other officers, its revenues, its employees, or its clients, and what little we did come across was a rehash of what was on their Web site:
Offices in Washington, New York, and London. Practice areas include financial services, technology, media, and energy. Strategic and tactical engagements.
Neary leaned back in his chair and stretched. “I’ve got to get this guy to work on my rA©sumA©,” he said, laughing. “A little tweaking, and it can read like I was attorney general.”
“Or even postmaster general. But who is this guy, and what does he actually do? And what’s his interest in Danes?”
“Assuming it is his interest,” Neary said.
“As opposed to…?”
“As opposed to a client’s interest.”
“Another fucking cutout… great.” I shook my head. “So who’s his client, and what the hell does he want with Danes?”
Neary smiled. “First things first,” he said. “Let’s start with who this guy is and what he does. What was the name of the magazine reporter?”
I looked down at my pad. “George L. Gerber, out of LA,” I read.
Neary’s fingers were busy again and he was quiet for a moment, reading his screen. “There we go. Think it’s too early to call out West?” But he was already working the phone.
It wasn’t too early for George L. Gerber. He was awake and alert over the phone speaker, and there was a prickly hint of Brooklyn in his voice. But he was pleasant enough, until we told him what we wanted to talk about. Then there was silence on the line, followed by some very careful questions about who we were. We gave him answers, and he said he’d call us back. Neary started to give him his direct number, but Gerber stopped him.
“I’ll find the number for Brill in New York,” he said. “If I can’t reach you there, I don’t want to talk to you.” Five minutes later he was on the line again.
“So what’s your interest in him?” Gerber asked. There was still plenty of caution in his voice.
“We tripped across him in a case we’re working,” Neary said. “We’re looking for some background on him and thought you might help us out. You’re the closest we’ve come to a Pflug expert.”
“You got that right,” Gerber said, with a bitter laugh. “But if you read my article, you already know the important stuff- that he’s a lying, self-aggrandizing creep. I don’t know what I can add.”
“What can you tell us about Scepter Intelligence?” I asked. “You didn’t say much about the company in your piece.”
“Besides Pflug, there isn’t a lot to say about Scepter. I mean, Pflug is Scepter.”
“Their Web site sure makes it sound that way,” Neary said. “Of course, it makes it sound like a lot of the civilized world depends on Pflug, just to hold things together.”
Gerber didn’t laugh. “I wasn’t joking, Neary. He really is the company. I mean, from everything I learned, Pflug is the only employee of Scepter Intelligence.”
Neary looked at me and I looked back, and we were quiet for a while. Gerber helped us out.
“The Web site’s a Potemkin village, and all the offices- in DC and New York and London- they’re just serviced space. For a few hundred a month he gets a respectable address, a phone number, a receptionist, a place to get mail, and a decent conference room when he needs to have a meeting. As far as I could tell, the company mainly exists in Pflug’s condo, out in the northern Virginia burbs.”
“So he does all the work?” I asked.
“He’s more like a contractor. He gets the gigs and hires on whatever help he needs- day labor, specialists, even other companiesfor however long he needs them. He manages them and slaps a big markup on every job.”
“What kinds of jobs, George?” Neary asked. “What’s he selling, and who’s he selling it to?”
Gerber snorted. “He calls it private intelligence and opposition research and a few other pretentious euphemisms, but what it is, is spying- dirty tricks, creeping and peeping, buying and selling secrets, smear campaigns- all that good stuff. Pflug’s a corporate spook, and despite what a creep he is- or maybe because of it- he’s a good one.” Neary looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
“And his clients?” Neary asked.
“He keeps that a secret,” Gerber said. “And the people and companies that buy his services tend not to talk about it much.”
“You never ran across any of them doing your research?” Neary said.
“The closest I came were some guys who did freelance work for him over the years. They’re how I first got on to what his business was really all about. Pflug never let them anywhere near clients, but they knew who their targets were. They wouldn’t share any names with me, no matter how many drinks I bought them- I think they were afraid of being implicated in anything- but two of them said the list included a lot of Wall Street assholes. And that’s a quote.”
Neary and I looked at each other again. “Think we could have a chat with some of those guys?” I asked.
Gerber laughed. “Sorry, boys, that’s how somebody like me loses all his reporter merit badges. Pardon my French, but no fucking way.”
Neary shrugged, and we were quiet for a while, thinking.
“How do you know he’s good at it?” I asked Gerber finally.
“What?”
“If you never spoke to any of his clients, how do you know that Pflug is good at his work?”
There was a long silence on the phone speaker.
“You still there, George?” Neary asked.
“I’m here,” Gerber said. His voice was a little choked.
Neary looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “You doing okay?” he said to the phone.
“I’m all right,” Gerber said.
“Did we hit a nerve, George?” Neary asked. “Was that a bad question?”
Gerber coughed a little. “No, no, it was the right thing to ask,” he said. “It’s what I would’ve asked.” Another cough. “I know that Pflug is good at what he does because for a while, after that article came out, I was one of his targets.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Gerber sighed. “It was little shit at first: hang-up phone calls in the office and on my cell and at home. And then I began to notice that they were timed- just when I’d get to my desk in the morning, just when I’d get in my car, just when I’d get home- as if someone was watching me. Then my mail started getting fucked up. Bills came late, and the envelopes looked like they’d been tampered with. Some bills never came at all. Then one day I got no mail at all, just a mailbox filled with dog shit.
“After that he moved on to the office. A woman down in sales started getting harassing e-mail- pornographic e-mail- that looked as if it was coming from my computer. From me. And just like the phone calls, they were timed; she’d only get them when I was at my desk. And then…” Gerber paused and coughed some more. “Then, my editor gets a fax- anonymous- that purports to be from an employee who’s too frightened to come forward directly. The fax tells him he should check out my computer, that I’ve been downloading all sorts of… pictures… of kids, for chrissakes…” Gerber paused again and sighed heavily.
Neary spoke to him, and his voice was surprisingly gentle. “You must’ve had some idea where this was coming from, George. You must’ve thought of Pflug first thing.”
“Of course I did,” Gerber said. “As soon as the phone calls started. And I told my editor and our lawyers and the cops about them right away. That’s probably what saved my ass. Because these e-mails and the shit they found on my computer- the pictures- they all looked like the real deal. And there were no signs of tampering, no traces of intrusion, no traces of anything- not on my computer, or my phones, or my mailbox. Nothing.”
“When you told the police about the phone calls, did they put traps on your line?” Neary asked.
“Sure they did, at which point the calls stopped. And that was the pattern: I was always playing catch-up. As soon as I talked to the postal inspectors about my mail, the mail tampering stopped and the e-mail shit started. When that happened, our tech guys put some sort of monitor on my account, after which there were no more harassing messages. And then my boss got the fax.”
“Did anybody ever confront Pflug?”
