The Hunt

10

The four of us cleared our table and headed back toward the hotel, and along the way we summarized what we thought we knew: Hilary had gone off with Iggie to interview him for her article, with Iggie potentially misinterpreting her overtures as a chance to realize his long-unfulfilled romantic aspirations. But once he found out what she was actually planning on writing, he must have flipped and decided to hold on to her until she changed her mind, at which point Hilary had managed to send out the SOS signals. So we still needed to track down Iggie if we hoped to find Hilary.

This all would have sounded bizarre to the casual listener, but its bizarreness had been nearly eclipsed by the appearance of my new Lincoln Memorial keychain-the Iggie-Hilary scenario now seemed almost dull in contrast. It was possible that bestowing keychains of national monuments on unsuspecting people was part of some exercise in avant-garde street theater, but as it was I had no idea why “some old dude” would have paid twenty bucks to give me something so peculiar and in such a peculiar manner, much less whether it had anything to do with my missing friend.

Luisa and Ben had decided to postpone their respective trips home until we’d extricated Hilary from Iggie’s grasp, which was an especially generous gesture for Ben to make given his role as recent dumpee. I suspected he saw rescuing Hilary as an opportunity to win her back, which was likely doomed as a strategy-she had strict rules about treading the same ground twice when it came to relationships. Regardless, he’d already proven himself useful, and I was glad we had his help. I was also confident that Luisa had her own reasons for sticking around, reasons only partially related to any concern for Hilary’s safety.

Peter and I were due to meet his parents in Chinatown shortly, but Luisa and Ben said they would check with the hotel doormen to see if they could confirm it was indeed Iggie who had chauffeured Hilary to and from the hotel the previous evening and ask if by any chance they’d mentioned where they were going when they left. They would also contact the tech-support center at Berkeley to attempt to identify the mysterious Leo-from the comments Caro and Alex had made the previous evening, it seemed as if it would be easier to find him than to find Iggie’s disappeared-from-the-planet ex-wife, and perhaps Leo would know how to reach Iggie. He might even know why Hilary had thought it necessary to stash that photo in the hotel safe.

“Is there a way to get a picture of the other man you saw on the tape?” I asked Ben as we reached the hotel entrance on Market Street. “The one from the party?” I was curious as to whether it was, in fact, Alex Cutler or if it had been someone else entirely.

He shook his head. “I tried to freeze the recording and print some still shots, but they came out really grainy. I could probably convince the security guys to let you take a look at the tape, though.”

“If you really want to know, I’ll just call Alex and ask,” said Peter. “I doubt it was him, but I’m sure he’ll tell us, one way or the other, and if he was there, he’ll tell us why. And once I get to my computer, I can try to figure out how to decrypt the other file on the memory stick.”

“What about your ‘friend,’ Luisa?” I asked, knowing full well who her “friend” was. “The one who thought she might know how to track down Iggie?”

“Oh, I’m supposed to catch up with her in a bit,” Luisa said breezily.

“Good,” said Peter, before I could comment on Luisa’s breeziness. “We’ll call you when we’re finished with my parents.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Ben agreed.

Chinatown was just far enough away to be a longer walk than I was up for since I was still feeling the aftereffects of the half-marathon Peter had bullied me into that morning. I gave him the choice of either carrying me or driving, and he opted to drive.

Once in the car, Peter put in a call to Alex Cutler, but his number went right into voice mail. He waited for a long moment, listening to the recording before leaving a message. “Alex, it’s Peter. This is going to sound like a strange question, and I’ll explain when I talk to you, but did you happen to swing by the Four Seasons after the party last night? Give me a call when you get a chance. Thanks.”

I checked my own messages while Peter was on the phone. I’d been monitoring my BlackBerry throughout the day to make sure there were no further communications from Hilary, but I hadn’t paid too much attention to the other e-mails and voice mails that had accumulated. Most were from work colleagues, and none required an immediate response. The exception was a message from Laura Taylor, the junior-most person on the team that had worked on the materials for Tuesday’s presentation to Igobe.

“Hi, Rachel, it’s Laura. Something came up on the Igobe pitch, and I wanted to run it by you.” Her tone was apologetic and slightly nervous-she was only a year out of college, and difficult as it was for me to accept, in her eyes I probably appeared senior enough to be intimidating. But I couldn’t help but wonder if the nervousness had something to do with the deal itself. It wouldn’t be surprising, given what I now knew about Hilary’s article. Perhaps I’d been a bit hasty in concluding it would be just the thing to put me firmly back on the partner track.

I dialed Laura’s number. “What’s up?” I asked in my most friendly and least intimidating voice.

