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“Make Detective Anderson and these accusations go away. Before they make you go away.” Walker showed himself to the door and stopped. “Glad you could come to the wedding, Christian. It means a lot to me.”

Gamble watched as the gray-haired groom let himself out. The CEO held no illusion that Walker and the investors he represented were his “friends,” but he was concerned about the extortion issue—more concerned than Walker and the CIA knew.

Gamble had yet to inform the board of directors, but the Department of Justice was pushing for a top-to-bottom cybersecurity audit of Buck. It wasn’t up to the company to decide who at DOJ would leadit, but his attorney was already negotiating with the U.S. Attorney’s Office about it, and Gamble suddenly had a very clear vision of who he wanted.

Gamble picked up his cellphone and dialed his attorney.

“Abigail, I have a name for you,” he said, confident in his decision.

Chapter 7

Kate exited the Metro station to Judiciary Square, a neighborhood filled with more government employees than any other square block in America. It had always struck Kate as odd that neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor the U.S. Department of Justice was actually in Judiciary Square, but it was otherwise chock-full of federal and municipal courthouses and office buildings. Among those closest to the Metro station was the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, the largest of the nation’s ninety-four U.S. Attorney’s offices, employing more than three hundred assistant U.S. attorneys. Right outside the station, waiting on the sidewalk, was an AUSA named Noah.

“Walk with me,” he said, and Kate went with him.

He led her away from his building, toward Holy Rosary Church. It was in this old Italian neighborhood near Georgetown Law School that Kate had first shared her secret about writing a play inspired by the tech industry. Eventually, after several edits by Noah, she would set the opening scene with the census enumerator in a Lower East Side tenement. But Kate’s early drafts had featured this D Street neighborhood pre–wrecking ball, once the D.C. version of New York’s Little Italy. Noah’s offer to read her script had made her so happy, though it was an open question whether he was more interested in the playwright than in her play. “I can’t wait to get inside your head,” he’d told her, which made Kate feel naked, or at least like a little too much cleavage was showing.

“I’ve learned a lot about Sandra Levy lately,” he said.

Not Kate’s favorite subject. “I would have thought a prosecutor in the Cybercrimes section would already know all about her.”

“She was indicted before I joined Cybercrimes. I was still doing local crimes.”

The District of Columbia office was unique in that it served as both the local and the federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital.

“What have you learned?” she asked.

“That she was an executive coach, which as best I can tell is a combination of a sports coach and a psychiatrist, someone who helps corporate leaders reach their full potential. Buck Technologies hired her to help identify who among current management should be groomed to be your father’s heir apparent as CEO.”

“Except she wasn’t really an executive coach,” said Kate.

“Actually, she was. A highly regarded one for almost fifteen years. What no one knew is that she was also a spy. Moscow planted her to tap into the deepest, darkest secrets of corporate America.”

“I wasn’t aware that the Russian connection was ever proved.”

“It wasn’t. The FBI arrested her too soon. It was a judgment call. If they’d waited for her to actually steal Buck’s technology, the damage would have been irreversible. But by not waiting until they could catch her red-handed, that undercut our espionage case.”

“Which is why she was never convicted of espionage.”

“No. Convicted on multiple counts of lying to a federal investigator. But not espionage.”

“You do realize you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, right?” asked Kate.

He stopped walking. “How much do you know about the consent decree that Buck Technologies entered into with the Department of Justice after the conviction of Sandra Levy?”

“I know the company never admitted any wrongdoing,” she said. “In fact, the DOJ’s cybersecurity audit found that Sandra Levy was working alone and that no national security interests were compromised. I hope you didn’t call me here to tell me that’s changed.”

“No, it hasn’t changed.”

“Then what’s up with this ‘can’t talk on the phone’ walk around Judiciary Square?”

“The consent decree with Buck gives the federal government the right to do one follow-up audit within five years of Sandra Levy’s conviction. Your father was notified this morning that we’ve decided to do it now.”

“Why now?”

“I can’t tell you that. The department doesn’t comment on cyber audits of companies that have access to matters of national security.”

“Then we probably shouldn’t be having this conversation.”

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