Terminal Value

by Thomas Waite

  “You too, Rich.”

  * * *

  May 16, 9:30 a.m. Boston

  Sarah opened the door and walked in. “You’re in late today, aren’t you?” She looked at her watch.

  “Yeah,” Dylan answered curtly. “What’s up?”

  Sarah sat on the corner of his desk. “I just wanted to quickly review your calendar today, but I can come back later if you like.”

  “No, that’s okay. Sorry to be short, but I just have lots on my mind. What’s on the calendar?”

  She shrugged off his indifference. “Well, it’s actually pretty light. You have a couple of calls to field, at ten and eleven, and then a video conference this afternoon at three.”

  “Okay.” It hadn’t escaped Dylan’s notice that Sarah was trying hard to keep his schedule fairly open. He appreciated it.

  “Oh—and you might want to spend some time going through your e-mails,” she added as she turned to leave. “I’ve had a few people call wondering if you ever got them.”

  He frowned. Ever since joining Mantric it seemed like he received at least fifty e-mails a day. He used to be pretty good about staying on top of it, but he had recently fallen behind. “Okay, I’ll do that this morning. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Door open or closed?”

  “Closed, please.”

  She nodded and closed the door behind her.

  Dylan turned back to his computer and called up his e-mails. He shuddered at the long list: over two hundred unread messages. As he started plowing through them, he noticed how many were a back-and-forth discussion of some particular problem. Most had been resolved without his involvement. It was as if he were already out.

  He remembered his conversation with Matt and felt the anger rising in his mind. His thoughts wandered back to the weekend as he and Heather watched the videos over and over until they were almost memorized. He knew he would never receive Tony’s e-mail. It was time to stop beating his head against that wall. He had secondary proof that Art and Christine were heavily involved in some scam, but no proof as to what it was. All he knew was that he would give anything to find it. He also feared they were involved either directly or indirectly in Tony’s murder. Time to do some research. He opened up his web browser and Googled the Securities and Exchange Commission website: a vast archive of stock market history and data. In response to the great stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression, Congress had established the SEC in 1934 to protect investors.

  As he looked through its site, Dylan noted that the primary mission of the SEC was to protect investors and maintain the integrity of the securities markets. If he could find hard evidence that Mantric was cooking its books to fraudulently boost its stock price, the SEC would certainly be interested. He wrote down the address of their Boston office.

  Dylan searched through the site looking for the Office of Internet Enforcement, commonly known as the “Internet fraud squad.” It had been created to combat the opportunity the Internet had created for stock swindling schemes. Dylan added the Washington, D.C., number of the director, Steve Markes, to the contacts list of his new Tracfone.

  Then he went to www.fbi.gov.

  Thirty minutes later he pushed back from the desk and walked out of his office. “I’m going down for a Coke,” Dylan said as he passed Sarah’s desk.

  “I can get you one,” offered Sarah.

  “No, thanks, I’ll get it myself.”

  Dylan left the office and took the elevator down to the second floor. When he arrived, instead of going to the cafeteria, he turned left and slipped into an empty conference room, where he pulled out his Tracfone.

  “Hi,” Heather said. “You okay?” The sound of an espresso machine roaring in the background and customers being called to pick up orders assaulted Dylan’s ears.

  “Yep.” He heard clinking sounds. “Where are you, anyway?”

  “I’m at a restaurant. Had my meeting. It went okay, but nothing much to report. He didn’t work on that account. Just Rob and the team. And he knew nothing about LC.”

  “Okay.”

  “But he has suspicions. He says to check out a scandal involving a company called Cendant.”

  “I vaguely recall something about that company, I think. I’ll check. Anything else?”

  “Nope. Just doing research in my new and very public office while I wait for my eleven o’clock.”

  “Be careful.”

  “You too.”

