Paranoia (38 page)

“I don’t believe it. Can’t you at least give me the thumbnail?”

She looked skyward, heaved a sigh. “Well, it’s like this. You ever hear of the Haloid Company?”

“No,” I said slowly.

“Of course not. No reason you should have heard of it. But the Haloid Company was this small photographic-paper company that, in the late nineteen-forties, bought the rights to this new technology that had been turned down by all the big companies—IBM, RCA, GE. The invention was something called xerography, okay? So in ten, fifteen years the Haloid Company became the Xerox Corporation, and it went from a small family-run company to a gigantic corporation. All because they took a chance on a technology that no one else was interested in.”

“Okay.”

“Or the way the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in Chicago, which made Motorola brand car radios, eventually got into semiconductors and cell phones. Or a small oil exploration company called Geophysical Service started branching out and getting into transistors and then the integrated circuit and became Texas Instruments. So you get my point. The history of technology is filled with examples of companies that transformed themselves by grabbing hold of the right technology at the right time, and leaving their competitors in the dust. That’s what Jock Goddard is trying to do with AURORA. He thinks AURORA is going to change the world, and the face of American business, the way transistors or semiconductors or photocopying technology once did.”

“Disruptive technology.”

“Exactly.”

“But the
Wall Street Journal
seems to think Jock’s washed up.”

“We both know better than that. He’s just way ahead of the curve. Look at the history of the company. There were three or four points when everyone thought Trion was on the ropes, on the verge of bankruptcy, and then all of a sudden it surprised everyone and came back stronger than ever.”

“You think this is one of those turning points, huh?”

“When AURORA’s ready to announce, he’ll announce it. And then let’s see what the
Wall Street Journal
says. AURORA makes all these latest problems practically irrelevant.”

“Amazing.” I peered into my wineglass and said oh-so-casually, “So what’s the technology?”

She smiled, shook her head. “I probably shouldn’t have said even this much.” Tilting her head to one side she said playfully, “Are you doing some sort of security check on me?”

68

I knew from the moment she said she wanted to eat at the restaurant at the Harbor Suites that we’d sleep together that night. I’ve had dates with women where an erotic charge came from “will she or won’t she?” This was different, of course, but the charge was even stronger. It was there all along, that invisible line that we both knew we were going to cross, the line that separated us from friends and something more intimate; the question was when, and how, we were going to cross it, who’d make the first move, what crossing it would feel like. We came back up to my apartment after dinner, both a little unsteady from too much white wine and G & Ts. I had my arm around her narrow waist. I wanted to feel the soft skin on her tummy, underneath her breasts, on her upper buttocks. I wanted to see her most private areas. I wanted to witness the moment when the hard shell around Alana, the impossibly beautiful, sophisticated woman cracked; when she shuddered, gave way, when those clear blue eyes became lost in pleasure.

We sort of careened around the apartment, enjoying the views of the water, and I made us both martinis, which we definitely didn’t need. She said, “I can’t believe I have to go to Palo Alto tomorrow morning.”

“What’s up in Palo Alto?”

She shook her head. “Nothing interesting.” She had her arm around my waist too, but she accidentally-on-purpose let her hand slip down to my butt, squeezing rhythmically, and she made a joke about whether I’d finished unpacking the bed.

The next minute I had my lips on hers, my groping fingertips gently stroking her tits, and she snaked a very warm hand down to my groin. Both of us were quickly aroused, and we stumbled over to the couch, the one that didn’t have plastic wrap still on it. We kissed and ground our hips together. She moaned. She fished me greedily out of my pants. She was wearing a white silk teddy under her black shirt. Her breasts were ample, round, perfect.

She came loudly, with surprising abandon.

I knocked over my martini glass. We made our way down the long corridor to my bedroom and did it again, this time more slowly.

“Alana,” I said when we were snuggling.

“Hmm?”

“Alana,” I repeated. “That means ‘beautiful’ in Gaelic or something, right?”

“Celtic, I think.” She was scratching my chest. I was stroking one of her breasts.

“Alana, I have to confess something.”

