28

SAM IS ASKED
TO MAKE A CALL

The night Sam explained to Harriet the mess at Electronika, she had reacted much the same way she had when told that two purse snatchers had almost shoved Althea down onto the tracks of the IRT subway two years before. Her face grew taut; her voice dropped in a low, harsh whisper, vowing they wouldn’t get away with this; and then she had burst into tears.

The Wyatts had stayed up for almost the rest of the night, talking, wondering, talking, wondering, silent, at times, in their own thoughts.

Lying in bed, with Harriet’s head resting on his chest, Sam, gently stroking Harriet’s back, had said, “I thought about not doing anything about the Pretoria plant.”

“You were thinking of us,” she had murmured.

Silence.

“And I was thinking of my career,” he said.

At that, Harriet flung herself off his chest to look at him. “Don’t, Sam don’t try and turn this back on yourself. When you’re powerless to fix something, you say, ‘I’m powerless.’ You can’t blame yourself for things over which you had no control.”

“But I did have control. I went to Cassy—weeks later, I went to Cassy.”

“But—you—went,” Harriet said, head jerking forward with each word.

“But I almost didn’t,” Sam sighed.

“Almost,” she said, sounding almost angry, “almost. You almost died when you were born. Does that mean you’ve been dead all these years? You almost didn’t go to Hazelden—does that mean you’ve been drunk ever since?”

“But I didn’t—”

“Samuel J. Wyatt,” she said, giving his stomach a small slap, “guess what? You’re human. Yes—human.” She curled back down, resting her forehead against the side of his face. “Just like the rest of us mortals.”

After a few minutes Sam sighed again. “Althea’s tuition is coming up, Samantha’s too.” Pause. “If worse comes to worst, Althea can probably get some kind of scholarship—and I was thinking... we’ve got the mutual fund, I could sell the—” He turned his head away. “Oh, God, Harriet,” he said, slipping his arm out from under her to sit up. He held his face in his hands for a moment and then gave a small laugh. “I was going to say I can sell our Electronika stock.” He looked to the ceiling, massaging his throat. “God.”

Harriet sat up and ran her hand over her husband’s shoulders, back and forth, back and forth. “We’ll get through this, Sam. You know we will.”

He turned to her. “I never wanted to cause you trouble again.”

“You’re not causing me trouble,” she whispered. “Walter Brennan is causing us trouble. Mack Sperry is causing us trouble,” she added, smiling slightly. “But not you, Sam. You only make my life better. Always.”

He shook his head but didn’t say anything.

She slid her arms around him and rested the side of her face against his back. “As long as I have you, and the girls, I have everything.” She paused. “I know, because I almost lost you.”

“Lost me?”

He felt her head nodding against his back. “Uh-huh. That’s why I left you in ‘73. Because I couldn’t bear to slowly lose you.”

“Honey,” he said, easing her arms from around him. Harriet sat up and Sam fell back on the bed, pulling her down to lie in his arms. “Honey,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head, “you’d have to kill me to get rid of me.”

“For Pete’s sake,” Althea hissed to Sam in the kitchen, “he’s a business major. Business, Dad—I bring Mr. Right home for you and you can’t even remember his name.”

Sitting down at the table, Sam lit another cigarette. “Sorry, honey.”

“George, you called him,” Althea said, throwing the dish towel on the counter.

Exhaling a stream of smoke, Sam said, “He should be Mr. Right for you, not me. Mr. Right,” he repeated, tapping the ash of the cigarette into the ashtray.

Harriet came in. “John’s ready to go,” she announced. She looked at Sam’s cigarette, frowning slightly. Althea looked first at her mother, then at her father, and then back to her mother. “Is anyone ever going to tell me what’s going on around here?”

After a moment Sam put the cigarette down in the ashtray and got up. “Come here,” he said to her.

Althea looked at him, then at her mother, and then back to him.

“Come on,” Sam said, holding out his hand.

