Gavallan had toured Mercury's Prague office in Panišc's company. In his mind, he saw the cool marble floors, the legions of busy workers glued to their workstations, the aisles of servers, routers, and switches housed in trim glass cabinetry. One wall in the office's conference room displayed a map of Mercury's European operations and highlighted its expansion plans. Red fairy lamps depicted network operations centers, white lines denoted the cable or satellite connections, blue lights indicated cities with over twenty thousand subscribers, and green lights showed areas where service was to be offered within twenty-four months. Mercury was driving west to Berlin, south to Budapest, north to the Baltic republics, and east to the oil and mining boomtowns of Siberia. Standing there, Gavallan had felt the company's pulse as surely as if it were his own.

"There's not a scrap in here," said Tony Llewellyn-Davies. "Mercury's as clean as a whistle. Bravo, Meg. Well done, Jett. There's absolutely nothing to worry about, at least nothing we could see."

"That doesn't excuse us if we're wrong," cautioned Gavallan. "Our name's still on the prospectus."

"Not my name, Jett," Bruce Jay Tustin pointed out frankly. "She goes south, you're on your own."

"Thank you, Bruce. You're comforting as usual."

"My pleasure," replied Tustin. "Naturally, I do expect to get your office while you're doing your time in the pokey- oh, excuse me, I mean the men's correctional facility. I've always loved the view."

"Please, Bruce," cut in Tony Llewellyn-Davies, his cheeks pink with anger. "You're being exceptionally rude, even for yourself." He offered Gavallan a look of perfect exasperation, then turned back to Tustin. "You know damned well we agreed I was to get the office."

"No, me," said Meg. "The office is mine. Age before beauty, gents."

Everyone laughed, and the tension in the room was cut by half.

"Thanks, fellas. Thanks, lady," said Gavallan. "I appreciate your efforts. Now if we can finish up, I believe we're scheduled to talk to Silber, Goldi, and Grimm."

Meg Kratzer punched some numbers on the phone. "I've got Jean-Jacques Pillonel, their MD, on conference when we're ready"- "MD" in this case meaning "managing director."

Gavallan reached a hand over the notebook and activated the speakerphone. "Jean-Jacques, it's Jett Gavallan. Good morning."

"Bonjour, Jett. Ça va?"

"We've got a minor problem over here. Just a headache, I'm sure. Meg tells me she's gone over it with you. Can you help?"

"Jett, this is nonsense. I read this web page already. Mercury is here in Geneva with us. We spent a week camping in their offices. Certainly there's no question of revenues; we've got the bank statements from UBS and Credit Suisse."

"Jean-Jacques, no one is questioning the revenues. It's a matter of the physical assets." Gavallan leaned over to Meg Kratzer and whispered, "They handled that too, right?" She nodded, and he said into the speakerphone, "Who did the on-site inventory?"

"Mostly, we hired independent specialists," Pillonel replied. "Systems engineers, information technology guys, you know. I supervised the project myself. A favor for my American friends. I know this is a big deal for you."

"Thank you, Jean-Jacques," said Meg, as Gavallan and everyone else at the table rolled their eyes.

"Jett, listen, no worries, my friend. We checked Mercury up and down. We even look in their shorts and count their pubics, you know. Forget this guy on the Net. Je te dis, ça va."

Tustin lobbed an arm across the table and punched the mute button. "Ça va, ça va. Same thing the fuckin' frogs said about the Maginot Line. It ees inveencible! Look how that turned out."

"He's Swiss, Bruce," Meg pointed out.

Tustin shrugged. "Swiss. French. Whatever. A frog's a frog."

The room tittered nervously and Tustin turned off the mute.

"And Moscow?" asked Gavallan. "Who did you send?"

"I went myself."

"You?" It was odd, not to say completely out of the ordinary, for a senior partner of an internationally prominent accounting firm to hole up in a client's offices and physically inventory its assets. That was a job reserved for "newbies."

"With my associates, of course," Pillonel added quickly. "We have a new office in Moscow, so it was a side trip. Like I say, a favor."

"And you saw all their operations, including the network operations center?"

Suddenly the Swiss adopted a belligerent tone. "Hey, Jett, we put our signature on the offering memorandum. Last time I checked, our name still meant something- or do you pay just anybody two hundred fifty thousand dollars for their help?" The voice regained its diplomatic flavor. "You are worried for nothing. How can Mercury earn so much money without having the equipment to do so? You can't harvest wheat without a thresher- know what I mean? Mercury is doing a hell of a good job, I tell you. Look at their metrics: over four million hits a day. You know I have an order with you to buy a lot of shares."

"And we'll see you get filled," said Gavallan. "Thank you, Jean-Jacques. Au revoir."

"Au revoir, tout le monde."

For a moment, there was only silence. The sound of pens tapping the table. Legs crossing. Meg Kratzer lit a cigarette and took pains to direct her smoke toward the ceiling.

There it was, Gavallan told himself. The managing director of Europe's largest accounting firm had just confirmed that Mercury's Moscow operations were up and running. Gavallan asked himself why he hadn't called Jean-Jacques Pillonel in the first place. Because you can only trust your own, a cynical voice reminded him. Because people lie.

More and more, he was certain the Private Eye-PO had to be someone he knew, someone with a personal ax to grind.

"So, are we back at square one," he asked his colleagues, "or did we just cross the finish line?" Unspoken, but hanging up there near the ceiling with Meg's cigarette smoke and the lingering scent of his half-eaten burrito, were the words "postpone," "shelve," and "cancel."

"Where the hell is Byrnes?" griped Tustin.

"Give him time," said Llewellyn-Davies. "He'll get back to us."

"It's ten o'clock in Moscow. How much time does he need?"

"Relax, Bruce," said Meg. "I'll take Jean-Jacques's word over the Private Eye-PO's anytime. I'm sure Graf will only confirm what we already know."

"Maybe," said Tustin grudgingly. "But I still want to hear from him."

So did Gavallan. Every minute that passed without word from Byrnes fueled his worry over his friend's well-being. Still, he was pleased with the give-and-take of the discussion. If there were any doubts about Mercury, it was best that they surfaced within the confines of the office.

"So, Sam, what's your call?"

"Tough one."

Tannenbaum was the firm's resident bohemian. With his tight jeans, flannel shirt, and flowing blond hair, painstakingly groomed and tied into a ponytail, he looked like a refugee from Big Sur. "We seem to be stuck between believing in ourselves and believing the Private Eye-PO. From what I can gather, Mercury is everything we say it is. You think so. Meg thinks so. Jean-Jacques thinks so. Jupiter Metrix says so. It's a 'go deal.' At the same time, we feel compelled to trust the Private Eye-PO because he's been accurate in the past."

"Jesus, Shirley, you're getting me hard," whined Tustin. "Say what you want to say and let's get on with it."

Tannenbaum shot him a withering look, but refused to be hurried, either by Tustin or by any of the other curious faces staring at him. "Unfortunately, I don't know what to say except that we need to find the Private Eye-PO as quickly as possible and ask him where he's getting his information."

"Only one problem," said Gavallan. "We still don't know who he is."

"Can't we shut him up?" asked Meg. "Slap an injunction on him for false and deprecatory statements? I mean, what he's doing isn't any different from some wiseass issuing a phony earnings warning."