It had been three years since he’d worn a uniform, yet he had never left his country’s service. At the urging of his superior officer, he’d retired from active duty to work for a company with close ties to the top ranks of government. The company was called Scanlon Corporation, and it did much of the work that the armed forces could not be seen to do itself. The pay was four times what he’d earned as a sergeant first class, and the company offered a 401(k). There were also excellent health-care benefits and a $250,000 life insurance policy. Taken together, it went a long way toward compensating for the retirement on full pay he’d been four years from earning. Wolf had a wife and three kids under the age of seven to keep clothed and fed. Most important, the work was essential to keeping America strong at home and abroad.
For the past two years, Wolf had hunted terrorists in the purple mountains of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the lawless borderlands that separated the two. Finding a bad guy, he’d call in his team of “wolverines,” set a perimeter, and hunker down until nightfall. Out came the iPod, in went the earbuds, and on went Metallica. When Wolf hit a target, he was fuckin’ pumped, mainlining adrenaline.
But capturing the bad guys was only half the job. The other half was interrogating them. Time was critical. Ten minutes meant a player escaping or being captured. It meant an American soldier living or dying. That was the way Wolf saw things. Black and white. He didn’t hold with any of this bullshit about torture not working. It worked, all right. A man would give up his infant daughter when he was being skinned alive. You cannot lie when a superheated Bowie knife is flaying you strip by strip. Sometimes, he still heard the screams, but they didn’t bother him too much.
Duty. Honor. Country.
That was also his credo.
America had given his father, a Mexican immigrant with no money, no education, and no skills, a chance. Now his papa owned a successful dry-cleaning business in El Paso, and had just opened a second store across the border in Ciudad Juárez. He drove a red Cadillac. American doctors had operated on his sister’s cleft palate, leaving hardly a scar and giving her a beautiful face. Now she was married and had children of her own. The American military had taught him the value of sacrifice for a greater cause. It had made him into a man. The day Wolf received his American citizenship was the proudest of his life. He prayed for the President every morning and every evening.
And now an asshole like Bolden was trying to fuck everything up. Putting his nose where it didn’t belong. Associating with a bunch of left-wing kooks who thought they knew better than the men in Washington. He looked around the apartment, at the fly furniture and the kick-ass stereo and the unbelievable view. Bolden had it much too good to be bad-mouthing the system. The Wolf would not permit it.
Seventeen minutes later, he had scoured the apartment. He found only one item of interest: a scrap of paper lying in the wastebasket. The drawing on it was crude, but he recognized it right away. He called Guilfoyle to tell him what he’d found.
“The man’s a snoop,” Wolf added, before ending the call. “He ain’t one to forget what’s been done to him.”
15
I need a list of all companies my core has bought and sold in the last twenty years,” said Bolden, once Althea had taken a seat.
“You want what?”
“A list of companies my clients have bought and sold. The information’s in the offering memos. It’s just a question of going through them and writing it all down.”
“Why are you asking me? Don’t you have an associate you can call, one of those boys who likes to work even harder than you?”
“I’d like you to do it.”
“Sorry, Tom, my morning’s all booked. I’ve got about three of your expense reports to get through first, then—”
“Althea!” The burst escaped from Bolden before he could stop it. He blew out through his teeth. “Just get it done. Please.”
Althea nodded, but he could see that she was angry.
Like half the assistants in the office, Althea Jackson was a single mom working ten-hour days to give her son a better life. A native of St. Martin, she spoke fluent French and just enough Spanish to swear at the cleaning crews when they didn’t leave Bolden’s desk just so. She stood five feet one inch in her stockings and made it a point not to wear heels. Even so, she walked the halls like a queen. She was imperious, haughty, and temperamental as hell. She was also whip smart, efficient, and loyal. In a perfect world, she should have gone to university and graduate school herself.
