“Her parents,” Morita said. “She knows the game and the stakes. And she loves playing it.”
“I’ll talk to Boggs & Saggett about the new assignment when we get back. Then I’ll talk to Vargas. In the meantime, let’s figure out how to deepen her commitment to us. Maybe a special bonus of Musselman stock if she breaks him,” Tate said as he stood up.
“I’m going to take a shower before dinner.”
“Would you like some company?”
“Will your offer stand for a few hours?” he asked with a charming smile. “Right now I’m in desperate need of some down time before the mingling resumes—and a chance to visualize Quinn’s wilder side.”
“The offer expires at midnight,” Morita said temptingly.
During a luxurious dinner buffet at Rotisserie des Chevaliers, Wayland Tate and Jules Kamin enthusiastically informed David Quinn that Musselman’s Chairman of the Board, James MacMillan, had made it official: instead of breaking up the company, Tate and Kamin would be discussing Wilson Fielder’s mismanagement of the Kresge consulting project at next week’s board meeting.
“What did MacMillan say?” Quinn asked anxiously. James MacMillan had mentored Quinn earlier in his career. Quinn returned the favor by asking MacMillan to be Musselman’s chairman. At age seventy-eight, MacMillan was healthier than most forty-year-olds. He’d been the perfect chairman, giving Quinn free reign as CEO, until profits started declining a couple of years ago. That’s when things had changed, much to Quinn’s dismay. MacMillan’s deep sense of fiduciary responsibility to Musselman’s shareholders had caused him to get increasingly involved in company issues. Now Quinn wanted his former mentor off his back.
“He asked a lot of questions about Wilson’s father, mostly out of curiosity, I think,” Tate said. “Then he asked about Fielder & Company. He was especially interested in why
The Wall Street Journal
had dubbed it the most secretive consulting firm in America. When we finally got around to discussing Wilson, I told him that I’d done some probing and discovered that Wilson exhibited the same tendencies of mental instability as his father. I also said that he had serious problems with authority figures, in general, just as we discussed. I informed him that Wilson was seeing a psychologist about his extreme behavior and growing irrationality.”
“He believed you?” Quinn’s eyes grew wide.
“Let’s just say it’s impossible to disprove a negative,” Tate said, enjoying the drama. “One threatening cloud can convince anyone of an impending storm.”
“You’re sure he’s convinced?”
“Kresge & Company’s presentation has been postponed indefinitely,” Tate said with a wily smile. “Jules and I will make some summary comments next week, but I think the project is going to be permanently buried. MacMillan seemed particularly concerned when I informed him that Wilson had been seeing a clinical psychologist. Of course, I didn’t mention that the psychologist was his girlfriend or that they broke up several months ago. By the time I was finished, he began discussing avenues of redress against Kresge & Company.”
“Beautiful! Absolutely beautiful,” Quinn said, reaching over and squeezing Tate’s shoulder. The three of them burst into mercenary laughter, tinged with relief in Quinn’s case.
When their laughter died down, Quinn became serious again, wanting more assurances.
“Did he seem at all suspicious or reluctant?”
“Not at all,” Tate said. “He thanked me for doing my homework. You were right. The fact that I had recommended Fielder & Company instead of Kresge & Company a few months ago made me even more credible.”
For the next hour, the three of them strategized about the timing of Musselman’s next public stock offering and how to put J. B. Musselman on Fortune’s top ten list of most admired companies. To Tate’s pure delight, Quinn was spinning into executive bliss.
After dinner, Tate invited Quinn to the Banff retreat.
“My most memorable day of skiing was at Banff fifteen years ago,” Quinn said before pausing a moment, “Until today, that is.”
“I heard about your figure eights in the powder above the Diavolezza Bowl,” Tate said with raised eyebrows. “Here’s an opportunity to do it all again next week. We can finalize everything, America’s Warehouse grand opening and the Musselman stock offering.”
Quinn was silent for a few moments before he grinned broadly and said, “I’ll be there.”
