by Thomas Waite
“Not particularly,” said Dylan. This was his chance. It was a complex deal, but he knew he had a strong hand. “But if that’s the price of nailing you, I’ll just have to pay it. What else have you got?”
“Consider this,” Ivan responded. “If my surveillance activities are in any way curtailed, as they surely would be if Mr. Williams found out Miss Carter has seen samples of the videos, he will close ranks with those closest to him, and that will directly affect your ability to find out who killed Tony. And I assure you it wasn’t me.”
Heather shook her head. “Why should we believe you?”
Ivan’s brow furrowed, and he slumped back against the desk. “I had my suspicions. Ever since Tony’s death, the situation screamed murder to me, and I began my own investigation, trying to get what you Americans call ‘an angle.’ Now—” He pointed a hand at them, almost accusingly. “You now confirm my suspicions. If there’s a murderer in the company, I want to find him and get him out of here. I want to prove I had nothing to do with this.”
Dylan eyed him closely. An hour before, Ivan had been a suspect. Now, he wondered if someone else was the culprit. But who? “It looks like we all want the same thing.”
“So what do we do?” asked Heather, not willing to release Ivan as a suspect.
Dylan nodded. “We’ll keep quiet. For now.”
Ivan’s face reeked of contempt, and also of a chilling amusement. “I’ll destroy this,” he said, picking up the CD and breaking it in half in his hands. “The videos in that archive belong to Mantric, and I can’t let you go around hacking into my files. You may have this back.” He picked up Heather’s briefcase and held it out.
Dylan, sensing Heather’s unwillingness to go near Ivan, grabbed it from him. Ivan moved to the door then turned. His face reflected the old unpleasant aloofness for which he was known.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said, and left. His footsteps echoed down the empty hall.
“You get the files?” whispered Dylan as he watched Ivan disappear in the distance.
Heather put a hand to her pendant. “As much as I had room for.”
“Good.”
“Dylan.”
He looked at her. There was relief in her expression—and anger, too. “What?”
Heather gripped his arm. “You can’t trust him!”
Dylan shook his head slowly. “I don’t, but I want him to become comfortable, to let down his guard. He pointedly avoided giving me an alibi; he skirted the issue. If he is doing his own investigation, even if he did not kill Tony, he may know who did or have a strong suspicion based on his insights into the people around here. And that may be to our advantage.”
Chapter 25
May 13, 10:00 a.m. New York
Dylan and Heather rushed back to the twenty-fifth floor, where they encountered nothing out of the ordinary. They remained silent as they reached the bullpen, and Dylan touched Heather lightly on the elbow, steering her toward his office. To his surprise, she gave him a warning glance and pulled back.
“We need to—” he began.
“Dylan!”
He whirled around, heart in mouth, and saw Rachel hurrying toward him. “What’s up?” asked Dylan, trying, with little success, to sound casual.
“Matt needs you. He told me to tear the building down if I had to.”
Dylan glanced around and spotted Heather’s back, moving in the direction of the lounge. He turned back to Rachel. “Okay.”
He gathered himself as he walked across the bullpen. Two weeks earlier, the ebb and flow of the office, his relationships with his clients and his staff, had been all-important to him. Clutter frustrated him, and now he felt as if he were walking through an alien landscape.
He sat at his desk and logged onto the LAN. Matt was there, waiting. Dylan acted as if nothing had happened, showing the appropriate response to Matt’s comments and questions. His head ached throughout the process.
“Hyperfōn?” Dylan asked. He seemed to see Matt’s face at the far end of a dark tunnel.
“Yeah. Everyone’s worked like a dog on this—through the weekend and non-stop yesterday. Christ, I think we turned over every stone, pulled in every favor everyone on the team had. They know what’s at stake.”
Dylan’s mind multitasked as it wandered back to Heather and why she had walked away from him. Was she all right? What had happened with Ivan before he had shown up? “And?” he asked Matt.
“And it’s paid off.” Matt lowered his voice.
Dylan’s blood began to pump. He leaned in toward Matt and lowered his voice. “Okay. Good. How?”
“You know how when we write code for our clients, there are embedded comments most people can’t read? Stuff for the techies in case there was some kind of a glitch or something?”
“Uh-huh.” Dylan waited for more.
“Well, as you know, we always put tags in the source code, tags that make it clear who wrote it and who’s licensed to use it. To protect the client. And us.”
“And?”
“And,” Matt said in a soft voice, “well, I kind of hacked into LC’s site.”
Dylan shoved back from the desk quickly. “You did what? Jesus, Matt! How exactly did you get your hands on script from LC?”
“Actually a lot of it is sitting right there on their website. All you need to do is fire up your browser and view the source. But the important stuff—” Matt ran a hand across his bristled chin. “Well, I told you the part about calling in favors.”
“I see.” Indeed he did see. It suddenly dawned on Dylan that he had crossed over to the dark side himself by sending Heather in to hack the Mantric files. Now here he was feigning dismay at how Matt had stolen a competitor’s intellectual property. But it was way too late to go back. “So why the hell didn’t you look for these tags in the first place?”
