The Capitol Game (51 page)

Jack’s introduction electrified the room. All eyes shifted to his face; more than a few eyes narrowed and the frowns deepened a few notches. Over the past twenty-four hours everybody in the room had learned his name. A few had seen his face on TV or splashed on the front page of their morning paper. He was the subject of a nationwide manhunt, the smiling face on a five-million-dollar wanted poster, and, quite possibly, the culprit behind a twenty-billion-dollar swindle. A few thought how he barely resembled the photo on TV—he seemed so much taller, thinner, less tanned. Jack smiled and nodded pleasantly, visibly unconcerned to be in the midst of so many law enforcement authorities.

Mia waited long enough for the shock to wear off. “On Jack’s behalf, here’s the deal we’re offering,” she continued. “Jack will come forward and offer testimony on one condition. He’s a whistleblower. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the program, but it won’t hurt to review a few important stipulations. Last year the federal government spent over $2.5 trillion. Considering that at least ten percent of that was lost or stolen due to waste, fraud, or abuse, the Congress in its wisdom passed a whistleblower act granting a reward of up to twenty-five percent of whatever the government collects against cheating companies. Now the good news. Jack’s not greedy. He wants a mere ten percent of whatever he saves.”

“Or we can just arrest him,” Harper threatened. “Throw him in our nastiest, most vicious federal prison and see how long he holds out before he talks.”

“You don’t have the grounds,” Mia said, very cold, very lawyerlike.

“How about graft? Theft, bribery, falsification of documents.
I’m sure we’ll think up more charges. We can be very creative. Something will stick.”

“Jack’s done nothing wrong. He’s innocent. And we have the evidence to back that up.”

“And that’s the first time I’ve ever heard a defense lawyer make that claim,” Harper snapped back, baring her teeth.

Mia opened her mouth to argue, then abruptly changed her mind. “I’d like you to listen to this tape,” she suggested with a swift nod at one of the agents seated beside Graves. The agent dutifully got to his feet, went to the corner, and pushed play on the tape machine.

During the short interval before the tape kicked in, Mia quickly mentioned, “The first voice belongs to Mitch Walters, CEO of the Capitol Group. He’s talking to Daniel Bellweather.”

Those intriguing names brought everyone forward in their seats.

Mia waved a hand and the agent abruptly shut off the tape.

If there were doubts about what Jack was offering, they instantly disappeared, but those doubts gave way to a thousand questions and suspicions.

Mia’s old boss demanded, “Where did you get that?”

“We don’t answer anything until we have a deal. But you’re probably wondering, so I’ll tell you. It’s a sampler, a small taste from a huge banquet. Jack has thousands of them. He’s unearthed one of the biggest frauds in history, and has a fabulous library to prove it.”

Rutherford II unfolded his veiny hands and began rubbing his jaw. “How do we know your client didn’t commit any criminal activity?”

“He didn’t, but you don’t. It doesn’t matter. Jack gets all the immunity the whistleblower act affords. He’s free from prosecution for anything related to this case.”

“It may be the law, but that’s ridiculous.”

“And it’s nonnegotiable,” Mia shot back. “No immunity, no deal.”

The inspector general was a lawyer himself, he knew a smart lawyer when he saw one, and Mia was certainly very smart. And smart lawyers always have a backup. He took a stab and asked, “And if we say no?”

“This is only hypothetical and should by no means be construed as a threat,” Mia responded quickly, obviously prepared for that challenge.

The faces on the other side of the table grew uneasy—of course she was about to threaten them.

“But I imagine,” Mia continued, “that my client has already made arrangements to ship all his files and tapes to some very reputable news organizations. The
New York Times
and
Washington Post
come to mind. As you know, both adore big government scandals.”

She paused to inspect the faces across the table. They hadn’t accepted their defeat yet, but they definitely didn’t like what they were hearing.

Mia cleared her throat and turned up the heat a little more. “Again, I don’t want to be too specific at this point, but the tapes will sound even more dramatic on TV. Think of a full hour of
60 Minutes
. A three-hour special in prime time isn’t out of the question, or maybe six weeks of one-hour specials. There’s so much to cover, so many embarrassing avenues to go down. Believe me, everyone in this room has an incentive not to let that happen.”

“Like what?” Margaret Harper asked.

“For instance, you might not like to be blamed for failing to stick up for an honest, hardworking agent when you ordered her off this case.” Harper suddenly looked away. In light of the tape she just heard, she suddenly felt ill. How would that look splashed across the front page? Did Mia mention
60 minutes
? Mia redirected her eyes at Rutherford II. “Or here’s another bomb. The office of the inspector general was thoroughly infiltrated by the Capitol Group. Only this afternoon one of your employees was arrested for pilfering my files and providing certain very sensitive papers to a private investigating firm working for the Capitol Group. And he wasn’t their only paid plant. Would you care to hear more specifics?” Mia asked very nicely.

Nobody wanted to hear more.

“Believe me,” Mia continued, “I’ve listened to less than a tenth of the tapes. Half the Pentagon directory gets mentioned in one way or another, none flattering.”

