“I’ll let you make the introductions,” he said.
“Thanks again for lunch,” she said, and waved as she drove away, and Logan thought about her as he walked to his car, amazed at how easy and fun it had been. She hadn’t disappointed him in any way, and the word that came to mind as he thought about her was terrific.
Fiona had had a good time at lunch too. When she got back to her spot in the parking lot and parked her car, she glanced at her BlackBerry and saw that she had a message from the investigation service they had used. She listened to it before she got out of her car. It was from the head of the company, and he said it was urgent.
She called him back as soon as she got to her office, and he told her he wanted to come in and see her that afternoon.
“That urgent?” Fiona asked him.
“I think so.” They had taken long enough to get back to her on it, and now they were in a hurry. She knew she would be in meetings until six o’clock, and told him it was the best she could do, and he promised to be there then. And when she left her last meeting of the afternoon, he was waiting for her in her office. It had been a long day, and she was tired. And she was still paying her dues after her vacation.
She invited him to sit in a small meeting area with her, and he handed her a thick envelope with the initial results of their investigation in it, and she asked him to sum it up so she didn’t have to read it while he waited.
“You may want to close the door before I do,” he said carefully, and she smiled at the espionage aspect of it. Everyone else had left for the day, including her assistants.
“Do you know who the source of the leak was?” she asked as she followed his advice and closed the door to her office, although she felt silly when she did.
“Yes, I do,” he said seriously. “I got final confirmation of it yesterday. And I checked it again this morning. Everything in the report has been verified, and we used no wiretaps or illegal sources. It’s all been handled just as you requested, legally and cleanly.” She nodded, satisfied by what he was saying.
“Why don’t you tell me who it is? I’ll read the report in detail tonight at home.” She felt a ripple go down her spine as the head of the investigation looked at her. He was retired FBI, and had been highly recommended.
“Your leak on the board is Harding Williams,” he said simply. Fiona stared at him in disbelief. It wasn’t possible. They had to have made a mistake. He was pompous and disagreeable, and he hated her, but he was a man who followed the rules, and his integrity was above question.
“Are you sure?” Her voice was a squeak when she said it. “The chairman?” she asked, as though she needed to confirm who he was. It just couldn’t be true.
“The chairman,” he said with a somber look. “He’s been having an affair with a very attractive young woman for the past year. She’s a journalist, and it may have started innocently, but she’s been bleeding him for information. I don’t know if she’s blackmailing him or not. I don’t think so. But they meet once a week at a hotel, and whatever else they do, he shares information with her. Maybe he just thinks it’s pillow talk, but she uses it. And he must have known it since the leak about the Larksberry plant. She actually told one of my operatives that she has a source straight from the boardroom at NTA. She’s proud of it. And he’s been hinting to his barber that he’s having an affair with a much younger woman. She’s thirty-two years old and a knockout.” He reached for the envelope, took out a file, and extracted a photograph of a beautiful girl with a stunning figure. She had dark hair and light eyes, and in the photograph, she was exhibiting a fair amount of cleavage. Fiona stared at it for a long time and then handed it back to him, and he put it back in the envelope and sealed it.
“Are you sure he’s having an affair with her?” Fiona said in disbelief, and he pointed at the envelope.
“It’s all in there. I have photographs of them together, two of them kissing. He seems to be crazy about her.” He was more than twice her age, and all Fiona could think of was the subdued woman he was married to, whom he bragged about being married to for forty-four years. And he had treated Fiona like a slut for twenty-five years, for a harmless affair she’d had at Harvard in her early twenties. And what Harding was doing was so much worse. He had violated his position of trust as chairman of the board, broken confidentiality, jeopardized their stock, and hurt the company. He had disregarded and disrespected the most important rules of the board, and made a lie of everything he claimed to believe in. He was a hypocrite and a liar, and he was sleeping with a thirty-two-year-old girl, a journalist, and sharing direly sensitive company secrets with her. Fiona felt as though she were ricocheting off the walls and could hardly believe what the investigator had told her. But she knew it had to be true. The investigator had photographs of him going in and out of the hotel to meet her and receipts for the hotel room, and the girl in the picture was the one who had first printed the leak, with her byline. There was no question. Fiona stood up with the envelope in her hand and thanked him. She was going to read it all carefully that night before making a decision, but if what he said was true, there could be only one outcome. Harding Williams would have to be fired from the board and as their chairman. She wanted to read the material, and then she would call an emergency meeting of the board. Even though she didn’t like him, and he had tormented her for years, this was not the outcome she had hoped for, nor the one she expected. She would never in a million years have guessed that the leak on the board was Harding.
