Paranoia

57

An early night for me – I got home by nine-thirty, a nervous wreck, needing three days of uninterrupted sleep. Driving away from Trion, I kept replaying that scene with Mordden in my head, trying to figure it all out. I wondered whether he was planning to tell someone, to turn me in. And if not, why not? Would he hold it over my head somehow? I didn't know how to handle it; that was the worst part.

And I found myself fantasizing about my great new bed with the Dux mattress and how I was going to collapse onto it the second I got home. What had my life come to? I was fantasizing about sleep. Pathetic.

Anyway, I couldn't go right to sleep, because I still had work to do. I had to get those Camilletti files out of my hot little hands and over to Meacham and Wyatt. I didn't want to keep these documents around a minute longer than I had to.

So I used the scanner Meacham had provided me, turned them into PDF documents, encrypted them, and secure-e-mailed them through the anonymizer service.

Once I'd done that, I got out the Keyghost manual, hooked it up to my computer, and started downloading. When I opened the first document, I felt a spasm of irritation – it was a solid block of gibberish. Obviously I'd screwed this up. I looked at it more closely and saw that there actually was a pattern here; maybe I hadn't botched it after all. I could make out Camilletti's name, a series of numbers and letters, and then whole sentences.

Pages and pages of text. Everything the guy had tapped out on his computer that day, and there was a lot.

First things first: I'd captured his password. Six numbers, ending in 82 – maybe it was the birth date of one of his kids. Or the date of his marriage. Something like that.

But far more interesting were all the e-mails. Lots of them, full of confidential information about the company, about the acquisition of a company he was overseeing. That company, Delphos, I'd seen in his files. The one that they were preparing to pay a shitload of money in cash and stock for.

There was an exchange of e-mails, marked TRION CONFIDENTIAL, about a secret new method of inventory control they'd put in place a few months ago to combat forgery and piracy, particularly in Asia. Some part of every Trion device, whether it was a phone or a handheld or a medical scanner, was now laser-etched with the Trion logo and a serial number. These micromachined identification marks could only be seen under a microscope: They couldn't be faked, and they proved that the thing was actually made by Trion.

There was a lot of information about chip-fabrication manufacturers in Singapore that Trion had either acquired or had invested heavily in. Interesting – Trion was going into the chip-making business, or at least buying up a stake in it.

I felt weird reading all this stuff. It was like going through someone's diary. I also felt really guilty – not because of any loyalty to Camilletti, obviously, but because of Goddard. I could almost see Goddard's gnomelike head floating in a bubble in the air, disapprovingly watching me go through Camilletti's e-mails and correspondence and notes to himself. Maybe it was because I was so wiped out, but I felt lousy about what I was doing. It sounds strange, I know – it was okay to steal stuff about the AURORA project and pass it to Wyatt, but giving them stuff I hadn't been assigned to get felt like an outright betrayal of my new employers.

The letters WSJ jumped out at me. They had to stand for the Wall Street Journal. I wanted to see what his reaction to the Journal piece was, so I zoomed in on the string of words, and I almost fell out of my seat.

From what I could tell, Camilletti used a number of different e-mail accounts outside of Trion – Hotmail, Yahoo, and some local Internet-access company. These other ones seemed to be for personal business, like dealing with his stockbroker, notes to his brother and sister and father, stuff like that.

But it was the Hotmail e-mails that grabbed my attention. One of them was addressed to BulkeleyW@WSJ.com. It said:

Bill -

Shit has hit the fan around here. Will be lot of pressure on you to give up your source – hang tough. Call me at home tonite 9:30.

– Paul

So there it was. Paul Camilletti was – he had to be – the leaker. He was the guy who had fed the damaging information on Trion, on Goddard, to the Journal.

Now it all made a creepy kind of sense. Camilletti was helping the Wall Street Journal wreak serious damage on Jock Goddard, portraying the old man as out of it, over-the-hill. Goddard had to go. Trion's board of directors, as well as every analyst and investment banker, would see this in the pages of the Journal. And who would the board appoint to take Goddard's place?

It was obvious, wasn't it?

Exhausted though I was, it took me a long time, tossing and turning, before I finally fell asleep. And my sleep was fitful, tormented. I kept thinking of little round-shouldered old Augustine Goddard at his sad little diner chowing down on pie, or looking haggard and beaten as his E-staff filed past him out of the conference room. I dreamed of Wyatt and Meacham, bullying me, threatening me with all their talk of prison time; in my dreams I confronted them, told them off, went off on them, really lost it. I dreamed of breaking into Camilletti's office and being caught by Chad and Nora together.

And when my alarm clock finally went off at six in the morning and I raised my throbbing head off the pillow, I knew I had to tell Goddard about Camilletti.

And then I realized I was stuck. How the hell could I tell Goddard about Camilletti when I'd gotten my evidence by breaking into Camilletti's office?

Now what?

58

The fact that Cutthroat Camilletti – the jerk who pretended to be so pissed off about the Wall Street Journal piece – was actually behind it really chafed my ass. The guy was more than an asshole: he was disloyal to Goddard.

Maybe it was a relief to actually have a moral conviction about something after weeks of being a low-down lying scumbag. Maybe feeling so protective of Goddard made me feel a little better about myself. Maybe by being pissed off about Camilletti's disloyalty I could conveniently ignore my own. Or maybe I was just grateful to Goddard for singling me out, recognizing me as somehow special, better than everyone else. It's hard to know how much of my anger toward Camilletti was really selfless. At times I was struck with this terrible knife-jab of anguish that I really wasn't any better than Camilletti. I mean, there I was at Trion, a fraud who pretended he could walk on water, when all the time I was breaking into offices and stealing documents and trying to rip the heart out of Jock Goddard's corporation while I rode around in his antique Buick…

It was all too much. These four-in-the-morning flop-sweat sessions were wearing me down. They were hazardous to my mental health. Better for me not to think, to operate on cruise control.

So maybe I really did have all the conscience of a boa constrictor. I still wanted to catch that bastard Paul Camilletti.

At least I didn't have any choice about what I was doing. I'd been cornered into it. Whereas Camilletti's treachery was of a whole different order. He was actively plotting against Goddard, the guy who brought him into the company, put his trust in him. And who knew what else Camilletti was doing?

Goddard needed to know. But I had to have cover – a plausible way I might have found out that didn't involve breaking into Camilletti's office.

All the way into work, while I enjoyed the jet-engine thrust and roar of the Porsche, my mind was working on solving this problem, and by the time I got to my office, I had a decent idea.

Working in the office of the CEO gave me serious clout. If I called someone I didn't know and identified myself as just plain-vanilla Adam Cassidy, the odds were I wouldn't get my call returned. But Adam Cassidy, "calling from the CEO's office" or "Jock Goddard's office" – as if I were sitting in the office next to the old guy and not a hundred feet down the hall – got all his calls returned, at lightning speed.

So when I called Trion's Information Technology department and told them that "we" wanted copies of all archived e-mails to and from the office of the chief financial officer in the last thirty days, I got instant cooperation. I didn't want to point a finger at Camilletti, so I made it appear that Goddard was concerned about leaks from the CFO's office.

