Trading Reality (25 page)

‘And David?’

Cochrane leaned forward. ‘David Baker’s a bit more interesting. He was at home all day on Saturday. He says he was preparing a presentation most of the day, and then went for a run. His wife was at work herself till five, so she can’t corroborate what he says.’

‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘And what about at the time of the fire?’

‘Well, that was three in the morning. Everyone was tucked up in bed, weren’t they? Anyone could have put on a pair of slippers, and gone lighting bonfires.’

I thought that over for a moment. ‘But David’s married. I’ve met his wife. She would have known if he’d left the house.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, laddie,’ said Cochrane.

‘Why?’

‘Because they sleep in separate bedrooms.’

I cast my eyes quickly over the legal document in front of me. Twenty minutes in which to read thirty pages. I should just about have time, although I wasn’t sure how much would sink in. Damn David! Why couldn’t he have given it to me on Friday as he had promised?

The basic deal was simple. We would license our simulation management software, FairSim 1, to Onada Industries for them to develop virtual reality games for the massive world entertainment market. We would earn a small royalty on each game sold. I took a gulp of strong black coffee, and checked my watch again. A quarter to nine. Onada would be here in fifteen minutes. I read on, my eyes flicking down the pages.

Whoa! My eyes jarred to a halt. I read and reread the paragraph. I didn’t like what I saw.

We were going to give Onada Industries the source code to FairSim 1.

This seemed to me to be a big mistake. Once we had released our code to Onada then the power in the relationship would be squarely with them. In a year or two they would come up with a different, if similar code, and we would be history. This was dangerous. The source code to FairSim 1 represented the total of FairSystems’ knowledge to date on how to build virtual worlds. It was the heart of the company.

And we were giving it away.

Ten to nine. I picked up the document and strode over to David’s office. He wasn’t there. I called to Susan.

‘Have you seen David?’

‘He’s in,’ she said. ‘I saw him half an hour ago. Isn’t he in his office?’

‘No. Can you phone around and try to track him down. I need to find him urgently.’

I went back to my desk, and waited, tapping my fingers impatiently. What was David thinking of? Had he deliberately given me the papers late in the hope that I wouldn’t spot the clause? Or was I blowing this out of proportion. Was it in fact a fair price to pay for access to the entertainment market? In the short-term, maybe. In the long-term, no.

Eventually David strolled into my office. It was a couple of minutes past nine.

‘Susan e-mailed the whole company looking for me. What’s up?’

‘I’ve just looked through this,’ I said, holding up the Onada agreement.

‘And?’

‘It gives away the source code for FairSim 1. We can’t do that.’

‘We’re not giving it away, we’re selling it,’ said David patiently. ‘We’ll get a big royalty stream from Onada. It’s a great deal for us commercially.’

‘But then Onada will have all our knowledge about VR. They’ll be able to use it to develop all sorts of stuff of their own. We’ll lose our lead in VR technology.’

‘Look, Mark, don’t worry,’ said David. ‘We’ll still own the code itself. I’ve thought all this through, trust me. This is the product of six months of negotiation, and Onada have brought over a big honcho from Tokyo to close the deal. They’re waiting for us now. Shall we go?’

I clenched my teeth. ‘David, I said I’m not happy with us giving away our source code.’

David was losing patience. ‘Look, Richard and I worked on this for months. This deal could save us financially, and get us a powerful new partner. We can’t afford to let this opportunity slip,’ and he walked out of my office towards the board room.

I followed him in two minds. He was the marketing director, I ought to trust him. Especially since he had conducted these negotiations with Richard.

But I was being bounced, and I didn’t like it.

They were arrayed along the other side of the board-room table, four Japanese in a row. Dark blue or grey suits, white shirts, wild swirling ties. The ties had intricate patterns of leaves, peacocks, bright suns. The effect was spoilt a little by the fact that all four were wearing them. Conformity in rebellion.

The pecking order had been made clear during the introduction. ‘The big honcho from Tokyo’ was the smallest and oldest. A squat man with closely cropped grey hair, he seemed permanently on the verge of sleep as he watched the proceedings from heavily hooded eyes. He didn’t speak any English. He was referred to as Mr Akama.

