The Term Sheet: A Startup Thriller Novel (8 page)

“
A
re you sure
? Let me see,” said Shawn. He pulled an old cathode ray tube monitor toward him. “You are right! It’s him!”

Shawn had almost forgotten about the tap they had put on the email addresses. He had nearly given up hope, assuming the accounts had been abandoned.

The email was caught on an intermediary SMTP server that lived between Google’s servers and the backbone of the Internet. Without subpoenas, Google had not been cooperating directly with the government. But the geeks in the NSA didn’t need Google’s cooperation to create a tracer tag like Brandon had done.

“Did it trace back to anywhere foreign? Anything in China or Germany?” said Shawn.

“The FBI hasn’t gotten back to me yet about that,” said Brandon.

“I couldn’t care less about the FBI.” Shawn said with a reprimanding tone. “Have you tracked down any foreign leads yet?”

“No. I’ll get on it.” Brandon jumped out the door like a hound on the scent.

“Brandon!” Shawn said. “Pull up the email for me before you go.”

Shawn stood at the desk. Too much excitement and energy to sit down. This was it. His big break. He had been working on this for so long in the dark. Every morning, he would come into work and say out loud: “Today’s the day. Today we're getting our big break.” He read the email and then reread it. Unlike the last email exchange he’d discovered, this one was obviously a bulk email sent as a welcome for some Internet service.

Shawn reached for his phone to text Brandon, but when he pulled up the screen, he saw Brandon had already texted him:
I forgot to tell you, already looking into David and Cryptobit. Will give you a debriefing tonight.

Shawn smiled.
Attaboy.
He texted back:
Anyone else know about this yet?

Brandon responded:
No.

Shawn responded:
Keep it that way.

I
t had been
dark outside for a couple of hours, but inside the building the dim florescent light looked the same as it did during daytime. When Brandon came back to Shawn’s desk with a ream of paper under his arm, he walked with a peacock’s posture of geeky pride. Picking apart the life of David Alexander was easier than he had anticipated.
Typical millennial
, he thought.
Spends countless hours posting his life story on social networks and blogs.
Brandon loved getting information on millennials—it was always so easy that it made him look really good.

Brandon explained that David’s cofounder was Andrew Smith, a slightly less geeky weirdo also in Portland, Oregon. He told Shawn about David’s girlfriend, Megan Anderson, his sister Heather, his mother Sophia, and his father Richard. He had David’s credit card records (shops at Safeway, but eats out a lot at Pok Pok), his criminal record (speeding ticket two years ago), and even his movie rewards card (mainly likes spy and action movies, James Bond,
Fast and the Furious
,
Mission Impossible
). Brandon and Shawn poured over David’s life for hours.

Then came Cryptobit. Brandon had forwarded Cryptobit to Jason, a techie friend of his in the NSA who had been evaluating the startup’s security claims. Jason had been doing crypto since he was nine years old and was able to pick apart the weaknesses of most new crypto projects he saw within minutes. But Brandon hadn’t heard from Jason all day. He had texted him a few times to check on the status, but Jason had gone dark. So Brandon stepped Shawn through the basics of Cryptobit, at least what it said on the website.

“If it actually works, it’s no wonder our unsub wants to use it,” said Shawn. “We almost got him last time because of that careless email. He won’t make that mistake again.”

Just then, Richard Curtis walked in. He slammed his hands on Shawn’s desk as his nostrils flared and his face beamed red.

“Would someone care to explain to me why you are communicating with the NSA?” asked Richard. He didn’t wait for an answer.

“I thought I made it abundantly clear that you were to cease all independent investigations. Now I am getting phone calls in the middle of the night from the FBI telling me you two are looking into some loony startup in Oregon. You sure as hell should not be investigating, but if you found something you should have contacted me immediately. Do you have any idea how the phone calls went tonight? ‘Richard, what are they doing?’ ‘I don’t know, sir.’ ‘Richard, what does Oregon have to do with this investigation?’ ‘I don’t know, sir.’ You made me look like a complete ass.”

Richard took a deep breath. Shawn began to say, “I am so—” but Richard wasn’t done yet.