One intriguing thing I'd learned was that Camilletti made a habit of deleting copies of certain sensitive e-mails, whether he sent them or received them. Obviously he didn't want to have those e-mails stored on his computer. He must have known, since he was a sharp guy, that copies of all e-mails were stored somewhere in the company's data banks. That's why he preferred to use outside e-mail for some of the more sensitive correspondence – including the Wall Street Journal. I wondered whether he knew that Trion's computers captured all e-mail that went through the company's fiber-optic cables, whether Yahoo or Hotmail or anything else.

My new friend in IT, who seemed to think he was doing a personal favor for Goddard himself, also got me the phone records of all calls in and out of the CFO's office. No problem, he said. The company obviously didn't tape conversations, but of course they kept track of all phone numbers out and in; that was standard corporate practice. He could even get me copies of anyone's voice mails, he said. But that might take some time.

The results came back within an hour. It was all there. Camilletti had received a number of calls from the Journal guy in the last ten days. But far more incriminatingly, he'd placed a bunch of calls to the guy. One or two he might be able to explain away as an attempt to return the reporter's calls – even though he'd insisted he never talked to the guy.

But twelve calls, some of them lasting five, seven minutes? That didn't look good.

And then came copies of the e-mails. "From now on," Camilletti wrote, "call me only on my home number. Do not repeat do NOT call me at Trion anymore. E-mails should go only to this Hotmail address."

Explain that away, Cutthroat.

Man, I could barely wait to show my little dossier to Goddard, but he was in meeting after meeting from midmorning to late afternoon – meetings, I noted, that he hadn't asked me to.

It wasn't until I saw Camilletti coming out of Goddard's office that I had my chance.

59

Camilletti saw me as he walked away but didn't seem to notice me; I could have been a piece of office furniture. Goddard caught my eye and his brows shot up questioningly. Flo began talking to him, and I did the index-finger-in-the-air thing that Goddard always did, indicating I just needed a minute of his time. He did a quick signal to Flo, then beckoned me in.

"How'd I do?" he asked.

"Excuse me?"

"My little speech to the company."

He actually cared about what I thought? "You were terrific," I said.

He smiled, looked relieved. "I always credit my old college drama coach. Helped me enormously in my career, interviews, public speaking, all that. You ever do any acting, Adam?"

My face went hot. Yeah, like everyday. Jesus, what was he hinting at? "No, actually."

"Really puts you at ease. Oh, heavens, not that I'm Cicero or anything, but…anyway, you had something on your mind?"

"It's about that Wall Street Journal article," I said.

"Okay…?" he said, puzzled.

"I've discovered who the leaker was."

He looked at me as if he didn't understand, so I went on: "Remember, we thought it had to be someone inside the company who was leaking information to the Journal report -"

"Yes, yes," he said impatiently.

"It's – well, it's Paul. Camilletti."

"What are you talking about?"

"I know it's hard to believe. But it's all here, and it's pretty unambiguous." I slid the printouts across his desk. "Check out the e-mail on top."

He took his reading glasses from the chain around his neck and put them on. Scowling, he inspected the papers. When he looked up his face was dark. "Where's this from?"

I smiled. "IT." I fudged just a bit and said, "I asked IT for phone records of all calls from anyone at Trion to the Wall Street Journa l. Then when I saw all those calls from Paul's phone, I thought it might be an admin or something, so I requested copies of his e-mails."

Goddard didn't look at all happy, which was understandable. In fact, he looked fairly upset, so I added, "I'm sorry. I know this must come as a shock." The clichй just came barreling out of my mouth. "I don't really understand it, myself."

"Well, I hope you're pleased with yourself," Goddard said.

I shook my head. "Pleased? No, I just want to get to the bottom of -"

"Because I'm disgusted," he said. His voice shook. "What the hell do you think you're doing? What do you think this is, the goddamned Nixon White House?" Now he was almost shouting, and spittle flew from his mouth.

The room collapsed around me: it was just me and him, across a four-foot expanse of desk. Blood roared in my ears. I was too stunned to say anything.

"Invading people's privacy, digging up dirt, getting private phone records and private e-mails and for all I know steaming open envelopes! I find that kind of underhandedness reprehensible, and I don't ever want you doing that again. Now get the hell out of here."

I got up unsteadily, light-headed, shocked. At the doorway I stopped, turned back. "I want to apologize," I said hoarsely. "I thought I was helping out. I'll – I'll go clear out my office."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, sit back down." The storm seemed to have passed. "You don't have time to clear out your office. I've got far too much for you to do." His voice was now gentler. "I understand you were trying to protect me. I get it, Adam, and I appreciate it. And I won't deny I'm flabbergasted about Paul. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do things, and I prefer the right way. You start monitoring e-mails and phone records and then you find yourself tapping phones, and next thing you know you've got yourself a police state, not a corporation. And a company can't function that way. I don't know how they did things at Wyatt, but we don't do 'em that way here."

I nodded. "I understand. I'm sorry."

He put up his palms. "It never happened. Forget about it. And I'll tell you something else – at the end of the day, no company ever failed because one of its executives mouthed off to the press. For whatever unfathomable reason. Now, I'll figure out some way of handling it. My way."

He pressed his palms together as if signifying the talk was over. "I don't need any kind of unpleasantness right now. We've got something far more important going on. Now, I'm going to need your input on a matter of the utmost secrecy." He settled himself behind his desk, put on his reading glasses, and took out his worn little black leather address book. He looked at me sternly over his reading glasses. "Don't ever tell anyone that the founder and chief executive officer of Trion Systems can't remember his own computer passwords. And certainly don't tell anyone about the specific type of handheld device I use to store them." Looking closely at the little black book, he tapped at his keyboard.

In a minute his printer hummed to life and spit out a few pages. He reached over, removed the pages, and handed them to me. "We're in the final stages of a major, major acquisition," he said. "Probably the most costly acquisition in Trion history. But it's probably also going to be the best investment we've ever made. I can't give you the details just yet, but assuming Paul's negotiations continue successfully, we should have a deal ready to announce by the end of next week."

I nodded.

"I want everything to go perfectly smoothly. These are the basic specs on the new company – number of employees, space requirements, and so on. It's going to be integrated into Trion immediately, and located right here in this building. Obviously that means that something here has to go. Some existing division's going to have to be moved out of headquarters and onto our Yarborough campus, or Research Triangle. I need you to figure out which division, or divisions, can be moved with the least disruption, to make room for…for the new acquisition. Okay? Look over these pages, and when you're done, please shred them. And let me know your thoughts as soon as possible."

"Okay."

"Adam, I know I'm dumping a whole lot on you, but it can't be helped. I need you to call it as you see it. I'm counting on your strategic savvy." He reached over and gave me a reassuring shoulder squeeze. "And your honesty."

60

Jocelyn, thank God, seemed to be taking more and more coffee-and little-girls'-room breaks the longer she worked for me. The next time she left her desk, I took the papers on Delphos that Goddard had given me – I knew it had to be Delphos, even though the company's name wasn't anywhere on the sheets – and made a quick photocopy at the machine behind her desk. Then I slipped the copies into a manila envelope.

