"No. Fuck him."

"I think we should counter."

"Fuck him."

Fernandez shook her head. "Let's be smart, not angry. What do you hope to gain from all this, Tom? There must be a figure you would accept."

"I want what I'll get when they take the company public," Sanders said. "And that's somewhere between five and twelve million."

"You think. It's a speculative estimate for a future event."

"That's what it'll be, believe me." Fernandez looked at him.

"Would you take five million now?" "Yes." "Alternatively, would you take the compensation package he outlined, plus the stock options you would get at the time of the offering?"

Sanders considered that. "Yes." "All right. I'll tell him."

She walked back across the courtyard to Heller. The two spoke briefly. After a moment, Heller turned on his heel and stalked away.

Fernandez came back, grinning. "He didn't go for it." They headed back inside. "But I'll tell you one thing: this is a good sign."

"It is?"

"Yes. If they want to settle before Johnson gives her testimony, it's a very good sign."

In view of the acquisition," Meredith Johnson said, "I felt it was important that I meet with all the division heads on Monday." She spoke calmly and slowly, looking at everyone seated around the table in turn. Sanders had the sense of an executive giving a presentation. "I met with Don Cherry, Mark Lewyn, and Mary Anne Hunter during the afternoon. But Tom Sanders said he had a very busy schedule, and asked if we could meet at the end of the day. At his request, I scheduled the meeting with Tom at six o'clock."

He was amazed at the cool way that she lied. He had expected her to be effective, but he was still astonished to see her in action.

"Tom suggested that we could have a drink as well, and go over old times. That wasn't really my style, but I agreed. I was especially concerned to establish good relations with Tom, because I knew he was disappointed he had not gotten the job, and because we had a past history. I wanted our working relationship to be cordial. For me to refuse a drink with him seemed . . . I don't know-standoffish, or stiff. So I said yes.

"Tom came to the office at six o'clock. We had a glass of wine, and talked about the problems with the Twinkle drive. However, from the outset he kept making comments of a personal nature that I considered inappropriate for example, comments about my appearance, and about how often he thought about our past relationship. Reference to sexual incidents in the past, and so on."

Son of a bitch Sanders's whole body was tense. His hands were clenched. His jaw was tight.

Fernandez leaned over and put her hand on his wrist.

Meredith Johnson was saying, ". . . had some calls from Garvin and others. I took them at my desk. Then my assistant came in and asked if she could leave early, to deal with some personal matters. I said she could. She left the room. That was when Tom came over and suddenly started kissing me."

She paused for a moment, looking around the room. She met Sanders's eyes with a steady gaze.

"I was taken aback by his sudden and unexpected overture," she said, staring evenly at him. "At first, I tried to protest, and to defuse the situation. But Tom is much larger than I am. Much stronger. He pulled me over onto the couch and started to disrobe, and to take my clothes off as well. As you can imagine, I was horrified and frightened. The situation was out of control, and the fact that it was happening made our future working relationship very difficult. To say nothing of how I felt personally, as a woman. I mean, to be assaulted in this way."

Sanders stared at her, trying desperately to control his anger. He heard Fernandez, at his ear. 'Breathe. "He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He had not been aware until then that he was holding his breath.

"I kept trying to make light of it," Meredith continued, "to make jokes, to get free. I was trying to say to him, Oh, come on Tom, let's not do this. But he was determined. And when he tore my underwear off, when I heard the sound of the cloth ripping, I realized that I could not get out of this situation in any diplomatic way. I had to acknowledge that Mr. Sanders was raping me and I became very scared and very angry. When he moved away from me on the couch, to free his penis from his trousers, prior to penetration, I kneed him in the groin. He rolled off the couch, onto the floor. Then he got to his feet, and I got to my feet.