  * * *

  May 16, 10:30 a.m. Boston

  Back at his computer, Dylan popped open his Coke and Googled Cendant. Over 100,000 hits. He read the detailed report about the company and its “irregular accounting practices” over the course of three years. Once it was discovered, Cendant’s stock dropped in market value by fourteen billion dollars in one day. It also triggered one of the largest shareholder lawsuits in history.

  Dylan scanned the report until he reached the section that indicated that the CFO had kept a schedule the management team used to track the progress of the fraud itself. Dylan pushed back quickly from his desk, and his mind rushed over the details. “Holy shit,” he said out loud. “Schedule B!”

  * * *

  May 16, 11:30 a.m. Boston

  “Hey, Heather.”

  Heather, lost in her laptop, jumped when she heard her name.

  “Whoa! Didn’t mean to scare you!”

  “Hey, Matt. Sorry. I guess I was pretty absorbed in my work.”

  Matt sat down in the chair that Rich had occupied earlier. “I like your new office. The décor. The staff. An upgrade.”

  “Agreed.” She smiled. She had always liked Matt, and hated what had happened to him.

  “Did you get booted too, or are you just playing hooky?” he asked with a lopsided grin.

  “I needed the air. After Friday—Jesus, Matt, I’m sorry. Dylan did not want to send that letter to you.”

  “Hey, I understand. Dylan wants to get to the bottom of this LC mess, and he can’t do it if he resigns, so I had to be the one. I believe him.” He shrugged. “Besides, I’ve been expecting this for days. Things just aren’t right there, Heather. But hey—I already wiped my office computer,” he joked.

  “It’s all so incredible. I just wanted to see you face-to-face and for you to know that, somehow, all of this is going to work out.”

  “Look, Heather. I’m done with Mantric. I don’t care about being fired. Except for one thing. All I honestly care about is finding the SOB who sold us out to LC and proving it wasn’t me or anyone on my team. If they hadn’t fired me—”

  “You’d have worked it out eventually?” Heather cut in.

  “Well, I think so. I felt really close to discovering something, something I mentioned to Dylan about coding—” he faltered.

  “Matt, I think you have it exactly right. I think you were fired because you were on the verge of working it out. I need you to tell me everything you did after your conversation with Dylan on Friday.”

  Matt’s eyes widened. He nodded slowly, collecting his thoughts.

  * * *

  May 16, 2:00 p.m. Boston “How did it go?” Dylan asked, holding the Tracfone close to his ear.

  “Okay.” Heather whispered. “He’s a little upset, but not as angry as I expected.”

  “That sums Matt up. Did you get his itinerary from Friday?”

  “Yeah. He didn’t tell Rob he had been fired. Rob told him to go home, eat something, pull down the blinds, and go to bed, and he’d send him the files when he woke up and checked in.”

  “Hmm,” Dylan said, gathering his thoughts.

  “He said he went out like a light and woke up at about six. He found an e-mail from Rob saying, and I quote, ‘Bad news, Matt. Got an e-mail from Art saying I was to have no further communication with you about company business. What’s going on?’”

  “What did he say to Rob?” Dylan asked, his mind racing over the turn of events.

  “He said he didn’t want to get Rob in any trouble.”<
br />
  “Okay. Now with Matt out of the picture, we’ll leave LC to Rob, and we can focus on the real issue—proving who killed Tony and why.”

  “Agreed. Have you discovered anything more that might finger Art or Christine?”

  “I followed up on Rich’s suggestion and checked out Cendant. According to what I read, the company was formed in 1997 by the merger of CUC and HFS. One was a direct marketing company and the other was a franchiser.”

  “And?”

  “Well it turns out they had inflated their earnings by 500 million dollars over the previous three years. That triggered one of the largest shareholder lawsuits in history. Cendant agreed to pay two-point-eight billion dollars to settle, effectively admitting their management team had issued false and misleading statements and sold a large portion of their stock at inflated prices. And get this. The CFO was not only deliberately falsifying the company’s quarterly and annual financial results, he actually kept a schedule that the management team used to track their progress.”