Althea took a cautious step; Sam reached for her arm and pulled her over to hug her. “I can’t breathe,” Althea said over his shoulder, laughing.

Sam released her, stepped back slightly and looked down into his daughter’s eyes. “You know how much I love you, don’t you?”

“What is with you, Daddy?” Althea wanted to know. “You’ve been acting so weird.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, “I’ve been acting weird all right. Because I’ve been feeling plenty weird.” He held his daughter’s hands, swinging them. He sighed, glancing back at Harriet, and then simply held Althea’s hands. “Something’s been going on at the office that’s not—ethical. And I’ve been upset, because I haven’t known how to deal with them—it.”

“The guy who took your files, I bet,” Althea said.

He shook his head, laughing a little. “Mind like a steel trap, this girl.” He touched Althea’s chin. “I will explain everything to you—eventually. But what’s important right now is that I apologize to you, for acting so—weird—and to tell you how much I love you.”

Althea squinted at him, wary. Sam leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “You better get going with, uh...” Althea rolled her eyes. “John,” Sam finished, moving back to the table to get his cigarette.

Althea watched her father a moment and then looked at her mother. “Well,” she said with a little shrug, “thanks for cooking dinner for John.”

“I like him,” Harriet whispered, moving over to stand next to Sam.

“Only because he knew that Gardiner & Grayson book,” Althea laughed, walking toward the door. She paused there, looking back at the two of them—Sam sitting, Harriet standing there, hand on his shoulder. She smiled and came back to them. “I love you, Daddy,” she said, bending to kiss him on the cheek. “You too, Mom.” Harriet accepted a kiss on the cheek as well and gave Althea’s a hand a squeeze. And then Althea went back to the living room.

Harriet sat down, eyes on her husband. Sam smiled and gave her knee a small nudge with his own. Harriet crinkled her nose and waved the smoke out of the air. Sam laughed then, and Harriet did too. “Man,” he said under his breath, shaking his head, “it’s like old times, isn’t it?”

She nodded, watching him put the cigarette out. Her eyes came back up. “Back to the hypnotist when this is over,” she said.

“Uh—” said a deep voice at the door. Harriet and Sam turned to look. It was John. “I just wanted to thank you for dinner.”

“Oh, George—” Sam said warmly, rising to his feet.

“Dad!” Althea wailed from the living room.

“John!” Sam declared brightly, raising a forefinger into the air.

As they had expected, the doorbell of the Wyatts’ apartment rang that night at nine-thirty. Sam and Harriet went to the door together, and when they opened it, they saw Cassy standing there, smiling. “Guess what Lane Smith had in the basement of his house in the country?”

“What?” Sam asked.

Cassy stepped inside, took the door from Sam, closed it, and leaned back against it. “Copies of every piece of paper on the Trinity Electronics deal up to the day he was fired.”

Sam whirled back, letting out a whoop. Cassy laughed, and Harriet laughed too, not quite sure what this really meant.

“We’re gonna get ‘em—we’re gonna get ‘em—we’re gonna get ‘em”, Sam chanted like a college cheer. He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, baby!” he then cried, lifting Harriet off the ground. He put her down and gave her a big kiss on the forehead.

Cassy pushed herself off the door. “There’s more, Sam, much more,” she said, looking at her watch. “And we’ve got to hurry.”

They went into the kitchen and Harriet made coffee. Cassy started to outline the “part” that related to Sam and Electronika.

Part?

Part.

The story, then, was larger?

The story, then, was much, much larger.

Huh.

The London bureau of Conolly’s had tracked down Smith and two other dismissed executives of Trinity Electronics. All three were happy to cooperate on condition they be left out of it. Conolly’s had copies of everything letters, memos, contracts, telexes—involved with Electronika’s buy-out. It was the evidence that proved that, before the arrival of Brennan and Canley, Trinity and Electronika had absolutely no ties with South Africa.

Thank God.