"Mr. Sanders was angry that I had refused his advances. He started shouting at me, and then he hit me, knocking me down onto the floor. But by then I was angry; too. I remember saying, `You can't do this to me,' and swearing at him. But I can't say I remember everything that he said or that I said. He came back at me one more time, but by then I had my shoes in my hand, and I hit him in the chest with my high heels, trying to drive him away. I think I tore his shirt. I'm not sure. I was so angry by then, I wanted to kill him. I'm sure I scratched him. I remember I said I wanted to kill him. I was so angry. Here it was my first day in this new job, I was under so much pressure, I was trying to do a good job and this . . . this thing had happened that ruined our relationship and was going to cause a lot of trouble for everybody in the company. He went off in an angry rage. After he left, the question for me was how to handle it."

She paused, shaking her head, apparently lost in the emotions of that moment.

Heller said gently, "How did you decide to handle it?"

"Well, it's a problem. Tom's an important employee, and he is not an easy person to replace. Furthermore, in my judgment it would not be wise to make a replacement in the middle of the acquisition. My first impulse was to see if we could forget the whole thing. After all, we're both adults. I was personally embarrassed, but I thought that Tom would probably be embarrassed, too, when he sobered up and had a chance to think it over. And I thought that maybe we could just go on from there. After all, awkward things happen sometimes. People can overlook them.

"So when the meeting time changed, I called his house to tell him. He wasn't there, but I had a very pleasant conversation with his wife. It was clear from our conversation that she did not know that Tom had been meeting me, or that Tom and I knew each other from the past. Anyway, I gave his wife the new meeting time, and asked her to tell Tom.

"The next day, at the meeting, things did not go well. Tom showed up late, and changed his story about the Twinkle drive, minimizing the problems and contradicting me. He was clearly undercutting my authority in a corporate meeting and I could not permit that. I went directly to Phil Blackburn and told him everything that had happened. I said I did not want to press formal charges, but I made it clear that I could not work with Tom and that a change would have to be made. Phil said he would talk to Tom. And eventually it was decided that we would try to mediate a resolution."

She sat back, and placed her hands flat on the table. "That's all, I think. That's everything." She looked around at everyone, meeting their eyes in turn. Very cool, very controlled.

It was a spectacular performance, and in Sanders it produced a quite unexpected effect: he felt guilty. He felt as if he had done the things that she said he had done. He felt sudden shame, and looked down at the table, hanging his head.

Fernandez kicked him in the ankle, hard. He jerked his head up, wincing. She was frowning at him. He sat up.

Judge Murphy cleared her throat. "Evidently," she said, "we are presented with two entirely incompatible reports. Ms. Johnson, I have only a few questions before we go on."

"Yes, Your Honor?"

"You're an attractive woman. I'm sure you've had to fend off your share of unwanted approaches in the course of your business career."

Meredith smiled. "Yes, Your Honor."

"And I'm sure you have developed some skill at it."

"Yes, Your Honor."

"You've said you were aware of tensions from your past relationship with Mr. Sanders. Considering those tensions, I would have thought that a meeting held in the middle of the day, without wine, would have been more professional-would have set a better tone."

"I'm sure that's correct in hindsight," Meredith said. "But at the time, this was all in the context of the acquisition meetings. Everybody was busy. I was just trying to fit the meeting with Mr. Sanders in before the Conley-White sessions the next day. That's all I was thinking about. Schedules."

"I see. And after Mr. Sanders left your office, why didn't you call Mr. Blackburn, or someone else in the company, to report what had happened?"

"As I said, I was hoping it could all be overlooked."

"Yet the episode you describe," Murphy said, "is a serious breach of normal business behavior. As an experienced manager, you must have known the chance of a good working relationship with Mr. Sanders was nil. I would have thought you'd feel obliged to report what happened to a superior at once. And from a practical standpoint, I would have thought you'd want to go on record as soon as possible."

"As I said, I was still hoping." She frowned, thinking. "You know, I guess . . . I felt responsible for Tom. As an old friend, I didn't want to be the reason why he lost his job."

"On the other hand, you are the reason why he lost his job."

