The guest bedroom faced the rear of the row house and looked out upon the slate-tiled courtyard; or rather, it would have had the windows not been blacked out with tinted film and covered with drapes heavy enough to make the rod bow. While the senator’s computer setup was the kind hackers used in movies, with half a dozen monitors and glowing components stacked to either side and bolted to the walls, it was all for show. Mason knew his father had simply paid for whatever top-of-the-line package the cybersecurity firm recommended for powerful people who didn’t know any better. He undoubtedly just used it for videoconferencing and accessing AgrInitiative’s system, which was accomplished by clicking an icon on his home page. The user name and password autofilled, eliciting a groan from Gunnar, who sat in the high-backed leather chair at the keyboard like the captain of a spacecraft.
Mason rolled a second chair across the small room and took a seat beside him. He couldn’t help but think of his wife as Gunnar typed commands, breezed through directories, and scrolled through data formerly belonging to the Thornton empire. His father waited until they were networked to the corporate mainframe before adjourning to the living room, from which they heard the occasional clinking of glasses and snapping of knots in the fire.
“Whoever’s managing your dad’s affairs has already made significant strides in distancing AgrInitiative from the mess AgrAmerica made of its holdings, not to mention its reputation,” Gunnar said. “Its portfolio’s been purged of anything that could possibly be perceived as tainted and most of its less wieldy subsidiaries have been sold, closed, or are in the process of being dismantled. We’re talking wholesale slaughter, corporate-style.”
“I take it that’s a good thing,” Mason said. “Or are you trying to tell me you might not be able to find the information we need?”
“You have to understand that the finances of a company of this size essentially have a life of their own. They’re in a constant state of fluctuation and at any given time provide little more than a snapshot of the larger picture, like a photograph taken through the window of a moving car. Liquid assets, by definition, are fluid. Cash flow can be manipulated, the value of investments varies from one day to the next, physical assets are depreciated on seemingly arbitrary schedules, and mergers and acquisitions are never simple transactions. They’re often complex arrangements that involve combinations of stocks and cash and subsidiaries and board seats and trade secrets and intellectual properties and any number of intangibles whose worth is dictated not by the market but by their value to the buyer.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“But it does explain how Victor was able to weasel his way into the biotechnology game. Your brother-in-law couldn’t simply cut a check for millions of dollars to buy an existing business without tipping off the competition to his aspirations, so he acquired one piecemeal.”
“You found it.”
“Was there ever any doubt?”
“So what do we know?”
Gunnar populated all six of the monitors with information and glanced from one to the next as he spoke.
“We’re dealing with a Swiss company by the name of Aebischer Pharma AG. Certainly not a juggernaut in the world of pharmaceuticals like Novartis or Roche, although it does have an interesting history. It launched in 1996 with the stated mission of producing cutting-edge medical-grade pharmaceuticals using a unique fusion of man-made and natural sources, but it was woefully unprepared for the continual assault of environmental interests, which forced it to develop synthetic versions of the naturally occurring components. Not only was that contrary to its own stated mission; it ended up being significantly more expensive, so by 1999, it was actually worth less than its physical assets. Fortunately, its facilities were state of the art, its location outside of Bern was ideal, and the Swiss were notorious for their lack of governmental regulation, which made it the perfect European outpost for an American pharmaceutical research group that received its start-up capital from the Richter Foundation.”
“The charitable entity of the very same dead man who conspired with my wife’s great-grandfather to develop a deadly strain of influenza on a hog farm,” Mason said. “We should have known his name would pop up at some point.”
“It gets better. That company was called Advanced Medical Defense Solutions and the group that launched it was composed of medical research scientists who all served in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and passed through Fort Detrick at some point. While technically a limited partnership under the Aebischer name, the deal was a whole lot more complicated than that. The original Aebischer ownership group retained a thirty-two-percent share, which it subsequently sold to chemical giant Bayer. For its initial investment in AMDS, the Richter Foundation was rewarded with a full third of Aebischer, which it converted into private shares and sold to several different international corporations, which then sold those shares to even more international corporations. By the time all was said and done, the ownership of the company was like a jigsaw puzzle that could only be assembled by picking up the pieces, one by one, and fitting them back together, which was how Victor, over the span of a decade, patiently accumulated controlling interest in a firm headed by former Defense Department scientists who, in addition to manufacturing a solid and reputable line of generic antibiotics, vaccines, and prescription drugs, expanded into the arena of agricultural insecticides and fungicides.”
