The Spy Devils by Joe Goldberg (top rated books of all time .TXT) 📕

“Who—”

“Please hurry.” She hung up, cutting off his next questions.

Peter replaced the receiver, then immediately picked it up and punched a button.

“What’s up?” the female voice of Peter’s chief researcher asked.

“Anything in the news this morning I should know about?” he asked as he rested his elbows on his desk.

“Nothing unusual,” she said.

Peter was silent for a moment.

“How about on MacLean?”

The death of Kirkwood’s CFO earlier in the week shook employees across Kirkwood. Tears, hushed conversations, and memorial emails had filled the days since.

Peter felt terrible, but not horrible, like some others. That just wasn’t his way. He knew George MacLean and considered him a decent guy for a corporate executive. Nice. Appreciated effort. Big personality. Bigger waistline. He was dead, and it didn’t impact Peter one way or the other.

“There are the usual follow-up stories, but no new details,” the voice said.

An hour later, Peter stepped out of the elevator onto the tenth floor of Kirkwood headquarters located in Oak Brook, a western Chicago suburb.

At six feet tall, Peter Schaeffer, Senior Director, Corporate Intelligence and Insights, Strategy Office, Kirkwood International Industries, had a skeletal frame his mother used to call “solid.” Black, wavy hair. Frying pan dark eyes. Bushy eyebrows and a square jaw framed on an Eastern European angled nose—but he was often mistaken as someone with an Italian or Greek heritage.

Peter was a regular visitor to the executive offices over his eleven years. Tom MacBride's office, his boss, was on this floor, as were the offices of most of the senior leadership team. All of them were clients of Peter's strategic intelligence group.

Marilyn sat behind a desk outside the office with a plaque by the door engraved with Thomas MacBride, Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer. He saw Marilyn’s red eyes and flushed skin. She kept wiping her nose with a crumpled tissue.

“Hello, Marilyn.” In her late sixties, she was older than most assistants, which meant she cared more and knew more about the company. Peter liked her. Peter noticed a pile of used tissues in the wastebasket next to her.

“How are you doing, Marilyn?”

“It is so sad.” She took another tissue from the pack on her desk.

He looked at her, then at MacBride’s empty office.

“Oh, they are in the boardroom.” She checked the small apple-shaped clock on her desk. “Go. You need to hurry.” She waved the tissue to her left. “Go right in. They are waiting.”

“Who? Can you give me a clue what this is about?” he asked.

“Whatever it is, they seem to be quite worried—they have been waiting for you. Good luck.” Her face started to turn a deeper red. Tears appeared in her eyes.

“Thanks.”

He backed away, then stood staring down the hall toward the boardroom. Her words made his warning systems spike into the red…quite worried…waiting for you.

Peter knew the tenth floor was the battleground for the civil war raging within the company. It was a war between the Old Timers and the New Kids.

Old Timers are life-long employees who love the idea of working in a traditional, built from the ground, family-run business. For them, the company has been, and always will be, a first among peers, formidable tech company that reinvents itself with world-changing technology year after year, decade after decade.

New Kids are younger, modern-era risk-takers who looked outside Kirkwood for like-minded New Kids to force Kirkwood into the future or, at the very least, to move it out of the past.

Three years ago, when CEO Samuel Kirkwood was looking for a new chief strategy officer, he felt intense pressure from stockholders and brokers to shake things up. He did this by selecting Tom MacBride, a wunderkind of tech start-ups. A New Kid. Then he hired George MacLean as CFO a year later. Not a true New Kid, but someone viewed as a cost-cutter.

But the highest levels of the company, both Old Timers and New Kids, were privy to a secret. For the first time in its illustrious one-hundred-and-twenty-year history, Kirkwood International Industries' demise was a serious topic within their closed meetings.

Peter stopped at a massive floor-to-ceiling oak double door with a sign with gold lettering on a black background that declared it “The Jacob Kirkwood Boardroom.”

“Schaeffer.” The deep voice came from behind Peter, causing him to jump.

He turned to see Benton, Senior Director, Personal and Facilities Security, Office of Security, Kirkwood International Industries. Everything about Benton said retired Chicago cop—the notoriously dishonest kind of Chicago cop. Which is what he was before retiring and coming to Kirkwood as security chief. Chia Pet gray hair and a face that only a mother could love. Gray pants. Gray jacket. Gray skin. An over-sized badge on the breast pocket that just said, “Benton.” No one was sure if it was his first or last name.

“Oh. Hi, Benton. On your nightly vampire leftover donut prowl?”

“I should shut that smart mouth of yours, Schaeffer,” he said in a low and menacing rasp.

Peter felt Benton needed to take counter-intelligence and the threat from competitors seriously. If Peter was trying to get information on the competition, the competition was trying to do the same to Kirkwood. Those companies could count on help from their home intelligence services to steal secrets. Not Peter.

Economic espionage had infected corporate America. Business leaders would rather ignore it for the sake of profits and market share. Even worse, many were willingly handing over trade secrets and intellectual property as terms for doing business in their countries.

Benton hated Peter for sticking his nose into his business.

“They are waiting.” Benton jerked his thumb toward the boardroom door.

Tom MacBride was sitting one chair from the end along the far side of a massive wood Board of Director’s table. “Peter. Come here. Sit.” He indicated the chair to his left.

MacBride was a New Kid who did not care if he fit the corporate executive slicked-backed image. A rare combination of brilliant scientific mind and entrepreneur. Corporate executive and nearly nice guy. A tangled mop of red hair hung from his