"Yes. Again, in hindsight."

"I see. All right. Ms. Fernandez?"

"Thank you, Your Honor." Fernandez turned in her chair to face Johnson. "Ms. Johnson, in a situation like this, when private behavior occurs behind closed doors, we need to look at surrounding events where we can. So I'll ask you a few questions about surrounding events."

"Fine."

"You've said that when you made the appointment with Mr. Sanders, he requested wine."

"Yes." "Where did the wine come from, that you drank that night?" "I asked my assistant to get it." "This is Ms. Ross?" "Yes." "She's been with you a long time?" "Yes." "She came up with you from Cupertino?" "Yes."

"She is a trusted employee?" "Yes."

"How many bottles did you ask Ms. Ross to buy?" "I don't remember if I specified a particular number." "All right. How many bottles did she get?" "Three, I think." "Three. And did you ask your assistant to buy anything else?" "Like what?" "Did you ask her to buy condoms?"

"No."

"Do you know if she bought condoms?"

"No, I don't."

"In fact, she did. She bought condoms from the Second Avenue Drugstore."

"Well, if she bought condoms," Johnson said, "it must have been for herself."

"Do you know of any reason why your assistant would say she bought the condoms for you?"

"No," Johnson said, speaking slowly. She was thinking it over. "I can't imagine she would do that."

"Just a moment," Murphy said, interrupting. "Ms. Fernandez, are you alleging that the assistant did say that she bought the condoms for Ms. Johnson?"

"Yes, Your Honor. We are."

"You have a witness to that effect?" Yes, we do."

Sitting beside Johnson, Heller rubbed the bottom of his lip with one finger. Johnson showed no reaction at all. She didn't even blink. She just continued to gaze calmly at Fernandez, waiting for the next question.

"Ms. Johnson, did you instruct your assistant to lock the door to your office when Mr. Sanders was with you?" "I most certainly did not." "Do you know if she locked the door?" "No, I don't." "Do you know why she would tell someone that you ordered her to lock the door?"

"No."

"Ms. Johnson. Your meeting with Mr. Sanders was at six o'clock. Did you have any appointments later that day?"

"No. His was the last."

"Isn't it true that you had a seven o'clock appointment that you canceled?"

"Oh. Yes, that's true. I had one with Stephanie Kaplan. But I canceled it because I wasn't going to have the figures ready for her to go over. There wasn't time to prepare."

"Are you aware that your assistant told Ms. Kaplan that you were canceling because you had another meeting that was going to run late?"

"I don't know what my assistant said to her," Meredith replied, showing impatience for the first time. "We seem to be talking a great deal about my assistant. Perhaps you should be asking her these questions."

"Perhaps we should. I'm sure it can be arranged. All right. Let's turn to something else. Mr. Sanders said he saw a cleaning woman when he left your office. Did you also see her?"

"No. I stayed in my office after he had gone."

"The cleaning woman, Marian Walden, says she overheard a loud argument prior to Mr. Sanders's departure. She says she heard a man say, `This isn't a good idea, I don't want to do this,' and she heard a woman say, `You fucking bastard, you can't leave me like this.' Do you recall saying anything like that?"

"No. I recall saying, `You can't do this to me."'

"But you don't recall saying, `You can't leave me like this.' "

"No, I do not."

"Ms. Walden is quite clear that was what you said."

"I don't know what Ms. Walden thought she heard," Johnson said. "The doors were closed the entire time."

"Weren't you speaking quite loudly?"

"I don't know. Possibly."

"Ms. Walden said you were shouting. And Mr. Sanders has said you were shouting."

"I don't know."

"All right. Now, Ms. Johnson, you said that you informed Mr. Blackburn that you could not work with Mr. Sanders after the unfortunate Tuesday morning meeting, is that right?"

"Yes. That's right."

