Chapter 27 — Mark Calls for Help
Rachel Zane's heels hit the forty-third floor hallway with a precision that anyone who'd worked near her for more than a week had learned to read like weather.
Normal pace: professional, efficient, the rhythm of someone moving through a day with purpose.
This pace: something was wrong and the something had a name.
The two women from the administrative department who made the mistake of calling out Good morning, Duchess as she passed the kitchen alcove received a smile so controlled it could have been used to demonstrate the concept of controlled smiling to people who'd never seen one. Rachel kept walking.
The nickname had spread through the firm with the speed and enthusiasm that only interdepartmental gossip could achieve. Pearson Hardman had sixty-three attorneys, two hundred support staff, and an internal communication network that would have impressed the CIA. Within seventy-two hours of Martin first using it — casually, in the hallway, in front of two paralegals who had nothing better to do — the nickname had acquired additional context that ranged from mildly inaccurate to genuinely creative.
Rachel had given this situation exactly two months of patience.
The patience had expired this morning somewhere between the elevator and the administrative wing.
She turned the corner to her cubicle, organized her schedule and the morning's documents with the efficient speed of someone who'd decided that work was happening regardless of the conversation she was about to have, then stood, smoothed her blazer, and walked into Martin's office.
She stopped.
Martin was at his desk, leaning forward, frowning at his monitor with his left hand on the keyboard and his right hand moving the mouse with the focused intensity of someone managing something important. His expression had the concentration she'd seen on him during the Amanda Somme preparation, during the Wyatt acquisition analysis, during every moment when a case required the full weight of his attention.
Rachel pulled back slightly.
She walked around to see the screen.
World of Warcraft.
Specifically: the Black Temple raid instance, and from the chat log scrolling along the side, a group of people who were very pleased with how it was going.
"Nice pull, Sheldon. Okay, everyone hold position — Martin, you're tanking the left add—"
"On it—"
"Beautiful. Okay, execute—"
"Well done, everyone." Martin leaned back. "That's a clean clear. Logging off — I've got work." He typed something into the chat, received what appeared to be several enthusiastic responses, and closed the game window.
Rachel became aware that her blood pressure had made a decision without consulting her.
"You," she said.
Martin turned his chair around and registered her expression. His own expression made the small adjustment it made when he understood that a conversation was happening on terms that weren't his.
"That was a scheduled raid," he said. "Sheldon and the others are free Monday mornings. I committed to this two weeks ago."
"This is a company computer."
"All my actual work files are on the company system. The game client is—"
"This is a company computer on a Monday morning at a law firm."
"The IT department monitors for data security events. Playing World of Warcraft doesn't trigger—"
"Martin." Rachel sat down in the chair across from his desk with the deliberate calm of someone who has decided that volume is not the tool for this conversation. "I need you to hear me say something."
Martin closed the monitor, turned his chair fully toward her, and gave her the attention he gave clients when he'd decided they needed to be heard rather than managed.
"The nickname," Rachel said.
Martin didn't look away.
"It started as a joke between us. That's fine. I can take a joke." She held his gaze. "What I cannot absorb on a daily basis is walking through this building and having it used to speculate about my personal life, my ambitions, and my relationship with you. None of which is anyone's business. All of which is now apparently communal property." She paused. "I need it to stop."
Martin was quiet for a moment.
"You're right," he said. "I didn't think about how it would travel, and I should have. I'm sorry."
Rachel had prepared for several possible responses. This was the one that required the least follow-up.
"Thank you," she said.
"It stops today." He said it simply, without hedging, the way he made commitments when he meant them.
Rachel let the subject close. She opened her schedule book, turned it to face him across the desk. "Jessica's M&A client comes in at ten. The prelim discussion on deal structure. I've kept your afternoon clear for follow-up research."
"Good." Martin looked at the schedule. "What's your read on him from the intake?"
"Impatient. He's motivated to close quickly but doesn't want to appear motivated, which usually means the deal is more time-sensitive on his end than he's disclosed." Rachel closed the book. "I'd push on the timeline early. Find out what's driving the urgency before you discuss structure."
Martin looked at her with the expression he used when she'd said something he'd been thinking independently and was confirming.
"Ravenclaw," he said.
Rachel blinked. "What?"
"House assignment. If this were Hogwarts." He leaned back. "Intelligence-forward, values competence, underestimated by the houses that mistake confidence for ability." He tilted his head. "Ravenclaw."
Rachel looked at him. "You're telling me my Hogwarts house on a Monday morning."
"You implied it. I completed the thought."
"I didn't imply—"
"You referenced a love potion from Knockturn Alley. That implies familiarity with the canon, which implies a sorting preference, which—"
"You are so strange," Rachel said, but the forty minutes of contained fury had by this point been reduced to something considerably more manageable, which she suspected was exactly what he'd been doing and which she chose not to acknowledge out loud.
She stood. "Ten o'clock."
"I'll be ready."
She was at the door when his phone rang.
He looked at the screen. Something crossed his expression — not concern exactly, more like the recalibration of someone who'd expected a call at a different time.
"Sit down," he said. "You can stay."
