Disclosure (41 page)

You're cbecking the wrong company.

Sanders stared at Meredith, smiling and joking with the three men from Conley-White. What had Phil Blackburn said to him yesterday?

The thing is, Tom, Meredith Johnson is very well connected in this company. She bas impressed a lot of important people.

Like Garvin.

Not only Garvin. Meredith bas built a power base in several areas.

Conley- White?

Yes. Tbere, too.

Alongside him, Fernandez stood up. Sanders stood and said, “You know what, Louise?”

“What?”

“We've been checking the wrong company.”

Fernandez frowned, then looked over at the Conley-White table. Meredith was nodding with Ed Nichols and pointing with one hand, her other hand flat on the table for balance. Her fingers were touching Ed Nichols. He was peering at the sheets of data over his glasses.

“Stupid glasses . . .” Sanders said.

No wonder Meredith wouldn't press harassment charges against him. It would have been too embarrassing for her relationship with Ed Nichols. And no wonder Garvin wouldn't fire her. It made perfect sense. Nichols was already uneasy about the merger-his affair with Meredith might be al that was holding it in place.

Fernandez sighed. “You think so? Nichols?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

Fernandez shook her head. “Even if it's true, it doesn't help us. They can argue paramour preference, they can argue lots of things-if there's even an argument that needs to be made. This isn't the first merger made in the sack, you know. I say, forget it.”

“You mean to tel me,” he said, “that there's nothing improper with her having an affair with someone at Conley-White and being promoted as a result?”

“Nothing at al . At least, not in the strict legal sense. So forget it.”

Suddenly he remembered what Kaplan had said. She was looking in the wrong direction when they fired her.

“I'm tired,” he said.

“We al are. They look tired, too.”

Across the room, the meeting was breaking up. Papers were being put back into briefcases. Meredith and Garvin were chatting with them. They al started leaving. Garvin shook hands with Carmine, who opened the front door for his departing guests.

And then it happened.

There was the sudden harsh glare of quartz lights, shining in from the street outside. The group huddled together, trapped in the light. They cast long shadows back into the restaurant.

“What's going on?” Fernandez said.

Sanders turned to look, but already the group was ducking back inside, closing the door. There was a moment of sudden chaos. They heard Garvin say,

“Goddamn it,” and spin to Blackburn.

Blackburn stood, a stricken look on his face, and rushed over to Garvin. Garvin was shifting from foot to foot. He was simultaneously trying to reassure the Conley-White people and chew out Blackburn.

Sanders went over. “Everything okay?”

“It's the goddamned press,” Garvin said. “KSEA-TV is out there.” “This is an outrage,” Meredith said.

“They're asking about some harassment suit,” Garvin said, looking darkly at Sanders.

Sanders shrugged.

“I'l speak to them,” Blackburn said. “This is just ridiculous.”

“I'l say it's ridiculous,” Garvin said. “It's an outrage, is what it is.”

Everyone seemed to be talking at once, agreeing that it was an outrage. But Sanders saw that Nichols looked shaken. Now Meredith was leading them out of the restaurant the back way, onto the terrace. Blackburn went out the front, into the harsh lights. He held up his hands, like a man being arrested. Then the door closed.

Nichols was saying, “Not good, not good.”

“Don't worry, I know the news director over there,” Garvin was saying. “I'l put this one away.”

Jim Daly said something about how the merger ought to be confidential.

“Don't worry,” Garvin said grimly. “It's going to be confidential as hel by the time I get through.”

Then they were gone, out the back door, into the night. Sanders went back to the table, where Fernandez was waiting.

“A little excitement,” Fernandez said calmly.

“More than a little,” Sanders said. He glanced across the room at Stephanie Kaplan, stil having dinner with her son. The young man was talking, gesturing with his hands, but Kaplan was staring fixedly at the back door, where the Conley-White people had departed. She had a curious expression on her face.

Then, after a moment, she turned back and resumed her conversation with her son.

The evening was black, damp, and unpleasant. He shivered as he walked back to his office with Fernandez.

“How did a television crew get the story?”

