Shimmer (16 page)

Ronald had begun passing out copies of a document stamped
CONFIDENTIAL
in bright-red ink. One of SWAT's duties was to run response scenarios on a wide range of potential security threats. Developed in conjunction with former security experts from the NSA and CIA, the scenarios covered everything from terrorist attacks on local power supplies to routine break-ins of our field and home offices to blackmail by people inside and outside the company.

“Is all this
really
necessary?” I'd asked Whitley eighteen months earlier, when Ronald had first presented me with the request to develop these scenarios.

“Ronald makes a compelling cost/benefit analysis,” she'd said flatly, then paused, pushing her black hair from her face for a moment, eyes held upward as she considered a thought. “And, just as appealing, maybe they'll form a kind of window on our future.”

As I scanned the security document now, I saw that there were numerous blackmail scenarios. This possibility—a direct approach by a member of the Fadowsky family—had not only been explored, it had been identified as the most harmful to us.

“It's as if,” Perry said quietly, eyes scanning the pages of the security scenario, “young Eugene has read this paper himself.”

Ronald stopped in place, turning carefully toward Perry. “Are you suggesting there has been an internal security breach?”

“No,” Perry said, turning a page, fingers moving slowly, the rest of his body so tremendously still. “It just struck me as the most dramatic comment I could make.”

“I would ask you to take this more seriously,” I said to Perry, “if we weren't all sitting in children's school chairs.” I turned to Whitley. “What in the hell is going on around here?”

“Pure envy,” Whitley said flatly, nodding toward Perry, whose low desk and chairs were, in fact, being emulated companywide, people hauling children's chairs onto the elevator or exchanging as much as six months' worth of favors to get a full set of chairs and a table delivered to their offices.

I started to respond, but Ronald interrupted our digressing exchange. “As you can see, Eugene's offer does almost exactly match
that described in this scenario. And, as you can see, the scenario concludes with the following recommended response.” He turned to the last page, pausing for a moment before reading aloud.
“Keep the contents, nature and all associated information regarding the threat completely secret. Do not contact outside authorities. Do not negotiate. Pay the family blackmailer any amount up to and including $75 million, which, weighed against the enclosed benefit analysis, is a less expensive option than the fallout that would unquestionably follow the disclosure of the story.”

A look of disgust passed over the faces of the people at the table. Julie seemed ready to put her hand through the floor, Cliff's head began to move in a circle, Leonard sat back in his small chair, his face frozen in an extended wince.

“Rumors of lost journals have floated into view for three years,” Whitley said, voice fading even as she spoke, trying lamely to convince herself of what she was saying. “We've never paid off anyone else.”

Perry shook his head, smiling only slightly. “Except.”

She threw a pencil at him, clearly aiming it directly for his eyes. “Except none of the stories came from Eugene,” she snapped.

The pencil careened off the wall. Whitley lowered her eyes, let her hair fall forward slightly, finding a half second of privacy in the fray.

Over the next twenty minutes, everyone in the room made attempts to convince themselves of some reason why we did not need to follow the advice of the scenario document. But each point was as weak as Whitley's, and each point had already been examined and then discarded within the scenario we all held.

The problem, in the end, was that even if we tried to fight or discredit Eugene, his name and relationship to Fadowsky would carry enough weight to give him credibility. Credibility would make people consider the possibility that Eugene's journal was real. And at that point they'd realize how dangerous a real journal—or a fake one—would be to Core's now dominant position. In turn, the market would not only demand that Eugene's claims about his journal be validated, it would also demand a response to the possibility that another threat might
surface in the future. The more we fought Eugene, the more the issue would remain in the market's mind.

And so he had us. Just as the scenario document described.

And of course Eugene had me in a worse position than he could possibly have realized. Because of what the dramatic dips in the stock price could do to the shadow network.

