Severe Clear (13 page)

—

I
n her room, she ordered a steak from room service and had a double scotch from the minibar. After dinner, she watched an old movie on TV, until she fell asleep.

She woke up after nine, showered, dressed, and checked out of the hotel. Back at the office building, she took the elevator to the ninth floor and found the TIT door. She walked in and found a barely furnished reception area, no receptionist. From there, she could see into a small conference room, and she could hear the clicking of a computer keyboard. She followed the noise to an open door and found a young Asian man in an office containing only a steel desk and two chairs, working at a laptop.

“Hey, Jimmy,” she said.

He looked up. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“My name’s Harp, like the beer. Now you know me.” She sat down in the other chair.

“Did Mo Shazaz send you?” he asked. “I’m anxious to meet him face-to-face.”

“Not exactly,” she said. “I’m here representing the firm you still work for.”

“And who would that be?”

Harp opened her briefcase and held up a document. “High Cotton Ideas. I’ve got a copy of your signed contract right here.”

“How the hell did you find me?” Jimmy asked.

“Everybody always asks me that,” Harp replied. “It’s just what I do, that’s all.”

“You find people for a living?”

“I do a lot of things, finding people is just one of them. Now listen carefully. I have some advice for you.”

“I need advice from
you
?”

“Yes, and badly. You are in violation of the terms of your employment contract, stated very clearly in this document. I’m surprised your attorney didn’t explain that to you.”

“Yeah, well, contracts are made to be broken.”

“I can tell you’re a bright guy, Jimmy, but believe me, intelligence does not buy wisdom, and what you’ve done is very unwise. That little start-up you worked for back in New York is now a professionally run corporation, with all the legal safeguards in place to protect its property, which still includes you.”

“They don’t own me.”

“Of course they do, Jimmy, you just haven’t figured that out yet. Now, there’s a legal and proper way to separate yourself from High Cotton, but you haven’t followed that procedure. You need to come back to New York with me and talk with Mark Hayes and with Herb Fisher, his attorney.”

“Yeah, I know Fisher, the legal shark.”

“Finally you’ve said something smart, Jimmy. Herb is certainly a shark, and he patrols the waters that High Cotton operates in, and he can make your life miserable.”

“I’ve already got a new deal,” Jimmy said.

“Look around you, Jimmy. Does this look like the offices of a legitimate venture capital firm?”

“The new furniture arrives next week,” Jimmy said.

“No, it doesn’t,” Harp replied. “Mo Shazaz is scamming you. He wants something from you that you can’t legally give him—the trade secrets of your employer. If you take his money, then you will spend the next decade in the courts. How much money have you saved?”

“Enough.”

“Not enough. It will all go to your lawyers, and the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slowly. Are you beginning to get the picture?”

“I’ve already taken Mo’s money.”

“Have you cashed the check?”

“Not yet.”

“Tear it in half and leave it on the desk with a very brief note saying the deal’s off.”

“Does Mark really want me back that bad?”

“Bad enough to send me out here to bring you back,” Harp said.

“I’m not legally required to go with you.”

“I can have a court order by mid-afternoon,” she lied, “if that’s the way you want to go, but believe me, this will be a much more pleasant experience if you just come with me now. We have a two
P.M.
airplane back to New York, and we’ll have time for a nice lunch at the airport.”

Jimmy looked confused. “I’ve got to call . . .”

“Call Jasmine from the airport,” Harp suggested.

“How do you know about Jasmine?”

“Oh, Jasmine Shazaz is famous at a certain level of the tech world,” Harp lied again. “You’re not the first hotshot techie she’s lured away from a great job with promises of billions. You don’t want to see her again.”

Jimmy stared forlornly at his keyboard.

“Just close the laptop, put it away, and come with me.”

“I’ll need to stop at the hotel and pick up my clothes.”

Harp shook her head. “Time is of the essence, Jimmy. You have to be back in your office at High Cotton at nine tomorrow morning, if you’re going to have a chance to make this right. I’ll arrange for the hotel to ship your luggage back to New York, and I’ll see that your bill is paid.”