“And then they tell me that the startup you found has stumped the NSA, and now I have their senior directors calling me and asking me the same questions. ‘Richard, where did they find this website?’ ‘I don’t know, sir.’ ‘Richard, do they think a terrorist is using this website?’ ‘I don’t know, sir.’ I need answers and I need them right now. And don’t you dare bullshit me anymore.”

Shawn explained everything—the email tracer tag, the hit that morning and how that led to the website. Brandon gave Richard a review of the findings of the day on David and his friends and family.

“Give me those papers. Is that the only copy?” said Richard.

“Yes, sir,” said Brandon.

“Good. From this moment on, you are both to stop investigating. No exceptions. Go home and forget about today. I’ll save your asses this time, but there will not be a second chance. You got it?”

“Yes, sir,” said Shawn and Brandon in unison.

Richard stormed out of the office and had his phone to his ear before he even reached the threshold.

“So I guess Cryptobit is as good as it claims to be,” Brandon whispered to Shawn.

Shawn smiled and rapped his knuckles on his desk.

I
t had been
two weeks since the fight. David and Andrew had not spoken a word to each other. David was heads down coding, while Andrew tried to smooth things over with Mark Baxter. One time, they ran into each other quite by accident at an out-of-the-way coffee shop, Costello’s Travel Café. For two long hours, they sat at opposite sides of the small café pretending they hadn’t seen each other.

David had managed to get a simple prototype working. It didn’t do much yet, but you could send basic messages back and forth and they would get encrypted and decrypted transparently behind the scenes. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. The interest in Cryptobit had grown too. What started as five thousand people on the waiting list had grown to over twenty thousand. People couldn’t stop talking about it. Even the
New York Times
mentioned it briefly in a story about the NSA and privacy in a digital age.

“Can I see what you’re working on?” asked Andrew. David nearly choked on his Darjeeling.

“Oh. Yeah.”

David walked through a quick demo of Cryptobit. Essentially, it just looked like you wrote some words and it would show up on the other screen. But Andrew and David both knew how much was going on behind the scenes. Before the message left the first phone, it was encrypted along with dozens of other dummy encrypted messages, all gibberish. The messages were then distributed in a big network of globally distributed servers (eventually they would just be distributed on the phones using Cryptobit). Every hop on the network magnified the gibberish. Then the other device tried to decrypt everything it got. The gibberish messages wouldn’t work and would be thrown out. However one message, the needle in the virtual haystack, showed up on the small screen Andrew was holding. Four simple words: “Let’s stop fighting, shitface.”

“Awww. Thanks, buddy.” Andrew beamed a smile.

“I got this weird email a few days ago. I can’t tell if it’s a prank. He claims to be Doug Kensington.”

“As in the Doug Kensington? President of System Doug Kensington? Totally a prank. Not from me, I promise.”

“I knew it wasn’t from you because it didn’t have any typos.”

“Fuck you. Can I read it?”

“Sure.”

David pulled up the email. Andrew dragged the computer screen toward himself.

“David, you should totally call that number. I mean it. Pretend like you are the pizza guy and need to be buzzed in. This is totally fake, there is no way the president of System has time to email you. People like that are way too busy for people like us. If someone really wanted to trick us, they should have made it look like it was coming from their product manager or some business development guy. Even corp dev.”

“Nah. I’m too busy coding. You interrupted my flow. Give me back my computer.” David reached over to yank the computer away from Andrew. But Andrew held fast.

“Give me your phone first and I’ll give you your computer.”

“What’s wrong with your phone?”

“It’s an iPhone 5s. The battery lasts exactly fifteen minutes and I left my charger at home. Come on, give me your phone and I’ll give you back your precious laptop.”

“Fine.”

The two exchanged Apple devices and Andrew proceeded to make a phone call.

“You are not doing what I think you are doing. Give it back.”

“Oh yes I am. It’s already ringing. You’re too late.” He stuck out his tongue.

Andrew put the phone on speaker as it rang. The line kept ringing so many times that Andrew was about to hang up when finally someone picked up.

“Hello? Who is calling?”

Andrew looked at David with big eyes and a wide smile.