“Start with Halloran, then go on to Atlantic Oriental and Jefferson Partners. Find the offering memorandum for every fund the companies have raised. At the back, there’s a listing of all prior transactions. Name of company, what they paid for it, what they sold it for, and the rate of return to investors. All I’m interested in are the names of the companies and their principal business activities.”
“What exactly are you looking for?”
“I’ll know it when I see it.”
“If you’d tell me, it might make my work a little easier.”
Bolden leaned forward. “Just do what I asked. I’ll explain it to you later.”
Althea rolled her eyes and exhaled. One more indignation visited upon her. She stood and opened the door. “Your meeting with Jefferson Partners has been moved to the forty-second-floor conference room. Eight o’clock.”
“Who’s confirmed?”
“From Jefferson, Franklin Stubbs, and ‘la Comtesse,’ Nicole Simonet.”
“Your favorite,” said Bolden.
“Too bad she doesn’t look as pretty as her name. That child was just born ugly.”
“Be nice, Althea,” said Bolden.
“Now I have to be nice, too? You know where she’s from? Bayonne, New Jersey. And her thinking she can speak French better than me.”
“You have a very capable network of spies. I’d hate to think what you’ve dredged up about me.” Bolden began gathering together the papers he’d need. “What else is going on?”
“Meeting with the finance committee at ten. Interview with that boy from Harvard at eleven. Conference call with Whitestone at eleven-thirty. Lunch with Mr. Sprecher at twelve. Then—”
“Call him and reschedule. I’ve got other plans.”
Althea raised her eyes from her notepad. “You’re not missing lunch with Mr. Sprecher,” she said in a no-nonsense voice. “No one stands up the head of the compensation committee two weeks before bonuses are handed out.”
“I’ve got a lunch date with Jenny.”
“Not anymore you don’t. This has been on your calendar for a month. He’s reserved a table at Le Cirque and told Martha to clear his schedule until four, and then book a massage at his club at six. He’s planning on having a real good time.”
Bolden tapped his desk. There was no way out of it. Althea’s bonus came straight off the top of Bolden’s. If he didn’t go, she’d never let him forget it.
“Okay,” he said, checking his watch. Jenny would just be starting class right now. He’d catch her in an hour, when she had a break. “Remind me to call Jenny when I get out of the Jefferson meeting.”
Althea was still shaking her head as she left his office. “Oh, and Tommy, “ she called, pausing at the door. “You got something on your cheek. Newsprint or something. I’ll get you a wet tissue to wipe it off. Must have been a real late night.”
Taking a breath, Bolden pulled the piece of paper with the drawing of the tattoo out of his pocket and put it on the desk. He wrote the words “Crown” and “Bobby Stillman” below it, then refolded the paper and put it in his pocket.
It was officially time to stop thinking about what had happened last night and get his head into the job.
“Althea,” he called. “I’m due to fly down to D.C. tonight for that Jefferson dinner. Can you double-check my flight details? What time am I set to leave?”
As Bolden gathered his materials for the meeting, he looked around his office. It wasn’t to
o big, maybe fifteen by ten, one of five lining this side of the forty-second floor. A window looked out over Stone Street and directly into another office building. If he pushed his cheek to the glass, he could make out the East River. Pictures of Jenny, and some of his success stories at the Boys Club, lined the shelves. There was Jeremiah McCorley, currently a senior at MIT, who, Bolden had learned the night before, had just been offered a fellowship at Caltech in Pasadena. Toby Matthews, who was playing baseball on a full scholarship at the University of Texas at Austin, and an academic all-American. Mark Roosevelt, who was finishing his first year at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, the finest diplomatic school in the world. Not bad for a bunch of foster kids from Harlem. Bolden kept in touch with them all, writing e-mails, sending care packages, making sure they had plane tickets to get home for the holidays.
And then there was a picture of Bolden with one who hadn’t made it out. Darius Fell. Chess champion. Punt, Pass, and Kick finalist for the state of New York, big-time crack dealer, hardened criminal, and major-league gangbanger. Darius was the one that got away. He was still out there braving it in the wild. Bolden gave him another year before he was dead or in prison.