“Oh, man.” The inspector general was now rubbing his eyes. A migraine that seemed to have come out of nowhere was splitting his head open. “How bad is it?”

“Nixon and Watergate come off like a bunch of kids playing with matches in the woods compared to this.”

“Who’s implicated?”

“Who isn’t? A lot of people sound absolutely terrible. But at worst most were only stupid, gullible, and careless, not crooked. There’s plenty of those, too, but you know the press and the great American public. They might not be discriminate in their judgments.”

The faces on the other side of the table conveyed a mixture of terror, shock, and disbelief.

Mia decided to push them across the brink and said, “The congressional inquisitions alone will last months. Enough of their own members and staffers are implicated, they’ll need to put on a large public lynching just to tamp down the outrage. And I’m afraid it’s not just the polymer. The Capitol Group has dozens of other Pentagon contracts. Jack’s tapes picked up lots of nasty tidbits about corruption related to other deals.” She paused for a moment to underscore her client’s generosity. “He’s throwing those in free of charge.”

The inspector general asked, “Why are you bringing this to us? Why not your FBI friends here?”

Graves pushed forward in his chair. “It was part of the original bargain when she first came to see us,” he announced from the end of the table, evidently very much on her side. “She fed us a few cases that were important to us. That investigating firm she mentioned, it employs about a dozen Bureau alumni. All retired or otherwise separated, but it’s somewhat embarrassing for us.”

“And the rest is for us?” Harper asked, her eyes moving from Mia to Graves. They were down to bargaining the particulars now.

“She was very demanding on that point,” Graves admitted. “Mia insisted on a clear division of spoils. You’re going to need plenty of perp walks of your own to counter your humiliation.”

“That’s what she said?”

“More or less. Remember, she was a DCIS agent at that time. I’ve heard a few of those tapes. She’s not bluffing. It’s uglier than you can imagine.”

“So the deal is, we get to clean our dirty laundry, you get to launder yours?” Rutherford II asked, suddenly warming to the subject.

“The esteemed members of Congress belong to us, too,” Graves insisted with an uncompromising look.

“Sure, no problem,” answered Rutherford II quickly, actually more than happy to concede that point. Congress funded the Pentagon and Rutherford admitted, “We have no interest in pissing off any of our congressional supporters.” Then the two officials
swiftly broke into a comfortable negotiation about indictments and courts and jurisdiction and other legal matters.

It didn’t escape the notice of either Harper or Rutherford II how generous Graves was being. The big foot of the FBI was growing soft, they thought before the truth dawned on them—as Graves said, he had already listened to a bunch of the tapes. The spirit of intragovernmental generosity had nothing to do with this. There were more than enough indictments to keep everybody busy for a very long time, enough that he was worried about overload at this point.

“So we have a deal?” Mia asked at the first pause in their conversation.

Harper and the inspector general exchanged looks. The looks weren’t all that hard to read, the decision not at all hard to make.

Mia calmly placed a paper on the table and slid it across to the inspector general. Rutherford II lifted it up and Harper leaned over his arm; they read it together, a short, precisely worded agreement that listed all of Mia’s conditions, from the ten percent reward, to Jack’s amnesty, to Mia’s permanent separation from the DCIS. The IG scrawled his signature and handed the agreement back across the table.

Mia tucked it in her briefcase, then said, “Now I think it’s time to hear from Jack what you’re buying.”

J
ack opened with a smiling invitation. “Feel free to interrupt anytime you like. Do you have any questions to start?”

“Plenty,” Harper fired back, unamused. “But let’s hear your tale first.”

“Sure. As Mia mentioned, I was a partner at a private equity firm in New York. About twelve months ago, I met Perry Arvan. He was hunting for capital to get his company through a rough patch. A midsize chemical company bleeding cash didn’t fit our investment profile and my firm wasn’t interested. Neither was anyone else Perry approached. I spoke with him after his pitch. He was quite dispirited, facing the prospect of bankruptcy at that point. I offered to find a buyer or a major investor willing to stake cash for a slice of ownership. A fairly common arrangement on Wall Street.”

“And that’s what brought you to the Capitol Group?” one of the DCIS aides asked.

“That and my good-faith belief that Arvan Chemicals fit squarely into CG’s portfolio of turnaround prospects. A few months later I approached the Capitol Group, but from the beginning CG was most interested in the polymer Perry invented. Actually, that was all that seemed to interest them. To be frank, I did little to discourage that interest. Why should I? My job was to represent the
interests of my client Perry Arvan. So I shared the results of a study completed a year before that put the polymer in the best light.”

Harper pointed an accusatory finger at Jack. “You mean you deceived them?”

“I meant what I said,” Jack answered and seemed to smile. “Understand, ladies and gentlemen, the Capitol Group is in the takeover business. They’re not novices. They’re one of the most experienced firms in that line of business. They make their fortunes gobbling up companies and chewing them up. They had time and more than enough opportunity to conduct a thorough due diligence before they moved in.” Jack paused, then said, “Had they ever asked me if there was another report on the polymer, I certainly would’ve shared the final report with them.”