Chapter 1
The day the sky fell on Joe Stewart started out just like any other day, that is, pretty much perfect as far as he was concerned. At 6:30 a.m. the CD player on his alarm clock clicked on, and waves of violin music washed across the spacious bedroom that he and his wife, Heather, shared. He had loved classical music for as long as he could remember. One of his earliest recollections was of his mother lying on the living room floor beside him one afternoon, he could have been no more than three at the time, as they listened to an especially beautiful piece that he thought might have been Tchaikovsky.
“Close your eyes,” she had whispered to him, “and imagine that you can fly. Let the music carry you anywhere you want.” The two of them had lain side by side, silently lost in their own worlds. For him, the strings had been the energy, the source of all motion. The brass were powerful crosswinds that tossed him wildly across the sky, the woodwinds updrafts, rocketing him above the clouds and then plummeting him back toward the earth. To this day, when he closed his eyes and listened to the evocative strains of an especially good concerto, he could feel his spirits float skyward.
“Okay Superman, rise and shine.” Heather rocked his shoulder, spoiling the imagery, and then padded into the bathroom where Joe could hear the spray of water against glass as she turned on the shower.
Groaning, he rubbed one palm across his stubbly cheek and rolled out of bed. Below, the metallic rattling of a whisk tapping against the side of a mixing bowl signaled that Tia Sanchez was down in the kitchen beginning to prepare breakfast. Joe’s stomach growled, anticipating the aroma of sautéing onions and peppers and frying sausage that would begin wafting up the stairs over the next few minutes. It was Monday morning, which, in the Stewart household, meant Denver Omelets.
He had just enough time, he thought, for a few laps in the pool before eating if he hurried. Quickly changing into a pair of swim trunks that sported yellow and blue dolphins swimming across them, he draped a towel over his shoulders and then stopped for a quick glance in the mirror. Not bad for a man in his midforties. His gut wasn’t exactly washboard material, but on the other hand it wasn’t hanging out over his trunks either, like a lot of the guys at the office. Other than a painful rash on his upper thigh, that he’d been trying to get rid of for the last week without success, he thought he looked pretty good. When he and Heather took their daughter Debbie to BYU this fall, he wouldn’t even be surprised if some of the girls in the dorm mistook him for her older brother. But then, allowing his gaze to travel up to the wrinkles that had gathered around the corners of his eyes over the years, and the loose skin beginning to sag beneath his chin, he conceded that he would have to be a much older brother.
“Okay, so I may not look like an older brother. But hey, isn’t there something to be said for being the totally hot-looking father?” he asked his reflection.
“Totally hot?” Heather stepped out of the shower and slipped up behind him. “I’m afraid that the kids would consider that a contradiction in terms. You can’t be totally hot if you’re old enough to say ‘totally hot.’ I think you have to be ‘tight’.” She grinned up at him in the mirror and patted him on the rear.
“I’m not sure I could ever think of tight as a compliment,” he said, turning to face her. “How about rad?”
“Way out of date.” She gave a quick shake of her head. “Might as well try for groovy.”
Heather was four years younger than Joe. The kid sister of his best friend in high school, he’d barely noticed her until he returned from his mission—finding that the scrawny little thing who’d tagged along behind them at dances and youth activities had grown up in the two years that he’d been gone. She was a knockout when he married her, he thought, and if anything the last twenty years had only made her more beautiful.
Her reddish-blonde hair was wrapped turban style in a dark blue towel, with only a few wisps escaping out from under the edges, and he could just make out the floral scent of the shampoo she had washed it with. Beneath the towel, her bright green eyes crinkled with good humor, something he hadn’t seen much over the last eighteen months. It was good to see her smiling again.
When the doctors had first diagnosed her breast cancer, it had been a terrible shock to all of them. It felt as though they had gone through every emotion imaginable—from disbelief to terror, and finally to a kind of numb acceptance. But through it all, Heather had been the tough one, able to adapt, when it felt to Joe like the whole world had just crumbled around them. She had even managed to retain her sense of humor during the initial surgeries and the chemo, although it had made her so sick that she could barely get out of bed some days.
But when they learned that the tumors had returned—that she would need to undergo a double mastectomy, something inside of her had finally broken. It was as if the reserves of strength that had carried her for so long had finally run dry. The woman he had known and loved for more than half his life had disappeared, replaced by a shadow that stayed locked in the house, unwilling or unable to let him help her.
Job had taken six months off of work, taking her to the best doctors money could buy and, with Tia’s invaluable help, caring for the children. They had tried everything from counseling to acupuncture. But the services and medications the doctors provided had done nothing to keep her from sliding ever deeper into the abyss, and finally she refused to see them at all, positive that they were only making things worse. As the months passed, Joe became more and more desperately afraid that he was going to lose her forever to whatever darkness had claimed her.
He thought that it might have been little Angela who finally brought Heather around. Holding her mother’s hands for hours at a time, talking to her in the breathy slurred syllables that Heather had always been the best at translating, and crooning songs whose melodies were sometimes recognizable, but just as often not, she was the only one who seemed able to get through. It was as if deep in her Down’s syndrome–clouded mind, Angela knew that it was her chance to repay her mother for all the time Heather had spent helping her over the first six years of her life. Heather’s recovery had been a struggle, and while she still had her bad days, Joe thought that just as her body had beaten the cancer into remission, her spirit was fighting the depression too.
