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“It is. I know I don’t need to tell you this, Jack, but he’s one of the elephants.”

“I know.”

“We lose him, and … well … you can kiss more than just bonuses goodbye this year.”

“I understand, Terry.”

“It’s important to keep guys like him happy. Lord knows we could use the juice. The last couple of years haven’t exactly …” 

“Terry, I get it.”

“I know you do. Come by on Thursday and I’ll fill you in on what I know.”

“Done.”

“Oh, and Jack.”

“Yeah, Vaughn.”

“That buy rating you put on Western Line.”

“Yeah.”

“Nice. They were very pleased.”

“They should be. It was a gift.”

“Talk to you, Jack.”

"Monique, Graham here. Listen, I’m on my mobile so I might lose you. Tell Alfred that I need that dossier finalized in a fortnight … What’s that? … Madrid? … Fine … but I need to get back to Brussels the following day … Who? Tell them it’ll have to wait until after my speech … Listen, I’m about to walk into the conference hall. I’ll have to call you back …”

Sir Graham Eatwell stood taller than he had at any time during his career. He was in Paris for a technology conference. The big guns were there – the former head of Vivendi, senior executives from Bull, Hewlett Packard, Olivetti, Intel, and IBM. France’s minister of technology was present, as were his German and Dutch counterparts.

As European Commissioner for Competition, Eatwell was one of the most powerful men in Europe. He could play God by deciding which mergers and acquisitions could go through – not just European companies, but global companies. He could also bust up cartels and throw his weight around when it came to providing aid to EU member countries.

In the three years since Eatwell had joined the Commission, he had successfully grabbed turf from other commissioners in an effort to transform the role of Competition Tsar into something that had incisors. By all accounts, he had been successful. The rest of the world didn’t get the European Union. That much was clear. It didn’t understand what went on in the paneled backrooms of Brussels. A journalist once said of the European Commission that “if it had a sense of theater to match its mission, its members would gather for their meetings in a dimly lit medieval hall, clad Jedi-style in flowing robes, and accompanied by a light saber-wielding palace guard.”

This was all fine to Eatwell. He kind of liked it that way. The world may not understand Europe, but it sure as hell was going to respect it, at least on his watch.

He rose to the podium with characteristic poise. He liked the way his suit fell on his body. Cameras flashed. The conference host introduced him in French. He shook the gentleman’s hand, took off his watch and placed it on the side of his speech book to time himself. People clapped. He was popular. Few things were quite as gratifying as being the center of attention:

“Mesdames et messieurs,”
Eatwell said without accent.
“Merci pour l’opportunité de m’adresser à vous. The economic state of Europe is sound.”

(Applause)

“The headlines of late depict a bruised Europe – a stumbling

Europe.

“We are experiencing a period of introspection about who we are and what it means to be European. The people of Europe are 
speaking, and the obedient bureaucrats of Brussels must listen. “But I hope our period of introspection is brief. I hope that as we emerge from our torpor, we gain strength from the array of successes that our European Union has wrought. “Europe has a single currency in its pocket for the first time since the florin or possibly even the denarius. We have expanded our membership to 27 countries. But we have not lost sight of the ideals that brave men like Monnet and Schumann put forward after the Second World War.”

(Applause)

“We should take pride in what we have accomplished. But we cannot rest. A new century is upon us - a century that will be driven, perhaps like no previous century — by technology and innovation. “

(Applause)

“We have proven to the world that by working together we can prevent war and bloodshed. We are a model for economic cooperation. We are a leader. You see it in our labs, in our companies, and in the marketplace. 
Mark my words, a day will come in the not too distant future when Europe will have its own Microsoft.”

(Applause)

Eatwell could feel the energy rising from somewhere within him. He was born to talk like this. He was tailor-made to stir a crowd.

“… Take Europe’s global satellite positioning system, Galileo. Until now, we have been dependent on the GPS infrastructure that the American military put in place. And we have benefited. But soon, we will have a fully-functioning system of our own – a European system, built by Europeans for Europeans.”

