The Inverted Pyramid (An Alex Vane Media Thriller, Book 2)

by A. C. Fuller

  She ran over and hugged him, long and hard. "Why didn't you wake me?"

  "I just . . . you were sleeping so soundly."

  "What did the police say?"

  "They checked out Bice's apartment. Nothing. No sign of him. They're doing what they can."

  He sat on the bed and took off his shoes and jeans. "Throw me my shorts, okay?"

  Greta grabbed his running shorts from the door handle of the closet and tossed them across the room. "I'm coming, too," she said.

  "Good, because we need to talk."

  After they'd both dressed in their running gear, Alex grabbed his Blackberry from the pocket of the pants he'd just changed out of.

  Greta stood in the open doorway, blocking his way. "You're not bringing your phone."

  "I always bring it when I run. And the police said to keep it with me, in case something happens."

  She moved aside and Alex stepped out, locking the door behind them.

  "Fine," she said. "But no answering it unless it's the police."

  They made their way down the stairs, emerged onto Broadway in their bright running gear, and began a slow jog east toward Central Park. The late-morning sun was bright, the light harsh, as they passed between buildings where the sun flooded through.

  As they crossed Amsterdam, she said, "I just know you're going to get calls from Lance or James or Camila, and . . ."

  She trailed off and sighed.

  He glanced at her and noticed three deep creases across her forehead. She'd told him once that they formed whenever she was deeply upset. He'd been appreciative of the physical clue, but all he wanted was to alleviate the stress causing them.

  "I promise. I'm ignoring it."

  "But you're gonna look at the caller ID every time—"

  "And immediately ignore it, if it's not the police. I promise."

  They crossed Columbus and began to pick up the pace. They entered the park at 106th Street, and, a few minutes later, made their way onto the dirt track at the north end of the Central Park Reservoir.

  He tried to catch her eye. "Greta, why didn't you . . ."

  "What?"

  She slowed, but he kept the pace steady. He knew they were on the verge of an argument, but also knew that the more out of breath they were, the less likely it was to get ugly. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "Tell you what?"

  "The baby."

  They swerved around a large group of elderly joggers clogging the path, then slowed slightly.

  "How'd you find out?"

  "Bice. He's been reading your e-mails."

  She stopped suddenly in the center of the path. "What?"

  He stopped as well. "Please, can we keep running? We have so many things to talk about. In the last twenty-four hours, I've had to tell the same story to the Bainbridge Island PD, the Seattle PD, and, this morning, the NYPD. I will tell you everything, but for now, can we just have this one conversation?"

  He started jogging slowly and glanced back long enough to see that she was following.

  Finally, she said, "I wasn't certain when you left."

  "But you suspected?"

  "Yeah."

  "Is that why you were acting strange?"

  "I'd like to believe that it had more to do with you going to that conference. And I was right about the conference, by the way. But, yeah. I was freaking out. I'm still freaking out."

  They sped up along a straightaway, running in silence. The long curve began at the south end of the reservoir, and they slowed to a walk.

  He turned to her. "But why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you talk to me about it? If you were freaking out, that's something we could have talked about."

  "Honestly, I thought you'd freak out. I don't know, I just felt like thinking about it on my own for a bit."

  She stopped at a slatted wooden bench just off the path. "Let's stretch."

  He pulled one foot back to his butt, bracing himself on the bench with the other, as she pressed both hands into the bench and extended her legs back as far as they would go behind her, stretching her calves.

  "I didn't really freak out," he said. "But I was coming down from horse tranquilizers, so maybe I might have otherwise. And I think I was more freaked that Bice was the one telling me."

  Greta's eyes were closed and Alex noticed that the three creases were back. She breathed deeply, inching her feet back to lengthen the stretch in her calves.

  After a long minute, they spoke at the same time.

  "Do you want to have a baby?" he asked.

  "Did you sleep with her?" she asked.

  They both laughed slightly, then she said, "You first."

  "No," he said. "Not even close."

  "And yes," she said. "I do."

  She stood and went into Standing Bow pose. "I wasn't even thinking about a baby. Now, it just seems like the next thing that's happening."

  She closed her eyes when she reached the apex of the pose.

  His phone vibrated and he reached into his running jacket, silenced it quickly, then eased it out. Lance. He put it back in his jacket.

  The creases had returned. "What are you worrying about?" he asked.

  "The creases?"

  "Yeah."

  Greta ran her free hand gently over her forehead, and the creases lessened. She ended the pose and stepped right in front of him. "It's you I'm worried about. For most of my life, I thought I'd be someone who didn't have kids. I kinda saw myself as the awesome aunt who would take the nieces and nephews to see Sir Mix-a-Lot or Marilyn Manson and not tell my brother and his wife about it until it was too late. But now, this is what's happening. And I want it. I really do. So, the only thing I'm worried about is you."

  Alex took her hand, and they continued walking on the path around the south end of the reservoir to the east side of the park. Puffy white clouds were reflected on the surface of the reservoir, causing a double-sky effect.

  "When were you gonna tell me?" he asked.

