Page 161 of The Session

“It took me three minutes of googling to figure that out,” Mark told him.

“But how did you know we spoke to the clinic in the first place?” asked Laurent.

Mark pointed to a USB-C cable on the table connected to a video screen at the end of the conference room.

“Do you mind if I use this?” he asked.

“Go ahead,” Diane offered.

Mark plugged in the phone and pulled up the screen for them to see on the monitor. It displayed a conversation thread consisting of terse, clipped responses and initials.

“This is a live Signal chat,” Mark told them. “Technically, it’s nearly impossible to hack one of these, with one big exception: if you have access to one of the participants’ phones . . .”

“Who did you hack?” asked Diane.

“I didn’t hack anyone. David McCready did. He actually put an exploit on a number of telephones issued to employees. While on paper he wasn’t even in the same organization that handled this, his desk was next to the desk of the person responsible for setting up and profiling phones for Summit staff,” Mark explained.

“One of the things I realized about Summit my first day there was that there were two versions. There’s what it looks like on paper, which has a family tree of show companies with totally different teams, all of them remote subsidiaries billing each other. But the reality is two people who seem completely unrelated on the org chart might be cube mates, might even be good friends, and probably talk a lot.”

Mark pointed to the screen.

“It took me a while to find this. And I won’t go into the details, but what you’re looking at right now is a live conversation between Nathan Morris and Safid.”

He paused while Laurent and Diane reacted.

“They don’t trust each other, you’ll notice, but they are sharing information. For example . . .” Mark scrolled to the bottom of the thread.

Prinz: silverboy at FC rn

Namor: Anybody w/ him?

Prinz: no. cutting deal?

Namor: Maybe.

“That little exchange happened twenty minutes ago, right as I walked in here. Which tells you they’ve got somebody watching you.”

Laurent glanced over his shoulder at the window for a moment.

Diane pointed her chin at the conversation in progress. “What else is on there?”

“Lots. Most of it’s coded. Nothing definitively IDs either of them, but it’s clear who’s talking.”

“This sounds like another game,” Laurent remarked.

“Well, it’s not one of mine, I assure you that. And your commissaire générale, Helena Arnaud, probably won’t think it’s a game either,” Mark added for good measure.

Laurent flinched. “Why would you say that?”

“When Nathan Morris sat where I’m sitting, I imagine he painted a deeply sinister picture of my father—a Machiavellian master manipulator pulling strings around the world for his own twisted reasons. He probably even provided evidence of that. And some of it may have been true. I’m not here to make the case for my father’s sainthood. That’s for sure. But what I don’t think you realized was the man Morris was describing wasn’t Max Lightman. It was himself. So much of what is wrong with this organization is the monster Morris turned into over the last couple of decades.”

“Why did he come to us if he was really the one in power?” asked Diane.

“Because he didn’t control everything. And that’s what he wants. You can create the org chart, set up the shell companies, direct the funds, have access to the bank accounts. But the real value of Summit is the myth of Max Lightman. Morris never controlled that. So he wanted to destroy it.”

“What does this have to do with the commissaire générale?” Laurent asked, still looking bent about Mark’s casual threat.

“This is where it gets a bit uncomfortable. Let’s say that Morris and Safid made sure that they had insurance that the investigation would be handled in a way that would be maximally beneficial to them,” Mark proposed.