Déjà Vu

 

The next morning, Griff sat in a shadow in the dimly lit and extremely well-appointed war room, sipping coffee from a massive, dark mug with Stein, Baylor & Stein gilded on the side. His psyche struggled mightily—as Johnny put it in court—to allow the memory of a delicious home-cooked meal and the warm, naked embrace of a beautiful and sensual woman the night before to triumph over and mask the deep and foreboding sense of déjà vu haunting him.

“Miss me?” teased Lance, baring his canines in a huge smile as he burst into the small, oak-paneled conference room tucked away back among the partner offices.

“That did not help,” Griff said.

“What?”

“Oh, no. Oh, no.” Griff suddenly realized he was reliving the very day he first met Helena Nickolson.

“I have a little surprise for you,” Lance said.

“I hate surprises,” Griff growled lowly. In spite of his inside voice’s warning, he felt himself instinctively grasp at a slender thread of hope.

“I know, but…” Lance winked. “You owe me. remember?”

“How could I ever forget?”

Lance stepped back out of the room and waved to someone down the hall to join him.

“Goddamn it, Lance.”

Lance just looked back into the war room and smiled.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Griff said as he rose to his feet when the tall, buff man who looked like the illegitimate spawn of Richard Nixon and a blonde surfer dude came through the door.

“I believe you know Cliff Nickolson, Junior,” Lance said, following JR into the room.

Griff and JR stared one another down.

JR finally looked away. “I, ah, apologize.”

Lance put his hand on JR’s shoulder and led him to sit in the chair catty-corner across from Griff, next to his seat at the head of the conference table. “Griff. Griff. Down, boy. Sit. Sit.”

Griff slowly sat back down at the same time as Lance.

A pretty Asian woman pushed a serving cart into the room. She placed a platter of pastries and a small tray with cream and sugar on the table. She poured a cup of coffee for Lance and JR. She came around to top off Griff’s mug.

“Thank you, Mae Lynn,” Lance said.

She placed the pot on the table and left, closing the door behind her.

Lance took a sip of coffee. He looked at JR sitting beside him, then down the table at Griff, as the two glared at one another like rival pack animals. He took another sip. “So, this is nice. Making amends and all.”

“Steve and Allen. They here, too?” Griff asked

“Downstairs in the Starbucks,” Lance said. “Cooling their heels.”

“Wonderful.”

“You know, Griff, it seems to me you fellas have something very important in common. Think about it.” Lance took a sip of coffee, then noticed both Griff and JR had turned their alpha male stares his way. “No, no, no. Not her.”

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” JR said.

“Just because Johnny so ably disposed of your legal problem doesn’t mean your troubles are over.” Lance set his cup down and looked Griff in the eye. “Maura heard back from your buddy in Norfolk, T-Rex.”

“The Fed in court?”

“Yeah. He’s an all-star evil doer seemingly headed for the bad guy hall of fame.”

“Great,” said Griff.

“Yeah. And now I’m on his shit list, too,” said JR. “Along with you and my sister.”

“Too bad for you,” Griff said. “But welcome to my world.”

“And you know how misery loves company and brings folks closer together in common cause,” Lance said, smiling broadly. “God, I love my job—helping people, that is.”

“And now I’m supposed to save his ass, too,” Griff said. “After what he tried to do to me in court.”

“Now, I thought we were going to let bygones be bygones—and you better, Griff,” Lance said. “Besides, he and Helena really didn’t have much choice.”

Griff winced at the mention of her name. His inside voice told him to keep his fucking mouth shut. “There is always a choice to be made.”

“And you best make the right one,” Lance said. “We can’t put down Goliath if all the Davids keep squabbling amongst themselves.”

“So, what was the point—the real point—of finding those journals?” Griff asked JR. “Not sentimental, was it?”

“No.” JR sighed. “I honestly don’t know if she was trying to drown me…or save me.”

“This is all about Hornet’s tech sector divestiture, right?” Lance asked.

JR nodded. “But they had their hooks in me, too.”

“So, what was it? Did Daddy Warbucks come down with a bad case of the morals all of the sudden about taking dirty government money?” Griff asked.

“Fuck no.” JR shook his head. “You know what my very first lesson in business was at Dad’s knee? He asked me why Willie Sutton robbed banks.”

“Because that’s where the money is,” said Lance.

“Yeah. Then he asked me, who printed all the money in all those banks?”

“The government,” said Griff.

“Lesson One: Willie Sutton was a chump change chump.”

“I wouldn’t think Silicon Valley types would want the government all up their skirts,” Lance said. “Tax dollars usually come with strings attached.”

“You gotta understand these guys. They’re the Masters of the Universe. The smartest guys in any and every room they walk into. And greedy bastards to boot—they don’t play whose dick is the longest.” JR took a sip of his coffee. “And if you think these guys aren’t picking the pockets of the Treasury all the while laughing out loud behind the backs of the lame-oid bureaucrats sent to babysit them…well…”

“Lame-oid bureaucrats with Predator drones, Hellfire missiles, and Navy SEALs on speed dial,” Lance said, looking at Griff.

