The Secret (34 page)

“What would it cost to upgrade it?” I asked.

“A lot more than it would be worth,” she said. “There’s too much competition out there, already established with good names. Dell. Hewlett-Packard. Micron. Gateway. Not to mention IBM and Compaq.”

“Well … just suppose.”

“You couldn’t do it without Tom Malloy,” she said. “And I’m not sure you could do it with him. He could be a major impediment.”

“Why?”

“He might insist on keeping the major features of the old Sphere. You might have a difficult time weaning him off his original ideas.”

“But you also say we couldn’t do it without him.”

“Mr. Cooper, computer manufacturing today is mostly just a matter of buying components and assembling them. The components come from Intel, Texas Instruments, and so on.”

“Are you saying we could assemble a computer and put the Sphere name on it?”

Her chin rose. Her big blue eyes opened wider. “Is that what you’re thinking of doing?”

“Well … something like that. Maybe. What is the Sphere name worth?”

“It stands for innovation and quality,” she said without hesitation. “Tom Malloy would campaign against you fiercely if you tried to change that.”

She had said pretty much what we had deduced. I had to believe she knew her business. I had Middleton and Scheck interview her. I called my father in Florida. I offered her a job.

*   *   *

I soon learned more about Liz. She was starved for affection. She wanted a man, sure, but she wanted respect from women; she wanted people to like her. She was often misunderstood. Too often men took her affability for an invitation.

She called people “honey” and “darling.” From others it might have been taken in a different way, but from her it was just an element of her personality.

I let her teach me about some computer programs, and she would stand behind me as I sat at the keyboard and say things like, “C’mon now, honey babe. You’ve done it before, remember? Like last time, sweet.” She would lean forward to point at something on the screen, and I would feel her big, soft breasts pressing against my neck and shoulder. I don’t know if she was unconscious of that or did it purposefully. Outwardly, she was happy, exuberant even. I would understand in time that she was starved for affection.

Anyway, we made it plain to her what we intended to do with Sphere if we acquired it. She expressed enthusiasm for the idea.

She went to Texas to have a look at Sphere and came back with a report.

“All that’s keeping the Sphere company afloat right now is their laser printer.”

“Their what?”

“Laser printer. It prints your computer output: your text, your spreadsheets, your graphs, your pictures. The Sphere prints fast and with extremely good quality. What’s more, it’s in a reasonable price range for that kind of equipment. Malloy was smart enough to make his printer compatible with just about anything. It can print from any computer, even the Apple line. The hardware of it is mostly outside stuff, but the software that runs it is strictly Malloy and company.”

“‘And company?’”

“A few of their key people have remained loyal to Tom Malloy and are still there. There’s a rumor afloat that a New York company with more money than good sense is about to bail Sphere out and make it a comer again.”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning
us,
of course!” She laughed. “The very rumor of us is what’s holding some of those people. They dream of returning to the glory days.”

She gave us a written report, which Scheck and Middleton pronounced “competent” and “thorough.”

One day I called her into my office.

“Sit down, Liz. I want to talk with you.”

She sat down a bit apprehensively, as if she suspected I had called her in to notify her she was being terminated.

“You haven’t been with us long,” I said to her. “But you’ve become a valued person for us. You’ve got some rough edges, though. I’m going to ask you to avoid calling people ‘dear’ and ‘darling.’ You understand why?”

She nodded. I sensed that she was holding back tears.

“Well … I’ve had some new business cards engraved for you. Have a look.”

I handed her a card from a box of them on my desk. It read:

E
LIZABETH
T. M
C
A
LLISTER
V
ICE
P
RESIDENT
, T
ECHNOLOGY
O
PERATIONS
G
AZELLE
, I
NCORPORATED

I had expected she would be demonstrative. I couldn’t have guessed how much.

She began to cry. She dropped on her knees before me and seized my legs in her arms.

“
Oh, Len! Len!
I love you, Len! I simply love you!”

