Disclosure (38 page)

“You real y believe Blackburn means it?”

You can never trust a lawyer.

“Yes,” she said. “Frankly, it's the first thing that has made any sense to me al day. They had to do this, Tom. Their exposure is too great, and the stakes are too high.”

“And what about this briefing?”

“They're worried about the merger-as you suspected when al this began. They don't want to blow it with any sudden changes now. So they want you to participate in the briefing tomorrow with Johnson, as if everything was normal.

Then early next week, Johnson wil have a physical exam as part of her insurance for the new job. The exam wil uncover serious health problems, maybe even cancer, which wil force a regrettable change in management.”

“I see.”

He went to the window and looked out at the city. The clouds were higher, and the evening sun was breaking through. He took a deep breath.

“And if I don't participate in the briefing?”

“It's up to you, but I would, if I were you,” Fernandez said. “At this point, you real y are in a position to bring down the company. And what good is that?”

He took another deep breath. He was feeling better al the time.

“You're saying this is over,” he said, final y.

“Yes. It's over, and you've won. You pul ed it off: Congratulations, Tom.”

She shook his hand.

`Jesus Christ,” he said.

She stood up. “I'm going to draw up an instrument outlining my conversation with Blackburn, specifying these options, and send it to him for his signature in an hour. I'l cal you when I have it signed. Meanwhile, I recommend you do whatever preparation you need for this meeting tomorrow, and get some much deserved rest. I'l see you tomorrow.”

“Okay,”

It was slowly seeping into him, the realization that it was over. Real y over. It had happened so suddenly and so completely, he was a little dazed.

“Congratulations again,” Fernandez said. She folded her briefcase and left.

He was back in his office at about six. Cindy was leaving; she asked if he needed her, and he said he didn't. Sanders sat at his desk and stared out the window for a while, savoring the conclusion of the day. Through his open door, he watched as people left for the night, heading down the hal . Final y he cal ed his wife in Phoenix to tel her the news, but her line was busy.

There was a knock at his door. He looked up and saw Blackburn standing there, looking apologetic. “Got a minute?”

“Sure.”

“I just wanted to repeat to you, on a personal level, how sorry I am about al this.

In the press of complex corporate problems like this, human values may get lost, despite the best of intentions. While we intend to be fair to everyone, sometimes we fail. And what is a corporation if not a human group, a group of human beings? We're al people, underneath it al . As Alexander Pope once said, `We're al just human.' So recognizing your own graciousness through al this, I want to say to you . . .

Sanders wasn't listening. He was tired; al he real y heard was that Phil realized he had screwed up, and now was trying to repair things in his usual manner, by sucking up to someone he had earlier bul ied.

Sanders interrupted, saying, “What about Bob?” Now that it was over, Sanders was having a lot of feelings about Garvin. Memories going back to his earliest days with the company. Garvin had been a kind of father to Sanders, and he wanted to hear from Garvin now. He wanted an apology. Or something.

“I imagine Bob's going to take a couple of days to come around,” Blackburn said.

“This was a very difficult decision for him to arrive at. I had to work very hard on him, on your behalf. And now he's got to figure out how to break it to Meredith. Al that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But he'l eventual y talk to you. I know he wil . Meanwhile, I wanted to go over a few things about the meeting tomorrow,” Blackburn said. “It's for Marden, their CEO, and it's going to be a bit more formal than the way we usual y do things.

We'l be in the big conference room on the ground floor. It'l start at nine, and go to ten. Meredith wil chair the meeting, and she'l cal on al the division heads to give a summary of progress and problems in their divisions. Mary Anne first, then Don, then Mark, then you. Everyone wil talk three to four minutes. Do it standing.

Wear a jacket and tie. Use visuals if you have them, but stay away from technical details. Keep it an overview. In your case, they'l expect to hear mostly about Twinkle.”

Sanders nodded. “Al right. But there isn't real y much new to report. We stil haven't figured out what's wrong with the drives.”