I fired off an e-mail to "Arthur" telling him, in coded language, that I had some new stuff to pass on – that I wanted to "return" the "clothing" I'd bought online.

Sending an e-mail from work was, I knew, a risk. Even using Hushmail, which encrypted it. But I was short on time. I didn't want to have to wait until I got home, then maybe have to go back out…

Meacham's reply came back almost instantly. He told me not to send the item to the post-office box but the street address instead. Translation: he didn't want me to scan the documents and e-mail them, he wanted to see the actual hard copies, though he didn't say why. Did he want to make sure they were originals? Did that mean they didn't trust me?

He also wanted them immediately, and for some reason he didn't want to set up a face-to-face. Why? I wondered. Was he nervous about my being tailed or something? Whatever his logic, he wanted me to leave the documents for him using one of the dead drops we'd worked out weeks before.

At a little after six, I left work, drove over to a McDonald's about two miles from Trion headquarters. The men's room here was small, one-guy-at-a-time, and you could lock the door. I locked it, found the paper towel dispenser and popped it open, put the rolled-up manila envelope inside and closed the dispenser. Until the paper towel roll needed changing, no one would look inside – except Meacham.

On the way out I bought a Quarter Pounder – not that I wanted one, but for cover, like I'd been taught. About a mile down the road was a 7-Eleven with a low concrete wall around the parking lot in front. I parked in the lot, went in and bought a Diet Pepsi, then drank as much of it as I could. The rest I poured down a drain in the parking lot. I put a lead fishing weight inside the can from the stash in my glove compartment, placed the empty can on the top of the concrete wall.

The Pepsi can was a signal to Meacham, who drove by this 7-Eleven regularly, that I'd loaded dead drop number three, the McDonald's. This simple bit of spy tradecraft would enable Meacham to pick up the documents without being seen with me.

The handover went smoothly, as far as I could tell. I had no reason to think otherwise.

Okay, so what I was doing made me feel sleazy. But at the same time, I couldn't help feeling a little proud: I was getting good at this spy stuff.

61

By the time I got home there was an e-mail on my Hushmail account from "Arthur." Meacham wanted me to drive to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, more than half an hour away, immediately. Obviously they considered this urgent.

The place turned out to be a lavish restaurant-spa, a famous foodie mecca called the Auberge. The lobby's walls were decorated with articles about the place in Gourmet and magazines like that.

I could see why Wyatt wanted to meet me here, and it wasn't just the food. The restaurant was set up for maximum discretion – for private meetings, for extramarital affairs, whatever. In addition to the main dining room, there were these small, separate alcoves for private dining, which you could enter and leave directly from the parking lot without having to go through the main part of the restaurant. It reminded me of a high-class motel.

Wyatt was sitting at a table in a private alcove with Judith Bolton. Judith was cordial, and even Wyatt seemed a little less hostile than usual. Maybe that was because I'd been so successful in getting him what he wanted. Maybe he was on his second glass of wine, or maybe it was Judith, who seemed to exert a mysterious sway over him. I was pretty sure there was nothing going on between Judith and Wyatt, at least based on their body language. But they were obviously close, and he deferred to her in a way he didn't defer to anyone else.

A waiter brought me a glass of sauvignon blanc. Wyatt told him to leave, come back in fifteen minutes when he was ready to order. Now we were alone in here: me, Wyatt, and Judith Bolton.

"Adam," said Wyatt as he gnawed on a piece of focaccia, "those files you got from the CFO's office – they were very helpful."

"Good," I said. Now I was Adam? And an actual compliment? It gave me the heebie-jeebies.

"Especially that term sheet on this company Delphos," he went on. "Obviously it's a linchpin, a crucial acquisition for Trion. No wonder they're willing to pay five hundred million bucks in stock for it. Anyway, that finally solved the mystery. That put the last piece of the puzzle into place. We've figured out AURORA."

I gave him a blank look, like I really didn't care, and nodded.

"This whole business was worth it, worth every penny," he said. "The enormous trouble we went to to get you inside Trion, the training, the security measures. The expense, the huge risks – they were all worth it." He tipped his wineglass toward Judith, who smiled proudly. "I owe you big-time," he said to her.

I thought: And what am I, chopped liver?

"Now, I want you to listen to me very closely," Wyatt said. "Because the stakes are immense, and I want you to understand the urgency. Trion Systems appears to have developed the most important technological breakthrough since the integrated circuit. They've solved a problem that a lot of us have been working on for decades. They've just changed history."

"Are you sure you want to be telling me this?"

"Oh, I want you taking notes. You're a smart boy. Pay close attention. The age of the silicon chip is over. Somehow Trion's managed to develop an optical chip."

"So?"

He stared at me with boundless contempt. Judith spoke earnestly, quickly, as if to cover over my gaffe. "Intel's spent billions trying to crack this without success. The Pentagon's been working on it for over a decade. They know it'll revolutionize their aircraft and missile navigation systems, so they'll pay almost anything to get their hands on a working optical chip."

"The opto-chip," Wyatt said, "handles optical signals – light – instead of electronic ones, using a substance called indium phosphide."

I remember reading something about indium phosphide in Camilletti's files. "That's the stuff that's used for building lasers."

"Trion's cornered the market on the shit. That was the tip-off. They need indium phosphide for the semiconductor in the chip – it can handle much higher data-transfer speeds than gallium arsenide."

"You've lost me," I said. "What's so special about it?"

"The opto-chip has a modulator capable of switching signals at a hundred gigabytes a second."

I blinked. This was all Urdu to me. Judith was watching him, rapt. I wondered if she got this.

"It's the goddamned fucking Holy Grail. Let me put it to you in simple terms. A single particle of opto-chip one-hundredth the diameter of a human hair will now be able to handle all of a corporation's telephone, computer, satellite, and television traffic at once. Or maybe you can wrap your mind around this, guy: with the optical chip, you can download a two-hour movie in digital format in one-twentieth of a second, you get it? This is a fucking quantum leap in the industry, in computers and handhelds and satellites and cable TV transmission, you name it. The opto-chip's going to enable things like this" – he held up his Wyatt Lucid handheld – "to receive flicker-free TV images. It is so vastly superior to any existing technology – it's capable of higher speeds, requiring far lower voltage, lower signal loss, lower heat levels… It's amazing. It's the real deal."

"Excellent," I said quietly. The import of what I'd done was beginning to sink in, and now I felt like a damned traitor to Trion – Jock Goddard's own Benedict Arnold. I had just given the hideous Nick Wyatt the most valuable, paradigm-shifting technology since color TV or whatever. "I'm glad I could be of service."

"I want every fucking last spec," Wyatt said. "I want their prototype. I want the patent applications, the lab notes, everything they've got."

"I don't know how much more I can get," I said. "I mean, short of breaking into the fifth floor -"

"Oh, that too, guy. That too. I've put you in the fucking catbird seat. You're working directly for Goddard, you're one of his chief lieutenants, you've got access to just about anything you want to get."

"It's not that simple. You know that."

"You're in a unique position of trust, Adam," put in Judith. "You can gain access to a whole range of projects."

Wyatt interrupted: "I don't want you holding back a single fucking thing."

"I'm not holding back -"

"The layoffs came as a surprise to you, is that it?"