She left the building with the investigator and drove home to Portola Valley. She felt as though someone had shot her out of a cannon. It was all so hard to imagine. She couldn’t understand how he could violate the ethics and morality he claimed to believe in and adhere to. It not only proved her sister’s theory about men and power, and Logan’s thoughts on the subject too, but it reminded her of the old adage, “There is no fool like an old fool.” And without question, Harding Williams had been a fool. She didn’t even have a sense of victory about it, of having discovered the source of the leak; she was just disgusted by it. She had thought he was better than that, but apparently he wasn’t. He was as low as you could get, and what he had done was shockingly dishonest.
She didn’t even bother to have dinner that night. She sat at her desk reading the report from beginning to end. And when she finished it, she knew what she had to do. She called Harding at home and asked him to meet with her in the morning.
“I have better things to do,” he said irascibly. “I have appointments tomorrow. I’ll come in the day after.”
“I’m sorry, Harding,” she said in an icy tone. “I need you there tomorrow. Ten A.M.?” She had an eight A.M. controller’s meeting with the CFO, and expected it to last for two hours.
“What’s so important that I need to come in tomorrow?” He didn’t even sound worried, just pompous and unpleasant, as usual.
“I need you to sign off on some reports, and as the chairman of the board, I can only give them to you,” she said, not wanting him to know the real reason she had asked him to come in. And he groused about it, but finally agreed.
“You shouldn’t leave things like that till the last minute,” he complained, but he could hardly refuse her as the CEO.
“You’re quite right, Harding,” she said clearly. “See you tomorrow.” She tried to maintain a neutral tone and barely could.
After that she e-mailed the members of the board and asked them to come in the day after her meeting with Harding. She did not notify Harding of the board meeting, and planned to advise him of it when she met with him in the morning. She wanted an opportunity to speak to him first. But there was very little he could say. They had all the evidence they needed.
She walked around her house after that, thinking about him, and the lies he had told, the fraud he had been, the hypocrite he was. It made her feel sick to think about it. She wasn’t looking forward to the confrontation, but she wasn’t afraid of it either. Dealing with him now was
part of her job as CEO. She had a responsibility to the board and the corporation she worked for, and their stockholders. Fiona never lost sight of what she owed them. And she loved the company and wanted to protect it.
Before she went to bed that night, she sent an e-mail to Logan, to thank him for lunch and tell him that she’d enjoyed it. It felt as though it had been months ago and not that afternoon, so much had happened since. She hit “send” and sent the e-mail off to him. And then she showered, brushed her teeth, and put her night guard in. And when she looked in the mirror and saw herself, she almost laughed, remembering what Logan had said at lunch when she mentioned it to him. “Scary.” It was. And so was Harding Williams. Anyone that dishonest, who violated his ethics and responsibilities to the degree that he had, was truly scary. But now, after what she knew, he could no longer torture her. He had no power over her anymore. And she went to bed, and slept like a baby, feeling as though a thousand-pound weight had been lifted off her shoulders. He had condemned her as a young woman, and been rude to her for all the years she’d been at NTA. And now she knew the truth about him. He had abused his power as chairman, cheated on his wife, and lied to them all. But it was over now. The mighty chairman was about to fall.
