Disclosure: A Novel (45 page)

Sanders nodded.

"And they got rid of Jafar."

Sanders nodded. "Kahn told Jafar to go visit his cousin in Johore for a week to get out of town. To make it impossible for me to reach Jafar. But he never thought that Jafar would call me." He glanced at his watch. "Now, where is it?"

"What?"

On the screen, there was a series of tones, and they saw a handsome, dark skinned newscaster at a desk, facing a camera and speaking rapidly in a foreign language.

"What's this?" Fernandez said.

"The Channel Three evening news, from last December." Sanders got up and pushed a button on the tape machine. The cassette popped out.

"What does it show?"

Cindy came back from the copying machine with wide eyes. She carried a dozen stacks of paper, each neatly clipped. "What're you going to do with this?"

"Don't worry about it," he said.

"But this is outrageous, Tom. What she's done."

"I know," he said.

"Everybody is talking," she said. "The word is that the merger is off."

"We'll see," Sanders said.

With Cindy's help, he began arranging the piles of paper in identical manila folders.

Fernandez said, "What exactly are you going to do?"

"Meredith's problem is that she lies," Sanders said. "She's smooth, and she gets away with it. She's gotten away with it her whole life. I'm going to see if I can get her to make a single, very big lie."

He looked at his watch. It was eight forty-five.

The meeting would start in fifteen minutes.

The conference room was packed. There were fifteen Conley-White executives down one side of the table, with John Marden in the middle, and fifteen DigiCom executives down the other side, with Garvin in the middle.

Meredith Johnson stood at the head of the table and said, "Next, we'll hear from Tom Sanders. Tom, I wonder if you could review for us where we stand with the Twinkle drive. What is the status of our production there."

"Of course, Meredith." Sanders stood, his heart pounding. He walked to the front of the room. "By way of background, Twinkle is our code name for a stand-alone CD-ROM

drive player which we expect to be revolutionary." He turned to the first of his charts.

"CD-ROM is a small laser disk used to store data. It is cheap to manufacture, and can hold an enormous amount of information in any form-words, images, sound, video, and so on. You can put the equivalent of six hundred books on a single small disk, or, thanks to our research here, an hour and a half of video. And any combination. For example, you could make a textbook that combines text, pictures, short movie sequences, animated cartoons, and so on. Production costs will soon be at ten cents a unit."

He looked down the table. The Conley-White people were interested. Garvin was frowning. Meredith looked tense.

"But for CD-ROM to be effective, two things need to happen. First, we need a portable player. Like this." He held up the player, and then passed it down the Conley-White side.

"A five-hour battery, and an excellent screen. You can use it on a train, a bus, or in a classroom-anywhere you can use a book."

The executives looked at it, turned it over in their hands. Then they looked back at Sanders.

"The other problem with CD-ROM technology," Sanders said, "is that it's slow. It's sluggish getting to all that wonderful data. But the Twinkle drives that we have successfully made in prototype are twice as fast as any other drive in the world. And with added memory for our packing and unpacking images, it is as quick as a small computer.

We expect to get the unit cost for these drives down to the price of a video-game unit within a year. And we are manufacturing the drives now. We have had some early problems, but we are solving them."

Meredith said, "Can you tell us more about that? I gather from talking to Arthur Kahn that we're still not clear on why the drives have problems."

"Actually, we are," Sanders said. "It turns out that the problems aren't serious at all. I expect them to be entirely resolved in a matter of days."

"Really." She raised her eyebrows. "Then we've found what the trouble is?"

"Yes, we have."

"That's wonderful news."

"Yes, it is."

"Very good news indeed," Ed Nichols said. "Was it a design problem?"

"No," Sanders said. "There's nothing wrong with the design we made here, just as there was nothing wrong with the prototypes. What we have is a fabrication problem involving the production line in Malaysia."

"What sort of problems?"

