The Corporation

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

AT SOME POINT during dinner Michelle thought she was going to scream when Bruce casually mentioned that it was a funny coincidence that she and Connie shared the same last name.

Michelle took a sip of wine and wiped her mouth with the heavy white cloth napkin she’d placed in her lap. It was seven-thirty p.m. and they had a private booth at Brannigan’s, which was a very upper-class steak house. There were nine in their party, including Reginald Dwight, Vice-President of Operations, and Tina Young, Frank Marstein’s executive assistant. Frank Marstein was currently holed up in his executive suite at headquarters strategizing tomorrow’s plans.

“It’s a coincidence all right,” Michelle said, not looking at Connie, who was seated three people away on her left. “But then I run into people often who have the same last name and aren’t related.”

“Go to Los Angeles and you’ll see a Garcia or a Hernandez on every corner,” Tina Young said. She was in her twenties and would have been pretty if she’d not been so severe-looking.

Michelle had stayed close to Gary and Sam’s side while they talked in Bruce’s office. When introduced around she’d shaken hands with everybody and nodded politely, noting the same empty expressions, a common trait with everybody she saw at Corporate Financial. When she was introduced to Connie she kept up her front. “Nice to meet you,” she’d said. Connie nodded back politely with the same false look as the others. She noticed in the few seconds she was able to see her mother that mom hadn’t aged much; she still had the same conservative hairstyle, cut short and close to her face, still favored the same bland suits. Michelle couldn’t tell if her mother recognized her. If she did, she gave no indication.

Staying by Sam and Gary’s side was the only way she knew how to stay sane.

She kept up her business-like front as they talked about Project Reign, how everything went today, and Michelle paid attention and tried not to look at her mother. The few times she did, she stole quick glances, always making sure her eyes scanned the room and didn’t settle on any one individual. Every glimpse she caught of her mother, she was more absorbed in the discussion.

Things surely haven’t changed that much, Michelle thought. She even looks the same as she did the last time I saw her. And on the heels of that: I wonder where dad is?

Before she knew it she was in the backseat of the Lexus again as they headed to Brannigan’s for dinner. At some point before they left for the restaurant, she mentioned to Sam that she wanted to check her email and Bruce directed her to a spare desk in his suite with a network connection nearby. She set up her laptop and, while pretending to check her mail, made a visible effort to appear still interested in the discussion. She quickly opened all of her new email in her account, then opened a web browser. Her home page settings were automatically configured to hit the Corporate Financial Intranet site and, once there, she quickly scanned the links. She quickly found a section on Headquarters and kept browsing until she found what she wanted: a file that detailed the diagram of the building for potential visitors. Michelle saved the file onto her hard drive and quickly looked for other information that might be useful. She didn’t see anything, so she disconnected from the network, shut down her laptop, and rejoined the group.

Her cell phone vibrated twice; once while she was in the meeting, a second time while appetizers were being served at Brannigan’s. She hoped it wasn’t Donald; she didn’t want to worry him. She couldn’t think about Donald now. If she did she’d go crazy, so she pushed him out of her mind and concentrated on the group and bullshitting them as best as she could.

She tried not to think of her mother as well.

Does she know who I am? Michelle thought as she faked interest in the topic of discussion—Project Reign and the sales projections for today, which Connie was rattling off in a flat, toneless voice. I don’t think she does but then she used to look like that all the time… maybe she did recognize me, maybe she’ll tell Sam and Gary, I wonder if she and dad live out here now, maybe…

“…productivity rose sharply by forty percent,” Connie said, reading the numbers off her Blackberry. “Our sales were up sixty percent and we expect that to go higher tomorrow.”

“And the buyouts?” Bruce asked. He hadn’t touched his appetizers.

“All going as planned,” Connie reported. She regarded everybody with that flat look. “Wall Street noticed and the Dow rose through the roof. A story will be running in tomorrow’s Journal. The financial news outlets are already reporting the activity. Most of it’s positive, especially Fox’s coverage. MSNBC has been overwhelming negative.”

“They aren’t clients, are they?” Bruce asked.

“No, they’re not,” Sam answered. “We’re hoping they respond favorably to our marketing efforts this week. Dennis Harrington is paying them a visit tomorrow with an offer.”