Sanders sat forward. He suddenly realized that he had overlooked that, while Meredith was making her original statement. He had been so upset, he hadn't realized that she had lied about when she saw Blackburn. Because Sanders had gone to Blackburn's office right after the meeting-and Blackburn already knew.

"Ms. Johnson, what time would you say you went to see Mr. Blackburn?"

"I don't know. After the meeting."

"About what time?"

"Ten o'clock."

"Not earlier?"

"No."

Sanders glanced over at Blackburn, who sat rigidly at the end of the table. He looked tense, and bit his lip.

Fernandez said, "Shall I ask Mr. Blackburn to confirm that? I imagine his assistant has a log, if he has difficulty with exact memory."

There was a short silence. She looked over at Blackburn. "No," Meredith said. "No. I was confused. What I meant to say was I talked to Phil after the initial meeting, and before the second meeting."

"The initial meeting being the one at which Sanders was absent? The eight o'clock meeting."

"Yes."

"So Mr. Sanders's behavior at the second meeting, where he contradicted you, could not have been relevant to your decision to speak to Mr. Blackburn. Because you had already spoken to Mr. Blackburn by the time that meeting took place."

"As I say, I was confused."

"I have no more questions of this witness, Your Honor."

Judge Murphy closed her notepad. Her expression was bland and unreadable. She looked at her watch. "It's now eleven-thirty. We will break for lunch for two hours. I'm allowing extra time so that counsel can meet to review the situation and to decide how the parties wish to proceed." She stood up. "I am also available if counsel wish to meet with me for any reason. Otherwise, I'll see you all back here at one-thirty sharp. Have a pleasant and productive lunch." She turned and walked out of the room.

Blackburn stood and said, "Personally, I'd like to meet with opposing counsel, right now."

Sanders glanced over at Fernandez.

Fernandez gave the faintest of smiles. "I'm amenable to that, Mr. Blackburn," she said.

The three lawyers stood beside the fountain. Fernandez was talking animatedly to Heller, their heads close together. Blackburn was a few paces away, a cellular phone pressed to his ear. Across the courtyard, Meredith Johnson talked on another phone, gesturing angrily as she talked.

Sanders stood off to one side by himself, and watched. There was no question in his mind that Blackburn would seek a settlement. Piece by piece, Fernandez had torn Meredith Johnson's version apart: demonstrating that she had ordered her assistant to buy wine, to buy condoms, to lock the door when Sanders was there, and to cancel later appointments. Clearly, Meredith Johnson was not a supervisor surprised by a sexual overture. She had been planning it all afternoon. Her crucial reaction-her angry statement that "You can't leave me"-had been overheard by the cleaning woman. And she had lied about the timing and motivation of her report to Blackburn.

There could be no doubt in anyone's mind that Meredith was lying. The only question now was what Blackburn and DigiCom would do about it. Sanders had sat through enough management sensitivity seminars on sexual harassment to know what the company's obligation was. They really had no choice.

They would have to fire her.

But what would they do about Sanders? That was another question entirely. He had the strong intuition that by bringing this accusation, he had burned his bridges at the company; he would never be welcomed back. Sanders had shot down Garvin's pet bird, and Garvin would not forgive him for it.

So: they wouldn't let him back. They would have to pay him off.

"They're calling it quits already, huh?"

Sanders turned and saw Alan, one of the investigators, coming up from the parking lot. Alan had glanced over at the lawyers and quickly appraised the situation.

"I think so," Sanders said.

Alan squinted at the lawyers. "They should. Johnson has a problem. And a lot of people in the company know about it. Especially her assistant."

Sanders said, "You talked to her last night?"

"Yeah," he said. "Herb found the cleaning woman and got her taped. And I had a late night with Betsy Ross. She's a lonely lady, here in a new town. She drinks too much, and I taped it all."

"Did she know that?"

"She doesn't have to," Alan said. "It's still admissible." He watched the lawyers for a moment. "Blackburn must be shitting staples about now."