To the business at hand . . . Jefferson Partners . . . Trendrite Corporation . . . a five-billion-dollar deal. Concentrate, Bolden.
He picked up a copy of the bound memorandum. It was two inches thick. A code name was written on the cover, which was standard practice for deals involving publicly traded companies. The target company, Trendrite, was the nation’s second-largest processor of consumer data, handling requests for more than a billion records a day. Whenever someone bought a car, Trendrite learned about it. Whenever someone sold a house, Trendrite got the details. Miss a mortgage payment, delinquent with credit-card debt, increase your life insurance, Trendrite made it its business to know that and more; specifically, your name, age, social security number, annual income, place of employment, salary history, driving record, and legal history, plus seventy other points of personal data. Every person in the company’s database—and that meant ninety-eight percent of all Americans—was classified into one of seventy “lifestyle clusters,” among them “Single in the City,” “Two Kids and Nowhere to Go,” and “Excitable Oldies.”
It sold this information to its customers, which included nine of the country’s top ten credit-card users, nearly every major bank, insurance company, and automaker, and lately, the federal government, which used Trendrite’s personal-profiling systems to check out airline passengers. And for all this, it earned three billion dollars a year in revenues, and four hundred fifty million in profit.
The deal was Bolden’s baby. He’d come up with the idea. He’d contacted the company. He’d pitched it to Jefferson. Supervised the road show. Overseen financing. Everything was all set to go. HW’s fees were estimated to top a hundred million dollars. It would be his first big payday.
RM. Real money.
Just then, he spotted Sol Weiss’s leonine gray head loping along at the far end of the hall. He was dressed in a double-breasted blue suit, a silk hankie overflowing his breast pocket, the unlit cigar leading the way. With him was Michael Schiff, the firm’s CEO.
“Althea,” he called again. “What about those flight times?”
He peeked his head out the door and saw her sitting at her desk, crying. “What is it?” he asked, rushing to her side. “What happened? Is it Bobby? Is he okay?”
But she refused to look at him. “Oh, Thomas,” she sobbed.
Bolden laid a hand on her shoulder and was shocked when she knocked it away. He looked up. Weiss and Schiff, and two uniformed security officers, were powering down the hallway. Stone faces all around. It was impossible to mistake their intention. These guys were out for blood. He wondered what poor sucker had got his ass caught in the ringer this time.
“Tommy!” It was Sol Weiss, and he had his arm outstretched and his finger pointed directly toward him. “We need to talk. “
16
Five stories beneath the frozen Virginia landscape, Guilfoyle sat listening to the recording of Thomas Bolden’s phone call to Jennifer Dance that had been made at six o’clock that morning.
“Don’t go,” the woman said. “I’ll take a day, too. Come over to my place.”
“Can’t do it,” replied Bolden.
“I need you. Come over. Now.”
“Jen, it’s a big deal. People are coming in from D.C. There’s no way I can miss it.”
“Okay, lunch then. I’ve got something to tell you, too.”
“Hint?”
“Never. But I’m warning you. I may hijack you afterward.”
“If things go well with Jefferson, I may let you. Lunch. Twelve sharp.”
“Regular place?”
“Regular place. And you? Your arm? Only ten stitches?”
“How did you know?”
The recording ended.
Guilfoyle was seated at his stainless-steel desk on the upper level of the Organization’s command and control room. The room was the size of a college lecture hall and bathed in dim blue light. Technicians manned broad computer consoles on three descending levels. All were men. All held PhDs from top universities in computer science, electrical engineering, or other related fields. All had worked for Bell Labs, Lucent, Microsoft, or a firm of equivalent stature before joining the Organization. The pay was equivalent. It was the toys that lured them, the prospect of doing pioneering work on the most advanced, and certainly the most secret, software array in history.
A dull rumble shook the floor as the air-conditioning kicked in. It might be thirty degrees up top, but the massive array of parallel-linked supercomputers combined with a lack of natural ventilation meant that temperatures were much higher down here.