There was another round of toasts to skiing and lavish corporate retreats before they decided to call it quits for the evening. Tate excused himself from Quinn and Kamin who were sharing a few last minute thoughts on how to reduce Musselman’s ballooning debt in the next stock offering. As soon as Tate had left the dining room, he called Vargas to inform her that their dinner had concluded and that Quinn was feeling rather euphoric. Then he dialed Morita’s cell. “It’s 11:40 and I’m on my way.”
“I’ll be ready and waiting,” Morita said seductively.
Fiery melodies and exotic rhythms from a Spanish guitarist and his band wafted beguilingly through the hotel lobby, as Quinn returned to his room. Still on cloud nine, he decided to stop at the Club Bar and enjoy the music. The crowd was abuzz as he slowly made his way to the bar and ordered a scotch. While surveying the scene around him, he spotted Vargas alone at the end of the bar.
She looked up in feigned surprise when he sat down next to her. Quinn’s suspicions about Vargas’ true intentions were gone. And despite his occasional discomfort with Tate’s aggressiveness and unpredictability, he knew that Tate was the only member of Musselman’s board who could have accomplished what he did today. For that, Quinn was deeply grateful to Tate and his entire organization.
Quinn and Vargas enjoyed the romantic music, the drinks, and each other until the band stopped playing around two. As they said goodnight in the foyer, Vargas leaned in to kiss Quinn on the cheek, the way friends do when saying hello or good-bye. At the last second, Quinn turned slightly and kissed Vargas on the lips.
She responded with a soft and sensual “hmmm.” Then she stroked his neck lightly with her fingers before leaving for her room. They agreed to meet in the lobby at eleven to share a limo to the airport.
It took three calls for Wilson to track down the former head of covert ops for the CIA and founder of Greene Mursin International. After an exchange of pleasantries and a heads-up from Wilson about the telephone scrambler he was using, Hap Greene assured him that his end of the conversation was also protected. Wilson gave Hap a ten-minute summary of everything that had happened during the past few days. Then he asked, “How long will it take you to clear the decks?”
“Give me a week. I’ll meet you at the Bostonian Club next Thursday for lunch,” Hap said. “But I need to warn you, this could get expensive.”
“Not an issue. I’ll see you Thursday. In the meantime …”
Hap cut him off. “An advance team will arrive tomorrow to perform an initial assessment and begin surveillance. I’m also going to send you a package of surveillance busters. You’ll have them in the morning. And don’t move your father. My guys will keep him protected. I want to assess the entire situation first. Moving your father will send a message that you’re preparing for battle. We need to be ready before we send that message.”
“Just make sure nothing happens to him.”
“My guys will be there by morning. Don’t do anything rash. I can hear the anxiety in your voice. Focus on deciding what you’re going to do with Fielder & Company. Let me worry about protecting you and your family. If you need to reach me, call this number. Otherwise, my people will be in contact with you as soon as they arrive.”
When they hung up, Wilson left Brattle House to join his mother and sister who were already at the hospital. There still had been no change in his father’s condition. Dr. Malek was slightly more optimistic after the latest round of tests, but with a disturbing caveat: his father might remain in his present condition for years.
A reclining chair next to his father became Wilson’s bed, after his mother and sister left at midnight. Two police officers and two security guards from Weintraub, Drake, Heinke & Redd remained on duty all night, monitoring every medical interaction and procedure. This had greatly reduced Wilson’s lingering concern about not moving his father. At seven o’clock in the morning, as he watched his father breathe, Wilson began a one-sided conversation, expressing a flood of concerns and questions.
“Why didn’t you tell me about what you were doing at Fielder & Company? Thanks to your strict instructions, Daniel only gave me bits and pieces. And now, Carter’s doing the same thing. Everyone’s going to be dead before I figure it out. How can I correct your mistakes if I don’t understand them?” Wilson asked, frustrated at the impossibility of a response.
Suddenly, there was movement in his father’s left hand. Wilson squeezed his hand and cried, “Dad, it’s me.” But there was no more movement. He called for Dr. Malek, who’d just arrived at the hospital. He came within minutes. A battery of pupillary reflex tests was performed to determine any changes in his condition. The room quickly filled with nurses, policemen, and hired security personnel. But there was nothing. Only the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his father’s chest, his perilously shallow breathing. Wilson asked Dr. Malek to call him immediately if there was any further sign of movement or consciousness.
