The Old Enemy by Henry Porter (read with me .TXT) 📕

when she shifted on the sofa. She took out a cigarette but did not light it. ‘I believe Mila Daus struck early. She knew what was coming and moved to stop it.’ Samson sat back and waited. She lit up and inhaled. ‘The funeral is a target. There will be security. So many of Bobby’s friends and old colleagues are determined to come. The police are going to shut off some streets and they’ll have armed guards at the church and the gallery afterwards. Not everyone is invited to the reception – just family and a few trusted friends, but we will need protection.’ She gave him an odd look. ‘But we have to pay for that. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Samson?’

‘With this?’ He waved his hand at the laptops on the table. ‘Tomas already mentioned that to me.’

‘He phoned after he saw you,’ she said. ‘He knew you were hiding something, so they made the security conditional on receiving what we have. I had to say yes.’

‘Do you know what Naji and Zoe and the others found out about Daus’s networks?’

‘No.’

‘So, you give KaPo what you know and leave it at that.’

She nodded, and they moved on to the only other name they recognised – Jonathan Mobius. Mobius was forty-seven, a multimillionaire who had sold his communications and PR company but remained on the board and was the chair of GreenState. He was the son of Arthur Mobius, whom Mila Daus had married in late 1996, a few months after the court case with the Muller family was concluded and her fortune assured. Arthur Mobius was also rich, and he died in circumstances that were never fully explained. Samson looked up the week of his death in the local newspaper in New York state, the Wyoming County Star, and found that the paper’s archive wasn’t digitised. But each edition of the newspaper had been photographed and, with the help of a magnification tool, you could read the entire paper. The headline at the top of page three of the old-time broadsheet from Thursday 7 October 1999 read ‘Notable Businessman Dies in Power Line Tragedy’. Below this was a picture of Arthur Mobius on his wedding day, a solid man – comb-over, late fifties – with his bride in sunglasses lightly hanging on his arm. She wore high heels and a cream two-piece suit. It showed her figure to good effect – she was still trim for her early forties. In the background were a party of stout, beaming relatives and to Arthur’s left was his only child, Jonathan, who seemed somehow detached from the occasion.

Samson read the first paragraphs of the story. ‘“Mystery surrounds the death of computer pioneer and benefactor Arthur Mobius II, aged 62, after his body was found lying near a live power line at Allan’s Farm Estate, near Silver Lake.

‘“Mr Mobius, a mathematician and inventor of early software for hand-held organisers, was found near a group of beehives, where a power line came down. One theory is that Mr Mobius, a lifelong beekeeper, was trying to remove the line from the beehives, one of which was burnt out. However, power-company engineers said that the hive might have caught light after Mr Mobius had been electrocuted. They believe the line was hidden in wet grass and Mr Mobius likely did not see it and stumbled on it. He is thought to have died instantly.

‘“The Wyoming County Sheriff’s Department and the Fire Department attended the scene. Investigation is now underway to determine how the power line, which was part of the property’s internal power arrangements, not the distribution grid, came down. Early examination of the line indicates that it may have been cut.

‘“Mr Mobius’s widow, Mila, who is a director of his company, A. J. Mobius Data, was away on business at the time of the accident. The Sheriff’s Department interviewed Jonathan Mobius, 27, his heir, who is also a director of his late father’s company, at Allan’s Farm. Mr Mobius discovered his father’s body late Tuesday evening and is said to be in a state of shock.”’

Samson looked up. ‘So they arranged his death.’

Ulrike nodded and leaned over to look at the photograph. ‘She seduces the young man then they decide to get rid of Arthur when she’s away and so speed up the business of inheriting. I wonder if she slept with him before the wedding.’ She raised her reading glasses from the end of her nose to her forehead and Samson momentarily saw the grief in her eyes. ‘What did she want? She was already wealthy, and we can assume she would have inherited anyway. It wasn’t for love, because she later married someone else.’

‘Data,’ said Samson. He had skimmed the next few lines. ‘Listen to this. “In recent years, Arthur Mobius’s fortune increased manyfold because of the success of Mobius Data Strip, a program designed to collect consumers’ data from instalment plans, and in the mortgage and insurance industries. Mr Mobius devised algorithms for the analysis of that data.” That’s the motive – she wanted those algorithms, and fast.’

He bookmarked the story and started searching references for A. J. Mobius Data in the first years of the new century. The company was privately owned by Jonathan Mobius, Arthur’s sister, Lilli, and Mila Daus, and little had been written about it. But profits were obviously large and, under joint CEOs Mila Daus and Jonathan, the AJM data expanded rapidly, picking up casualties of the dotcom crash that had owned valuable intellectual property. There were interviews in New York magazine and Forbes with Jonathan, who presented as the understated wunderkind of consumer data, but his father’s widow was never mentioned. It was if she was the sleeping partner, whereas in fact she was building her own empire, based on the use of Arthur Mobius’s programs, presumably leased at a favourable rate from the company she part-owned with the Mobius family.

Over the next half-hour, Samson used the skills he’d acquired as a banker to unearth a number of acquisitions