  "My friend sent me this link to a single-mom blog the other day. A mom on there wrote about when she told her boyfriend she was pregnant. He got real quiet for a day, distant. Then, finally, she was like, 'I need to know if you're in.' And he bared his soul. He told her he'd gone quiet because his head was spinning out of control thinking about the next twenty years. Juice spilled on rugs, choosing a car seat, parent-teacher conferences, chaperoning school dances, college tuition—all his fears about responsibility. And she was like, 'Okay, that's normal enough.' Couple days later, though, he still hadn't told her if he was in. Finally, she called him at work and said, 'I need to know, right now, in or out. If you are in, I'll get you a Xanax and a bottle of red wine, and we'll figure this out. If not, we can set up a direct deposit for child support, shake hands, and part ways as friends.' Anyway, she wrote that he said he was in, he took the Xanax and drank the wine, but disappeared anyway a month after the baby came. Took her a year to start getting child support."

  "First of all, I would never do that. The disappearing part." He stopped and leaned on the chain-link fence surrounding the reservoir. "But what was your takeaway from all that?"

  She sighed. "I don't know, this is a super intense time for us. Your life was threatened again, and my privacy was violated by this lunatic. And now, I find out you knew about our pregnancy before I had the chance to prepare myself emotionally for you knowing. I'm certain I want to be this child's mother." She gestured to her abdomen. "I know that this is happening, but I'm not sure that we are happening."

  "I wish I could say 'I'm in' and mean it. I really do. I just . . . I guess I'm spinning like the guy in the story."

  They were both silent for a long time, staring out across the reservoir.

  "I think the takeaway is, I'm not willing to pressure you to decide what you want your relationship to be with me or our child. I want to skip the are-you-in-or-are-you-out ultimatum and get straight to the wine. But, I can only have a quarter glass every few days, so, can we splurge on the good stuff once in a w
hile?"

  They both laughed.

  His phone buzzed again and he pulled it out, planning to silence it, but it was a text from James. He wanted Alex to get up to the office as soon as possible.

  "It's James," he said. "Wants me up there to put this story together."

  "So, you're gonna run it?"

  "We're gonna run the part about Bice, about Bhootbhai, about Gathert and Plutarch Capital. But not any of the details about the . . . material that Bhootbhai uncovered."

  "So Lance sided with you?"

  "He and I are cut from the same cloth. We're both old school. James is . . . I don't know . . . Anyway, I gotta get up there to do this story."

  "And—"

  "And I love you. I just need a few days with this."

  53

  Tuesday, September 21, 2004

  As Lance read over their story, Alex descended the five flights down from James's apartment, then strolled toward the bodega on the corner. He'd been up for thirty hours writing and fact-checking the story with James, and they were out of coffee.

  The dawn was cool and slightly overcast. Delivery trucks were double parked on both sides of the street, and in the distance, Alex heard sirens. The sounds were intense, as if his head had been cleared out so that everything echoed inside it.

  He nodded at the man behind the counter as he passed. "Morning, José."

  At the back of the store, he stood for a moment, confused, before remembering why he was there and turning to stare blankly at the coffee. On a normal day, he would have stopped on the way in to read the headlines on the rack of newspapers at the front of the store. But as he stared at the varied cans and bags of coffee—a wide selection for a corner market—his mind was fuzzy. He tried to read the labels, but the words blurred together in a black-and-white haze.

  He reminded himself over and over that he was there for coffee and wondered whether he should be buying cups of brewed coffee or a package of ground. After what felt like minutes, he grabbed a brown can of "espresso roast" from the shelf and approached the cash register.

  "Two large coffees, please."

  "Alex, you look terrible," José said, smiling. "James forcing you to pull all-nighters again?"

  "You'll know why later today. Big story." The words echoed strangely in his head. "You hear what happened to James?"

  "No."

  "You will."

  "What happened?"

  "Check our site in a few hours, and you can read all about it."

  José began filling two large paper cups from a silver dispenser behind the counter. "Alex, you know you have coffee in your hand already, right?"

  Alex looked down, then placed the can on the counter. "Yeah. I . . . um . . . I guess I decided to get some coffee for the walk home, too. I think I'm more tired than I knew."

  José smiled and nodded, set the two cups on the counter, and tapped at the cash register. "Eleven sixty-five."

  Once Alex had paid, he picked up the two coffees and headed toward to door, where he stopped at the rack of newspapers. He scanned the front pages of the Post and the Daily News—stuff about the Yankees and some celebrity he'd barely heard of—then studied the front page of The Times. The familiar font felt foreign all of a sudden. He had trouble deciphering the headlines as the morphing letters seemed to bend into unrecognizable shapes.

  José called out. "Alex. You forgot the can of coffee."

  He turned to José, then glanced back at The Times's largest headline, that ran across its top center and right columns.

  Suddenly, it came into focus.

  Massive Conspiracy to Stack FCC Uncovered

  At Least Three Telecom and Media Companies Involved in Apparent Election Fraud

  Denver Bice Sought for Questioning in Battery Park Murder

  Then he read the byline.

