The Thirtieth Day

The memo leaked on the thirtieth day.

It was a Strategy memo, four pages, marked internal, written by Elena and typed by Priya Sen, and it laid out in plain numbers what Harrow Dynamics would have to divest to survive a Reyes Capital merger if the vote went wrong. At six in the morning it was on the front page of the business section under the headline HARROW PLANS FOR DEFEAT. By seven the share price was down nine percent. By eight the fortieth floor had called everyone above Manager to the long table.

"Sixty days to the vote," Augustine said, "and we have just told the market we expect to lose it. Who."

Nobody answered. Daniel sat at his grandfather's right with the memo in front of him. Elena sat at his left, which was where a wife sat and also where the Director of Strategy sat, and for once the two chairs were the same chair.

"The distribution list," Daniel said, "was nine people. The Chairman. Me. Director Marsh and her analyst. Director Lowell in Finance. Vice President Imogen Harrow in Operations. Manager Daniela Harrow in Communications, because Communications gets everything. Legal, two of them."

Imogen leaned back. "Communications gets everything, and Communications has a cousin who gets Daniel's email by mistake twice a week. I'm only saying what everyone is thinking."

Daniela went white and then red. "I have never..."

"Nobody is accusing anyone," Daniel said.

"I am," said Imogen. "Daniela dot Harrow, Daniel dot Harrow. One letter. She has told that story at every holiday party for six years. If she can receive his mail she can forward it."

"Enough." Augustine did not raise his voice. He never did. "Director Marsh. It is your memo. Find me the hole by five o'clock or I will assume the hole is in Strategy."

Elena went back to the twelfth floor with her hands shaking and sat down across from Priya.

"It wasn't us," Priya said immediately.

"I know it wasn't us. Prove it."

They worked through lunch. Priya pulled the document history. The memo had been drafted on the Strategy server, exported once to a locked PDF with a tracking watermark, and sent from Elena's account to the nine names on the list. Each copy carried an invisible stamp, a line of characters in the footer that told you which recipient's copy it was.

"The newspaper printed the PDF," Priya said. "Look. They printed a scan of it. The watermark is in the scan."

Elena looked. Then she took a ruler to the screen, which was not a Strategy technique, and read the characters off one at a time while Priya matched them against the list.

It was not Daniela's copy.

It was not Imogen's.

It was the copy sent to Marcus Lowell, Director of Finance.

"He gave the toast at your wedding," Priya said quietly. "Four minutes over. He mentioned the share price twice."

"He mentioned it because he'd been shorting it." Elena was already standing. "Pull his trading disclosures. All of them. Then pull the Reyes Capital filings for the same month and put them side by side."

By three o'clock the two piles agreed with each other like a pair of liars. Marcus Lowell had sold forty thousand Class B shares of Harrow Dynamics on the twenty-eighth day, two days before the leak. Reyes Capital had bought forty thousand Class B shares the same afternoon, through a broker Lowell's brother-in-law happened to own.

At four Elena walked into the fortieth floor without an appointment. Oswin opened the door without being asked.

"It was Finance," she said, and put the two piles on the table. "Director Lowell sold the memo to Reyes and sold his stock ahead of it. Daniela's copy was never opened outside the building. Imogen's copy was never opened at all."

Imogen, who was still at the table, said nothing. She did not apologise to her cousin either, but she stopped looking at her.

Augustine read the pages slowly, then pushed them to Daniel. "Call security," he said. "Then call the regulator. Then call Lowell and tell him he is no longer a Director of anything, and he may collect his coat from the lobby."

Marcus Lowell was out of the building by five. He went quietly, which Priya said was the most suspicious thing he had done all day.

At six the executive floor was empty except for the Harrows and the one Marsh who had married into them. Daniel stood by the window with the city coming on below.

"Finance has no Director now," he said. "And Strategy has one who just saved the company nine percent of its own stock in a day."

"Strategy will have the same one tomorrow," Elena said. "I like my job."

"No." Daniel turned. "You are Director Marsh. You have been Director of Strategy for a year this week. I am promoting you. Vice President of Strategy, effective tomorrow, reporting to me. The board approved it an hour ago by telephone. Grandfather voted first."

Elena opened her mouth and nothing came out of it.

"You will sit on the executive committee," Augustine said from the head of the table. "You will not sit on the board. The charter is the charter, and the charter says family, and you are family by contract for eleven months. I do not bend the charter for contracts. Ask Imogen."

Imogen stood up so fast her chair rolled into the wall.

"Vice President," she said. "She has been in the building two years and she is a Vice President. I have been a Harrow my whole life and I am still thirty days from a seat you promised me when I was nineteen."

"The charter promised it," Augustine said. "Not I. No Harrow sits on the board before thirty. Your father waited. I waited. You will wait thirty more days, and then you will have your seat, and then we will see what you do with it."

"We will," Imogen said, and looked at Elena, and the look was not what it had been on the fourth day. It was worse. "Congratulations, Vice President. Welcome to the family. There are two of us now."

She walked out. The door did not slam, because the doors on the fortieth floor were hung too well for that, but it wanted to.

Daniela gathered her things slowly. At the door she stopped beside Elena. "Thank you," she said. "For the ruler. I saw you through the glass. Nobody has ever taken a ruler to a screen for me."

"You wrote my press release," Elena said. "We're even."

When they were alone Daniel sat down heavily in his grandfather's chair, which Augustine had vacated for the first time all day to go and lie down.

"She's right, you know," he said. "Imogen. I gave you in thirty days what the charter has kept from her for ten years. She will not forget it."

"She was never going to be my friend, Daniel."

"No. But I would have liked her not to be your enemy." He rubbed his face. "Sixty days to the vote. Thirty to her birthday. My mother still hasn't signed. And now my sister has a reason."

Elena sat down beside him, in the chair that was hers now, Vice President, executive committee, no board. "Then we have thirty days to give her a better one," she said.

Downstairs, Priya Sen was still at her monitors. She had updated the Strategy org chart before anyone asked her to. At the top it now said Elena Marsh, Vice President. Beneath it, alone, it said Priya Sen, Analyst, and beside that, in the comments field where nobody would ever look, she had typed: still works for the Vice President. Does not work for whoever she married.