The Capitol Game

30

Jack opened with a smiling invitation. “Feel free to interrupt anytime you like. Do you have any questions to start?”

“Plenty,” Harper fired back, unamused. “But let’s hear your tale first.”

“Sure. As Mia mentioned, I was a partner at a private equity firm in New York. About twelve months ago, I met Perry Arvan. He was hunting for capital to get his company through a rough patch. A midsize chemical company bleeding cash didn’t fit our investment profile and my firm wasn’t interested. Neither was anyone else Perry approached. I spoke with him after his pitch. He was quite dispirited, facing the prospect of bankruptcy at that point. I offered to find a buyer or a major investor willing to stake cash for a slice of ownership. A fairly common arrangement on Wall Street.”

“And that’s what brought you to the Capitol Group?” one of the DCIS aides asked.

“That and my good-faith belief that Arvan Chemicals fit squarely into CG’s portfolio of turnaround prospects. A few months later I approached the Capitol Group, but from the beginning CG was most interested in the polymer Perry invented. Actually, that was all that seemed to interest them. To be frank, I did little to discourage that interest. Why should I? My job was to represent the interests of my client Perry Arvan. So I shared the results of a study completed a year before that put the polymer in the best light.”

Harper pointed an accusatory finger at Jack. “You mean you deceived them?”

“I meant what I said,” Jack answered and seemed to smile. “Understand, ladies and gentlemen, the Capitol Group is in the takeover business. They’re not novices. They’re one of the most experienced firms in that line of business. They make their fortunes gobbling up companies and chewing them up. They had time and more than enough opportunity to conduct a thorough due diligence before they moved in.” Jack paused, then said, “Had they ever asked me if there was another report on the polymer, I certainly would’ve shared the final report with them.”

Yeah, yeah, right, Jack, the looks from across the table were saying.

“Why didn’t they?” another aide asked.

“Greed, fear, impatience. They were afraid another big firm might get interested. They didn’t want to lose Arvan, and I suppose they didn’t want a bidding war that drove up the price. So Mitch Walters and a few others decided to launch a quick, dirty, very unfriendly takeover.”

Jack paused and looked around for more questions. None, not yet, though there were plenty of skeptical expressions across the table.

“I was very opposed to this and told them so,” Jack explained with a sad look. “Then Mitch Walters called me. He had a tape, the fruits of an illegal wiretap, of Perry making a phone call and discussing plans to call some private investors and sell off partial ownership of the polymer in exchange for cash. Perry was looking for a white knight to fend off CG’s takeover, Mitch told me. It was an opportunity, and he didn’t want to let it go by.”

“An opportunity?” Harper asked.

“As a public company, this would be a serious violation of various securities laws. It was Mitch’s intention to, in his words, grab Perry’s balls and force a quick, nonnegotiable sell.”

“You’re saying it was extortion?”

“Yes, and I strongly advised him not to do it. I wore a wire, incidentally, and have that conversation on tape. He invited me to a private meeting with Perry where he dropped the hammer. He gave Perry no choice-prison or sell-and Perry caved in to every demand immediately. He sold the company and the polymer for a hundred million.”

“Then he fled,” Harper mentioned to anybody in the room not in the loop on this story, which frankly was nobody. “He took the money, rented a big boat, and went into hiding in the Caribbean.”

Jack immediately corrected her. “That’s not exactly right.”

“Then where is he?”

“Nowhere near the Caribbean. Never was. Try New Mexico with his wife, in a beautiful rented lodge in Taos. Perry’s wife gets seasick. He hates the sun, loves the mountains. He’s living under a false identity until this gets cleared up.”

“Oh, spare me. An innocent man has nothing to fear,” Harper insisted, shooting Jack another condemning expression. All these evasions and double-talk, she wasn’t buying a word of it. Jack and his coconspirator, Perry Arvan, had committed serious crimes and were now trying to squirm out of it. “And innocent men don’t hide behind false names,” she threw in, lowering her bifocals and looking down her nose at Jack.

Jack looked amused. “Something I failed to mention. A few weeks before that meeting my house was broken into. While I was down in D.C. being wined and dined and courted by CG, a group of hired thugs picked the locks, entered, spent three hours searching, and left a few gifts in their wake. All this is on film. They left bugs in my phones and hid about five pounds of marijuana they could use to blackmail me in the event I didn’t hand CG the sale.”

The faces across the table showed their surprise. Suddenly this was more than a simple case of graft. It was burglary and blackmail, and Lord knew what else.

