Power Play: A Novel (16 page)

“What about you? What were you like as a kid?” he asked her, and looked genuinely interested. He was asking her questions he normally wouldn’t have asked at a first lunch, and she would have deflected them, but he was open with her, and she was so much more personable and warm than he’d expected, that they were surprisingly forthcoming with each other.

“I was shy. And I wore glasses and had buckteeth until I had braces,” she said with a modest smile.

“And then you turned into a swan,” he said, looking at her, and she blushed at what he said.

“Not exactly. I wear contacts, and a night guard at night when I’m stressed, so I don’t clench my jaw.”

“Scary,” he said, and they both laughed. “With all the stress you
must have in your job, I’m surprised you don’t wear a helmet and shin guards, and a protector for your teeth. I don’t know how you do it. The responsibility for a hundred thousand employees would kill me. All I have to do is turn in my stories on deadline.”

“That’s stressful too,” she said practically. “I don’t know. I like what I do. I think that helps.” She seemed totally focused on her job, in a very human way. She was completely different from the arrogant CEOs he met and interviewed every day, like the one he was meeting with that afternoon, whom he didn’t like but was an important story. His subjects usually spent hours talking about themselves, telling him how great they were. And Fiona talked about having buckteeth as a kid, and wearing a night guard to bed. It was hardly a sexy image, despite her natural good looks, and she didn’t seem to mind pointing out her own flaws. He thought there was something very touching about it. He found her astonishingly humble, particularly given how important and powerful she was.

“What’s the one word you would use to describe your job?” he asked her, trying to get a sense of how she felt about it, but he already knew. And she was quick to answer.

“
Hard
. Second word:
fun
. What about you?”

He thought about it for a minute—he wasn’t used to anyone asking him the questions. “
Fascinating. Surprising. Different every day. Exciting
. I’m never bored by the people I meet, even if I don’t like them. And people never turn out to be what I expected.” She wasn’t either. She was even better than he had thought. He was only sorry that she wouldn’t let him interview her. He could have done a great piece. But if they wound up friends, by some sheer stroke of good luck, that would be even better. And Fiona was happy she had had lunch with him too. She realized that Jillian was right, and it was
interesting to meet new people. And she genuinely liked Logan, more than she thought she would. She had accepted lunch with him to be polite, and she was having a terrific time. She looked regretful when she finally glanced at her watch, saw that it was almost two o’clock, and knew that she had to go. She had a meeting in twenty minutes.

Logan paid for their lunch, and they walked out of the restaurant together.

“Thank you for meeting me for lunch today,” he said sincerely as he walked her to her car. “It’s nice to meet the woman who goes with the voice. You’re nothing like I expected. Well, a little, but not a lot. You’re just a regular person.” He loved that about her.

“Yes, I am,” she said simply. “Most people expect the Wizard of Oz, or the Wicked Witch of the West.” She reminded him more of Dorothy than the witch the house had fallen on, although he had met plenty of those too. But not Fiona. She didn’t take herself too seriously, and listened to what other people had to say. She had an innocent quality that he liked about her too, as though she were so clean and straightforward that she expected everybody else to be too, and they both knew they weren’t. But she seemed like the kind of woman who gave people the benefit of the doubt and brought out the best in those around her.

“I hope your interview goes well this afternoon,” she said as she unlocked her car and slid behind the wheel.

“You don’t use a driver?” He looked surprised, and she shook her head.

“I’d rather drive myself. It’s simpler. I only use one if I go to the airport.”

“Yeah, me too,” he said with a grin. “Well, take care, and thanks
for joining me. Maybe we can do it again sometime. And I’d like to meet your sister.”

“I’ll e-mail you her number. You should call her.” But even he wasn’t brave enough to call her out of the blue, and he would have felt foolish calling her, just because Fiona said so. “Believe me, she’s not shy. And she’d love to meet you and talk about her book.”

“I’ll let you make the introductions,” he said.

“Thanks again for lunch,” she said, and waved as she drove away, and Logan thought about her as he walked to his car, amazed at how easy and fun it had been. She hadn’t disappointed him in any way, and the word that came to mind as he thought about her was
terrific
.

