. “Brandon, will you kick us off?”
Brandon, a twenty-five-year-old New Yorker and, despite his young age, the most accomplished of the researchers, the alpha boy, says, “Let me just give you an overview of where we are. We have compiled what we believe to be a full list of Schwartz Corp.’s below-the-board activities for the past five years. As well, of course, as their legitimate jobs. This we’ve done through a combination of hacking into their accountants’ network and their own. Their firewalls are pretty much standard-issue, so it would seem that neither Schwartz nor his bean counters have woken up to the modern world of transgressions. Our luck, really.”
Francis interjects, “They will. After we’re done with them. Sorry; do go on, Brandon.” He gestures at the young man.
“Okay, apart from taking a peek at their computers, we have also intercepted a number of cell phones and landlines for the senior staff, including Schwartz himself.” He points to a corner, where a pile of papers several feet tall rests against the wall. “Over there are the transcripts we pulled. You may want to consult them at some point. We fed them through our data-match software and came up with a number of interesting links. Let me show you.” The huge screen on the far wall suddenly comes alive with a diagram showing Schwartz’s name in a center bubble that is linked with a number of other bubbles of varying sizes, each containing a different name.
Brandon continues, “The graphic shows the top twenty numbers Schwartz has called over the past three months. Please note that the third one, after his wife and his senior vice president, is a man named Pierre de Lingua. We have traced him to Sri Lanka, where he seems to own quite a lot of property and, unless he travels under a different name, also spends most of his time.”
Jo says, “Interestingly, Schwartz’s calendar showed no less than four trips to Sri Lanka in the past eighteen months. That must mean something.” She turns to Francis. “Shouldn’t we pursue this one?”
Francis nods. “Good idea. Brandon, cross-reference Schwartz with this de Lingua guy and see where it takes you.”
Brandon scribbles something on a pad before continuing. “We already did some digging on Mr. de Lingua since he took on such a prominent position in Schwartz’s phone logs. We compiled a profile on him. It’s in the folder in front of you.”
“Give us the important stuff,” Francis says.
Brandon looks at Jo for a moment. “Your name has come up in their conversations twice, Jo Vermeer. But we haven’t been able to establish the context. It is rather convoluted. Of course, we continue working on it.”
Jo’s face registers nothing.
Brandon continues, “Another interesting point is that the tone between Schwartz and de Lingua is rather familiar. Warm, almost. The reason why this is so, we haven’t discovered yet. The essence of their conversation seems to be logistics. You know, the typical euphemisms, like ‘parcel,’ ‘destination,’ ‘travel arrangements,’ and so on.” He looks at Francis, savoring the moment before he delivers the goods. “We have reason to believe that de Lingua is housing Wharton at Schwartz’s request.”
“Are you sure?” Francis asks sharply.
“No. But you know how we always base our research on a number of hypotheses and then search for evidence to prove or disprove these? Well, somebody made a half-hearted suggestion about de Lingua running a tucked-away little bed-and-breakfast for Schwartz. And as it was such a crazy idea, we followed it. And it actually turns out that there is quite a lot of data in these conversations that could support the hypothesis. So, at the moment, it is one of our prioritized scenarios.”
Jo smiles at Brandon. “You guys have the wildest imaginations! Why would Schwartz send Wharton to Sri Lanka, of all places?”
“We don’t know yet. And we may be wrong. But, like I said, if you accept this as a scenario, all the recent conversations between Schwartz and de Lingua suddenly makes sense. And also, Sri Lanka is rather off the map for most foreigners, thanks to the Tigers and the tsunami.”
Jo and Francis share a look across the table. Both are thinking the same thing.
“I guess we can’t obtain any more information without going in there. Is that right, Br
andon?” Francis asks.
Brandon nods. “Yeah, of course, we can keep on monitoring the phones. We can also tap into some excellent satellite footage of Sri Lanka from our friends in the United States, but unless we know what we are looking for, it’ll be like searching the desert for a grain of sand.”
