The Veritas Conflict (59 page)

“What do I …?”

“Just wait. I must log you on. Write down the instructions.” He smiled as his fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling up several different programs and typing in his private passwords.

Claire pulled a notebook and pen out of her backpack and listened carefully to his instructions, writing as fast as she could.

“… the printers are over there, and if for some reason you need to get onto Harvard’s intranet you can do that here.” He patted another terminal. “The one you’re at is not on-line, so no one can hack into it. The one you’re at, by the way, also contains our proprietary alumni database. Much more extensive detail than the one you’ll find on the intranet, but its also a lot more difficult to use, so I don’t recommend it.” He stared at her from under bushy brows. His e
yes
twinkled. “Got all that?”

“I hope so. What happens if I need help?”

“My clerk is around. He’s supervising the moving of those boxes. He’ll be back for another load at some point. The movers will be working all weekend.”

Claire took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“I hope you find everything you need. I’ll be back Monday-after-next if you need anything more.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The director smiled, nodded, and grabbed an attaché case off a nearby desk. “Good luck, miss.” He walked quickly down the long room and out the door. Claire watched through the glass in the upper half of the wall as he hurried along the corridor, heading toward the exit like a short Albert Einstein with a briefcase.

Claire let out a breath and turned back toward the terminal. She tapped tentatively, then with more confidence, as she perused screen after screen of scholarships, student
grants, work-study programs. There were many listings to check, but the time flew by under Claire’s eager fingers. She pulled up the next section, typing in the usual query: Pike Fellowships.

And there it was. Her lips parted as the screen flickered. “One category found. Processing.” A small hourglass appeared in place of the cursor, and then a summary screen appeared. Claire squealed in triumph as the bold heading appeared at the top of the page. “Pike Fellowships, Private Scholarship.”

She forced herself to take a deep breath, then leaned forward, biting her lip hard as she scanned the page. It was packed with text. She began muttering to herself, reading the stark, technical summary.

“Private scholarship. Endowed. Restricted. Unpublished; no applications. Description on file: Controlled by the Pike Trust, granted to juniors and seniors of the proper character and standing. Full tuition. Stipend case by case. Crosstrust cooperation necessary with the following universities.”

Claire’s eyes flickered down the list of mostly Ivy League schools, and the names and phone numbers of the appropriate contacts. Then there was a bunch of technical information about banks, investments, and other legal language. There were also links to more details. At the very bottom was the line, “All recipients chosen by designees of Pike Holdings. Current designees: Anton Pike, Victor Pike.”

She leaned back in her chair. “What is Pike Holdings?”

Sherry grabbed Stefan’s hand as they headed down the escalator toward the T. She held it tight, her thoughts indignant. What a ludicrous, mean-spirited attack. The nerve of Claire!

They arrived at the platform. The track was empty, but the area was crowded with people. Stefan leaned against a railing to wait, and Sherry backed into him, inviting him to put his arms around her. He did, holding her hands and rubbing his thumb softly along her fingers. She could hear the train approaching.

“When you were on the Machu Picchu trip, did you ever see anything strange going on?” Sherry asked.

The thumb stopped moving. “What?”

“Claire was just telling me about some guy who was on that trip a few years ago, who got arrested in New York, and—”

“What!” He swiveled her around, staring into her eyes.

The train arrived in a rush, the doors smoothly opening. She tugged him toward the doors. “Come on, I’ll tell you on the train.”

He hung back, his face tense. “Claire told you what?”

Sherry pulled on his arm, moving him through the doors and onto the train. “She just said that she saw some friend of yours busted on CNN for drug-running.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“M-something. Sounded like it could be a—”

“Murphy?”

“Yeah, that might’ve been it. She—”

He started for the doors just as they closed in his face. He turned slowly, and Sherry was taken aback by the dark look on his face.

“How did Claire know that Murphy was a friend of mine?”

“I don’t know. She said she was doing research or something, and this had come up. I wasn’t listening very closely. I was too angry that she was implying something bad about you.”

“Well.” A rigid smile appeared on Stefan’s face, and he put his arm around her, steering her toward an empty seat in the back of the car. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me what you do remember.”

She sat in a single seat tucked back in the corner of the car. He stood over her, asking soft questions. She gave soft answers: Claire had been upset … Murphy was arrested for drug-running or something … Claire questioned how well Sherry knew Stefan … she was doing some sort of research on the Pikes…

“Keep going.”

“That’s pretty much it. I’d taken a phone message that she was in a hurry to return—her research for Mansfield on something—and I had to meet you.”

“What message?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Well, you took the message!” Stefan slammed his fist against the bulkhead of the train car. Sherry started to her feet.

“Sit down.”

Sherry looked into his eyes, quivering slightly, but stayed standing.

His voice was soft as he leaned his face close to hers. “You took the message. What did it say?”

“What’s going on, Stefan?” Her voice was shaky. “What’s wrong?”

“What did the message say, Sherry?”

She sat down and took a calming breath. “I’m not telling you anything until you tell me what’s going on.”

A fleeting rage crossed Stefan’s face, and then he sighed and shrugged. “I’m really not supposed to talk about this, but I suppose with you its okay.” He glanced around before he lowered his voice. “One of our main pharmaceutical competitors has been trying to get us in trouble with the regulators for years, and they’ve just stepped it up. They’re trying to
harass us by impugning our people and inviting audits and investigations by the government, trying to get us shut down. And now they seem to have set up poor Murphy.”

“But … he doesn’t work for your uncle. Claire said Murphy was an investment banker.”

“Well, yes, he is. But he’s
our
investment banker, so to speak.” He cleared his throat. “He works for a big investment bank in New York that represents us, and he’s one of our bankers. So by setting him up, this competitor is really harassing us.”

