Joseph Finder - Power Play

"Oh, that. About the ethics. Yeah, it sounded nice."

"Sounded nice," she echoed, her voice as frosty as her handshake. You could almost see the icicles hanging down from her words. "Hmph."

"I always thought that Enron had the finest code of ethics I ever heard," I said, and immediately wished I'd kept my mouth shut.

She looked at me for a few seconds as if she wanted to scratch my eyes out. Then she smiled with her mouth, though not the rest of her face. "Quite the brownnoser, I see."

"Not working, huh?"

"Not exactly."

I shrugged. "I guess that's the advantage to being a low-level flunky. I'm not a member of the team. You know what they say: The nail that sticks up gets hammered down."

"Ah. So you don't stick up. That way you can say whatever you want. Even when you're face-to-face with the CEO."

"Something like that."

She turned to look at Ali. "You didn't tell me what a charmer he is, Alison."

Ali rolled her eyes, and said to me warningly, "Landry."

Cheryl leaned forward and fixed me with an intense stare. "What I'm about to tell you, Jake, is not to be repeated."

"Okay."

"Absolutely no one must know what I'm about to tell you. Is that clear?"

I nodded.

"I have your word on this?"

"Yes." What next: a pinkie swear, maybe?

"Alison assured me you could be trusted, and I trust her judgment. A few months ago I hired a D.C. law firm, Craigie Blythe, to conduct an internal corporate investigation into Hammond Aerospace."

I nodded again. I didn't want her to know that I'd already overheard Bodine telling Bross about it. Or that Zoл's friend in Corporate Security had revealed how they'd been going through the e-mails of a few top officers in the company. I couldn't help thinking, though: For a brand-new CEO to launch an investigation of her own company-that was almost unheard of. No wonder everyone hated her.

"Do you remember the trouble that Boeing got into a few years ago with the Pentagon acquisitions office?"

"Sure." That was a huge scandal. Boeing's CFO had offered a high-paying job to the head of the Air Force acquisitions office if she'd throw a big tanker deal their way. The woman they'd co-opted, or bribed, or whatever you want to call it-everyone called her "the Dragon Lady"-had power over billions of dollars in government defense contracts. She decided which planes and helicopters and satellites and such the Air Force would buy. "Didn't he go to prison?"

"That's right. So did she. And Boeing's CEO was forced to resign. Boeing had to pay a massive settlement, lost a twenty-three-billion-dollar deal, and their reputation was damaged for years. I was at Boeing at the time, and I remember it well. So you can bet that I'm not going to let anything like that happen at Hammond-not on my watch."

I just looked at her, waited for her to go on, not sure why she was telling me all this. Ali was watching her, too, but it looked as if she was waiting for a cue to start speaking.

"I'm sure you've heard the rumors about something similar going on here," she said. "That someone at the Pentagon-presumably the current chief of acquisitions-was given a bribe by someone at Hammond."

"To lock in that big transport plane deal we signed a few months back," I said. "Yeah, I've heard that. Sounded to me like Boeing got a way better deal than us."

"How so?"

"All the lady at the Pentagon got from Boeing was a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar job that she actually had to show up and do. But what I heard, Hammond gave her successor-I don't know, they say it was a million bucks."

"Be that as it may," Cheryl said, unamused. "At first I dismissed these reports as just sour grapes-you know, how in the world did a second-tier player like Hammond Aerospace beat out both Boeing and Lockheed? But after I got here, I was determined to make sure there was no truth in the rumors. Alison?"

Ali shifted on the couch so she could address both of us at the same time. "The investigators at Craigie Blythe have already turned up some interesting things," she said.

"Such as?"

"What looks like a pattern of improper payments, both here and abroad."

"We're talking bribes, right?"

"Basically."

"Who?"

"We don't have names yet. That's one of the problems."

"Hey, you've got the name of whoever the Air Force acquisitions chief is now-why don't you just lean on him-or her?"

Ali shook her head. "This is a private investigation. We don't have subpoena power or anything like that."

"So why don't you tip off the government and have them take over?"

"No," Cheryl broke in. "Absolutely not. Not until we know who at Hammond was involved. And not until we know we have prosecutable evidence."

"How come?"

"It's tricky," Ali said. "Once the word spreads at Hammond, people will start destroying documents. Deleting evidence. Covering their tracks."

Cheryl said, "And the moment you bring in the U.S. Attorney's Office in a situation like this, it becomes a media circus. I saw that with Boeing. Their investigation will go on forever and become front-page news, and it'll do immeasurable harm to the company. No, I want this inquiry completely nailed down. Only then will we turn it over to the government-names, dates, documents, everything."

"That's why this whole thing has to be done under the radar," Ali said.

"Come on," I said, "you're telling me you have a team of lawyers flying in from Washington and interviewing people and combing through documents and poking around the company and no one's going to find out? I doubt it."

"So far, everything's been done remotely," Ali said. "They've got computer forensics examiners going through backup tapes of e-mail and financial records. Huge amount of stuff-gigabytes of data."

"Our in-house coordinator," said Cheryl, "is our general counsel, Geoff Latimer, and he's been tasked with keeping everything under wraps. He's one of only four people at Hammond who know. Well, five, now, counting you."

"Who else?" I said.

"Besides us and Latimer, just Ron Slattery." That was the new CFO, whom Cheryl had brought over from Boeing. He was generally considered to be her man, the only member of the executive council loyal to her. Which was another way of saying that he was her toady. Her hood ornament, some people called him. Her sock puppet.

"Oh, there's more than five who know about the investigation," I said.

Ali nodded. "The head of Corporate Security," she said, "and whoever he assigned to monitor e-mail. And probably Latimer's admin, too. So that makes eight people."

"More than that," I said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cheryl said.

"The word's out. I heard Hank Bodine tell Kevin Bross about the investigation."

"When was this?"

"This morning."

Cheryl gave Ali a penetrating look. "I suppose that explains why he's suddenly being so circumspect in his e-mails and phone calls."

He, I assumed, was Hank Bodine.

To me, she said: "You were in Hank Bodine's office?"

I nodded.

"Interesting. Do you go there often?"

"First time I've ever been there."

"What was the reason he asked you?"

"I think the real reason was to find out why you'd put me on the offsite list. He seemed awfully suspicious. He wanted to know if I knew you."

"Was he aware that you and Ali are acquainted?" Cheryl asked.

How much, I wondered, did she know? Had Ali told her about us?

I shook my head. "I don't think so. He would have said something."

For a few seconds she seemed to be watching the flat-screen TV. She wrinkled her nose, and said to Ali, "Do you smell cigars?"

Ali shook her head. "Cigars? I don't think so."

"The 'real reason,'" Cheryl repeated softly. "So there must have been an ostensible reason he asked to see you. A cover reason."