“Come in, Ms. Bootstamp,” he said. “I’m most interested to meet you.”
So he knew who she was. Imala wasn’t yet sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
He pocketed his stylus and faced her, smiling. “But tell me first, is Karen O’Hara a real journalist for Space Finance or did you pull that name from a hat?”
“Real, sir. In case you checked her on the nets.”
“As if I have time for such things,” he waved her to a cocoon chair, which resembled an empty sphere with the front quarter sliced off. They were great for minimal gravity, and Imala climbed inside. Gardona took the chair opposite her.
“Why did you agree to meet me, sir, if you knew who I was?”
Gardona spread his hands in an innocent gesture. “Why wouldn’t I want to meet any of my employees? And such a good one, too, I’m told.”
He was either lying or there were people watching her she didn’t know about. Pendergrass and Kidney Cap would rather yank out their fingernails than give her a positive review.
“I apologize for the silly deception, sir, but reaching you by traditional means wasn’t working.”
“I’m a busy man, Imala. My secretary protects my time.”
So he knew how she had tried to reach him as well. Or maybe he was simply assuming she’d gone to the secretary.
He laughed. “Disguising yourself as a journalist. That’s takes guts, Imala. Guts or stupidity, I’m not sure which.”
“Perhaps a bit of both, sir.”
“And under the guise of doing a feature interview, too.” He shook a finger at her. “Appealing to my narcissism, I see.”
“It seemed the most believable story, sir.”
“Well I’m flattered you would think me important enough to warrant a feature interview in such a reputable magazine.” He crossed his legs. “Well, you have my attention, Imala. I’m all ears.”
She got right to it. “I have evidence, sir, that Gregory Seabright, one of our senior auditors, has been ignoring and in many cases concealing false financial records from Juke Limited for the better part of twelve years.”
“I know Greg, Imala. I’ve known him since grad school. That’s a very serious accusation.”
“There’s more, sir. I also have evidence of financial payments to Mr. Seabright from a small subsidiary of Juke Limited in excess of four million credits.”
Gardona was silent a moment. He was still smiling, but there was no longer any life behind it. “If such an allegation were true, Imala, which I doubt, I can’t imagine Greg would be dumb enough to keep such payments on file or make them easily detectable. He’s one of our top auditors. He would cover his tracks.”
“Oh, he covered his tracks, sir. He covered them with so many layers it’s taken me two months to piece it together. I had to snoop and dig in places not normally accessible to me. It’s a very lengthy thread that I had to follow to connect Mr. Seabright with the payments, but if prosecutors are patient enough, I can connect the dots for them.”
“Prosecutors?”
“Obviously. Juke Limited ships have been exceeding weight limits for transshipments to Earth year after year without paying the required fees and fines. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of credits here. Juke has been paying him off to turn a blind eye and foster illegal tax and tariff practices.”
“And you can prove all this?”
She held up a data cube. “Over three thousands documents.”
“I see. And when did you research and compile all this?”
“After hours. I only stumbled on it because I was studying old files, trying to familiarize myself with some of our larger accounts.”
“This is troubling, Imala. Who else knows about this?”
“Just my immediate boss, Richard Pendergrass.”
“I see. Well I will have to look into this immediately. If this proves true, it would be devastating to the reputation of this agency. I would ask that you keep this quiet until we can conduct an internal investigation.”
He started to get up.
“One more thing, Mr. Gardona. Juke Limited is our largest account. To conceal something this big for this long is too much for one person. I can’t prove it beyond the legal definition of doubt, but I have six other names on this cube whom I suspect are aware of and participating in this practice.”
He took the cube. “I hope you’re wrong, Imala. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”
She left his office, and by late afternoon of the following day word was spreading that Gregory Seabright had been terminated. Not suspended. Not given leave. Terminated.
Imala stood at her cubicle-which was smaller than most refrigerators and sometimes just as cold since it was directly below one of the AC vents-and felt better than she had in a long time. She had beaten the Man. She had taken on the giant and slung her rock and hit him dead center in the forehead. Gregory Seabright, dirty money-grubber, was down. And not just Seabright but Ukko Jukes as well, the wealthiest man in the solar system. Or, as Imala knew all too well, one of the most crooked men alive. Yes sir, not even old Ukko Jukes was safe from her justice.
She slapped her desk with the palm of her hand. Now this was auditing. If only her father could see her now. “Auditing?” he had said, when she had told him about her plans for grad school. “Auditing?” He said the word like it left a sour taste in his mouth. “That’s worse than accounting, Imala. You’re not even counting beans. You’re checking to make sure someone else counted beans. That’s the most pointless, fruitless, meaningless career anyone could possibly choose. You’re smarter than that. You can do anything. Don’t waste your life being a bean-counter checker.”
But oh how wrong Father was. Auditing was what made everything work. Without auditing, we’d live in financial barbarism. Markets would collapse. Banks would break. The whole system would crash.
But you couldn’t explain that to Father. He’d throw up his hands at talk like that. But taking a crook, putting a bad guy in prison, that Father could grasp, that was something he could wrap his head around.
Once she saved up enough to send a holo to Earth and once Lunar prosecutors got involved and the media caught wind, she could contact home and say, “See, Father? Your little girl taking on Ukko Jukes. That big enough for you?”
Pendergrass poked his head over the wall of the cubicle. “You heard about Seabright?”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“You have anything to do with that?”
She shrugged.
“Come on, Imala. You told me he was duping. I didn’t think it was possible. I thought you were witch-hunting. You know, fresh out of school and ready to take on the world. All that idealistic crap. We get people like that sometimes.”
Imala said nothing.
“Guess I was wrong,” said Pendergrass. “I should’ve listened to you. My mistake.”
Imala raised an eyebrow. “Are you actually admitting you were wrong?”
“Hey, there’s a first for everything.”
He smiled, and for once he didn’t look at her chest.
“As a peace offering,” said Pendergrass, “I want to buy you lunch.”
Ah, thought Imala. So that’s where this was going.
He must have sensed what she was thinking. “It’s not a date, Imala. Hanixa is meeting us at the restaurant. It would be the three of us.”
Nothing could be less appetizing than to share a table with Pendergrass and his little HR hussy, but Imala wasn’t about to reject an offered olive branch. That would only make things worse. So she grabbed her coat and followed him outside.
The black car waiting at the curb was the first red flag. Pendergrass opened the back passenger door, still as friendly as ever, and Imala was climbing inside even though warning bells were going off in her head.
When the car door closed without Pendergrass joining her, Imala realized what a mistake she had made. A man was sitting across from her, his face hidden in shadow. Imala didn’t need to see his features to know who he was.