Rabbi Gabrielle's Defiance (22 page)

He froze behind one of the chairs facing her
desk until she rose and marched around it to shake his hand. But
that did not satisfy her and she planted a kiss upon his cheek. In
order to maintain their professionalism she had previously
restricted kissing him to
Shabbos
greetings. But given their troubles such professional distancing no
longer seemed warranted.

He hid his embarrassment by waving an
envelope. "A messenger dropped off this summons. They're going to
depose me. It's really going to happen now, Gabby."

"Depositions aren't so bad. You're going to
get a lot of coaching by a lawyer named Horace Corcoran, who
represents the insurance company, and one or more of the Ohav
Shalom lawyers. The main thing, Asa, is that you have truth on your
side. You don't have to lie or fabricate anything that isn't
exactly the way you remember it. The synagogue will be exonerated
by facts, nothing less."

He looked dubious. "Will you be there when
they flay my carcass?"

"If they'll let me. It won't be a picnic but
it won't be that bad either. David Morgenstern's lawyer will get
around to deposing me later so I'd better know exactly what you
say. Shirley Delinsky will be there with you, but she said her role
is limited by rules about depositions. But before answering, you
can confer privately with Mr. Corcoran or whatever defense counsel
he appoints."

"Is it true that Marc Sutterfeld is a
barracuda?"

"That's his reputation yet I doubt he'll
expose his fangs to a rabbi. Many people are scared of us or the
power we're supposed to represent. Hopefully, he's one of
them."

***

Gabby arrived by car in the New Carrolton
area near
Politicstoday
at a quarter past
eight in the evening and immediately headed for the Metro East
Business Campus. How different this cluster of office and low-rise
buildings appeared after business hours when their deserted parking
lots were blanketed with fresh snow. A heavy vehicle had left
behind deep tracks in the ice for her to follow. Distant street
lights silhouetted the headquarters of
Politicstoday
. No signs of life shown through its dark
windows, though the adjacent building used by the staff as a
dormitory was slightly less ghostlike. A faint light beyond the
glass door suggested the presence of life inside.

While tracking over slippery ice, she
wondered why
Politicstoday
remained dark
when neighboring buildings appeared to have recovered from the
power outage. Her pulse increased as she passed through the front
door into a vast lobby bathed by faint light from a hurricane lamp
deposited on the receptionist's counter. Rock music permeated the
surrealistic atmosphere. It took Gabby only a few moments to
appreciate there was no heat.

On the first floor in open space used for a
canteen, she discovered a dozen young employees huddled around a
kerosene space heater. Here music was louder and in order to be
heard over it, voices were elevated. Bundled in winter jackets and
wearing fleece mittens, no one seemed to notice her approach along
the dark corridor.

"I'm Gabrielle Lewyn," she introduced herself
as she emerged from the shadow into light from two additional
hurricane lamps. "I'm looking for Kye Naah. Any idea where I might
find him?"

A heavy-set girl with a ski cap restraining
bushy hair erupting around her ears rocked onto her knees in the
act of standing and eyed Gabby with dawning recognition. "Aren't
you the woman going to challenge Toby Ryles for the Democrats?"

To be recognized both flattered and alarmed
Gabby. "Yes, in theory that's the program. Kye invited me to have
lunch here, but the blizzard snarled everything. Are you planning
to spend the night without heat?"

A slim young man with an adolescent beard and
wrapped in thick fleece followed the girl to his feet. "This is our
home. Where else are we gonna go?"

Gabby refrained from saying what first popped
into her mind. "Any place warmer than this." Instead, she said,
"I'd like to talk with Kye Naah."

"He's across the way at South Pole salvaging
our computers," the girl said. "You can go over, but you're going
to need a flashlight. We need the hurricane lamps here."

"What's to salvage? Won't everything just
return when you get power back?"
Others clustered around the space
heater turned their attention to Gabby and immediately perceived
that she didn't understand the situation. A thick necked, plump
girl said, "The whole frigg'in shooting match. They got us good.
Everything is fried."

