Millennium - 73. Chapter 73

April 10, 2000

 

I was laboring over this thing with Omega, letting it haunt me. I got up from the dining room table and strolled over to the windows to take in the view of the ocean, and to let it soothe me. The waves were mediocre today, nothing to really draw me out into the surf, but that wasn’t the case with Will. He was out there, hoping to find a good wave. I studied the patterns, the state of the tide, and decided that he probably wouldn’t get lucky today.

He evidently decided the same thing. I watched him catch a small wave for the ride to the beach. I smiled as I equated that wave with a commuter bus, just transportation to the shore. Will jumped up, grabbed his board, and started heading to the house when someone stopped him and struck up a conversation. I got a good look at the person who stopped him and felt the adrenaline surge. I was at a full run by the time I was out of the family room, and all but bounded down the stairs and across the sand until I was standing next to, and slightly in front of Will.

“What the fuck are you doing here Carson?”

He gave me a shit-eating grin. “It’s a public beach. I was just talking to this guy.”

“Who is he, Dad?” Will asked.

“This is Carson. He’s the guy Pop dated.” I watched Will’s eyes narrow at that. He knew how badly I’d been hurt in November, and he got that this was the guy who was responsible.

“Oh, is this your son?” Carson asked, like he didn’t know.

“You’re playing with fire,” I said firmly.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” he said, almost whining. “I’m here on a public beach, just making idle conversation with a young surfer.”

“You’re camping out in front of my house, stalking my son,” I said. I was manfully trying to control the fury that surged through my body, the cold fury that was begging me to beat the shit out of him. “I see you here again; you won’t look so pretty when you leave.”

“You’re threatening me?” he asked, feigning offense. “That’s illegal. I should report you.” He gave me that idiotic smile of his and turned to walk away. He got about five feet away, out of range of my fists, and turned back again. “Oh, by the way, Alexandra said to say ‘hello’.”

The fury transformed itself into raw hate, which was a much better emotion for me, because that one I could bury deeper; that one I could control. I said nothing and just watched him walk away. “What did he say to you?”

“This time?”

“What do you mean, ‘this time’?”

Will shrugged. “I’ve seen him here before, and I saw him outside of school. He offered to take JJ and me out to eat, and then he offered us a ride home, like we needed him for transportation,” Will said with a sneer.

“You’ve seen him before?” I asked incredulously. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t know who he was,” Will said, getting pissed at me for being so upset. “I figured it was just some dude hitting on me. He’s scrawny. I could kick his ass.”

“Yeah, but he’s dangerous. He’s linked in to those Omega people, and he purposely tried to ruin Pop’s relationship with me and his career.” He just gave me that look that told me I was being way too dramatic. I mellowed. “I’m sorry I freaked out. I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“We know the rules, not to run off with strangers. He flirted with me, I led him on to tease him, and then shut him down.” If I would have been in a better mood, it would have been funny to see Will let a little bit of the player in him show. I guess he did grow up with Darius. “Pop has shitty taste in men.”

That did make me laugh. “He’s with me.”

“See,” he said, giving me shit.

“In the future, stay away from him. You’re going to have some people keeping an eye on you.”

“Dad, I do not want a security guard hovering over me,” he said, really irritated now.

“You’re getting one, and it’s not negotiable,” I said firmly. He glared at me but got that I wasn’t backing down. “I’ll try to find a cute guy to make it less painful,” I added, trying to take some of the sting out of it.

“Whatever.”

“Tell me what he said to you, as much as you can remember,” I demanded.

“Like I said, on the beach the dude just made comments about my surfing, about how good I was. That was it. After school, he asked me if I was hungry, if I wanted to get something to eat.” He paused. “He had a car, and gestured to it, so he wanted to drive us somewhere. When we said no, he offered to give us a ride home. JJ and I both know better,” he reiterated.

“Has he talked to JJ before?”

“No, he’s only really talked to me, and even after school with JJ there, it seemed like he was only talking to JJ because he was with me.”

“So you were his target,” I concluded.

“Kind of seemed that way,” he agreed.