"I told you there was some kind of big announcement coming. I really didn't know anything more than that at the time."

" 'At the time,' " he repeated nastily. "You knew about the layoffs before CNN did, asshole. Where was that intelligence? I have to watch CNBC to find out about the layoffs at Trion when I've got a mole in the fucking CEO's office?"

"I didn't -"

"You put a bug in the CFO's office. What happened with that?" His overly tanned face was darker than usual, his eyes bloodshot. I could feel the spray of his spittle.

"I had to pull it."

"Pull it?" he said in disbelief. "Why?"

"Corporate Security found the thing I put in the HR department, and they've started searching everywhere, so I had to be careful. I could have jeopardized everything."

"How long was the bug in the CFO's office before you pulled it?" he shot back.

"Not much longer than a day."

"A day would get you a shitload."

"No, it – well, the thing must have malfunctioned," I lied. "I don't know what happened."

Frankly, I wasn't sure why I was holding back. I guess it was the fact that the bug revealed that Camilletti had been the one who'd leaked to the Wall Street Journal, and I didn't want Wyatt knowing all of Goddard's private business. I hadn't really thought it through.

"Malfunctioned? Somehow I'm dubious. I want that bug in Arnie Meacham's hand by the end of the day tomorrow for his techs to examine. And believe me, those guys can tell right away if you've tampered with it. Or if you never put it in the CFO's office in the first place. And if you're lying to me, you fuck, you're dead."

"Adam," said Judith, "it's crucial that we're totally open and honest with each other. Don't withhold. Far too many things can go wrong. You're not able to see the big picture."

I shook my head. "I don't have it. I had to get rid of it."

"Get rid of it?" Wyatt said.

"I was – I was in a tight spot, the security guys were searching offices, and I figured I'd better take the thing out and throw it in a Dumpster a couple of blocks away. I didn't want to blow the whole operation over a single busted bug."

He stared at me for a few seconds. "Don't ever hold anything back from us, do you understand? Ever. Now, listen up. We've got excellent sources telling us that Goddard's people are putting on a major press conference at Trion headquarters in two weeks. Some major press conference, some big news. The e-mail traffic you handed me suggests they're on the verge of going public with this optical chip."

"They're not going to announce it if they haven't locked down all the patents, right?" I said. I'd done a little late-night Internet research myself. "I'm sure you've had your minions checking all Trion filings at the U.S. Patent Office."

"Attending law school in your spare time?" Wyatt said with a thin smile. "You file with the Patent Office at the last possible second, asshole, to avoid premature disclosure or infringement. They won't file until just before the announcement. Until then, the intellectual property is kept a trade secret. Which means, until it's filed – which may be any time in the next two weeks – it's open season on the design specs. The clock's ticking. I don't want you to sleep, to rest for a goddamned minute until you have every last fucking detail on the optical chip, are we clear?"

I nodded sullenly.

"Now, if you'll excuse us, we'd like to order dinner." I got up from the table and went out to use the men's room before I drove off. As I came out of the private dining room, a guy walking past glanced at me.

I panicked.

I spun around and went back through the private room to the parking lot.

I wasn't one hundred percent sure at the time, but the guy in the hall looked a whole lot like Paul Camilletti.

62

There were people in my office.

When I got into work next morning, I saw them from a distance – two men, one young, one older – and I froze. It was seven-thirty in the morning, and for some reason Jocelyn wasn't at her desk. In an instant my mind ran through a menu of possibilities, one worse than the next: Security had somehow found something in my office. Or I'd been fired and they were clearing out my desk. Or I was being arrested.

Approaching my office, I tried to hide my nervousness. I said jovially, as if these were buddies of mine who'd dropped by for a visit, "What's going on?"

The older one was taking notes on a clipboard, and the younger one was now bent over my computer. The older one, gray hair and walrus mustache, rimless glasses, said, "Security, sir. Your secretary, Miss Chang, let us in."

"What's up?"

"We're doing an inspection of all the offices on the seventh floor, sir. I don't know if you got the notice about the security violation in Human Resources."

Was that all this was about? I was relieved. But only for a few seconds. What if they'd found something in my desk? Had I left any of my spycraft equipment locked in any of the desk or file cabinet drawers? I made it a habit never to leave anything there. But what if I'd slipped? I was stretched so thin I could easily have left something there by mistake.

"Great," I said. "I'm glad you're here. You haven't found anything, have you?"

There was a moment of silence. The younger one looked up from my computer and didn't reply. The older one said, "Not yet, sir, no."

"I wasn't thinking I was a target, necessarily," I added. "Gosh, I'm not that important. I mean anything on this floor, in any of the big guys' offices?"

"We're not supposed to discuss that, but no, sir, we haven't found anything. Doesn't mean we won't, though."

"My computer check out okay?" I addressed the young guy.

"No devices or anything like that have turned up so far," he replied. "But we're going to have to run some diagnostics on it. Can you log in for us?"

"Sure." I hadn't sent any incriminating e-mails from this computer, had I?

Well, yes, I had. I'd e-mailed Meacham on my Hushmail account. But even if the message hadn't been encrypted, it wouldn't have told them anything. I was sure I hadn't saved any files on my computer I wasn't supposed to have. That I was sure of. I stepped over behind my desk and typed in my password. Both security guys tactfully looked away until I was logged in.

"Who has access to your office?" the older man asked.

"Just me. And Jocelyn."

"And the cleaning crew," he persisted.

"I guess so, but I never see them."

"You've never seen them?" he repeated skeptically. "But you work late hours, right?"

"They work even later hours."

"What about interoffice mail? Any delivery person ever come in here when you're out, that you know of?"

I shook my head. "All that stuff goes to Jocelyn's desk. They never deliver to me directly."

"Has anyone from IT ever serviced your computer or phone?"

"Not that I know of."

The younger guy asked, "Gotten any strange e-mails?"

"Strange…?"

"From people you don't know, with attachments or whatever."

"Not that I can recall."

"But you use other e-mail services, right? I mean, other than Trion."

"Sure."

"Ever accessed them from this computer?"

"Yeah, I suppose I have."

"And on any of those e-mail accounts did you ever get any funny-looking e-mail?"

"Well, I get spam all the time, like everyone else. You know, Viagra or 'Add Three Inches' or the ones about farm girls." Neither one of them seemed to have a sense of humor. "But I just delete all those."

"This'll just be five or ten minutes, sir," the younger one said, inserting a disk into my CD-ROM drive. "Maybe you can get a cup of coffee or something."

Actually, I had a meeting, so I left the security guys in my office, not feeling so good about it, and headed over to Plymouth, one of the smaller conference rooms.

I didn't like the fact that they'd asked about outside e-mail accounts. That was bad. In fact, it scared the shit out of me. What if they decided to dig up all my e-mails? I'd seen how easy it was to do. What if they found out I'd ordered copies of Camilletti's e-mail traffic? Would that make me a suspect somehow?

As I passed Goddard's office, I saw that both he and Flo were gone – Jock to the meeting, I knew. Then I passed Jocelyn carrying a mug of coffee. Printed on it was GONE OUT OF MY MIND – BACK IN FIVE MINUTES.