Leaving me to wonder exactly what that meant.

*   *   *

While Liz was in Houston I received two large packages from Bai Fuyuan in Shenzhen. One contained finely woven wool sweaters in a variety of styles and colors. The other contained knockoffs of some of the most popular Cheeks styles of panties, bras, garter belts, and teddies, most of them in black.

I also received a letter from Bai—Federal Express.

Dear Mr. Cooper,

I have dispatched to you two cartons containing goods for your examination and, I hope, approval. They are examples of the sort of thing we might be able to work in partnership to manufacture and sell, both in China and in the United States.

I should very much welcome the opportunity to sit down with you to discuss this merchandise and explore the terms on which mutually profitable and mutually agreeable arrangements might be made.

I could come to the States, but I am wondering if we might not better meet in Hong Kong, where your Mr. Chan can join in our conversations.

I would hope, too, that your father might see fit to come.

Most sincerely,

Bai Fuyuan

I ordered the Lear and flew to Florida, taking the packages and the letter with me.

“It’s good-enough merchandise,” my father said.

We sat on the lanai—a word my father considered affected and so despised. Just outside its screens was a small swimming pool, where my father and Therèse both swam regularly. Beyond that was a canal, where yachts passed by in an almost regular procession. The pool and yard were surrounded by a strong chain-link fence that was anchored to the ground by steel stakes every foot or eighteen inches of its length. The fence was there because alligators had been known to lunge out of the canal and seize small dogs or cats, or to take up residence in swimming pools.

“He suggests you meet him in Hong Kong with Charlie Han. What I’d do is write him back and tell him to send Charlie the same samples he’s sent us. Charlie he knows sewn merchandise. This stuff may have defects we don’t see.”

“Notice the labels,” I said. Each item had a sewn-in label—
MADE IN HONG KONG.
“None of this stuff ever saw Hong Kong. It was made in China.”

“And he wants to put in Cheeks labels?”

“Exactly.”

“Well … if the merchandise is of high quality—and I mean we inspect every shipment, in China or on its way here—I suppose it could be a deal. If we have things manufactured for us in Hong Kong, why not in China? It’s a matter of politics.”

“It’s a matter of quality,” I said.

“All right. And quality. And we have to work out a way to be sure Ariana Middleton doesn’t find out what we are doing. I rather imagine we can trust Roger not to tell her.”

“This is going to mean another trip to Hong Kong,” I said.

“You could be doing worse. You could be making business trips to Cleveland.”

“Somebody is going to have to keep an eye on Houston,” I said.

“You won’t be going to Hong Kong for a while. Let’s try to acquire Sphere before you leave. Or drop it.”

52

Zhang Feng had said in Guangzhou that Tom Malloy would resist any effort to acquire Sphere that did not involve an absolute commitment that the company would continue to make and sell the Sphere computer. We had not told him that this was no part of our plans. Liz had reported that he would rear back and fight if he suspected we were going to scrap his wonderful machine.

As I had told him, we could do what we wanted whether he liked it or not. Sphere, Incorporated, and Malloy personally, owed a lot of money. We could buy up the paper and call the loans. Much of the debt had been secured by pledging Sphere stock as security, and by calling the loans we could acquire the pledged stock that secured them. We would own controlling interest and could elect our own directors, who would in turn elect our officers. We could simply force Malloy out.

Maybe it was a brutal way of doing business, but it was not uncommon.

Liz also cautioned us, though, that if Malloy left, his people would very likely leave, too.

“Something you must understand, Len,” she said to me. “The chief asset of a technology-based company is its people. The chief asset is
brains.
Otherwise, you’ve got a lot of desks and chairs, plus some bins of components, and probably a small inventory of machines. Absent the people, the brains, the company is nothing. It’s nothing like a smokestack industry, where the mill, the machinery, the trucks, and so on loom large on the balance sheet.”

“The laser printer…?”