“Let’s go inside,” I said, and put my hand on his shoulder as we walked up to the house. Will may be an adolescent, but he was still way smarter than Carson. I headed straight to the phone to call Robbie.

“Hey baby,” he said cheerfully.

“Hey there,” I said, unable to match his mood. “I need to talk to you.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to have this conversation over the phone.” I could feel his anxiety. “I’m not mad at you.”

“Alright,” he said nervously. “I’m pretty much done here. I’ll come home.”

“Thanks,” I said as lovingly as I could. The next call was to the same people Stef had used on occasion, to arrange for security for the kids. The third call was to Stef.

He was in a meeting, but I had Jeff pull him out of it, so when he answered the phone, he sounded very irritated. “Carson is stalking Will,” I said bluntly, cutting short any snippiness he might otherwise have hit me with.

“He is stalking Will? You must get him some protection!” Stef said, alarmed. I wanted to tell him that I already bought him Magnums, but I figured that joke would probably fall flat.

“That’s already handled.”

“How do you know he is stalking Will?” I told Stef the whole story, including Will’s recollections of encountering Carson after school. I could feel Stef’s fury on the other end of the phone, as if his mood was going over the airwaves.

“So what will you do?” he asked simply. I smiled at that, at how he had trust and confidence in me to protect my family, and didn’t see the need to jump in and do it for me.

“I’m going to handle it,” I said mysteriously. “I need to get a few phone numbers and e-mail addresses from you.” I told him what I wanted, and he gave it to me willingly.

“What did Robbie say about this?”

“I haven’t told him yet,” I said. “I didn’t want to have this conversation with him over the phone.”

“You are worried about phone taps? Why did you tell me over the phone?”

“It’s not that,” I said dismissively. “Besides, our phones have been tuned up by those security people. I want to tell him so I can help him control his reaction. Carson wants attention, and Robbie would fall right into that trap. And I want him to know that I’m going to handle it.”

“How will you do that?”

“I’m done playing nice. The gloves are off. I’m going to go JP on them,” I said, making a joke that wasn’t all that funny.

Stef paused, and then finally simply said, “Be careful.”

“No risk, no reward,” I said. I hung up the phone and went upstairs to pack up a few things. I was going to go up to Los Altos tomorrow and finalize things with my team for next week, and then I’d finalize my own plans. I began, in my own methodical way, by making lists, and I was so absorbed I didn’t even hear Robbie come in the room.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as he ambled over to me nervously. I felt bad that I’d worried him so badly.

“Carson is stalking Will.” I watched his mind grapple with that, and smiled internally when I saw that his first reaction was to believe me, and only after that did he ask for facts. I told him what I witnessed, and what Will had told me.

“I’m going to ream that son of a bitch a new asshole,” Robbie yelled. He was enraged, absolutely unhinged, just as I thought he would be. “I’m going to beat him to within an inch of his life!”

“No,” I said simply. “I’m going to handle this.”

“What do you mean?”

“Carson is doing this for any number of reasons, but I know what at least two of them are. First, he knows that by doing this, he’ll get a reaction from you, and you’ll pay attention to him. Second, he figures this will drive a wedge between us.” I let that sink in. “No one threatens my kids. No one.” I said that so forcefully, and with so much meaning, it even scared me.

“What are you going to do to him?” Robbie asked.

“I said I was going to handle it.” I looked at him, asking, no begging him with my eyes not to make this a huge issue. That wasn’t enough for him.

“He’s not going to turn up dead somewhere, is he?” he asked me.

“I’m going to handle it,” I repeated firmly. “I don’t want this to be an issue between us. I think the less we talk about it, the better.”

“I don’t want you to run off and solve my problems,” he snapped. That upset me, not because he snapped at me, but because we were having arguments like we used to.

“It’s our problem, we’re partners.”

“If we’re partners, we should work out a solution together,” he said logically, but I really didn’t hear the whole sentence clearly.

“If we’re partners?” I asked him that with a really pissed off and nasty tone.