  He heard a slight gasp. “A schedule? Schedule B?” Heather asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Jesus. Do you think Art and Christine would be stupid enough to actually keep a schedule like that?”

  “Nixon was stupid enough to tape-record his conversations, wasn’t he?”

  “Okay. In fact, if we use Cendant as a template for what’s happening here, I think I can add to the picture.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I did a little work myself while I was waiting for my appointments. I’ve built a spreadsheet model. You know, loading all our consultants by rank, the billing rates they charge, and an estimate of the average hours they should be billing. I started with our San Francisco office. Based on the number of consultants there, I calculated that they should account for about ten percent of our revenues.”

  “And?”

  “It wasn’t even close. And, since I’ve been out there a lot, I happen to know there are a number of consultants who aren’t working on any projects at all.”

  “Christ.”

  “There’s more. Then I did the same exercise for all of our offices. I even used a very conservative estimate of the hours they are billing by rank, a good fifteen percent below what we’ve been told. I plugged those numbers in and totaled it up.”

  “Let me guess. That wasn’t even close either.”

  “Not by a country mile.”

  Dylan was stunned. He wanted to ask her if she was sure she’d run the numbers right. But of course she was.

  “Dylan, do you remember when we were at Docks and I told you how enthusiastic those investment bankers were about our stock?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I checked out all the major investment sites and message boards. You wouldn’t believe it. There are tons and tons of postings playing up Mantric and how hot we are and how high our stock is going to go. There are even rumors being posted that some of the big firms like IBM are taking a look at acquiring us.”

  “Acquiring us?” he said skeptically. “I haven’t heard anything about that.”

  “That’s my point. It’s as though someone is spreading rumors on purpose.”

  “Maybe they are. Maybe that’s another part of the whole campaign.” Dylan sat back and rested his head on the sofa, then jerked back upright. “Heather, does this mean what I think it does?”

  “It means we’re on to them.”

  “Yeah. Only we just don’t have the damn evidence. And, if we are correct, the bigger question is: Did Tony know? If he did, then we have strong evidence of a motive for his death.”

  “Maybe it’s time to talk to the cops.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it’s time to let in some sunshine on these guys and expose the truth.”

  “And how are we going to do that?”

  Dylan paused. “Heather, I have an idea.”

  “What?”

  “I need to think about it a little more. And I’m going to need help.”

  “You know I’m here.”

  “Someone from outside the office. You still have the key to my place?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good, I’ll meet you back there by five o’clock to discuss it. It’s time we turned those bastards’ own tactics against them.”

  Chapter 28

  May 17, 7:00 a.m. Boston

  Dylan arrived early at the Boston office. He seated himself at his desk amid the quiet of the morning; the normal buzz of activity was absent. He opened his laptop and watched the stock market prices stream across the bottom of the screen. Mantric’s stock soared to an all-time high of $101.75 a share, and for Dylan that meant that, on paper at least, he was now worth over sixteen million dollars.

  He shook off the thought and forced his mind to refocus on just two things: business and Tony—and how they crossed paths. He obsessed about Art and Christine’s probable involvement with Tony’s death, and the ongoing Hyperfōn fiasco continued to raise its ugly head and beckon him.

  He expected to hear from Art at any moment, a curt letter demanding his resignation—or maybe from Christine, unapologetically nasty as she fired him and laid the blame on Art. He was staring at the streaming figures on the monitor when his screen flashed, letting him know a caller wanted to speak to him on the LAN. It was Ivan. He got up, closed his door, then reseated himself. He clicked “accept,” and Ivan’s grim face appeared.

  “Good morning, Mr. Johnson,” Ivan said, his accent more chopped and precise than normal.

  “Morning,” Dylan said, his tone barely civil. “What do you want, Ivan?”

  “I would like to discuss the Hyperfōn situation with you.”

  “Would you? Okay. Go ahead.”

  Ivan cleared his throat. “I would prefer to do this in person.”

