The Associate

The Associate Page 19

Six months after the Trylon-Bartin dispute went public with the filing of the lawsuit, the battleground had been defined and the troops were in place. Both sides had filed ponderous motions designed to capture the higher ground, but so far no advantage had been gained. They were of course haggling over deadlines, schedules, issues, discovery, and who got to see what documents, and when.

With the waves of lawyers working in sync, the case was plodding along. A trial was nowhere in sight, but then it was far too early. With monthly billings to Trylon averaging $5.5 million, why push the case to a conclusion?

On the other side, Bartin Dynamics was paying just as much for a vigorous and gold-plated defense coordinated by the bare-knuckle litigators at Agee, Poe & Epps. APE had committed forty lawyers to the case and, like Scully, had such a deep bench that it could send in another wave whenever necessary.

The hottest issue so far was no surprise to either set of litigators. When the forced marriage of Trylon and Bartin unraveled, when their clumsy joint venture blew up, there had been a virtual slugfest for the documents. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of documents had been generated during the development of the B-10 HyperSonic Bomber. Researchers employed by Trylon grabbed all the documents they could. Researchers for Bartin did the same. Software was routed and rerouted, and some of it was destroyed. Hardware controlled by one company found its way to the other. Thousands of secured files disappeared. Crates of printed documents were hoarded and hidden. And throughout the melee each company accused the other of lying, espionage, outright thievery. When the dust settled, neither knew exactly what the other possessed.

Because of the supersensitive nature of the research, the Pentagon watched in horror as the two companies behaved outrageously. The Pentagon, as well as several intelligence agencies, leaned heavily on Trylon and Bartin to keep their dirty laundry private, but they were ultimately not successful. The fight was now controlled by the lawyers and the courts.

A major task for Mr. Wilson Rush and his Scully & Pershing team was to accumulate, index, copy, and store all documents in the possession of Trylon. A warehouse was leased in Wilmington, North Carolina, about a mile from the Trylon testing facility where most of the B-10 research had taken place. After it was leased, it was completely renovated and made fire-, wind-, and waterproof. All windows were removed and replaced with a six-inch cinder-block wall. A Washington security firm wired the warehouse with twenty closed-circuit cameras. The four large doors were equipped with infrared alarms and metal detectors. Armed guards patrolled the empty warehouse long before any of the documents arrived.

When they did arrive, they came in unmarked tractor-trailer rigs, complete with more armed guards. Dozens of deliveries were made over a two-week period in mid-September. The warehouse, nicknamed Fort Rush, came to life as ton after ton of paperwork was stacked neatly in white cardboard boxes, all waiting to be organized into a system understood only by the lawyers up in New York.

The warehouse was leased by Scully & Pershing. Every contract was signed by Wilson Rush  -  contracts for the renovations, security operations, transporting of documents, everything. Once the documents entered the warehouse, they were deemed AWP  -  Attorneys' Work Product  -  and thus subject to a different set of rules regarding disclosure to the other side.

Mr. Rush selected ten associates from his litigation team, ten of the brightest and most trusted. These unlucky souls were shipped to Wilmington and introduced to Fort Rush, a long, windowless hangar of a building with shiny concrete floors and a pungent industrial smell to it. In the center was the mountain of boxes. Along both sides were rows of empty folding tables, and beyond the tables were ten large, fierce-looking copy machines, with wires and cables running everywhere. The copiers were, of course, state-of-the-art color and capable of instant scanning, collating, even stapling.

Far away from their New York offices, the associates were allowed to wear jeans and running shoes, and they were promised bigger bonuses and other goodies. But nothing could compensate them for the dismal job of physically copying and scanning a million documents. And in Wilmington! Most were married, with spouses and children back home, though of the ten, four had already suffered through a divorce. And it was quite likely that Fort Rush would be the cause of even more marital problems.

They began their forbidding task under the direction of Mr. Rush himself. Every document was copied twice, in a split second, and instantly scanned into the firm's virtual library. Several weeks down the road, when the task was complete, the library would be accessible by a secured code, and once inside, a lawyer could locate any document in a matter of seconds. The firm's computer experts designed the library and were supremely confident that its security was impenetrable.

To impress upon the associates the gravity of their seemingly mindless work, Mr. Rush stayed for three days and was involved in the unpacking, sorting, scanning, copying, and repacking. When he left, two other litigation partners remained and directed traffic. Such mundane work was normally contracted out to a copying service and supervised by the firm's litigation support staff, but that was far too risky with these documents. They had to be handled by real lawyers who appreciated their importance. The real lawyers manning the copiers averaged about $400,000 in salary, and most had at least one degree from an Ivy League school. At no point in their graduate or postgraduate studies could they have pictured themselves running copiers, but after four or five years with Scully & Pershing they were shockproof.

The rotation began after the first week. Eight days in the warehouse, then four days in New York, then back to Wilmington. The assignments were staggered, and a total of fifteen associates were eventually used. All were forbidden to discuss any aspect of Fort Rush with anyone in New York. Security and confidentiality were paramount.

The first project took six weeks. Two point two million documents were copied, indexed, and added to the library. The associates were freed from Fort Rush and flown back to New York on a chartered jet.

By then, Bennie knew exactly where the warehouse was located and had a general idea of its security features, but his interest in these matters was only passing. What Bennie wanted, of course, was access to the virtual library, access only his spy could deliver.