"It turns out," Sanders said, "that we don't have the proper equipment on the line. We should be using automatic chip installers to lock the controller chips and the RAM cache on the board, but the Malays on the line have been installing chips by hand. Literally pushing them in with their thumbs. And it turns out that the assembly line is dirty, so we're getting particulate matter in the split optics. We should have level-seven air handlers, but we only have level-five handlers installed. And it turns out that we should be ordering components like hinge rods and clips from one very reliable Singapore supplier, but the components are actually coming from another supplier. Less expensive, less reliable."

Meredith looked uneasy, but only for a moment. "Improper equipment, improper conditions, improper components . . ." She shook her head. "I'm sorry. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you set up that line, Tom?"

"Yes, I did," Sanders said. "I went out to Kuala Lumpur last fall and set it up with Arthur Kahn and the local foreman, Mohammed Jafar."

"Then how is it that we have so many problems?"

"Unfortunately, there was a series ofbad judgment calls in setting up the line."

Meredith looked concerned. "Tom, we all know that you're extremely competent. How could this have happened?"

Sanders hesitated.

This was the moment.

"It happened because the line was changed," he said. "The specifications were altered."

"Altered? How?"

"I think that's something for you to explain to this group, Meredith," he said. "Since you ordered the changes."

"I ordered them?"

"That's right, Meredith."

"Tom, you must be mistaken," she said coolly. "I haven't had anything to do with that Malaysia line."

"Actually, you have," Sanders said. "You made two trips there, in November and December of last year."

"Two trips to Kuala Lumpur, yes. Because you mishandled a labor dispute with the Malaysian government. I went there and resolved the dispute. But I had nothing to do with the actual production line."

"I'd say you're mistaken, Meredith."

"I assure you," she said coldly. "I am not. I had nothing to do with the line, and any so-called changes."

"Actually, you went there and inspected the changes you ordered."

"I'm sorry, Tom. I didn't. I've never even seen the actual line."

On the screen behind her, the videotape of the newscast began to play silently with the sound off. The newscaster in coat and tie speaking to the camera.

Sanders said, "You never went to the plant itself?"

"Absolutely not, Tom. I don't know who could have told you such a thing or why you would say it now."

The screen behind the newscaster showed the DigiCom building in Malaysia, then the interior of the plant. The camera showed the production lines and an official inspection tour taking place. They saw Phil Blackburn, and alongside him, Meredith Johnson. The camera moved in on her as she chatted with one

of the workers.

There was a murmur in the room.

Meredith spun around and looked. "This is outrageous. This is out of context. I don't know where this could have come from-"

"Malaysia Channel Three. Their version of the BBC. I'm sorry, Meredith." The newscast segment finished and the screen went blank. Sanders made a gesture, and Cindy began moving around the table, handing a manila folder to each person.

Meredith said, "Wherever this so-called tape came from-"

Sanders said, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you will open your packets, you will find the first of a series of memos from the Operations Review Unit, which was under the direction of Ms. Johnson in the period in question. I direct your attention to the first memo, dated November eighteenth of last year. You will notice that it has been signed by Meredith Johnson, and it stipulates that the line will be changed to accommodate the labor demands of the Malay government. In particular, this first memo states that automated chip installers will not be included, but that this work will be done by hand. That made the Malay government happy, but it meant we couldn't manufacture the drives."

Johnson said, "But you see, what you are overlooking is that the Malays gave us no choice-"

"In that case, we should never have built the plant there," Sanders said, cutting her off.

"Because we can't manufacture the intended product at those revised specifications. The tolerances are inadequate."

Johnson said, "Well, that may be your own opinion-"

"The second memo, dated December third, indicates that a cost-savings review diminished air-handling capacities on the line. Again, this is a variance in the specifications that I established. Again, it is critical-we can't manufacture high-performance drives under these conditions. The long and the short of it is that these decisions doomed the drives to failure."

