30. “Foster’s Move”
“FOSTER’S MOVE”
Tuesday morning at the firm.
Foster came in at eight.
He had a thick black binder under his arm and a thumb drive in his pocket and the small steady look on his face that he wore when he was about to do something he had been preparing to do for several weeks and was not interested in being talked out of.
He sat down across from me.
He set the binder on my desk.
He did not open it.
“Atlas.”
“Foster.”
“I have been working on this for six weeks.”
“I know.”
“I have not yet shown it to you.”
“I know that too.”
“I am about to show it to you. I want you to look at it before I tell you what I want to do with it. I want you to look at every page. I want you to take your time.”
“All right.”
He pushed the binder across the desk.
I opened it.
The binder had eight tabs.
The first tab was Marcus Ellery. Inside the first tab was a printed thread of every email Marcus Ellery had sent or received in the last four months.
Foster’s people had pulled it out of three different mail servers using a combination of techniques I did not want explained to me.
Beside each email was a paragraph of context.
Where Ellery had been when he sent it. Who he had spoken to before he sent it. What had happened after.
The second tab was Sara Lin. Inside the second tab was the complete archive Sara had given me on the thumb drive at her office in Russell on Monday morning.
Foster had cross-indexed it with the email thread in tab one.
The cross-references were color-coded. The red entries were entries where Marcus Ellery had been the courier of information that originated with Sara. There were forty-seven red entries.
The third tab was Helena.
I sat with that one for a long time.
Inside the third tab was a folder of dinner conversations — transcripts assembled from emails Helena had sent Edward Whittaker, plus two recordings Foster had pulled from God knew where, plus an interview Foster had conducted with one of Edward’s former associates the previous afternoon.
The transcripts laid out, in Helena’s actual words, the small pieces of information she had passed her husband over the last two years.
None of the pieces, on their own, were criminal.
The pattern was not criminal either. Helena was not a criminal.
The transcripts existed to demonstrate that.
The fourth tab was Edward Whittaker. The fifth was the firm partner Edward did not yet know was a problem.
The sixth was the chief of staff at Senator Ardent’s office.
The seventh was three other smaller leaks Foster had identified in the senator’s broader operation that I had not yet known about.
The eighth tab was Senator Vivienne Ardent herself.
The eighth tab was the longest.
Inside it was a paper trail. Foster had been gathering the paper trail for two months.
It included three personal emails Ardent had sent from her own private account, two voicemails Foster had subpoenaed out of a vendor I did not know existed, a pattern of fundraising disbursements that traced back to Marcus Ellery’s accounts, and — at the very back of the tab, in a single sealed plastic sleeve — a notarized affidavit from a former Ardent staffer who had agreed to cooperate two weeks ago in exchange for immunity.
I read the affidavit twice.
I closed the binder.
I sat back.
“Foster.”
“Atlas.”
“This is a federal indictment.”
“It is the basis for one. Yes.”
“You have been holding this since when.”
“I have been gathering since August. The affidavit came in the day before yesterday. The package was complete as of this morning at four.”
“What do you want to do with it.”
He sat forward.
He folded his hands on the desk between us.
“I want to take it to the Bureau directly. Not through the senator’s office.
The senator’s office cannot be the channel.
If the senator’s office is the channel, the press story is that Senator Whitlock used federal law enforcement to take down a sitting senator from the opposing party for personal reasons.
That story is not true. We will not be able to prevent it from being run.
If I take it to the Bureau directly, as a private investigator who has assembled a file in the course of unrelated work, the channel is clean.
The Bureau will follow up on its own. The senator’s name will appear in the file as a victim, not as a sponsor.
By the time the press connects the dots, Ardent will already be in custody. ”
I watched him.
I had known Foster for fourteen years.
I had never seen him this ready.
“You need the senator’s permission.”
“I do.”
“Call him.”
“I want you to call him.”
“Why.”
“Because if I call him, he will say no for the next three hours out of an abundance of caution. If you call him, he will say yes by lunch. We need yes by lunch. The Bureau will not move on a Tuesday afternoon if the package arrives after three.”
I picked up the phone.
I dialed the compound.
Mrs. Harris picked up. She got Chip.
I gave him the short version. The package was complete. Foster wanted to deliver it directly to the Bureau. The optics were better. The story stayed clean. He needed permission.
He listened.
He said: “Yes. Tell Foster yes. Tell him to deliver it personally and not through a courier. I want a signed receipt. I want him to be in the room when the assistant U.S. attorney opens it. I want a follow-up call from the Bureau today. Tell him those are my conditions. Otherwise it is yes.”
I told Foster.
Foster nodded.
He picked up the binder. He stood up.
“I will be at Federal Plaza at noon.”
“Foster.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course. I will call you when it is done.”
He left.
I sat with the open binder on my desk for ten minutes after he left.
I read the eighth tab again.
The eighth tab was the kind of file that ended a career.
It was the kind of file that I had spent my professional life building against opposing parties on behalf of clients who paid me very well to be the kind of lawyer who could build them.
I had not built this one. Foster had built this one. Foster had built it without me asking.
Foster had built it because Eden was Eve’s daughter, and because Foster had been at Eve’s funeral, and because Foster had been the man who had driven the senator home from the cathedral that night because the senator had not been able to drive himself.
I closed the binder.
I sat with my coffee cup empty.
The morning went.
Anya came in at ten. We worked on a press response.
We worked on a press response that did not yet say anything because the news was not yet out.
We worked on three different versions of the response, each calibrated to a different scenario — Ardent in custody, Ardent indicted but not in custody, Ardent’s staff in custody but Ardent herself uncharged.
I had Eden’s office on the line at eleven. I told her the package was being delivered at noon. I told her I would call her after Foster called me. I told her I loved her. She told me she loved me. She said: I am at the imprint. I will not leave my desk. Call me.