“Okay, I’ll go in,” Jo says. “But we need to come up with a highly credible back story. A reason for meeting de Lingua and a reason for me tagging along with him for a while, getting to know him, finding his lair. Or lairs, as the case may be.” She turns to Francis. “Do you agree?”
“I do. But I want it to be as safe as possible, which means we need to do some watertight legends here. It needs to check out. Thomas, I want you to handle this personally. And find a way to let me be a part of the op. At least in the beginning. Give us your best, Thomas.” Thomas smiles. His background in government intelligence has trained him hard in the necessity of waterproof legends when one is entering what may be hostile territory. An idea is already forming in his mind.
Francis turns back to Brandon. “Anything else?” Brandon shakes his head. “You, Jo?” Francis prompts.
“Well, I scanned the content of Schwartz’s home computers, but there doesn’t seem very much of interest,” Jo says. “It might be, as you said earlier, that he’s too careful to leave anything of real importance where it might be found. But I still think we should go over it carefully and map the information we find there with our other findings.”
She looks inquiringly at Francis, who turns to one of the researchers. “Ruth, you do that. Fine-comb it and run it against Brandon’s stuff and the files we have from Smith, Turner, and Stevenson. See if any links come up, anything that indicates any sort of collaboration or even mutual interest.” He turns back to Jo. “Your search really didn’t come up with anything, then?”
Jo looks at him and says hesitantly, “There was something. A picture. Let me show you.” She opens her laptop. “Can we get this onto the screen, Arthur?”
A young man jumps up and deftly connects her Mac to the huge plasma screen, where the image of Schwartz being awarded an order from the queen now fills a whole wall. Jo explains, “As far as I have been able to make out, this is the Order of the Companions of Honour, a rather cumbersome title that is awarded for outstanding achievements. We will have to find out exactly what it is Schwartz has done to earn this.” She pauses. “However, it is not the order I am interested in. Look at his face. He’s proud! This is the man who never smiles in public but always wears a frown. He’s grinning from ear to ear, completely unable to contain his glee.”
The room is silent as everybody studies the face blown up on the wall.
After a while, Francis breaks the silence. “Excellent work, Jo. That one there is worth all your time and effort in London. We now know what Schwartz’s Achilles’ heel is. Very well done!”
Jo exercises all her self-control not to beam in the face of such praise. Coming from Francis, this kind of honor is very rare indeed.
Francis and Jo stay behind as the researchers leave the room. Jo says, “Georg Schwartz is pure evil.”
It’s a while before Francis answers, “I am not so certain. I know this must sound strange to you, but I sometimes wonder whether he and I are actually on the same team rather than lifelong enemies.”
Jo looks sharply at him. “How can you even think such a thing?”
“You see, if you really observe his operations carefully over a long period of time, it becomes clear that none of them are successful in the terms you would expect them to be. Anybody who makes a short-term gain in one of his pyramid games soon finds himself or herself hopelessly in debt because they have overextended themselves and generally have thrown caution to the wind. Clients who requested that a competitor be destroyed eventually find themselves working in a market that has lost its economic appeal. Those that he backed got so used to his support that they folded once he removed the props. So, it would seem that clients benefit momentarily, but because they’re building on empty air, all their savings and then some will disappear, leaving them high and dry. But as in all other schemes of quick gains, he’ll never be short on clients. And I will forever be right on his tail as long as he continues to encourage greed and malice in the business community.”
Francis gets up and starts pacing the room, getting uncommonly agitated. “Notice how, nowadays, anybody who gets rich quickly soon finds himself on the less sunny side of the street. Just witness the community of bankers, the entire nation of Iceland. The energy of the times does not allow for easy money. Or rather, it doesn’t allow easy money to last. It’s almost as if it comes with a time bomb. It’s just a matter of weeks, months, or, if they are lucky, years before it explodes in their faces. Everything is accelerating. What used to take a long time is now hatched, brought to life, enjoyed, and destroyed in a far shorter time. The global economy is intensified to a point where it has almost collapsed on us. And Schwartz has had no insignificant role in the current financial crisis. Greed is ruling the world, enslaving rich and poor alike. It is a poor state of humanity.”