Rachel, who had been about to step out as professional habit dictated, registered this and sat back down on the office couch.
Martin answered on speaker.
"Mark." His voice shifted register slightly — not less professional, but calibrated differently, the way it always shifted when he was talking to someone from before. "I thought you were in deal meetings all week."
"Martin. I need you." The voice on the other end was loud enough that it would have been audible without speaker, and carried the specific energy of someone who had been awake for a long time making very consequential decisions. "I fired the legal team."
Martin went very still. "Which legal team."
"The whole thing. All of them. Gone."
"Mark."
"They told me the best offer was ten billion. Ten. Billion. You know what Microsoft's search division is worth? You know what the advertising revenue trajectory looks like? Ten billion is what you offer someone when you think they don't know what they have."
"Which is why you negotiate," Martin said, "rather than—"
"I need you. I need you and I need the Harvard guys. I need people I trust in the room."
Martin leaned forward and opened his browser. Rachel watched him run a search, scan the results, run another. She picked up her own phone and started pulling threads.
Facebook. Microsoft. Acquisition talks. Valuation. The pieces assembled quickly.
"The board approved bringing you in," Mark continued, at a pace that suggested he'd had this argument internally several times and had won. "I told them you'd get us to fifteen billion. They didn't argue. Nobody argues when I say your name, Martin, I don't know if you know that."
"I know you believe that," Martin said. "How long have talks been running?"
"Ten days."
"And you fired the legal team on day ten."
"Day nine. I needed the weekend to find a replacement."
"The weekend was—" Martin looked at the ceiling briefly. "Mark, it's Monday morning."
"I work fast."
"This is a hundred-million-dollar financing round minimum, potentially a multi-billion acquisition negotiation. That is not—"
"Fifteen billion, Martin. You're going to get me fifteen billion. I already told the board."
Rachel was reading a Bloomberg piece from Friday about the Microsoft-Facebook acquisition discussions. The reported valuation gap between the parties was, by any measure, significant. She turned her phone screen toward Martin so he could see the number without interrupting the call.
Martin glanced at it. His expression processed this and continued.
"Mark," he said, "you need to go to sleep."
"I'm not—"
"You've been awake since at least Friday making decisions that are going to live with you for ten years. The first thing you need to do is sleep. The second thing we need to do is have a real conversation when your brain is operating at the level that built the thing you're trying to protect." He paused. "I'm not saying no. I'm saying not right now, not in this condition."
A pause on the other end. Longer than the previous pauses.
"You'll come?"
"I'll call you tonight. You'll have slept. We'll talk." Martin held the phone steadily. "Go to sleep, Mark."
"...Okay."
"I mean it."
"I know. That's why I called you."
The call ended.
The office was quiet for a moment.
Rachel looked at her phone screen, then at Martin. "Microsoft is trying to acquire Facebook."
"Microsoft is exploring it," Martin said. "Which means several other parties are also exploring it, because nothing at that scale happens in isolation." He leaned back. "The valuation gap is real. Ten billion is the opening position of someone who wants to see if Zuckerberg panics. He didn't panic — he fired his legal team, which is adjacent to panicking but in a direction that might actually work if handled correctly."
"Can you negotiate a fifteen billion valuation?"
Martin looked at the Bloomberg piece again. "I can build a framework that makes fifteen defensible. Whether the other side accepts it depends on variables I don't have yet." He closed the browser. "I need to know who the other parties are. Microsoft doesn't move on something this size without competitive intelligence about alternative bidders."
Rachel was already making a note. "I'll start pulling the deal landscape."
"Also—" Martin picked up his phone— "I need to book two flights to Palo Alto. Tonight if possible, tomorrow morning latest. And I need Priya briefed on the M&A case so she can handle the ten o'clock without me if I need to be on calls."
"Done." Rachel was already standing. Then she stopped. "Palo Alto. Who's the second ticket?"
Martin looked at her with the expression that had preceded several of the better decisions he'd made in the last two months.
"You've been managing the Mutual Aid Association relationship from the administrative side for two months," he said. "You know these clients better than anyone except me. And a negotiation at this scale needs someone in the room who can read the room while I'm making arguments." He held her gaze. "That's you."
Rachel looked at him.
"Also," he said, "Priscilla specifically asked about you in her last email and suggested you come next time there was a reason to visit. This is a reason."
"That's manipulation," Rachel said.
"It's comprehensive reasoning," Martin said. "Two different things."
Rachel stood at the door for a moment.
"Do you want a window seat or an aisle?" she said.
"Aisle," Martin said. "I need to be able to work."
"I'll book both," Rachel said. "Aisle seats. Different rows if coach is full."
"We're not flying coach," Martin said mildly.
Rachel had known this before she said it. She went to her desk and started making calls.
Outside the window, Monday continued. The city below the forty-third floor went about its business in the way the city always went about its business — enormous, indifferent, requiring nothing and producing everything.
Inside, a twenty-three-year-old Senior Lawyer at Pearson Hardman was about to fly to California to negotiate the valuation of the most important social network in the world on behalf of a friend who'd built it in a dorm room five years ago.
Martin opened a new document, titled it Facebook — Deal Framework, and started writing.
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