He called a junior finance assistant named Cindy Sato and told her, in as many words, that her career depended on logging in and backing up his changed timestamps.

Cindy had received the memo protecting anyone who came forward.

She hung up, and she reported him.

There is a particular courage in a young person with no power refusing a powerful person’s order, and I have thought about hers many times since.

I thought about it because I knew exactly the pressure she was under, having lived inside a smaller version of it for three years.

Zane had told her, I later learned, that no one in management would ever take the word of an entry-level clerk over a regional director — and he was describing, without knowing it, the precise machinery that keeps quiet rot quiet everywhere.