Free Tom Hyman by Jupiter's Daughter Page B

fraud?”
    “I don’t rule it out. More likely Goth is conning himself. He wants to believe he can do these things. Maybe he needs to believe it.”
    “You think we should forget it, then?”
    Ajemian pulled a tissue from his pocket and blew his nose loudly. He hated it when his boss put him on the spot like this.
    “Well, what’s he offering us? Basically nothing—beyond his word. And I don’t think that’s worth much. As you yourself said—” “Stop quoting me, for godsakes. I know what I said.”
    Ajemian nodded.
    “I want to think about it,” Stewart decided.
    Both men were clutching the edges of the seats in front of them to keep from being thrown around by the rough mountain road.
     
    Stewart appraised his chief assistant. He was wearing that hangdog look he put on whenever Stewart was abrupt with him.
    He paid Hank Ajemian a million dollars a year, along with stock options, a fat expense account, and a complete medical plan. And Ajemian was worth it. He didn’t have much imagination, but he was quick and savvy, and an absolute wizard with a balance sheet. He could cut corners and bend rules with the best of them. He knew how to pull out all the stops to outwit a rival in a deal or to confound and defeat an army of regulatory investigators. He could put together—or take apart—a deal like no one else Stewart had ever known. When Ajemian was doing the numbers, the competition didn’t stand a chance.
    And Stewart trusted him. He was loyal. And it wasn’t just his personality that made him that way. He owed Stewart a lot.
    In 1988 Ajemian had been hit by both the SEC and the United States Attorney General’s office in a Wall Street securities fraud case that sent him to the federal penitentiary in Danbury, Connecticut, for three years. When he got out of prison, in 1992, no one would hire him. He had a wife and three children, and he was reduced to sending his kids to live with relatives while he and his wife, Carol, cleaned offices to stay alive.
    That was how he met Dalton Stewart. He was polishing his office floor one night when Stewart walked in. Ajemian had seen some papers on Stewart’s desk relating to plans to buy out a small pharmaceuticals company in upstate New York. He couldn’t resist pointing out a few ways in which Stewart might improve his bargaining position. Stewart, once he got over the shock of being given advice by a nosy cleaning man, was impressed. Despite Ajemian’s jail record, he put him on the payroll as an investment consultant. Stewart had reason to be sympathetic. His own father had once gone to prison for a crime similar to Ajemian’s.
    In the years since, Ajemian had become Stewart’s only real confidant.
    “Goth’s a crackpot,” Ajemian declared. “You read the file. He’s an embarrassment in the scientific community.”
    “He won the Nobel Prize.”
    “He’s still a crackpot.”
    “Hold on a minute,” Stewart countered. “Don’t confuse being controversial with being crazy. The guy’s a genius. Nobody disputes that. And I find it hard to believe that a man with his brains—and ego—would spend ten years working a dry hole.
    He’s on to something. And if he can do what he says he can do . .
    .”
    Stewart paused. He felt a sudden euphoric rush, akin to the sensation he experienced when he decided to go after a beautiful woman. “There’s an opportunity to make some money here, Hank. A lot of money.”
    Ajemian rubbed his nose. “Goth may be years from being able to produce the kind of genetic package he was talking about in there.”
     
    “That’s part of the risk of backing him. But he’s not asking for much, either. Ten million. That’s not big money. We lost twice that last year on that damned drugstore chain you talked me into buying.”
    “It was only twelve million,” Ajemian protested. “And the numbers were there—” Stewart waved a hand to cut him off. “Think of the possibilities. If the genetic program works even half as well