His deputy was much younger, probably in his thirties. His name was Yoshiki Ishida, but we could call him Yoshi. He spoke in a flawless American accent. He explained that he had a master’s degree from MIT and had just spent three years with Onada Industries’ US subsidiary in California. He was now General Manager of Onada Industries pie in London. He was clearly intelligent, very intelligent. He did all the talking, and occasionally spoke rapidly and deferentially to his boss, who would give a curt response, and resume his semi-sleeping position.

The other two Japanese didn’t say anything, and were quickly forgotten.

David and I were on the other side of the table. I left all the talking to him.

He was good. He spoke with respect and without any of the condescension with which some westerners address the Japanese. They took out the draft contracts and began working through them.

I have to admit I was intimidated. I had come across the Japanese before in the bond markets. I had always dismissed them as the dumb guys with all the money and none of the sense. Someone has to buy at the top and sell at the bottom for the rest of us to make an honest buck, and more often than not it was the Japanese.

But these men were different. Onada Industries was a medium-sized Japanese electronics company, and as such was bigger than any British company in the same sector. The Japanese reputation in electronics was formidable. It was difficult to believe that once they got their teeth into virtual reality, a company like Onada wouldn’t swat the likes of FairSystems to one side.

And we were just about to give away the code for FairSim 1 to these people.

But what did I know? A twenty-eight-year-old whose experience of virtual reality was measured in weeks rather than years. David knew much more than me about this sort of stuff. And Onada would not be happy if we tried to change the terms of the contract now. They could be a powerful enemy.

Yet I had always had faith in my own judgement. It had seen me through many difficult situations at Harrison Brothers. I remembered my first few months as a trader. I was working for Gus, at thirty an old man of the markets who was a legend in his own lunchtime. We were trading ‘perpetuals’, or ‘perps’. These were extraordinary bonds that never matured. Apparently, this didn’t matter, since investors could always sell the bonds if they wanted to. Hundreds of millions of these bonds were traded every day, and they were treated as the next best thing to cash.

This bothered me. It seemed to me that all this only made sense if someone else was always around to buy the bonds. What if the market for perps disappeared? Then you would be stuck with these things for ever.

I explained my concerns to Gus. He explained to me that I was an ignorant trainee, and went off to lunch.

Well, the price of these perps began to slide, bit by bit. Gus thought this was great. Perps were cheap; ship ’em in, shag!

One afternoon, he rang the office from the White Horse to say that he was going to take the afternoon off. I was worried, the perps were falling again, and we were getting hit with bonds. ‘Ship ’em in,’ he slurred. ‘The market will bounce in the morning.’

Well, I didn’t. I sold every perp we had, the market crashed off a point and never recovered. Gus went crazy and wanted me fired. I was moved up to settlements instead. But a week later, it became clear that perps were just that, perpetuals. Gus was gone, and Bob Forrester gave me his job.

Since then I had trusted no one’s judgement but my own. I took a deep breath.

‘I’m not comfortable with this,’ I said, pointing to the offending clause.

They were the first words I had spoken during the meeting. Yoshi’s eyes darted towards me. David looked at me furiously. Mr Akama’s lids moved up perceptibly. I wondered if he truly didn’t understand any English.

‘I’m afraid FairSystems will not be able to release the code for FairSim 1,’ I went on. ‘Can I suggest instead a similar approach to the one we use with our other partners, where we work with them on the design of each application?’

Subtle this was not. David’s jaw dropped. He was too stunned to say anything. I felt almost sorry for him. He had had his legs taken out from under him by a boss who was five years his junior in front of his major client. Tough. I just couldn’t let the contract go ahead. And he shouldn’t have tried to bulldozer it through.

Yoshi stared at me for several seconds, his cheeks slowly reddening. Then he turned to Mr Akama, and spoke rapidly to him. Mr Akama was now well and truly awake. He spoke fast and angrily, darting black looks my way as he spoke. Yoshi couldn’t get a word in, but simply nodded his head, barking ‘hai’ at regular intervals.