Louise Fernandez was stalking across the courtyard, grim-faced, hunched over. "Goddamn it," she said, as she came up.

"What happened?" Sanders said.

Fernandez shook her head. "They won't make a deal."

"They won't make a deal?"

"That's right. They just deny every point. Her assistant bought wine? That was for Sanders. Her assistant bought condoms? That was for the assistant. The assistant says she bought them for Johnson? The assistant is an unreliable drunk. The cleaning lady's report? She couldn't know what she heard, she had the radio on. And always the constant refrain, `You know, Louise, this won't stand up in court.' And Bulletproof Betty is on the phone, running the whole thing. Telling everybody what to do." Fernandez swore. "I have to tell you. This is the kind of shit male executives pull. They look you right in the eye and say, `It never happened. It just isn't there. You have no case.' It burns my ass. Damn it!"

"Better get some lunch, Louise," Alan said. To Sanders he said, "She sometimes forgets to eat."

"Yeah, fine. Sure. Eat." They started toward the parking lot. She was walking fast, shaking her head. "I can't understand how they can take this position," she said. "Because I know-I could see it in judge Murphy's eyes that she didn't think there'd be an afternoon session at all. Judge Murphy heard the evidence and concluded it's all over. So did 1. But it's not over. Blackburn and Heller aren't moving one inch. They're not going to settle. They're basically inviting us to sue."

"So we'll sue," Sanders said, shrugging.

"Not if we're smart," Fernandez said. "Not now. This is exactly what I was afraid would happen. They got a lot of free discovery, and we got nothing. We're back to square one. And they have the next three years to work on that assistant, and that cleaning lady, and anything else we come up with. And let me tell you: in three years we won't even be able to find that assistant."

"But we have her on tape . . ."

"She still has to appear in court. And believe me, she never will. Look, DigiCom has huge exposure. If we show that DigiCom didn't respond in a timely and adequate fashion to what they knew about Johnson, they could be liable for extremely large damages. There was a case on point last month in California: nineteen point four million dollars, found for the plaintiff. With exposure like that, take my word for it: the assistant will be unavailable. She'll be on vacation in Costa Rica for the rest of her life."

"So what do we do?" Sanders said.

"For better or worse, we're committed now. We've taken this line and we have to continue it. Somehow, we have to force them to come to terms," she said. "But we're going to need something else to do that. You got anything else?"

Sanders shook his head. "No, nothing."

"Hell," Fernandez said. "What's going on? I thought DigiCom was worried about this allegation becoming public before they finished the acquisition. I thought they had a publicity problem."

Sanders nodded. "I thought they did, too."

"Then there's something we don't understand. Because Heller and Blackburn both act like they couldn't care less what we do. Now why is that?"

A heavyset man with a mustache walked past them, carrying a sheaf of papers. He looked like a cop.

"Who's he?" Fernandez said.

"Never seen him before."

"They were calling on the phone for somebody. Trying to locate somebody. That's why I ask."

Sanders shrugged. "What do we do now?"

"We eat," Alan said.

"Right. Let's go eat," Fernandez said, "and forget it for a while."

In the same moment, a thought popped into his mind: Forget that phone. It seemed to come from nowhere, like a command:

Forget that phone.

Walking beside him, Fernandez sighed. "We still have things we can develop. It's not over yet. You've still got things, right, Alan?"

"Absolutely," Alan said. "We've hardly begun. We haven't gotten to Johnson's husband yet, or to her previous employer. There's lots of stones left to turn over and see what crawls out."

Forget that phone.

"I better check in with my office," Sanders said, and took out his cellular phone to dial Cindy.

A light rain began to fall. They came to the cars in the parking lot. Fernandez said, "Who's going to drive?"

"I will," Alan said.

They went to his car, a plain Ford sedan. Alan unlocked the doors, and Fernandez started to get in. "And I thought that at lunch today we would be going to have a party," she said.

Going to a party . . .