(Applause)

Eatwell paused for effect. He was at a point in his career where he could say what he meant, not what he felt he had to say. He was laying it on the line – take it or leave it. He took the audience through a quick review of the EU’s technology budget. He pointed to areas of progress in various member states. He riffed a bit on how the Mediterranean was the cradle of Western Civilization, and how it once again was poised to teach the world.

At the twenty-minute mark, the watch that he had placed on the podium made a low-pitched beep. He always tried to keep his speeches to 20 minutes. Anything more was gratuitous; anything less, incomplete.

“These are important gatherings. But as we gather, let us keep one thing in mind. “We are a privileged people – privileged by the wear and tear 
of time to know our strengths and weaknesses. 
And when it comes to technology, we are far from weak. We 
are strong. We have choices. 
We can treat this conference as just another conference, or 
we can treat it as the start of something. 
For our collective sake, I hope we choose the latter.
”
 

“Thank you.”

The crowd clapped. Several members of the audience stood, followed by more, and still more until the majority of the room was on its feet. Eatwell had connected. He had shamed them and then played the pride card. It always worked.

More than 640 kilometers away in the small Dutch university town of Groningen, a twenty-nine-yearold graduate student named Peter Van Weert watched Eatwell’s speech on TV. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Peter didn’t like Eatwell, or his toff accent, but this Eurocrat had spoken the truth.

Europe needed to get off its ass. Peter had tired of reading about young Americans his age with half his talent who had managed to cash in their dot.com millions before things had gotten really ugly. Deep down, he knew the tech revolution would bounce back, and when it did, he wanted a piece of it – he wanted the buckets of money, the notoriety and the respect. His problem was that he was lazy. He didn’t like to work all that hard. And he preferred to let his ideas speak for themselves.

Most of his ideas eddied around the subject of water. More than hash, more than sex, more than John Wayne westerns, Peter was consumed with water. It had always been a big deal to him. Growing up in the northern part of the Netherlands, it could not be avoided. When the warm winds of spring prevailed, his family would sail the choppy waters between Holland and Denmark. At other times they would visit friends in Hoorn, where they would rent a flat-bottomed Friesian boat for three or four days, wandering the calm waves of the Ijsselmeer – formerly the South Sea until a series of storms and floods forced the Dutch to build a 19-mile long dike that turned it into a fresh water lake.

“I never really left the placenta,” Peter used to say in his undergrad days when he was feeling intoxicated by the power of H2O. His pals thought he was a bit odd. He couldn’t believe that a decade had gone by since then, but it had. The millennium had come and gone. He was now in year seven of his PhD. He had decided once and for all that it would be his final year. What he would do next, he hadn’t a clue, but he was somewhat confident that it would be related to an idea that had been swishing around in his head for some time. The Eurocrat’s speech brought it to the fore once again.

Peter walked over to his stereo, turned on some Brahms and fired up his computer. He was restless. He had wanted to get away for a while, and started surfing the Web for cheap air fares to Rome. The Internet connection was painfully slow. After minutes of waiting for a page to load, Peter smacked his fist on the table, knocking over a glass of water. The water oozed across the uneven contour of the wooden desk top, rolling toward the lowest part of the plain. Hanging on a cork board on the wall just above the place where the water dripped off the table, hung a postcard of New York – an old one dated by the presence of the World Trade Center towers sticking out their chests.

“Grote ver Jezus (Jesus Christ),” he whispered to himself.

With that, Peter threw himself into a week of monastic isolation. No phone calls, no nightcaps at the bar, no football. He stocked up on cheese and plunged into a fit of research that at times felt dreamlike. What emerged was an esoteric description of how the world’s water supply could be used to transmit voice, video and data to homes and offices through the municipal water network. It was a big idea. For Peter, it was up there with Newton’s apple. He wrote it all down, put it in an envelope, dropped it in his tutor’s mailbox on an uncharacteristically sunny Friday afternoon, and headed to the graduate lounge for half-priced pints of Oranjeboom beer.

