Joseph Finder - Power Play

FICTION

The Moscow Club

Extraordinary Powers

The Zero Hour

High Crimes

Paranoia

Company Man

Killer Instinct

NONFICTION

Red Carpet: The Connection Between the Kremlin and Americas Most Powerful Businessmen

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

POWER PLAY . Copyright 2007 by Joseph Finder. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Finder, Joseph.

Power play / Joseph Finder.1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-1762-9

1. Management retreatsFiction. 2. ExecutivesCrimes againstFiction.3. HostagesFiction. I. Title.

PS3556.I458P69 2007
813'.54dc22

2007016178

For my editor, Keith Kahlathe best

Knowing your own darkness is the best method
for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

Carl Jung

I f youve never killed someone, you really cant imagine what its like. You dont want to know. It leaves you with something hard and leaden in the pit of your stomach, something that never dissolves.

Most of us, Im convinced, just arent wired to take a human life. Im not talking about some stone-cold sniper with a thousand-yard stare, or one of those psychos who come back from the war and tell you that killing guys was like squishing ants. Im talking about normal people.

I remember reading once how, during World War IIthe Good War, right?maybe 85 percent of the soldiers never even fired at the enemy. These were heroes, not cowards, yet they couldnt bring themselves to aim at a fellow human being and pull the trigger.

I understand that now.

But what if you dont have a choice?

I was standing at the end of a splintery wooden dock in the pale moonlight, the turbulent ocean at my back, blue-black and flecked with gray foam. On either side of me was rock-strewn beach.

And less than ten feet away, a man was pointing a gun at me, a matte black SIG-Sauer nine millimeter.

Boy, youre full of surprises, arent you? he said.

I just looked at him.

He shook his head slowly. Nowhere to run, you know.

He was right, of course. There really was nowhere to run. There was nowhere to swim, either. And I had no doubt that, the moment I made a move to jump, hed pull the trigger.

I took a long, slow breath. Who says I want to run?

I could smell the seaweed, the tang of salt in the air, the faint rot of dead fish.

Just put your hands up, Jake, he said, and come back inside. I dont want to hurt you. I really dont.

I was surprised he knew my name, and I was even more surprised by the gentleness in his voice, almost an intimacy.

But I simply looked at him, didnt answer, didnt move.

Come on, now, lets go, he said. Hands up, Jake, and you wont get hurt. I promise. The crash of the waves on the shore was so loud I had to strain to make out his words.

I nodded, but I knew he was lying. My eyes strayed to the left, and then I saw the crumpled body on the sand. I felt a jolt, felt my chest constrict, but I tried to conceal it. I knew hed killed the guy, and that if it were up to him, Id be next.

It wasnt up to him, though.

I dont want to do this, I thought. Dont make me do this.

He saw my eyes move. There was no point in trying to stall for time anymore: He knew what Id just seen. And he knew I didnt believe him.

Dont make me kill you.

Jake, he said, in his lulling reasonable voice. You see, you really dont have a choice.

No, I agreed, and I felt that hard lump forming in the pit of my stomach. I really dont.

W e got trouble.

I recognized Zos voice, but I didnt turn around from my computer. I was too absorbed in a news report on the website AviationNow.com. A competitors new plane had crashed a couple of days ago, at the Paris Air Show. I wasnt there, but my boss was, and so were all the other honchos at my company, so Id heard all about it. At least no one was killed.

And at least it wasnt one of ours.

I picked up my big black coffee mug THE HAMMOND SKYCRUISER: THE FUTURE OF FLIGHT and took a sip. The coffee was cold and bitter.

You hear me, Landry? This is serious.

I swiveled slowly around in my chair. Zo Robichaux was my bosss admin. She had dyed copper hair and a ghostly pallor. She was in her mid-twenties and lived in El Segundo not too far from me, but she did a lot of club-hopping in L.A. at night. If the dress code at Hammond allowed, I suspected shed have worn studded black leather every day, black fingernail polish, probably gotten everything pierced. Even parts of the body you dont want to think about getting pierced. Then again, maybe she already did. I didnt want to know.

Does this mean you didnt get me a bagel? I said.

I was on my way down there when Mike called. From Mumbai.

Whats he doing in India? He told me hed be back in the office today for a couple of hours before he leaves for the offsite.

Yeah, well, Eurospatiales losing orders all over the place since their plane crashed.

So Mikes lined up meetings at Air India instead of coming back here, I said. Nice of him to tell me.

Mike Zorn was an executive vice president and the program manager in charge of building our brand-new wide-bodied passenger jet, the H-880, which we called the SkyCruiser. Four VPs and hundreds of people reported to himengineers and designers and stress analysts and marketing and finance people. But Mike was always selling the hell out of the 880, which meant he was out of the office far more than he was in.

So hed hired a chief assistantmeto make sure everything ran smoothly. Crack the whip if necessary. His jack-of-all-trades and U.N. translator, since I have enough of an engineering background to talk to the engineers in their own geeky language, talk finance with the money people, talk to the shop floor guys in the assembly plant who distrust the lardasses who sit in the office and keep revising and revising the damned drawings.

Zo looked uneasy. Sorry, he wanted me to tell you, but I kind of forgot. Anyway, the point is, he wants you to get over to Fab.

When?

Like an hour ago.

The fabrication plant was the enormous factory where we were building part of the SkyCruiser. Why? I said. Whats going on?

I didnt quite get it, but the head QA guy found something wrong with the vertical tail? And he just like shut down the whole production line? Like, pulled the switch?

I groaned. Thats got to be Marty Kluza. Marty the one-man party. The lead Quality Assurance inspector at the assembly plant was a famous pain in the ass. But hed been at Hammond for fifteen years, and he was awfully good at his job, and if he wouldnt let a part leave the factory, there was usually a good reason for it.

I dont know. Anyway, like everyone at headquarters is totally freaking, and Mike wants you to deal with it. Now.