Part 6 (2/2)
The hair rose on the back of Nyquist's neck. The case he'd nearly died working had involved Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor.
”That seems like a huge coincidence,” he said.
”What?” Leidmann asked. ”That she did a big story? She specializes in big stories.”
”She hadn't had one for more than six months,” Nyquist said. ”Then her big story, her comeback story, is about WSX? And she dies the next day.”
”It wasn't supposed to be one story,” Leidmann said. ”I remember that. It was the first in a series. You probably should watch it.”
Nyquist couldn't suppress his shudder. ”I probably should,” he said.
8.
Justinian Wagner's office was as black as his mood-which, he knew, was normal. The place was designed to mirror his moods. But he'd never seen it this dark. His desk was black, the carpet had turned black, and even the skylight that opened to the dome was closed.
He supposed he could shut off the mood-matching feature, but that seemed like too much work. Besides, it would be a nice warning to any a.s.sistants who tried to contact him.
Now might not be the best time.
He smiled grimly at the understatement. There was no best time, not anymore. He'd watched Ki Bowles's piece on his law firm for the fifteenth time in the past twenty hours, and he still didn't know where she'd gotten the information.
He had a.s.sociates scrambling to find out who had given out confidential files. He had his best computer techs searching for a smooth backdoor hack into the firm's systems, and he was going to have to use another tech to sweep his own private systems.
The story was too good, the facts too accurate. Bowles clearly had had access to confidential materials. Her interviews with former employees seemed to back up her conclusions, but no one-not even the other partners-knew everything that she had brought up in that first five-minute segment.
Or they hadn't known it until six p.m. last night when the first installment ran.
Bowles was planning to run a dozen other installments or more, all on WSX, all about its practices and its misdeeds.
He was doing everything he could to stop her-an injunction on airing the piece further, a lawsuit alleging slander, and a third alleging fraud designed for personal gain. He didn't just file against her, he filed against Upstart Productions and the various networks that aired the first story, adding criminal conspiracy to their charges-although that would be difficult to make stick.
By the time that last charge went to court, he had to find proof or withdraw the charges. Because if he accused them of criminal conspiracy without actual proof of a theft or malicious intent, all he was doing was confirming what she had reported.
He'd worried about that from the moment he filed the charges, which was one reason why he hadn't filed the criminal charges against Bowles.
At least, not yet.
He clasped his well-manicured hands behind his back as he walked toward the center of the room. He'd frozen the image of Bowles as she sat behind some cheap desk. He'd left the image as a 3-D hologram, one that was slightly see-through as all net-provided holograms were, so that no one would confuse them with the real thing.
She seemed slight and a bit overdressed. The tattoos across her face were beautifully drawn for something that cheap, and her multicolored hair accented them perfectly. She wore no jewelry at all, which surprised him. She seemed very comfortable with her little truth-telling mission, as if she wasn't afraid of the consequences of her so-called investigative journalism.
He was afraid. He had made certain he was unavailable all day. The senior partners would meet in two hours, and he wasn't sure what he could tell them.
Wagner walked around her image, as if in studying the posture of something filmed hours, maybe days, ago could give him an insight into this woman.
This first story was mostly allegations and tantalizing tidbits, with just enough doc.u.mentation to show that Bowles was serious. The problem with the story was the promises Bowles made for future stories.
She had, in just a few words, outlined WSX's longstanding relations.h.i.+p with Ultre Corporation. Ultre had been one of the first businesses to work with Wagner's father, back when WSX was a new law firm. Most of the other clients had come from Wagner's mother. She'd been the prime breadwinner when the law firm was founded.
Bowles didn't mention that. She did talk about the solar arrays that Ultre had placed on Mina, the arrays that had ended up malfunctioning and costing the lives of two dozen Ultre employees. She mentioned the settlement that, considering the easy-to-prove liability for Ultre, had been more than fair to all concerned, the payouts to the families of the victims, and the legal fees that Ultre paid.
She also provided evidence-mostly testimony from forensic accountants who followed what she called ”a clear doc.u.ment trail”-that the victims all had lawyers from a firm with tight connections to WSX. In fact, that firm, which advertised itself as the only privately owned, human-focused law firm on Mina, was a satellite company of WSX. The ties were so hidden that no one would ever have been able to find it, but the firm's partners knew. And they had consulted with WSX before any settlement had been made.
Which was illegal under Earth Alliance law.
Wagner stopped next to the image of Bowles. Illegal, but no longer prosecutable. His father had made the arrangement. The money from the Ultre deal had gone into building WSX into the firm it was now. When that deal had been completed, Wagner had been less than a year old.
His parents were dead. Xendor was no longer an active partner, although the name remained on the door. Wagner could easily defend himself and his firm against these charges. But they weren't the only ones. They were the beginning of a very, very long list.
The fact that Bowles listed several other names on that list frightened him.
And he didn't scare easily.
He had taken action, but he wasn't sure it was the right action. The allegations would remain. He had noticed that with the Bowles's story. Other networks had picked it up and folded it into a story on Bowles herself-her firing from InterDome Media six months ago, the ill-advised piece she had completed on Noelle DeRicci, which ran as DeRicci had saved the Moon from one of the worst disasters it had ever faced, the previous award-winning stories and triumphs that had marked Bowles's career before the DeRicci piece.
A few networks had even run stories on Bowles's past, how she hadn't come up through the normal channels. Her training had been in art history and that, the dumb reporter had maintained with an air of authority, had given her the ability to sift through details to find the one important piece of information hidden in plain sight.
The problem was that nothing about WSX was in plain sight. Wagner ruthlessly controlled his firm's image. He knew what information was out there on the public links about his firm.
He knew what former employees could say with authority and what they could suppose. He had worked very hard, first with his father and then after his father left, to make sure that no one knew as much about the firm as he did.
Not even the other partners knew which ”privately owned, human-focused” firms throughout the known universe had ties to WSX. The more limited the knowledge, the more he could control it.
The files on the firm's business had layers upon layers. Some never left his private system at all. Others were buried in a code that only the most savvy could find-and then, only if they had months to sift through and the expertise to understand both computers and the law.
Bowles, for all her pretense at intelligence, didn't have either expertise. And even though she had been out of work for six months, she didn't have the patience or the kind of mind that would allow her to sift through those details and see the pattern, no matter what some stupid network talking head said.
Bowles had a.s.sistance. A lot of it. And she'd been smart enough to protect her sources. She had a raft of lawyers, some copyright and trademark lawyers, some business lawyers, some civil attorneys. She had started with Maxine Van Alen, who was one of the few attorneys in Armstrong smart enough-and courageous enough-to take on Justinian Wagner and win.
Van Alen had a grudge against him. She understood how he worked, too. She would have built the tightest firewall around the information in her firm that any firm could a.s.semble.
He'd tried to break through her firewalls before, first on a Disappeared case, and then when she represented Miles Flint, and he hadn't been able to.
If she had known that Bowles was taking on WSX, she would have built an even tighter firewall. Maxine Van Alen wasn't the doorway into Bowles's sources. But the other attorneys might be.
He would see what they knew. And he would see whether he could get an advance screening of the next two or three stories.
With the right amount of money and a few softly voiced threats, he should be able to see what he was up against.
Because if Bowles actually had what she said she did, she had the ability to destroy WSX. Not through negative public opinion or even through the courts.
But through the clients. They would believe-they would know know-that WSX sometimes (often) manipulated them into a deal that would work better for WSX than anyone else.
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