Outsource@Home—Pt. 01

He gave me a look I didn't quite know how to interpret, sort of a combination of surprise and approval and concern. "I asked our IT guy the same thing, he said it would take a lot longer and cost a lot more to write the specifications and test the results than it would to just have someone enter the data. I don't know about the rest, that all happened before I was transferred to this office last year." He looked away for a minute, then it sounded like he was talking to himself. "I should look into that more."

He thanked me for taking such an interest in my assignment, turned to leave, then looked back at me. "If you have any more questions about the work, Ms. Romano, please don't hesitate to come see me. I think you know where my office is." He paused as if he were through, then added something curious. "But don't email. "

I assured him I knew where his office was, and he flashed me another warm smile and left. I walked back to my cubicle, puzzling over his reaction to my questions—especially his telling me not to email.

A couple of days later I was back in the zone, mindlessly entering and proofing dates and places and amounts, when an errant thought—almost an alarm—began trying to break my concentration. I gave up, reluctantly returned to full awareness, and tried to figure out what was different, what was wrong.

The items I was entering were printed on both sides of the claim application, which had a one-page cover letter stapled to it. In almost all cases, the cover letter had been folded behind the application itself, but the last five or six hadn't been; I had had to fold those over myself. I noticed that the cover letter included a claim number, which apparently I had subconsciously looked at while I was folding the page over.

Something was wrong, but I had to get the last several completed forms from the box where I'd tossed them to figure it out. Each claim number began with the last two digits of the year, followed by a hyphen, four alphabetic characters, another hyphen, and a five-digit sequence number that incremented by one.

Except when it didn't. The claim number on the last packet I entered was two greater than the one before it. Curious, I grabbed a couple of dozen completed forms; sure enough, more missing sequence numbers. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to discover that the dates of the missing sequence numbers were all seven days apart. A quick check with Prof. Google revealed that each missing claim apparently had been received on a Friday.

That seemed like something Mr. Hopkins (as I thought of him then) might be interested to know. It was almost quitting time, but I knew he usually stayed after everyone else left. I decided to stay put so I could see him alone. At quarter after five I walked to the open door of his office.

"Another question, Ms. Romano?" He flashed me another warm smile that sort of discombobulated me. I sort of wished he wouldn't do that. Sort of.

"Not a question, Mr. Hopkins, but something I discovered that seems a bit...odd." I told him about the missing sequence numbers, admitting that I had only checked a few dozen claim forms so I wasn't sure how many times it happened altogether. He frowned; I liked his smile better.

"The dates of the skipped claims were always a Friday?" I nodded. "That's very interesting." He tilted back in his chair and seemed to stare through me at something, then tilted back forward and looked up with a serious boss face.

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Ms. Romano. This could be very important." Another pause. And please don't say anything about this, at least for the time being. Can you do that?"

I assured him that I was quite accustomed to keeping client matters confidential, then stood for a moment. Neither one of us said anything, so I mumbled a goodbye and went back to my cubicle, then went home and puzzled over what I'd found. I also puzzled over my reaction to the smiles Mr. Hopkins flashed at me.

That was Thursday. I worked my way through two more boxes of claim forms by Friday afternoon and left for the weekend, relieved to be away from the tedium. Monday morning my boss at O@H called and told me NAI wouldn't need me until Wednesday and to take Monday and Tuesday off.

============

Part 3

You can take the girl out of Texas, butcha cain't...

WEDNESDAY MORNING when I showed up at NAI, the boxes of claim forms were gone from my cubicle and a note on my keyboard asked me to come to the small conference room next to Mr. Hopkins' office. I walked in to find him and two other men I'd never seen before. Mark asked me if I would like a cup of coffee. I nodded and wondered what this was all about.

"Ms. Romano, or may I call you Katerina?" I nodded again. "Good. And you should call me Mark. No more of this Ms. Romano-Mr. Hopkins nonsense. Okay?"I nodded for a third time, starting to feel like a bobblehead doll and even more curious about what the hell was going on.