“You know what I mean,” he snapped back at me. And we were back in that other place, where we didn’t get along and didn’t listen to each other, a place I didn’t want to go back to. That realization shook me out of my pissy mood.

“Look, I’m sorry. This has me really pissed off, and I’m directing some of it at you. That’s not fair.” I watched him mellow.

“I guess I just feel guilty about it, since he’s my fuck-up in the first place.”

“Will says you have bad taste in men,” I said, teasing him.

“I’m with you,” he shot back.

“See, that’s what I told him.” He laughed with me then, and I moved forward and hugged him, letting the physical contact soothe over our emotions.

“Great minds think alike,” he quipped.

I got serious again. “I just didn’t want to upset you, that’s why I didn’t plan to talk about this with you. If you want me to, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you anything.”

“Do you really think he’s serious?” Robbie asked, referring to Carson. “It sounds like he’s just playing a stupid game.”

“Maybe he is, but if that’s the case, it is a really stupid game. If Alexandra’s involved, it’s serious. I’m not taking that risk. I’m not going to bet Will, JJ, or Darius on my guess that he’s innocuous.”

I’d brought him to the same place I was, where it was a simple equation: Carson, or our sons. There was no contest. He nodded sadly.

 

April 11, 2000

“We’re going ahead with our plans,” I told my team. I watched their assembled faces as they digested that, and seemed to accept my words as an admission of failure. “On the 17^th, we’ll make sure we give the information we have to the IRS. Then during the week, we’ll snake that third contract away from them and GoChang will be shut down in China.”

“Do you think that will be enough?” Ethan asked.

“That alone will not be enough to bring them down, but it will set the ball in motion. You know as well as I do that plans never survive the first round of battle. We’re going to have to think on our feet once things start happening.”

“You make it sound like you’re planning something else. You want to share that with us?” Jacob asked. That was a strange question, coming from an attorney.

“There are a lot of people who don’t like ABC. If they join the fray, it would be helpful. If they sense Omega is weak and vulnerable, they may want to jump in and take advantage of the situation. We have no way of predicting that. As of right now, I’d like us to focus on making sure Triton is a strong competitor for Omega, or any other firm. We’ll drop this tax stuff on Omega, we’ll mess with their contracts, we’ll help them realize a huge loss with GoChang, and then we focus on business.” They looked at me blankly.

“I can work with that,” Randi said. “Triton has so much potential, it’s exciting to help them push forward.”

“I need one more thing, and I need it by Monday,” I announced. They looked at me, waiting. “I want you to evaluate Omega’s assets and programs. If we have an opportunity to acquire them, or part of them, I want to know which parts we want.”

“I don’t know if we’d be allowed to pick up the whole company,” Rashid said. “The Pentagon will once again be nervous about having only one major electronics provider.”

“That’s a good point,” I said, and was glad he made it for me. I’d already thought of that, but I didn’t say so. “I need you to envision a scenario where Omega is dissolving, and we partner with PTL to acquire their assets and divide them up.”

“Do you think that will happen?” Ethan asked, surprised. He couldn’t see how we could go from an admission of defeat to acquiring Omega.

“I don’t know, but if it does, I want to be prepared. If it does happen, we’ll need to be able to convince the PTL people to go with us on the deal, and we’ll need to act damn fast.” I turned to Randi. “I’ll need contact and profile info on the key players at PTL.”

“You got it,” she said.

“I’ll work on the numbers,” Cal said unnecessarily.

“Thanks. After next week, maybe we can all go back to building companies, and not destroying them.”

“Let’s hope,” Grace said. I nodded. I had to walk this last part of the path to destroy Omega all by myself.

Well, almost alone. I headed upstairs to meet with Stef and fill him in on my meeting. “I feel bad, like I built them up to a major climax, and then left them hanging.”

“You make it sound like this whole battle has been unproductive. Look at what we are achieving with Triton. They are growing and thriving, and I would have to believe that if we tried to sell our stake now, we would already have achieved a huge profit.” He was being logical, and I was being emotional.

“I made a deal with the devil,” I told Stef morosely.