"Are those security goons still at my desk?" she asked.

"They're in my office now," I said and kept going.

She gave me a little wave.

63

Goddard and Camilletti were seated around a small round table along with the COO, Jim Colvin, and another Jim, the director of Human Resources, Jim Sperling, plus a couple of women I didn't recognize. Sperling, a black man with a close-cropped beard and oversize wire-rim glasses, was talking about "targets of opportunity," by which I assume he meant staff they could lop off. Jim Sperling didn't do the Jock Goddard mock turtleneck thing, but he was close enough – a sports-jacket-and-dark-polo-shirt. Only Jim Colvin wore a conventional business suit and tie.

Sperling's young blond assistant slid me some papers listing departments and individual poor suckers that were candidates for the axe. I scanned it quickly, saw that the Maestro team wasn't on there. So I'd saved their jobs after all.

Then I noticed a roster of New Product Marketing names, among them Phil Bohjalian. The old-timer was going to get laid off. Neither Chad nor Nora was on the list, but Phil had been targeted. By Nora, it had to be. Each VP and director had been asked to stack-rank their subordinates and lose at least one out of ten. Nora had obviously singled out Phil for execution.

This seemed to be more or less a rubber-stamp session. Sperling was presenting the list, making a "business case" for those "positions" he wanted to eliminate, and there was little discussion. Goddard looked glum; Camilletti looked intent, even a little jazzed.

When Sperling got to New Product Marketing, Goddard turned to me, silently soliciting my opinion. "Can I say something?" I put in.

"Uh, sure," said Sperling.

"There's a name on here, Phil Bohjalian. He's been with the company something like twenty, twenty-one years."

"He's also ranked lowest," said Camilletti. I wondered whether Goddard had said anything to him about the Wall Street Journal leak. I couldn't tell from Camilletti's manner, since he was no more, or less, abrasive to me than usual. "Plus given his tenure with the company, his benefits cost us an arm and a leg."

"Well, I'd question his ranking," I said. "I'm familiar with his work, and I think his numbers may be more of a matter of interpersonal style."

"Style," said Camilletti.

"Nora Sommers doesn't like his personality." Granted, Phil wasn't exactly a buddy of mine, but he couldn't do me any harm, and I felt bad for the guy.

"Well, if this is just about a personality clash, that's an abuse of the ranking system," said Jim Sperling. "Are you telling me Nora Sommers is abusing the system?"

I saw clearly where this could go. I could save Phil Bohjalian's job and jettison Nora, all at the same time. It was hugely tempting to just speak up and slash Nora's throat. No one in this room particularly cared one way or another. The word would go down to Tom Lundgren, who wasn't likely to battle to save her. In fact, if Goddard hadn't plucked me out of Nora's clutches, it would surely have been my name on the list, not Phil's.

Goddard was watching me keenly, as was Sperling. The others around the table were taking notes.

"No," I said at last. "I don't think she's abusing the system. It's just a chemistry thing. I think both of them pull their weight."

"Fine," Sperling said. "Can we move on?"

"Look," said Camilletti, "we're cutting four thousand employees. We can't possibly go over them one by one."

I nodded. "Of course."

"Adam," Goddard said. "Do me a favor. I gave Flo the morning off – would you mind getting my, uh, handheld from my office? Seem to have forgotten it." His eyes seemed to twinkle. He meant his little black datebook, and I guess the joke was for my enjoyment.

"Sure," I said, and I swallowed hard. "Be right back."

Goddard's office door was closed but unlocked. The little black book was on his bare, neat desk, next to his computer.

I sat down at his desk chair and looked around at his stuff, the framed photographs of his white-haired, grandmotherly-looking wife, Margaret; a picture of his lake house. No pictures of his son, Elijah, I noticed: probably too painful a reminder.

I was alone in Jock Goddard's office, and Flo had the morning off. How long could I stay here without Goddard becoming suspicious? Was there time to try to get into his computer? What if Flo showed up while I was there…?

No. Insanely risky. This was the CEO's office, and people were probably coming by here all the time. And I couldn't risk taking more than two or three minutes on this errand: Goddard would wonder where I'd been. Maybe I took a quick pee break before I got his book: that might explain five minutes, no more.

But I'd probably never have this opportunity again.

Quickly I flipped the worn little book open and saw phone numbers, pencil scrawlings on calendar entries…and on the page inside the back cover was printed, in a neat hand, "GODDARD" and below that "62858."

It had to be his password.

Above those five numbers, crossed out, was "JUN 2858." I looked at the two series of numbers and figured out that they were both dates, and they were both the same date: June 28, 1958. Obviously a date of some importance to Goddard. I didn't know what. Maybe his wedding date. And both variants were obviously passwords.

I grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper and copied down the ID and password.

But why not copy the whole book? There might well be other important information here.

Closing Goddard's office door behind me, I went up to the photocopier behind Flo's desk.

"You trying to do my job, Adam?" came Flo's voice.

I whipped around, saw Flo carrying a Saks Fifth Avenue bag. She was staring at me with a fierce expression.

"Morning, Flo," I said offhandedly. "No, fear not. I was just getting something for Jock."

"That's good. Because I've been here longer, and I'd hate to have to pull rank on you." Her stare softened, and a sweet smile broke out on her face.

64

As the meeting broke up, Goddard sidled up to me and put his arm around my shoulder. "I like what you did in here," he said in a low voice.

"What do you mean?"

We walked down the hall to his office. "I'm referring to your restraint in the case of Nora Sommers. I know how you feel about her. I know how she feels about you. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for you to get rid of her. And frankly, I wouldn't have put up much of a struggle."

I felt a little uncomfortable about Goddard's affection, but I smiled, ducked my head. "It seemed like the right thing to do," I said.

" 'They that have power to hurt and will do none,' " Goddard said, " 'They rightly do inherit heaven's graces.' Shakespeare. In modern English: When you have the power to screw people over and you don't – well, that's when you get to show who you really are."

"I suppose."

"And who's that older fellow whose job you saved?"

"Just a guy in marketing."

"Buddy of yours?"

"No. I don't think he particularly likes me either. I just think he's a loyal employee."

"Good for you." Goddard squeezed my shoulder, hard. He led me to his office, stopped for a moment before Flo's desk. "Morning, sweetheart," he said. "I want to see the confirmation dress."

Flo beamed, opened the Saks bag, pulled out a small white silk girl's dress, and held it up proudly.

"Marvelous," he said. "Just marvelous."

Then we went into his office and he closed the door.

"I haven't said a word to Paul yet," Goddard said, settling behind his desk, "and I haven't decided whether I will. You haven't told anyone else, right? About the Journal business?"

"Right."

"Keep it that way. Look, Paul and I have some differences of opinion, and maybe this was his way of lighting a fire under me. Maybe he thought he was helping the company. I just don't know." A long sigh. "If I do raise it with him – well, I don't want word of it getting around. I don't want any unpleasantness. We have far, far more important things going on these days."

"Okay."

He gave me a sidelong glance. "I've never been out to the Auberge, but I hear it's terrific. What'd you think?"

I felt a lurch in my gut. My face grew hot. That had been Camilletti there last night, of all the lousy luck.