“Oh.”

“And … I hate to say this, but we’ve discovered that Mansfield is actually working with this competitor as a consultant.”

“Oh!”

Stefan crouched down by her seat and looked into her eyes. “So you see, there’s a possibility that Claire is an unwitting pawn in a devious strategy concocted by our competitor. So you can see why I really need you to remember what that message said.”

“Yes. What a shame. Well, let me think. This guy called …” She closed her eyes, reciting the words as they came to mind. “He said Claire had left him a message asking if she could come over to his office, but he was leaving earlier than expected, at one-thirty.”

Stefan glanced at his watch. As Sherry told him the caller’s title and office, Stefan’s mouth tightened into a hard line.

“I kinda got the impression she was in a hurry to get over there. She may be there right now.”

Stefan stared at the dark tunnel outside the windows as the train wound its way toward their stop in Boston. He muttered to himself.

Sherry sat back, relieved. Thank goodness she’d been able to remember that message!

Claire sat straighter in her chair. She’d have to worry about Pike Holdings later. She clicked print on the summary screen. Across the room she heard the paper going through the printer, and she put her notebook back in her backpack. Easier than writing it all down, that was for sure.

She looked at the details on the monitor one more time, then started paging through the other screens on this scholarship. She muttered under her breath, frustrated. But after a few minutes, her eyes lit up.
Aha!

It took just a moment, and she was eagerly scanning the Recipients section. The screen was filled with a list of years the scholarship had been granted. She frowned slightly. The record was shorter than expected, starting in 1985.
Probably since they computerized the records
.

She swung around in her chair and stared at the cardboard boxes behind her. If more was in there, she’d never find it. She turned back to the computer, sighing. But that nice old man had said the boxes contained only records that had been modernized, so the information had to be here somewhere.

At least they now knew the old Pike Fellowship was being granted in the modern day. She just needed to work with what she had. But where to start? She felt unsettled, rudderless. Suddenly, she sat upright in her chair. She hadn’t told Ian where she was!

Claire walked down the corridor toward the receptionist’s station. “Excuse me.”

The receptionist looked up in surprise.

Claire smiled. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

“It’s no bother.” The receptionist pressed a few buttons on her telephone and smiled. “What can I do for you … Claire Rivers, right?”

“That’s right. I need to make a phone call about this research. Can I use one of the phones in the office or …?”

The receptionist gestured to a telephone on the side of her desk. “Dial 9 to get out.”

“Great.”

Claire dialed Ian’s number, turning away slightly from the receptionist’s friendly gaze. The phone rang several times, then Ian’s voice mail picked up.
Rats
.

Her voice was soft. “Ian, this is Claire. I hope you get this message soon. Listen, you’re not going to believe what happened. I found the right place, but ended up having to rush over here before it closed because they were going to be closed for the next ten days. And I found the records we were looking for. It looks really promising, but I wanted to be sure I called you so you could come over here.”

She described the location of the office and how to find the resource room, then glanced at her watch. “I hope you get this message soon. Its two-thirty now. I’m a little uncertain as to how to proceed, and this place closes in a few hours. See you soon. I hope.”

She hung up the phone and asked the receptionist to keep an eye out for her research partner. “And one other thing. When will the clerk be back?”

The receptionist looked at a list on her desk. “Oh, not that long now. He’s probably taking a coffee break.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Within minutes Claire was back at the terminal, pondering her next move. Available class years were displayed on the screen in front of her.
1987 … 1991 … 2000
. She randomly picked
1989
and clicked on it.

Three names popped up. There were a bunch of technical codes—letters like
FN
or
MT—
beside their names, but no other identifying information, and no dollar amounts of their scholarships.

She called up recipients from another year. Six names and the codes. None of the names were familiar.

Sighing, she went to another list, from four years before. Six names again.

Murphy Barker

Johanna Godfrey

Gregory Granville III

Soraya Maljanian

Paolo Ramirez

Heather Stephenson

She stared, aghast, at the first name on the screen, then slapped her forehead. She should have thought to check that before!

She pressed print again and went to pick up the page from the printer, leaving the first still in the tray. She started to sit back down, then suddenly headed for the terminal the resource director had said was connected to Harvard’s intranet.

I wonder where all these grads are working now?

FIFTY

T
HE TRAIN SLOWED TO A STOP IN
B
OSTON
, and Stefan grabbed Sherry’s hand and pushed through the thick crowd toward the exit, incurring irritated glances from other travelers.

Sherry smiled sheepishly at the other commuters as Stefan cut into the line waiting for the long escalator up to ground level. He pulled her onto the motorized stairway, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a slim cell phone and checked the signal.

Stefan swore and shook the phone, as if that would bring up a signal. He looked up the steep escalator at the slowly growing square of daylight above them, then gazed intently at the phones small screen. “Come on, you piece of junk!”

Claire hummed to herself as she tapped out her name and password on the second terminal. In a moment she was on-line. She fumbled around for a minute before figuring out how to access the alumni database that listed the names, phone numbers, and current employment of Harvard graduates.

She smiled. You could do anything through Career Services. They made sure their alumni network would be open to all Harvard job seekers! This was probably a lot more user-friendly than the proprietary alumni database the resource director had mentioned. She typed in the first name on her list. The screen flickered, and his name appeared, one of a huge list.

Murphy Barker
. There were several lines of information below his name, including his graduating class, major, employment data, and contact data.

She looked for his employer. Keppler, Collins, and Preston.

She snorted.
Not anymore
.

There was a short summary in the work experience section—he was in investment banking, specializing in pharmaceuticals.