“That's fine. I don't think anybody expects a solution yet. Just emphasize the success of the prototypes, and the fact that we've overcome production problems before. Keep it upbeat, and keep it moving. If you have a prototype or a mock-up, you might want to bring it along.”

“Okay.”

“You know the stuff-bright rosy digital future, minor technical glitches won't stand in the way of progress.”

“Meredith's okay with that?” he said. He was slightly disturbed to hear that she was chairing the meeting.

“Meredith is expecting al the heads to be upbeat and non-technical. There won't be a problem.”

“Okay,” Sanders said.

“Cal me tonight if you want to go over your presentation,” Blackburn said. “Or in the morning, early. Let's just finesse this session, and then we can move on.

Start making changes next week.”

Sanders nodded.

“You're the kind of man this company needs,” Blackburn said. “I appreciate your understanding. And again, Tom, I'm sorry.”

He left.

Sanders cal ed down to the Diagnostics Group, to see if they had any further word. But there was no answer. He went out to the closet behind Cindy's desk and took out the AV materials: the big schematic drawing of the Twinkle drive, and the schematic of the production line in Malaysia. He could prop these on easels while he talked.

But as he thought about it, it occurred to him that Blackburn was right. A mock-up or a prototype would be good to have. In fact, he should probably bring one of the drives that Arthur had sent from KL. It reminded him that he should cal Arthur in Malaysia. He dialed the number.

“Mr. Kahn's office.”

“It's Tom Sanders cal ing.”

The assistant sounded surprised. “Mr. Kahn is not here, Mr. Sanders.”

“When is he expected back?”

“He's out of the office, Mr. Sanders. I don't know when he'l be back.”

“I see.” Sanders frowned. That was odd. With Mohammed Jafar missing, it was unlike Arthur to leave the plant without supervision.

The assistant said, “Can I give him a message?”

“No message, thanks.”

He hung up, went down to the third floor to Cherry's programming group, and put his card in the slot to let himself in. The card popped back out, and the LED

blinked oooo. It took him a moment to realize that they had cut off his access.

Then he remembered the other card he had picked up earlier. He pushed it in the slot, and the door opened. Sanders went inside.

He was surprised to find the unit deserted. The programmers al kept strange hours; there was almost always somebody there, even at midnight.

He went to the Diagnostics room, where the drives were being studied. There were a series of benches, surrounded by electronic equipment and blackboards.

The drives were set out on the benches, al covered in white cloth. The bright overhead quartz lights were off.

He heard rock-and-rol music from an adjacent room, and went there. A lone programmer in his early twenties was sitting at a console typing. Beside him, a portable radio blared.

Sanders said, “Where is everybody?”

The programmer looked up. “Third Wednesday of the month.”

“So?■

“OOPS meets on the third Wednesday.”

“Oh.” The Object Oriented Programmer Support association, or OOPS, was an association of programmers in the Seattle area. It was started by Microsoft some years earlier, and was partly social and partly trade talk.

Sanders said, “You know anything about what the Diagnostics team found?”

“Sorry.” The programmer shook his head. “I just came in.”

Sanders went back to the Diagnostics room. He flicked on the lights and gently removed the white cloth that covered the drives. He saw that only three of the CD-ROM drives had been opened, their innards exposed to powerful magnifying glasses and electronic probes on the tables. The remaining seven drives were stacked to one side, stil in plastic.

He looked up at the blackboards. One had a series of equations and hastily scribbled data points. The other had a flowchart list that read: A. Contr. Incompat. VLSI? pwr?

B. Optic Dysfunct-? voltage reg?/arm?/servo?

C. Laser R/O (a,b,c)

D. E Mechanical J J

E. Gremlins

It didn't mean much to Sanders. He turned his attention back to the tables, and peered at the test equipment. It looked fairly standard, except that there were a series of large-bore needles lying on the table, and several white circular wafers encased in plastic that looked like camera filters. There were also Polaroid pictures of the drives in various stages of disassembly; the team had documented their work. Three of the Polaroids were placed in a neat row, as if they might be significant, but Sanders couldn't see why. They just showed chips on a green circuit board.