“I need to call Mo Shazaz,” he said.

“He won’t answer his phone. Has he ever answered his phone?” She was taking a chance here.

“No, now that you mention it. He always calls back the next day.”

Harp stood up. “Come on, Jimmy, let’s get out of here while you still can.”

Jimmy stood up, closed his laptop, yanked the cord from the receptacle, and shoved it into a canvas briefcase.

They were in the car before Harp spoke again. “Let’s use the time to the airport,” she said. “Tell me what Mo wanted you to do for him.” She listened while he talked for a while, then she spoke again. “Jimmy, you’re well out of this. You were about to get mixed up in something that would have ended in disaster for you.”

Jimmy took out his cell phone.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t let
anyone
know where you are. I’ll put you into a good hotel in New York, and then I’m going to get you the help you need to get out of this mess.”

—

I
n the airline’s VIP lounge, she waited for Jimmy to go to the men’s room before she called Herb.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“On my way home,” she said, “and with Jimmy in tow.”

“How did you convince him to come back?”

“I lied some, but mostly I told him the truth. Then he told me what his new employer wanted him to do.”

“What was that?”

“You mentioned to me your friend Stone Whatshisname . . .”

“Barrington.”

“Yeah. You said he had some connections to the intelligence world.”

“Yeah.”

“Arrange a meeting with you, Jimmy, and Stone for tomorrow morning. Both of you will get an earful. Uh-oh, here comes Jimmy. Gotta go.” She broke the connection.

“Who were you talking to?” Jimmy asked.

“To the guy who’s going to get you out of this,” she replied.

 25 

S
tone was on the phone with Mike Freeman, hearing about Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, when Herbie’s call came.

“He says it’s urgent,” Joan said.

“I’ve got to run,” Stone said to Mike, and pushed the button for line two. “Herb?”

“Hey, Stone. I need to set up a meeting with you for first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Okay, what’s up?”

“It’s to do with one of Mark Hayes’s people at High Cotton. He’s gotten himself into something that may involve American intelligence, and I’m out of my depth there.”

“Okay, nine o’clock?”

“Good. I’ll be bringing my investigator, too. Her name is Harp O’Connor.”

“Okay. I’ll help if I can. See you at nine.” He hung up.

—

N
ine came early for Stone; he wasn’t usually at his desk much before ten. His housekeeper, Helene, made coffee and pastries and left them in his office.

Herbie arrived on time and sat down. “They’ll be along shortly.”

“What’s this about?” Stone asked.

“It started with a High Cotton employee who disappeared. Mark Hayes called me and asked me to look into it. I put Harp on it, and she found the guy in Palo Alto, California, brought him back last night, and stashed him in some way-in hotel downtown.”

“And how does this relate to intelligence?”

“Harp will have to explain that. By the way, I’ve been seeing a lot of her.”

“Good for you.”

“You still seeing Marla?”

“Not so much.”

Joan walked two people into Stone’s office, and Herbie made the introductions.

“Hi, Jimmy,” Stone said, “we met once before at your big office party a while back.” They shook hands.

“Okay, Harp, tell us what’s going on.”

“First, let Jimmy tell his story.”

“Go ahead, Jimmy.”

“About three weeks ago, I met this girl named Jasmine Shazaz,” he said. “A real knockout. Almost immediately, she began telling me about her brother, Mo, who is a venture capitalist. She said he had heard about me and wanted to put me in a start-up that would make me a huge amount of money when it went public. I talked to Mo on the phone a couple of times, and he impressed me by immediately offering me twice what I was getting at High Cotton. He began pressing me to quit immediately and come to Palo Alto, where he had offices. The lease on my apartment was up, and I finally caved. I put my belongings into storage and went to Palo Alto. What I found was a rented space—one of those short-term things you see advertised in the tech magazines.”

“Tell them what Shazaz wanted you to do,” Harp said.

“The first thing he wanted me to do was to set up a chain of websites, where members could contact his company and each other while concealing their identities and whereabouts. He told me that this was part of a venture of his, and it would make it easier to set up a company for me. I didn’t understand it, but I started to work in this empty office. Then Harp showed up and brought me back.”