“This is going to sound sort of strange,” she said, and then she hesitated, as if she were wondering if whatever she had to tell me was too strange to share. She had no way of knowing that strange was well on its way to being the theme of the day, and I told her as much.

“I was doing some final preparations for the Igobe meeting on Tuesday, making sure I had all of the background information,” she said. “And I’d gone through the file of press clippings on the company when it occurred to me it might be a good idea to check out what people are saying about Igobe online, too.”

This made perfect sense-some of the most informed commentary on tech businesses came from bloggers, not mainstream journalists. I complimented Laura on her thoroughness and initiative, two qualities the firm appreciated in its junior bankers, along with the willingness to obey all orders, work hundred-hour weeks and otherwise uncomplainingly relinquish one’s personal life to further enrich the partners of Winslow, Brown.

“Did you learn anything interesting?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Most of the well-known bloggers agree with everything the mainstream press has been saying-that Igobe’s technology is revolutionary and breaking new ground and everything. But then I found some blogs written by hackers-it’s like they have their own online subculture-and they’re circulating an odd rumor.”

“What kind of rumor?”

“They’re saying Igobe’s technology can be hacked.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s not good.”

Igobe’s entire value was in the promise of its technology to protect people’s privacy, to wrap their online identities in an impenetrable layer of security. That value went away completely if the technology wasn’t hack-proof; its users would be left exposed-just like the allegorical emperor in his imaginary new clothes. I wondered if this was the direction in which Hilary had been headed with her article-perhaps she’d come across a similar rumor. It would definitely explain her working title. I’d been worried about Iggie not liking the angle Hilary was taking, but I hadn’t realized just what her angle was or how much he wouldn’t like it.

“Do any of the blogs say who’s managed to do the hacking?” I asked Laura.

“The rumor is there’s only one person who knows how to breach the security protocols, and he’s very secretive. That’s not uncommon for hackers, probably because a lot of what they do is illegal. But here’s the strange part-the hacker claims to have an elaborate plan to bring Iggie Behrenz down and Igobe with it. The guy is waging some sort of personal vendetta-the blogs are saying he used to be a close friend of Iggie’s but now he’s out for revenge.”

As soon as she said this I thought of Leo, Iggie’s last-nameless computer-savvy Berkeley pal. They had looked pretty cozy in Hilary’s photo, but that picture had been taken years ago. There was plenty of time for Leo and Iggie to have had a falling-out since then, and it wasn’t hard to imagine the Igster alienating someone so thoroughly. “I don’t suppose anybody has a name for the guy, do they?”

“In a way, I guess. I mean, he seems to have an online code name of sorts. But I don’t see how it could be his real name. In fact, it could be a her. That’s sort of what the name implies.” She hesitated again.

“What is it?” I asked, expecting something with a lion theme, a variation of Leo.

“Petite Fleur.”

“Petite Fleur?”

“Petite Fleur.”

“Oh,” I said again, momentarily at a loss. Who knew my Lincoln Memorial keychain would find itself competing for the day’s most random prize so soon?

“It’s French for Little Flower,” added Laura.

“Can it mean anything else?” I’d taken a few years of French in high school, but it had been a long time since Madame Weber’s lessons had occupied any space in my head. Something had to be jettisoned to make room for Madonna lyrics, and French had really only been useful for ensuring I didn’t accidentally order tripe or something equally disturbing in fancy restaurants.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I even double-checked in a French-English dictionary. So that’s when I called you. Since you know Igor Behrenz personally, I thought you might know who this old-friend-turned-enemy could be and what the story is.”

Not only did she have no way of knowing just how strange something had to be for me to consider it strange, she had no way of knowing just how clueless I was when it came to Iggie. I couldn’t even locate him, let alone explain anything about his personal history. And my initial idea about the hacker being Leo now seemed misguided-for the bulky man in the picture with that shaggy mane of hair to call himself Petite Fleur would be an enormous stretch, even online, where people regularly give free rein to their alter egos. It would be like me calling myself Rambo.

But I promised Laura I’d find out what I could and thanked her for the heads-up. It was important for Winslow, Brown to know what it was getting into. If Igobe’s technology was compromised, then so were its business prospects, which meant that underwriting its IPO could leave our firm financially vulnerable and even cause serious damage to its white-shoe reputation.

And it wasn’t just Winslow, Brown’s reputation I was worried about-my own reputation was on the line, as well. I was the one who’d urged the firm to go after the Igobe business, trading on my personal relationship with Iggie. If there were questions about Iggie, I’d be found guilty by association.

I felt a chill pass over me that had nothing to do with the climate. All the glory I’d hoped for could just as easily morph into something far less appealing should I unwittingly lead the firm into disaster.