Джозеф Файндер - The Switch

“I gotta ask myself,” Jones was saying on speaker, “can I cover my expenses at that price point?”

Tanner picked the phone up. “You’re asking the wrong question, Jonesie. Question you should be asking is, do you ever want to do business with us in the future?”

The guy sighed loudly. “We’ll make it work.”

“Good,” said Tanner. “We’re back in business.”

Then Sal Persico knocked on the doorjamb to Tanner’s office with his left hand. His right arm and shoulder were still stiff. His right hand was especially stiff in the morning. The bullet had gone through the clavicle, the top of the shoulder, just missing the dome of the lung and the subclavian artery. It had left a large divot in the trapezius muscle, the exit wound. Only recently had he stopped wearing the sling. The doctors told him it might take a year before he regained full use of his arm.

“We’re ready,” he said.

The morning cupping was on. It was Costa Rican day.

“Be right there,” said Tanner.

He’d been reading résumés. Actually, he was supposed to be reading résumés. There were a lot to read, and six new employees to hire, including another roaster and an assistant sales manager. Plus he was looking at larger office/warehouse spaces. They’d already outgrown the old space. They were moving a lot of coffee, and the one that seemed to be the biggest seller was their new, light roast, the Lanny Roast.

Business had taken off after the Four Seasons deal went public. That had generated a number of major copycat hospitality accounts that wanted the same coffee as you found at Four Seasons hotels.

Instead of reading résumés, though, Tanner found himself distracted by a news article about how the National Security Agency’s budget was about to double, to twenty billion dollars. The biggest proponent for that increase, according to the reporter, was Senator Susan Robbins, chairman of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

He wondered for a second about whatever had happened to her laptop. Maybe it was reformatted and being used by some drug dealer, someone sketchy. Or maybe it was at the bottom of a pile of scrap metal at a dump somewhere.

Another knock at his doorjamb. “I’m coming,” he said, but then he saw that it was Sarah. He beckoned her in and got up.

His phone buzzed, and he heard Lucy’s voice. “It’s that biz-dev guy from Starbucks again.”

“Tell him I’m in a meeting.”

“Again?”

“Isn’t he bound to get the point? I mean, I’ve already told his boss I don’t want to sell. I gotta go.” He came around and gave Sarah a kiss.

“There’s a bid on Brattle Street,” she said. “I think we should counter with the asking.”

She was talking about the big clapboard house on Brattle Street in Cambridge they’d made an offer on. It had just gone on the market. She’d been on a hot streak for three months, since selling that mansion in Chestnut Hill he’d stayed in to a Russian oligarch. Sarah had always considered their South End house too damned vertical, too many stairs to climb.

“It’s a lot of house,” Tanner said. “Six bedrooms.”

“We each get a study, and there’s a guest room, and... room for expansion.”

Tanner smiled. They’d talked. “I’m liking the idea of expansion.”

Sarah’s face lit up, and she threw her arms around him. She came in for a kiss. Tanner glanced at the laptop on his desk, then reached one hand over and pulled it shut.

It’s gotta be the laptop,” said John Thomsen as he held aloft the heavy oblong cardboard box. He was a second-year graduate student in classics at Princeton. He and his roommate and fellow grad student, Matt, were standing at the counter of the Frist Campus Center Package Room, where you picked up parcels.

“That piece of crap you bought on eBay for a hundred bucks?”

“Hundred twenty-five. Plus shipping.”

“For a MacBook Air? Dude, it’s gonna be a brick.”

“No way.” Matt was obviously jealous. He was complaining last week about how much he’d had to spend on a new Acer laptop — almost six hundred bucks!

By the time they returned to their town house on Prospect Avenue, John was beginning to wonder himself whether he’d just bought a dud.

“Hey, it works,” he said to Matt, who was sitting on the couch with his laptop on his lap, but really concentrating on the football game. “Booted right up.”

“Huh,” said Matt, uninterested.

“Oh my God, it’s got the last owner’s sign-on screen. They didn’t even reformat it!”

Matt laughed. “Without the password, you’re totally screwed.”

“It’s right here. On a sticky note.”

“Jeez. No wonder it was so cheap. They didn’t do shit to it. How many owners did it have?”

“I don’t know,” John said distractedly as he entered the numbers and letters into the passcode blank. “The thing’s only like a year old. Can’t be more than one owner.”

A commercial came on, and Matt muted the volume. “Where do you think this seller gets his laptops? You think they’re hot? Wouldn’t that be funny? You get in trouble ’cause you have someone else’s stolen laptop?”

John looked up from his computer. “It might be hot,” he said.

“Who’s the owner?”

“S. Robbins. That’s all it says. And most of the documents — wait... Huh, now, this is interesting.”

“What?”

“Check this out. ‘Top secret’ and ‘classified,’ it says. Check it out.” He handed the computer over to Matt.

“Dude, are you sure you should be looking at that?”

“Seriously?” said John. “What’s the harm?”

I’m grateful to a number of people who so generously helped me in the preparation of this book, including a number of current and former chiefs of staff and aides to US senators, all of whom exhibited more spine and heroism than Will Abbott: Clarine Nardi Riddle (Joe Lieberman), Dan Geldon (Elizabeth Warren), Jeff Duncan (Ed Markey), Travis Johnson (David Vitter), Mark Kadesh (Dianne Feinstein), Allison Herwitt (Chris Murphy), and especially Andy Winer (Brian Schatz). My thanks to James Bamford, dean of NSA writers (with apologies for my fictional conceits). Also in DC, I’m grateful to Dan Jones of the Daschle Group, my terrific researcher/editor/assistant Clair Lamb, and Doyle Bartlett of the Eris Group. (Note: For dramatic purposes, I’ve taken creative liberties with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s security protocols.)

For legal assistance, I thank Charles Sims of Proskauer Rose, J. Patrick Rowan of McGuireWoods, Stephen Vladeck of the University of Texas School of Law, Alex Abdo of the ACLU, and Mark Zaid. My coffee experts included Corby Kummer, Jaime van Schyndel, and particularly George Howell.

In Boston, thanks to my friend Jay Groob of American Investigative Services, Bruce Irving, Larry Roberts, Eric Boutin, Chris Keller, Marc Davis, Sean Murphy of The Boston Globe , and my unindicted coconspirator, Giles McNamee. For medical help, Mark Morocco of the UCLA ER, and for some baby details I’d forgotten, Matt Miller of Stories Bookshop. At Dutton, my thanks to Christine Ball, Amanda Walker, Abigail Endler, Carrie Swetonic, Jess Renheim, and Ben Sevier. At my office, many thanks to Laura Jaye and Marilyn Saks Goldstein. Finally, I’m grateful to my agent, Dan Conaway, and most of all to my brother, Henry Finder.