The remark puzzled Gabby but she didn't want
to sound dumb and ask for clarification. "Can somebody lend me a
flashlight for a few minutes. I'll bring it back on my way
out."

A rubber-handled flashlight made its way from
the inner circle outward through several gloved hands toward Gabby.
"Anybody interested in accompanying me?" she asked at the last
second before turning to leave.

A slender youth accepted her invitation; she
couldn't tell if from a desire to be helpful or just out of
boredom. "Journey to the bowels of Disasterville," he uttered to
those remaining behind.

Batteries powering the flashlight were weak. In the
path of a dim beam that flickered on and off, Gabby barely
recognized the thriving nerve center of
Politicstoday
she had visited on New Year's Day. Her
guide apologized for malfunctioning elevators and led her into a
stairwell descending to the
South Pole
,
where artificially cooled air had once contrasted with warmer
temperatures on the floors above. Now that differential was
negligible. Cold air snaked through her lined fleece jacket and
attacked exposed wrists. Once in the basement, the pair navigated
wide corridors to the interlocking computer rooms housing
Politicstoday
's mainframe memory. The
continuous growl of the air-circulating chillers was gone now,
along with the humming of the computers. A gaggle of distant voices
penetrated the purr of temporary generators.

Ahead, four hurricane lanterns provided
illumination for seven engineers working on a bank of servers.
Beside them, two portable oil-burning generators pumped power into
an improvised command post. The engineers' concentration precluded
them from noticing Gabby's approach. Kye was huddled beside a
monitor punching a keyboard with the aid of a headlight strapped to
his forehead. A companion nearby was dictating numerical code from
a rumpled spiral notebook.

After a long moment, Gabby's guide addressed
Kye, knowing that an interruption would not be appreciated. "The
rabbi has come to see you."

The light attached to Kye's forehead swung in
her direction, but almost immediately returned to the keyboard.
"Just a second, please," he called to her. "We're almost finished
with this sequence…" His keystrokes increased in velocity. A spate
of expletives issued from his partner's lips. Beside an adjacent
monitor additional cursing erupted.

It took twenty-five minutes before Kye was
able shift his attention to Gabby, who shivered in the cold,
thinking that nothing could be colder than a dark, unheated office
building in the winter. She drew herself into the ring of light and
offered a gloved hand. His well-shaven look she was accustomed to
seeing had vanished. From behind sweat-coated glasses, his eyes
were weary. When she tried to withdraw her hand, he held on,
dragging her from the circle of his associates in shadows beyond
the penumbra of hurricane lamps.

She said, "I tried to answer your email about
lunch, but couldn't raise your server. The phones were also dead.
So I said to myself, the only way to find out what's going on is to
drive over. Looks like I caught you at a bad time."

His lips curled with irony and his eyes
seemed to disappear entirely into the darkness surrounding them.
"Thanks, Gabby. I appreciate your concern. We got hit real
bad."

"I thought high-tech companies like this had
emergency generators."

"We do. Three separate redundancies. But none
work when sabotaged."

The word
sabotaged
sent a secondary chill rippling through her already chilled body.
"I don't understand. Is this more than a power outage?"

"We've made a lot of enemies around this
town. People who make their livings in Washington feel threatened
by what we do. And for every politician there are a dozen
associates whose livelihoods depend upon business-as-usual. And
that's not to mention all the people we owe money. They'd be just
as happy to lynch me from the White House portico. Whoever
sabotaged us knew what he was doing. He waited for a blizzard like
this and went after our jugular – all three emergency generators.
They bled fuel from one. Then cut belts of another. Redirected the
exhaust lines of a third. When PEPCO went down, my backup
generators also failed. I figured on one or two failing, but not
all three at the same time. If that was all we got, we might have
been able to recover the bulk of our data. But they went way beyond
that. Somehow they hooked into our input from PEPCO. When power
returns, you're vulnerable to electrical surges. We have resistance
protectors to guard against this. But whoever did this to us tapped
into our main line and pumped six or seven times the juice expected
from a normal surge. It fried our resistance coils to a crisp and
traveled on to attack our memory banks. We're trying to assess the
full damages now. Several servers are destroyed beyond repair;
others crippled. We're employing some pretty heroic methods to
salvage what's left."