  “Well that could be difficult, because I’m in Boston, and—”

  Ivan cut Dylan off. “Yes, I know. As am I.”

  Dylan caught himself short, wondering why Ivan was in Boston. He cursed under his breath. “You know you can have your secretary call my secretary and—”

  “Mr. Johnson, please. Will you come to Tony’s office?”

  Dylan noticed a subtle change in Ivan’s expression. Not threatening, but more pleading. He gave a curt nod. “I’ll be right there.” He signed off and left his office.

  The sound of his steps echoed as he walked through the empty hallway. He recalled the last time he had gone to Tony’s office—he’d found Ivan dismantling his friend’s computer. He hesitated outside it, then opened the door.

  Ivan sat in a chair behind the desk, arms folded and head bowed. Dylan glanced around. The empty office, now stripped of any evidence of its former occupant, contained only a desk and two chairs. A cold and empty feeling swirled through the pit of his stomach. He stepped in and closed the door.

  Anger bubbled up from his gut like bile. “So why do you give a fuck about Hyperfōn?”

  Ivan raised his head and regarded Dylan as an unwelcome pest. “I don’t. I had to say something to get you here.” He glanced around the room. “Where we can talk.”

  Dylan snorted. “You’re kidding. Now you’re worried about someone snooping in my office, after what happened last week and what’s been happening for months?” He shook his head in disbelief. He pulled up a chair and sat in silence, waiting for Ivan to take the first step.

  “We have a big problem,” Ivan said.

  “Really? What a brilliant revelation!”

  “You refer to what happened last week. You are speaking of Mr. Smith’s firing?”

  Dylan cast an icy stare across the desk.

  “I did nothing, Mr. Johnson.” Ivan looked at him with a pained expression. “I don’t think you appreciate the difficulty of my position.” He rose and walked to the window, his back to Dylan.

  “I think I do. You’re playing both sides for your own benefit.”

  “Not benefit. Survival.” He turned around and faced Dylan. “This is a difficult time, Mr. J
ohnson. The moral issues are . . . ambiguous.”

  “Right. Because it’s hard to decide whether or not to turn in a murderer.”

  “Sometimes, yes, but not in this case. Unfortunately, I do not have any substantive information leading me to identify the murderer.”

  Dylan scrutinized Ivan’s face. He saw questions in his eyes. Was he lying about knowing who murdered Tony? Was he wondering what Heather had seen? The man’s granite face left little room for answers. Only his eyes displayed fear—and perhaps a bit of sadness.

  “So what did you want to talk about?”

  Ivan hesitated for just a second. “I wanted to see if you have made any progress in your investigation of Tony’s death.”

  “Nothing that points away from Mantric, if that’s what you mean.” Dylan tried to stay one mental step ahead of Ivan, but felt the man’s breath on the back of his neck.

  “Have the police told you anything?” Ivan asked.

  “I’m actually avoiding the police. I guess you know about that.”

  “You guess wrong, Mr. Johnson. The people I am avoiding are not the police.”

  “Well, if you lie down with swine—”

  “You criticize me?” He lifted his chin. “You are such a successful young professional, aren’t you, Mr. Johnson? With the world in the palm of your hand. Money is your god. You think you are so different from Art Williams, from Christine Rohnmann, from me? How closely have you examined your motives? Because from where I am sitting, you are well on your way to becoming a second Art Williams.” His tone was not rude, just stating the facts as he saw them.

  Dylan bristled: he knew that Ivan’s angry words might well be true. Again, he thought he saw a moment of fear, crossed with desolation. “What does Art have on you anyway, Ivan? The way Art talks to you—his condescending attitude. It’s pretty clear he’s holding something over your head.”

  Ivan returned to the desk and sat down, leaning in toward Dylan. “You couldn’t even begin to imagine my situation.”

  “Fine. So again I ask, what do you want?”

  Ivan’s jaw clenched. “I want to ask you to warn me when you make your move.”

  “What move?”