The Term Sheet: A Startup Thriller Novel (5 page)

M
egan scrubbed
the hardwood floors of their small apartment with an old Swiffer that was bent and duct-taped back together. The spring had brought more rain than normal and David always tracked in mud after working at the café a couple blocks from their place in Ladd’s Circle. Still David was confused about why he saw Megan cleaning all the time. He thought their apartment was small enough that it shouldn’t be that hard to keep clean. He rolled over in the bed to reach to the floor and pick up his socks from the night before.

“Meg, it’s Saturday,” he yelled. “Do you really need to be cleaning this early? Come back to bed.”

“Up already, lazy head? Coffee’s on the stove.”

“Thanks.”

David pulled himself up half-naked, wearing only his superhero pajama pants. The spring rain was beating hard and loud on the roof. David dragged himself to the kitchen and reached for a mug and a bowl.

Megan brushed the Swiffer over David’s ever-expanding vinyl collection before tearing it off and throwing it in the trash. “I’m headed to the flea market to set up shop for tomorrow. Then I’m having lunch with Elly and Monica. Want to get together after lunch and catch a movie?”

“Sounds good. Andrew will be here soon.”

“He’s always late. Make sure he takes off his shoes.”

David poured himself a bowl of Lucky Charms. Megan took off her top and started walking toward the bathroom.

“You know what Andrew said I should do?”

“Shave your beard?”

“Ha. No.” His beard had been growing past the point of lazy stubble. “He said I should start a company around my encrypted chat idea. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Crazy like spending your life savings on a jellyfish website in an online auction?” Megan turned on the shower.

“Boy, you are really on this morning, aren’t you?”

She turned and scrunched up her nose. “I’ll be here all weekend, tips are welcome in the jar.”

“Anyhow, smarty-pants, I told him it was just a thought experiment. I am not going to turn away from the time and money we have invested in Jellies-R-Us.”

“We? Whatever. The chat idea sounds like it has more potential than Jellies-R-Us ever did. At least this new idea solves a real problem, rather than one you made up to rationalize spending so much money.”

“Very funny. You’re probably right, but I don’t like businesses that don’t charge money. Nobody pays for chat apps these days,” David said while scarfing down his cereal. He washed it down with a large gulp of coffee.

“Remind me how many people have paid for the jellyfish tanks? I don’t have a degree from Harvard, but it seems to me like if you solve a real problem for people, you can figure out how to make money from it.”

“Maybe. I’m just too busy to try something new right now.” David tossed the empty bowl in the white porcelain sink and poured another cup of coffee, before heading down the hallway to get dressed.

After Megan finished her shower, a pop of sun poked through the clouds, briefly lighting up the small living room. David kissed Megan on the forehead and flew out the door. When it rained this hard in the spring, the ground would soak to capacity and water everywhere turned brown. During this quick interlude of sun in an otherwise miserable day, you could smell mud in the air and hear small birds singing in the trees.

David walked a few steps to Palio Café to meet Andrew. The café felt a little like the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, with books piled to the ceiling, cozy tables, dim lights, and big windows to watch the passersby. Ladd’s Circle was the center of bicycle traffic for most of Southeast Portland, and no amount of rain stopped Portland bikers. Many of the tables were large, community tables with seven or eight wooden chairs surrounding them. But there were also a few big cozy leather chairs near the books. Prime real estate for someone reading a novel, or wanting to avoid the unwanted attention of strangers at a shared table. The coffee served there was from Stumptown and always good.

David went to the counter and ordered an Earl Grey tea before spotting Andrew in the adjoining room. Andrew was alone at one of the large tables typing on his laptop.

Andrew pointed at his screen. “Hey, how much do you think it costs to bribe Skype into letting you see all the chats going on in their system?”

“No idea. A billion dollars,” said David.

“Snowden released more documents today. Apparently it’s only twenty million a year. And they’ve been doing it since 2009. That’s a lot less money than I thought. I wonder if rich people and foreign governments are getting in on this action too, or if it’s just reserved for the good old USA.”

“That’s crazy,” said David. “I wonder what email system Snowden uses. Probably something like Hushmail with built-in public-key encryption.”

Andrew shook his head and asked: “Why is public-key encryption so damn hard to use? I tried to get my dad to use it last week but I lost him at the key server.”

“You probably lost him long before that.” David laughed. “There are just a ton of steps to get started with that stuff, and it isn’t really useful until all your friends have done all of the steps correctly.”

“Hey, if you built that encrypted chat service, I bet Snowden would use it. I bet he would even pay for it. He probably can’t use a credit card, so you would have to accept bitcoin.”