“We did. Every piece of code, every page of script. We ran searches for every single tag that would possibly identify Mantric or Hyperfōn.”
“So that’s how you figured it out?”
“No. We didn’t find a thing.” Matt’s voice broke, and he laughed a little. “Then last night, when I was almost asleep sitting at my desk, it dawned on me. We started working on Hyperfōn long before we ever came to Mantric.”
“Jesus,” whispered Dylan. He sat back in his chair and realized Matt had gone back to the old MobiCelus tags and tried them instead.
Matt nodded in silent agreement. “Yeah. So I came in early and ran the searches again. And what do you know?” He choked. His hands shook. “Hey, presto! The stupid code on a simple end-user log-in error page was riddled with fragments of MobiCelus tags—tags we wrote to protect Hyperfōn. Man. I should have thought of that sooner.” He laughed, then coughed. “They should have, too.”
“Take it easy, Matt.”
Matt grimaced. “Not possible. You do understand what this means, don’t you? Someone from Mantric sold us out to—”
“Hey!” said Dylan sharply. “It doesn’t mean that at all. Some hotshot at LC could have stolen the code themselves, or someone at Hyperfōn could have snatched it.”
“That’s very reassuring,” said Matt sarcastically. “This is a bombshell.”
“Just let me think a minute.” Bombshell indeed. LC had not magically beaten Hyperfōn to the punch, and it didn't look like an inside job at Hyperfōn, either. Someone at Mantric had taken the Hyperfōn business and given it to LC, probably for a considerable amount of money. But what good did that do? They still could not actually prove Mantric was responsible for the theft. It might even be someone in his own division. “Fuck,” he breathed softly.
“Exactly.” Matt slumped back in his chair, looking dazed and defeated.
What a time for this to happen! Dylan’s mind tore through multiple options. A year ago, he would not have hesitated to bring the staff together, along with Rob and Heather and Tony. They would brainstorm for an hour and come up with the best way to find out whoever had done this, no matter what the cost. Bu
t now, what if he made the accusation but couldn’t prove it? Wouldn’t he simply be giving Art an excuse to fire him? No, he needed hard proof. Otherwise he would be out with nothing but the shirt on his back, and Tony’s murderer would never be found.
“Dylan, I think it’s probably best if I resign.”
“No, you’re not going to do that. We’re not done yet. And we’re not going to mention this to anyone, either.”
Matt’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding?”
“First we need to find out whether it was a sell-out or a theft. Who else knows about this?”
“You and me.”
“Okay. Then keep it to yourself. Of course, I’ll report it to Art when I absolutely have to, but I want that to be when we know for sure what happened. If this gets out now, it only hurts us. Plus it would make it harder to find out the truth. Okay?”
Matt drew a hand across his mouth as if to wipe away his surprise. “Okay. But what do I do?”
“You need to focus on personal connections between the MobiCelus employees who had access to the Hyperfōn project and LC. Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing.”
“Except Rob—right?”
“Of course. We need to be sure no one is overlooked. Rob has a lot on his plate and could use the help.”
“OK.” Matt pulled himself up as if standing at attention.
“Good. Call me if you find out anything. And, Matt, do whatever you have to do, but remember, do it quietly. Good luck.”
“Thanks, boss.”
“Don’t thank me. We still have to figure this out.”
Dylan hung up and began reorganizing his thoughts, allowing the memory of Ivan to flow back into his mind like a tide encroaching on an open beach. He had a swift image of Heather standing tall and beautiful, a look of angry triumph on her face and one hand clenched around the flash pendant. He pulled out his cell phone.
“Heather,” he said when she answered. “You okay?”
“Sure.” Her short, curt answer troubled him.
“I was worried. I was afraid you might be—”
“Listen, Dylan, I’m pretty busy. I’m on my way out the door to catch a shuttle back to Boston, and I really don’t want to talk to you. Do you understand?”
“What? But—”
“I said I was fine. Just because we work together doesn’t mean you have to check up on me. Okay?”
He hesitated. “Okay.”
“Good.” She hung up.
Dylan stared at his phone. Call time: twenty-two seconds. What the hell was going on? Then he had a thought. What an idiot he was! Was there someone in her office? Someone she didn’t want to know what they had found or that they were working together? Could someone have been listening to their conversation? Was that why she reacted that way?
He considered racing out the door to fly back to Boston with her, but he needed to be alone for a while to think, to take time to unclutter his mind and put everything in perspective. He picked up a sponge basketball and threw it at a small hoop mounted on the back of his door. He repeated this activity with precision, all the while opening each file in his mind, reorganizing it, and, when satisfied with the process, going on to the next file. He continued to throw the ball at the hoop, but several of the files would not cooperate—the Hyperfōn file, Tony’s murder, and his position in Mantric.
His mind refused to be of assistance. He feared discovering that, by joining Mantric, he had become party to a colossal fraud, and he feared he would never find out the truth about Tony. He put the ball away and punched “three” on his keyboard.
Rob answered after four rings, “Hi, Dylan, what’s up?”
“I just wanted to alert you I’ve asked Matt to help you look through the LC-related files.”
