Chapter 36

All day, he had tried to get in to talk to Sommers. Chet kidded him that he must be hoping to ask for a raise since speaking to the boss seemed so important. Sommers was busy, busy, and still busy and didn’t call Eric in to see him until well after five.

The research chief was a slight man in his early fifties, whose suit seemed molded to his body, as if he had never had the opportunity to send it out to be cleaned or pressed. No matter, his reputation had him as the actual genius behind Westlake, the man upon whom the weight of the business rested. Legend also had him down as a pretty nice guy, unassuming—but not unrecognized. The story was that several universities had begged to have him on their teaching staffs.

All sorts of offers had been made and Sommers had prepared to depart for Yale University. Then Westlake had countered with a promotion to vice president plus untold other rewards. Sommers had stayed.

“Come in. Come in,” said Sommers, almost nervously. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting so long. It’s one thing after another. God knows I barely have time to accomplish any of my own projects. We should have had a talk before this, I’m sure. I did mean to call you.” He gave Eric a vague look. “Sit down. Sit down. How is it going for you here?”

Eric almost had the impression that Sommers thought Eric actually was one of his engineers. “It’s my fault, Dr. Sommers,” he apologized. “I’ve been so concerned with chasing after bits and pieces that I forgotten to have you enlighten me about the total picture. Some of that information might fit in right about now.”

“Anything at all,” promised Sommers. His phone rang and he gestured for Eric to hold that thought.

Eric looked at his watch. He might want to stick around a while after he finished with Sommers and pull his electronics out of Ryan’s office—which he had neglected to do last week because of the weather. Sommers hung up and looked at Eric expectantly.

“Dr. Sommers, you said technology had been stolen from Westlake, technology that later appeared as a Moritomo product.” Eric felt extremely awkward asking his question. “Could you tell me, what’s the evidence that the chip in question belonged to Westlake to begin with?”

Sommers, in fact, looked at Eric as if he were nuts. “The evidence is in eighteen months of my own hard labor. I have all the documentation from day one, along with my patent application. Westlake currently has fifteen attorneys working on a civil suit against Moritomo for theft of trade secrets. We’ve asked for an injunction to stop them from using our designs. The only problem is that we have so far been unable to prove how our designs were stolen by the Japanese. Didn’t Terry explain that to you? That was the whole point of the investigation, as far as I’m concerned. Get proof of the Moritomo theft.” Sommers seemed more puzzled than miffed.

That figured. It really did. Leave it to Ryan to set Eric on the wrong trail, or at least misinform him as to the purpose of the investigation. Eric had never been told that litigation was involved or that he was supposed to prove a case against Moritomo. Ryan must have a military background. This was a typical military screw-up.

“Okay, Dr. Sommers, but when I reported that Daniel LeBeau took a file, I had planted in the system to give to a representative of Moritomo, why didn’t you fire him?”

“I talked to Daniel about that,” answered Sommers in reassuring tones. “He indicated to me that his actions had been misunderstood. He’s completely loyal to Westlake, you see, and an extremely productive worker.”

Eric sat there and shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. “I don’t think I really mistook the situation,” he insisted. “I saw him give the file to the Moritomo executive who later turned out to have the data in his possession.”

“Daniel thought it was Moritomo information,” Sommers countered.

“Why would something from Moritomo be in the Westlake system?” Eric hadn’t been so confused since the time he’d seen a videotape of Richard Nixon trying to explain Watergate to David Frost.

“Daniel had heard that someone was importing outside data into the system.” Sommers seemed to feel that had clarified the entire matter.

“Yes, I can understand that,” agreed Eric. “That’s what he believed because he had been told so by his friend at Moritomo.” Now he really did grasp the point. Kitani was a disinformation specialist. He had cultivated LeBeau by spreading lies, and he was using that technique and others to win Eric himself over to Kitani’s camp. His trickery included having Kita escort Eric back to Tokyo—and all that the trip with the beautiful young woman had implied.

“The stolen information belonged to Westlake all along and you never had any Moritomo data in the Westlake network,” Eric summed up.

“To the best of my knowledge,” agreed Sommers. “Does that get us any closer to being able to prove something against Moritomo?”

“I don’t know,” Eric admitted. “I have another matter on the burner, however, which may or may not be connected. I’ve been hit on by some international information brokers looking for whatever Westlake secrets they can buy. My investigation of them has called the NYPD and FBI into play, but the upshot may be, if these guys are arrested, and they’re linked with Moritomo, they could roll over on their co-conspirators at the Japanese company. That would be my hope, anyway.” He wondered if he was simply spinning straw and not into gold.

“Roll over?” asked Dr. Sommers. “What does that mean?”

The overview was coming into focus for Eric ever so slightly as he left the scientist’s office. He was a fool. Helen had slept with Ryan, and Kitani had stolen Westlake secrets—perhaps in conjunction with Morgan, Andrews, and poor dead Sherba.

Eric wasn’t as cynical as he gave himself credit for. He had thought Helen was blameless. He had also secretly believed Kitani, had imagined Kitani was truthful about Moritomo information being ripped off by someone at Westlake. Even though Eric had pretended to himself to be weighing the credibility of Kitani’s statements, he had believed the man. But Kitani had lied right to his face, while calling him a friend. Amazing!

Eric sat back down at his desk and fiddled with his computer a while. Since he knew the system administrator’s password, he could log in and scan the network at any time. Silly of Helen not to change the code this morning after learning that Eric had been entering the network without authorization. She should have jumped to her feet right after they had made love and locked him out of the system. That was the only sensible way for an information security manager to behave. Right?

