Steve Martini - The Enemy Inside

“If I can’t tell a judge and a jury what’s going on here, Alex is very likely to end up in prison. A long stretch,” I tell him. “You do understand that?”

“I’m sorry. I wish I could help. But the story is no longer mine.”

“What do you mean? Alex told me you knew everything.”

“Well, he was exaggerating,” says Graves. “There are still things we don’t know and some important details we haven’t been able to confirm.”

“But you can tell me what you do know.”

“Can’t do that either,” he says.

“If you force the issue, I can drag you in front of a judge, subpoena your records and notes. You know as well as I do the court will compel you to turn them over. There is no shield law that’s going to protect you in a case like this. A man’s liberty is at stake. The court will balance the equities and I got news. You’re going to come up short.”

“I understand and you’re probably right. But you still won’t get anything,” he says.

“The judge could put you in jail,” I tell him. “Contempt for refusing to comply with a court order.”

“Hell, you’d probably be doing me a favor,” says Graves. “All that publicity would serve to increase the value of the Gravesite . Besides, there are forces at work here you don’t understand.”

“Enlighten me,” I tell him.

“I don’t know how much I should tell you,” says Graves. “Maybe we should just let everything fall where it may.”

“Aw, come on, be a pal to your employee,” I tell him. “A hint or two might keep Alex out of the slammer.”

“I doubt it,” he says. “Problem is, I don’t own the story any longer, the stuff involving Serna.”

“What do you mean?”

Graves takes a deep breath. “Alex doesn’t know about this. Nor do any of the people out there.” He gestures with a nod toward the outer office. “If they knew they’d all be looking for other jobs. You see, I own the Gravesite . I started it twenty years ago. I tried to root it in the old traditions-Drew Pearson, Jack Anderson. You know. But between you, me, and that wall over there, the entire operation is heavily in debt. It’s the problem with e-journalism, the problem with changing technology, with many of the businesses operating on the net. It’s the question of how you monetize your product. How to get people to pay for it.”

“That’s interesting. I sympathize. But what’s that got to do with Serna and why the world caved in on her?”

“Everything,” he says. “Do you know who Arthur Haze is?”

“Who doesn’t?” Haze is in his eighties, a billionaire media mogul with a chain of newspapers, radio and cable channels that span a good chunk of the globe. Most people want to be rich and famous. Haze, from a young age, wanted to be famous for being rich. And he succeeded.

“In the last four years, I’ve entertained two offers to buy the Gravesite outright. Both of them from Haze. I turned both of them down. It wasn’t the money,” he says. “I don’t want to sell. The Gravesite isn’t for sale to anyone and especially to someone like Haze. He would turn it into a tiny cog in a massive media machine. It would get lost.

“But then a year ago I ran into difficulties. I could no longer meet overhead. I cut some jobs. Didn’t want to, but I had no choice. All I was doing was buying a little time. I thought about moving out of the high rent district. But even with that, the writing was on the wall. I could make payroll for maybe a few more months and that was it. I needed capital. I needed a loan, a big one.

“I went to the banks. They turned me down flat. The financial value of the Gravesite is in its future, which, like everything else on the web, is highly speculative. They weren’t willing to take the chance. There was only one place I could go-Haze,” he says.

“He had mountains of cash. When I first approached him, he thought about it and said no. All he had to do was sit back and wait until I went under. Then he could pick up the Gravesite for pennies on the dollar. I had to find something that would force him to change his mind. And I did. It was the story that involves Serna,” says Graves.

“It was the biggest story we’ve ever had. I reduced everything we knew, all the evidence we had, our research files, the entire story, to writing and copyrighted it. I talked to my lawyers and, only after they were satisfied, I shared one copy of the materials with Haze.

“He’s an old newspaper hand. It was where he cut his teeth when he was a kid. He knew a hot story when he saw one. He realized that with the copyrighted materials and the fact that the story was so big, that if we succeeded in getting to publication we could sell it all over the world. And everybody would be buying because if they didn’t, they would be locked out of some of the details on the biggest story since Watergate-bigger!” he says. “The revenue stream would be sufficient to carry us for years. Haze might not get another chance to buy the Gravesite, and he wanted it, wanted it badly.”

“So Haze bought the copyright,” I say.

Graves nods. “So now you understand why I can’t talk. Even if I wanted to. We have the exclusive rights on first publication, so the Gravesite gets attribution everywhere the story appears. But eighty percent of the revenue goes to Haze. The money he paid will keep our doors open for at least two more years. If we can publish in that time, and I think we can, the money from the story and the global publicity will carry us over the hump.”

“In the meantime, Alex goes to prison,” I tell him.

“If I talk. If I told you anything specific as to the story, Haze would sue me seven ways from Sunday. He’d get the Gravesite and everything it possesses, including the story,” says Graves. “I just can’t help you. I’m sorry.”

“What about Rubin Betz?” I ask.

Graves’s little eyes grow wider with the mention of the name.

“What can you tell me about him?”

“What did Alex tell you?”

“He said that you referred to Betz as the Holy Grail. The key to your story.”

“What exactly did he tell you? Did he use those words?”

I smile and play along. “He said that Betz held the key.”

With this he gives me a quizzical glance.

“Come on, at least give me a clue.”

“Then you don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“Never mind,” he says.

“Alex called Betz the whistleblower. Said he was in a federal prison. Maximum security to keep him quiet. He told me that Betz knew things about powerful people. That he claimed to have the goods on some prominent politicians with undeclared numbered accounts offshore. That Betz and Serna were, in a word, ‘acquainted.’ And that the government was doing everything in its power to keep him there, to shut him up.”

“I’ve never talked to the man. Nor has anyone from the Gravesite, ” says Graves. “What we know about Betz is pretty much in the public domain. Everything except his ancient history with Serna. You can look it up,” he says. “Stories on the Internet. Stuff in the newspapers. Most of it unconfirmed. Now if you could get to Betz, talk to him and find some way to confirm what he knows, being that you’re a lawyer, you might be able to find out what we can’t. In that case, we might be able to work out a deal. Sharing information,” he says.

“You think the stuff on Betz is true?”

“What I think doesn’t matter,” says Graves. “All that counts is what we can confirm.”

“And what about Switzerland? Alex says the two of you took a couple of trips there looking for some information? And that you went to meet someone, alone.”