The Capitol Game

by Brian Haig

  Mia opened her mouth to argue, then abruptly changed her mind. “I’d like you to listen to this tape,” she suggested with a swift nod at one of the agents seated beside Graves. The agent dutifully got to his feet, went to the corner, and pushed play on the tape machine.

  During the short interval before the tape kicked in, Mia quickly mentioned, “The first voice belongs to Mitch Walters, CEO of the Capitol Group. He’s talking to Daniel Bellweather.”

  Those intriguing names brought everyone forward in their seats.

  WALTERS: “So how did it go last night?”

  BELLWEATHER: “Splendid. You should’ve seen Robinson’s face when he learned I had the seat beside him.”

  WALTERS: “He’s a dumb jerk. Always was. Any administration that would make him secretary of defense is blind or stupid. They really scraped the bottom of the barrel with that clown.”

  BELLWEATHER (after a short, derisive laugh): “True enough, but don’t piss in a gift horse’s mouth, Mitch.”

  WALTERS: “Think he buys it?”

  BELLWEATHER: “Beginning to. We’re not quite there yet. Probably halfway, though.”

  WALTERS: “What’s he doing about Jenson?”

  BELLWEATHER: “She’s toast. He’ll get her off our ass in the morning.”

  WALTERS: “Jesus, that’s great. Just great. You really played him.”

  BELLWEATHER (sounding quite boastful): “Yeah, isn’t it? What did you do for the cause last night?”

  WALTERS (sounding annoyed and whiny): “Jackson had me slaving all night. Destroying evidence, concocting stuff to pin this mess on Wiley.”

  Mia waved a hand and the agent abruptly shut off the tape.

  If there were doubts about what Jack was offering, they instantly disappeared, but those doubts gave way to a thousand questions and suspicions.

  Mia’s old boss demanded, “Where did you get that?”

  “We don’t answer anything until we have a deal. But you’re probably wondering, so I’ll tell you. It’s a sampler, a small taste from a huge banquet. Jack has thousands of them. He’s unearthed one of the biggest frauds in history, and has a fabulous library to prove it.”

  Rutherford II unfolded his veiny hands and began rubbing his jaw. “How do we know your client didn’t commit any criminal activity?”

  “He didn’t, but you don’t. It doesn’t matter. Jack gets all the immunity the whistleblower act affords. He’s free from prosecution for anything related to this case.”

  “It may be the law, but that’s ridiculous.”

  “And it’s nonnegotiable,” Mia shot back. “No immunity, no deal.”

  The inspector general was a lawyer himself, he knew a smart lawyer when he saw one, and Mia was certainly very smart. And smart lawyers always have a backup. He took a stab and asked, “And if we say no?”

  “This is only hypothetical and should by no means be construed as a threat,” Mia responded quickly, obviously prepared for that challenge.

  The faces on the other side of the table grew uneasy—of course she was about to threaten them.

  “But I imagine,” Mia continued, “that my client has already made arrangements to ship all his files and tapes to some very reputable news organizations. The New York Times and Washington Post come to mind. As you know, both adore big government scandals.”

  She paused to inspect the faces across the table. They hadn’t accepted their defeat yet, but they definitely didn’t like what they were hearing.

  Mia cleared her throat and turned up the heat a little more. “Again, I don’t want to be too specific at this point, but the tapes will sound even more dramatic on TV. Think of a full hour of 60 Minutes. A three-hour special in prime time isn’t out of the question, or maybe six weeks of one-hour specials. There’s so much to cover, so many embarrassing avenues to go down. Believe me, everyone in this room has an incentive not to let that happen.”

  “Like what?” Margaret Harper asked.

  “For instance, you might not like to be blamed for failing to stick up for an honest, hardworking agent when you ordered her off this case.” Harper suddenly looked away. In light of the tape she just heard, she suddenly felt ill. How would that look splashed across the front page? Did Mia mention 60 minutes? Mia redirected her eyes at Rutherford II. “Or here’s another bomb. The office of the inspector general was thoroughly infiltrated by the Capitol Group. Only this afternoon one of your employees was arrested for pilfering my files and providing certain very sensitive papers to a private investigating firm working for the Capitol Group. And he wasn’t their only paid plant. Would you care to hear more specifics?” Mia asked very nicely.