Chapter 12
When Harding Williams showed up in Fiona’s office the next day, he strode in without waiting for her assistant to announce him. Fiona was seated at her desk, going through some papers, and expecting him. He was twenty minutes late, and she didn’t care. She had been thinking about him all morning, and had read the investigator’s report again when she got up. She wanted to be sure she hadn’t missed anything important, or even a small detail, but she hadn’t. It was all there, along with the photographs of him with the young woman, even him kissing her in a dark doorway. It made Fiona feel sick when she saw it, and sorry for his wife of forty-four years.
“Good morning, Harding,” she said quietly, as he stood across her desk from her, glaring at her, annoyed that she had asked him to come in. She got up and closed her office door. “Please sit down.” She gestured to the chairs in the sitting area, where she had met with the investigator the night before.
“I don’t have time to waste,” he said brusquely. “I have appointments in the city this afternoon. I can’t run down to Palo Alto every five minutes to please you.”
“That’s fine,” she said, as they sat down. “We can keep this short. I’d like you to resign,” she said in a clear voice. “I think you know why. And I’d like to keep this simple for both of us, and the board.” He looked stunned, by what she’d said and by how smoothly she’d said it. She didn’t look angry or upset, just businesslike and cold. And she met his gaze without hesitating for an instant. “You violated your responsibilities as chairman of the board. You violated the confidentiality agreement you signed, which I’d like to point out to you is a legal document. You jeopardized this company. You gave information to a member of the press, whom you are apparently sleeping with, coincidentally. You’re dishonest and hypocritical, and out of respect you no longer deserve, I’m giving you the opportunity to resign from the board today. And if you choose not to, you will be fired by the board tomorrow. I suggest you cite reasons of ill health. You were due to resign in December anyway, so no one will be surprised. It’s only a matter of a few months’ difference, and ill health is entirely plausible. I’m sure you’ll agree.” He had opened and closed his mouth several times but said nothing as Fiona went on, and he stared at her in outrage, and then stood up and paced around the room. He turned to her then with pure venom in his eyes.
“How dare you speak that way to me?!” He tried to intimidate her, but it didn’t work. Fiona didn’t look impressed by his posturing, and she spoke in a glacial tone.
“How dare you violate this board in the way you did, and give highly confidential information to the press, which affected thousands of lives, and could have caused our stock to plummet, just so you could sleep with some girl half your age, and impress her with what you knew. How dare you!” Her eyes bored into his, and this time the power was hers. Truth was a mighty sword.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blustered, and without saying another word, she stood up and handed him the photographs of him and the young journalist that were in the folder on her desk. He looked like he was going to have a heart attack when he saw them.
“Her byline was on the first leak. That’s enough evidence for me, and it will be for the board too. Who you sleep with is none of our business, but when your lovers start publishing confidential information about this company, given to them by you, then it becomes my business, Harding. You’re a danger to this corporation, and the board will undoubtedly agree. We are bound by confidentiality not to disclose our reasons for firing you, but if you force my hand, I will. I don’t think you’ll want speculation on why you were fired all over the newspapers and the Internet. I wouldn’t in your shoes.” Her eyes never left his, and they both knew she had the winning hand.
“You little slut,” he said in a voice filled with fury, and he was literally shaking with rage. “You whore!”
“That would be your girlfriend, not me,” she said coldly. “And you. I never was. I was an innocent young girl who was taken advantage of by your friend Jed Ivory, and you’ve held it against me ever since. I never liked you either, but I respected you for your abilities, the integrity I thought you had, and your distinguished career. And it turns out that you’re a sham. You’re a fraud, while you brag about being married for forty-four years, and make speeches about morality. You have none. I want you off this board as fast as you can sign your name. You’re a danger to us all.”
“You had no right to have me followed,” he shouted at her.
“That’s not illegal. I assured all of you that no illegal means would be used to conduct the investigation, and they weren’t. You’re a damn fool to be kissing her in public and making a spectacle of yourself. If she were anyone else, I wouldn’t care, although I think it’s disgusting of you, and in poor taste. But the woman you’re sleeping with is a reporter, you shared boardroom secrets with her, and she published them. That’s where I draw the line.”