She groaned. “You’re married.”

“No—”

She turned to me, a flash of annoyance in her eyes. “You’re involved with someone.”

“No, definitely not. I have to confess—I hate Ani DiFranco.”

“But didn’t you—you quoted her. . . .” She looked puzzled.

“I had an old girlfriend who used to listen to her a lot, and now it’s got bad associations.”

“So why do you have one of her CDs out?”

She’d seen the damned thing next to the CD player. “I was trying to make myself like her.”

“Why?”

“For you.”

She thought for a moment, furrowed her dark brow. “You don’t have to like everything I like. I don’t like Porsches.”

“You don’t?” I turned to her, surprised.

“They’re dicks on wheels.”

“That’s true.”

“Maybe some guys need that, but you definitely don’t.”

“No one ‘needs’ a Porsche. I just thought it was cool.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t get a red one.”

“Nah. Red’s cop bait—cops see red Porsches and they switch on their radar.”

“Did your dad have a Porsche? My dad had one.” She rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous. Like, his male-menopause, midlife-crisis car.”

“Actually, for most of my childhood we didn’t even
have
a car.”

“You didn’t have a
car?
”

“We took public transportation.”

“Oh.” Now she looked uncomfortable. After a minute she said, “So all this must be pretty heady stuff.” She waved her hand around to indicate the apartment and everything.

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.”

Another minute went by. “Can I visit you at work some time?” I said.

“You can’t. Access to the fifth floor is pretty restricted. Anyway, I think it’s better if people at work don’t know, don’t you agree?”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

I was surprised when she curled up next to me and drifted off to sleep: I thought she was going to take right off, go home, wake up in her own bed, but she seemed to want to spend the night.

The bedside clock said three thirty-five when I got up. She remained asleep, buzzing softly. I walked across the carpet and noiselessly closed the bedroom door behind me.

I signed on to my e-mail and saw the usual assortment of spam and junk, some work stuff that didn’t look urgent, and one on Hushmail from “Arthur” whose subject line said, “re: consumer devices.” Meacham sounded royally pissed off:

Boss extremely disappointed by your failure to reply. Wants additional presentation materials by 6 pm tomorrow or deal is endangered.

I hit “reply” and typed, “unable to locate additional materials, sorry” and signed it “Donnie.” Then I read through it and deleted my message. Nope. I wasn’t going to reply at all. That was simpler. I’d done enough for them.

I noticed that Alana’s little square black handbag was still on the granite bar where she’d left it. She hadn’t brought her computer or her workbag, since she’d stopped at home to change.

In her handbag were her badge, a lipstick, some breath mints, a key ring, and her Trion Maestro. The keys were probably for her apartment and car and maybe her home mailbox and such. The Maestro likely held phone numbers and addresses, but also specific datebook appointments. That could be very useful to Wyatt and Meacham.

But was I still working for them?

Maybe not.

What would happen if I just quit? I’d upheld my side of the bargain, got them just about everything they wanted on AURORA—well, most of it, anyway. Odds were they’d calculate that it wasn’t worth hassling me further. It wasn’t in their interests to blow my cover, not so long as I could potentially be useful to them. And they weren’t going to feed the FBI an anonymous tip, because that would just lead the authorities back to them.

What could they do to me?

Then I realized: I’d already quit working for them. I’d made the decision that afternoon in the study at Jock Goddard’s lake house. I wasn’t going to keep betraying the guy. Meacham and Wyatt could go screw themselves.

It would have been really easy at that moment for me to slip Alana’s handheld into the recharging cradle attached to my desktop computer and hot-link it. Sure, there was a risk of her getting up, since she was in a strange bed, finding me gone, and wandering around the apartment to see where I’d gone. In which case she might see me downloading the contents of her Maestro to my computer. Maybe she wouldn’t notice. But she was smart and quick, and she was likely to figure out the truth.

And no matter how fast I thought, no matter how cleverly I handled it, she’d know what I was up to. And I’d be caught, and the relationship would be over, and all of a sudden that mattered to me. I was smitten with Alana, and after only a couple of dates and one night together. I was just beginning to discover her earthy, expansive, sort of wild side. I loved her loopy, unrestrained laugh, her boldness, her dry sense of humor. I didn’t want to lose her because of something the loathsome Nick Wyatt was forcing me to do.