Jack shrugged and continued, “My private security firm discovered all of this, thank goodness. You can imagine my surprise, so of course I contacted my client and warned him there was a chance his phone and home might also be bugged.”

The Fibbies at the end of the table broke into loud chortles of laughter. Jack gave them an innocent look and the laughter grew louder. The sound bounced around the room a moment. They already knew the broad outline of the story. The details, though, were priceless. It was impossible to keep a straight face.

“You’re saying Arvan never called any private investors?” Harper asked when the laughter died down.

“I’m saying Perry might’ve discussed a vague intention to do so, but he never had the slightest intention to follow through.”

“But-”

“Forget the buts. If someone was illegally eavesdropping on his private phone calls and was misled, then committed an illegal act based on this information, where is Perry’s crime?”

Mia, ever the helpful lawyer, noted, “I’ve researched the statutes, so I’ll save you the trouble. No laws were violated, none.”

“Arvan still committed fraud.”

“How?” Jack asked, still with that pleasant smile.

“He withheld the final report. He deliberately misled CG about the polymer.”

“He was never asked about the final report. Nor was he ever given the opportunity to provide it. Once CG forced him to sell, he was goose-stepped off the premises and barred from ever returning.”

It was dawning on everyone in the room what an amazing tale they were listening to. It further dawned on them that Jack here was a very clever boy. So far, he had confessed to no wrongdoing, but he had certainly shadow-danced right up to the line.

“You see,” Jack continued, “CG jumped into the sale more or less without looking.” He held up his arms and shook his head from side to side as if it had been painful for him to witness. “They were so greedy and arrogant, no serious due diligence was done. They fired most of the workers, booted out the executives, and immediately kicked the polymer into production.”

Mia helpfully added, “Perry set aside thirty million of his cut to pay bonuses to the fired workers after the Capitol Group promised them severance but reneged.”

“And what did you get out of it?” Harper asked, looking at Jack.

“I was a limited partner. I got twenty million in cash as a finder’s fee, and twenty-five percent ownership of the company that produced the polymer.” He proudly waved a paper in the air they all assumed was the contract he had signed with the Capitol Group.

“Whose idea was the twenty-five percent?” the IG asked.

“Mine,” Jack confessed without embarrassment. “I insisted on a big piece of the action. I fought damned hard for it.”

Nobody asked why. The answer was obnoxiously obvious. The role of a confidence man is just to do that-to build confidence in the sucker. By battling hard for a big stake of ownership, Jack was conveying that the polymer was a sure thing. The idea that he had outsmarted the best brains in the Capitol Group was immensely entertaining, though nobody smiled.

“How did you get the tapes?” Rutherford II asked, almost incredulously.

“Well, by then I had… let’s call them serious trust issues with my new partners. They had burgled my home and obviously weren’t above blackmail and extortion, and God knows what else. As part of the contract, I had an office in CG’s headquarters-a small, out-of-the-way cubbyhole on the second floor. It afforded me a building pass and an opportunity. These people showed no compunction about breaking laws; I decided to protect myself. I wore a wire almost every time I talked to them. I recorded all phone conversations.”

“And that’s the source of all these tapes?”

“A handful of them,” Jack admitted.

“And the rest?”

“Almost every time I made my rounds around the headquarters I sprinkled listening devices around. I placed four in Mitch Walters’s office. Another three in each of the firm’s conference rooms, including the one on the top floor where the senior executive and board meetings are held. Believe me, those are some of the more captivating tapes.”

“And how did you monitor those bugs?” asked one of the FBI agents, making no effort to disguise his admiration. An irrelevant technical question, and the Feds at the end of the table already knew the answer, but they wanted the Defense people to share their amazement at Jack’s scheme.

Jack turned to him and said, “I had rented an apartment across the street. The devices have a range of one mile. My apartment was only a hundred yards away. I’d built a console with five noise-activated taping machines, and hired a crew to monitor the action around the clock.”

For the first time it really began to dawn on everybody what a truly remarkable find Jack Wiley was.

Harper bent forward. “How many tapes did you make?”

“A lot. Too many thousands of hours to be worth listening to. I didn’t want to overburden you, so my crew and I sifted through them. We disposed of anything too mundane or irrelevant, and preserved only those conversations that show legal culpability.”

“Give us an example.”