“Great today. Obsolete tomorrow. I might put it another way—a big asset of a technology company is its
future.
They have got to have a vision of the future and keep working toward it.” She grinned. “Some speech, huh, sweetie?”

I nodded. “Okay. What about the value of the name?”

“I’m not sure there will be any name without Malloy. And what if he travels around bad-mouthing the new management of his company? He could do that.”

“That would hurt?”

“You wouldn’t find any benefit in it.”

I began to wonder if we should not back away from Sphere. The only one we’d be disappointing would be Zhang.

Plus Liz. I had to think of her. What good was a vice president of technology operations if we backed away from going into technology? And she was being honest. She could have put a more positive spin on the idea of acquiring Sphere, to save the new position she cherished so much.

There was no point in asking my father what to do. He knew nothing about technology.

I decided I had to have a second opinion. With the help of Hugh Scheck I identified a reputable professor at MIT and went up to meet with him.

His name was William Cable, professor of applied mathematics. We met at Boston’s Logan Airport, where I arrived in the company Lear. He was a tall man, I judged about forty, with a pink face and a pink pate, which his sandy hair was rapidly abandoning. He wore round, gold-rimmed eyeglasses and a never-failing little smile.

I had arranged for a limo to take us wherever we wanted to go. I had supposed his office, but he suggested a seafood restaurant on the harbor. The driver knew where it was. In the car we exchanged pleasantries for a minute or so, and then I moved directly to the point. “Professor, I have come up from New York to pick your brains. I don’t expect you to allow me to do that free of charge. Would a fee of one thousand dollars for this first meeting be satisfactory?”

He was all restraint. I think he would gladly have accepted a hundred, but he concealed his surprise perfectly. He nodded. “Yes. That will be entirely satisfactory.”

I pulled from my jacket pocket an inexpensive but real leather black billfold. “For the time being, we can deal in cash,” I said. There were ten one-hundred-dollar bills in the billfold.

He looked at them but didn’t count them. He put the billfold in his own pocket and folded his hands in his lap. I knew he wouldn’t report the thousand as taxable income. I’d have been disappointed in him if I learned he had.

“There is one more thing,” I told him. “I should like for our conversation to be entirely confidential, including the fact that we met at all. You will see from our conversation that I am not involved in anything illegal or unethical. You will also see why I want it to be confidential.”

He nodded and said nothing.

“My father, over the past forty years, has built a multibillion dollar corporation. Gazelle, Incorporated owns and operates the Cheeks stores and its catalog sales. Have you heard of us?”

His smile broadened. “I know about Cheeks shops. I’ve been your customer a few times over the years.”

“Good. We are in the fortunate position of holding a lot of cash, which we need to invest. We also need to diversify. It has been suggested to us that we acquire Sphere, Incorporated, of Houston. I understand they make a fine laser printer but that their computer has become obsolete. What can you tell me?”

“Have you ever seen a Sphere computer?” he asked me.

“No, I never have. People talk about them in glowing terms, but I have never seen one.”

“I’ll show you one, later. A great many experiments were conducted in the early years of the technology. Many of the ideas weren’t bad. But they failed for a variety of reasons, often for want of adequate financing. I could recite a litany of names: intelligently designed computers that failed.”

“Sphere?” I asked.

“Well … looking at them from the outside, a computer is a computer: a beige box with a screen and keyboard. The Sphere was not sphere-shaped exactly, but it was rounded. It was not beige but made mostly of dark green transparent plastic, and you could see the parts inside: the circuit boards, transformer, rectifier, and so on. You could see the disks spinning. You could see the read heads moving across the disks. Of course, that was the only visible movement in the computer. For the rest it was just invisible electrons speeding over the circuits and through the components. I don’t know. Somehow it was exciting to think you could see the thing working.

“It’s what we can’t see that is really elegant,” he said. “The circuit design. The redundancies.”

“Redundancies?”

“If something fails, usually there is something behind it, ready to pick up the work and prevent a crash and loss of data.”