Wrapping his arms around her still-wet shoulders, he began to pull her toward him until he felt her body tense beneath her damp towel, turning in his embrace so that her shoulder butted up against his chest. Stupid, he thought. How could he have forgotten how sensitive she was about physical contact near the scars that marked where her breasts had once been? It was just seeing her so much like her old self, that for a moment he had let slip from his mind the pain that was still hidden so close to the surface.
“I’m sorry,” he fumbled, raising his hands up from her shoulders to caress her face.
Shaking her head, she clasped his hands between fingers that still looked so thin and fragile to him, and pressed them to her lips. “It’s not your fault. I’m really all right. It just that sometimes I feel so . . .” she struggled to articulate the thought, finally shrugging her shoulders and dropping her hands in frustration.
They had come so far, but sometimes it still seemed like there was a brick wall between them. Not a physical barrier. That was something they could deal with. Many times over the years Joe’s work had forced them to be apart for a week or two at a time, and they had dealt with the separation, if not accepting it, then at least bearing it. But this was more insidious. It was a communication barrier—a connection barrier. Joe knew that his wife loved him and thought she knew as much about his love for her. But since her depression, sometimes all they could do was stare silently at each other, standing only inches away from one another, and yet they might as well have been on opposite sides of the universe for all the good it did them.
They were saved from the awkward silence by the sound of pounding feet coming up the stairs outside their bedroom. Heather smiled up at Joe, the tension now broken, and pushed him toward the bathroom door while she reached for her robe.
“I think you are about to be assailed,” she said.
With a mock sigh, Joe turned and headed back into the bedroom, but they both knew that this was the highlight of his morning. He had scarcely stepped into the room before a toe-headed missile dressed in red, footed pajamas launched herself at him with a shout that would have done a Comanche proud.
“Addy, addy!” Angela fearlessly plowed at full speed into Joe, and then whooped with glee as he took her in his arms and spun her up into the air. No father, he thought, could ever hope for a better welcome. Every morning it was the same. Angela was always overjoyed, as though it had been months instead of hours since she had last seen him. And no matter how difficult a day he might have had at work, he couldn’t help smiling as he neared home, knowing that she would be waiting—her blue, almond-shaped eyes opened wide with excitement—to leap on him the moment he walked through the door.
Settling her back down to the floor, he brushed her curly blonde hair back out of her eyes and with a look of great seriousness he knelt in front of her and asked, “Did you sleep well last night?”
“Yes,” she answered back, equally serious.
“You didn’t get eaten by any monsters?” Joe continued earnestly, as though asking whether the temperature of her room had suited her. From the bathroom doorway Heather rolled her eyes, but it was a part of their morning routine that she’d learned to live with.
“No motaz.” Angela shook her head.
“And no handsome princes sneaked in to kiss my little sleeping beauty?”
Again she shook her head, but with obvious impatience.
“Well then,” he stood, “I guess that just about covers it. Let’s head down for breakfast.”
“Addy,” she shouted, shaking a pudgy finger at him. Heather couldn’t help laughing at the look of utter exasperation on Angela’s small face, but Joe pretended complete bewilderment.
“Did I forget something?”
“Patafwy kiz. Patafwy kiz,” she said, pulling his face toward hers.
“Oh of course, butterfly kisses.” He slapped his forehead. “How could I have forgotten?” He could no more have forgotten their morning butterfly kisses than he could forget his own name, but it never failed to send her into a spasm of giggles when she had to remind him.
Leaning gently forward, he turned his cheek toward her until he could feel her eyelashes blinking open and closed against his skin. And then, taking her baby-soft face in his hands, he gave her his own butterfly kisses. He couldn’t remember when they had first started this morning ritual, but after she’d given him the Bob Carlisle CD with the song about a father and daughter who shared “a hug every morning and butterfly kisses at night” as a Father’s Day gift, it had become their special greeting.
“Duhkee, patafwy kiz.” She smiled, snuggling against him.
“Thank you, for butterfly kisses,” he said, hugging her tightly.
Heather’s third pregnancy had been completely unexpected, both Joe and Heather accepting as fact that she had been unable to conceive again after giving birth to their second child. So when her obstetrician had confirmed that her morning sickness was actually “Morning Sickness,” it had been a shock to them both. But twelve-year-old Debbie and ten-year-old Richie had been delighted. Heather had been especially excited when the ultrasound showed that it was going to be a girl. Debbie had reached the age where she was willing to wear anything but what Heather suggested, so the thought of dressing up a little girl in frilly dresses and tiny patent leather shoes had tickled her.
When they received the call from the doctor’s office requesting that they come in for a meeting there had been a mild sense of unease, but nothing more. Maybe, they hypothesized, the doctor had seen a second tiny body on the film. Twins ran in Heather’s family. But when they had requested an explanation, the nurse’s silence had spoken volumes, and when the obstetrician asked them into her office, it was with a sense of grave seriousness.
“Down’s syndrome?” Joe had repeated, sure that he’d misunderstood. What had they done wrong? They’d asked. Was it because they were older this time?
The doctor had assured them that it was not their fault. Down’s syndrome was simply a case of the body having an extra chromosome. It didn’t appear to be genetic, and to date no one had been able to determine a cause, no less a cure. She had calmly explained that there was no way to be sure, unless they performed further tests, and that if those tests came out positive, there were other alternatives they could consider. There was no need to force that kind of trial on either them or the child. Joe was still trying to understand what other alternatives she might be referring to when Heather answered unequivocally.