"I just – I only had a glass of wine, actually."

"You'll never guess who happened to be having dinner there the same night," Goddard said. His expression was unreadable. "Nicholas Wyatt."

Camilletti had obviously done some asking around. To even try to deny that I was with Wyatt would be suicide. "Oh, that," I said, trying to sound weary. "Ever since I took the job at Trion, Wyatt's been after me for -"

"Oh, is that right?" Goddard interrupted. "So of course you had no choice but to accept his invitation to dinner, hmm?"

"No, sir, it's not like that," I said, swallowing hard.

"Just because you change jobs doesn't mean you give up your old friends, I suppose," he said.

I shook my head, frowned. My face felt like it was getting as red as Nora's. "It's not a matter of friendship, actually -"

"Oh, I know how it goes," Goddard said. "The other guy guilts you into taking a meeting with him, just for old times' sake, and you don't want to be rude to him, and then he lays it on nice and thick…"

"You know I had no intention of -"

"Of course not, of course not," Goddard muttered. "You're not that kind of person. Please. I know people. Like to think that's one of my strengths."

When I got back to my office, I sat down at my desk, shaken.

The fact that Camilletti had reported to Goddard that he'd seen me at the Auberge at the same time as Wyatt meant that Camilletti, at least, was suspicious of my motives. He must have thought that I was, at the very least, allowing myself to be wooed, courted, by my old boss. But being Camilletti, he probably had darker thoughts than that.

This was a fucking disaster. I wondered, too, whether Goddard really did think the whole thing was innocent. "I know people," he'd said. Was he that naпve? I didn't know what to think. But it was clear that I was going to have to watch my ass very carefully from now on.

I took a deep breath, pressed my fingertips hard against my closed eyes. No matter what, I still had to keep plugging away.

After a few minutes, I did a quick search on the Trion Web site and found the name of the guy in charge of the Trion Legal Department's Intellectual Property Division. He was Bob Frankenheimer, fifty-four, been with Trion for eight years. Before that he'd been general counsel at Oracle, and before that he was at Wilson, Sonsini, a big Silicon Valley law firm. From his photo he looked seriously overweight, with dark curly hair, a five o'clock shadow, thick glasses. Looked like your quintessential nerd.

I called him from my desk, because I wanted him to see my caller ID, see I was calling from the office of the CEO. He answered his own phone, with a surprisingly mellow voice, like a late-night radio DJ on a soft rock station.

"Mr. Frankenheimer, this is Adam Cassidy in the CEO's office."

"What can I do for you?" he said, sounding genuinely cooperative.

"We'd like to review all the patent applications for department three twenty-two."

It was bold, and definitely risky. What if he happened to mention it to Goddard? That would be just about impossible to explain.

A long pause. "The AURORA project."

"Right," I said casually. "I know we're supposed to have all the copies on file here, but I've just spent the last two hours looking all over the place, and I just can't find them, and Jock's really in a snit about this." I lowered my voice. "I'm new here – I just started – and I don't want to fuck this up."

Another pause. Frankenheimer's voice suddenly seemed cooler, less cooperative, like I'd pressed the wrong button. "Why are you calling me?"

I didn't know what he meant, but it was clear I'd just stepped in it. "Because I figure you're the one guy who can save my job," I said with a little mordant chuckle.

"You think I have copies here?" he said tightly.

"Well, do you know where the copies of the filings are, then?"

"Mr. Cassidy, I've got a team of six top-notch intellectual-property attorneys here in house who can handle just about anything that's thrown at them. But the AURORA filings? Oh, no. Those have to be handled by outside counsel. Why? Allegedly for reasons of 'corporate security.' " His voice got steadily louder, and he sounded really pissed off. " 'Corporate security.' Because presumably outside counsel practice better security than Trion's own people. So I ask you: What kind of message is that supposed to send?" He wasn't sounding so mellow anymore.

"That's not right," I said. "So who is handling the filings?"

Frankenheimer exhaled. He was a bitter, angry man, a prime heart-attack candidate. "I wish I could tell you. But obviously we can't be trusted with that information either. What's that our culture badges say, 'Open Communication'? I love that. I think I'm going to have that printed on our T-shirts for the Corporate Games."

When I hung up, I passed by Camilletti's office on the way to the men's room, and then I did a double take.

Sitting in Paul Camilletti's office, a grave look on his face, was my old buddy.

Chad Pierson.

I quickened my stride, not wanting to be seen by either of them through the glass walls of Camilletti's office. Though why I didn't want to be seen, I had no idea. I was running on instinct by now.

Jesus, did Chad even know Camilletti? He'd never said he did, and given Chad's modest and unassuming demeanor, it seemed just the sort of thing he'd have gloated about to me. I couldn't think of any legitimate – or at least innocent – reason why the two of them might be talking. And it sure as hell wasn't social: Camilletti wouldn't waste his time on a worm like Chad.

The only plausible explanation was the one I most dreaded: that Chad had taken his suspicions about me right to the top, or as close to the top as he could get. But why Camilletti?

No doubt Chad had it in for me, and once he'd heard about a new hire from Wyatt Telecom, he'd probably flushed Kevin Griffin out in an effort to gather dirt on me. And he'd got lucky.

But had he really?

I mean, how much did Kevin Griffin really know about me? He knew rumors, gossip; he might claim to know something about my past history at Wyatt. Yet here was a guy whose own reputation was in question. Whatever Wyatt Security had told Trion, clearly the folks at Trion believed it – or they wouldn't have gotten rid of him so fast.

So would Camilletti really believe secondhand accusations coming from a questionable source, a possible sleazebag, like Kevin Griffin?

On the other hand…now that he'd seen me out at dinner with Wyatt, in a secluded restaurant, maybe he would.

My stomach was starting to ache. I wondered if I was getting an ulcer.

Even if I was, that would be the least of my problems.

65

The next day, Saturday, was Goddard's barbecue. It took me an hour and a half to get to Goddard's lake house, a lot of it on narrow back roads. On the way I called Dad from my cell, which was a mistake. I talked a little to Antwoine, and then Dad got on, huffing and puffing, his usual charming self, and demanded I come over now.

"Can't, Dad," I said. "I've got a business thing I have to do." I didn't want to say I had to go to a barbecue at the CEO's country house. My mind spun through Dad's possible responses and hit overload. There was his corrupt-CEO rant, the Adam-as-pathetic-brownnoser rant, the you-don't-know-who-you-are rant, the rich-people-rub-your-face-in-their-wealth rant, the whassa-matter-you-don't-want-to-spend-time-with-your-dying-father rant…

"You need something?" I added, knowing he'd never admit he needed anything.

"I don't need anything," he said testily. "Not if you're too busy."

"Let me come by tomorrow morning, okay?"

Dad was silent, letting me know I'd pissed him off, and then put Antwoine on the phone. The old man was back to being his usual asshole self.

I ended the call when I reached the house. The place was marked with a simple wooden sign on a post, just GODDARD and a number. Then a long, rutted dirt path through dense woods that suddenly broadened out into a big circular drive crunchy with crushed clamshells. A kid in a green shirt was serving temporary valet duty. Reluctantly I handed him the keys to the Porsche.