“Okay. For example, you won’t hear Dan Bellweather ordering five whores from a D.C. call girl service, but you will hear him arranging payments to senators and congressmen to shove the authorization for the polymer through with two speedy votes. You’ll also hear how he paid a certain House member to assassinate the GT 400, the only real competition. Mia incidentally got a taped copy of that hearing. It’s very entertaining in a rather vulgar way.”

Jack paused and searched their faces. “If I’m boring you, stop me,” he said facetiously. “Or to take another example, you will hear Mitch Walters illegally offering post-administration jobs to several top assistant secretaries, and you will very clearly hear him arranging the cover-up on the polymer.”

Nobody looked the least bit bored.

“Anything else?” the IG asked, clearly rattled.

“Yes, plenty,” Jack assured him, no longer smiling, now looking quite grim. “Understand, I didn’t go into this with the intention of uncovering such a large scandal. But the more I saw, the more I heard, the more I learned, the more horrified I became. I realized that I was way over my head. I became frightened. The power of the Capitol Group is overwhelming. They could destroy me as easily as a tank could crush a bug.”

The people across the table weren’t buying this, not one bit. But they also suspected that they would never be able to prove Jack was lying. Any man who could pull off such a staggering swindle wasn’t likely to leave sloppy evidence around. Whatever they thought of, he had undoubtedly thought of first.

Mia stood up and announced, “My client is tired. It’s been a very exhausting few days. You can ask all the questions you want later.”

“Where are these tapes and when can we have them?” Harper asked with a gleam in her eye.

“Tonight. They’re in a moving van shuttling around the streets of northern Virginia. Frankly, I’d like to get them off my hands. Tell me where you want them delivered.”

Harper finally raised the point Mia and Jack had been anticipating from the beginning, the most important point. “What about legal admissibility? These tapes were made without the permission of both parties.”

Graves glanced at Mia and, by unspoken agreement, he handled this. “When Mia first came to us she mentioned she had an inside source. She provided us with the film showing Jack’s home being burgled and the crude attempt to frame him. In her view he was still at risk, and so was she.”

“Then what?” Harper asked.

“Well, it looked serious, so I took that film to Justice. They went to a federal judge for permission to tape all Jack’s phone conversations and plant bugs in CG’s headquarters.”

“On what grounds?”

“Conspiracy, burglary, attempting to fix a federal bid. You might even say Jack was acting as our agent. The bugs and tapes were legally authorized. The fruits are quite admissible in any court in the land.”

Harper and Rutherford II showed no hint of surprise at this astounding revelation. Nothing Jack did surprised them any long-er. Of course he got a judge to authorize his actions. Of course he had the FBI in his pocket. If the president walked in the room and kissed Jack’s ass, they wouldn’t bat a lash.

And though they knew they’d never be able to prove it, they were sure Jack had this whole thing planned out before he ever made that first call to the Capitol Group.

“Will Mr. Wiley testify?” Rutherford II asked Mia. In his mind he was already plotting the next move.

“In two days, you will have six hours to conduct a lengthy deposition. I suggest you film it. A lot of trials will come out of this, and Jack doesn’t intend to spend the rest of his life bouncing through witness chairs. He promises to appear in court, to verify the accuracy of his filmed testimony and get it entered into evidence. That should be sufficient to use it as many times as you like. Name the time and place, Jack and I will be there. He’ll swear to the provenance of the tapes, and he’ll detail the story he just told.”

“I’ll call as soon as it’s arranged,” Harper said.

“Just so we’re clear,” Mia mentioned, as if it was an afterthought, a niggling little last-minute detail, “Jack just saved the Department of Defense from a twenty-billion-dollar scam.”

For the first time, their brains concentrated on how much this was going to cost. The math was done quickly inside their heads and the sum was staggering. The howls were immediate and loud. “We’re not about to pay out two billion dollars,” Rutherford II shouted adamantly.

“You already signed the contract,” Mia reminded him.

If Mia took the lawyer’s standard one-third cut, her share would be in the neighborhood of six hundred million dollars.

No wonder she had resigned, Harper realized with a shock.

Mia looked at their faces. “You know the old cliché-think how much you’re saving, rather than spending.”

“The answer’s still hell, no.”

“You don’t want the tapes?”

“At that price, forget it. You’ve told us enough anyway. We’ll find other ways to pursue the case,” he answered smugly.

“I’d be interested to learn how.”

“We’ll take your client to court and sue. Or, if we want to play hardball, we’ll have Mr. Wiley here detained as an uncooperative material witness, or charge him as a coconspirator. You’re not the only lawyer in this room, young lady.”