“Hello,” said Andrew in a bad fake British accent. “This is David Alexander calling for Mr. Doug Kensington. I received an email from you just a few hours ago and I wanted to follow up.”

Andrew was cracking himself up. Even David started to laugh, but tried to hide it.

“Ah yes, David, hi. This is Doug. I didn’t realize you would call. I don’t want to be rude, but I thought you were someone else and I am waiting for another call. But I am really impressed with your work on Cryptobit and would appreciate the opportunity to talk to you more soon.”

Andrew looked over at David laughing into one hand.

Andrew continued, “Oh, I totally understand. But before you go, can I just ask you something really quickly? What’s your birthday?”

“Excuse me?”

“Yes, your birth date, sir. I was curious about your birth date.”

Doug’s tone started moving from confused to annoyed. “Is this some kind of joke?”

As Andrew forgot to keep up the British accent, David couldn’t hold back his laughter anymore.

“David, I am sorry, but I really have to go.”

“Sure, sure. We’ll talk soon. Bye.” Andrew hung up bent over in tears.

Seconds later, the phone started ringing again. “Unknown caller. Should I answer?” Andrew snorted.

“No, give it here.” Andrew passed David the phone.

“This is David,” said David.

“Hi David, this is Khelli Franklin, Doug Kensington’s executive assistant. Mr. Kensington asked me to invite you to an executive dinner he is hosting at his farmhouse outside of Portland tomorrow at eight p.m. I know you are located nearby. Are you able to attend?”

“Uhm. Sure. I guess.”

“Perfect. He’ll see you then. I’ll email you driving directions now.”

“Great, thanks. Bye.”

David sat down.

“Andrew, I don’t think that was a joke,” said David.

“What are you talking about, of course it was a joke.”

“Doug’s assistant just called to invite me to a dinner party at his house tomorrow.”

“No shit?” said Andrew.

“Yeah,” said David.

“Oops.”

“Yeah.”

D
oug Kensington’s
farmhouse was tucked away on Helvetia Road in Hillsboro, a farming suburb of Portland. Surrounded by wide swaths of land used to grow everything from corn to pumpkins and feed cattle and llamas, it felt like driving into a different universe. As David stared out the window, looking for a number to indicate which driveway was Doug’s, the road twisted and turned and went up and down on small hills like a roller coaster. He had not seen another car in miles and started to wonder if he was lost.

The road became a single lane gravel path and kicked up dust that wafted into his open windows. Now he was certain he was lost. But it was too tight to turn around, so he would have to wait until the next driveway. The heat was smoldering even though the sun was low on the horizon. The evening breeze had not yet had a chance to cool things down.

Finally the gravel road turned back into pavement and a large black gate emerged around a bend. David pulled up to the call box and rolled down his window, but before he said anything, the gate started to open. As he drove on, he saw a small black and white video screen with a man in a tuxedo waving him through. David felt self-conscious.

When Khelli had told him it was going to be an executive dinner, he should have realized that meant he should wear a suit. But he didn’t own a suit. He was wearing a light cotton lumberjack shirt and an old pair of Levi’s jeans with a hole in the knee. He’d thought it would be fitting at a farm, but now he realized how stupid that idea was.

“Farmhouse” was far from an apt description for the place. It was a mansion. Not a luxe mega-mansion like you might find in the Florida Keys, but a warm Southern-style plantation mansion. He saw a line of fancy cars parked in the semi-circular entrance: a black BMW, a silver Mercedes-Benz G-Class, a white Bentley and a red Tesla. He parked his beat-up old Camry as far to the side as he could and walked up to the main entrance where the tuxedo man, whom he assumed was the butler, was waiting for him.

“David Alexander, I presume?” he said.

“Yes.”

“They’re in the library.” The butler pulled a black sports jacket from the side closet and lifted it expectantly. David slid the jacket on with relief. “There, a perfect fit. Thirty-eight-R. Just like Mr. Kensington.”

The butler walked David up the right side of a dual marble staircase. The floor was also marble, various shades arranged in geometric patterns. The stone gave off a radiant coolness that instantly felt refreshing compared to the heat outside. They walked through a pair of tall oak doors into a room with a cathedral ceiling and books filling every inch of its twenty-foot-high walls.