“I think evil is a relative term,” he replied. “Even Roosevelt befriended Stalin to beat Hitler.”

“Robbie was worried I’d lose my soul in this fight. Maybe he was right.”

“You are whining,” he said to me rudely. I looked at him, thought about what he said, and realized he was right. That actually made me laugh.

“Wow. That’s pretty ironic,” I joked, thinking of how annoyed I got when Robbie whined. “Thanks for snapping me out of my morose mood.”

“If I recall, you have done that for me a few times,” he said, smiling. “I am going home.”

“I’ll ride with you.” We chatted away about nothing important on our way to Escorial. Stef must have sensed how keyed up, yet drained I was by this whole battle. I finally got us back on the topic at hand: Omega. “I was willing to play within certain bounds until they messed with the kids.”

“Protecting your children is a primal motive. It is understandable that you would feel more threatened by that than if the threats are just aimed at you.”

We pulled through the gates at Escorial and I looked at my watch. It was 7:00pm. “We’re going to be late,” I told Stef with a smile.

“I am working on making JP more flexible,” Stef said, cracking me up. As it was, JP didn’t bat an eye when we walked in five minutes late. I guess we all had more important things to worry about. It was a small crowd, with just Stef, JP, my mother, Frank, and I.

“That is just horrible, that man stalking Will,” my mother said. There was fear and anger in her voice. “I hope you are taking steps to deal with it.”

“I’m sure Bradley has things under control,” JP said, shutting her down. I just stared at him, totally stunned. His gaze moved over and his eyes locked on mine; he gave me an almost imperceptible wink. Everyone stopped talking and stared at him, then at me, taking in this monumental event. He’d just told them all that he trusted me to take care of things without his interference. It was as if the master had told the apprentice that he had graduated, and was now able to function on his own. It was like that scene in Star Wars, where Yoda told Luke Skywalker: ‘no more training do you require.’ The pause became uncomfortable until my mother started conversation up with some observations about the weather. I glance over at JP and smiled at him to thank him for the vote of confidence, and for helping to heal the wounds that had been there between us.

           

April 14, 2000

 

“The markets have certainly cooperated with your plans,” Stef said. I was sitting in his office, giving him a final briefing before our plan went into effect. “The NASDAQ closed at 3321 today.”

“That’s quite a drop from March 10, when it was a little over 5000,” I said. “You sure called that one.”

“Thank you,” Stef said, basking in the glow of being right. All of the employees eyed him with hero-worship now. Well, they’d eyed him that way before, but now it was even more pronounced. “The fallout in the venture capital industry has been extreme already. New deals are rare, and the prices on old ones have dropped like a rock.”

“I heard that Alphalogic has put going public on hold for the foreseeable future. We figure that the value of their stock today means that Omega lost about 75% of their investment, at least on paper.”

“What about the other deals they picked up in the City?” he asked.

“It’s pretty much the same thing. On all of them, they’ll be lucky if they’re worth half of what they paid, and on most, it will be more like 20-30%. They took a bath.” I was jubilant about that, and so was my team. “We think that once we start this process, and people look at their holdings, they’ll see what we see, and the stock will drop big time.”

“What is your buy price?” he asked.

“We think a lowball price for their shares is $5. I planned to start at $10, then while the market is pondering that, we’ll pull that and drop the offer to $5 or lower. That should shake things up even more.”

“I think that is a good strategy. How does Jordan feel about this? He will be watching much of his inheritance dissolve.”

“I talked to him about that.” Jordan and I had been having frequent conversations now that I was chairman, and I continued to be impressed by his integrity. “He said that he hadn’t planned on getting anything anyway, based on how badly he and Elliot got along. I think he did alright when his grandfather died, and his mother left him everything that was hers, so he’s focused on what he can make for himself at this point.”

“It is unfortunate that their relationship was damaged by all of this,” Stef said sympathetically.

“I think it was damaged long before this happened. I think Jordan is a dutiful son, and just went with the flow. When it was his time to call the shots, Elliot wouldn’t let him. That lack of confidence is a death blow.”

“It sounds much like what Robbie experienced with Greg.”

