Grisham, John - The Associate by Grisham John

Author:Grisham, John
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

Chapter 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.

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