“Do you want to hear it again?” a tech named Hoover asked from his console.
“Thank you, Mr. Hoover, but I think that’s enough.” Guilfoyle drummed his fingers on the desk, his eyes glued to the crude drawing that had been found in Bolden’s apartment. He sighed, and reluctantly admitted that Mr. Pendleton had been right. Maybe a machine did know better than him. Three large screens occupied the wall in front of him. One showed a projection of a Manhattan city map. A sprinkling of blue pinlights spaced at even intervals from one another formed the outline of a bell covering the lower half of the map. Every few moments, the pinlights advanced along well-marked streets, like some type of newfangled electronic game. An array of three letters glowed beneath each pinlight. RBX. ENJ. WRR. Each pinlight represented one of his men, his location broadcast by an RFID chip (Radio Frequency Identification) implanted in the soft flesh of the upper arm. Besides the recipient’s name, the RFID chip stored his blood type and full medical history.
In their midst, a sole red pinlight flickered faintly.
It was the red pinlight flashing at the corner of Thirty-second Street and Fifth Avenue that interested him. The light jumped erratically from block to block, then disappeared for a moment, only to reappear a few seconds later a half block away. The profusion of skyscrapers combined with the sheer volume of cellular traffic in Manhattan made it difficult to track the weak GPS signals emitted from a cell phone, or in Thomas Bolden’s case, his BlackBerry personal assistant.
The regular place.
“Mr. Hoover. Bring up a record of Bolden’s credit-card transactions for the past twelve months, please.”
“All of them? He’s got a Visa, a MasterCard, and two American Express cards, one personal, one corporate.”
“Leave out the corporate Amex. We’re not looking for a business expense.” In his short time with Bolden, Guilfoyle had pegged him as a straight-up individual. Not the type to put a lunch with his girlfriend on the company’s tab.
“What are we looking for?” asked Hoover.
“Isolate all dining establishments in New York City south of Forty-eighth Street. Drill down to the time of charge. Bracket eleven A.M. to two P.M.”
Though the command and control ro
om was cooled to sixty-eight degrees, he felt hot and unsettled. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and drew it across his forehead. A few moments later, a record of all the lunches Bolden had charged in downtown Manhattan flashed onto the screen. There were twelve transactions in all—fewer than Guilfoyle had expected—and they were spread across ten establishments.
Ten years earlier, the Organization had purchased the nation’s largest processor of consumer loans: credit cards, mortgages, auto loans. Though it had sold the company in the meantime, it had not forgotten to install a “back door” inside the firm’s software to allow unfettered, real-time access to all their customer records.
“Let’s go to Bolden’s ATM records. I’d appreciate it if you’d map them.”
A minute passed. The blue and red pinlights disappeared, replaced by a sprinkling of green pinlights dotting lower Manhattan. Guilfoyle was quick to notice a cluster near Union Square.
“Bring up all restaurants on Union Square.”
Six lights appeared around the perimeter of Union Square Park.
“Did Bolden use his credit card to pay for lunch at any of these?” Guilfoyle asked.
“Negative.”
“Let’s keep looking. Run through all stored phone communications since we began surveillance, ditto for e-mail, run the web addresses he’s been frequenting.”
Hoover grimaced. “That may take a while.”
“Make sure it doesn’t. He’s due to have lunch with Miss Dance in three hours, and we’re going to be there.”
When word of Sol Weiss’s death, and more important, of Bolden’s escape, had reached him, Guilfoyle had been reviewing Bolden’s file with an eye to discovering how Cerberus had kicked him out as a Class 4 offender. Cerberus was the Organization’s watchdog, a parallel-linked supercomputer programmed to search for clues indicating activity that might be detrimental to the cause. It drew from phone records, flight logs, insurance databases, credit histories, consumer profiles, bank logs, title companies, and many other repositories of sensitive information—all of it, officially, in the private domain.
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