“Not to mention Spook Central in Langely.” Griff shook his head.

“Yeah, well, remember the Arab Spring? Social media toppling the Tunisian and Egyptian governments?” JR asked. “You don’t think that didn’t go to their heads? I mean the President of the United States was coming to Silicon Valley to have lunch with all these guys.”

Lance and Griff looked at one another and shook their heads.

“Who’s pulling whose strings?” Lance asked Griff.

“Yeah. Right.” Griff looked at JR. “You don’t think the aforementioned spooks didn’t have anything at all to do with Murbarak getting the boot? Off camera from all CNN’s pretty boy stand ups from Tahrir Square?”

“Perception is reality.” JR shrugged his shoulders. “Especially in cyberspace.”

“And who had their hooks in you?” Lance asked.

“Likely the aforementioned spooks. I took Dad’s lesson to heart. While I was making the rounds for VC funding, I moonlighted by muling code back from India.”

“What kind of code?”

“Data mining social media mainly. They’d give me the parameters. And I’d bring back algorithms from Mumbai. The NSA has a boat load of RAID arrays to fill in Utah. What did I care as long as their money was green?”

“Do you care, now?” Lance asked.

JR hung his head low and nodded. “Yeah.”

“So, why did your father decide to divest?” Lance asked.

“Strictly a business decision. Dad was a master tea-leaf reader. I guess when you fly MACH two, you learn to think and react way ahead of where you are right now. Business Lesson Number Two: buy low; sell high. He tried to warn me. He saw rough waters ahead for the tech sector. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube reaching critical mass, getting to the point where they really had to decide what they wanted to be when they grew up. That’s going to be a painful process, as you can see, what with these guys picking censorship fights with their own users and pissing off half the political population. Then you’ve got the smoldering tire fire of tracking people’s every whim and folly online to abuse their privacy for fun and profit and…whatever. Thank you, Edward Snowden for bringing that to everyone’s attention. Not to mention internal rebellions. It ain't pretty having Google employees demand the company stop doing business with the Department of Defense. Yeah. Right. As if money isn’t the only thing more addictive than crack cocaine. And like Alphabet is going to just let Bezos walk away with all that cash being pocketed by Amazon Web Services. It’s all kind of a mess. And cleaning up messes tends not to be very profitable. So, Dad decided it was time to move on and find the next shiny new thing—which, of course, got some people’s panties all up their cracks—perception being reality on Wall Street, too.”

“I can’t believe they’d actually start putting metal on meat because of it,” Griff said.

“You’d be surprised how protective people get of their cash flow,” said Lance.

“And it’s not like we’re curing cancer or actually putting food into people’s mouths,” said JR. “It’s all just a house of cards nobody really needs that can come tumbling down faster than a cocaine addict’s heartbeat. Believe me, when you catch lightning in a jar, you’ll do anything to hold on to it.”

“I find it hard to believe your father could really bring down Google.” Lance shook his head.

“The big guys—they’d be okay. Maybe their quarterly reports might not be so rosy and their share price might take a hit for a little while, but they’ll lumber on,” JR said. “It’s the little guys who die hard. Not so much a bubble bursting as a financial tide going out sucking up all the cash. The lucky ones survive—if their little tide pool is deep enough or a big kahuna swims in and takes advantage of a fire sale. Either way, the early investors take it in the shorts. The unlucky ones lose it all.”

“I reckon it does take only one shot to start a stampede.” Griff looked at Lance and asked, “So, who’s the ambitious black hat you befriended in court?”

“According to T-Rex, his name is Seth Valance. Former 75th Ranger Regiment, former Company Cowboy, former Blackwater Associate. Evidently, he is currently pursuing a career as a ten ninety-nine independent consultant in the anti-hospitality industry. He’s kind of like you, only for the Dr. Evils of the world.”

“And which Dr. Evil is picking up his tab at present?”

“Talon Technology Group is the eight-to-five favorite on the Vegas betting line,” said Lance.

“I’ve heard of it,” JR said. “A small consortium of Highlands Group guys. Mostly government types trying to cash in for themselves.”

“You’ll have to forgive Wilkinson,” Lance said to Griff. “He’s still pretty spooked about what happened to Eply and didn’t really want to take this meeting, so I let him off the hook.”

“Does he blame me?” Griff asked.

“No, not at all. And he’s pretty pissed off about it, so he’s still digging hard into Blue Wing, Talon and the other names in Nicholson’s journals. Can’t hold it against him, though, for wanting to keep a low profile.”

“Yeah. Me, too,” muttered Griff.

“So, what do we do now?” JR asked.

“Me? I’m going home. You best stick close to Allan and Steve—better yet, get yourself some real protection. Your sister, too.” Griff looked at Lance. “Tell Wilkinson I’m sorry about Eply. Tell him I’ll make sure it gets taken care of—and get me everything he’s got so far.”

“I love it when a plan comes together.” Lance rubbed his hands together.

“Plan? What plan?” JR asked.

“Trust us. We know what we’re doing.”

 

***~~~***