He pointed, in turn, to the other two men. "This is John Draper, an IT consultant, and Gordon Liddy, an independent...security consultant." He may as well have put air quotes around "security"; I was going to have to watch myself around him. When both men acknowledged the introduction by nodding, I had to stifle a chuckle at my mental image of bobblehead dolls sitting around a felt-topped table playing poker.

"You said you understood the need to keep client matters confidential, so I'm sure I needn't emphasize the importance of protecting the content of this meeting." I resisted the urge to nod again. "Shortly after you left my office Thursday afternoon, I called Mr. Draper and Mr. Liddy, summarized what you had told me, created privileged accounts for each of them on our system, and asked them to look into the matter. They have performed similar duties for us in the past."

He opened a manila folder on the table in front of him. "Mr. Draper contacted me Sunday morning with some disturbing news. He discovered that someone had tampered with our system. Specifically, they altered all the policy applications and claim forms archived in our corporate database for a five-year period that ended..." He glanced at the top sheet in the folder. "about two years ago. The changes made the records unreadable."

"Corrupted." I said it without thinking, then worried that I should have kept my mouth shut. "Sorry, I didn't mean to say that. I was just...thinking out loud."

"Nothing to be sorry about, Ms. Rom...Katerina. That's the word our IT director himself used to describe it. He's been in the IT department almost eight years, but was promoted to director less than two years ago. Oddly enough, he says he has no idea how the database was originally built or updated. Mr. Draper says he finds that hard to believe. So do I."

I was beginning to get the feeling they suspected—or might already have discovered—that something not quite kosher was going on. That turned out to be an understatement.

"He—the IT director—was also surprised to learn that we had retrieved the original paper forms from the archive. Well, surprised isn't quite strong enough; let's say startled, perhaps even alarmed." He smiled, and it wasn't the warm smile he flashed at me a few times, it was more of a smirk. I was glad he hadn't smiled at me that way.

But his smile was cuddly compared to the evil grin the security guy Liddy sported when Mark asked him to explain what steps had been taken. "Thanks to some...creative research by my esteemed colleague, Mr. Draper, we learned that the IT guy's predecessor—who retired unexpectedly about two years ago—has taken residence in Montenegro, although apparently he is planning to move soon, either to Dubai or Hong Kong."

He paused and glanced questioningly at Mark, who nodded almost imperceptibly. "It seems that he managed to accumulate quite a large offshore account in the Caymans. Shortly after he retired, through a series of intermediate moves obviously intended to thwart detection, he transferred the entire account to several different accounts in other countries that are reluctant to share financial information. Mr. Draper...discerned how to gain access to these accounts, pending instructions from NAI." Draper grinned when Liddy said "discerned."

Mark continued. "We..." He gestured to the other two, "had a busy weekend. We learned that the IT director or his predecessor would apply almost every Friday for a large treaty reinsurance premium to one of several well-known reinsurers, to be paid by wire transfer. One of them would intercept the wire transfer and reroute it to the offshore account, delete the debit and credit records from the database, and destroy the paper request form."

Again he glanced at the top sheet in the folder. "As best we can tell without a more thorough audit, in five years they diverted almost $14 million." I gasped at the amount. "A forensic accounting team has taken over the task of restoring the corrupted data, so you won't have to finish that job, Ms. Romano. The team then will thoroughly analyze all records for the five-year period to draw a complete picture of what happened."

He looked at Liddy to cue him, who actually licked his lips before picking up the tale. "The current IT director was arrested by the FBI as he left his house this morning. A written request for the provisional arrest of his predecessor, pursuant to Article 16 of the European Convention on Extradition, was presented to the proper authorities in Montenegro about an hour ago. Given his plans to move shortly to a more congenial location, we also...ensured that he would be available for arrest." I had some idea of what "ensured" might mean; his feral grin as he said it gave me goosebumps.

We lapsed into silence, then Mark stood, ending the meeting. "Gentlemen, I'm sure I don't have to remind you to submit your invoices. You did a helluva job." More grins and acknowledging nods.

"Ms. Romano, since you've been relieved of that godawful boring job, I'm afraid that NAI won't be needing your services any longer. While Accounting is processing the final payment for O@H, may I buy you breakfast? In a proper restaurant, not the cafeteria?" His smile this time was the warm one that I liked.

