Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

Grale seemed to see this transition on her face. "Yeah, I know, I had the same thing, the slasher's good deed. It shows how far we are from perfect love. Still, it's a kind of mercy. He had the virus, you know."

"I didn't know." She recalled the fight she had been in with Doug Drug, the blood spilled, and could not help a thrill of loathing.

"Yeah, he had it, and it made him angry. He seemed to go out of his way to share needles with his pals. It's funny, I know that the rain falleth on the just and the unjust, but wouldn't it be a kick if like the bad guys got their desserts right here in front of everyone, and the innocent didn't get raped and murdered? What if there were saints who stuck it to the bad guys in the same way as Mother Teresa took care of the miserable and poor."

"They wouldn't stay saints for long, would they?" said Lucy, thinking of her mother. "I mean, if there's one thing the Church has learned in all this time, it's that violence and power are corrupting."

Now he fixed her with his eye and spoke with intensity. "Yes, but don't you think God gets tired of all this suffering? In Sudan I saw stuff… you can't imagine what people did to each other there. There were times when I wanted to grab an AK and finish off the bunch of them. Not just the bad guys either, all of them, just to make an end, just to let them fly off to heaven or hell or wherever."

"But you didn't."

He seemed to deflate a little. "No. No, I didn't. But sometimes when I think of people like old Doug there, I have my doubts." Grale grimaced and shook his head. "Old Doug. He must be getting a stern talking-to right about now."

"With pitchforks."

Grale laughed. "Uh-huh, like in the cartoons. But, you know, there's a theory that hell is completely empty. I mean, figure it out: You die, and all things are revealed. You have absolutely no doubts anymore. God is good, the devil is evil. And God's mercy extends everywhere, even into the pit. How many souls do you think reject His mercy at that point? Not many, I bet."

"I don't know. What about the people who like torment? Or the people who'd never admit they were wrong even if it meant ten thousand years in hell? And what if you don't like harp music?"

Grale smiled again, but this time in a sadly disapproving way. "You've been hanging with the Jesuits again. How is the good father?"

"He's fine. We found out where Canman is."

"No kidding! That's great news. Is he okay?"

"So we hear. We're going to try to… you know, find out more about how he is." Stupid! she yelled at herself in her head. David was the last one to tell about this. He didn't have a guileful bone in his body, and he talked to absolutely everybody. All at once she was uncomfortable, wanting to be away home, far from the conflicting and delicious and annoying feelings the man roused in her, and so she made a hurried excuse about having to get up early and practically ran off down the street, her mind full of mortification and all the clever, mature words she never managed to get out in real life.

"Are you really going to do it?" Karp asked, embracing his wife the next morning at the door to the loft.

"I'm going to give it a try," she said. She was wearing an old black Karan suit, something she had bought in a consignment shop before the money came, and a pair of Jil Sander's she'd got on sale in what seemed another age. She looked severe and felt the same.

"This is all beyond me," said Karp.

She laughed. "It might be beyond me, too. I'll call you."

She took a cab to the office, went in, and sat behind her desk and waited. The call from Osborne came at a little after ten. She picked up her loaded briefcase and went in.

They were all there, sitting along both sides of the table, with Osborne at the head: Oleg Sirmenkov, sitting next to the boss, then Bell, the lawyer, and Harry Bellow, and Deanna Unger and Marty Fox. They stopped talking when she came in, then started up again, pretending that they hadn't stopped talking. She took a seat at the foot of the long table, placing her briefcase on the table in front of her. She looked at Harry. He was confused, which was good, she thought, because it meant he hadn't been involved. Everyone else was staring at her, with expressions ranging from fear to contempt to (in Oleg's case) cold rage.

Osborne began without preamble. "People, this is a security firm, and the worst thing that can happen to a security firm is a breach in its own security. I'm sorry to tell you that we've experienced such a breach. Late on Friday night, Oleg informed me that someone had entered his confidential files and removed some highly sensitive phone records, digital recordings of conversations. I immediately contacted Marty, and he brought in a team to try to find out who had penetrated security and where the files had gone, if possible. The team worked all weekend and found that the intrusion had taken place from a machine on our own intranet. They started looking for traces of the missing files on every hard drive in the office and were eventually successful in locating the intruder."

Osborne looked at Marlene. "I've been thinking it over half the night, and I can't, for the life of me, figure out why you'd want to do such a thing. Maybe you'd like to explain yourself, Marlene."

"Gladly. First of all, just for my own personal curiosity, were you in on it yourself? I mean the scam."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Osborne. "What scam?"

Marlene reached into her briefcase and withdrew a stack of neatly stapled documents. She handed a short stack to Fox and to Harry, and they automatically passed them around the table.

"This is a translated transcript of conversations in Russian between Oleg and a man in Pristina, Kosovo, named Ilya. They demonstrate that not only did Oleg know the identity of the people who kidnapped Richard Perry, but also he knew, considerably in advance, the time and place they had planned to carry out the snatch. Which occurred as planned, as we all know. Further conversations concern the rescue. Oleg was at some pains to make sure that it went down two days before our IPO."

Osborne had gone pale, which Marlene thought was a hopeful sign. She liked Osborne. Which didn't mean much, since she liked Oleg, too.

Osborne turned to the Russian. "Oleg?"

Oleg made a little shrug. He smiled winningly. "Well, you know, Lou, truthfully, I think Marlene is maybe a little carried away here. This kind of operation is more complicated than watching out for girl singers, make sure no one sneaks into the dressing room. What you say on the phone to whoever, this is not always what you mean."

They all looked back at Marlene, who guffawed and said, "Oh, horseshit, Oleg! I got you nailed and you know it. But, hey, you don't want to believe my version of the story, I'd be glad to hand this package over to the press and let them play with it for a while, send a bunch of investigative reporters over there and let them poke around. The SEC is bound to be interested in it, too, especially the paragraphs on page twenty-one of the transcript where our boy here says"-she flipped through the pages and read-"'This is most important, Ilya; you must go in on the sixteenth.' And then Ilya says, 'We could do it tomorrow, we're all ready.' And Oleg says, 'No, the sixteenth. There is a business reason. Let them sit there for a while, it won't do them any harm.' Yeah, I think the SEC would be very interested in that part. It's probably even worse than messing with Rule 174."

At this the table erupted with angry noises, directed at Marlene. Osborne had to restore order by pounding his fist on the table and bellowing, and in the following hostile silence he asked, "Assuming you're correct in your allegations, what do you intend to do?"

"Not much. This is a good firm, more or less. There's no reason for you to lose all you've worked for because one person didn't quite get it. But I want out. I want to be bought out, now, today."