“Now that you mention it, it does sound that way. I think that Elliot’s management style was probably similar to Greg’s. Jordan is a lot different from Robbie, style-wise. Robbie is laid back and caring. I think he comes off as a teddy bear most of the time, and the employees seem to appreciate that. Jordan is more business-like. He’s like the classic east coast MBA, looking at things logically.”

“You make Jordan sound heartless,” Stef said, laughing.

“No, that’s not it,” I said, pretending to be irritated. “I think when it comes to making decisions, Jordan will base his primarily on the facts and the numbers. Robbie will include personal factors as well.”

“He listens to the sob stories?”

I smiled. “Yeah, he does.” I studied him carefully. “You are more like Robbie than Jordan.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You think I fall for sob stories?”

“If they come from a hot guy, yeah.” We both chuckled at that.

“It would seem that JP has done that with you.”

“Listened to my sob stories?” I joked.

“No, grown to realize that he can rely on you to make good decisions without his input. That he does not have to micro-manage you.”

“I haven’t always made the best choices, so I guess it wasn’t unrealistic for him to be worried, but usually those fuck ups are directed at my own life, not at others,” I said pensively. “It meant a lot that he said that at dinner. I felt so distant from him throughout this whole thing with Omega. In fact, I’ve felt a wedge between us since Brian came into the picture. It feels like that’s gone now, and we’re at a good place.”

“I think Brian has been hard for him to deal with because he had to deal with the same thing, with finding out he had a different father. In the end, I think he has realized that Brian is scum, and that his guilt is misplaced.”

“I hope so; otherwise he may really end up hating me.” Stef refused to let this conversation turn into a pity party for me, so he changed the subject.

“I heard that Amphion was dissolving, and their assets were folding into Omega,” Stef said.

“We’d planned for that and included Amphion in our numbers for Omega. The big news there is it means they’re out of our world, out of the venture capital business.” I guess I wasn’t too surprised about that, but it did seem like they came in with a bang and went out with a whimper.

“It does. I hear Cary Chase is scrambling around, looking for a job,” Stef said, making us both laugh. “It seems that he is finding it difficult after his conduct with Amphion. Rumor has it that he was somewhat profligate with his money, and he does not have much left.”

“He’s broke?” Stef nodded. “Man, he really went through some cash.”

“He did,” Stef agreed. “Brandon has been a busy little boy.”

“Oh?”

“He is apparently living with Dan Church. I am not clear as to how all of these relationships are intertwined, because Brandon was obviously intimately involved with Carson.”

“How do you know that Dan and Brandon are living together?” I asked.

“I am JP’s partner,” he said, smiling. “JP did some investigations into the cop that hounded you about Lark. That cop is definitely getting some supplemental income, although from what source I do not know.”

“I’ll bet I do,” I said. “Another slug on Alexandra’s payroll. No wonder Omega isn’t as profitable as they could be.”

“If you can buy them out, how do you plan to finance it?” he asked.

“Well, we put together that war chest, and I think that will be enough.” Stef and I had each sidelined a huge chunk of our net worth as a resource in the event we got the opportunity to acquire Omega. If that happened, I’d be up to my ears in that business, and so would Stef. “If we do this, and things turn out badly, we could both be a lot poorer.”

“So I will only be worth $100 million instead of $2 billion?” Stef asked sarcastically. “I will try to make do.”

“Yeah, but for me, it means dropping down to about $10 million, and who can live on that kind of chump change?” We both laughed as my reference to ‘chump change’ reminded us of Tonto.

“Next week will be a busy week,” he said.

“It will,” I agreed. “It’s like that movie The Godfather.”

“That was a good movie. When I watched Marlon Brando with all that cotton in his mouth, I decided that is what he would probably look like if he was sucking a dick.” I cracked up at that.

“Well, I was thinking of the very end of the movie, after Marlon Brando dies. Next week I’m going to clear away all of my adversaries one way or another. Well, maybe not all of them, but at least the ones linked to Omega.”

“Good riddance,” Stef said. I wholeheartedly agreed.