“No. Abortion is not an option.”
The children had been just as shocked when they were told. “You mean she’s retarded?” Richie had asked. And Debbie had worried about what her friends would think.
Joe and Heather had explained what they’d been able to glean from the pamphlets the doctors had given them, and the few books they had been able to get their hands on, but they still felt woefully unprepared for what was to come. Research had come a long way, but the things the doctors didn’t understand still far outweighed the things they did. The weeks leading up to Angela’s birth were filled with fear and late night worry, but the biggest change she brought into their lives had been something that no medical journal could have predicted.
The past six years had come with many trials they had never expected, and until they had actually raised a child with severe mental disabilities they’d had no idea the amount of energy and commitment that it required. But it was the spirit of unconditional love, the sheer almost overwhelming happiness that she exuded from the day she was born, that had won over everyone she met.
Now, gently prying her arms from around his neck Joe stood, and ruffling her baby-fine hair he started toward the door. “I’ve got to go get my swimming in or I’m going to get fat,” he said.
“No, phat is good,” Heather laughed behind him.
“Goot,” Angela agreed.
***
The first sign of trouble that morning came just as Joe was toweling off after his swim. As he stood by the side of the pool, enjoying the late May sunshine, the French doors that connected the kitchen with the backyard swung open and Tia Sanchez stepped out onto the patio holding the white cordless telephone with one hand while she shaded her eyes with the other. Her neat black hair was pulled up in a bun on the top of her head, her dark eyes peering from an unlined face that could have been anywhere in age from thirty to fifty.
“Mr. Stewart. You have a phone call. He says it’s Leon from the office.” Joe had given up on trying to get Tia to just call him Joe like everyone else did, although after seven years together she might as well be family. Tia was Spanish for aunt, and although he knew that she had a first name, Joe couldn’t recall it for the life of him. The kids had started calling her Aunt Sanchez soon after she began working as their cook and housekeeper, and after she taught them how to say aunt in Spanish, they used it so regularly that eventually Heather and Joe adopted it as well. It suited the relationship that they had formed with her.
“Thanks Tia.” As he took the phone from her, a small knot of concern formed in his stomach. It had been a tough year for tech companies, his being no exception. Stock prices at Infinity Networks had dropped from a high of seventy-five dollars down to seventeen dollars, and they would probably have dropped much lower if he hadn’t leveraged his own options and mortgaged his house to the hilt to buy back more than a million shares. When the market saw that the CEO was willing to buy even more shares than he already owned, it seemed to recover some of its old confidence in Infinity’s sound business practices. It had been a big risk, but it paid off well, and the stock had slowly risen back up to $24 and settled there.
Still, it was unusual for anyone to call him on his home phone. His mobile was on the dresser in his bedroom where he wouldn’t have been able to hear it ring from the pool. But normally, if he hadn’t answered that number, they would have left a message and waited for him to get back to them. And he was doubly concerned that it was Leon Kensington on the phone. As Chief Technical Officer of Infinity, it was his job to oversee both the hardware and software engineering for the company’s products. For the most part he was what the other engineers called a “lab rat,” content to keep his nose buried in research, testing, and design, only surfacing when it was absolutely necessary. If he was calling, it was obviously about something he thought was pretty important.
“Leon, you’re up early.” Joe glanced at his watch, noting that it was not yet a quarter past seven.
“Joe, we’ve got a catastrophe on our hands down here.” Leon sounded as though he had just run up a flight of stairs. Not a small task at his size.
“Calm down and tell me what’s wrong.” Joe took the words of his CTO in stride. Leon was also prone to overstatement. His idea of a catastrophe could include anything from an overtaxed server to the building being engulfed in flames. But he had to admit that from the tone of Leon’s voice it sounded like something more than an overtaxed server.
“I don’t think you’re going to want to hear this over the phone,” Leon puffed. “How soon can you get down here?”
“Well I need to get dressed and have breakfast—” Joe started before Leon cut him off.
“You’re not going to want to eat anything this morning Joe. You really need to get down here right away. I don’t think the press has caught wind of this yet, but when they do, accusations are going to start flying.”
“Okay, I’ll be right in.” Joe paused, wondering how hard he should push his CTO for an outright answer before deciding that, whatever the problem was, he should probably deal with it in person. He was still fairly sure that Leon was overreacting, like Chicken Little, interpreting a falling apple for something much worse. But whatever it was, if it had rattled him that badly, it needed to be dealt with before his fear carried to anyone else. In this kind of business climate, panic was contagious. That made him think of another question that he did need an immediate answer to.
“Have you talked to anyone else about this?”
Leon paused just long enough that Joe knew he wasn’t being entirely truthful before answering almost coyly, “Um, I thought I should talk to you before I discussed this with anyone else.” Joe knew that as soon as they got off the phone Leon would go to whomever he had talked to and ask them to keep it quiet. Which meant that by the time he got into the office rumors would be spreading like wildfire.
“All right. I’ll see you in about twenty-five minutes.” Joe switched off the phone and reflectively carried it into the house.
***
The second sign that morning was one that Joe forgot about in the chaos of that day and the terrible days that followed. It wasn’t until weeks later, when he first met the prospector, that he recalled the voice of warning that he’d received shortly before entering the office that day.
