Murray Hill || A Superhuman Tale - 1

Chapter Forty-One

Tommy picked up the phone and dialed his New York lawyers. After he identified himself, a partner was immediately put on the line. Tommy wasn't sure whether it was Dewey, Cheatum, or Howe with whom he spoke, but he told the man exactly what he wanted, a detailed summary of everything worth knowing about Hollirich, especially current contracts with the military and intelligence community. Tommy could almost picture the man on the other end of the phone. The fellow would not have even batted an eye at Tommy's request, but merely would have calculated the billable hours in his head. After a few more questions, the attorney said he could have it for him by the same time next week.

This was going to cost money, lots of money. Several more calls followed before Tommy managed to get in touch with an old acquaintance named Teddy Radek. Teddy was something of a wheeler-dealer, who knew gems and precious metals markets in New York City better than anyone Tommy had ever met.

That conversation was of a completely different tenor. The lawyer hadn't wanted to chitchat at all. Teddy wanted nothing but. Tommy could even picture the portly Teddy sitting in his overstuffed office chair, four phones cradled in his various nooks and crannies, talking back and forth on each phone and with two additional people in his office. Teddy's world was a riot of noise and conversation.

Forty-five minutes later, Tommy had a 3:00 pm appointment for the next day with one of the older diamond houses in the city, one that dealt almost exclusively in cash. Tommy knew diamonds passably well but hadn't bought or sold any in some time. He was glad he'd called and talked with Teddy and chastised himself for not thinking to contact the man when he was in San Francisco.

The broker charged him nothing for the call—Tommy would thank him in some way, later—and the man had even coached Tommy on what sort of price to expect by carat, cut, and quality. It was an eye-opener. Tommy would have parted with the stones for a fraction of what he now knew they would fetch. Small wonder he'd only been able .... Then he laughed.

No!

A realization struck Tommy like a mule's kick right between the eyes. Everyone in San Francisco must have thought he was hawking stolen goods at the scanty prices he'd been asking. The realization left Tommy very nearly falling out of his chair from laughter.

He owed Teddy a great debt.

Still, he made a few more appointments at other diamond houses for earlier in the day, just to double check the numbers his friend had provided and to have a few stones appraised. He knew Teddy's figures would be accurate down to the penny, but he was determined not to bungle anything else related to the sale.

Nonetheless, he continued to laugh at his own cock-up, on and off, for the next several hours.

After speaking with Teddy, he got another unexceptional cup of coffee, fitted his ear buds, and opened his favorite browser to begin his own background reading on Hollirich. His effort continued with a brief interruption several hours later when he got on the train and settled in for the trip home.

It was tedious.

The company was founded in 1962 as an enterprise that provided workers and support services to mining and petroleum production companies. Hollirich's first government contract was to build naval maintenance and dock facilities in South Viet Nam during the war. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, the company built close ties with various Middle Eastern countries, where they provided support to the petroleum sector as well as advisors and military specialists to help build the capacity of those countries' armed forces.

Military contracting was a pie from which Hollirich never pulled its finger. Since 1991, they'd provided building services, maintenance support, linguistic skills, military and civil affairs advisors, and diplomatic and sensitive site security for the State Department and the Department of Defense, as well as the latter's component agencies.

They also provided, directly and through their subsidiaries, trained and cleared personnel for a variety of contracts with the intelligence community, including linguist and analytical support for the NSA, DIA, DoD, Homeland Security, NGA, and others.

The company's meat and potatoes was not making things—although they did do that when necessary—it was providing people and services to fill gaps in government need.

As of 2015, 78 percent of Hollirich's business was with the Federal government. For its trouble, Hollirich was compensated handsomely. The company netted slightly less than $12 billion per year over the last five years, up from about $9 billion per year over the preceding 15. That number didn't account for revenue from their many overseas subsidiaries. The company was a cash cow.

Hollirich's board of directors proved that truism that money promotes clout, and clout promotes money. The board was a veritable Who's Who of Washington insiders, corporate elite, and retired military heavyweights. Looking at the company's website, Tommy recognized most of the names from television or the Internet.

At the top of the list was a former Montana senator and former vice-president, Mallory Diane Chaney, most famous for having switched party affiliations during the late-1990s, after divorcing her gluttonous womanizer of a husband, some forgettable southern politician. The divorce had been punctuated when Chaney—an avid hunter and lifetime member of the NRA—shot her husband in the face with a shotgun on a hunting trip to Utah. The trip was an attempt at reconciliation, and the nonfatal shooting was quickly characterized as an "accident."

Tommy remembered Chaney with a chuckle.

She also was famous for being one of the most active and involved vice presidents in American history. She was a true war-hawk. Rumor was that she'd been the main shot-caller at the White House during the 2000s, even overriding the president on important policy issues relating to the conflicts in the Middle East.

She had been on Hollirich's board for the past eight years, and for two years previously in the late 1990s. The former vice-president barely missed her party's nomination for president in the last election cycle, and many felt she was a shoe-in for the White House next time around, despite various scandals while she was in office, which included the awarding of a series of lucrative government contracts to companies, among them Hollirich, without the requisite bidding process.

His hours in D.C. and on the train were enlightening.

Although Hollirich was a huge company, with dozens of divisions and tens-of-thousands of employees, Tommy was confident the picture painted by his lawyers would enable them to narrow down what divisions, precisely, were involved in the war against them. From there, they would be able to focus their efforts.

The train was about ten minutes out from NYC when he decided to call it quits. After he went by the hospital to see Rhonda and then grabbed a bite, there would be all evening to exhaust himself on Hollirich.

As he waited for the train to pull into the station, he continued to fiddle with the tablet, and his fingers casually flipped through some pictures of the former vice president at various functions, most of them Hollirich receptions. The woman was well into her sixties but seemed tall, fit, and robust. It seemed unlikely she'd had the three heart attacks that the tabloids claimed.

As he was about to flip to another picture, something seized him. For the second time in a single day, Tommy very nearly jumped out of his skin. He looked at the caption of the photo on his screen a second time, and then a third.

There, in a good-quality digital photo, was former Vice President Chaney with a squat, 40-something, balding man named Alain Meeker. The caption, dated 2009, indicated that the event was a Hollirich reception celebrating the company's acquisition of Valhalla Security Systems.