The Fool's Run

glanced over at her and she grinned. “Yeah, a little.”
    “Good. If you didn’t, we’d be worried about your stability. But we want you to understand how strongly we feel about this. I think about it constantly. I can’t sleep, I can’t do business. It might be crazy. But we’ve talked it out and we don’t think so.”
    “So what do I do? Specifically?” I asked, dropping into his visitor’s chair.
    “First, we want your agreement that if you decide not to take the job, what we discuss never goes out of this office.”
    I wouldn’t talk anyway. Talk wouldn’t get me anything but a conspiracy indictment. I relaxed and crossed my legs. “Sure. If you want to take my word for it.”
    “Our research indicated that we could.”
    “I’d like to know about that research,” I said. “How did you find me?”
    “Dillon found you. Dillon is the best researcher in the United States. The Library of Congress calls him,” Anshiser said. “When we found out what had happened, that String had been stolen, we knew we’d probably lose the competition for the contract. Oh, we wriggled and turned and twisted, and talked to lawyers and patent specialists, and the answer kept coming up the same. So I assigned Dillon to the problem. I told him to forget any parameters at all—just find a solution. As it happens, there is one. Maybe. It just isn’t legal.”
    I glanced over at Dillon and the gray man smiled again. “That’s true,” he said.
    Anshiser continued. “To save ourselves, we have to put their ass in a sling. Then, maybe, I can work some kind of deal.”
    “What kind of deal?”
    “We’ll have to see. An acquisition. Maybe we can buy them. Maybe a merger. I don’t know. But I need an edge.”
    “I thought these guys were your blood enemies?”
    “I can live with enemies. I just can’t watch the company go down. If I can hustle them into a merger, I can take care of them later. Right now, there’s no reason in the world they should talk to us. We need to give them a reason.”
    He turned back to the desk and picked up a black-bound typescript. “This is Dillon’s report. In general, it says the best way to stop Whitemark is through their computer systems—design systems, accounting systems, information systems, scheduling, and materials. Altering them, destroying them, faking them out.”
    “This is a defense industry,” I said. “If we’re caught, they’ll drop us in Leavenworth for the rest of time.”
    “Ah. Now that’s something Dillon’s report covers quite thoroughly,” said Anshiser. “I will give you a contract outlining the kind of attack I want. If you are arrested, you will present the authorities with a copy of the contract. I will voluntarily confirm that I hired you to do this work. You will instantly become a very small fry.”
    “And you join me at Leavenworth.”
    “No. I don’t think so. I’m not absolutely sure, of course, but I don’t think so. If I am arrested, or any of my people are arrested, I will publicly discuss the contributions I have given our president over the past ten years. He’s exceptionally popular, you know, and intends to run for reelection. The contributions I made were quite illegal, but they kept his political career alive at several critical junctures. I am confident that any investigation will be quashed.”
    “Blackmail.”
    “Exactly. You’ve been around politicians enough to know that it happens every day.”
    “It’s usually not quite so blunt.”
    “Oh, there won’t be anything blunt about it. If they get to me at the end of the investigation, they’ll punch me into their computers and a flag will pop up. Some flunky will run over to the White House, and the whole investigation will disappear.”
    I grunted and thought about it. It could work, but I didn’t intend to commit myself without more thought. “It’s shaky. I’d have to think about it.”
    “Think about the fee when you’re thinking about the job,” Anshiser said. He leaned back and tented his fingers. “If you take the job and it doesn’t work out, one million dollars. If you take it and it does work, another million. I assume you would have to hire other people, buy equipment, whatever. When you sign the contract, Ms. Kahn will give you the first million in cash, plus one hundred thousand in expense money.”
    “Jesus,” I said. Now I was thinking furiously. “Why so much? If I was willing to do it, it wouldn’t take a million to convince