Jo is wondering if Francis has gone off the rails, or whether he just deems her worthy of entering the next level of understanding. She says nothing, but just indicates he should continue.
Francis seems to recognize her expression of doubt because he pours them both fresh coffee and settles back in his chair. “It’s only natural you should question my assessment. But let me tell you the story of Georg Schwartz and then perhaps you might change your mind about him.” He pauses, wondering where to start. After a moment, he begins. “Georg Schwartz was brought up under very fortunate circumstances. He was an only child, born into old money by a couple that had given up on having children. They couldn’t believe their luck when he finally arrived. He was lavished with attention, smothered in wealth, and sent to the best schools. In short, his was a charmed childhood, a blessed youth.
“But such was his natural energy and intelligence that, for all the pampering, which easily could have ruined a lesser man, Georg Schwartz emerged from his childhood and youth as a very determined man. The one psychological injury, so to speak, was caused by a world that fulfilled his wishes even before he realized them himself. It is an unshakable belief in his right to determine his own rules. He shares the megalomaniac and psychopath’s conviction that he, and he alone, is above the rules that apply to other people.” He smiles wryly at Jo. “It’s a way of thinking one naturally sympathizes with.”
She smiles back at him, enjoying his passion, thinking this is where his true obsession lies.
Francis continues, “But that obviously makes him a very dangerous man. Not only does he have the wit and the power, the knowledge and resources, but he’s not hindered or limited by the inconvenient roadblock that stops other people that is, conscience and regard for others. Believe me; he shies away from nothing to achieve his goals.”
He is a bit like you, Jo says to herself.
“The other thing that is characteristic of him, also in no small measure due to his early life, is that he sees the world as his playing field. Everything, every living soul, every establishment, every political party, every government institution is his pawn. For Georg Schwartz, the world is one huge chessboard. Everything is disposable. Everything and everybody removable as he sees fit. Obviously, he’s not the first man in history with this particular psychological profile. Nor the last. You find them in every boardroom and top political echelon, the rampant ones going for military coups, genocides, and high crimes. They’re everywhere.”
Jo smiles at him. “Francis, it sounds as if you really admire this man.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. Sometimes, I even think that we’re two peas in a pod, just using slightly different means. And that is mainly because I suspect him of actually acting out of what could be construed as goodwill to the human race. I believe he’s trying to put the world back in order through financial collapse.” He stands up, gesturing grandly. “And out
of the ashes, a new world order shall be born.”
Jo interjects, “Only nobody elected him. By his own admission, he’s playing God.”
“Exactly! That he does. So, all in all, I actually do suspect him of wanting to correct the world, but where we try to protect and prevent, he enhances the madness and plays into the bad and the corrupted, pumping it bigger and bigger until eventually, it destroys itself. But sometimes, I do wonder which of us is the smartest.”
Chapter 12
The dinner is held at the Hotel Mount Lavinia just outside Colombo. Balancing precariously on a promontory overlooking the Indian Ocean, the hotel represents the quintessence of colonial splendor. All sumptuous spaciousness, white columns, polished wood floors, intricately carved wood ceilings, and wide windows opening to the ocean breezes. It’s any British imperialist’s wet dream about a good night out. For Jo, it’s a nightmare. Every polished piece of wood, every starched linen, every meal cooked to perfection is yet another piece of the black-white power imbalance of the world. And the guests! They are parodies of the upstanding citizen, caricatures of the influential power players. Greedy, frightened, rather unintelligent people clinging to the last vestiges of the glory that once was. They resemble old Hollywood actresses, powdered like Marie Antoinette, and believing themselves to be the beauty she once was.
Jo’s face shows none of these thoughts as she and Francis are welcomed by the Danish ambassador and his wife on the wide stairs. Francis thanks them for the invitation. The ambassador compliments Jo’s looks. She’s styled to the fingertips and looks nothing like her usual working self. As they make their way through the reception toward the dining room, she cannot help but notice that people are watching them. They do look the part, she in a petrol-blue strapless cocktail dress from Lanvin; Francis in a midnight-blue dinner jacket.
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