Page 117 of The Session

“Money,” Morris replied.

“Do we have any idea where he is?”

“No. He was planning for this. He’s going to be a step ahead of us,” Morris lamented.

“I want him found,” Lightman said.

“I think he’s inflicted the damage he was going to,” said Morris. “If we apply too much pressure, he might run to certain parties we’d be better off avoiding.”

Mark assumed Morris meant the US government. The mere fact that they were worried about Nichols going to the feds was one more reason for Mark to be concerned about which side he had chosen.

He’d plunged in because he wanted to find out who killed Kevin, but he wasn’t sure how well that explanation would play in a federal court. Viewed objectively, it certainly looked as if Mark were part of a conspiracy.

“What is this Qatari thing you keep talking about?” Mark spoke up.

“A firm in Qatar that’s connected to their government has tried on multiple occasions to acquire parts of us. It’s complicated by the fact that they have their own arrangements with the United States government,” Lightman explained.

“Why don’t you go to the government, then?” Mark asked.

“Some members of the security community might prefer we get acquired,” Morris told him.

“Why would they want a US-owned company to get acquired by some foreign entity? That doesn’t make any sense,” Mark said.

“Because they may be a foreign entity on paper, but in reality they’re controlled by people in the US, or at least largely influenced by them,” Lightman replied.

“I’m still confused how you go from motorcycle-riding hippies teaching people how to sell life insurance policies over the phone to controlling private armies,” Mark said.

“Blame Arnold,” said Lightman.

“Bullshit,” Tru snapped.

“I was being flippant,” Lightman said. He turned to Mark. “We did a study to find out in what areas information had the highest return and the most stable market. Corporate contracting, government contracting, and military contracting were the three highest on the list, and even more profitable was consulting. The product quality was extremely lacking and the competition not impressive in that space. It wasn’t an overnight decision—just something we kind of ended up doing.”

“We can give Mark the complete corporate history later on,” Morris said. “Right now we’ve got to focus on next steps.”

“How did Blaise explain himself?” Tru asked.

“He said Nichols came to him,” said Jameson. “Nichols told Blaise he was being investigated by internal security and offered to help Blaise get access to his own file in the Vault if Blaise could give system access to an outside contractor.”

“Nichols has a higher security clearance than Blaise. Why would he need that?” Tru asked.

“Everything Nichols does is monitored. If Blaise was able to provide credentials to an outside party, then Blaise was the weak point, not Nichols,” Morris told her.

“How did you even know Blaise was connected to the Vault break-in?” Mark asked.

“It’s a miracle we even caught it, but Blaise forgot to use a VPN when he created the fake employee account. We were able to trace it to his home network,” Jameson explained.

“If it’s the Qataris, that’s bad,” Lightman warned. “Very, very bad.”

“Whoever it is, they still need to get a majority ownership of the company that owns the copyright to the tech,” Tru added.

“They may not need that,” Morris replied.

“Why is that?” Lightman asked.

“All the holding company does is control the copyrights to the materials. And the parts of the Summit they want, like the private military contractors and consulting groups, are more international. Trying to enforce US copyright law overseas is a joke. It was really meant to tie people up in court and force them to come to a settlement.”

“Maybe so, but that’s the lifeblood of everything we’ve built,” said Lightman.