Finally the tirade stopped. Yoshi turned towards us. He took a few seconds to calm himself down. ‘Mr Akama would like to thank you for your time,’ he said, with extreme politeness. ‘Unfortunately, Mr Akama feels that these negotiations are unlikely to reach a conclusion that is acceptable to both parties. I hope you will excuse us, we will have to hurry to catch our airplane.’

The Japanese all stood up, bowed with varying degrees of inclination, and we escorted them out to the black stretch Mercedes that had driven them to the factory from Edinburgh.

‘What the fuck was all that about?’ shouted David, as soon as the limousine had turned safely out of the car park. ‘I thought we’d agreed we’d go ahead. Onada would have been our biggest customer. That deal could have been worth two million dollars a year!’

‘If we give away FairSim 1, we give away the company,’ I said calmly. ‘And we didn’t agree anything.’

‘If we don’t give them FairSim 1, they don’t do the deal!’ shouted David in exasperation. ‘I’ve spent six months working on that deal! Six months down the drain!’

‘They’ll be back. If they want to launch a virtual reality entertainment system, which they do, they’ll be back. They have nowhere else to go.’

‘Like hell they will!’ shouted David. ‘You’ve just screwed up the best deal this company’s ever had!’ He stormed off back into the factory.

I looked around. A couple of engineers had heard us. The receptionist looked on, open-mouthed. I had no doubt that details of our argument would be all round the factory before the day was out.

What would Richard have done, I wondered, as I walked back up to my office.

I suddenly had a thought. ‘Did Richard keep a file on Onada Industries?’ I asked Susan.

‘Oh yes,’ she said. Within thirty seconds it was on my desk. I looked through the last few documents in the file. There was a draft of the contract dated 17 March, just over a month before Richard had died. I looked for clause 4(a) which referred to FairSim 1. There it was, heavily scored out in black pen, and NO was scrawled next to it in Richard’s writing. Then there was a brief fax from Onada Industries that said that since FairSystems would not agree to clause 4(a) as drafted, all discussions would be terminated.

I was shocked. As soon as Richard had died, David had reopened negotiations with Onada, reinserting a vital clause that Richard had explicitly rejected.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel so sorry about humiliating him.

The sun shone brightly on Richard’s funeral. The minister was more than happy for his church to be used for the event. It turned out that Richard had even been an occasional visitor on Sundays, something that had surprised me. The service was simple and meaningful, no long eulogies. Looking out to sea, I thought this was the right place to lay Richard, and the right way.

I had finally prevailed upon the procurator fiscal to release Richard’s body. He had insisted that Richard should be buried in case any future defence lawyer might want the body exhumed for further examination. The thought of that eventuality was unpleasant, but at least it was good to know that he was no longer lying in the mortuary.

I hadn’t made a big fuss about the funeral, but there were about fifty people there. I recognised most of them. David, Rachel, Willie, Susan and half a dozen others represented Fair-Systems. Jim Robertson was there, and Sergeant Cochrane. Walter Sorenson had been able to organise a trip to Britain to coincide with the funeral. Thankfully, Karen had flown up as well; it was good to have her with me.

But one person grabbed all my attention. I tried to ignore him through the service so that I could devote my thoughts to Richard and his memory. Afterwards, there was no escaping him.

My father.

I was shocked to see how much he had changed. His hair had thinned, gone greyer. There was a slight stoop. His face was creased with wrinkles. And he looked tired and pale.

Clinging to his arm was a woman. She was in her mid-thirties, slight, and just as pale as he, although she had dark hair and dark eyes. She looked familiar. With a shock, I realised that she reminded me of photographs I had seen of my mother when I was very young.

I wanted to avoid him. Not out of spite. I just couldn’t trust myself to keep my temper with him, and I didn’t want to start an argument over Richard’s grave. But I couldn’t ignore him completely at my brother’s funeral. So I took Karen by the arm, and led her over to where he and his wife were talking to Sorenson.