“Maybe if I knew who you were working for, I could convince them to observe those rules,” said Bauer. “Brown River doesn’t count.”
“They’re off-limits,” repeated Wellins. “You know that.”
“I’m not the one you need to convince,” said Audra.
The man’s glance shifted to Berg.
“Don’t look at me,” said Berg. “I have seventy-six painful reminders why I don’t give a fuck what they do to you or your family.”
Chapter 44
Darryl Jackson strolled into the great room, sipping his coffee more out of habit than necessity at this point in the morning. The effects of caffeine long ago quit having any measurable impact on his system. Just a little longer, and he’d settle in for a long nap. His wife was on the road, headed up to Princeton to get their daughter Liz and disappear until this mess cleared up. If it cleared up. Their other daughter, Emily, would be a little harder to safeguard. She was in her first year of law school at the University of California at Berkeley, thousands of miles away. Convincing a first-year law student to ditch classes and “disappear” would take some finesse. He’d let his wife handle that one, backed by a sizable emergency nest egg. Whatever it took for them to disappear.
As soon as he could break free from this mess, he’d meet up with his wife and figure out a way to get Emily. Unfortunately, he couldn’t give his wife a timeline for his departure. The more information they dug out of Wellins, which had been surprisingly scant so far, the stranger things sounded.
Audra Bauer walked into the great room and collapsed on the couch next to him. Karl Berg jarred awake and glanced over at them from the lounge chair. He’d been here all night, in and out of sleep based on the acquisition of new information.
“Well?” Berg prompted.
“I think the well is dry,” said Bauer. “He mumbled Ajax a few more times then passed out.”
“That’s it?” asked Jackson.
“He’s barely recognizable,” she replied with a tired, vacant look. “I can’t imagine they’ll get anything else out of him. He’s wrecked far beyond what they did to you, and I’m not letting them pay a visit to the man’s family. That’s nonnegotiable. I’ll turn myself in before I let that happen.”
Berg shook his head. “Sanderson’s cyber team hasn’t made any headway with Ajax. It doesn’t exist.”
“We scoured every possible public and government record for a company matching that name, involved in the same line of work,” said Graves. “Nothing remotely related came to our attention.”
“Well, you missed something,” said Jackson, turning toward Graves. “No offense.”
“I’m used to it,” said Graves. “But we didn’t miss anything.”
“Your head was on the desk a few minutes ago,” said Jackson.
“We’re all tired.”
“I distinctly recall a few managers and executives jumping ship for Ajax around the same time as Wellins. I checked out their website. Pretty slick compared to ours. I remember bringing that up with HR,” said Jackson. “The place is real. Somewhere just outside of Petersburg, Virginia.”
“Have you actually seen it?” asked Berg.
“You ever actually see Brown River?” Jackson shot back, slightly agitated.
“We’re not questioning the existence of Brown River,” said Berg.
“Fine. No, I’ve never seen the Ajax facility.”
“Maybe we’re not defining Ajax correctly? We know Wellins never technically left Brown River, right? He can say Ajax all day until he’s blue in the face,” said Berg. “But he’s a Brown River employee. Same with Harper, which brings up another issue. Brown River has done a lot of hiring over the past six months, according to payroll. What was the total, Graves?”
“Three thousand six hundred and forty-three new hires, all former military or law enforcement. Pay scales are divided into three distinct categories. Three thousand and forty-two at seventy-five thousand dollars annually, plus a single one-hundred-thousand-dollar lump sum payment. Then it jumps to five hundred and fifty employees at the same level as Harper. All salaried. That leaves fifty-one coming in at the very generous Wellins level.”
“This is all news to me. I was told we’re in replace-only mode for hiring,” said Jackson. “How much does all of this represent?”
“For fiscal year 2009, we’re talking seven hundred and thirty-six million dollars, rounded up. Fixed salary costs moving forward will be three hundred and thirty-four million dollars. This isn’t counting guys like Wellins, who joined Ajax beyond that six-month window.”
“That’s one hell of a capital expenditure,” said Bauer.
“Like they’re building an army,” said Berg. “Called Ajax.”
Jackson was stunned by the numbers. Nearly a billion in salary expenses alone for this year? He worked on the global operations side of the house, and their budgets had shrunk consistently over the past three years. Maybe Ajax was paying Brown River to piggyback on their payroll department? He knew that didn’t make sense, but he had to ask.
“Any way Ajax is using Brown River’s payroll division to process their own payroll?”
“Brown River is claiming these employees for tax purposes,” said Graves. “And that would be one hell of an employee expansion for a company that doesn’t exist.”
“I don’t know what to say or do at this point,” said Jackson. “Seriously. We can’t go to the FBI or CIA, and we might have a four-thousand-man death squad operating on U.S. soil, half of which is probably driving the streets, looking for us right now.”
“Looking for us,” Berg corrected. “Not you.”
“I don’t like the way that sounded,” said Jackson. “It sounded an awful lot like I’m about to be asked to do something that scares the shit out of me.”
“The cyber team has put together something they hope you can deliver to Brown River,” said Bauer.
“Waltzing into Brown River with this discovery doesn’t sound like a healthy idea right now. Or ever.”
“Hear us out,” said Berg.
“I knew I shouldn’t have left the two of you alone earlier,” Jackson grumbled.
“Graves wants you to log into your computer from a hardwire connection at your desk and insert a flash drive. Follow the directions on the screen, and the virus will take care of the rest. They think the Ajax information is on a network compartmentalized from the rest of Brown River’s visible network, but might be able to find a way to access it internally.”
“It’s highly probable that someone ‘officially’ working at Brown River has full knowledge of Ajax. Possibly several or more. It’s just too damn big of an operation to exist in a vacuum, and the fact that they’re piggybacking it on the Brown River payroll suggests collusion. I’m guessing these are highly placed executives and managers, who would require access to the Ajax network.”
“It’s a long shot, Darryl, but that’s all we have at this point. We need to keep pulling at threads until this unravels,” said Bauer.
“All right. I’ll do this, but after I deliver the virus and you guys confirm it’s working, I need to take care of my family. Cheryl’s on her way up to Princeton to get Liz, and I have no idea what’s going on with my daughter in California.”
“Does the timing work?” asked Berg. “I don’t want to put you in danger. You’ve done enough already.”
“I’m due back from my conference tomorrow, but it won’t raise any eyebrows if I roll in later this morning. I’ve been known to bail on conferences early.”
“Thank you, Darryl. If you sense anything is wrong at Brown River, you walk away. Promise me that.”