He had parked his car in the underground garage and was on his way to the elevator when he noticed the man with the grocery cart. Joe barely gave him a thought other than to note that he would have to tell security to come down and roust the man out. He didn’t know how the rough-looking man in the torn overcoat and ratty boots had gotten down there in the first place. It was supposed to be secure, entrance by permit only. And this street person obviously did not have a pass. Infinity couldn’t have him harassing the employees for enough money to buy a bottle of cheap wine.
Joe was just walking past him, avoiding eye contact, yet still knowing somehow that he would hear the man’s raspy voice call out, “Hey mister can you spare some change?” Or maybe he even had a story worked out about the train fare that he’d mysteriously lost. Whatever it was, Joe had no time for it this morning. Under other circumstances he might have stopped. Probably even would have given him a buck or two and warned him to clear out before the guards came down. Just because a man had problems didn’t mean that he wasn’t still a human being. But today he had much bigger problems to deal with than this guy’s sob story.
“Nice shirt, Joe.”
He didn’t know whether it was the line or just the voice that stopped him. They were both unique and unexpected. After college he had worked in New York for three years and he thought he’d heard them all. Everything from children that just needed a quarter to call home, to whole families that were down on their luck. But the voice that hailed him from behind the scraggly gray beard had a husky quality that was both deep and comforting. It could have come from the narrator in a feature film, or the host of a radio talk show. James Earl Jones had nothing on him.
Whatever it was, Joe paused and turned, made eye contact, and they both knew that he would stop. It wasn’t just that the man had called him by name. Joe was a common enough way to call out to a stranger. “Hey, Joe can you spare a quarter?” had been the regular refrain of lots of the panhandlers he had seen. It was simply a coincidence. It wasn’t until later that he came to question that assumption.
But he had appealed to one of Joe’s vanities. It was a nice shirt. He had ordered it, hand-made by an Italian tailor, just a few days earlier. It was a hand-woven blue silk with just enough black threads sewn in to give it an almost multi-layered texture. Not that he thought the man leaning on the shopping cart could have recognized any of that, but he reflexively turned to say “Thank you,” before he even realized what he was doing.
He started to turn away, and the man smiled at him as if to say “Gotcha,” his deep brown eyes unremarkable and yet somehow familiar. Joe shook his head, the likelihood that the two of them had ever run in the same circles was slim to none, nevertheless, he dropped his hand into his pocket to grab a few bills. He would never have gotten this far in the business world if he couldn’t recognize a good salesman, and this guy had put together a winning pitch. Dropping a five and a one onto the top of the bags piled in the man’s cart, he winked and said “Good luck, buddy,” before turning back to the elevator.
“Keep ya umbrella out. Gonna be a stormy one today I think.” Again Joe was impressed by how well the man’s voice resonated, even off the cement walls of the garage. But while he might well have trained at Julliard, it was obvious why he was living out of a grocery cart. It had been nothing but clear blue skies for the last week, and it looked to stay that way for at least another week. Obviously this guy was missing a few cards from his deck.
He spared one last glance for the man leaning against the cart. He was sure that the six bucks would have disappeared into the man’s overcoat as soon as they left his hand. By now he should have been halfway to the nearest liquor store. But the only move he’d made was to rest his chin in one grimy palm, a worried, far-off look on his weathered face, as though he were looking past the confines of the garage at some distant thundercloud. He seemed so intent that Joe found himself following the man’s gaze, but all he saw was row after row of expensive cars.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Joe lied, before stepping into the elevator and punching the button for the top floor.
“Nah. Not yet ya won’t.” The man smiled grimly as the elevator doors closed.
Chapter 2
“Mr. Stewart, Mr. Kensington is waiting to meet with you,” Abbey Vincens stated with a covert roll of her eyes, as though he couldn’t see the red-faced man hovering over her desk. She only called him “Mr. Stewart” when he was meeting with someone important or when she was very annoyed. He thought that after having spent the last twenty minutes baby-sitting Leon, this was most definitely a case of the latter.
“Thanks Abbey. I’ll meet with him now.” Travis winked his understanding to her, and she returned an exasperated look that said, “Take him away from me now, before I skin and fillet him alive.”
“Leon?” As he turned to his CTO, the man grabbed Joe’s sleeve in one sweaty palm and pulled him toward the door to Joe’s office.
“We gotta talk right now, Joe. I don’t know how long I’m gonna be able to keep this hush-hush.”
“All right, all right, come on in.” Joe swung the door open and ushered Leon inside. Unlike his den at home, which was decorated in dark wood and filled with so many books and pictures that it sometimes gave the appearance of chaos, his office here looked almost utilitarian. Centered on his chrome and glass desk was a trim gray notebook computer. The only other items on the desk were a black metal in/out box, a ceramic pen and pencil holder, his phone, and several pictures of his family.
Behind the desk a swivel chair stood in front of a black lacquer horizontal filing cabinet, its glossy top bare except for a neat stack of legal pads and a folded copy of that morning’s Wall Street Journal. Above the filing cabinet was the single piece of art work in the room, a framed copy of Arnold Friberg’s painting, “The Prayer at Valley Forge.” The only other furnishings were a leather sofa placed directly across from his desk, and a circular table surrounded by chairs that stood in front of an enormous whiteboard on the far wall.
Joe was not a person that liked to spend the day cooped up in his office. He preferred ranging the manufacturing floors, stopping to meet the workers that ran the assembly line, or sitting in on departmental strategy meetings, enjoying being a part of the give and take that was what really shaped the company. He only came back to the isolation of this room when Abbey convinced him that it was absolutely essential. Now, guiding his obviously agitated officer over to the couch, he sat next to him and assumed his most calming voice.