The Pretoria plant was leased from a South American holding company, fronting for a Mexican holding company, fronting for an American company, whose CEO happened to be Brennan’s brother-in-law. A stringer for WST managed to get a look inside the plant and, based on what he described, Lane Smith estimated that it could only handle approximately five to ten percent of the assembly for the ZT 5000.

So they never really intended to move full assembly there.

Enough for a scandal, but no, not full assembly.

“Then where are the machines being assembled?”

“In Kenya. Right where they were always supposed to have been.”

“Huh.”

Sam’s office phone and the Wyatts’ home phone, as they knew, were tapped. There had been no unusual movement on Electronika’s stock. Which meant? “We think,” Cassy said slowly, “that they’re waiting for word that the story on the Pretoria plant is about to break.” She paused. “And now we’re not sure of this, Sam, but it may be you’re not the only one at Electronika who has been set up to break the story. We’re not sure about that—but we are sure someone’s listening on your phones and”—she paused, sighing slightly—”following you. There’s a man outside right now—right across the street.”

“Althea,” Harriet murmured, reaching out to hold Sam’s arm.

“No, Harriet,” Cassy hastened to add. “He’s following Sam.” She hesitated and then said, “Besides, there’s someone following him.”

Sam and Harriet looked at her.

“The FBI.”

Sam covered his face with his hands and then let them slowly drop. Reaching for his cigarettes, he said, “I don’t believe this.”

Cassy went on to explain that Conolly’s and WST had to go to the Securities and Exchange Commission with what they had—they couldn’t sit by and watch what was probably a multimillion-dollar crime-in-progress. But the SEC, they found, was already investigating Caswell Zander in connection with three other transactions that smelled of insider trading. The Electronika connection was new to the SEC, but they quickly saw that it was their chance to observe how the Caswell Zander “syndicate” actually worked. And since it was a federal case, the FBI was brought in. So Conolly’s and WST were working with them. For them, actually, and in return, of course, they would have the story as it broke.

“So where we are, Sam,” Cassy finished, looking at her watch again, “is waiting to see what they do when they think the South Africa story is breaking. Who talks to whom, and who does what, and for whom.” She paused, eyes dropping as she touched the edge of the table. She looked up. “We want you to make the call, Sam. Tonight. To Paul. He’s at his office now—with company, of course.”

Silence.

“We want you to call him and tell him about the Pretoria plant, just as you would have weeks ago.”

“And they’ll be listening,” Sam said.

“Yes.” Cassy looked to Harriet and then back to Sam. “I’ll be honest with you—with both of you. We’ll do our best to protect you, Sam—to keep you clear of all this. But,” she sighed, biting her lower lip slightly, “I have to warn you, I can’t promise you that whoever is listening on your phone is going to do the same. Rumors can get out. My fears are not about Brennan or Canley—my fears are about the repercussions for you if Electronika thinks you blew the whistle on their chief executive officers. A scandal is a scandal and bad business, as they say.”

Silence.

Sam looked down at the table, blinking rapidly. He sighed, and went about lighting a cigarette. He exhaled smoke, rubbed one eye, and looked to Harriet. “What do you think?”

She turned to Cassy. “We’ve discussed this.” She looked back at Sam. “Whatever you decide, honey.”

He took a deep breath and looked at Cassy, stretching. “Oh, I’m going to do it, Cassy,” he said, dropping his arms. “I’m just trying to think of what I’m going to say.”

Cassy beamed. And then she said, “Don’t worry about your lines. Paul will ask all the questions, just like a good reporter should.” She took out a piece of paper from her purse and handed it to him. “Give me,” she said, looking at her watch, “say, twenty minutes, and then call him.” She got up from her chair.

“Where are you going?” Harriet asked her.

“Who, me?” Cassy said, checking her watch again. “I’ve got a date with your elevator man to let me out through the basement.”

Sam and Harriet exchanged looks. “Great neighborhood we live in,” Sam said, rising from his chair. “I’ll see you to the door, Mata Hari.”