I caught myself just as I started to nod yet again. "That would be very nice, Mr. Hopkins. Thank you in advance." I didn't know it at the time, but the die was cast that morning. Despite my resolve never again to make myself vulnerable to a man, I wasn't prepared for a tall, good-looking guy who could skillfully play a long game.

—————

A COUPLE OF WEEKS later he called and asked when I could be free to attend an early dinner meeting with some of NAI's management. Figuring they wanted to tie up any loose ends about the conspiracy, I said I could be there at their convenience. He suggested Wednesday, and I agreed; a car would pick me up at 4:30.

The "car" was a Mercedes limo. It took me up the 101 to (where else?) the Mark Hopkins hotel, where Mark Hopkins greeted me and reminded me that he had no connection with the hotel. Then he admitted with a sheepish grin that he hadn't been able to resist choosing it as a venue, and whisked me up to a semi-private area of the Top of the Mark.

As he introduced everyone, it quickly became apparent that this wasn't some routine tie-up-the-loose-ends session. A dozen suits were there, led by the CEO of NAI himself, TJ Watson, and his wife; they flew in from Hartford in a corporate jet just for the occasion. Lesser lights included the CFO and CTO and their wives, who accompanied the Watsons, plus a gaggle of executive and senior VPs.

Mark asked what I would like to drink. When he brought me my soda with a twist (sans comment, bless his heart), I asked what the gathering was all about. He simply smiled and asked me to be patient. "But surely you remember we had agreed to forget the Ms. Romano-Mr. Hopkins formalities and address each other as Katrina and Mark." Once again he flashed that disarming smile. "You're right, Mr...uh, Mark. And my friends call me Kat." I took a sip of my soda and smiled. Yegods, I was flirting with him!

The place cards seated me between Mark and TJ Watson. Before Mark could react, Watson pulled the chair out for me, then slid it toward the table as I sat down. It took me a moment to figure out what he was doing; the only other times that had happened were during the etiquette classes that were part of my job training.

The food, as well as the view of San Francisco, was to die for. We started with a Caesar salad, and could choose either steak and lobster (Filet Medallion & Pan Roasted Spiny Lobster) or salmon (Char Sui Glazed Salmon Steak). I knew it was too intimate when I accepted a bite of Mark's salmon, then offered him in return a taste of my lobster, but I was caught up in the pleasure of the evening. Little did I know it was the beginning of a long, slow courtship dance.

During coffee and a marvelous dessert (Lemon-Berry Trifle Cake), the CEO stood and walked to the middle of the table on the window side. "I want to thank Mark Hopkins for suggesting such a delightful place for this dinner. I can't imagine what inspired him, but I applaud his choice." The polite applause was accompanied by some guffaws and one not-so-sotto voce comment that Mark's ego was the real top of the Mark. Grins all around, however, confirmed their genuine appreciation.

Watson turned serious. "We're all aware of the theft carried out by the Pacific Coast Region IT Director and his predecessor. Thanks to Ms. Katerina Romano's instincts and initiative, the forensic accounting team was able to determine that $29 million and change was diverted." I gasped at the number.

"What we haven't revealed until tonight was that we discovered similar schemes in all six US regions, coordinated by the former Pacific Coast region IT director. He remains in custody in Montenegro; we anticipate he will be extradited to the US early next week. Although all audits are not yet complete, it appears that altogether more than $212 million was taken."

Everyone gasped at this number. "More than 80 per cent of that has been recovered. Apparently they were waiting until they were sure the thefts hadn't been detected before they fully cashed in. To put it in the vernacular once favored by my children, Ms. Romano saved NAI a shit-ton of money." I blushed and everyone else chuckled.

Before I had time to react, he gestured for me to join him. Everyone stood and started clapping as I got up and walked around the table; it seemed I was the guest of honor. I've never set foot on Will's sceptr'd isle, but "gobsmacked" best describes how I felt.

Watson greeted me with a warm handshake. To this day, I regret not brushing his hand aside and giving him the abrazo muy grande I would have in a pre-#metoo world. My surprises weren't over.