The house was a sprawling, gray-shingled, comfortable-looking place that looked like it had been built in the late nineteenth century or so. It was set on a bluff overlooking the lake, with four fat stone chimneys and ivy climbing on the shingles. In front was a huge, rolling lawn that smelled like it had just been mowed and, here and there, massive old oak trees and gnarled pines.

Twenty or thirty people were standing around on the lawn in shorts and T-shirts, holding drinks. A bunch of kids were running back and forth, shouting and tossing balls, playing games. A pretty blond girl was sitting at a card table in front of the veranda. She smiled and found my name tag and handed it to me.

The main action seemed to be on the other side of the house, the back lawn that sloped gently down to a wooden dock on the water. There the crowd was thicker. I looked around for a familiar face, didn't see anyone. A stout woman of about sixty in a burgundy caftan, with a very wrinkled face and snow-white hair, came up to me.

"You look lost," she said kindly. Her voice was deep and hoarse, and her face was as weathered and picturesque as the house.

I knew right away she had to be Goddard's wife. She was every bit as homely as advertised. Mordden was right: she really did look kind of like a shar-pei puppy.

"I'm Margaret Goddard. And you must be Adam."

I extended my hand, flattered that she'd somehow recognized me until I remembered that my name was on the front of my shirt. "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Goddard," I said.

She didn't correct me, tell me to call her Margaret. "Jock's told me quite a bit about you." She held on to my hand for a long time and nodded, her small brown eyes widening. She looked impressed, unless I was imagining it. She drew closer. "My husband's a cynical old codger, and he's not easily impressed. So you must be good."

A screened-in porch wrapped around the back of the house. I passed a couple of large black Cajun grills with plumes of smoke rising from the glowing charcoal. A couple of girls in white uniforms were tending sizzling burgers and steaks and chicken. A long bar had been set up nearby, covered in a white linen tablecloth, where a couple of college-age guys were pouring mixed drinks and soft drinks and beers into clear plastic cups. At another table a guy was opening oysters and laying them out on a bed of ice.

As I approached the veranda, I began to recognize people, most of them fairly high-ranking Trion executives and spouses and kids. Nancy Schwartz, senior vice president of the Business Solutions Unit, a small, dark-haired, worried-looking woman wearing a Day-Glo orange Trion T-shirt from last year's Corporate Games, was playing a game of croquet with Rick Durant, the chief marketing officer, tall and slim and tanned with blow-dried black hair. They both looked gloomy. Goddard's admin, Flo, in a silk Hawaiian muumuu, floral and dramatic, was swanning around as if she were the real hostess.

Then I caught sight of Alana, long legs tan against white shorts. She saw me at the same instant, and her eyes seemed to light up. She looked surprised. She gave me a quick furtive wave and a smile, and she turned away. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, if anything. Maybe she wanted to be discreet about our relationship, the old don't-fish-off-the-company-pier thing.

I passed my old boss, Tom Lundgren, who was dressed in one of those hideous golf shirts with gray and bright pink stripes. He was clutching a bottle of water and nervously stripping off the label in a long perfect ribbon as he listened with a fixed grin to an attractive black woman who was probably Audrey Bethune, a vice president and the head of the Guru team. Standing slightly behind him was a woman I took to be Lundgren's wife, dressed in an identical golfing outfit, her face almost as red and chafed as his. A gangly little boy was grabbing at her elbow and pleading about something in a squeaky voice.

Fifty feet away or so, Goddard was laughing with a small knot of guys who looked familiar. He was drinking from a bottle of beer and wearing a blue button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves, a pair of neatly creased, cuffed khakis, a navy-blue cloth belt with whales on it, and battered brown moccasins. The ultimate prepster country baron. A little girl ran up to him, and he leaned over and magically extracted a coin from her ear. She squealed in surprise. He handed her the coin, and she ran off, shrieking with excitement.

He said something else, and his audience laughed as if he were Jay Leno and Eddie Murphy and Rodney Dangerfield all rolled into one. To one side of him was Paul Camilletti, in neatly pressed, faded jeans and a white button-down shirt, also with the sleeves rolled up. He'd gotten the appropriate-dress memo, even if I hadn't – I had on a pair of khaki shorts and a polo shirt.

Facing him was Jim Colvin, the COO, his sandpiper legs pasty-white under plain gray Bermuda shorts. A real fashion show this was. Goddard looked up, caught my eye, and beckoned me over.

As I started toward him, someone came out of nowhere and clutched my arm. Nora Sommers, in a pink knit shirt with the collar standing up and oversized khaki shorts, looked thrilled to see me. "Adam!" she exclaimed. "How nice to see you here! Isn't this a marvelous place?"

I nodded, smiled politely. "Is your daughter here?"

She looked suddenly uncomfortable. "Megan's going through a difficult stage, poor thing. She never wants to spend time with me." Funny, I thought, I'm going through the exact same stage. "She'd rather ride horses with her father than waste an afternoon with her mother and her mother's boring work friends."

I nodded. "Excuse me -"

"Have you had a chance to see Jock's car collection? It's in the garage over there." She pointed toward a barnlike building a few hundred feet across the lawn. "You have to see the cars. They're glorious!"

"I will, thanks," I said, and took a step toward Goddard's little gang.

Nora's clutch on my arm tightened. "Adam, I've been meaning to tell you, I am so happy for your success. It really says something about Jock that he was willing to take a chance on you, doesn't it? Place his confidence in you? I'm just so happy for you!" I thanked her warmly and extricated my arm from her claw.

I reached Goddard and stood politely off to one side until he saw me and waved me over. He introduced me to Stuart Lurie, the exec in charge of Enterprise Solutions, who said, "How's it going, guy?" and gave me a soul clasp. He was a very good-looking guy of around forty, prematurely bald and shaved short on the sides so it all looked sort of deliberate and cool.

"Adam's the future of Trion," Goddard said.

"Well, hey, nice to meet the future!" said Lurie with just the slightest hint of sarcasm. "You're not going to pull a coin from his ear, Jock, are you?"

"No need to," Jock said. "Adam's always pulling rabbits out of hats, right, Adam?" Goddard put his arm around my shoulder, an awkward gesture since I was so much taller than him. "Come with me," he said quietly.

He guided me toward the screened porch. "In a little while I'm going to be doing my traditional little ceremony," he said as we climbed the wooden steps. I held the screen door open for him. "I give out little gifts, silly little things – gag gifts, really." I smiled, wondering why he was telling me this.

We passed through the screened porch, with its old wicker furniture, into a mudroom and then into the main part of the house. The floors were old wide-board pine, and they squeaked as we walked over them. The walls were all painted creamy white, and everything seemed bright and cheery and homey. It had that indescribable old-house smell. Everything seemed comfortable and lived-in and real. This was the house of a rich man with no pretensions, I thought. We went down a wide hallway past a sitting room with a big stone fireplace, then turned a corner into a narrow hall with a tile floor. Trophies and stuff were on shelves on either side of the hall. Then we entered a small book-lined room with a long library table in the center, a computer and printer on it and several huge cardboard boxes. This was obviously Goddard's study.