"Now look," Johnson said. "If anybody believes that the failure of these drives is anything but your-"

"The third memo," Sanders said, "summarizes cost savings from the Operations Review Unit. You'll see that it claims an eleven percent reduction in operating costs. That savings has already been wiped out by fabrication delays, not counting our time-to-market delay costs. Even if we immediately restore the line, this eleven percent savings translates into a production cost increase, over the run, of nearly seventy percent. First year, it's a hundred and ninety percent increase.

"Now the next memo," Sanders said, "explains why this cost-cutting was adopted in the first place. During acquisition talks between Mr. Nichols and Ms. Johnson in the fall of last year, Ms. Johnson indicated she would demonstrate that it was possible to reduce high-technology development costs, which were a source of concern to Mr. Nichols when they were meeting at-"

"Oh Christ," Ed Nichols said, staring at the paper.

Meredith pushed forward, stepping in front of Sanders. "Excuse me, Tom," she said, speaking firmly, "but I really must interrupt you. I'm sorry to have to say this, but no one here is fooled by this little charade." She swept her arm wide, encompassing the room.

"Or by your so-called evidence." She spoke more loudly. "You weren't present when these management decisions were carefully taken by the best minds in this company. You don't understand the thinking that lies behind them. And the false postures you are striking now, the so-called memos that you are holding up to convince us . . . No one here is persuaded." She gave him a pitying look. "It's all empty, Tom. Empty words, empty phrases. When it comes right down to it, you're all show and no substance. You think you can come in here and second-guess the management team? I'm here to tell you that you can't."

Garvin stood abruptly, and said, "Meredith-"

"Let me finish," Meredith said. She was flushed, angry. "Because this is important, Bob.

This is the heart of what is wrong with this division. Yes, there were some decisions taken that may be questionable in retrospect. Yes, we tried innovative procedures which perhaps went too far. But that hardly excuses the behavior we see today. This calculated, manipulative attitude by an individual who will do anything-anything at all-to get ahead, to make a name for herself at the expense of others, who will savage the reputation of anyone who stands in her path-I mean, that stands in his path-this ruthless demeanor that we are seeing . . . No one is fooled by this, Tom. Not for a minute. We're being asked to accept the worst kind of fraudulence. And we simply won't do it. It's wrong. This is all wrong. And it is bound to catch up with you.

I'm sorry. You can't come here and do this. It simply won't work-it hasn't worked. That's all."

She stopped to catch her breath and looked around the table. Everyone was silent, motionless. Garvin was still standing; he appeared to be in shock. Slowly, Meredith seemed to realize that something was wrong. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.

"I hope that I have . . . that I have accurately expressed the sentiments of everyone here.

That's all I intended to do."

There was another silence. Then Garvin said, "Meredith, I wonder if you would leave the room for a few minutes."

Stunned, she stared at Garvin for a long moment. Then she said, "Of course, Bob."

"Thank you, Meredith."

Walking very erect, she left the room. The door clicked shut behind her.

John Marden sat forward and said, "Mr. Sanders, please continue with your presentation.

In your view, how long will it be until the line is repaired and fully functioning?"

It was noon. Sanders sat in his office with his feet on his desk and stared out the window.

The sun was shining brightly on the buildings around Pioneer Square. The sky was clear and cloudless. Mary Anne Hunter, wearing a business suit, came in and said, "I don't get it."

"Get what?"

"That news tape. Meredith must have known about it. Because she was there when they were shooting it."

"Oh, she knew about it, all right. But she never thought I'd get it. And she never thought she'd appear in it. She thought they'd only show Phil. You know-a Muslim country. In a story about executives, they usually just show the men."

"Uh-huh. So?"

"But Channel Three is the government station," Sanders said. "And the story that night was that the government had been only partially successful in negotiating changes in the DigiCom plant-that the foreign executives had been intransigent and uncooperative. It was a story intended to protect the reputation of Mr. Sayad, the finance minister. So the cameras focused on her."

"Because . . ."