“Definitely the kind of place where guys like Chenhav and Mosche, a microbiologist and a biochemist with ties to the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the World Medical Association, might be sent in the aftermath of nine/eleven,” Mason said.
“Especially considering that in the wake of the merger, Aebischer became the exclusive production facility for Bayer’s proprietary drug ciprofloxacin, a second-generation fluoroquinolone antibiotic used to treat inflammatory conditions of the urinary, gastrointestinal, and respiratory tracts. Not to mention anthrax. In fact, once the CDC and WHO recommended that it be prescribed prophylactically to everyone who might potentially come into contact with respiratory anthrax, it sold its existing stockpile—one point two billion pills—directly to the U.S. Department of Defense on the day after Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle received a letter filled with spores. At a profit of close to three billion dollars.”
Mason suddenly understood exactly why his brother-in-law had acquired Aebischer.
“Let me guess,” he said. “They also just happened to be sitting on an inoculation against the swine flu.”
“Aebischer has an entire R and D department devoted to the production of vaccines and prophylactic treatments with defense applications, so if it didn’t already have one, it was definitely the kind of place that would be able to produce one.”
With Victor controlling both the release of the Hoyl’s virus and access to the cure, he could have staged a pharmaceutical revolution that very well could have made him as powerful as any of the Thirteen, which was quite possibly why they’d had him killed. Or maybe he’d never been in control of his own hostile takeover of his family’s agricultural empire and the Thirteen had been manipulating him from the very start.
“What kind of damage could Aebischer do to my father if anyone found out about its potential involvement?” Mason asked.
“None that I can see,” Gunnar said. “At least not on paper. I don’t have access to sensitive projects, and the lack of governmental oversight means no one outside of the company really knows what they’re developing beyond what’s been publicly reported. For all we know, whatever plans Victor had for it never reached the execution phase. Then again, if he were truly looking for a legitimate foothold in the Eastern European pharmaceuticals market like he claimed, this would have been the perfect way to go about it. As far as the world’s concerned, Aebischer is just the most recent casualty of a boom-or-bust industry.”
“Casualty?”
“Your old man’s transition team at AgrInitiative began divesting him within a week of taking over. AMDS, now a minority partner, needed to distance itself from its association with Aebischer, too. Neither party could afford to simply walk away, and with its reputation having sustained significant damage, there was no chance of selling the company outright, so between them they reached a deal to divide the company into two units, equal in value to their ownership percentages, with the intention of marketing the assets to companies interested in investing in the intellectual properties and developmental potential, not the Aebischer name. AMDS held on to all properties specifically related to defense, which it turned around and sold directly to the U.S. government. AgrInitiative retained the biomedical and chemical units and had an offer on the table within two weeks. Looks like the sale will be finalized any day now.”
“That was quick.”
“Your dad’s team must have received an offer they couldn’t refuse. Either that or they took whatever they could get just to wash their hands of it.”
“Who’s the buyer?”
Mason realized he knew the answer before he even finished asking the question. Every aspect of the investigation had been leading to this revelation. And if he was right, not only did he know who’d hired the Scarecrow; he had his first concrete lead on a contemporary member of the Thirteen.
“Aegis Asset Management.” Judging by the tone of Gunnar’s voice, he wasn’t surprised in the slightest, either. “A subsidiary of Royal Nautilus Petroleum.”
“The same company that owns the apartment registered to Charles Raymond, the man who was killed in Central Park.”
“If Nautilus is really a player here, why would it commission the murder of one of its own high-level executives?”
“It wouldn’t,” Mason said. “The murders are personal to the Scarecrow. Part of his own private agenda.”
“You think he’s playing both sides?”
“I think we’re dealing with a man who doesn’t have an exit strategy.”
Gunnar performed one final, thorough search of the network for any other foreign holdings and downloaded the pertinent information to his laptop, just in case it might prove useful later.
Mason figured that since his father’s team had already distanced him from Aebischer, it was probably best that he not say anything about what they’d learned, especially considering the kind of fallout he anticipated once this was all over. And it would be soon, one way or another. He could positively feel the inevitability of the coming confrontation, swelling like the pressure underneath the snowpack before an avalanche.
He and Gunnar descended the stairs into the parlor. The senator and Ariana were little more than wavering shapes through the glass fireplace in the dining room, but even then Mason could tell they were enjoying each other’s company. He didn’t want to disturb them any more than he already had. His father deserved a little bit of happiness in his life.
Mason closed the front door behind them with a soft click and headed back out into the cold.