Fiona had had a good time at lunch too. When she got back to her spot in the parking lot and parked her car, she glanced at her BlackBerry and saw that she had a message from the investigation service they had used. She listened to it before she got out of her car. It was from the head of the company, and he said it was urgent.

She called him back as soon as she got to her office, and he told her he wanted to come in and see her that afternoon.

“That urgent?” Fiona asked him.

“I think so.” They had taken long enough to get back to her on it, and now they were in a hurry. She knew she would be in meetings until six o’clock, and told him it was the best she could do, and he promised to be there then. And when she left her last meeting of the afternoon, he was waiting for her in her office. It had been a long day, and she was tired. And she was still paying her dues after her vacation.

She invited him to sit in a small meeting area with her, and he
handed her a thick envelope with the initial results of their investigation in it, and she asked him to sum it up so she didn’t have to read it while he waited.

“You may want to close the door before I do,” he said carefully, and she smiled at the espionage aspect of it. Everyone else had left for the day, including her assistants.

“Do you know who the source of the leak was?” she asked as she followed his advice and closed the door to her office, although she felt silly when she did.

“Yes, I do,” he said seriously. “I got final confirmation of it yesterday. And I checked it again this morning. Everything in the report has been verified, and we used no wiretaps or illegal sources. It’s all been handled just as you requested, legally and cleanly.” She nodded, satisfied by what he was saying.

“Why don’t you tell me who it is? I’ll read the report in detail tonight at home.” She felt a ripple go down her spine as the head of the investigation looked at her. He was retired FBI, and had been highly recommended.

“Your leak on the board is Harding Williams,” he said simply. Fiona stared at him in disbelief. It wasn’t possible. They had to have made a mistake. He was pompous and disagreeable, and he hated her, but he was a man who followed the rules, and his integrity was above question.

“Are you sure?” Her voice was a squeak when she said it. “The chairman?” she asked, as though she needed to confirm who he was. It just couldn’t be true.

“The chairman,” he said with a somber look. “He’s been having an affair with a very attractive young woman for the past year. She’s a journalist, and it may have started innocently, but she’s been
bleeding him for information. I don’t know if she’s blackmailing him or not. I don’t think so. But they meet once a week at a hotel, and whatever else they do, he shares information with her. Maybe he just thinks it’s pillow talk, but she uses it. And he must have known it since the leak about the Larksberry plant. She actually told one of my operatives that she has a source straight from the boardroom at NTA. She’s proud of it. And he’s been hinting to his barber that he’s having an affair with a much younger woman. She’s thirty-two years old and a knockout.” He reached for the envelope, took out a file, and extracted a photograph of a beautiful girl with a stunning figure. She had dark hair and light eyes, and in the photograph, she was exhibiting a fair amount of cleavage. Fiona stared at it for a long time and then handed it back to him, and he put it back in the envelope and sealed it.

“Are you sure he’s having an affair with her?” Fiona said in disbelief, and he pointed at the envelope.

“It’s all in there. I have photographs of them together, two of them kissing. He seems to be crazy about her.” He was more than twice her age, and all Fiona could think of was the subdued woman he was married to, whom he bragged about being married to for forty-four years. And he had treated Fiona like a slut for twenty-five years, for a harmless affair she’d had at Harvard in her early twenties. And what Harding was doing was so much worse. He had violated his position of trust as chairman of the board, broken confidentiality, jeopardized their stock, and hurt the company. He had disregarded and disrespected the most important rules of the board, and made a lie of everything he claimed to believe in. He was a hypocrite and a liar, and he was sleeping with a thirty-two-year-old girl, a journalist, and sharing direly sensitive company secrets with
her. Fiona felt as though she were ricocheting off the walls and could hardly believe what the investigator had told her. But she knew it had to be true. The investigator had photographs of him going in and out of the hotel to meet her and receipts for the hotel room, and the girl in the picture was the one who had first printed the leak, with her byline. There was no question. Fiona stood up with the envelope in her hand and thanked him. She was going to read it all carefully that night before making a decision, but if what he said was true, there could be only one outcome. Harding Williams would have to be fired from the board and as their chairman. She wanted to read the material, and then she would call an emergency meeting of the board. Even though she didn’t like him, and he had tormented her for years, this was not the outcome she had hoped for, nor the one she expected. She would never in a million years have guessed that the leak on the board was Harding.

