Episode 22.2

The further away we get from the reception area, the quieter the environment becomes. Looking around I try to find individual offices, but I quickly realize that all the doors are closed.

"Has this always been a division of the Secret Service?" Charlie asks. He uses the same festive tone as always, but the anxiety in his voice is unmistakable.

"I wouldn't call it a division," Katkin clarifies as we turn left toward his office. He is wearing khakis, loafers, and a Doral golf shirt. The typical Miami three-piece suit. But the flat, nasal Minnesota accent makes it seem out of place. It is more of a society.

Gillian and I took the two armchairs in front of Katkin's huge glass-topped desk. Charlie steals a space on the black leather sofa with contemporary lines. The dispatch is a high-tech attempt paid for with taxpayer dollars. In one corner, a black-lacquered bookcase displays dozens of deal toys, the thank-you trinkets a company gives away when it closes a good deal: a fire engine, a fake syringe, a microchip-shaped bookend. The typical useless objects of the business world. Just above the bookcase is a framed certificate commemorating Katkin's appointment as a special agent for the Secret Service. Charlie is staring at him.

"Society, and shit," he nods.

I show my agreement by nodding slightly. The secret service is the secret service. However, Katkin seems to have no idea who we are; that means, wherever they are, Gallo and DeSanctis keep their mouths shut.

—How exactly does the fund work? I stammer, trying not to panic.

"Don't let the secret service part fool you," Katkin says. This is just the next rung in R&D. With technology advancing at the speed of light, government agencies couldn't keep up. As soon as we managed to crack one security system, another would take its place. CIA... FBI... all were at least five years behind the private market. The CIA opened In-Q-Tel to close the gap. Two years ago we opened Five Points.

"It's really quite simple when you think about it," he continues. Why kill yourself trying to run against Silicon Valley when you can let them line up outside your door? This is the interesting thing about the game: every new idea needs money, even illegal ones. And, in this way, we get everything to work in our favor. For example, if a guy invents a bullet that can go through Kevlar, instead of letting his invention go on the black market, we buy it ourselves, find out what makes it so powerful, and then provide our agents with the appropriate countermeasures. . It's the best of both worlds: we can use it ourselves or defeat it if someone uses it against us. By the time we're done, our entrepreneurs receive their funds and we get a look at the best products before anyone else.

"So the government gets to keep the profits?" -I ask.

"What benefits?" Katkin jokes. We are a 501(d)(3). "Nonprofit" is our middle name. In this way the politicians are happy, the competition does not consider us a threat and they allow us to make the leap into the business world. Welcome to the future. Government, Inc.

"If you can't beat them…" Charlie begins.

"Eat them," Katkin jokes. It's a shame I'm the only one laughing. Well, how can I help you?

"It's about my father," Gillian says, finally opening her mouth. Marty Duckworth...

"Duckworth was his father?" Katkin asks, and the tone in his voice sounds amused. I really liked that guy. What is of his life?

Gillian looks away.

"My father died a few months ago. "Wow, I…I'm sorry," Katkin says. I carefully watch his reaction. Eyes wide open. Sunken chest. Not overly shocked, but obviously shocked by the news. I look over his shoulder at Charlie for confirmation. He has seen it too.

"If this guy is acting, he's going to get an Oscar this year," Charlie agrees.

"I didn't know that…" Katkin continues.

"No problem," he interrupted, resuming my role as banker. As you may have guessed, we are the estate of Mr. Martin Duckworth and we thought there might be some things you could help us with. You see, when we were going through his personal effects, we found this…" I reach into my inside jacket pocket and pull out the non-disclosure agreement and hand it to Katkin.

Nodding to himself, Katkin suppresses a smile.

"Here he is... the one who escaped..." "Excuse me?"

"He was a brilliant man, but also a real character. A thoroughbred businessman. I mean, one time we were at the airport on a moving walkway and I asked him, jokingly, "How long do you think it would take to go around the world in something like this?" Duckworth thought about it for a moment, then turned to me and said, "2,233.3 hours, assuming the Earth's polar diameter is used, not the equatorial one."

Gillian wants to laugh, but she can't.

"So you remember dealing with him?" Charlie asks.

"How could I forget it?" He was an original guy, no doubt. He found our name in the phone book. Honestly, they opened this office to establish contacts with Latin America... Who would have thought that a man like Duckworth would show up here?

Leaning forward, Gillian crosses her arms in front of her stomach.

"What was it that he told them?" she asks and her tone reveals pain.

"He just walked in." Laptop in one hand and an old clipboard with a rusty clipboard in the other. We sent one of our interns to talk to him. In the office we do not accept proposals that we have not previously requested. Ten minutes later he was taken to see the marketing guys. And ten minutes after that, Duckworth was escorted directly to my office. Waving the AND in front of him, Katkin added, We used to joke that his dad had downloaded this from some law firm's website. But I must say to his credit that he refused to reveal how it worked until we signed this document.

"That good was he?"

—Do you know how many ANDs we signed last year? Katkin asks. Two, he answers himself. And the other corresponded to the guy who…" He stops abruptly. Let's just say... this is someone you've no doubt heard of.

Charlie sits upright on the couch, sensing that we're getting closer to our goal.

"So you signed that data nondisclosure agreement?"

"Duckworth left us the document. We hesitated... we took detours... and finally we signed. But after a few first dates, I seem to recall that being about eight months ago, we never heard from Duckworth again.

-What? Charlie and I say simultaneously.

"That's exactly what we thought." We were all ready to get the thing going—we had the equipment in place…it was already in the budget—we even had our financial crime expert flown in from New York.

At the precise moment that Katkin mentions our hometown, a sharp pain settles between my shoulders. It's as if a vulture was sticking its hard beak into the back of my neck.

-NY? -I ask.

"We actually have some friends in the New York office," Charlie chimes in. "What's that expert's name?"

Gillian frowns, but the trick works.

"Well, he's one of our best men," Katkin says as the vulture's talons dig deep into my back. I stare blankly across the glass top of the huge desk as Katkin's feet rest on the soft carpet. Really nice guy," Katkin explains. His name is Jim Gallo.