“Ha!” David snorted his hot tea as he laughed, and an older lady with dark red hair and glasses that looked like they were made in the 70s glanced over with a disapproving look. “Megan likes the idea too, says it’s one of the better ideas I’ve had.”

“Coming from her, that means a lot. You should at least test the idea to see if it has legs. Put a simple page up or whatever.”

David opened his laptop and started editing his latest blog post. The novelty of male jellyfish spewing sperm from their gonads in a desperate hope of one happening to float along and hit a female had run out. Even the word “jellyfish” gave David indigestion these days. Can’t hurt to try a landing page, he thought. He closed his word processor, pulled up a terminal and started coding. Twenty minutes later he twisted his laptop toward Andrew and sat back.

“You actually listened to me. Kudos for that. But that’s the crappiest landing page I have ever seen.”

“I never live up to your standards. You badger me to test an idea, then I test it, and you don’t like how I test it.”

“No, David, stop freaking out. You just have too many words—people don’t read on the interwebs. Here, let me fix it.”

Andrew pulled the computer closer to him and started typing. A few minutes later, he turned the computer back to David. He started reading aloud. The lady behind them shot another disapproving glare their way, like a librarian trying to stare someone out of the library, but neither of them cared.

“‘Cryptobit: an un-breakable, un-snoopable, un-stoppable encrypted chat service for your phone. To find out more, put your email in the box.’ That’s it? But don’t people have to know how it’s un-snoopable? I don’t think this is nearly enough information.”

“You don’t sell people on features,” Andrew explained. “You sell people on their problems. Put yourself in their shoes, don’t be a smarty-pants and try to show off. How you make it work behind the scenes doesn’t matter to people. At least at first it doesn’t. They wouldn’t care if you pulled it off with monkeys passing messages through tin cans strung together by threads. They just want to know that it solves a problem they care about.”

“I don’t think Snowden would pay for this the way you wrote it.”

“I’m not asking people to pay here, I’m seeing if they want to find out more. I am certain he would put his email in the box to learn more.”

“What do you know, anyhow?” asked David. “When did you become the Snowden whisperer? This is stupid. I don’t know why we're even still talking about this. I’m going to get another tea.”

David picked up his big empty cup and the saucer with the spent teabag and dropped it clumsily in the dirty dishes tub.

“Young man! Can you please try to keep it down?” The old lady’s face was as red as a tomato.

“I am sorry, ma’am, we didn’t mean to disturb you,” said Andrew like a troublemaker on his best behavior. The polite tone appeared to satiate the woman and she nestled herself back into her book. Andrew grabbed David’s computer and started fiddling around as David walked away.

David turned around and stormed back to the table. “On second thought, I’ve got things to do.” He unplugged the charger, tucked the laptop under his arm, and waved halfheartedly. “Later.”

“Wait,” said Andrew. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing.”

H
e woke
up in a cold sweat.
Abigail, where did Abigail go?
He had not been able to sleep through the night since the day of the attack. Shawn had tried over-the-counter and prescription pills, but they took his edge off during the daytime and he needed that edge. So he stopped.

He woke at 5:43 a.m. and got out of bed at 5:44 a.m. His tiny one-bedroom apartment was in disarray. It looked like there had been a weekend frat party and smelled like dirty socks. The refrigerator was empty except for half a carton of spoiled milk and a couple eggs. At 6:12 a.m. he ate a scrambled egg. He then took a fifteen-minute cold shower. He put on his navy suit. As he passed the picture of his wife Norah, his fingers grazed over the top of the frame. He grabbed the keys sitting on the nightstand next to the photo and got into his old black Jaguar.

Five minutes into the drive, he passed the dark glass office building on his right. It had been a particularly wet winter in Washington DC and now that the tourist season was winding down, the streets were clearing up. As he approached the National Mall, it was quiet and still. Most of the Mall didn’t open for another hour.

The rains had helped wash the streets of the physical scars from the devastating events just a month earlier, but the psychological scars remained. The workers had just started laying bricks for the old brewery after having rebuilt much of the interior. The community garden remained untouched since planting season had long since passed.

Shawn pulled up to the spot where the Secret Service tent had been. He parked his car and sat there silently. After a few long minutes, he got out of the car and stepped onto the freshly paved street. You could still smell the asphalt and the rain made the new ground feel tacky.

“The president’s driver is awaiting our signal.” He could hear Abigail’s voice like she was right in front of him.