Sanders looked at Fernandez sitting in the front seat, behind the rain spattered windshield. He held the phone up to his ear and waited while the call went through to Cindy. He was relieved that his phone was working correctly. Ever since Monday night when it went dead, he hadn't trusted it completely. But it seemed to be fine. Nothing wrong with it at all.

The couple was going to a party and .she made a call on a cellular phone. From the car . . .

Forget that phone.

Cindy said, "Mr. Sanders's office."

And when she called, she got an answering machine. She left a message on the answering machine. And then .she hung up.

"Hello? Mr. Sanders's office. Hello?"

"Cindy, it's me."

"Oh, hi, Tom." Still reserved.

"Any messages?" he said.

"Uh, yes, let me look at the book. You had a call from Arthur in KL, he wanted to know if the drives arrived. I checked with Don Cherry's team; they got them. They're working on them now. And you had a call from Eddie in Austin; he sounded worried. And you had another call from John Levin. He called you yesterday, too. And he said it was important."

Levin was the executive with a hard drive supplier. Whatever was on his mind, it could wait.

"Okay. Thanks, Cindy."

"Are you going to be back in the office today? A lot of people are asking."

"I don't know."

`John Conley from Conley-White called. He wanted to meet with you at four."

"I don't know. I'll see. I'll call you later."

"Okay." She hung up.

He heard a dial tone.

And then she had hung up.

The story tugged at the back of his mind. The two people in the car. Going to the party. Who had told him that story? How did it go?

On her way to the party, Adele had made a call from the car and then .she had hung up.

Sanders snapped his fingers. Of course! Adele! The couple in the car had been Mark and Adele Lewyn. And they had had an embarrassing incident. It was starting to come back to him now.

Adele had called somebody and gotten the answering machine. She left a message, and hung up the phone. Then .she and Mark talked in the car about the person Adele had just called. They made jokes and unflattering comments for about fifteen minutes. And later they were very embarrassed . . .

Fernandez said, "Are you just going to stand there in the rain?"

Sanders didn't answer. He took the cellular phone down from his ear. The keypad and screen glowed bright green. Plenty of power. He looked at the phone and waited. After five seconds, it clicked itself off; the screen went blank. That was because the new generation of phones had an autoshutdown feature to conserve battery power. If you didn't use the phone or press the keypad for fifteen seconds, the phone shut itself off. So it wouldn't go dead.

But his phone had gone dead in Meredith's office.

Why?

Forget that phone.

Why had his cellular phone failed to shut itself off? What possible explanation could there be? Mechanical problems: one of the keys stuck, keeping the phone on. It had been damaged when he dropped it, when Meredith first kissed him. The battery was low because he forgot to charge it the night before.

No, he thought. The phone was reliable. There was no mechanical fault. And it was fully charged.

No.

The phone had worked correctly.

They made jokes and unflattering comments for about fifteen minutes.

His mind began to race, with scattered fragments of conversation coming back to him.

"Listen, why didn't you call me last night?"

"I did, Mark."

Sanders was certain that he had called Mark Lewyn from Meredith's office. Standing in the parking lot in the rain, he again pressed L-E-W on his keypad. The phone turned itself back on, the little screen flashing LEWYN and Mark's home number.

"There wasn't any message when I got home."

`I talked to your answering machine, about six-fifteen."

`I never got a message. "

Sanders was sure that he had called Lewyn and had talked to his answering machine. He remembered a man's voice saying the standard message, "Leave a message when you hear the tone."

Standing there with the phone in his hand, staring at Lewyn's phone number, he pressed the SEND button. A moment later, the answering machine picked up. A woman's voice said, "Hi, you've reached Mark and Adele at home. We're not able to come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, we'll call you back." Beep.

That was a different message.

He hadn't called Mark Lewyn that night.

Which could only mean he hadn't pressed L-E-W that night. Nervous in Meredith's office, he must have pressed something else. He had gotten somebody else's answering machine.

And his phone had gone dead.