“Have him extend a seventy percent discount for two weeks,” Reginald said. “If they bite, Dennis can bring in Alma and Joyce Caruthers Wednesday. Joyce can get to work immediately and we can start seeing a change by Friday if we act quickly.”

Michelle wondered how they could influence news coverage, but she didn’t want to ask. The thought that they had control over the news networks terrified her. It made sense; if the big guns—CNN, Fox—were owned by large conglomerates, Corporate Financial did business with them and had sunk their tentacles deep into their other operations. Bad news about Project Reign would not go well with viewers. Remaining silent on it or skewing the news heavily in favor of it, would make people think it was a good thing. Of course not everybody believed what they read or saw on the news, and Michelle was one of them.

When the main courses came, Michelle dug in. She was ravenous and she didn’t know when she’d get a chance to eat again. She’d ordered the seafood platter with rice pilaf, and as she ate she paid attention to the conversation and joined in where appropriate. She wasn’t faking it anymore—she wanted to know as much as possible about what was going on, what their business agenda was, so she’d have sufficient ammunition to go to Alan with. Her seeming enthusiasm must have been evident because at one point during the meal Sam nudged her and whispered. “I think you’re casting a nice impression on the group. You ready for tomorrow?”

Michelle nodded. “Yes,” she said.

The dinner lasted till nine-thirty. After the main meal was finished, drinks were served. Discussion continued to flourish and Michelle took part in it with great success. She took it easy with the drinks, limiting herself to two glasses of wine. Dessert was offered and Michelle passed. When the party broke up and ventured outside, Michelle was grateful for the diversion. She stood by as Sam parted with Bruce and Connie. “We’ll be in at eight o’clock sharp,” he said.

“Wonderful.” Bruce turned to Michelle. “I’m looking forward to working with you, Ms. Dowling.”

“I’m looking forward to being part of the team,” Michelle said.

Sam and Gary drove her back to her hotel, which was two miles up the road and was part of the Marriot chain. “We’ll meet you in the lobby at seven-thirty sharp,” Sam told her as they helped her with her bags.

“Sounds fine,” Michelle said.

“We’ll probably have breakfast tomorrow in the executive dining room,” Gary said as they ventured into the lobby. Michelle was trailing her suitcase, briefcase, and laptop. “So bring your appetite.”

Once Michelle was in her room—Gary and Sam were staying in separate rooms two floors above her—Michelle collapsed on the king-sized bed and tried to control her emotions. Seeing her mother this afternoon had pushed her over the edge. She hadn’t expected that and she was certain mother hadn’t recognized her. Seeing mom had picked at the scab holding the unpleasant memories of her past that had built up over the years, and she’d done a good job at staunching the flow of emotion that wanted to pour out of those old wounds. Now they seeped out and Michelle allowed herself to let them out: the abandonment she’d felt as a child, the feeling that her parents never cared for her as they worked long hours and finally, her mother’s callous attitude toward Michelle’s pregnancy. She refused to allow the loss of Alanis to get the best of her. She sat up, took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. She had to get through this, had to do what she was brought here to do. She knew that everything Alan and Rachel told her now was the truth. She’d seen the vapid expressions displayed en masse at Corporate Financial headquarters, felt the overpowering miasma of the unholy vibe, of some noxious evil that permeated the building she could see how it could infiltrate into the body and persona of somebody who was vulnerable for acceptance. The vibe in the entire executive suite had been even stronger—Michelle could tell the minute she’d stepped off the elevator to the fourth floor, but she’d blocked its influence and how she really felt about it out of her stance. Had she allowed herself to react naturally to it she would have screamed and run like hell out of the building. Instead, she reacted as an undercover narcotic agent would have reacted at the scene of criminal activity and it wasn’t yet time to make an arrest: she’d pretended like she was one of them and they had bought it completely.

She slipped out of her shoes and shrugged her jacket off. Then she scooped her cellular phone out of her purse and, knowing already Donald had tried calling her from the message light blinking on her phone, called him. “Hey, honey.”

“Michelle! You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Hearing Donald’s voice sounded so good. “I saw my mother today.”

Pause. “At Corporate Financial Headquarters?”

“Yes.” The memories resurfaced again along with all the bad vibes. “She’s one of the top executives for the company. And she didn’t even recognize me!”

“Oh my God,” Donald said.