  Nobody wanted to hear more.

  “Believe me,” Mia continued, “I’ve listened to less than a tenth of the tapes. Half the Pentagon directory gets mentioned in one way or another, none flattering.”

  “Oh, man.” The inspector general was now rubbing his eyes. A migraine that seemed to have come out of nowhere was splitting his head open. “How bad is it?”

  “Nixon and Watergate come off like a bunch of kids playing with matches in the woods compared to this.”

  “Who’s implicated?”

  “Who isn’t? A lot of people sound absolutely terrible. But at worst most were only stupid, gullible, and careless, not crooked. There’s plenty of those, too, but you know the press and the great American public. They might not be discriminate in their judgments.”

  The faces on the other side of the table conveyed a mixture of terror, shock, and disbelief.

  Mia decided to push them across the brink and said, “The congressional inquisitions alone will last months. Enough of their own members and staffers are implicated, they’ll need to put on a large public lynching just to tamp down the outrage. And I’m afraid it’s not just the polymer. The Capitol Group has dozens of other Pentagon contracts. Jack’s tapes picked up lots of nasty tidbits about corruption related to other deals.” She paused for a moment to underscore her client’s generosity. “He’s throwing those in free of charge.”

  The inspector general asked, “Why are you bringing this to us? Why not your FBI friends here?”

  Graves pushed forward in his chair. “It was part of the original bargain when she first came to see us,” he announced from the end of the table, evidently very much on her side. “She fed us a few cases that were important to us. That investigating firm she mentioned, it employs about a dozen Bureau alumni. All retired or otherwise separated, but it’s somewhat embarrassing for us.”

  “And the rest is for us?” Harper asked, her eyes moving from Mia to Graves. They were down to bargaining the particulars now.

  “She was very demanding on that point,” Graves admitted. “Mia insisted on a clear division of spoils. You’re going to need plenty of perp walks of your own to counter your humiliation.”

  “That’s what she said?”

  “More or less. Remember, she was a DCIS agent at that time. I’ve heard a few of those tapes. She’s not bluffing. It’s uglier than you can imagine.”

  “So the deal is, we get to clean our dirty laundry, you get to launder yours?” Rutherford II asked, suddenly warming to the subject.

  “The esteemed members of Congress belong to us, too,” Graves insisted with an uncompromising look.

  “Sure, no problem,” answered Rutherford II quickly, actually more than happy to concede that point. Congress funded the Pentagon and Rutherford admitted, “We have no interest in pissing off any of our congressional supporters.” Then the two officials swiftly broke into a comfortable negotiation about indictments and courts and jurisdiction and other legal matters.

  It didn’t escape the notice of either Harper or Rutherford II how generous Graves was being. The big foot of the FBI was growing soft, they thought before the truth dawned on them—as Graves said, he had already listened to a bunch of the tapes. The spirit of intragovernmental generosity had nothing to do with this. There were more than enough indictments to keep everybody busy for
a very long time, enough that he was worried about overload at this point.

  “So we have a deal?” Mia asked at the first pause in their conversation.

  Harper and the inspector general exchanged looks. The looks weren’t all that hard to read, the decision not at all hard to make.

  Mia calmly placed a paper on the table and slid it across to the inspector general. Rutherford II lifted it up and Harper leaned over his arm; they read it together, a short, precisely worded agreement that listed all of Mia’s conditions, from the ten percent reward, to Jack’s amnesty, to Mia’s permanent separation from the DCIS. The IG scrawled his signature and handed the agreement back across the table.

  Mia tucked it in her briefcase, then said, “Now I think it’s time to hear from Jack what you’re buying.”

  30

  Jack opened with a smiling invitation. “Feel free to interrupt anytime you like. Do you have any questions to start?”