  Cooper Whyte

  Alex stumbled over to the counter, but instead of picking up the can of coffee, he set down the two cups.

  José asked, "Alex, what's wrong?"

  Alex didn't hear him. He grabbed the paper and staggered out into the street.

  A light rain had started, almost a mist, and his skin prickled as he reread the headline. His mind was working slowly and his sense of time was off. For a moment, he wondered why James had given their story to The Times, and how The Times had gotten it to print so quickly.

  But, of course, James hadn't.

  They'd been scooped.

  Massive Conspiracy to Stack FCC Uncovered

  At Least Three Telecom and Media Companies Involved in Apparent Election Fraud

  Denver Bice Sought for Questioning in Battery Park Murder

  A mysterious offshore corporation named Plutarch Capital has been working throughout the election season to discover embarrassing secrets from the personal lives of President Bush and Senator Kerry. The company planned to use the information to blackmail the victorious candidate to stack the FCC over the coming years in order to create laws more favorable to business interests in Internet and mobile communications, according to corporate documents and e-mails obtained by The Times.

  Plutarch Capital is headed by former Standard Media CEO Denver Bice, who is being sought by the NYPD for questioning in the murder of a man whose body was discovered in a Battery Park porta potty on the afternoon of September 11, 2004. Until recently, the body had been unidentified, but The Times has learned that the body is that of Aloop Sarin, known in online hacking communities as Bhootbhai, or "Ghostman."

  According to incorporation records and leaked e-mails, while day-to-day operations of Plutarch Capital were managed by Denver Bice, the firm was created by board members of at least three of the world's top media and telecom companies, though only William Gathert's name appears in official corporate records. Furthermore, evidence suggests that attempts to conceal the existence and purpose of the company were made over a sixteen-month period.

  According to multiple sources close to the investigation, Bice—who was fired from Standard Media in October 2002 after a story surfaced implicating him in two murders—is suspected of killing Sarin on the morning of September 11. Sarin had accepted payments from Plutarch Capital over a three-month period in exchange for hacking the personal phones, computers, and bank records of multiple members of the campaign staffs, including President Bush and Senator Kerry themselves. The murder, sources say, occurred after a dispute over payments.

  The details Sarin uncovered, because they were obtained illegally and are not newsworthy, will not be printed by The Times.

  A staffer within the Bush administration, who declined to be named, said he'd never heard of Plutarch Capital. "We haven't been contacted by anyone, and it wouldn't matter anyway. President Bush has nothing to hide."

  But staffers within the Kerry campaign said they'd detected a security breach over two months ago and had since changed passwords and e-mail servers.

  "We figured it was people within the Republican Party," one senior member of Senator Kerry's team said.

  Media experts and political historians contacted by The Times say that the significance of this breach, and the reasons behind it, can't be overstated.

  "This is one of the most brazen attempts to thwart the democratic process that American business has ever engaged in," according to Sadie Green, Executive Director of the Media Protection Organization, a group that lobbies against corporate control of media and Internet technology. "Three or more American companies are trying to blackmail their way to complete control over the Internet and mobile technologies, and to rig an election while they're at it."

  Multiple calls to Plutarch Capital's only listed phone number have not been returned.

  Attempts to reach Denver Bice for comment were unsuccessful.

  Gabriel Sanchez, a spokesman for Standard Media, called the accusations "absolutely false."

  He continued, "Standard Media denies any knowledge of, or responsibility for, any actions by any companies, including Plutarch Capital. Like all Americans, we value free and
fair elections. Denver Bice was relieved of his duties as CEO over two years ago, and Standard Media has had no formal or informal business relationship with him since."

  But e-mails obtained by The Times indicate that at least two current Standard Media Board members were in direct communication with Mr. Bice over a three-month period from January to March of 2003.

  Among the plans discussed in the e-mails: to create an offshore company managed solely by Denver Bice, to use the company to influence the candidates during the election process, to seek assurance from candidates that they would appoint FCC members approved by Plutarch Capital. And, in perhaps the most shocking revelation, "to gather and release damaging information against either candidate who refuses these qualified candidates."

  Alex stopped reading. His phone was vibrating. A text from Sadie Green: See The Times piece yet? I'm sorry, they called me at ten, right before they went to print. I couldn't not comment when they told me it was running. How the hell did they scoop you?

  Alex sprinted back to the loft and up the five flights of stairs. He found James sitting at his desk, Lance pacing around the behind him, mumbling and swearing under his breath.

  "James, I . . ." He was out of breath.

  "I just read it," James said. "How the hell?"

  "We both just read it," Lance said. "That bastard Cooper!"

  "He had ninety percent of our story."

  For the next hour, Alex called everyone he knew at The Times, including Cooper Whyte, while James tore apart the loft, looking for recording devices. Lance made a few half-hearted attempts to reach people he knew at The Times, but gave up quickly to nap on the couch.

  When both Alex and James had given up, they sat next to each other on the couch in the living room.

  "We just got scooped on our biggest story ever," James said.

  "I just—"

  "How the hell did they get it?"