“Now Leon, tell me what’s wrong. Whatever it is, I’m sure we can fix it together.”
Like a bobber popping to the surface of a lake, Leon jumped back up off the couch and began pacing around the room. “This isn’t my fault. I had no idea that the designs weren’t our own. I can’t be every place at the same time. Of course I had to assume that if Research gave it to me we had created it right?” He stared at Joe with the plaintive look of a child who has just been caught stealing cookies.
“Just calm down and tell me what this is all about.” The knot in Joe’s stomach was growing larger. Even for his excitable CTO this behavior was strange, bordering on bizarre. But before Leon could answer, the phone on Joe’s desk buzzed and Abbey’s voice interrupted.
“Joe, Stan Holtz is on the line.” Stan was the chairman of the board of Infinity Networks. His East Coast venture capital firm was the largest single holder of the company’s stock. It was unusual for him to phone as he preferred using e-mail to stay up to date on the latest numbers. As Joe got up to answer the phone, he glanced over at Leon who had suddenly found something very interesting to look at out the window, and the knot in his stomach began to burn.
“Stan what’s up?” Joe cradled the receiver between his ear and shoulder as he reached for one of the legal pads and grabbed a pen.
“What is going on down there?” Stan’s voice was so loud that even Leon turned briefly around before quickly staring back out the window.
“What do you mean?” Joe tried to stay calm, but he could feel his fingers tightening on the barrel of the pen.
“What do I mean?” Stan was practically howling. The Brooklyn accent that only became obvious when he was excited or angry made him sound like a street thug now. “First I get some cockamamie phone call from some guy in your office feeding me a bunch of bull about nothing being his fault.” Joe stared at Leon’s broad back. So much for not talking to anyone else. “Then I get a call from the Times wanting to know how we plan on responding to a suit for theft of intellectual property and patent infringement.”
As Joe scribbled the words onto the pad in front of him, he felt as though he had swallowed a meteorite, but he managed to keep his voice calm. “Listen Stan, I’m not sure what’s going on. But I’ve got someone in my office right now that I think might be able to clear things up. Can I call you right back?”
“Make it quick. I’ve gotten three more messages while we’ve been talking.” Stan hung up the phone leaving Joe with only a faint hissing noise in his ear.
As he set the receiver back down, the phone buzzed again. “Joe, what is going on? You’ve got a dozen people on hold for you right now.” Abbey sounded as close to frantic as he had ever heard her.
“Abbey, hold all my calls please. I’m going to need a few minutes.” Joe released the intercom button and turned his attention back to Leon who was rubbing his palms up and down the sides of khaki pants, his slick hands making a chirping sound like the world’s largest cicada against the stiff fabric, as he continued to stare out the window.
“Leon, please come and sit down.” As Joe waited, Leon turned away from the window and glanced anxiously toward the door before making his way back to the couch and collapsing down onto it.
“Now would you please tell me what is going on here?”
Coughing nervously into his fist, Leon opened and closed his mouth like a fish gasping for oxygen before finally blurting, “I really didn’t know Joe. When I got the first letters from their attorneys I figured that they were just another one of those small European companies trying to make a quick buck off of someone else’s success. Who would have even considered that it might be true?”
Joe, finally losing his last shred of patience, slammed his fists on the desk, bouncing the ceramic pencil holder to the floor and sending pens and pencils showering across the carpet. Storming around from behind his desk, he placed his hands on the shoulders of his CTO—who looked like he was about to start weeping—and in a voice that by its very calm demanded attention asked, “That what might be true?”
Leon stared down at the floor, his cheeks bright red and dripping with sweat. “We stole their designs. We stole ’em. No other way to say it. For at least the last three years, maybe longer, we’ve been selling products based on someone else’s designs.” He shook his head. “No, not even just based on. We copied them circuit for circuit.”
Joe stared at him, too stunned to speak. It didn’t make any sense. Infinity Networks was a powerhouse, right up there with Cisco. They spent millions on research and development every month. They had scores of attorneys filing patents on everything they made and suing the pants off of anyone who even came close to infringing on what they had designed. It was not only illogical that they would steal someone else’s designs, it was impossible. Or at least he would have said it was five minutes earlier.
“So what are you saying? One of our routers or something was designed by another company?” Joe asked, still trying to make sense of the situation.
Leon moaned as if he had just been punched in the stomach. “Not one of our routers. All of our routers, all of our switches, all of our hubs. This guy in Hungary is some kind of freakin’ genius. And somehow one of our engineers got a hold of his designs. No one knew exactly where they had come from, but they were so much better than anything else on the market that we had to use them. I don’t know who decided to copy them, but they did. And since then we’ve just been modifying the original specs.”
“That’s crazy. It would have turned up when we filed our patents.” Joe fished a roll of Tums out of his pocket, started to take two, then thumbed four out of the wrapper and crushed them between his teeth.
“That’s what I thought at first. But this guy is so small that he only filed locally. Our people are mostly on the lookout for products infringing on our patents, I guess these other designs didn’t even show up on their radar.”
Before Joe could completely comprehend what he was hearing, the intercom buzzed again. “Joe?”
“Abbey, I said I didn’t want to be interrupted,” Joe growled in the general direction of the phone. It wasn’t like Abbey to ignore his instructions, and he had a sickening feeling that things were starting to slip out of his control.