“Tell the driver to proceed,” he remembered saying as the ground around the operations tent began to shake. Most of the dead had been accounted for, but they never found the remains of Abigail Onassis. The train had come in full force through Shawn’s tent and had proceeded to run into another building before coming to a halt.

Shawn’s phone rang loudly in his pocket.

“Boss, where are you?” Brandon sounded concerned.

“I’ll be right in. Have you heard anything new yet?”

“Yes, I just tracked down a rumor about the ashcat, Jared Wilson Farthing. Jared’s an ex-con and apparently their inside man. He broke the neck of the conductor minutes after the train left the station and then installed a remote override mechanism that disabled the safety mechanisms in place, before jumping off the train.”

“So where is he now?”

“In the wind. The FBI has put him on the ten most wanted list, but he skipped town before we knew to stop him.”

“I want to know everything there is to know about Jared Farthing. Have a file on my desk when I get there.”

“Yes, boss.”

Shawn put the phone back in his pocket and got back in the car.

A
s he came
out of the elevator, the briskness of the cold air cleared Shawn’s mind. He spotted Brandon down the hall carrying papers in one hand and a brace in the other. Brandon had been out of the way of the train, but a computer-turned-projectile had shattered his left arm when the train came through the tent.

“Brandon, is the profile done?”

“Oh.” He turned to see Shawn. “Yes, boss. Jared Wilson Farthing. Twenty-five-year-old orphan who was in and out of foster homes until he found his way to Columbia Heights and joined the MS-13 gang when he was thirteen. He was in jail for armed robbery when he was sixteen and was released two years ago. Only one living relative, a great aunt living in California, but he has been in DC all of his life. Think this is gang related?”

“Absolutely not. This was a carefully planned and well-executed attack. Who are his known associates?”

“All I could find were gangbangers. Another man was spotted limping away from the train around the time of the hijacking, but nobody stopped him and we only have a vague description.”

“Okay, well check hospitals for all recent leg injuries. And let’s start following the money. Look into Jared’s bank records. How’s your arm?”

“It’s okay, mostly just hurts at night and during storms. Thanks for asking. How are you? Where were you this morning?”

“I’m fine. Go pull the financials on Jared and his aunt.”

“Yes, boss.”

Shawn sat at his desk, opened the file and began paging through the papers like Ebenezer Scrooge counting his money. Lost in his own world, Shawn didn’t notice as Senior Director Richard Curtis walked up to his desk. Richard was a tall and stocky man with deep-set wrinkles and a smooth bald head.

Richard knocked on Shawn’s desk. “Shawn, how are you?”

“Sir, I didn’t know you were here today.” Shawn stood up at his desk and started pulling his papers together, trying to neaten up his desk. Though technically Shawn’s boss, Richard was so busy and traveled so much that Shawn only saw him a few times a year in person. Usually at formal events. Never in the office. Richard could usually be found on or near Air Force One.

“Yes, the president wanted me to check on you. How is the concussion healing?”

“I’m fine, sir. You didn’t need to come by just to check on me.”

“I also came to give you some advice. Don’t meddle in the investigation that the joint task force is running. This is the largest terrorist attack since 9/11 and the president is in a very precarious position with public opinion right now. We need this investigation to run its course. Can you play ball?”

“With all due respect, this attack goes much deeper than the president’s polling numbers. People were hurt. My own people died. And this could have been prevented if others had listened to me in the first place.”

“We did listen to you, Shawn. Maybe not enough, but that’s water under the bridge now. It’s out of our hands. I need you to step away. This needs to be a clean investigation.”

Richard’s presence grew more and more imposing.

“The FBI has no idea what they’re doing. I have been onto this guy for a year now. Do you know how many times they’ve asked me to help in the investigation? Zero. None. One measly Senate interview. Not a single investigator has come to ask me about my research into the ashcat or the email trail.”

“Shawn, they have all your reports and transcripts. I assure you they’re going over every lead. They will interview you soon if and when they need to. I just need your word that you won’t meddle. You can’t run your own investigation. I need you coordinating travel. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I’ll send the president your regards.”

Richard turned away and started walking, but Shawn called over.

“Sir, one more question. Can I ask what the FBI has found so far?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Do they have any leads though?”

Richard shrugged.
I knew it,
said Shawn to himself under his breath.

“What’s that?”

“Safe travels, sir.”

Richard continued to walk away. When he turned the corner, Shawn’s fists slammed on the desk, pushing all the papers to the floor. Brandon came over and started to pick up the papers.

“Who was that?” Brandon asked.

“My boss.”

“No wonder you don’t like me calling you sir.”