If there's one piece of shit I'd just love to strangle right here it's that little fucker Antoine DuQuesne.
Who??
Kind of a minor guy. I've probably mentioned him a few times. What's infuriating is that he's so trivial but responsible for so much absolute bullshit.
To start with, he was an FBI agent. Some of the shenanigans Magna had gotten up to attracted fed attention, but let's be real. This was America in the '90s. The FBI wasn't going to do a damn thing to a vast multinational corporation, even if it had backed a coup or three. As far as they knew, the weirdest stuff Magna was up to was having a cult-like org structure. Hardly worth their time.
So, why DuQuesne? Ultimately, he'd been recruited by shady characters. Specifically, this guy called the Prophet--I know, right?--had some designs on taking Magna down a peg. That whole mess unfolded a bit later. Bottom line, DuQuesne was able to convince his superiors that it was worth sending somebody undercover into Magna Black. He'd get legitimately hired, work his way into the confidence of the leadership, figure out if there was anything to get involved with, then quietly exit and let the higher ups at the agency make the call. In reality, the Prophet wanted him in there to gather intel for his own plans. Like I said, those plans aren't the focus right now. This is just about the guy.
The CEO of Magna Black at that time was Gregor Mandelbaum. Utterly weird guy.
I remember.
Alright, so I won't repeat myself. There's nothing he loved more than a sycophant, and AD could syc on a phant like a pro. AD joined as a business analyst, which I mean, there were always like 100 of those milling around Magna Black. He blended right in.
What happened after that was, he started bending Gregor's ear. He'd come with a bit of an ace in the hole--and this wasn't authorized, mind you. Long story short, there'd been a previous undercover investigation into one of Magna Black's competitors. You can probably guess which one. The people who make invisible fighter jets.
No?
Doesn't matter. DuQuesne brought with him lots of intel from that operation, and you can imagine that proprietary information from a major defense contractor was both highly prized and highly toxic. Now, I'd been brought on as the new Vice President of Research and Development, which is so me, obviously. So, I got to sit in on the top-level discussion of what to do about what this guy brought. That was, at the time:
I'm sorry, Dean Decarlos? What is that, a porn name?
It's the guy's fucking name, what do you want from me?
Well, yeah, it does sound like a fucking name.
Brynn!!
Alright, so there's ten of us in the executive boardroom. It's been swept for bugs, surveillance devices of any kind. There'd be hell to pay if anyone eavesdropped. The room was also soundproofed. Just normal high-tech weapons manufacturer things. Gregor drops the bomb: DuQuesne gave him a taste of the intel he got on the third party. Because Gregor loved drama about as much as he loved womanizing, he turns on the big TV on the far wall and flips to a channel talking about said contractor's new airborne weapons platform, literally just announced.
He explains that DuQuesne gave him info two weeks ago that this platform was about to go public. The documents he had were two years old, verified by ink analysis. So, he'd gotten his hands on legitimate documents from a competitor that proved to be accurate. The question was, what to do with the rest of what he offered?
Wasn't it illegal?
Highly! I'm pretty sure if you fumble that ball badly enough, you can catch treason charges for it. At best, some executives are going to prison for ten years, and you can forget Magna ever getting a single government contract ever again. The tricky part is, once you see this info, you can't unsee it. You could be accused of acting on it even if you had seen it but forgot, or if the logical decision to make even without that intel happened to look like it was informed by it. Like nuclear war, the only way to win this game was not to play. But Gregor hated having something like this stare him in the face, tempting him, asking him to grab it and hit a competitor where it hurt.
So, Gregor's starting position was that he wanted to ask AD for a little more proof of exactly how much info he had, and what he wanted for it. In the meantime, Ira would run a background check on him, see if there was any reason to believe he was anything more than the corporate traitor he appeared to be. Now, the obvious question is, how can you trust a guy who claims to have spied on his last employer? That's someone whose loyalty you'll be buying forever, if you can even afford it. Gregor was pretty matter-of-fact about that whole thing: just kill him. You think this was the kind of organization that wasn't above "disposing" of a guy who'd become inconvenient? Cutthroat world, I tell you.
We took a straw poll. Joan, the twins, Jared, Fabian, and Dean were against. Gregor, Ira, and Graham were for. I came down on the latter side, not because I thought it was a good idea, but because these people already had an inkling that I possessed some technology that was beyond their existing capabilities and, well, I thought this would get them off my back about it for a while. Letting them focus on this hot corporate intel seemed like a good way to do that.
