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Paranoia by Joseph Finder. Copyright 2004 by Joseph Finder.
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I felt weird reading all this stuff. It was like going through someone's diary. I also felt really guilty—not because of any loyalty to Camilletti, obviously, but because of Goddard. I could almost see Goddard's gnomelike head floating in a bubble in the air, disapprovingly watching me go through Camilletti's e-mails and correspondence and notes to himself. Maybe it was because I was so wiped out, but I felt lousy about what I was doing. It sounds strange, I know—it was okay to steal stuff about the AURORA project and pass it to Wyatt, but giving them stuff I hadn't been assigned to get felt like an outright betrayal of my new employers. The letters WSJ jumped out at me. They had to stand for the Wall Street Journal. I wanted to see what his reaction to the Journal piece was, so I zoomed in on the string of words, and I almost fell out of my seat. From what I could tell, Camilletti used a number of different e-mail accounts outside of Trion—Hotmail, Yahoo, and some local Internet-access company. These other ones seemed to be for personal business, like dealing with his stockbroker, notes to his brother and sister and father, stuff like that. But it was the Hotmail e-mails that grabbed my attention. One of them was addressed to BulkeleyW@WSJ.com. It said: Bill— Shit has hit the fan around here. Will be lot of pressure on you to give up your source—hang tough. Call me at home tonite 9:30. —Paul So there it was. Paul Camilletti was—he had to be—the leaker. He was the guy who had fed the damaging information on Trion, on Goddard, to the Journal. Now it all made a creepy kind of sense. Camilletti was helping the Wall Street Journal wreak serious damage on Jock Goddard, portraying the old man as out of it, over-the-hill. Goddard had to go. Trion's board of directors, as well as every analyst and investment banker, would see this in the pages of the Journal. And who would the board appoint to take Goddard's place? It was obvious, wasn't it? --- Exhausted though I was, it took me a long time, tossing and turning, before I finally fell asleep. And my sleep was fitful, tormented. I kept thinking of little round-shouldered old Augustine Goddard at his sad little diner chowing down on pie, or looking haggard and beaten as his E-staff filed past him out of the conference room. I dreamed of Wyatt and Meacham, bullying me, threatening me with all their talk of prison time; in my dreams I confronted them, told them off, went off on them, really lost it. I dreamed of breaking into Camilletti's office and being caught by Chad and Nora together. And when my alarm clock finally went off at six in the morning and I raised my throbbing head off the pillow, I knew I had to tell Goddard about Camilletti. And then I realized I was stuck. How the hell could I tell Goddard about Camilletti when I'd gotten my evidence by breaking into Camilletti's office? Now what?
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