now if the Navy was persuaded to paint its ships with this polymer. Twelve aircraft carriers coated, head to stern, then a hundred destroyers, and three hundred assorted other warships.”
The jaws on the other side of the table were dropping. The numbers struck like bullets.
Jack continued in the same assured businesslike tone. “And that’s only the beginning. There’s a large private market as well-corporate limousines, police cars, bulletproof vests. And of course, the United States isn’t the only country with military vehicles that need protection. Marketed properly, I envision sales to reach the fifteen billion a year range.” Jack smiled. “Of course, I come from a small, backward firm. Meekness is bred into me. Regrettably, I tend to underestimate these things.”
The three men across the table suddenly found it hard to breathe. Their knees went weak. Had they heard right? The magic numbers hung in the air. The accountant was noisily scribbling figures on his beloved legal pad.
Four billion the first year alone-a two thousand percent return in only twelve months. Four billion! Why hadn’t Jack announced that at the start?
“Jack, sit down and stay a little longer. Please,” Blank pleaded, suddenly overwhelmed with affection for Jack Wiley. “There’s a lot more for us to discuss.” He tried a smile that came across like a tree tortured by the wind. “Please, Jack.”
Jack glanced at his watch. “My flight leaves in thirty minutes. I meet with a firm in New York in three hours. At five, I have to be in Pennsylvania for another meeting. Sorry, boys, busy day.”
“These meetings wouldn’t be about this polymer, would they?” Golightly asked, overcome with a sudden feeling of nausea. If this deal walked out the door, if it turned out to be half what Wiley promised, and if some other firm bagged Jack Wiley, he might as well throw himself out of the window.
If, if, if-three big ifs. A sickening feeling was telling him the ifs were about to become whens.
At least it wouldn’t be a solo flight: Blank would splat in the parking lot right beside him.
“I tried to warn you, Brian,” Jack said. “Three times. You blew it. It wasn’t an empty bluff, you should’ve listened.”
“Don’t be that way. It’s not personal, Jack, it’s business.”
“Exactly, it’s business.” Jack now had his case packed and was standing by the door. He turned his back on them and said, “I’ll listen to what the other firms offer. Then, maybe, I’ll get back to you.”
With that parting shot he was out the door, gone.
Like that, the fifteen-billion-dollar man disappeared.
The three men huddled together for a terrifying moment. Agreement came quickly and unanimously; a few frantic, sweaty handshakes and a firm bargain was violently sealed. What a disaster.
“You blew it,” he’d said-and he was right.
Their only prayer was to keep this calamity from the big boys upstairs.
They swore a solemn oath to carry this secret to their graves.
4
The existence of the taping system was known to barely a handful of CG’s most senior executives. Beyond that, there was just the small crew of closemouthed listeners hidden in the basement who monitored the action, sifted the nuggets from the useless chatter, and red-lighted anything alarming or worthy of interest to the big bosses upstairs.
Only the LBO boys were targeted. Only their conference rooms were wired. Consideration had once been given to a wholesale expansion, to tapping their phones, bugging their desks, even planting a few listening devices in nearby bathrooms. Put in enough bugs and wire to match Nixon’s White House. No way. As quickly as it was raised, that dangerous idea was discarded. The overhead of listeners would multiply sixfold. The chance of exposure would become immense. Why risk it?
The real action took place in the conference rooms anyway.
The system was a necessary precaution, the senior leaders of CG felt. At first, anyway. Over the years some of the LBO boys had been caught wheeling-dealing, cutting side deals, or committing CG to things that weren’t technically or even mildly legal.
More than perhaps any other firm in the world, the Capitol Group had a reputation that needed to be protected, whatever the costs.
Over time, the taping system acquired wonderful new purposes. The CEO and a few select directors frequently listened in to decide which of their aspiring LBO cutthroats had the right stuff and which needed to be booted out the door. Truth was, they enjoyed listening to the kids bicker and quarrel, raise the pressure, and go for blood. They loved having ringside seats at the most profitable game in town.
The full-time tenders worked out of a cluttered room in the basement, a small nook fitted with security cameras and a highly sophisticated taping console. They came and went through the service entrance at the rear of the building. They wore grease-stained coveralls, carried pails and brooms, and were coldly ignored by the snooty executives on the upper floors.
Mitch Walters, the CEO, had his big feet planted on his desk. His two big hands gripped the armrests as he craned forward and strained to hear every word, every nuance. The instant they heard Wiley’s farewell threat and the door close behind him, Walters punched a button.
The noise stopped. “Idiots. They underestimated him. He’s smarter than they are. Much smarter,” he announced for the benefit of the older man in the room.
Daniel Bellweather produced a weary nod. “You have to admire it.”
“You’re right, a perfect ambush. Didn’t let on till the very end.”
“Just let them act stupid, play like loudmouthed braggarts, then handed them their balls on a plate.”
Daniel Bellweather, or Mr. Secretary, as everybody in the firm still called him-without the slightest trace of affection-was a former three-term congressman and, for four years, secretary of defense under a mildly unpopular former Republican president. His tenure in the Pentagon had been somewhat rocky. There had been runaway spending on a few multibillion-dollar hardware programs that produced useless belly flops the military hated. Two martial misadventures that went horribly wrong and resulted in lots of corpses and hasty retreats. Then came the quiet revolt by a bunch of Army generals that had to be brutally quelled.
The former president he had served was now in the grave; dead, he became far more popular than when he was breathing. An average president on his best day, compared with the sorry losers who followed in his stead, he had been lionized as one of the greats, an afterglow that trickled down to his retainers and aides.
They were the sage architects, the wise elder statesmen of an administration notable for one unforgettable achievement: it produced no great disasters. Two full terms. Eight years without a single market meltdown, no big wars, and, in a modern record, slightly less than half his cabinet ended up under indictment or in prison.
No successive administration had even come close.
Mid-seventies, craggy-faced, tall, thick white hair, portly, but not too much, Daniel Bellweather had weathered nicely into the picture of an eminent Washington mandarin. For eight years before Walters, he had been the CEO. He steered the ship and attended to the details. He roared into the office screaming at six every morning and didn’t mellow out until six in the evening. He stoked the ranks with as much greed, fear, and insecurity as he could manage, and kept the immense profits flowing.
His tantrums were legendary. Firm lore had it that after one of Bellweather’s calmer tongue-lashings, a senior VP fled down to the parking lot, withdrew a pistol from the glove compartment, and reupholstered the interior of his Mercedes with his brains.
That myth was a wild fabrication. The man had flung himself from an upper-floor window and painted the car’s exterior.
But after eight years at the helm, eight years of steadily increasing profits, and after getting richer than he ever believed possible, Bellweather suffered his first stroke. A mild one. Little more than a bad headache, really; his first scary glimpse, however, that all good things come to an end. In shock, he stepped back from the unrelenting pressure and retreated into the fringe role of director.
Time to kick back and relax, he told himself; enjoy the fruits of thirty years of juking and jiving around