Both her hands felt for his in the darkness
and failing that, gripped his upper arms. "I'm sorry, Kye. You must
feel like you've been hit by a meteor."

He sighed audibly, breathing heavily. "It
isn't me, Gabby. Somehow, I'll survive. I always do. But I've got
people here who have worked their asses off for this organization.
They've sweated and sacrificed so we could build a company that
does more than just make money. They've deferred their
compensation. Eaten beans. Foregone marriages and children. They've
lived like penniless hermits in a dormitory that wouldn't pass
muster in the Congo. All because they believed in what we're doing.
I promised to repay my creditors and I will, even if some of them
are behind this shit. That's a solemn promise. They have my word
and I've never, never gone back on it. All I ever needed was time
to prove what we could do. Now that's doubtful."

She stepped closer and wrapped her arms
around his torso, embracing him. In the darkness, her lips press
against his neck. His arms completed the circle coupling behind her
back. When she lifted her chin, moisture from his skin transferred
to her cheek. Was this sweat or tears, she asked herself? Perhaps a
combination of both.

"I haven't figured out yet what to do with
your campaign," he said. "I'll get some part of this operation
moving again, but it's too early to know exactly what."

"Don't worry about that, Kye. In the big
picture that isn't important."

"PEPCO turned on our power just long enough
to fry our hardware, but then turned it back off until I cough up
cash for my overdue bills. One or two days in the cold and I'm
going to have to release my associates. As long as I ask them,
they'll stay behind and endure anything. These aren't ordinary
people, you must understand. They're the very best in the industry.
But I can't imperil their futures. Once gone, they'll scatter over
the country. I fear
Politicstoday
will be
nothing more than a bad memory."

"I've got access to wealthy entrepreneurs in
the Jewish community. Can I introduce you?" Her lips caressed his
neck again. It was damp and coated with a granular residue, but she
didn't care.

"Thanks, but I can't. To maintain the value
of the stock warrants, I promised not to dilute the company's
ownership. Nobody's going to lend me money flat out without wanting
a part of the equity. We've been backloading our financial success
knowing that the more we show our product the more customers will
buy it. I just didn't see this one coming." His hands rose to touch
her hair, then fall over her cheeks and the indentations of her
dimples, now flat for lack of a smile. "Sorry, Gabby. I've got to
get back to work. It's going to be a long night. And when the sun
rises in the morning, it will still be bloody cold."

"Go, Kye. You know my phone and email
address. Thanks for taking time to fill me in. I'll wait until I
hear from you. And I'll recite a prayer, too. It probably won't do
much good, but it will make
me
feel as
though I'm helping. And by the way – how many people are in the
dorm right now?"

"About seventy, plus or minus five."

"Do they eat pizza?"

"What techy doesn't?"

"Good, because I know a great place that
delivers – even on cold nights like this."

"That's not necessary, but I can't say it
wouldn't be appreciated." He seized her hand and led her back in
the direction of the lanterns. Gabby's guide remained with the
engineers, waiting to usher her out. "Please take Rabbi Lewyn to
her car, Carl. Be careful on the ice. We've already had one
injury," Kye said to him. And to her, he said, "Thanks for coming.
You made this shit a little easier to accept. I'm really glad you
came. I'll be in touch. Promise."

She replied, "Whatever I can do for you, Kye.
And I'm serious about the offer to make contact with rich
investors."

Once in her Volvo with the heater turned high, she
called Chuck Browner by cell-phone at his apartment. "Sorry to
disturb you," she was abrupt. "I've just been at
Politicstoday
at the New Carrolton station. Somebody's
sabotaged their operation. Kye's people there are working in the
cold and dark. What's the best delivery pizza we can get at this
hour, Chuck?"