“Yeah, he’s already stopped by.”
“Good. Is he there?”
“Hell no. I sent him home for some sleep. He’s a wreck.”
“Okay. Well, I just wanted you to know. When he comes back in, you and he should double-check each other’s work.”
“Right. We’ll get on it as soon as possible.”
“You haven’t found anything?”
Rob laughed. “Do you think I’d be sitting here if I had?”
* * *
May 13, 7:05 p.m. Boston
Dylan finally caught the five-thirty shuttle back to Boston, and he arrived home still feeling unsettled and directionless, still trying to figure out what was up with Heather. He slid the knot of his tie down and slipped it over his head. He took off his sweaty shirt, removed his belt, and was kicking off his shoes when the doorbell rang. In another life, he might have let it ring. But this was not another life, so he wandered over to the front door. It might be Matt, with news about the Hyperfōn fiasco. Or it might be. . . .
He yanked open the door. “Heather!”
She gave him a quick kiss that only partly allayed his fears. “Did you just get in?”
“Yeah, about ten minutes ago.” He led her into the living room. “I would have called, but—” He sat down on the sofa and shot her a pained look. “You were so—”
“Yeah,” she said, easing herself into an armchair. “Sorry if I came off like a bitch. It was all I could think of to say to stop the conversation. I can’t believe you called me!”
“You weren’t alone? That was all I could think of to explain things.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I was alone. But my God, Dylan. We can’t talk on the phone about what happened, about anything that’s going on at the office. If Ivan secretly videotaped Art’s meetings, then he wouldn’t think twice about listening to phone messages or taping other employees.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I only thought of that after you hung up.”
Heather laughed, shaking her head. “Dylan, you should know I’d never talk to you like that without a reason. I figured it wouldn’t hurt if anyone who might be listening got the impression we weren’t on the best of terms.”
Dylan thought about her comment. She was right. “I know. Even Prometheus warned me. No more talking about what we’re doing, either in the office or on a Mantric phone.”
“Or e-mail,” added Heather.
“Well, that takes us right back into the nineteenth century.”
“Not quite.” She reached into her laptop case and pulled out a couple of cheap flip phones. “This one’s for you. I’ve already put my number in it. If we want to talk, we use these—okay?”
“Excellent.” Dylan opened the little phone and pushed a few buttons. “Tracfone, eh?” They were disposable and favored by criminals and terrorists. “Wish I’d thought of that. You did right. It’s a good thing, too.”
“Maybe the danger of being taped was more obvious to me, given that I’d just spent half an hour watching Ivan’s spy videos. My God, who knows what these people are up to or where else they may have placed some bugs?” She leaned her head on her hand and took a deep breath.
He eyed her critically. The strain on her face was clear.
“Okay, we need to pull ourselves together and calm down.” He looked at the pendant that hung around her neck. “I think we should watch those vids.”
“Right.” She slipped the pendant from around her neck, tugged gently on the USB plug, and slipped it into the port on Dylan’s laptop.
“Jesus,” said Dylan, reviewing the long list of files. “You got a lot.”
“This thing has blazing speed. When Tony gave it to me, he told me it could hold twenty-five hours of video. I guess we tested it today. Tony should have patented this baby. It’s a monster.”
“Where’ll we start?”
“Well, obviously, I haven’t seen them all yet. But they’re in chronological order. Let’s start at the top.”
Dylan clicked on the first .avi file, dated April 29, and sat back as the media player started up. A still image of Art and Ivan sitting in a green-walled room appeared.
“Do you recognize this room?”
“Not sure. It could be th
e conference room off his office.” He glanced at Heather, then hit the space bar and the video began.
“Tell anyone who asks we’re just checking on our own security before we go public,” Art said, consulting his notepad.
“Consider it done, Art.”
Art stared at Ivan for a moment, then stood up and paced. “We’ve worked too hard to let some little screw-up destroy our plans.” He turned around. “So you’re going to go over every possible scenario of what could go wrong. Got it? The records, Schedule B, my private accounts. I want every single possibility looked at. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“And I swear to God that if somebody in your group screws up this deal, I’m going to cut your balls off myself.”
“I understand.”
“Good. Whatever’s going on, I want it nipped in the bud. And I want it done now.”
The video ended.
“Any of that mean anything to you?” asked Dylan.
Heather’s headshake was so slight Dylan was not sure he saw it.
“Maybe they were talking about Rich finding out about the reserve?”
Heather said nothing.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she said, half to him, half to herself. “What are these bastards up to? And what the hell is ‘Schedule B’?”
Dylan leaned back in his chair. He studied Heather’s aquiline profile. “I have no idea.”
She turned her face to him. Heather was a beautiful woman; he had known that since he had first laid eyes on her. He had admired her quick wit and intelligence, but he had never before realized just how strong a woman she was. He placed these thoughts back in the “Heather” file in his mind and returned to the business at hand.
The next several videos were more mundane and much longer than the first. It didn’t take them long to understand they were watching regular meetings between Art and Ivan, or Art and Christine—though why they were special enough to be recorded and archived remained unclear.
