Run is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Andrew Grant
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Grant, Andrew
Run : a novel / Andrew Grant.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-345-54072-0
eBook ISBN 978-0-345-54074-4
1. Technology consultants—Fiction. 2. Computer industry—Fiction. 3. Corporations—Corrupt practices—Fiction. 4. Betrayal—Fiction. 5. Trade secrets—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6107.R366R86 2104
823’.92—dc23 2014017537
www.ballantinebooks.com
Jacket design: Scott Biel
Jacket image: © Bruno Abreu/Flickr Open/Getty Images
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Monday. Morning
Monday. Mid-morning.
Monday. Lunchtime.
Monday. Early afternoon.
Monday. Afternoon.
Monday. Late afternoon.
Monday. Evening.
Tuesday. Morning.
Tuesday. Mid-morning.
Tuesday. Lunchtime.
Tuesday. Early afternoon.
Tuesday. Afternoon.
Tuesday. Late afternoon.
Wednesday. Morning.
Wednesday. Afternoon.
Wednesday. Late afternoon.
Wednesday. Early evening.
Wednesday. Evening.
Wednesday. Evening.
Wednesday. Evening.
Wednesday. Late evening.
Wednesday. Night.
Thursday. Early morning.
Thursday. Morning.
Thursday. Lunchtime.
Thursday. Afternoon.
Thursday. Late afternoon.
Thursday. Late afternoon.
Thursday. Late afternoon.
Thursday. Early evening.
Thursday. Evening.
Thursday. Evening.
Friday. Morning.
Friday. Lunchtime.
Friday. Early afternoon.
Friday. Afternoon.
Friday. Late afternoon.
Friday. Late afternoon.
Friday. Early evening.
Friday night–Saturday morning.
Saturday. Late morning.
Saturday. Early afternoon.
Saturday. Mid-afternoon.
Saturday. Afternoon.
Saturday. Late afternoon.
Saturday. Early evening.
Saturday. Late evening.
Saturday. Night.
Sunday. Early morning.
Sunday. Mid-morning.
Sunday. Late morning.
Sunday. Noon.
Sunday. Early afternoon.
Sunday. Afternoon.
Sunday. Late afternoon.
Yesterday.
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
Monday. Morning
ON A USUAL MONDAY MORNING, I’D BE THE FIRST TO ARRIVE.
The gate, which was little more than a hinged version of my client’s corporate logo—the name AmeriTel splashed across the globe with three multi-colored electrons spinning inexplicably around it—would still be closed. Mine would be the only car in the parking lot, except for the night-shift security guard’s—a pink 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Seville, all tailfins and chrome—which the management made him leave in the farthest corner from the door. The official reason was that the car took up too much space. My guess was the fact that it left their bland German status symbols in the shade had more to do with it. But anyway I’d pass the guy, dozing in the otherwise deserted reception area—a double-height triangular wedge driven between the two functional wings of the building like the central tip of a “W,” and crammed with van der Rohe and Le Corbusier in the hope that the smell of money would impress the visitors—and head to the narrow second-floor office I’d requisitioned for the duration of my project. I’d check on the progress of all the new reports I’d left running over the weekend. I’d catch up on email. And I’d line up the jobs I wanted to nail that week.
It wasn’t rocket science, but it worked for me.
Until that Monday.
I knew something was up when I couldn’t park in my usual space. It had been taken by a black S-Class Mercedes. Another black Benz was tucked in next to it, and a trio of BMWs was lined up farther along the row. It made the place look more like a funeral home than an office building. But five big-hitters at work before the first pot of coffee was normally brewed? A sure sign of crisis. Something new and nasty must have hit the fan over the weekend. Not that I was surprised. Everyone knew AmeriTel was struggling. They wouldn’t have hired me if they weren’t having problems. It’s just that I was expecting a more general kind of trouble to have surfaced. Something that had pushed the whole corporation another step closer to the abyss. Not something aimed at me, personally.
The security guard wasn’t half asleep that morning. He was fully awake, waiting near the foot of the stairs with Simon Wakefield, the Chief Operating Officer—his boss, several levels removed—lurking behind him.
“Good morning, Mr. Bowman,” the guard said as I approached. I was surprised. I hadn’t realized he even knew my name. “Would you come with me, please?”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Mr. LeBrock’s waiting for you in the boardroom. He’d like to see you.”
“I know where the boardroom is. I don’t need an escort. But why does he want to see me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Simon?”
Simon Wakefield shrugged and looked away.
“OK, then. I’ll just check on my computers, and I’ll be along in a minute.”
“No, sir.” The guard shook his head.
“What do you mean, no?”
“Mr. LeBrock wants to see you in the boardroom right away, sir.” He started to look a little flustered and tried to gesture subtly at Simon Wakefield. “Mr. LeBrock said I was to take you directly there the moment you arrived.”
Their little reception committee seemed slightly overdramatic—wouldn’t an email or a text have done the job just as well?—but there didn’t seem to be much point in arguing. There was nothing to gain by getting the security guard in trouble. Or landing him in the hospital. He wasn’t a small guy, and the stress of the confrontation—minor as it was—already had his chest heaving. And Roger LeBrock was the CEO of AmeriTel. I’d known LeBrock for fifteen years. We’d worked together before, and he was the one who’d brought me in when the first potholes started to appear in his latest road to riches. If anyone could explain what was going on that morning, LeBrock could. And he was apparently waiting for me on the second floor, so I wasted no more words on his lackeys and started up the stairs.
THE BUILDING’S ARCHITECTS HAD been opposed to individual offices. They believed shutting people off from their co-workers discouraged communication, and that putting nameplates on doors fostered elitism, so the entire place was designed to be open-plan. That was fine in theory. And the sense of light and space was very attractive to prospective tenants. But the problems started once the people moved in. Human Resources needed privacy for interviewing new employees, they said. A large alcove at the far end of their section was converted into three separate rooms. And within a week, their director was unofficially but permanently ensconced in one of them. The same thing happened in the Sales area. And Marketing. And Customer Service. And as for the CEO? The boardroom—the whole of the second floor above the reception area—soon became his private domain.