“Closing Larksberry would have come out eventually anyway,” he argued with her, but they both knew it would have been presented very differently at the right time. Instead, the information had been used to damage the company, turn the public against them, stir up their employees, and ultimately jeopardize their stock. And Harding knew it too. His reporter friend hadn’t used the information well or responsibly, and he was so besotted with her that he had put himself and the company at risk. “If you leak this to the press, I’ll sue,” he said menacingly, but Fiona wasn’t frightened.
“This isn’t slander, Harding. It’s all true. You can’t sue for libel against the truth. It’s an iron-clad defense. And we won’t leak anything to the press if you resign today. You can tender your resignation to the board tomorrow at nine A.M. I called an emergency meeting and I expect you to be there. It’s all over after that.” Fiona maintained a level tone, but he had been shouting at her almost since he walked in. “How you do this is entirely up to you. You can do it cleanly, or make a mess of it. It’s your choice. Personally, I’d go quietly, if I were you.”
“Women like you shouldn’t be running corporations,” he said viciously. “You don’t know what you’re doing.” But the solidity of their stock even in a bad economy said otherwise, and he knew that too.
“I’m not under discussion here,” Fiona said quietly, and handed him a resignation letter she’d had prepared for him that morning. He took a look at it, crumpled it into a ball, threw it at her feet, and walked out of the room. But she knew he would have to sign one like it the next day, or they would fire him. He was through, finished, over. He had been exposed as the dishonest person he was. She picked up the crumpled resignation letter and threw it in the waste-basket as her assistant came in with a worried look. She had seen Harding leave, and heard h
im shouting through the closed door.
“Do you need an Advil?” Fiona laughed at what she said. She had never felt better. She was only sorry she had let him torment her for six years, and make her feel guilty twenty-five years before.
“No, Angela, I don’t,” Fiona said, and went back to her desk.
She had a full day of meetings after that, and another finance committee meeting that night, but she wasn’t even tired when she got home. And she looked fresh and alert the next morning at nine o’clock when she met with the board. They were already assembled when she got there, and they looked concerned and were anxious to know what the emergency meeting was about. And just as she arrived, Harding stormed into the room. His face was red with rage as he sat down and addressed them from the chairman’s seat.
“I want you all to know what kind of person this woman is,” he bellowed as they looked at him in astonishment. Fiona knew what was coming, but she didn’t care. There were no more battles to be fought with him. He had lost the war, and the board members were about to find that out too. “She had an affair with a married professor when she was at Harvard. She seduced him, and lured him away from his wife. She caused him to divorce her. She’s a homewrecker and a slut. She’s an immoral woman and has been all her life.” The board members stared at him after his outburst. He looked deranged.
Fiona spoke up in a calm voice as they looked at Harding and then at her. “The man was separated when I met him. He was a friend of Harding’s. And the professor in question had a habit of sleeping with his students. He divorced his wife to marry another student he got pregnant, which wasn’t me, and broke my heart. I was twenty-four years old, and the girl he got pregnant was twenty-two. He took advantage of both of us, and a lot of other girls like us before and since. That’s not why we’re here today,” she transitioned smoothly, as several of the board members squirmed in their seats. They didn’t like what Harding had said, or the way he had tried to portray her. They respected Fiona, as a woman and as the CEO. “We’re here because our investigators have discovered the source of our leak,” she said calmly. “Unfortunately, Harding is our boardroom leak. He’s involved with a journalist, and has been having an affair with her for the past year. She’s the woman whose byline was on the story. There is no question of it, and I have a copy of the report for each of you.” There was a stack of them on the conference table, marked confidential, with their names on them. She went on calmly from her seat. “I urged Harding to resign yesterday, for reasons of ill health, which would cause very little attention in the press, since he’s due to resign in five months anyway. He refused. I would like to make the same suggestion today, or we can fire him. I don’t care either way.” She turned to Harding then, who was slumped in his chair. He had run out of steam, and every member of the board looked shocked by what they’d just heard. “Harding, do you have anything to say?” She asked the question without visible emotion and appeared to be in total control. There were whispered murmurs from the board members as they each took a copy of the report, and then he spoke up.
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