  “Plenty,” Harper fired back, unamused. “But let’s hear your tale first.”

  “Sure. As Mia mentioned, I was a partner at a private equity firm in New York. About twelve months ago, I met Perry Arvan. He was hunting for capital to get his company through a rough patch. A midsize chemical company bleeding cash didn’t fit our investment profile and my firm wasn’t interested. Neither was anyone else Perry approached. I spoke with him after his pitch. He was quite dispirited, facing the prospect of bankruptcy at that point. I offered to find a buyer or a major investor willing to stake cash for a slice of ownership. A fairly common arrangement on Wall Street.”

  “And that’s what brought you to the Capitol Group?” one of the DCIS aides asked.

  “That and my good-faith belief that Arvan Chemicals fit squarely into CG’s portfolio of turnaround prospects. A few months later I approached the Capitol Group, but from the beginning CG was most interested in the polymer Perry invented. Actually, that was all that seemed to interest them. To be frank, I did little to discourage that interest. Why should I? My job was to represent the interests of my client Perry Arvan. So I shared the results of a study completed a year before that put the polymer in the best light.”

  Harper pointed an accusatory finger at Jack. “You mean you deceived them?”

  “I meant what I said,” Jack answered and seemed to smile. “Understand, ladies and gentlemen, the Capitol Group is in the takeover business. They’re not novices. They’re one of the most experienced firms in that line of business. They make their fortunes gobbling up companies and chewing them up. They had time and more than enough opportunity to conduct a thorough due diligence before they moved in.” Jack paused, then said, “Had they ever asked me if there was another report on the polymer, I certainly would’ve shared the final report with them.”

  Yeah, yeah, right, Jack, the looks from across the table were saying.

  “Why didn’t they?” another aide asked.

  “Greed, fear, impatience. They were afraid another big firm might get interested. They didn’t want to lose Arvan, and I suppose they didn’t want a bidding war that drove up the price. So Mitch Walters and a few others decided to launch a quick, dirty, very unfriendly takeover.”

  Jack paused and looked around for more questions. None, not yet, though there were plenty of skeptical expressions across the table.

  “I was very opposed to this and told them so,” Jack explained with a sad look. “Then Mitch Walters called me. He had a tape, the fruits of an illegal wiretap, of Perry making a phone call and discussing plans to call some private investors and sell off partial ownership of the polymer in exchange for cash. Perry was looking for a white knight to fend off CG’s takeover, Mitch told me. It was an opportunity, and he didn’t want to let it go by.”

  “An opportunity?” Harper asked.

  “As a public company, this would be a serious violation of various securities laws. It was Mitch’s intention to, in his words, grab Perry’s balls and force a quick, nonnegotiable sell.”

  “You’re saying it was extortion?”

  “Yes, and I strongly advised him not to do it. I wore a wire, incidentally, and have that conversation on tape. He invited me to a private meeting with Perry where he dropped the hammer. He gave Perry no choice—prison or sell—and Perry caved in to every demand immediately. He sold the company and the polymer for a hundred million.”

  “Then he fled,” Harper mentioned to anybody in the room not in the loop on this story, which frankly was nobody. “He took the money, rented a big boat, and went into hiding in the Caribbean.”

  Jack immediately corrected her. “That’s not exactly right.”

  “Then where is he?”

  “Nowhere near the Caribbean. Never was. Try New Mexico with his wife, in a beautiful rented lodge in Taos. Perry’s wife gets seasick. He hates the sun, loves the mountains. He’s living under a false identity until this gets cleared up.”

  “Oh, spare me. An innocent man has nothing to fear,” Harper insisted, shooting Jack another condemning expression. All these evasions and double-talk, she wasn’t buying a word of it. Jack and his coconspirator, Perry Arvan, had committed serious crimes and were now trying to squirm out of it. “And innocent men don’t hide behind false names,” she threw in, lowering her bifocals and looking down her nose at Jack.