“She was just… just like she was when I last saw her, only worse.” Michelle closed her eyes, willing the bad feelings back. “I don’t think anybody noticed a physical resemblance but… it wouldn’t surprise me if they did. Sam mentioned something about us having the same last name.”

“Did you talk to her at all?”

“As little as possible,” Michelle said, feeling better the more she talked about this to Donald. “I didn’t go out of my way to avoid her, and I didn’t let on that I recognized her or that she was my mother. She reacted the same way.”

“Could you tell if she recognized you? Was there anything in her posture, her attitude or demeanor?”

“Nothing.”

“Jesus.”

Michelle sighed. “Things are going very well for them. I haven’t seen anything on the news much today, but I heard MSNBC has been blasting them.”

“Jay and I have been monitoring the news on our drive,” Donald said. “And there hasn’t been anything on the radio.”

“Most radio stations are owned by one or two big companies,” Michelle said. “They’re probably in Corporate Financial’s pocket.”

“Exactly.”

“Where are you guys now?”

“Colorado.” There was a short pause. “We just passed a little town two hours outside of Loveland and we’re going to gas up and switch places in about an hour.”

“Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah. We’re doing okay. We’re taking turns with the driving, and the back seat is comfortable for sleeping. Jay doesn’t need much sleep anyway thanks to all the caffeine he drinks. It’s a wonder we’re making such good time. You’d think with all the coke and coffee he drinks we’d be stopping every thirty minutes for a pit stop for him to pee.”

Michelle heard Jay’s voice in the background respond to this but she couldn’t make out what he said.

“Be careful,” Michelle said. She wished Donald was here with her now.

“I will,” Donald said. “You be careful, too. We should be there late in the day tomorrow.”

“Probably more like tomorrow night.” The thought of this chilled her. “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

“Call Alan,” Donald said. “Tell him where you are. He’ll fill you in.”

“Have you been in touch with him?”

“Yes, and everything’s running smoothly.”

“I’m scared,” Michelle said. The fear hit her again hard and fast. She didn’t want to go through with this. She just wanted it to all go away.

“I am too, but we have to go through with this. If we don’t act now, Corporate Financial—the things controlling Corporate Financial—will take over and we’ll be enslaved. The entire human race will be subservient to the whims of a thing, an entity we can’t even begin to fathom. It’ll be like one of those science-fiction movies that’s on late night TV, where humans exist as slaves for some unseen alien hybrid. Only in this case it isn’t really alien, but something demonic… something so spiritually evil that I can’t even begin to describe it.”

Michelle didn’t want to think about the possibilities of what this all might entail. Knowing that Phase One and Two were going to be bad enough by forcing people to work twelve, fourteen, even eighteen hour days and keep them away from their families was enough to motivate her to barrel through the fear and regain her senses. For the past few hours she’d fantasized about how they were going to accomplish this: would their political power pressure police departments all over the country to keep workers in line? The thought chilled her. “I’m going to call Alan now,” she said. “Please call me tomorrow morning? At seven? I’ll need to hear your voice before I start my day tomorrow.”

“You’ve got it,” Donald said. “Seven sharp.”

“I love you,” Michelle said.

“Love you, too.”

After they hung up Michelle sat on the bed for a moment, silently wishing Donald and Jay would get to Calistoga quickly, then she regained her composure and called Alan. He answered on the third ring. “I’m here,” she said. “The Marriot on Pine Grove, room two eighty-seven.”

“Did you get a diagram of the building?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“If you can, try connecting to the network tonight and see if you can get anything else. Email it to the account Jay gave you.”

“I will. I want to take a shower first. I’m beat.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you at three a.m. Your room.”

“You have the stuff?” She felt like a secret agent talking in code.

“I have it and I’ll bring it with me.”

“Okay. See you then.”

When she hung up the phone she sighed in relief. For a moment she felt alone, cast adrift, and more far away from home than she had ever felt before.

Then she sighed again and headed to the bathroom to take a shower.

WHEN THE ALARM woke her up at three a.m. sharp, Michelle rolled out of bed and hit the floor running.

She was ready ten minutes later, freshened up, robe pulled tight over her frame. She waited by the door to her room and opened it the instant she saw Alan appear in the fisheye lens of the peephole.

Alan came inside quickly and Michelle closed and locked the door behind him. She’d turned on the lamp by the bed and, as she joined Alan in the main portion of her room, she saw him put a briefcase on the bed. He opened the flaps and raised the lid. He was dressed in dark jeans and a dark shirt. “Open your briefcase and let’s transfer this stuff into it.”