The butler disappeared as David tried to get his bearings. The air smelled like old paper, leather, and cigar smoke. There were five pods of old leather chairs with thick heavy wood armrests, and near the far corner stood a group of a four gentlemen and two ladies, all of them much older and distinguished looking than David. David stood at the entrance motionless, not knowing exactly what to do. The men on the other side of the library hadn’t noticed him yet, or at least hadn’t acknowledged his entrance. They were deeply engaged in a debate, but David couldn’t quite make out the topic. After a few more moments of standing like a deer in the headlights, someone came up behind him to grab his arm and began walking him across the room.

“David, I am so happy you could join us,” said the man. “Did you find the place all right?”

“Yes,” David said. “I thought I got lost at one point, but then the gate just appeared out of nowhere.”

David looked at the man with his arm around him. He assumed this must be Doug. He also looked distinguished, but a lot younger than the other men in the room. He had a sharp angular jawline and dark, piercing eyes. There was something electric in his movements—self-assured, confident and wise.

“That happens to everyone their first time here. Next time, you will find it without any problem at all,” he said.

“Your house is beautiful,” David said as he was gawking around the room. “I had no idea something like this was out here.”

“Thank you,” said Doug. “It took me six years to build. I had the staircase flown in from an old Florentine palace and the chandelier in this room came from artisans in Venice. You can’t make things like this anymore. The amount of fine craftsmanship that they used to put into this work could only be accomplished by the slave labor available to our ancestors. Too bad slavers are so out of vogue right now.”

David chuckled, unsure of whether that was supposed to be a joke. He scanned Doug’s face, but it didn’t reveal any clues either way.

“Let me introduce you to my friends and colleagues. Friends, this is David Alexander. Founder and CEO of Cryptobit. David, this is Senator John McKenzie and his wife Eleanor, Mayor Potter Brown and his wife Helen, Nike board member Tom Duncan, and my CFO Arnold Anchor.”

“Who owns the Tesla?” asked David.

The Senator reached his hand over toward David. “That’d be mine, son. Good to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” said David as he shook the senator’s hand. “Does it drive as good as everyone says?”

“Certainly does,” nodded the bald man in excitement. “You can find out for yourself later, if you care to.”

“You know,” said Doug. “Car pollution is only a part of the overall air pollution problem today. Take, for example, the all-American wood-burning fireplace. Those things should be illegal.”

“Oh you can’t be serious,” said Elanore. “The fireplace is the heart of a home. It’s where all my best childhood memories happened. The smell of burning wood filling the house. Christmas presents and Easter baskets nearby.”

“Surely there are homes without fireplaces that celebrate Christmas. Aside from contributing some of the most deadly forms of air pollution, fireplaces create toxic carbon monoxide, and that’s not the worst of it. The soot particles you so happily remember as the wonderful smell actually cause cancer. A fireplace is like a huge cigar that the whole family gets to smoke together. And this in a time when widespread natural gas and electric heating is completely ubiquitous. There are no excuses for fireplaces anymore. They no longer serve any purpose. We hold on to them dearly for sentimental reasons, because they make us feel warm and fuzzy. However, in reality they’re harming us all.”

Helen looked over at Doug in disgust. “You can’t seriously compare fireplaces to cigars.”

“You’re right, fireplaces are worse. But as your husband can explain to you, trying to ban fireplaces would be political suicide. So it’s not likely to happen within our lifetime and we’ll continue breathing wood-fire smoke for years to come. But one can dream. One can hope that someday someone would improve the world for the rest of us, even if it has to be against their own will to do it.”

“Now I know you are really pulling our legs, Doug,” said Helen. “And I’ll have you know I do not find it amusing.”

“I am sorry that I have upset you. Anyhow, dinner will be served shortly. Can we start making our way to the dining room?” Then in a whisper, “David, can you come with me to my office?”

David followed Doug as they passed through a corridor full of paintings and sculptures. They turned into Doug’s office, which was dimly lit, as if by candlelight. The office was much more modern than the rest of the house. Stark and minimalist like an Ikea catalogue.

“Please, have a seat,” said Doug. “You know what I like best about Cryptobit, David?”

David sat and shook his head.

