“Just the man I wanted to see,” Guy said as he swiveled around in his chair to face them. An unlit cigar was clamped between his teeth. “Can I get you a drink?”
“No thanks.”
“A man who doesn’t mix business with pleasure,” Guy said. “I can respect that, but it can make Alan a dull boy. Bruno, do me a favor would you. Go for a walk.”
Bruno nodded and exited the room, closing the door behind him.
Guy turned to face his laptop, clicked the mouse a few times, and the laser printer perched on the corner of the desk started to make a low whine as it began spitting out pages.
“He’s still broken up about that fight the other day,” Guy said over the sound of the printer. “In his mind, it’s a huge setback to his therapy.”
“Yeah, he told me about it,” Alan said, sitting down at the edge of the bed.
Most of the bed was being used as a makeshift desk in which Guy had lined up dozens of neatly arranged case folders.
“Don’t mind the mess. I’m in the process of doing some spring cleaning. Never saw a point in wasting time coming up with a good filing system and now I’m paying the price for it. Did Bruno tell you about his therapist? Barbara something. Says he’s falling madly in love with her.”
“That was the conclusion I came to.”
“Yeah, well, I hope he doesn’t get his heart broken.” There was a surprising amount of sympathy in Guy’s voice. “Any mistakes he made in the past, I’d say he’s paid his dues. He deserves to find love. Just like the rest of us.”
“What about you? How are things with the wife? Any headway?”
Guy grew introspective for a moment and then said, “She’s got me coming and going. That’s the thing about women. They like to keep you in a state of perpetual confusion. It’s how they hold onto the power. One minute Sheila’s making it sound like we’re getting back together, but as soon as I act like that’s the case, she says she’s not ready to make any decisions. Always one step forward, two steps back, if you know what I mean.”
“That’s why I avoid it altogether,” Alan said. “That, and I’m not very good at it. I’m socially inept in that category.”
“Maybe you just haven’t found the right one.”
“Sounds like something my mother would have said.”
“When it comes to love, we’re full of the same tired old sayings. But that’s mostly because it’s true. You’re fooling yourself if you think you can avoid it. Sooner or later, Cupid’s arrow will hit the bullseye and there’ll be nothing you can do about it. You’ll be a fool like the rest of us.”
“We’ll see.”
“Anyway, enough out of the Lonely Hearts Club.”
Guy turned and snatched the stack of papers from the printer. “This is what you really came for.” He handed the pages to Alan. “You asked me to find out if there had been any reports of stolen equipment from biotech facilities within the past year. I found two. One is a company called Allied Genetics Corporation. I spoke to the public relations rep over there. Talkative lady. Said they had some samples go missing around eight months ago. Monetarily, it didn’t amount to much. They reported it to authorities, but nothing ever came of it. She said it happens more often than a person might think.
“The other company, a place called Sagent BioGen, was less forthcoming. I found them through a police report filed with the San Francisco PD. Something like ten million dollars worth of equipment and supplies stolen. I got the impression they tried to sweep it all under the rug. Turns out, they only reported the theft because the insurance companies require it in order to make a pay out on a claim. Otherwise, I think they would have kept it hush-hush. Company loses that much in equipment, why keep it quiet?”
“So they don’t attract unwanted attention to themselves.”
“Exactly. That sent the red flags flying. So I called and talked to the CEO. Darius Jones. He wouldn’t give me squat. All he would say was that the proper authorities had been notified, and he left it at that. At least he tried to.”
“Tried to?”
“If I let everybody off the hook that easy, I wouldn’t be where I am now,” Guy said. “Hey, follow me out so I can smoke while we talk.”
Guy led them out of the room. He lit up his cigar when they were outside and leaned against the railing as he exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “Nobody wants to give information freely. If they do, then it isn’t the kind of information you need. You have to apply pressure.”
“Pressure?”
“Yeah. Turn the screws.”
Alan was curious. “And how does one go about doing that?”
“It varies. Hypothetically speaking, one might take the liberty of hacking into Mr. Jone’s email and social media accounts. Twitter. Facebook. Gmail. That’s where you start digging, and you keep digging until you find the right kind of dirt. And believe me, there’s always dirt. It’s just a matter of finding it. For argument’s sake, let’s say we found a bunch of racy email threads in Jone’s Gmail account. Some juicy stuff. And the emails weren’t from his wife. Turns out that our tightlipped Mr. Jones has a little side thing going with his secretary. A Mrs. Wanda Blum. Also married.”
“So you came by this information illegally,” Alan said without making judgments.
“See, this is what I was talking about when I mentioned your delicate moral sensibilities.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Good man,” Guy said. “Equipped with this information, I once again spoke to our Mr. Jones and, surprisingly, he was more forthcoming. Apparently, they’re into some heavy shit involving cloning and stem cell research. He made it a point to keep reminding me that none of their research was illegal. Per se. His exact words. ‘We don’t do anything illegal per se.’ But the stuff they’re working on might not be condoned by the scientific community at large. You can Google them and you won’t find diddly squat. They keep it under wraps. My hunch is that scrutiny is like acid to them. They don’t need anybody poking around in their business. But I got him to lay it all out for me.