Michelle got her briefcase, opened it, and removed papers and other documents from it. When it was empty, Alan handed her what looked like a small cardboard box, the kind bank checks arrive in. It felt heavy in her hands and was made of soft brown leather. “This thing’s loaded with C4 and it has a voice-activated trigger,” he said. “Rachel is about ten miles away with a radio that will send the signal to detonate these. I’ve already turned them on; they run on a battery that has a twenty-four hour life span. Rachel won’t turn the radio on until thirty minutes before we’re set to go. Then we’ll—”

“What if she fucks up or something?” Michelle asked, hefting the explosive in her hand. “Suppose it turns itself on accidentally this morning while I’m eating breakfast and instead of blowing up the parts of the building you want blown up, I blow up the cafeteria and myself instead?”

Alan shook his head. “That won’t happen. Trust me. I know we planned this sort of last minute, but we did it carefully.”

Michelle wanted to respond but didn’t know what to say. At this point she’d crossed the point of no return. It didn’t matter any more. What more did she have to live for? Corporate Financial was set to enslave the world; blowing herself up by accident would be a ticket out of the nightmare.

Alan began handing her more of the explosives and Michelle stacked them in her briefcase. “These things are water-proofed,” Alan said. “Best place for them is in the toilet tanks of as many of the women’s rest rooms as you can get them in.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep.” Alan held one of the devices in his hand. “The executive suite, the bathroom outside the executive secretary’s office, and the bathroom near conference room 4H on the fourth floor are prime targets. They’ll probably take you into the data center tomorrow. There’s a bathroom right off the data center’s main entrance. Plant two of them in that one. Then there’s going to be a bathroom in the executive lounge in the basement. Hit that one, too.”

“The basement?”

“That’s where they’re going to begin your immersion.”

“How… how will I be able to get out of the immersion?”

Alan held up an earpiece. “Remember this?” He passed it on to her. “You’ll be in direct contact with Rachel and me all day. The audio wire you wore today goes with it. At three p.m. tomorrow Rachel or myself will send a signal to you that will break through the subliminal messages Corporate Financial will be feeding you during immersion. It’s a signal designed to penetrate not only audio, but psychic messages as well.”

“Psychic messages?”

“It will intercept brain waves,” Alan explained. “That’s part of how they’ll turn you. Unlike planting the explosives, this part of our mission has been in the planning stages for a long time. We’ve been working on it for three years and we’ve tested it. Trust me on this. Naturally, you’re going to try to fight the immersion as you lie down in that room, but just in case you succumb we’re going to intercept their influences and awaken you this way. If we don’t hear anything from you, we’re going to jam the signals again. We’re going to keep jamming the signal until you tell us you’re awake and that you’re making your way out of the building. If we don’t hear from you in five minutes, we’re aborting.”

Michelle tried to read Alan’s face to see if he was telling the truth. He looked like he was. His features were open, honest, and she saw the same ray of hope she saw when she first met him. His was an honest face, one she felt she could trust. Yet for some reason, she didn’t believe him when he said that if they didn’t succeed in tearing her away from Corporate Financial’s grip they would abort. She didn’t believe that for one second.

If they didn’t hear from her, if she failed to wake up and make a beeline for the doors, they were going to go through with the plan anyway.

All this passed through her mind in a microsecond. “When I come out of it, then what?” she asked.

“Leave one of the devices in the room,” Alan said. “It’ll be the last one. Make your way out of the room and head upstairs. The stairway will dump you off near the data center and there will be a side exit. There’ll be a guard station there; don’t worry about that one, they probably won’t notice you leave anyway. If they do and they try to stop you, keep going. I’ll be waiting for you in a green Honda in the executive parking lot.”

“When will you show up?”

“Two p.m.” He sighed and rubbed his right hand across his face. He looked tired. “I told Sam that I’m meeting a client in the Bay Area and that I’ll be at headquarters to meet with IT. I’ll be planting devices myself, hopefully in the data center.”

“So I meet you at the car at, say, ten after three, and we take off and then what?”

“When we’re a mile away I call Rachel and give her the signal. If it works, we’ll know. We’ll likely hear the blast, probably even see it.”