“Maybe I failed to mention that every tape was copied three times. Two other moving vans are cutting fairy circles around the Beltway at this moment, one for our friends in the printed press, one for the TV news stations.”

They searched Mia’s face to see if she was bluffing. Not a wrinkle of doubt or uncertainty. She looked quite cool and confident.

“Are you threatening blackmail?”

“Aren’t you? Lawsuits, prison? But let’s not think of it that way.”

“What would you call it?”

“Lawyer talk. I thought we were just discussing alternative scenarios.”

“I know a threat when I hear one.”

“Then call it a polite reminder.”

“Ripping the government off of two billion dollars is anything but polite.”

“Honor the contract, Mr. Rutherford. You’ll get the tapes either way, I promise. My client wants this scam exposed. Fine with us if comes out in dribs and drabs as the story’s fed over the news wire, dissected and discussed by every talking head in TV land.”

Rutherford II paused for a moment, then tried a fresh tack. “Are you aware of the highest amount ever paid to a whistleblower? How unreasonable this is?” he asked.

“One hundred million. Believe me, I’ve studied the act in great detail. Two billion, or we’ll finish this discussion in court.” She waved the contract like a loaded gun.

There was a long pause as Harper and Rutherford unhappily put two and two together. Jack had not just become Mia’s client; the pair had been in this together from the start. It explained so much, from Mia’s earlier discovery of the report detailing the polymer’s fatal flaw to what was happening here now. She had had many months to think this through, and she had used that edge to sucker them into this deal.

Oh, what they would give if only they could go back ten minutes in time, a do-over.

Suddenly Jack leaned up against Mia and whispered in her ear. She said, “Excuse us a minute,” then they both got up and carried the private conversation to the far corner of the room. All eyes remained on their faces. Mia whispered something at Jack, a hiss more than a whisper. Jack leaned closer and whispered more fervently, and they went back and forth awhile. Their discussion, while quiet, was obviously an intense argument. Eventually, Mia produced a sulky nod, then backed away from Jack. They returned to the table and fell into their chairs.

Mia looked upset for a few seconds, and it required a considerable effort to collect herself. “Oddly enough, Jack agrees two billion is a shocking sum. Too shocking.”

“Thank God somebody’s being reasonable.”

She gave Jack a dirty look, then faced Rutherford II again. “He’ll settle for one billion. Our final offer. A pitiful five percent of what the Capitol Group would’ve stolen were it not for Jack.”

“That’s still ridiculous.”

“Then I’ll see you in court for the full two billion.”

Now it was their turn to whisper. Harper and Rutherford II got up and moved to a different corner, where they murmured back and forth at a furious pace. What are our chances if we refuse to back down and go to court, Harper asked Rutherford, the lawyer. An uncertain shrug-a contract’s a contract, he whispered unhappily. He and Harper both would have to admit incredible stupidity, they’d have to argue that they had no idea what they were signing, a humiliating and feeble assertion coming from the mouths of an experienced lawyer and a senior law enforcement official. Then pray for a cheapskate judge and a long-shot verdict.

Two billion was so far over the top, it could happen.

And what if we concede to one billion, she asked, and they began chewing over that option. Well, at least half that cost would be recouped in the penalties they would impose on CG. They would also sue to claw back the $5.5 billion already paid into CG’s coffers. Clawbacks typically got back only a modest fraction of the total spent, but if these tapes were half as compelling as Mia and Jack claimed, they stood an excellent chance of getting far more; three-quarters wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. A one billion investment that offered a return of possibly four, or even five billion dollars. Considered in that light, it wasn’t a bad deal; in fact, it was a great deal. And when the secretary of defense heard that taped conversation of Bellweather and Walters talking about him, Harper noted, he’d want to hammer them into bankruptcy, or as close as they could get.

For one billion, they’d buy the tapes, they’d buy Jack, they’d buy control of this thing, and they’d get back billions.

Harper didn’t mention the billions in embarrassment they would save. She didn’t need to.

Rutherford II returned to the table. He took off his glasses and spent a moment wiping the lenses on his necktie. “All right,” he finally groaned. “One billion. But you won’t see a penny until we have the tapes and see for ourselves that they’re everything you’ve promised.”

Mia smiled at him.

Jack thanked them.

Graves leaned back in his chair and tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a loud laugh. They were certainly an amazing couple. Mia had warned him only an hour before that he would be shocked by the size of the reward. How much? he had asked.

One billion, she’d predicted.