Since this was the kind of decision that was never going to be on the books, it wasn't exactly a "majority rules" thing. Gregor could've ultimately decided all by himself, but pissing off your entire leadership team was too stupid of a choice, even for him.
We argued it out for a couple hours and really didn't get anywhere. Then, I had an idea. The main thing we were worried about was him turning on us. It wouldn't do any good to kill him after he tipped off authorities. What we needed was leverage. My brilliant idea--
You're laying it on pretty thick, man.
It was a good idea! My thought was, if his background check came back clear, the smart thing would be to involve him in some of our black ops activity. There was plenty of other stuff we did that was off the books, real "we never knew you existed" stuff if anything went wrong. We'd ramp him up into a couple of those, then get him to hand over the intel. Had we known he was working for the FBI, we would never have gone that route, but we thought he was just a guy and his background check confirmed it.
He got taken on two particular missions: one was to "convince" a developer in Waltham to abandon plans for an apartment complex so Magna Black could build a research annex there.
Why that spot?
It happened to sit on top of a very particular geological formation that offered some research potential into remote sensing and power generation. Really advanced stuff and they couldn't exactly tell the developer what they wanted it for. We found the guy running the development effort and he wasn't willing to abort for any amount of money. He had a lot riding on this, including his reputation. We made it clear that we could pretty easily just make sure none of the paperwork ever got approved, hold him up in bureaucratic hell forever. He said he would expose us, which, expose what exactly? We were just some dudes in black leather trying to intimidate him. He had no idea who we worked for. I hate to say it, but we had to break a couple of his fingers with the promise of dropping his body into a river for him to cooperate. Not one of my finer moments, personally, though I've absolutely done worse.
Yeah, how does this one even rate?
To be honest, I thought working a corporate job would keep me out of this kind of shit! But once a leg-breaker, always a leg-breaker, I guess.
Anyway, DuQuesne did fine, which is to say he did nothing. He didn't barf or anything embarrassing like that. I mean, he was FBI, so obviously. But we found it impressive that this dude who looked like a total pencil pusher could hold his lunch around some downright mobster shit. That raised his stock in my book.
Second mission was making sure some unpleasant documents a disgruntled employee had supplied to his Congressman didn't amount to anything. Do you think it's easy to break into a Congressional staff office? Actually, it wasn't that hard. I didn't even need Inferno. But that time, once we were in, I got AD to actually rifle through the papers in the office and find what we were looking for--basically some safety record stuff that didn't look too good regarding items we sold to the US government.
I'm sorry, you helped cover up corporate negligence that endangered national security?
You make it sound really bad when you say it that way!
We did it, though. If it makes you feel any better, since I was head of R&D I made sure the issues in question got addressed on the next cycle. Gaskets really shouldn't just fall off during inverted flight.
This is inspiring so much confidence, believe me.
This happened like 25 years ago, what do you want from me?
Bottom line, he proved himself to my satisfaction, and that brought the twins on board. Then we were six in favor. Was hard for the rest to hold out at that point. And holy hell, his intel was juicy. He pretty much had the ten-year plan, prototype specs, some basic research that was well beyond what we had at the time. Great stuff.
I can't believe he gave you the real thing!
It goes down a little easier if you realize he didn't actually care about working for the FBI, it was just a means to an end with the whole Prophet thing. Giving us good info meant he got closer to the innermost secrets of Magna Black, which was all he really wanted.
I don't see why you hate this guy. I assume he turned on you?
What's fucked up is that he turned on the Prophet first. He truly had divided loyalties once he got to know the Magna Black freaks. Which makes sense, I guess. The Prophet's whole deal was kinda culty too. But then, when the Prophet finally put his plans in motion, AD had a change of heart and went crawling back. Dumbass got killed for his trouble, as I hear it. What a shame.
Maybe the lesson here is "don't do corporate espionage"?
Nah, there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you aren't a dipshit.
DuQuesne's problem is that he wanted something to believe in, and he never fully bought into anything. The hole he was looking to fill was in himself.
Kinky.
Not like that. I just hate that kind of gutless loser, you know? Never quite knew who he was, manipulated by whoever the most powerful person in proximity was. Like I said, a total sycophant. Got a better death than he deserved, as far as I'm concerned.
I feel like you could just be glad he's dead? I personally wouldn't be glad. That's fucked up. But, you know, for your own sake.
Hm, maybe. I'd still strangle him if he somehow showed up again, though.