She left the building with the investigator and drove home to Portola Valley. She felt as though someone had shot her out of a cannon. It was all so hard to imagine. She couldn’t understand how he could violate the ethics and morality he claimed to believe in and adhere to. It not only proved her sister’s theory about men and power, and Logan’s thoughts on the subject too, but it reminded her of the old adage, “There is no fool like an old fool.” And without question, Harding Williams had been a fool. She didn’t even have a sense of victory about it, of having discovered the source of the leak; she was just disgusted by it. She had thought he was better than that, but apparently he wasn’t. He was as low as you could get, and what he had done was shockingly dishonest.

She didn’t even bother to have dinner that night. She sat at her desk reading the report from beginning to end. And when she
finished it, she knew what she had to do. She called Harding at home and asked him to meet with her in the morning.

“I have better things to do,” he said irascibly. “I have appointments tomorrow. I’ll come in the day after.”

“I’m sorry, Harding,” she said in an icy tone. “I need you there tomorrow. Ten
A.M.
?” She had an eight
A.M.
controller’s meeting with the CFO, and expected it to last for two hours.

“What’s so important that I need to come in tomorrow?” He didn’t even sound worried, just pompous and unpleasant, as usual.

“I need you to sign off on some reports, and as the chairman of the board, I can only give them to you,” she said, not wanting him to know the real reason she had asked him to come in. And he groused about it, but finally agreed.

“You shouldn’t leave things like that till the last minute,” he complained, but he could hardly refuse her as the CEO.

“You’re quite right, Harding,” she said clearly. “See you tomorrow.” She tried to maintain a neutral tone and barely could.

After that she e-mailed the members of the board and asked them to come in the day after her meeting with Harding. She did not notify Harding of the board meeting, and planned to advise him of it when she met with him in the morning. She wanted an opportunity to speak to him first. But there was very little he could say. They had all the evidence they needed.

She walked around her house after that, thinking about him, and the lies he had told, the fraud he had been, the hypocrite he was. It made her feel sick to think about it. She wasn’t looking forward to the confrontation, but she wasn’t afraid of it either. Dealing with him now was part of her job as CEO. She had a responsibility to the board and the corporation she worked for, and their stockholders. Fiona
never lost sight of what she owed them. And she loved the company and wanted to protect it.

Before she went to bed that night, she sent an e-mail to Logan, to thank him for lunch and tell him that she’d enjoyed it. It felt as though it had been months ago and not that afternoon, so much had happened since. She hit “send” and sent the e-mail off to him. And then she showered, brushed her teeth, and put her night guard in. And when she looked in the mirror and saw herself, she almost laughed, remembering what Logan had said at lunch when she mentioned it to him. “Scary.” It was. And so was Harding Williams. Anyone that dishonest, who violated his ethics and responsibilities to the degree that he had, was truly scary. But now, after what she knew, he could no longer torture her. He had no power over her anymore. And she went to bed, and slept like a baby, feeling as though a thousand-pound weight had been lifted off her shoulders. He had condemned her as a young woman, and been rude to her for all the years she’d been at NTA. And now she knew the truth about him. He had abused his power as chairman, cheated on his wife, and lied to them all. But it was over now. The mighty chairman was about to fall.

When Harding Williams showed up in Fiona’s office the next day, he strode in without waiting for her assistant to announce him. Fiona was seated at her desk, going through some papers, and expecting him. He was twenty minutes late, and she didn’t care. She had been thinking about him all morning, and had read the investigator’s report again when she got up. She wanted to be sure she hadn’t missed anything important, or even a small detail, but she hadn’t. It was all there, along with the photographs of him with the young woman, even him kissing her in a dark doorway. It made Fiona feel sick when she saw it, and sorry for his wife of forty-four years.