Page 20 of Business Temptations

He put a chocolate muffin on his plate and separated the top and bottom carefully as he said, “Two days ago, a strange fellow, who claimed to be a representative of your company,” he looked directly at Matteo, “offered me the formula for your original fuel additive.” He carefully spread a pat of butter on the warm muffin as if he hadn’t just dropped a bombshell among the group sitting around the kitchen island.

“What?” Bailey gasped. She looked over at Matteo to see his reaction and saw that his face was blank.

Matteo then turned to Tim. “Was the formula compromised?”

Tim immediately shook his head. “No. After Zahir told me what happened, I checked and discovered that the formula we keep in the vault had been moved.” He looked around at the others. “We don’t keep the formula for any of our products on a computer or in the vault. And we have several factories that produce only a portion of the product. It was Matteo’s idea to divide up the production of the additive and it’s actually brilliant. For each of our products, we have four or five factories and each factory adds something to the barrels before those barrels are shipped to a packaging plant so that no one person has the entire formula. The final product is then packaged into the consumer containers that are then shipped off to the retail stores.”

“That’s smart,” Levi commented.

“So, what’s the problem?” Kennedi asked, always one to get right to the problem so she could fix it.

“She’s right,” Clarissa agreed. “Is the problem merely that the fake formula was stolen from the vault?”

“No,” Tim replied with a shake of his head. “It isn’t that.” He ran a hand over his face. “The vault sits to the side of the lab and holds a bunch of false formulas. The safe is just a decoy. The real formulas are stored in a different area of the lab.”

“Again, what’s the problem? If the formulas are safe and the factories haven’t lost any product, why are you so concerned? And is this even about the formulas for your product? Or is something else going on?”

Tim lifted his hand, trying to slow the flood of questions.

“If it was just a question about someone trying to steal a formula, then that would be one thing. But right before I was about to leave for the gala tonight, the police showed up. Apparently, the guard that works the first half of the night shift was attacked earlier this evening. He was bashed over the head and rendered unconscious. I saw him at the hospital and he’s fine,” he announced, forestalling concerns from around the room, “but he said that two people were trying to break into the lab.” He turned to Zahir. “Would you tell them the rest?”

Zahir clapped his hands together, brushing off the crumbs from his third muffin. “I was visited by someone who was accompanied by one of my ambassadors. They told me that they would sell me the formula to your fuel additive if I was willing to finance the building of a factory that could produce the product in my country. They said that they knew how to manufacture the additive for less money and could undercut your prices by more than half.” He paused, letting that news sink in.

There was a long moment of silence.

Finally, Matteo summed up the problem. “So right now, we have someone who broke into our lab, stole an ineffective formula that isn’t even complete, hit someone over the head and approached a foreign leader who isn’t going to help him out.” He looked around at the group. “Did I sum up the problem effectively?”

Tim’s jaw clenched slightly before he added, “The thief works at the lab. It’s an employee.”

That sent a wave of shock throughout the group.

“Why do you think that?” Bailey demanded, her face paper white.

“Because whoever attacked the guard knew to wait until a very specific time of the night when the guard was running checks in the hallways.”

“Why would we…?”

Tim held up his hand. “The checks are random and are dictated by our security system. The guards on duty get an electronic signal that cues them to do hallway checks. In theory, they are random, but since a computer generates the times, they are only random in our eyes. Obviously, there is a mathematical formula that generates those times.”

Bailey lifted her hand, still confused. “Okay, I still don’t see why you think that it’s someone inside the company,” Bailey argued.

Matteo put a hand over hers. “I’m guessing that the guard was attacked at the moment he was going through one of the electronically controlled doors. In other words, the person would have gotten the same electronic signal. So they are either an employee or they are somehow connected to an employee. Most likely, they are an employee because fingerprints control the security in our laboratory. The only way the intruder could have gotten the computer generated signal is if they had the correct fingerprint to allow them through the exterior doors.”

“So we have two problems;” Bailey summarized. “One is that we have an employee attempting corporate espionage. And two, if this person approached you, Your Highness,” she said in acknowledgement of Sheik Zahir, “then they have probably approached others who might also have the resources to manufacture and distribute a less effective product.”

Tim sighed heavily, bracing his arms wide on the countertop. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

Matteo eyed Tim for a long moment, then said, “I get the impression that you are more upset about the fact that the person attempting to steal the formula might be an employee, than the rest of the issues in this situation.”

Tim looked at Matteo, longtime friends and colleagues. Then he nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think that’s it. The people in the lab…they are all hand selected by me. I know their backgrounds.” He turned to explain to the others in the group. “I follow promising kids from high school through college and I have funded their educations in several cases, through my foundation. I hire almost exclusively through that funnel, but I don’t get angry when students I’ve helped prefer to work for a different organization.”

“But these are your protégés, no matter where they end up working, right?” Clarissa asked, always the sensitive, understanding one in the group.

Tim paused, the muscles in his jaw tightening before he nodded. “That’s true. I don’t care where they work. As long as they succeed. A lot of them come from poverty and have had huge obstacles put in their path. It’s…important…to know that they are breaking the cycle of poverty. All it takes is some money to help them escape and create a good life for themselves.”

Clarissa raised a finger. “I have to disagree with you on that point,” she interjected. “Having come from poverty,” she looked around the room, “I know that it’s not just money that helps someone get out of that cycle.” Her eyes returned to Tim. “Money is important, but you also believe in those kids. You don’t just give them money. You mentor them. You guide them through the process to get out of that poverty.”

Kennedi nodded slowly, understanding dawning. “And that makes this personal, doesn’t it?”

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