He logged out and took his lock picks to Ryan’s office, knocked on the door, and when he heard no answer, entered. He reviewed the documents on top of Ryan’s desk, just to make sure he hadn’t missed some shred of evidence that would allow him to call in the cops or even the morality patrol. Hell, he wanted to get that asshole Ryan for something. The pissant!

He reached behind the picture of Lake George to retrieve his (the NYPD’s) bug, then went to put it in his canvas bag with the picks, when he realized that the radio (RF) microphone looked and felt different from the one he had originally dropped into position. He felt behind the frame again, running his fingers all the way around until he came away with a second piece of equipment. This was the unit he had put in place. That meant the other bug had been installed either before or after he had made his own contribution. He felt infuriated but intrigued.

Why would anyone want to listen in on Ryan’s conversations? Could Ryan be bugging his own office in order to have recordings of his own conversations? No, he would simply record and skip this hidden microphone business. This was unexpected and most peculiar.

Eric returned the strange bug to its original spot in back of the picture and dropped the NYPD loaner in the bag. Could the other device have been there when he put his own mic behind the frame? He was unable to say for sure. Quite possibly he might not have noticed it. Now that he knew the other bug was there, however, he’d call Helen tonight and warn her—and have her warn Ryan. She should also be careful of anything she said in her own office. Or did—like making love with him this morning. Someone might have heard every groan of theirs.

He went back to Sommers’ office and knocked on the door. No one answered, but the door wasn’t locked. He walked in. Why wasn’t the door locked? He checked the file drawers to see if they were at least secured. They were. He had told Helen when she had been hired that physical documents considered to hold trade secrets should all be maintained in a separate area and signed in and out. Westlake now did this, but some top officials, such as Dr. Sommers, had working files that were kept in their offices in locked cabinets.

Computer materials were another matter, though, in terms of protection. Sommers had a PC with a lock on it, he noticed, but that really didn’t help. Eric had himself flipped through Sommers’ files on the network—not that he understood what he was looking at. Yes, a layer of encryption had been placed on some of the records, but he also had the de-encrpt key, by benefit of his high-level entree into the system.

Eric turned on the light and began feeling around for a mic or other surveillance equipment. The approach was stupid of him, of course, because the only way to really check it would be to do an electronic sweep, which definitely should be performed at this point. Despite a sweep, however, if the eavesdropper had in place an inexpensive transmitter operating on microwave frequency, such a bug would be invisible to most countermeasure receivers used in detection and wouldn’t be found…

Yet the microphone in Ryan’s room had been a radio frequency device and not been secreted in a particularly hidden location. Eric felt the baseboards and visually inspected areas above ordinary eye level. Dr. Sommers had no pictures on his walls.

Eric flicked off the light, left Sommers’ office, and headed back to his own cubicle, where he had left his coat on his desk. That’s when he heard it—a noise coming from the R&D section. Someone was in there. Automatically, he slowed his pace and quieted his step. He slipped through the open door into his department.

Now he could hear the noise with greater clarity, a focused, deliberate, methodical sound. Someone was working at some task but in the dark. No, not quite the dark. He saw a pinpoint light run over the surface of… Shit! Someone was messing with his computer!

The most unlikely explanations ran through his head. Someone was planting a bomb in his computer. The person who had installed the bug in Ryan’s office was bugging him. Someone was trying to make him look bad by vandalizing the machine for which he was responsible.

As soon as he reached the light switches, not two yards from his own cubicle, he pushed up the full set, illuminating the entire area. He was at his desk less than a second later, even as the intruder dropped whatever he was doing and glanced up in surprise.

The man at Eric’s computer was young, dressed in jeans and a heavy jacket. He wore an earring in one earlobe and appeared to be armed only with a small Phillips-head screwdriver. “What the fuck are you doing?” Eric demanded.

The guy tried to run, but Eric grabbed him and dragged him back. “Nothing,” the man panted. He tried to pull away.

Eric shoved the kid’s leg out from under him, causing him to fall heavily to the ground, then he stepped on the screwdriver. He supposed that people now and then were stabbed with these things. The boy released the tool and jumped up, running toward the exit. Eric let the kid go, then put on his coat and turned out the lights. He followed the subject out.

No problem. The young man had gotten as far as the outside yard where Eric himself had been stuck his first week on the job. Frannie—it was Frannie herself, Eric thought—stood snarling nearby.

“What was it, you were saying?” Eric asked.

“I was taking the chips. That’s all, taking a few chips.”

“Chips?” said Eric. They designed chips in the R&D section.

“Microprocessors—from the computers.”

Then Eric got it. This was a physical theft of a physical object, an almost old-fashioned sort of crime. “How did you get in?” Eric wanted to know.

“I waited in the men’s room,” the kid confessed desperately. “I came in about five-thirty and pretended to be leaving and told the receptionist I was a messenger and could I use the men’s room? Then I waited. Now can you get that dog out of here?”

“Oh, I have nothing to do with the dog,” Eric said. He walked off, smiling at Frannie as he left. The dog showed her teeth and growled as the intruder tried to move.

When he got to the parking lot, Eric used his cell to alert the security guard on duty that he had a customer in back. Then he called the local police.

If he were in Ryan’s slot, he’d install a two-way emergency call box in the parking lot. He’d also make damn sure that the security officer patrolled with the dog, as he was supposed to.