“Probably from Walsh,” Fernandez said. “But maybe another way. It's real y a smal town. Anyway, never mind that. You've got to prepare for the meeting tomorrow.”

“I've been trying to forget that.”

“Yeah. Wel , don't.”

Ahead they saw Pioneer Square, with windows in the buildings stil brightly lit.

Many of the companies here had business with Japan, and stayed open to overlap with the first hours of the day in Tokyo.

“You know,” Fernandez said, “watching her with those men, I noticed how cool she was.”

“Yes. Meredith is cool.”

“Very control ed.”

“Yes. She is.”

“So why did she approach you so overtly-and on her first day? What was the rush?”

What is the problem she is trying to solve? Max had said. Now Fernandez was asking the same thing. Everyone seemed to understand except Sanders.

You're not a victim.

So, solve it, he thought.

Get to work.

He remembered the conversation when Meredith and Blackburn were leaving the conference room.

It should be quite smooth and impersonal. After all, you have the facts on your side. He's clearly incompetent.

He still can't get into the database?

No. He 's locked out of the system.

And there’s no way he can get into Conley -Whiter system?

No way in hell, Meredith.

They were right, of course. He couldn't get into the system. But what difference would it make if he could?

Solve the problem, Max had said. Do what you do best.

Solve the problem.

“Hel ,” Sanders said.

“It'l come,” Fernandez said.

It was nine-thirty. On the fourth floor, cleaning crews worked in the central partition area. Sanders went into his office with Fernandez. He didn't real y know why they were going there. There wasn't anything he could think to do, now.

Fernandez said, “Let me talk to Alan. He might have something.” She sat down and began to dial.

Sanders sat behind his desk, and stared at the monitor. On the screen, his email message read:

YOU'RE STILL CHECKING THE WRONG COMPANY.

AFRIEND

“I don't see how,” he said, looking at the screen. He felt irritable, playing with a puzzle that everyone could solve except him.

Fernandez said, “Alan? Louise. What have you got? Uh-huh. Uhhuh. Is that . . .

Wel , that's very disappointing, Alan. No, I don't know, now. If you can, yes.

When would you be seeing her? Al right. Whatever you can.” She hung up. “No luck tonight.”

“But we've only got tonight.”

“Yes.”

Sanders stared at the message on the computer screen. Somebody inside the company was trying to help him. Tel ing him he was checking the wrong company. The message seemed to imply that there was a way for him to check the other company. And presumably, whoever knew enough to send this message also knew that Sanders had been cut out of the DigiCom system, his privileges revoked.

What could he do?

Nothing.

Fernandez said, “Who do you think this Àfriend' is?”

“I don't know.”

“Suppose you had to guess.”

“I don't know.”

“What comes into your mind?” she said.

He considered the possibility that Àfriend' was Mary Anne Hunter. But Mary Anne wasn't real y a technical person; her strength was marketing. She wasn't likely to be sending routed messages over the Internet. She probably didn't know what the Internet was. So: not Mary Anne.

And not Mark Lewyn. Lewyn was furious at him.

Don Cherry? Sanders paused, considering that. In a way, this was just like Cherry. But the only time that Sanders had seen him since this began, Cherry had been distinctly unfriendly.

Not Cherry.

Then who else could it be? Those were the only people with executive sysop access in Seattle. Hunter, Lewyn, Cherry. A short list.

Stephanie Kaplan? Unlikely. At heart, Kaplan was plodding and unimaginative.

And she didn't know enough about computers to do this.

Was it somebody outside the company? It could be Gary Bosak, he thought.

Gary probably felt guilty about having turned his back on Sanders. And Gary had a hacker's devious instincts-and a hacker's sense of humor.

It might very wel be Gary.

But it stil didn't do Sanders any good.

You were always good at technical problems. That was always your strength.

He pul ed out the Twinkle CD-ROM drive, stil in plastic. Why would they want it wrapped that way?

Never mind, he thought. Stay focused.

There was something wrong with the drive. If he knew what, he would have the answer. Who would know?

Wrapped in plastic.