“Six months ago they had a bunch of equipment and other supplies go missing. Thing was, there wasn’t any sign of breaking and entering. I asked about video surveillance and he said they didn’t have anything. They use remote DVR, so the video footage isn’t even kept on site. It’s captured and then saved remotely on hard drives at another facility.”
“So they should have footage from the night it happened.”
“They should have, but when they went to view it, it was gone. Same night the equipment was stolen, someone sent a virus over the network and infected the DVR system at the remote location. Corrupted the hard drives and wiped them clean. Even took out the redundant back-up systems. Their security technology is state of the art. The company has billions in assets. They aren’t dicking around. Whoever did it was highly sophisticated and would have to have had detailed knowledge of Sagent’s security systems. Internally, everything in the facility works on proximity sensors. Employees only have access to what they need to. There was no sign of tampering with any of the sensor locks.”
“An inside job,” Alan said.
“That’s what I figured.”
“An employee.”
“Exactly, or an ex-employee.
“Did you have him give you info on employees that had resigned or been terminated?”
Guy smiled, tapping ash from his cigar and watching it plummet to the parking lot below. “I’m one step ahead of you. Not only did I get a list, but I also ran background checks on all of them. They had a total of three employees that left the company within the last year. Two resigned and one was terminated. One of the employees resigned because they went to work for another research company, the other one was a female that was pregnant and quit so she could be a stay at home mom.”
“And the terminated employee?”
“You sure you don’t want a drink?”
“I’m sure.”
“C’mon, live a little. Yo
u should have one. Because I think I just found you your lucky break.”
The name of the man who had been terminated from Sagent BioGen six months ago was Graham McKay. He was a thirty-five year old lead biologist who had studied for several years at Cambridge and had then finished out his education at Harvard. He was divorced and had a seven year old son from a previous marriage. His employment at Sagent had started in 2019, and he had remained with the company, eventually becoming one of the lead scientists, up until his termination in late 2023.
“Did Jones tell you why they fired this guy?”
“Reluctantly.”
“And?”
“Apparently, they found out the guy had been giving out company information to a third party. Inventory logs, research data, equipment manifests, you name it.”
“Do they know who he was giving the information to?”
Guy shook his head. “Nope. Whoever it was, they were using a dummy cloud storage account. McKay would funnel data into the cloud and then it would disappear.”
“We’ve got people that can trace that kind of stuff.”
“Sagent didn’t provide specifics to the officials. Other than some of the top level executives within the company, nobody knew about McKay’s clandestine efforts. Even if they had brought it to law enforcement, I doubt they would have gotten anywhere. Whoever was on the other end was no doubt using software to mask their location. Daisy-chain a few proxy IPs together and they’d be jumping all over the place. Most of the service providers won’t budge when it comes to giving out client info without being subpoenaed first, and even if they made it to the next link in the chain, they’d have to keep drilling down. It would take forever. If a person is the slightest bit tech savvy and doesn’t want to be found…then the sad fact is that he isn’t going to be.”
“That leaves McKay himself.”
“Best way to do it. Get it straight from the horse’s mouth,” Guy said. “Not that he would cooperate.”
“Where does he live?”
“Walnut Creek. Suburb outside of San Fran. About an hour’s drive from the city. I’ve had his place under surveillance for the last five hours.”
“That’s a little more involved than I expected.”
“Hey, I wanted you to get your money’s worth. I’ve got friends everywhere. McKay hasn’t shown up.”
“Did he find other work?”
“Not as far as I can tell. But I got access to his bank accounts. Should be in the stack of papers I gave you.”
The sun was starting to sink below the horizon, disappearing behind the building across from them. Alan shuffled through the papers Guy had given him until he found a copy of McKay’s bank account statement. “He isn’t hurting,” Alan said. “He’s got over a hundred fifty thousand in his account.”
“In that account. He’s got close to a quarter-mil in another one. If you look at the transactions, you’ll see that someone has been making regular wire transfers into them on a monthly basis. Sagent shitcanned him six months ago, but he’s still got money rolling in.”
Alan studied the bank statements more closely, focusing his attention on wire deposits that occurred like clockwork over the course of the last eight months. “All the big deposits are coming from a company called Odin LLC. That’s something.”
“Not really. If you do some research, you’ll find out that Odin LLC is a subsidiary of some outfit called The Valhalla Group. As far as I can tell, its operations are based out of Gibraltar. Good luck finding anything on them though. I tried and didn’t get anywhere. I think it’s a dummy corporation. A way to siphon money from one offshore account to another. Odin LLC appears to be an offshore company, too, but it’s registered to do business in a single state. Wanna take a stab at which one?”
“California?”
“Bingo. And the person listed as the registered agent is Graham McKay, with his home address listed as the registered office. There’s a P.O. Box listed for the mailing address and I’ll bet that was setup under McKay’s name as well.”
“That seems pointless,” Alan said. “Why go to all the trouble of trying to cover your tracks just to make a simple mistake?”