“I’m sorry, but it’s Jin Kwan. He says that it’s urgent that he speaks to you now.”
“All right, put him through.” Jin was the most levelheaded guy that Joe knew. As the company’s Chief Financial Officer, he had ridden the same roller coaster that everyone else at Infinity had been on for the last eighteen months, but he had been sitting on the front of the first car with his mouth wide open. It had been up to him and Joe to take the brunt of the investors’ criticisms when their stock had plummeted, calling in every favor they had with the analysts to get them to paint a fair picture of the company’s stability and future growth potential so the market wouldn’t pound them any worse than it had. If he said that this was urgent, then it was.
Joe pressed the speaker button, but before he could say anything, Jin was already talking. His voice sounded horse and tired as though he had spent the last few hours shouting. “Joe, they’ve halted trading on our stock.”
Although he had spoken softly, the words crashed inside Joe’s head like thunder. The NASDAQ only halted trading on a stock when there was an immanent announcement expected that could have a dramatic impact on the stock’s value, or when there had been a drop so sharp that a freeze automatically went into effect. Since he knew that there was no announcement scheduled, that could only mean that the market had gotten wind of Infinity’s problems even before he had.
“How bad is it?”
“Four and a quarter. But it would have dropped even lower if they hadn’t stopped the carnage.” Joe heard the door close behind him, and realized that Leon had heard everything. He shouldn’t have put Jin on speaker. Leon would be rushing through the building seeding panic everywhere he went. He considered going after him, and then realized that it wouldn’t make any difference. If there was one thing you could count on with employees of any publicly traded company, it was that they were stock watchers. If the stock was up, everyone was in a good mood. But when the stock dropped, productivity went down, sick days increased, and people generally griped about pretty much everything.
“Joe? You still there?” Jin’s voice called out from the speakerphone.
“Yeah.” Joe dropped down into his chair. At least it was a Friday. That would give them the weekend to do some damage control before the market opened again on Monday. “How did word of this get out so fast anyway? I just heard about it myself.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line before Jin spoke. “You haven’t seen the article yet?”
“No. What article?” Apparently Leon hadn’t gotten around to telling him everything.
“Aw Joe.” Jin’s voice had changed, softened somehow. “I thought for sure that you would know more than I did. I was actually kind of ticked off that you hadn’t given me any kind of heads-up on this. The paper says that we’d received several letters, but chose not to respond.”
“What paper?” This was getting worse by the minute, and it wasn’t even eight in the morning. It was going to be a very long day.
“Well apparently it ran about a week ago in some Hungarian local, the Daily Goulash or something. But the London Times picked it up this morning, and now it’s all over the wires. The thing is . . .” Jin hesitated as if he were afraid to utter what he needed say to next.
“What?” Joe tried to force out a chuckle. “It can’t get any worse, can it?” But on the other end of the line Jin’s voice was dead serious.
“They’re quoting an unnamed source as saying that you knew about it all along. They’re saying that you knew Infinity’s products were sub par, so you arranged the theft of the designs. That you figured it was such a small company you would never get caught.” He sounded as though the words were being forced unwillingly from his mouth. “I know it can’t be true . . . but this looks really bad.”
It was like a long nightmare that he couldn’t awaken from, and for a moment, he considered pinching his leg to see if he might possibly wake up. “Is there anything else?”
Jin seemed to be considering his words carefully before speaking. “Joe, I’m talking to you as your friend here, not your CFO. You need to protect any assets you have as quickly as you can. You might even want to consider bankruptcy.”
“What?” It was as if Jin had suddenly started speaking another language, one that sounded like complete gibberish. This was definitely bad, but what did it have to do with his personal finances?
“When you bought the Infinity stock last fall, you borrowed money from the company to do it.”
“Of course I did, but that loan was backed by—” the enormity of what Jin was saying suddenly hit him and it was like running full speed into a wall. The collateral he had used for the loan was the rest of his Infinity stock. If it had dropped to nearly four dollars? He quickly ran the numbers in his head and the figure was astounding. “I’m more than five million dollars in the hole?”
“And that’s if the stock doesn’t drop any more on Monday, which I wouldn’t bet on.” Jin’s voice was an emotionless monotone.
“But I put up the house too.”
Jin paused again before asking cautiously, “Job have you talked with Stan this morning.”
“Yeah, he called just a couple of minutes ago. But what does that have to do with anything?”
“Maybe nothing. But I’ve been getting some strange feelers out of New York this morning. And a lot of the questions have been specifically about our liability on your loan.”
“You don’t think that they would try to . . .” Job’s words hung limply in the silence between them. They both knew that, as Chairman of the Board, Stan could be a powerful ally, but once his hackles were raised he wouldn’t hesitate to bite.
“I’ll do everything I can to help you Joe. But you know as well as I do that my hands may be tied on this one.”
“Yeah I know. Thanks for the warning Jin.” Joe leaned woodenly back into his chair, feeling like every muscle in his body had suddenly seized up on him, before he reached out to press the intercom button. “Abbey can you please get Stan on the line?”
***
It was nearly eight that night before the phone finally stopped ringing. Abbey had gone home a half hour earlier. Reluctant to leave him alone, she had only acquiesced when he promised that he would be right behind her. Staring out the window at the setting sun reflecting off of the other buildings around him, Joe tried to understand how things could have fallen apart so quickly. It seemed as if it had been a thousand years since he’d come into the office, and at least a million since he’d rolled out of bed that morning.