It was something to do with the production line. It must be. He fumbled with the material on his desk and found the DAT cartridge. He inserted it into the machine.

It came up, showing his conversation with Arthur Kahn. Kahn was on one side of the screen, Sanders on the other.

Behind Arthur, the brightly lit assembly line beneath banks of fluorescent lights.

Kahn coughed, and rubbed his chin. “Hel o, Tom. How are you?”

“I'm fine, Arthur,” he said.

“Wel , good. I'm sorry about the new organization.”

But Sanders wasn't listening to the conversation. He was looking at Kahn. He noticed now that Kahn was standing very close to the camera, so close that his features were slightly blurred, out of focus. His face was large, and blocked any clear view of the production line behind him. “You know how I feel personal y,”

Kahn was saying, on the screen.

His face was blocking the line.

Sanders watched a moment more, and then switched the tape off. “Let's go downstairs,” he said.

“You have an idea?”

“Cal it a last-ditch hope,” he said.

The lights clicked on, harsh lights shining on the tables of the Diagnostic team.

Fernandez said, “What is this place?”

“This is where they check the drives.”

“The drives that don't work?”

“Right.”

═Fernandez gave a little shrug. “I'm afraid I'm not-”

═”Me neither,” Sanders said. “I'm not a technical person. I can just read people.”

═She looked around the room. “Can you read this?”

He sighed. “No.”

Fernandez said, “Are they finished?” “I don't know,” he said.

And then he saw it. They were finished. They had to be. Because otherwise the Diagnostics team would be working al night, trying to get ready for the meeting tomorrow. But they had covered the tables up and gone to their professional association meeting because they were finished. The problem was solved.

Everybody knew it but him. That was why they had only opened three drives.

They didn't need to open the others. And they had asked for them to be sealed in plastic . . . Because . . . The punctures . . . “Air,” he said. “Air?” “They think it's the air.” “What air?” she said. “The air in the plant.” “The plant in Malaysia?” “Right.”

“This is about air in Malaysia?”

“No. Air in the plant.”

He looked again at the notebook on the table. “PPU” fol owed by a row of figures.

PPU stood for “particulates per unit.” It was the standard measure of air cleanliness in a plant. And these figures, ranging from two to eleven they were way off. They should be running zero particulates . . . one, at most. These figures were unacceptable.

The air in the plant was bad.

That meant that they would be getting dirt in the split optics, dirt in the drive arms, dirt in the chip joins . . .

He looked at the chips attached to the board.

“Christ,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Look.”

“I don't see anything.”

“There's a space between the chips and the boards. The chips aren't seated.”

“It looks okay to me.”

“It's not.”

He turned to the stacked drives. He could see at a glance that al the chips were seated differently. Some were tight, some had a gap of a few mil imeters, so you could see the metal contacts.

“This isn't right,” Sanders said. “This should never happen.” The fact was that the chips were inserted on the line by automated chip pressers. Every board, every chip should look exactly the same coming off the line. But they didn't. They were al different. Because of that, you could get voltage irregularities, memory al ocation problems-al kinds of random stuff. Which was exactly what they were getting.

He looked at the blackboard, the list of the flowchart. One item caught his eye.

D. Σ Mechanical vv

The Diagnostics team had put two checks beside “Mechanical.” The problem with the CD-ROM drives was a mechanical problem. Which meant it was a problem in the production line.

And the production line was his responsibility.

He'd designed it, he'd set it up. He'd checked al the specs on that line, from beginning to end.

And now it wasn't working right.

He was sure that it wasn't his fault. Something must have happened after he had set up the line. Somehow it had been changed around, and it didn't work anymore. But what had happened?

To find out, he needed to get onto the databases.

But he was locked out.

There wasn't any way to get online.

Immediately, he thought of Bosak. Bosak could get him on. So, for that matter, could one of the programmers on Cherry's teams. These kids were hackers: they would break into a system for a moment of minor amusement the way ordinary people went out for coffee. But there weren't any programmers in the building now. And he didn't know when they would be back from their meeting. Those kids were so unreliable. Like the kid that had thrown up al over the walker pad.