He looked at the drives themselves, being careful not to disturb anything. Then he turned to the stack of drives that were stil wrapped in plastic. But looking closely, he noticed fine, needle-point punctures in the plastic covering four of the drives.

Nearby was a medical syringe and an open notebook. The notebook showed a column of figures:

PPU

7

II (repeat II)

5

2

And at the bottom someone had scrawled, “Fucking Obvious!” But it wasn't obvious to Sanders. He decided that he'd better cal Don Cherry later tonight, to have him explain it. In the meantime, he took one of the extra drives from the stack to use in the presentation the fol owing morning.

He left the Diagnostics room carrying al his presentation materials, the easel boards flapping against his legs. He headed downstairs to the ground floor conference room, which had an AV closet where speakers stored visual material before a presentation. He could lock his material away there.

In the lobby, he passed the receptionist's desk, now manned by a black security guard, who watched a basebal game and nodded to Sanders. Sanders went back toward the rear of the floor, moving quietly on the plush carpeting. The hal way was dark, but the lights were on in the conference room; he could see them shining from around the corner.

As he came closer, he heard Meredith Johnson say, “And then what?” And a man's voice answered something indistinct.

Sanders paused.

He stood in the dark corridor and listened. From where he stood, he could see nothing of the room.

There was a moment of silence, and then Johnson said, “Okay, so wil Mark talk about design?”

The man said, “Yes, he'l cover that.”

“Okay,” Johnson said. “Then what about the . . .”

Sanders couldn't hear the rest. He crept forward, moving silently on the carpet, and cautiously peered around the corner. He stil could not see into the conference room itself, but there was a large chrome sculpture in the hal way outside the room, a sort of propel er shape, and in the reflection of its polished surface he saw Meredith moving in the room. The man with her was Blackburn.

Johnson said, “So what if Sanders doesn't bring it up?”

“He wil ,” Blackburn said.

“You're sure he doesn't-that the-” Again, the rest was lost.

“No, he-no idea.”

Sanders held his breath. Meredith was pacing, her image in the reflection, twisting and distorted. “So when he does-I wil say that this is a-is that-you mean?”

“Exactly,” Blackburn said.

“And if he-”

Blackburn put his hand on her shoulder. “Yes, you have to-”

“-So-want me to-”

Blackburn said something quiet in reply, and Sanders heard none of it, except the phrase “-must demolish him.”

“-Can do that-”

“-Make sure counting on you-”

There was the shril sound of a telephone. Both Meredith and Blackburn reached for their pockets. Meredith answered the cal , and the two began to move toward the exit. They were heading toward Sanders.

Panicked, Sanders looked around, and saw a men's room to his right. He slipped inside the door as they came out of the conference room and started down the hal way.

“Don't worry about this, Meredith,” Blackburn said. “It'l go fine.” “I'm not worried,”

she said.

“It should be quite smooth and impersonal,” Blackburn said. “There's no reason for rancor. After al , you have the facts on your side. He's clearly incompetent.”

“He stil can't get into the database?” she said.

“No. He's locked out of the system.”

“And there's no way he can get into Conley-White's system?”

Blackburn laughed. “No way in hel , Meredith.”

The voices faded, moving down the hal way. Sanders strained to listen, final y heard the click of a door closing. He stepped out of the bathroom into the hal way.

The hal way was deserted. He stared toward the far door.

His own telephone rang in his pocket, the sound so loud it made him jump. He answered it. “Sanders.”

“Listen,” Fernandez said. “I sent the draft of your contract to Blackburn's office, but it came back with a couple of added statements that I'm not sure about. I think we better meet to discuss them.” “In an hour,” Sanders said. “Why not now?” “I have something to do first,” he said.

Ah, Thomas.” Max Dorfman opened the door to his hotel roomand immediately wheeled away, back toward the television set.

“You have final y decided to come.”

“You've heard?”

“Heard what?” Dorfman said. “I am an old man. No one bothers with me anymore. I'm cast by the wayside. By everyone including you.” He clicked off the television set and grinned.

Sanders said, “What have you heard?”