Tuesday morning. A soccer-ball phone blared next to Peter’s head.

“Peter, can you come to my office this afternoon?”

“Why?”

“Your paper. We need to talk. I want you to meet somebody.” The door of his tutor’s office had that kind of opaque, private

investigator glass prevalent in Dashiell Hammett flicks. Peter knocked and went in.

“Ah, Peter, thanks for coming by. I want you to meet Phillipe

Timmermans.”

“Pleasure,” Peter said.

“Timmermans is an old friend. We did our national service

together in Belgium. Many years ago it seems now, huh, Phillipe?” “It does, Alexi.”

Trust wasn’t a reaction that Timmermans immediately inspired in

Peter. The man was thin and unusually tan for a Belgian. For someone in his early 50s, Timmermans lacked a single gray hair among a sea of black.

Probably dyed
, Peter thought. Timmerman’s eyes weren’t exactly shifty, but they didn’t seem to focus on any one thing for very long. The guy had confidence, though. Peter could feel it.

“Peter, I happened to be having dinner with Phillipe on Saturday evening. I mentioned your paper. Quite interesting, your idea.”

“You showed it to him?” Peter said, annoyed.

“Relax, Peter. That’s why I’ve asked you to come here. I’d like you to explain it to Phillipe yourself, that is, if you’re comfortable doing that. What you’re proposing doesn’t belong in academia. It’s too important, and it comes at a time when the technology universe could use a shot in the arm. Phillipe is an entrepreneur. He’s done well for himself in diamonds, construction and telecommunications.”

“You did well in telecom?” Peter asked, incredulous.

“For a while,” Timmermans said, smiling.

Peter scanned the room. His tutor could tell that he was a bit put out.

“Peter, you remember the time that you spent in Belgium? Remember how dismal the phone system was there? Remember how long it used to take to simply get a phone hooked up by the local company?”

“Yeah, months.”

“Well it now takes a day, partly because of the role this man played, and his contacts with the American phone company that bought a 51% stake in the Belgian company.”

“Okay, so?”

“So I’d like to hear a bit more about your thoughts on water,” Timmermans said, taking a silver cigarette case from the pocket of his yellow tweed jacket. “Of course, it’s entirely up to you what you’d like to do with your idea, and frankly I didn’t understand most of what Alexi here was babbling about over dinner, but I sensed something bold and wanted to talk to you.”

Peter looked straight through Timmermans as if he was somehow trying to assess his soul. After all, 30 minutes ago Peter had been under the duvet dreaming of scoring the winning corner kick for FC Groningen against Utrecht. Now a total stranger, the looks of whom he didn’t even like, was being thrust upon him by a mentor whom he respected but who hadn’t come to him first.

“I’m not sure about this,” Peter said.

“Understandably,” Timmermans said. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“Exactly.”

“You’re asking yourself, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’”

“Right again.”

“You’d prefer to get to know me.”

“You were closer the first time.”

Timmermans smiled and took a long drag from his Dunhill Blue. “How about tonight?”

“What, tonight?”

“Dinner, on me. We can talk.”

“Won’t work. There’s a match. FC Groningen.”

“That’s too bad. Unfortunately, I leave tomorrow for several days of business in Amsterdam,” Timmermans said.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Amsterdam this week for a lecture?” Peter’s tutor chimed in. Peter stared at him, clearly disturbed by the mention.

“I tell you what,” Timmermans said, reaching for something in his sport coat. “No pressure. Let me leave you my card. We can arrange to meet the next time you are in Amsterdam. If you care to join me for dinner, the invitation stands.”

Timmermans wrote out the name and address of a restaurant on the back of his business card, flipped it back over and handed it to Peter.

Several weeks had come and gone since the meeting with Timmermans. It wasn’t so much out of spite that Peter had procrastinated, more out of unease. Who the hell was this guy? Just another schlep desperately trying to get back in the tech game off someone else’s idea - this time, his idea? When Timmermans called Peter’s tutor to say that Peter had