As I listened to everyone's increasingly weaker attempts to dispel the reasoning behind the scenario document, I realized, as I had in Perry's office a week earlier, that the child's chair was actually quite comfortable. And, in their way, the low table and chairs were somehow refreshing, this new and unexpected view from the near surface of the floor. The chair was comfortable enough, in fact, that I could keep myself from dwelling on the possibility that Perry, Whitley and anyone else who might soon buy chairs like this, all of them were reaching their own limits. All of them were nearing some state of regression.

My phone clicked, and I checked the screen. It was a message from Eugene, who'd insisted I give him my direct e-mail address and cell phone number.

By the way,
his message said,
I forgot to mention that if I don't sell the journal to you, the first company I will offer it to is based in Finland. A company called Regence. Ever heard of them?

I closed my eyes. I shook my head. The group had turned to look at me.

“Eugene,” Whitley said.

I nodded. I read his message aloud. And there was quiet then, the absence of movement. Finally, after a moment, Perry looked away, toward the window. Ronald Mertz sat down. Julie very carefully, very slowly, without noticing what she'd done, pulled her pen apart, blue ink now pouring into a pool near her hands. Cliff simply stood, then had to leave the room.

Eugene had thought all this through very, very carefully. Because by involving Regence—even by using their name with me—he'd reached a position stronger than even the security scenario had contemplated.

Founded by a onetime Finnish postal worker born Reginald Toralon, Regence was, on the surface, a multi-billion-dollar international supplier of telephone and networking equipment. In the business world, though, Regence was in fact a high-tech thug, a multinational phenomenon grown to prominence through an always ruthless mix of fast-paced innovation, technical superiority, blatant price gouging, largely illegal but entirely unproven product dumping, and the periodic hostile takeover. Known to the world as Chairman Tor, Reginald had leveraged the company's Cold War position as primary producer of computers, networking supplies and communications systems for the Finnish military to generate a huge reserve of money, influence and intellectual capital. Technical innovation, marketing creativity, top-quality service and support—these things had unquestionably aided the company. But few analysts or observers saw those as the essential reasons for Regence's dominance. Competitors were undercut into bankruptcy or acquired through hostile takeovers that, once completed, resulted in a complete liquidation of the business. Governments were lobbied, stroked, paid off or attacked in order for Regence to buy the best position for itself and its services. The few Regence employees who'd challenged Chairman Tor's vision or his methods had been immediately cast out of the company, stripped of their compensation, sued for breach of contract and held in limbo by their stifling noncompete agreements.

In all, Regence was an archetypal villain of the electronic age, with its blitzkrieg attacks on markets it sought to dominate anywhere in the world, with its deeply devout legions of multinational workers, with its mysterious but charismatic leader, Chairman Tor, pictured always as a windswept sixty-five-year-old in black Polarfleece and silver sunglasses.

A reporter working for a Swedish newspaper had once drawn connections between Chairman Tor and former top officials of the KGB. Though neither Regence nor Chairman Tor ever publicly responded to the article, the reporter was said to have moved out of Sweden just
weeks after the article appeared. Such stories about Regence's personal intimidation of its detractors were not at all uncommon, although I often thought the articles were manufactured by Regence's own very powerful public relations machine. Either way, the effect on the outside world was the same. Regence did not accept attacks or criticism—and so it was not attacked or criticized very often.

In the United States, Regence maintained eight campus-style offices nationwide, each staffed by hundreds of American workers but run by top-level Finnish executives imported from the company's headquarters in the hills outside Helsinki. They were metallic, fenced-in campuses located in heavily wooded, entirely faceless communities. In essence the campuses were highly manicured compounds, with their multiple security checkpoints, their black four-by-four vehicles roaming parking lots and access roads, their cameras peering out from hedges and trees. Their lobbies were staffed by guards in long trench coats, by unnaturally beautiful men and women sitting calmly at austere reception desks.