Alan was thinking about the fingerprint and DNA samples; how they had left evidence at all the crime scenes.
“Think about it. It probably wasn’t a mistake at all. McKay isn’t paying himself. If he was, that would make him one of the most incompetent money launderers in the world. And I would know. The IRS has hired the firm as an outside consultant a couple of times when they’ve investigated a few of the stickier cases. Tax evasion, money laundering, fraud. I’ve seen it before. The perps always create these dummy corporations to stay off the radar. Transfer funds from numerous dummy companies. Becomes virtually impossible to trace it back to its origins. Especially if you’re dealing with some of the offshore financial institutions. They’re serious about protecting their clients’ privacy. Nine times out of ten, you come up empty-handed.”
“So why set up a dummy company in order to pay McKay and then use his personal contact info? Wouldn’t that lead right to him?”
“Sure. That was probably the goal all along. So that all roads lead back to him. He’s basically what’s known as the fall guy. The patsy.”
“But somebody is still paying him. Maybe to ensure his silence?”
“Either that, or he’s still working for them.”
“He doesn’t work for Sagent anymore,” Alan said. “He doesn’t have inside access. What good would he be to them?”
“He is a scientist,” Guy said, flicking his cigar to the parking lot below. He led them back into the room and began mixing himself a drink. “He had probably passed off all the information they needed before Sagent let him go. Remember, the stolen equipment thing happened shortly after McKay left. Nobody steals that much equipment unless they either plan on selling it to a third party or using it themselves. Whatever happened at Sagent, McKay mustn’t have had any love for them if he was willing to jeopardize his job by committing corporate espionage. Somehow he must have become disgruntled. I don’t think anyone would have had to keep paying him to keep him quiet after the fact. He’s a brain, not a career criminal. He wouldn’t have taken the black mark on his employment history and his reputation just for the big payoff. I think something else would have enticed him.”
It made sense. Graham McKay had been making good money at Sagent BioGen. It wasn’t making him rich, but his salary had been triple that of Alan’s at the GCB. Add in ownership in company stock, the guy wasn’t suffering financially. He had worked his way up to a lead scientist position and had the highest access the company allowed. There was nothing to indicate that McKay’s betrayal had been motivated strictly by financial gain.
“You think whoever these guys are, they used McKay long enough to gain access to all the data they needed, and then poached him to come work for them after the fact?”
“It’s the logical conclusion.”
It’s about the only logical thing about this entire case, Alan thought.
“They steal all of Sagent’s data, steal their equipment, and then steal their lead scientist. Whatever kind of research Sagent was doing, these guys wanted it bad. They’ve gone to great lengths to keep it a secret.”
“We’re talking about millions in scientific equipment. Some of it wasn’t small. Which means it wouldn’t be easy to transport.”
“They’d need a big truck to haul it all,” Guy agreed.
“It’s doubtful they would have taken it far. They would need a place to set it all up. Big enough to house it all with enough power to make it all operational.”
“Like a warehouse or something.”
“If they’re using McKay as the fall guy, wouldn’t it stand to reason that if they were renting out a facility, they would have put it in his name as well? All roads lead back to McKay. That’s what you said.”
“Your logic is sound, Agent Lamb, and I think I know where you’re going with this. And I’m a
ll over it.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a national treasure?”
Guy made a throwaway gesture with his hand. “Ah, shucks, you’re going to make me blush. I like you, too.”
Alan stood up to leave.
“Did you want me to keep my guy casing McKay’s residence?” Guy asked.
“You can pull him. I’ll be paying him a visit myself. I owe you. Big time.”
“If there’s one thing you can count on,” Guy said, plucking a fresh cigar from a small humidor that stood to the left of the laptop on his desk, “it’s that someday I’ll collect.”
Chapter 12
Gant had been less than enthusiastic about Alan’s plan to go to California to follow a lead in the investigation, but it hadn’t hurt that Deputy Director Strickland was breathing down his neck for answers, or that Alan had fudged his reasons for going.
He didn’t like lying to Gant, or lying in general, but he wasn’t ready to lay all of his cards on the table just yet.
Marvin’s cloning theory still seemed preposterous despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Shaky enough that had he laid it all out for Gant, he might be on his way back to the Patriot Inn on involuntary leave rather than sweeping through the clouds on a jet bound for San Francisco.
Before leaving the office, he had let Lucy know where he was going. Unlike Gant, he had told Lucy the truth. He had explained the equipment theft at Sagent and Graham McKay’s possible connection.
Lucy had listened patiently until he was finished. “Are you sure you should do this by yourself?” she had asked. “This person might be dangerous.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“You say that, but what if you get in a pinch?”
“That’s a risk I’ll have to take. I need to find out who he’s working for, and I can’t take the chance of some yahoo fresh out of the academy with an itchy trigger finger shooting the guy because McKay looked at him funny.”
“If Gant knew what you were doing…”
She had let the remainder of the thought hang in the air. There was little reason to finish. They both knew that Gant would pop his top if things went all Wild West on them.
Replaceable: An Alan Lamb Thriller Page 9