Despite the severity of the crime she was about to partake in, Michelle no longer felt a sense of dread or foreboding. She no longer had any pangs of doubt. She had to do this come hell or high water. “And then what?”

“Then we meet up in San Francisco and one of our associates will put us up in a safe house. I’ll give Jay and Donald the address and phone number later this morning. We’ll meet up there, monitor things over the next day or so, and then we’ll see where we stand.”

Michelle looked at the briefcase, now almost packed with the explosive devices. She closed the lid and snapped the locks in place, then picked it up. It was heavy, but she’d be able to manage it. “What if we’re caught?”

“We won’t get caught.”

“What if we’re caught?”

“That can’t happen.”

“You didn’t make a backup plan?”

Alan grabbed her shoulders and spun her toward him. For the first time his face was livid, hot with anger. “We’re going to win! Do you understand me? We’re going to destroy these bastards and everything they stand for and that includes the… thing they’ve got sleeping in their basement!”

Michelle felt the blood drain from her face at the sound of Alan’s voice. “What thing?”

Alan looked at her. “You know what I mean. You know what Rachel and I told you last week in Chicago. About the Marstein’s devil-worshipping.”

When Rachel and Alan mentioned the occult angle to her yesterday, Michelle hadn’t given it much credit. If the Marstein’s believed it and were able to convince a bunch of other greedy executives that making sacrifices to the dark gods would increase their stock portfolios, that was their business. Michelle thought back to what Alan had told her yesterday about corporations being recognized as actual people. It stood to reason that if people could be possessed by demonic entities then corporations could too. And when the Marstein’s alleged devil-worship was taken into consideration, it all made sense. But if Alan and Rachel believed that there was some truth to the stories, then this was a whole different matter. “You believe the stories are real?”

“Hell yes!” Alan said, his voice a whisper. “I thought you believed us!”

“I did,” Michelle said, feeling a flush of embarrassment now that she realized she’d conveyed to them a little too strongly that she’d swallowed everything they’d told her. “But this… devil thing… is just… I mean, I believe that they believe it but—”

“Make no mistake about it,” Alan said, his tone serious, his gaze penetrating. “This shit is real. Corporate Financial has done something nobody would have ever dreamed of, and the thing Marstein conjured, the thing that makes him and his company rich and fat, exists to be fed and get stronger. It has its hooks in the people who run the company, and you can believe they’re getting something out of it.”

“What’s that?”

“Money. Power. Prestige.” Alan paused. “Pleasure.”

Michelle felt herself shiver. “What kind of pleasure?”

They looked at each other for a moment and despite her rational side telling her that this was bullshit, that this was a product of some mass hallucination, another part of her, the part that she always listened to, was telling her it was real, it was happening and she had to trust her instincts. She had to trust the fact that Donald believed it. If Donald was in the belief camp, it had to be true. She would trust her life to him. He’d never lied to her and never misled her before on anything. He’d never do anything to hurt her.

“Don’t you want to stop the people who made your mother into the fiend she is?” Alan said. “I know I do; I want to strike back at them for what they did to Susan. They took the love of my life away. They destroyed my future, my hopes and dreams. They’ve done that to a lot of people, and they’re going to do it to a lot more if we don’t stop them.”

Memories of Alanis popped into her mind; she remembered cradling her dead premature unborn daughter in the hospital alone, mourning her loss with no one there to comfort her because all her friends, her mother and father, were too busy working to come to her aid.

She choked back a sob and took a deep breath.

Do it for Alanis.

Her mother’s words rose in her mind. Get rid of it before it destroys your chance for a future with the company.

She faced Alan, her mind made up completely. She was no longer straddling the fence. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I think I just realized what you meant by that.”

“Do you?”

“I don’t need to know what kind of pleasure it takes,” she said. “All I have to do is put myself in the shoes of every sadistic boss and manager I’ve ever worked under that thrived on controlling his or her subordinates.”

Alan seemed to approve. “You’d think something so simple wouldn’t be in the equation.”

“Yes,” Michelle said. “But that’s exactly what it is. They… it… gets off on the power it feels dominating others. It’s the common thread schoolyard bullies and control freak workaholic bosses seem to share.”

“You forgot power-hungry world leaders.”

“Them, too.”

“So you’re ready?”

Michelle faced him, more comfortable now with her decision and what she was going to do tomorrow than she had ever been. “I’m ready.”