Gordon chose anonymity over speed, and they left the Lear sitting in mothballs at Byrd Field and drove north to Washington first thing Monday morning. By nine o’clock, they were sitting in the reception area of the headquarters of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. After fifteen minutes, a well-dressed, trim woman in her early fifties approached them. Her hair was graying and age lines were beginning to take their toll on her features, but her eyes were lively and she moved with alacrity.
“Are you Gordon Buchanan and Jennifer Pearce?” she asked in a pleasant voice.
“Yes,” Gordon replied, rising from the leather couch.
“I’m Elizabeth Ripley,” she said, shaking both their hands. “You asked to see someone about an alleged accounting fraud by a publicly traded company?”
“Yes.”
“Fine, let’s go to my office.” She led the way through a series of richly appointed offices and boardrooms until they reached a midsized office with her name on the door. They entered, and she closed the door behind them before sitting down. “What is the nature of your complaint?”
They had decided Jennifer would speak, as she was best versed in the method and extent of the fraud. “I work for Veritas Pharmaceutical…”
Ten minutes later, the SEC investigator looked up from the notes she had taken while Jennifer talked. “These are very serious allegations, Ms. Pearce,” she said. “If true, the accounting differences would total into the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“I know,” Jennifer said. “We’re both very aware of how serious this is.” She paused for a moment. “Now that you have the information, how do you proceed?”
Ripley laid her reading glasses on her desk and reclined in her chair. “It’s complicated, Ms. Pearce. We’re a small organization by government standards-we manage to get by with just over three thousand staff in eighteen regional offices. So our resources are spread a little thin. That said, when we get a complaint of this caliber-and by that I mean from someone working at the company with access to its financial records-we take it very seriously. And we’re not toothless. We bring up to five hundred civil actions against corporations or individuals every year.”
“Civil actions?” Jennifer asked. “Not criminal?”
She shook her head. “No, we don’t have criminal enforcement authority. But we manage the investigation: interview witnesses, conduct forensic audits, review brokerage records, and carefully check trading practices. Once we have something to run with, we bring in the appropriate criminal authorities. If the criminal activity has crossed state boundaries, the FBI is often given jurisdiction. Sometimes it’s the local police, if the crime was committed in a city where the police have a department capable of handling the investigation. And we work very closely with Congress, all the stock exchange houses and especially the state securities regulators. Not much gets by us once we’re on it, Ms. Pearce.”
“What sort of time frames are we looking at, Ms. Ripley?” Jennifer asked.
She glanced at her notes. “I’d like a couple of days to review the year-end financials Veritas has filed over the past few years. And I’ll need to confirm with the appropriate departments inside the government that Veritas has been utilizing the tax-credit program in the manner you’ve suggested they are. I would say the earliest we could meet again would be in about a week’s time. And that is placing it in the highest priority.”
“So this is not a quick process,” Gordon said.
“Not in the least. We’ve got to be sure, Mr. Buchanan. And whatever we find in the next couple of weeks will have to then go through the Office of the Chief Accountant. They’re the ones who order and perform the necessary audits.”
“Damn it,” Jennifer said under her breath.
Elizabeth Ripley looked concerned. “What’s wrong, Ms. Pearce? Why is time so important a factor for you?”
Jennifer glanced over at Gordon and he gave her a slight nod. She looked back to the securities investigator. “Everything we’ve told you so far this morning is entirely accurate and can be backed up with a forensic audit. But there’s more.” She hesitated, knowing the next few sentences were going to sound crazy. “With very good reason, we suspect one or more of the top executives at Veritas is responsible for at least two murders.”
Elizabeth Ripley did not laugh. The lines around her mouth drew tight and she sat forward in her chair. “What makes you think that, Ms. Pearce?”
The immediate and serious reaction from the SEC woman was not what Jennifer had envisioned. She swallowed and continued. “One of my research assistants, Kenga Bakcsi, was murdered while on holiday in the Caribbean. She had been supplying Mr. Buchanan with information on one of our drugs. Another employee, Albert Rousseau, was killed when his gas stove exploded. He had proof in a floor safe in his condominium that one of Veritas’s drugs was dangerous. And late last Tuesday, I was abducted from my house in Richmond, driven into the Shenandoah Mountains, and left teetering over a cliff. If Gordon hadn’t rescued me, I would also be dead. And the man who left me there was the one whose family was murdered in Denver a few days ago. It was on all the news stations.”
“I saw it,” Ripley said. She toyed with her pen for a moment. “Who do you think is responsible? And I realize you’re only speculating at this time.”
“We have good reason to think the company’s CEO, Bruce Andrews, is the man behind all this.”
Gordon cleared his throat. “You seem to be taking this a little more seriously than we thought you might.”
The intensity in Elizabeth Ripley’s eyes was almost frightening. “I’ve been doing this for a few years, and you are not the first people to sit across that desk fearful for your lives. Individuals who are willing to commit fraud on a large scale are often willing to protect their indiscretions.” She leaned back in her chair and glanced out the window at the D.C. skyline. “A few years ago, I had a young woman, perhaps thirty, come in my office and offer information about a fraud inside her company. She told me that the man who was responsible was acting in a threatening manner. I told her I would do everything I could and sent her home. She showed up in the Potomac River eight days later. She had three children. So you see, when people come to me of their own free will with tips of insider trading or accounting fraud, I take them seriously. When they tell me they fear for their lives, I take them extremely seriously.”
“Thank you for that,” Jennifer said.
“I’m going to fast-track this file,” Ripley said. “I’ll schedule a meeting with the chief accountant for this afternoon. We’ll subpoena financial records from the government department that handles the tax credits and have the information on our desks within forty-eight hours. We’ll know in four days-by Friday, next Monday at the latest-whether we can proceed against Veritas. That’s the best I can do.”
“That’s good enough,” Jennifer said. “Thank you.”
Elizabeth Ripley walked them to the reception area, wished them the best, and shook their hands. She disappeared back into the labyrinth of offices before the elevator arrived. They rode the sixteen floors in silence. Once on the street, they picked up the rental car from the parking lot and headed back toward Richmond. The meeting had gone well-extremely well, in fact-but lingering in both their minds was one burning question.
Could they survive until the securities commission removed Bruce Andrews from power?