I did not call her.
I waited.
Foster called at twelve forty-two.
“Done,” he said. “Receipt in hand. The AUSA opened the package in front of me. She read the affidavit twice. She made one phone call. She thanked me. She said she would be in touch by end of day.”
“Good.”
“She also asked me to tell you that the senator’s office should expect a courtesy call from her director by five p.m. The Bureau is going to move tomorrow morning.
Six a.m. Connecticut campaign office. They will not pre-announce.
They want the operation clean. By Wednesday noon, Ardent’s name will be in every paper in the country. ”
“Foster.”
“Yes.”
“You have done a thing today that I will not forget.”
“I know.”
“I am going to take you out for dinner next week. You and Maxwell and Hawk and Cole. I am going to pay. You are going to pretend you do not enjoy it.”
“That is fine. I will pretend.”
He hung up.
I sat in my office for a while after that.
The window of my office looked out at Park Avenue. The trees on the islands in the median were beginning their orange. The sun was at the angle that, this time of year, came in straight at the desk between two and four.
I sat with my hands on the arms of my chair.
I let the morning settle.
Six weeks ago I had watched Eden Whitlock walk into this office with a wedding ring on her left hand and a face I had been trying not to look at for four years.
Six weeks ago I had told her I could not represent her.
Six weeks ago I had texted her two words from this same desk and had pulled the entire architecture of my adult life apart with them.
Six weeks ago I had not yet kissed her.
Six weeks ago I had not yet sat at her father’s right at Sunday dinner.
Six weeks ago I had not yet put my mouth on her in the boathouse in the dark.
Six weeks ago a senator from Massachusetts had been a small problem at the back of my head and not a problem I was about to watch be brought down on the morning news.
The clock on my desk said two forty-one.
I had not moved in twenty minutes.
The director of the Bureau called Chip at four.
Chip called me at four oh six.
“Atlas.”
“Sir.”
“They will move tomorrow morning. Ardent’s chief of staff goes first. The senator goes a week after that, when the AUSA has the indictment.
Ardent will have the option to issue a statement and announce she will not seek reelection.
If she takes that option, the indictment stays sealed for thirty days and her exposure is reduced. The director thinks she will take it.”
“She will take it.”
“That is my read too.”
“Eden.”
“She knows. She will be at the loft tonight. We will be at the compound on Saturday. We have a Sunday dinner to get through. Caleb is coming, yes.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Bring him.”
“I will.”
“Atlas.”
“Sir.”
“It is going to be all right.”
“I know.”
“Tell my daughter I love her.”
“I will.”
He hung up.
I stood at the window.
The sun was at the angle. The light was on the desk.
I watched the trees on the islands of Park Avenue do the small autumn thing they always did at this hour.
I did not think about Ardent.
I did not think about Helena.
I did not think about the binder Foster had taken to Federal Plaza.
I thought about the small things.
I thought about the eleven entries on Sara’s spreadsheet that had said HELENA.
I thought about the fact that Helena had not yet been told, and that Edward had not yet been told, and that neither of them yet knew that their lives were about to be reorganized by twenty-four hours of news.
I thought about the call I would make to Helena in the morning, before the press, to tell her myself.
I thought about the call I would make to Edward an hour after Helena.
I thought about how to say the sentences in a way that did not let either of them think for a second that I held this against them.
I thought about Caleb. About the conversation I would have with him on Friday afternoon at the kitchen table at the Park Avenue apartment.
About the way he would listen with his elbows on the table and his hands folded under his chin the way he always listened to a thing he was working out the size of.
I thought about the woman who was at her desk on East Fifty-third Street thirty-eight blocks south of me.
I thought about the small green cardigan she would be wearing because she always wore the small green cardigan in the office on Tuesdays.
I thought about the manuscript she would be reading, a debut novel by a writer from St. Louis whose first chapter had made Eden cry on the train home last Friday.
I thought about the way she would be holding her pen.
I thought about the way she would be tucking her hair behind her ear with her left hand, which would be wearing my mother-in-law’s ring.
I had been watching this woman from a distance for years.
I was not at a distance anymore.
The Wednesday after that.
The morning was a Wednesday morning like other Wednesday mornings. I was at the firm by seven. I had a deposition at nine. I was reviewing the witness list when Anya knocked on my door at eight forty-six and slid her phone across the desk to me.
The Bureau had moved at six.
The Connecticut campaign office. Two arrests.
A senior staffer in cuffs at the curb. A photograph of an FBI agent carrying out a banker’s box already on the wires.
The story was running on every major outlet.
Anya’s phone was buzzing in her hand with a message from the senator’s office.
We had ninety minutes to be ready with a statement.
We were ready.
We had been ready since Tuesday afternoon.
By eleven the senator’s office had released a single line of statement. The senator was aware of the developments and had no comment beyond his complete confidence in the work of federal law enforcement.
By two p.m. Senator Vivienne Ardent had issued a statement of her own. She would not be seeking reelection. She would be retiring at the end of her current term to spend more time with her family. The statement did not mention the indictment. The statement did not need to.
By four she had stepped away from her committee chairs.
By six the news was the only news.
I stood at my office window as the sun went down on Park Avenue.
The trees were the color they had been on Tuesday and the color they would be on Thursday. Nothing had changed about the trees. Everything else had moved.
I was still at the window when there was a knock at my office door.
I turned.
Eden was standing in the doorway.
She had her coat on. She had a paper bag from the deli on the corner in her hand. She was a little out of breath.
She looked at me.
She looked at the window. She looked at the binder open on the desk. She looked at the empty coffee cup. She looked back at me.
“You forgot to come home for lunch,” she said.