As in all the countries where it operated, in America Regence paid its workers the highest salaries in the tech world, though in return it demanded not just the longest hours but also the most stifling confidentiality and noncompete agreements. It was that mix of demands that allowed Regence to breed a cloistered and arrogant culture of exceedingly devoted employees.

Parking lots filled with black sedans. An enticingly familiar yet ultimately meaningless company name. Deep-rooted paranoia that reached greater depths each day.

Very few workers had ever left Regence. Those who did leave were not only barred from discussing the work they'd done, they were also essentially barred from continuing to work in their field. So insular was Regence's culture that former workers never again spoke to their onetime colleagues. So powerful were Regence's campuses that former workers were soon forced to leave their homes—shunned by neighbors who worked for Regence themselves, stigmatized by community
leaders who'd quickly grown dependent on the company for tax revenue and political support.

It was said that, back in Finland, Regence employed an entire division devoted to nothing but the monitoring of these former workers. Wherever they moved. And, especially, wherever they next went to work.

Leaving Regence was a bit like entering the witness protection program.

And yet, as big and powerful as it was, as many products and services as it offered, Regence had never drawn blood from a mainframe. Which had made Core Communications an obsession for Chairman Tor. He had been putting hundreds of millions of dollars into mainframe research. He had been acquiring mainframe networking companies worldwide. He had even unsuccessfully attempted to buy the rights to the Fadowsky Boxes from the Fadowsky family. Regence was desperate. Tor wanted our clients. He was jealous of our success. And so I knew—everyone within SWAT knew—that Regence would jump at the chance to buy a fake journal from a member of the Fadowsky family. Tor would play right along with Eugene, spreading rumors about the journal, giving credibility to its contents, calling it “promising” and “worthy of extended study.” All of it would be done with a single goal—to undermine Core in any way possible.

“The decision's been made for us,” I said now, for a moment watching Julie, with her shoulders pulled so high, so hard and tight, but her fingers, those smooth, dense fingers, pushing lightly against the edges of the pool of ink on the table, delicately feeding the ink back on itself.

Perry sat so still, impossibly still, like me staring at the ink on the table.

Leonard worked his thick lips against the outer edges of his teeth.

Cliff returned to the room, hand clutching his calculator like an old man gripping a cane. He bent slowly down to sit in his low chair. I realized he'd gone to throw up.

“There's no better solution,” I said slowly, “no better solution than the one presented here.”

I was watching that pool of ink again. Watching Julie tend to its edges, keeping the dark fluid in place.

But something had happened. People had turned to me. Others looked down at the butcher-block tabletop.

And I realized that, when I'd said there was no better solution, my voice had gone quiet. Hearing my voice again. It had been an almost shallow voice. Weak. Because I had, in that moment, shown I was scared. Scared of Eugene's threat. Scared, especially, of Regence.

Whitley's hands were stopped at her lips. Julie held her fingers still, a dam against the drifting ink. Cliff appeared ready to leave the room again. Only Perry smiled slightly, slowly tilting his head to the side, clearly taking a picture of an image he'd never seen before.

I leaned back in my child's chair. I smiled at them all. I tried to break the spell I'd cast over the room. “We go with the expert advice,” I said finally, tapping the scenario document on the table in front of me, standing now, trying to speak quickly, confidently. “We dodge a fight with Regence. We pay Eugene his money.”

I came inside her.

Eugene's lost journal. Regence with an opportunity to hurt the company. My moment of fear. Trevor roaming the world's airports, phone at his ear, pushing aside any traveler who stepped in his way. Rogue sections in the DMZ. Whitley's SWAT team scanning servers, tracking accounting codes, watching for any anomaly in the chaos. Shimmer turning, spinning.

Beautiful. Above me. Hair black and falling across my face. Ends just brushing my forehead, my eyes.

She leaned down. She whispered, “Again?”

Thirty-five million in purchases for the shadow network. Three new companies in the Caymans. One more in Budapest. Lawyers out of Bermuda. Contract technicians from India.