“Tell him about the messages,” she said.

“There was an existing website that was part of this, and there were three messages left on it that hadn’t been deleted. Each of them said the same thing: ‘All is well. I am fine,’ and they were signed ‘Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.’”

Stone leaned forward and picked up a pen. “How do you spell ‘Shazaz’?” he asked, and wrote it down.

“That’s some kind of code or signal,” Harp said. “I Googled Mo Shazaz: there wasn’t much on him, but I found out that Mo is short for Mohammad. That worried me. I know enough about communication among cells—spies or terrorists—that the messages probably meant that agents were in place and ready to do something. This whole thing smells of fish: the way the girl recruited Jimmy, the lack of a written proposal, the big promises, and the empty offices. Mo may not even be in this country. He could be anywhere.”

“I’m feeling pretty dumb,” Jimmy said.

“You’re going to be fine,” Herbie said. “Don’t worry, Mark wants you back at work.”

“That’s a relief,” Jimmy said.

“So you never met Mo at all?” Stone asked.

“No.”

“Where does his sister live?”

“She was pretty much living with me for a couple of weeks,” Jimmy replied. “She said she had an apartment on the Upper East Side, but I never went there. All I had for contact was a cell number.”

“And what is that number?” Stone asked, then wrote it down. “Something bothers me,” he said.

“What’s that?” Harp asked.

“Why would Mo want somebody at Jimmy’s proficiency level to set up this chain of websites?” Stone asked. “I don’t know all that much about it, but it sounds like the sort of thing that a bright college student could do.”

“Well,” Jimmy said, “not to get too technical on you, but he wanted a lot of safeguards against penetration. It was the sort of thing a high-tech security company might do for him. He said there were other things he wanted me to do, too, things that would lead to software products I could develop for the new company.”

“I see,” Stone said, though he didn’t, really. “Is there anything else you can tell me about Mo and Jasmine?”

“No,” Jimmy said.

“I can run down the cell number,” Harp said. “Give me the day for that.”

“All right,” Stone said, “leave this with me, and I’ll run it past some people I know. Jimmy, you’d better go talk to Mark and get back to work.”

“I’ll do that,” Jimmy said.

“I’ll run you down there,” Harp said. “And, Stone, I’ll get back to you with what I find on the cell number. I’d like to speak to Jasmine, myself.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t do that,” Stone said. “Not until I’ve checked out some things.”

“She and her brother will be wondering where Jimmy is,” Harp said. “He doesn’t have an apartment anymore, so it won’t be easy to find him.”

“Yeah. I just want to know as much as I can before Jimmy calls Jasmine again.”

“I understand,” Harp said. “Jimmy, you shouldn’t answer your cell phone. In fact, give it to me, and I’ll get you another one this morning.”

Jimmy gave her the phone, and they all left.

Stone called Mike Freeman. “Mike,” he said, “something weird has happened.”

 26 

M
ike Freeman hung up the phone and called his contact at the NSA.

“Scott Hipp.”

“Scott, it’s Mike Freeman. I just came by some information I thought you ought to have.”

“I’m always happy to have more information, Mike.”

“There’s another report on Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.”

“How so?”

“Have you ever heard of anyone called Mohammad Shazaz, who calls himself ‘Mo’? Has a sister named Jasmine?”

“Hang on a sec.”

Mike could hear the tapping of computer keys.

“That’s interesting,” Hipp said, when he came back on the line.

“What’s interesting?”

“They’re not in our database. Hardly anybody is not in our database. The name doesn’t even register as Muslim. Sounds made-up to me.”

“Could be, I guess.”

“I got a couple of hits when I Googled Mo, but nothing of substance, and I think they must be very recent, because everything on Google migrates to our database pretty quickly.”

Mike gave him the address of the office in Palo Alto. “It’s a furnished, short-term let, Scott. I doubt if it will yield anything of value, but I can send one of my people from our Palo Alto office there to go over it, if that will be helpful.”

“I think it would be more helpful to the FBI or CIA than to us, but I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention this to them right away. I’d rather they get it from the White House.”