"The old bursitis is acting up," he apologized, indicating the big cartons on the library table, which were heaped with what looked like wrapped gifts. "You're a strapping young man. If you wouldn't mind carrying these out to where the podium's set up, near the bar…"

"Not at all," I said, disappointed, but not showing it. I lifted one of the enormous boxes, which was not only heavy but unwieldy, unevenly weighted and so bulky that I could barely see in front of me as I walked.

"I'll guide you out of here," Goddard said. I followed him into the narrow corridor. The box scraped against the shelves on both sides, and I had to turn it sort of sideways and up to maneuver it through. I could feel the box nudge something. There was a loud crash, the sound of glass shattering.

"Oh, shit," I blurted out.

I twisted the box so I could see what had just happened. I stared: I must have knocked one of the trophies off a shelf. It lay in a dozen golden shards all over the tile floor. It was the kind of trophy that looked like solid gold but was actually some kind of gilt-painted ceramic or something.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry," I said, setting down the box and crouching down to pick up the pieces. I'd been so careful with the box, but somehow I must have knocked against it, I didn't know how.

Goddard glanced around and he turned white. "Forget it," he said in a strained voice.

I collected as many of the shards as I could. It was – it had been – a golden statuette of a running football player. There was a fragment of a helmet, a fist, a little football. The base was wood with a brass plaque that said 1995 CHAMPIONS – LAKEWOOD SCHOOL – ELIJAH GODDARD – QUARTERBACK.

Elijah Goddard, according to Judith Bolton, was Goddard's dead son.

"Jock," I said, "I'm so sorry." One of the jagged pieces sliced painfully into my palm.

"I said, forget about it," Goddard said, his voice steely. "It's nothing. Now come on, let's get going."

I didn't know what to do, I felt so shitty about destroying this artifact of his dead son. I wanted to clean the mess up, but I also didn't want to piss him off further. So much for all the goodwill I'd built up with the old guy. The cut in my palm was now oozing blood.

"Mrs. Walsh will clean this up," he said, a hard edge to his voice. "Come on, please take these gifts outside." He went down the hall and disappeared somewhere. Meanwhile, I lifted the box and carried it, with extreme caution, down the narrow corridor and then out of the house. I left a smeary handprint of blood on the cardboard.

When I returned for the second box, I saw Goddard sitting in a chair in a corner of his study. He was hunched over, his head in shadow, and he was holding the wooden trophy base in both hands. I hesitated, not sure what I should do, whether I should get out of here, leave him alone, or whether I should keep moving the boxes and pretend I didn't see him.

"He was a sweet kid," Goddard suddenly said, so quietly that at first I thought I'd imagined it. I stopped moving. His voice was low and hoarse and faint, not much louder than a whisper. "An athlete, tall and broad in the chest, like you. And he had a…gift for happiness. When he walked into a room, you just felt the mood lifting. He made people feel good. He was beautiful, and he was kind, and there was this – this spark in his eyes." He slowly raised his head and stared into the middle distance. "Even when he was a baby, he almost never cried or fussed or…"

Goddard's voice trailed off, and I stood there in the middle of the room, frozen in place, just listening. I'd balled up a napkin in my hand to soak up the blood, and I could feel it getting wet. "You would have liked him," Goddard said. He was looking toward me but somehow not at me, asifhewereseeing his son where I was standing. "It's true. You boys would have been friends."

"I'm sorry I never met him."

"Everybody loved him. This was a kid who was put on the earth to make everybody happy – he had a spark, he had the best sm -" His voice cracked. "The best – smile…" Goddard lowered his head, and his shoulders shook. After a minute he said, "One day I got a call at the office from Margaret. She was screaming… She'd found him in his bedroom. I drove home, I couldn't think straight… Elijah had dropped out of Haverford his junior year – really, they kicked him out, his grades had gone to shit, he stopped going to classes. But I couldn't get him to talk about it. I had a good idea he was on drugs, of course, and I tried to talk to him, but it was like talking to a stone wall. He moved back in, spent most of his time in his room or going out with kids I didn't know. Later I heard from one of his friends that he'd gotten into heroin at the beginning of junior year. This wasn't some juvenile delinquent, this was a gifted, sweet-natured fellow, a good kid… But at some point he started…what's the expression, shooting up? And it changed him. The light in his eyes was gone. He started to lie all the time. It was as if he was trying to erase everything he was. Do you know what I mean?" Goddard looked up again. Tears were now running down his face.

I nodded.

A few slow seconds ticked by before he went on. "He was searching for something, I guess. He needed something the world couldn't give him. Or maybe he cared too much, and he decided he needed to kill that part of him." His voice thickened again. "And then the rest of him."

"Jock," I began, wanting him to stop.

"The medical examiner ruled it an overdose. He said there was no question it was deliberate, that Elijah knew what he was doing." He covered his eyes with a pudgy hand. "You ask yourself, what should I have done differently? How did I screw him up? I even threatened to have him arrested once. We tried to get him to go into rehab. I was on the verge of packing him off there, making him go, but I never got the chance. And I asked myself over and over again: Was I too hard on him, too stern? Or not hard enough? Was I too involved in my own work? – I think I was. I was far too driven in those days. I was too goddamned busy building Trion to be a real father to him."

Now he looked directly at me, and I could see the anguish in his eyes. It felt like a dagger in my gut. My own eyes got moist.

"You go off to work and you build your little kingdom," he said, "and you lose track of what matters." He blinked hard. "I don't want you to lose track, Adam. Not ever."

Goddard looked smaller, and wizened, and a hundred years old. "He was lying on his bed covered in drool and piss like an infant, and I cradled him in my arms just like he was a baby. Do you know what it's like seeing your child in a coffin?" he whispered. I felt goose bumps, and I had to look away from him. "I thought I'd never go back to work. I thought I'd never get over it. Margaret says I never have. For almost two months I stayed home. I couldn't figure out the reason I was alive anymore. Something like this happens and you – you question the value of everything."

He seemed to remember he had a handkerchief in his pocket, and he pulled it out, mopped his face. "Ah, look at me," he said with a deep sigh, and unexpectedly he sort of chuckled. "Look at the old fool. When I was your age I imagined that when I got to be as old as I am now I'd have discovered the meaning of life." He smiled sadly. "And I'm no closer now to knowing the meaning of life than I ever was. Oh, I know what it's not about. By process of elimination. I had to lose a son to learn that. You get your big house and your fancy car, and maybe they put you on the cover of Fortune magazine, and you think you've got it all figured out, right? Until God sends you a little telegram saying, 'Oh, forgot to mention, none of that means a thing. And everyone you love on this earth – they're really just on loan, you see. And you'd better love 'em while you can.' " A tear rolled slowly down his cheek. "To this day I ask myself, did I ever know Elijah? Maybe not. I thought I did. I do know I loved him, more than I ever thought I could love someone. But did I really know my boy? I couldn't tell you." He shook his head slowly, and I could see him begin to take hold of himself. "Your dad's goddamned lucky, whoever he is, so goddamned lucky, and he'll never know it. He's got a son like you, a son who's still with him. I know he's got to be proud of you."

"I'm not so sure of that," I said softly.

"Oh, I am," Goddard said. "Because I know I'd be."