  Jack looked amused. “Something I failed to mention. A few weeks before that meeting my house was broken into. While I was down in D.C. being wined and dined and courted by CG, a group of hired thugs picked the locks, entered, spent three hours searching, and left a few gifts in their wake. All this is on film. They left bugs in my phones and hid about five pounds of marijuana they could use to blackmail me in the event I didn’t hand CG the sale.”

  The faces across the table showed their surprise. Suddenly this was more than a simple case of graft. It was burglary and blackmail, and Lord knew what else.

  Jack shrugged and continued, “My private security firm discovered all of this, thank goodness. You can imagine my surprise, so of course I contacted my client and warned him there was a chance his phone and home might also be bugged.”

  The Fibbies at the end of the table broke into loud chortles of laughter. Jack gave them an innocent look and the laughter grew louder. The sound bounced around the room a moment. They already knew the broad outline of the story. The details, though, were priceless. It was impossible to keep a straight face.

  “You’re saying Arvan never called any private investors?” Harper asked when the laughter died down.

  “I’m saying Perry might’ve discussed a vague intention to do so, but he never had the slightest intention to follow through.”

  “But—”

  “Forget the buts. If someone was illegally eavesdropping on his private phone calls and was misled, then committed an illegal act based on this information, where is Perry’s crime?”

  Mia, ever the helpful lawyer, noted, “I’ve researched the statutes, so I’ll save you the trouble. No laws were violated, none.”

  “Arvan still committed fraud.”

  “How?” Jack asked, still with that pleasant smile.

  “He withheld the final report. He deliberately misled CG about the polymer.”

  “He was never asked about the final report. Nor was he ever given the opportunity to provide it. Once CG forced him to sell, he was goose-stepped off the premises and barred from ever returning.”

  It was dawning on everyone in the room what an amazing tale they were listening to. It further dawned on them that Jack here was a very clever boy. So far, he had confessed to no wrongdoing, but he had certainly shadow-danced right up to the line.

  “You see,” Jack continued, “CG jumped into the sale more or less without looking.” He held up his arms and shook his head from side to side as if it had been painful for him to witness. “They were so greedy and arrogant, no serious due diligence was done. They fired most of the workers, booted out the executives, and immediately kicked the polymer into production.”

  Mia helpfull
y added, “Perry set aside thirty million of his cut to pay bonuses to the fired workers after the Capitol Group promised them severance but reneged.”

  “And what did you get out of it?” Harper asked, looking at Jack.

  “I was a limited partner. I got twenty million in cash as a finder’s fee, and twenty-five percent ownership of the company that produced the polymer.” He proudly waved a paper in the air they all assumed was the contract he had signed with the Capitol Group.

  “Whose idea was the twenty-five percent?” the IG asked.

  “Mine,” Jack confessed without embarrassment. “I insisted on a big piece of the action. I fought damned hard for it.”

  Nobody asked why. The answer was obnoxiously obvious. The role of a confidence man is just to do that—to build confidence in the sucker. By battling hard for a big stake of ownership, Jack was conveying that the polymer was a sure thing. The idea that he had outsmarted the best brains in the Capitol Group was immensely entertaining, though nobody smiled.

  “How did you get the tapes?” Rutherford II asked, almost incredulously.

  “Well, by then I had… let’s call them serious trust issues with my new partners. They had burgled my home and obviously weren’t above blackmail and extortion, and God knows what else. As part of the contract, I had an office in CG’s headquarters—a small, out-of-the-way cubbyhole on the second floor. It afforded me a building pass and an opportunity. These people showed no compunction about breaking laws; I decided to protect myself. I wore a wire almost every time I talked to them. I recorded all phone conversations.”

  “And that’s the source of all these tapes?”

  “A handful of them,” Jack admitted.

  “And the rest?”

  “Almost every time I made my rounds around the headquarters I sprinkled listening devices around. I placed four in Mitch Walters’s office. Another three in each of the firm’s conference rooms, including the one on the top floor where the senior executive and board meetings are held. Believe me, those are some of the more captivating tapes.”