“We’ll keep him under close observation for the rest of the day,” Malek said. “This is a good sign though. I think he likes having you here. Did you say anything especially stimulating? Something he would definitely want to address?”
“I had an entire conversation with him about things he needs to address,” Wilson said nervously.
“He may have heard everything. But the slight movement in his hand was all he could do to communicate,” Dr. Malek said.
Wilson stared at the doctor, wondering whether his father had tried to encourage or restrain him.
An hour later, the door to his father’s room opened. One of the security guards informed Wilson that two men were there to see him. Wilson ran his fingers through his unkempt hair and tucked in his shirt as he got up from the chair. He met the two men in the corridor outside his father’s room. Both men stood over six feet and looked extremely fit, with eyes that seemed to take in everything. One was Caucasian, the other African American. These have to be Hap’s men, Wilson thought.
They introduced themselves as Driggs and Savoy, confirming that they worked for Hap Greene. Four other team members were already establishing a base of operations near the hospital. Hap had briefed them last night, but they wanted Wilson to give them some additional background.
Thirty minutes later, Wilson and Savoy left the hospital for Brattle House, where three packages of electronic surveillance-busting equipment were waiting for them. For the next two hours, Wilson and Savoy searched the house for electronic bugging devices using a handheld state-of-the-art surveillance buster, with enough detection power to ferret out any electronic bug within thirty feet of its sensory nodes. They found eight bugs distributed throughout Brattle House.
With Savoy’s concurrence, Wilson decided to leave each of the bugs in place, allowing the surveillance crowd to believe the devices had not yet been discovered. The only bug they removed was the one in the belfry library, carefully transferring it to the family room. The library would become the one secure room in the house, and just to make sure, they unpacked the most sophisticated piece of equipment that Hap Greene had sent. It was a hi-tech nullifying device that looked like a Sharper Image sound machine, five inches in diameter and five inches tall, with a nine-inch cube recharging base—much smaller than the one Carter Emerson had given Wilson the day before. According to Savoy, the nullifier could eliminate all possibility of voice detection or recording for a radius of fifty feet around the device. There were two nullifiers in the package. The last package contained four small telephone scramblers designed to prevent electronic surveillance on one or both sides of a telephone conversation.
When his mother and Rachel arrived at the house, having picked up Rachel’s husband Darrin at the airport, Wilson gave them hand-written notes. The notes advised them of the listening devices and directed them to the belfry library. The looks of anxiety on their faces were sobering. I have to protect them, Wilson said to himself. Anita, the house manager, took four-year-old Mary, Rachel and Darrin’s only child, to the playroom.
Once everyone was in the library with the nullifier on, Wilson introduced Savoy, informed them about the expanded surveillance, and described the equipment Hap Greene had sent. After angrily speculating about how, when, and by whom the bugs had been planted, they agreed that it must have happened when they were in Sun Valley. Wilson then told them about his conversation with Carter and what had happened earlier with his father at the hospital. His mother’s eyes widened as he spoke, but she said nothing.
Rachel broke the stillness that had descended on the room.
“How long are we going to leave the bugs in place?”
“At some point, they’ll expect us to find and remove them. But for the next week or so, we need to use their bugs to let them know that we’re worried enough about our safety to back off and leave them alone.”
Nodding his agreement, Savoy said, “You’re dealing with what seem to be very unpredictable and dangerous people. We need time to assess the threat and prepare an adequate defense. If they think their listening devices are working, they won’t be as likely to employ more sophisticated equipment such as thermal imaging, wall-penetrating cameras, and denullifiers.”
Just then Anita opened the door to the library. She and little Mary entered. “Sorry for the interruption,” Anita said. “There’s a Detective Zemke from Sun Valley, who wants to talk to Mr. Fielder. I asked him to wait in the study.”
“Thank you, Anita. I’ll take care of it,” Wilson said, surprised by Zemke’s presence in Boston, but even more surprised by the unannounced visit. Looking at Savoy in frustration, he said, “Guess we can’t use the nullifier, can we?”