Already I’d handed over to Wyatt all kinds of valuable information on the AURORA project. I’d done my job. I was finished with those assholes.

And I couldn’t stop seeing Jock Goddard hunched over in that dark corner of his study, his shoulders shaking. That moment of revelation. The trust he’d put in me. And I was going to violate that trust for Nick Fucking Wyatt?

No, I didn’t think so. Not anymore.

So I put Alana’s Maestro back into her pocketbook. I poured myself a glass of cold water from the drinking-water dispenser on the Sub Zero door, gulped it down, and climbed back into my warm bed with Alana. She muttered something in her sleep, and I snuggled right up next to her and, for the first time in weeks, actually felt good about myself.

69

Goddard was scurrying down the hall to the Executive Briefing Center, and I struggled to keep up with him without breaking into a run. Man, the old guy moved fast, like a tortoise on methamphetamine. “This darned meeting is going to be a circus,” he muttered. “I called the Guru team here for a status update as soon as I heard they’re going to slip their Christmas ship date. They know I’m royally pissed off, and they’re going to be pirouetting like a troupe of Russian ballerinas doing the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.’ You’re going to see a side of me here that’s not so attractive.”

I didn’t say anything—what could I say? I’d seen his flashes of anger, and they didn’t even compare to what I’d seen in the only other CEO I’d ever met. Next to Nick Wyatt he was Mister Rogers. And in fact I was still shaken, moved by that intimate little scene in his lake house study—I’d never really seen another human being lay himself so bare. Until that moment there’d been a part of me that was sort of baffled as to why Goddard had singled me out, why he’d been drawn to me. Now I got it, and it rocked my world. I didn’t just want to impress the old man anymore, I wanted his approval, maybe something deeper.

Why, I agonized, did Goddard have to fuck it all up by being such a decent guy? It was unpleasant enough working for Nick Wyatt without this complication. Now I was working against the dad I never had, and it was messing with my head.

“Guru’s prime is a very smart young woman named Audrey Bethune, a real comer,” Goddard muttered. “But this disaster may derail her career. I really have no patience for screwups on this scale.” As we approached the room, he slowed. “Now, if you have any thoughts, don’t hesitate to speak. But be warned—this is a high-powered and very opinionated group, and they’re not going to show you any deference just because I brung you to the dance.”

The Guru team was assembled around the big conference table, waiting nervously. They looked up as we entered. Some of them smiled, said, “Hi, Jock,” or “Hello, Mr. Goddard.” They looked like scared rabbits. I remembered sitting around that table not so long ago. There were a few puzzled glances at me, some whispers. Goddard sat down at the head of the table. Next to him was a black woman in her late thirties, the same woman I’d seen talking to Tom Lundgren and his wife at the barbecue. He patted the table next to him to tell me to sit by his side. My cell phone had been vibrating in my pocket for the last ten minutes, so I furtively fished it out and glanced at the caller ID screen. A bunch of calls from a number I didn’t recognize. I switched the phone off.

“Afternoon,” Goddard said. “This is my assistant, Adam Cassidy.” A number of polite smiles, and then I saw that one of the faces belonged to my old friend Nora Sommers. Shit, she was on Guru, too? She wore a black-and-white striped suit and she had her power makeup on. She caught my eye, beamed like I was some long-lost childhood playmate. I smiled back politely, savoring the moment.

Audrey Bethune, the program manager, was beautifully dressed in a navy suit with a white blouse and small gold stud earrings. She had dark skin and wore her hair in a perfectly coifed and shellacked bubble. I’d done some quick background research on her and knew that she came from an upper-middle-class family. Her father was a doctor, as was her grandfather, and she’d spent every summer at the family compound in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard. She smiled at me, revealing a gap between her front teeth. She reached behind Jock’s back to shake my hand. Her palm was dry and cool. I was impressed. Her career was on the line.