"I contacted Ms. Romano's superiors at her agency—" My superiors? Is this guy calling me inferior? I felt my face getting hot, but noticed that Mark was watching me. I didn't want to embarrass him, so I tamped down my anger. "—and asked if I could offer her a job." He shook his head.

"They told me in no uncertain terms that her contractual agreement prevented her from accepting such an offer, and because she is such a valued employee they weren't interested in releasing her from the contract." He leaned down and said something to one of the VPs, who nodded, picked up a glass of water from the table, and handed it to Watson, who drank almost half of it. His request seemed more polite than entitled; I was impressed.

"They knew the general nature of what had happened and the central role Ms. Romano played, but asked us to understand that they needed this sort of contractual protection to maintain a skilled staff of administrative consultants." I was pleased that neither my boss nor Watson referred to me or my colleagues as secretaries.

"I was pretty sure that would be their policy, so I then asked the question that was my actual reason for contacting them: Could we offer her an award, a bonus, so to speak, for outstanding performance? It turned out that their corporate policy specifically allowed such an award, but it was limited to the amount she would receive for four weeks of service." He smiled as the CFO handed him an envelope, then he handed the envelope to me.

"Ms. Romano, this isn't sufficient reward for what you did for us; it's only $6400. But it turns out that your employer has no policy forbidding donations made in your name to a 501(c)(3) organization. We think it will please you to know that a gift of $100,000 has been made in your name to the Hays-Caldwell Women's Center in San Marcos, Texas."

The bonus was very nice, but the generous gift brought tears to my eyes. In college I had interviewed some of the staff and clients at Hays-Caldwell for a research project in a psych seminar, then used that same series of interviews for a case study in a criminal justice class. The interviews moved me so much that I volunteered every other week at the center until I left San Marcos. That experience—especially the time I spent with battered women and their too-often-traumatized children—reinforced my belief that, with rare exception, most men simply couldn't be trusted.

Once again, people stood and applauded. It took me a minute to get my emotions in check. "Thank you, Mr. Watson. You—well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say NAI—needn't have given me a bonus, I simply passed along something that puzzled me." I paused for effect, then grinned. "But I wouldn't dream of insulting you by refusing it." The laughter assured me they understood I was kidding.

"But I am thunderstruck by y'all's generous gift to Hays-Caldwell." Y'all's? Good God, did I really say that? You can take the girl out of Texas, butcha cain't...I shoulda been poppin' my gum. Except I never talked that way, ever. Why the hell did I do that? I shook my head a bit to clear it and got back on track.

"That money will make life less painful and more hopeful for many women and children. I really can't tell you how it thrills and pleases me that I might somehow be responsible for any small improvement in their lives. But I have to share the credit for this honor with Mark Hopkins. The scheme wouldn't have been discovered if he hadn't taken me seriously and followed up on what I found."

I knew it sounded like ass-kissing, but it was true. He deserved credit for it. I babbled on for a couple more minutes, then sat down. As they all stood and applauded again, for the first time in a long time I wished could celebrate with a drink.

The rest of the evening was anticlimactic—at least for me. Watson called it to a close about half an hour later simply by standing and gripping the back of his wife's chair. As we milled around retrieving coats and purses, Mark said he regretted that I wouldn't be coming back to NAI, then asked if I would consider having dinner with him sometime. There was no polite way to say I wouldn't consider it, so I punted and suggested he call my cell; he had the number.

—————

THREE WEEKS PASSED. I had finished my limited-duty hiatus, and after two brief and blessedly uneventful ops, Thanksgiving was upon us. I was starting a five-day temp rotation when I got a text message from a number I didn't recognize.

—May I call you this evening? MH

It took me a moment to figure out who MH might be. I got all analytical about it—like, who has my cell number and wants to talk to me and would be polite enough to ask first and oh, by the way, whose initials are MH—then I was glad Moe wasn't around to slap my stupid-as-Curly face. As soon as I remembered the dinner and ego-boosting award at the Top of the Mark, plus the brief conversation with Mark Hopkins at the end, I responded.