He felt like the cat in one of those Tom and Jerry cartoons after the mouse has just hit him in the head with a ten-pound sledgehammer, staggering woozily as floating shapes circled around his head. Except that instead of stars and moons or cute little chirping birds, the shapes he saw were skulls and crossbones, red dollar signs, and big black question marks that buzzed in and out of his sight like giant mosquitoes.
Ten years ago, against the well-intentioned advice of most of his friends, Joe had left a high paying job as the vice president of a major chip manufacturer. Using his own money and anything he could scrape together from friends and family, he had introduced Infinity Network’s first product. His small business networking solution, at half the cost of the competitor’s and twice as easy to set up and maintain, had been an instant hit.
Over the years he had tramped through hundreds of miles of tradeshow aisles, met with scores of reporters, and done more demonstrations than he could ever hope to count. He had raised money when times were good and preserved it when things slowed down. He had been accused of everything from brilliance to incompetence, and at certain points had agreed with both. But not once during those years had anyone from reporter to board member even hinted that Joe Stewart was dishonest. Not until today.
Infinity had issued a press release that morning. If he had his way it would have been short and sweet, “Lies, lies, lies!” But by the time they had drawn up something that the board members and lawyers could all agree to, it was so watered down it sounded like an admission of guilt. We are currently investigating . . . to the best of our knowledge . . . no intentional wrongdoing. It was garbage. All he needed to do was get on a plane and go meet with these guys. The company’s name ended up being Cognitive Computing Solutions. Run by a Hungarian college professor with Ph.D.’s in Engineering and Mathematics, their company didn’t make in a year what Infinity made in a week.
Job was certain that this was all just a big misunderstanding. If they really had infringed on any CCS designs, they would pay them damages. It probably wouldn’t even make a dent in their quarterly earnings. And if it did, so what? It wasn’t like most companies were showing huge profits this year anyway. They’d take their medicine, fire anyone who had knowingly broken the law, and get back to business. Which is what he had told the board on their hastily scheduled conference call. He was sure things had hit rock bottom, which meant that it was time to start bouncing back up, when Stan had dropped the biggest bombshell on a day that had been packed with enough TNT to last a lifetime.
“Listen Joe,” Stan’s voice came over the speakerphone, “we’ve been talking things over and we think that maybe it would be good for the company if you were to step down.”
“What?” He was sure that he must have misunderstood. This was his company. He had poured his own blood, sweat, and tears into it. And what had Stan put in? Money that for the most part wasn’t even his.
“It’s probably only temporary. Until things have a chance to get sorted out. We’ll say that you’re taking some time off to be with your family, kind of a leave of absence.”
“Are you crazy?” Joe could hear Stan’s sharp intake of breath on the line, but it didn’t matter. What he was suggesting was so ludicrous as to be laughable, if it hadn’t also been incredibly dangerous. “Do you have any idea how the market would react to that?”
“Joe, the market has reacted, and now is the time for us to act quickly before it can get any worse.” Stan’s voice had gone from the velvety purr that he used to sell investors on his latest round, to the cold steel that he used when he was shoving a deal down some helpless company’s throat. “You’ve lost the confidence of the public, Joe. Frankly it doesn’t matter a whit whether you’re guilty or not. The investors need to know that the board is taking action. Moving quickly to find the problem and squash it. And as far as the rest of the world is concerned, you’re the problem.”
“I won’t do it.” Stan might be doing the talking, but he was only one member of the board. These were guys Joe had worked with for years. Some of them since even before he had started the company. Jin was on the board, and Joe had been the one who’d hired him. He’d made a lot of money for all of them, and if nothing else they would at least remember that.
“I’m sorry to hear that Joe. Because if that’s your final decision then you leave me no choice but to fire you.”
“You can’t do that, Stan. That requires a majority board vote.” He was taking a risk, but the other board members weren’t stupid. They had seen him pull the company out of some tight spots. Maybe not anything this bad, but they had to know that he was much better equipped to handle it than anyone else.
“I propose a motion that Joe Stewart be removed as CEO effective end of day today. I further propose that the outstanding balance on his company loan be called immediately, as a result of his termination.”
“I second the motion.” That was Karl Sterlington, the senior partner of Sterlington Capital. Sterlington made most of their money piggybacking on Stan’s deals, so it was not surprising that he join Stan on this. But there were seven voting board members including himself. He would be required to abstain, but that meant that Stan still needed a minimum of two more members to go his way.
“Lee?” Stan asked the founder of more than a dozen successful technology companies. Joe was confident that Lee would vote against this lunacy. He was one of the first people Joe had asked to join the board.
“I agree.”
“Jin?” Stan continued. Why was he starting with Joe’s stalwarts? Surely he had to realize that Jin would vote with his own CEO on this . . . unless the decision was a foregone conclusion. Had Stan taken a straw poll in advance and then, confident that he had the necessary votes, put the screws to the other board members?
“Sorry, Joe.” Jin sounded drained, and Joe couldn’t help but feel sorry for what this must be costing him.
One by one, he listened to the people he had worked with and trusted for years vote to remove him from the company he had come to love almost like a child. Each assent was like another spear, piercing his flesh and twisting, until numbly he listened to the last board member vote against him.
“Then with one abstaining member, voting is unanimous. We’ll make the announcement tomorrow. Are there any other issues?” Stan asked, as though they had just agreed on what they would have for dinner. When there was no answer, he continued. “Then Jin, I assume that you will take care of this. Joe, I wish you the best of luck. I’m sure that you’ll do just fine, as will Infinity.” And with that, the call ended with Joe sitting frozen behind his desk, unable to believe what had just happened.
His thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door to his office. “Come in,” he called, wondering who would be there so late.
The door swung slowly inward and Jin stuck his head through the opening, looking embarrassed and uncomfortable. “If this is a bad time,” he started, and then, realizing what he had just said, flushed even further.
“It’s okay. I’m just packing,” Joe said, nodding toward a single cardboard box, only half filled with belongings. It was hard to believe that this was all he had accumulated after more than a decade of leading Infinity Networks.
“I just have some papers for you to sign.” Jin stepped through the doorway, still looking as though he expected Joe to begin shouting at him at any moment.
“Sure, just leave them on my desk. I’ll stick them under your door on the way out.” Jin looked down at the floor, but didn’t come any further into the room, and Joe had a sudden flash of understanding.
“Oh, I see. You’re also supposed to make sure that I leave the building without planting any bombs or hurling myself out the window. Is that it?”
“Something like that,” Jin mumbled.
Joe quickly flipped through the papers. It was the standard termination paperwork he had approved many times over the years for other employees who had been let go, but he had never imagined that he would ever need to sign them himself.
“If you want you can have an attorney look them over,” Jin suggested.
“No, they’re fine.” Joe filled in his signature at each of the appropriate places and handed them back to his CFO. Actually, he corrected himself, his previous CFO now that his termination was official. He should probably have pushed the board for more favorable terms. He still held the leverage of being able to give the company a black eye. But even if he no longer worked there, Infinity was his baby and he couldn’t fathom bad-mouthing it. Besides, whatever fight he might have started the morning with had been completely drained out of him by the day’s events. All he wanted to do was go home and get this behind him.
Removing the electronic building key that had been on his ring longer than his car or house keys, he handed them to Jin along with his ID card and cell phone. Jin took the key and badge but handed back the phone. “Keep it. You’ve got all your numbers programmed into it, I’ll just have the bill transferred into your name.”
“Thanks.” Joe took the phone, his eyes beginning to mist at the small act of kindness in a day filled with so much pain.
“You’ll be back Joe. They’ll change their minds once they’ve had a chance to think about it.” Jin looked slowly around the office, as if realizing for the first time how wrong it would seem to have anyone else in it.
“I don’t think so. Too many people would end up looking bad if that happened, and everybody’s going to be looking to cover their flanks.” Joe picked up the pitifully small box of his personal effects. He briefly considered taking the painting as well, and then decided that he’d leave it for whoever took his place. They would probably just have it removed, but maybe the image of the country’s first president kneeling in prayer beside his horse would inspire the new CEO to run the company with the same respect that he’d run it with.
As he stepped into the elevator for what might be the last time, Joe knew that over the next few weeks he would do a lot of soul searching about what he should have done differently, but for now he was content to watch the lighted numbers count down to the garage level and let his mind shut down. He could take comfort in the fact, that for tonight at least, he wouldn’t receive any further blows.
The bell chimed, signaling that he had reached his destination, and Joe stepped out of the elevator, shifting his belongings to his hip as he pulled his car keys out of his pocket. Unlocking his car, he dropped the cardboard box onto the passenger seat, got in, and then, as he pulled the door closed, noticed something tucked under his windshield wiper. Suddenly irate, he reached through the open window to pluck the offending piece of paper off his windshield. He’d told the guards to keep people from coming in here and littering the automobiles with flyers. But it wasn’t a flyer that he found tucked between his fingers as he pulled his hand back into the car. It was a five-dollar bill and a one. Scribbled in spidery handwriting across the top of the five were the words. “I thought you might need this more than me.”
He knew that the sentence should mean something to him. For some reason his mind wanted to associate the money in his hand with a thunderstorm. He tried to think of why that might be, his overtaxed mind struggling to make a connection that he was sure would have been simple under other circumstances, but what little concentration he could muster was broken by the electronic ringing of his cell phone. Dropping the bills into the box, he picked up his phone and the checked the caller ID on the small glowing screen.
The number flashing on the phone was his home, and with a sickening start he realized that through the chaos of the day he had never called Heather. The story must have been on the TV and radio all day. How had he been so thoughtless? She had probably tried to call all afternoon, but with the phones ringing off the hook couldn’t get through until now. He had been so caught up in moving from one crisis to another that he hadn’t given his family a thought all day. She must be panic stricken.
“Heather.”
“Oh, Joe I’m so glad I got through to you. This is so humiliating.” Heather sounded drained.
“I’m so sorry sweetheart, it’s just been a madhouse down here. But I should have called you earlier.” He had promised her when he started the company that he would never put work ahead of his family, but today he’d done just that.
“How could you have known?” At first her words confused him. Of course he had known, he had been right in the middle of all this. But then he realized that she was asking how he had known that she would be aware of the day’s events.
“I’m sure it was all over the news. It was selfish not to call you as soon as everything started.”
“The news? Tia and I were at Angela’s school all day helping out with the bake sale. I haven’t been home long enough to watch TV. But do you think this is actually big enough to make the news?” Heather sounded completely bewildered, and for the first time Joe realized with a sinking feeling that they might be talking about two different things.
“What are you talking about?” He felt sure that he didn’t want to know the answer. He couldn’t take much more today without cracking completely.
“About our son getting arrested. What are you talking about?”