Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

"That's impossible!" said Unger. "We can't trade in stock for six months after IPO."

"I don't mean a public trade. You all have margin accounts. It shouldn't be hard for you to raise the cash, especially with stock as the collateral. Interior trades are perfectly legal. "We closed at fifty-five and a quarter on Friday. That's sixty-six point three million that my piece of Osborne is worth. You can divide my stock up among you however you like, I could care less. But I want a check for that amount net of strike price, taxes, and charges, and I want it today."

"How do we know you won't release this material anyway?" Fox demanded. "What guarantees can you give us?"

"My sacred word of honor, one, and two, if I blew the whistle, Oleg would kill me. Right, Oleg?"

Like automatons, every head swiveled to look at Oleg. They all thought they were pretty tough people, but they all cringed a little at what they saw in Oleg Sirmenkov's eyes just then.

Marlene continued, "And then Harry would kill Oleg, wouldn't you, Harry, even though you might be a little pissed at me now?"

"Yeah," said Harry, "I guess I would," in a tone and with an expression that he hadn't used much since he became a corporate guy, but which was absolutely convincing.

"Which would not be all that good for the firm, either. I just mention that in case Oleg is thinking about killing me anyway," said Marlene with a bright smile around the table, which was not returned.

Lou Osborne asked Marlene to leave the room, which she did, then walked back to her office, to find Min Dykstra standing guard, embarrassed but resolute about not letting Marlene into her own office. She wanted to know what was going on, and Marlene told her that it was better that she didn't know. Marlene left and went to the ladies' room and sat in a booth and used her considerable reserves of self-control to resist tears and actually made a small dent in the steel wall of the booth with her fist. Then she went back to Osborne's office and hung around, in the invisibility of the corporate pariah, until Bell came out and took her into his office, and they began to negotiate.

Three hours later, Marlene signed her name to an agreement. In it she promised that she would not compete with Osborne by opening her own international security firm or by working for an Osborne competitor, and also that if she ever made public anything whatever having to do with her career at Osborne International, said firm would have the right to strip her of all she possessed, parade her naked through the streets in a cart, transport her to a deserted island, and stake her down in the sun, to be devoured by ants and crabs, or words to that effect. In return she received a certified check for $50,823,000. Then she cabbed downtown and had a long conversation with Ms. Lipopo. If Ms. Lipopo was amazed, she did not show it. Marlene imagined that the banker had experienced all manner of financial eccentricity, and that Marlene's was nothing much in comparison.

Back on the street, she recalled the first time she had walked out of Ms. Lipopo's elegant suite. Then she had been heavy, plutonic, rich, as they say, beyond the dreams of avarice. She was still richer than 99 percent of the planet's people, but she was about to become very much poorer, and she felt light, Apollonian. She stepped off the curb to hail a cab, then stepped back and dropped her arm. Instead, she walked through the money-intent throngs to the subway and took the Lexington Avenue line up to the Hunter College station. The train was not crowded. She found a seat and observed her fellow passengers. She estimated that not one of them had been born in the United States, which obscurely cheered her. On the platform at Hunter College, where she left the train, she found a hairy kid with a guitar singing "I Shall Be Released." She paused to drop a twenty in his case and tripped up the stairs and to the garage that held her battered Volvo. In it she drove downtown, happily cursing the cabdrivers and truckers, and after stopping off to pick up some supplies for the tunnel expedition, she returned home, changed into worn jeans and a T-shirt, fixed herself a wine cooler, and telephoned the archdiocese about a donation she wanted to make to the Church. And, no, she told the secretary, she couldn't just put it in the box.

Marlene had bought them all yellow coveralls of some plasticized material, and white hard hats and Motorola two-way radios, and black gum-boots. The twins had been shipped off to their grandmother's. The dog was straying no more than four inches from his mistress's knee, well knowing some interesting events were in the offing. The four donned their outfits in the loft, and Marlene looked them over like a sergeant major on parade and distributed to each a four-cell Kel-light, the policeman's choice for both illumination and tuning up the skulls of malefactors. Father Dugan appeared the most authentic in the costume, oddly enough, more authentic than he usually looked in a surplice. His roughneck Irish face fit right in with the sandhog getup. He also seemed to be the most enthusiastic, which was perhaps not so strange since he was the only one who knew where they were going. He had spent the day in the chart room of the Department of Public Works, working out a rough map based on the instructions he had received from Spare Parts. It was a very approximate map since either Spare Parts was crazy or he knew a lot more about the underground than DPW did. The priest hoped it was the latter. As for the others, Marlene looked like the plumber's daughter she was; Lucy, pale, thin, and floating in the helmet and gear, resembled a breaker laddie sent down the pits at eight years old; Karp looked like a disguised distinguished attorney, miserable and awkward, and felt the same and said so more than once.

"Oh, stop," said Marlene after one of those comments. "Where's your sense of adventure? Didn't you ever read boys' books when you were a kid?"

"I did," said Karp, "and by the age of twelve I had identified them as unrealistic fantasies, never thinking I would marry someone who hadn't."

"How do you pee in these things?" Lucy asked.

"You let it run down your leg," answered her mom sweetly, "and then remove your boot to drain."

"I can't believe I'm doing this," said Karp almost under his breath. "All we need is a map that's been browned in an oven. And some peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches."

"The sooner we get started, the sooner we'll be finished," said Marlene in a leadership tone of voice, and headed for the door. Karp came close and said sotto voce, "Where's your guy?"

"His name is Tran. After the fuss you made, and on further reflection, I figured you would not be comfortable acknowledging the presence of someone you knew to be a suspected felon. You will not have to take cognizance of him."

"That's extremely and unusually considerate of you, my darling. But he'll be there? Backing our play if need be?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," she said with an airy flip of her hand.

It was a dark, rectangular hole in the western flank of Manhattan, down among the shadows of old dead piers, just south of Seventy-second Street, guarded by a loose and rusted gate. They entered, switching on their lights, Father Dugan in the lead, then Karp sticking close to his daughter, and Marlene last, descending damp slate steps, stumbling on the many broken ones.

"This is an emergency exit for the crew that built this tunnel," Dugan explained at the bottom of the stairs. "It's a railway tunnel and not used anymore, which is why it's popular. I think we should switch these lights off now. I don't want to upset the residents."

They did so. At first the blackness was absolute. Karp reached out without thinking and squeezed Lucy's hand. Gradually, however, they became aware of a distant, ruddy glow, and as their eyes adjusted, they made out shadows moving across it. They passed through a sparse waterfall dropping from a great height, and beyond that they found themselves in the midst of a considerable settlement. The railroad had cut deep bays out of the rock for storing equipment, and these had been converted into apartments with beds and furniture and rooms separated by curtains. The place had a zoo smell, mixed with smoke from the several fires. A huge figure came out of the gloom and approached Father Dugan. As the figure came closer, Karp thought he was wearing a cheap Halloween mask and then, with a shock of revulsion, saw that it wasn't a mask. Lucy said in a whisper, "That's Jacob. Spare Parts."