“The fact that you encrypt the messages transparently,” said Doug as he continued. He seemed to be enjoying the sound of his own voice. “You don’t require people to set up keys and share them. You do all that work in the back end. When people use Cryptobit, it improves the world for the rest of us. Whether or not the end-user has any idea about encryption, you are forcing him or her to do better.”

“I didn’t realize you were so familiar with our product,” said David.

“My team has been doing a lot of due diligence on you and your idea. Please, come walk with me for a moment. I’d like to talk with you privately before dinner.”

Doug pushed on a shelf full of books and the entire thing pivoted open to reveal a secret passage.

“I’ll meet you all in the dining room,” shouted Doug to his other guests. He led David by the arm into a dim hallway. “I have a confession, David. When I emailed you and asked you to meet with my product managers, I actually had ulterior motives. We have been working on a technology similar to Cryptobit for eighteen months now. And I am really sad to report that my team hasn’t made nearly as much progress as you have. They keep hitting roadblocks. None of them have your creativity and motivation. None of them have your out-of-the-box thinking. They all focus on the trees without seeing the forest. They create tools that make your life harder, not easier. And when my company tries this hard for this long and doesn’t get it right, it’s my job to come up with alternatives.”

Doug paused as if David knew what was coming next.

“David, I’ll get right to it.” Doug’s voice got softer and he came right up to David’s face. “I’d like to buy your company. Frankly, I’d like to buy you. I need your thinking, your leadership, and your product to be the centerpiece of System 360 Release 11.0. I know I’m springing a lot of information on you all at once, but when I want something, I don’t like to dick around the bush. If you can deliver on the promise of Cryptobit, and I mean really wow me, I’ll give you a stable of developers and a team of a hundred and fifty engineers and product managers. You will be a vice president and report directly to me. We’ll put it in the hands of millions overnight. It will produce so much traffic, so many billions of fake messages that the real ones will be impossible to find for anyone trying to listen. Together, we’ll make the world a safer place.”

David was stunned and enthralled. He had no idea what to do. He walked silently for a moment longer.

“I know this is a lot to take in. Don’t worry. I don’t need an answer tonight. Just think about it. I’ll call you in the morning to discuss terms if you are interested. I’d better get back to my guests; come join us when you are ready.”

They came to what looked to be a dead end. But Doug pushed a light fixture and a door pivoted inwards. Doug left through the opening. David realized that he hadn’t said anything at all to Doug the whole time. He felt like a fool; what must Doug have thought of him? What an amateur, he must have thought. Why did Doug want him to work at his company as a vice president? David wasn’t vice president material. Vice presidents didn’t have three-inch beards. And they didn’t walk around in undershirts and jeans. David had never worked at a company as big as System. He had never seen a team of 150 people before. How could he be in charge of one? He wondered for a moment if this was some kind of ruse to get him to give away his secrets.

David picked up his phone to call someone. He scrolled through the contacts. Andrew came up first. But Andrew would ask him details like how much the offer was for and what his role would be. Doug hadn’t mentioned Andrew at all, and David wasn’t sure if Doug even wanted Andrew to work with him. It was still too vague; David would tell Andrew after he had more details.

Heather came up next in the phone index. It was too late to call Heather. He wondered how she was doing. He worried about whether Megan had been right. Maybe Heather did seem a little worse the last time they had been together. He had spent so much time talking about himself that day, he’d failed to ask Heather how she was doing. He felt like a bad brother and remembered the promise he had made to his mother. He felt ashamed.

But now he could take care of his sister. Maybe. He still didn’t know how much Doug was going to offer. The acquisitions he read about on
TechCrunch
were always at least thirty to fifty million. Only a few came in at the ten to twenty million range, and Cryptobit was a better idea than those companies. Plus, for a company as big as System, thirty to fifty million was probably less than they spent on coffee per year. They should easily be able to make an offer in that range, David thought.

He would call Heather.

No signal. He thought how glad she would be to hear this news. It would cover all his recent sins, including canceling a dinner date with her tonight. He wanted to see the look on her face when he told her. He was bursting to tell someone the news, anyone, but still he felt alone. Doug’s secret passage began to feel cramped and heavy.