Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2) (15 page)

Alison led them to
an elevator where she swiped her ID badge against a reader. “One of the perks of
office. I get a private elevator. You could spend the rest of your life waiting
for elevators in a building this tall.”

Ted’s ears popped
as the elevator dropped forty-eight floors in a matter of a minute or less.
When the door opened, they were in a different world.

Gone were the
trappings of power and office. They stepped into a sealed off lobby. It could
have been a bank vault. The only feature was a heavy steel door with a mirror
in the top half. Alison stepped to a high-tech bio-metric reader and placed the
palm of her right hand against the device. A red light flashed under her hand,
like the barcode scanner in a super market, emitting a slight hum. The light
turned from red to green. Alison entered a number on a keypad and a buzzer
sounded above the door.

“Come on in.
That’s step one.” Alison pulled the door open.

They stepped into
a glassed-in foyer. On the other side of the heavy glass wall, a security guard
sat behind a desk. There was a pass through and a small, round, metal grill in
the glass like at the box office of a movie theater, to allow communication.

“Good afternoon,
Mrs. Clarke. What’s the weather like outside?”

“You’re missing a
sunny day, Paul.” Alison turned to Ted and Catrina. “We have a running joke
about Paul spending his life in a cave down here.” She turned back to the
guard. “We need access to conference room five and when are you going to start
calling me Alison?”

“Whatever you
like, Mrs. Clarke. Please sign in.” Paul pushed a clip board through the
opening above his desk with a smirk on his face.

Alison signed Ted
and Catrina in, then walked to a glass door and swiped her ID badge.

“Isn’t that a
little over-kill?” Catrina asked.

“You can’t be too
careful.” Alison held the door for Ted and Catrina. “We build our competitive advantage
down here. We’ve already had one leak. There’s not going to be another. You’ll
need to swipe your cards as you pass through the door too.”

Ted felt a little
silly as he held his hand over the bio-metric scanner. Why did they need his
hand print?

As if she read
Ted’s thoughts, Alison said, “We hand print everyone who goes through a class-one
security checkpoint.”

Alison led them
down a long white hallway with a blue stripe at waist-level. The hallway had a
faint scent of antiseptic. At every door, there was at least a card reader. On
some of the doors, there were bio-metric scanners. “We record every person who
goes through a door down here.” Alison stopped in front of a heavy looking
door. “We have RFID chips in our ID badges. Our system knows where you are
every second you’re in the building.”

She scanned her
palm again, swiped her card and entered a password on a keypad. “This is our
highest level of security. No one goes in here that doesn’t have a reason.
Including the CEO. Our CSO will receive a report in the morning of everyone who
has passed through a class-one security checkpoint.”

Except for a
stainless steel legged table, the room was bare. Standing next to the table, a
small Indian man in a lab coat smiled as they entered.

“Ms. Clarke, right
on schedule as usual.” He glanced at a high-tech looking wristwatch.

“When am I ever
going to get you to start calling me Alison?” Alison turned to Ted and Catrina.
“Catrina Flaherty, Ted Higuera, this is Gopi Singnapoora, our technical lead on
the Delphi project.”

“Gopi?” Ted asked.

“My full name is
much too long for you to pronounce, Mr. Higuera.” Gopi spoke with a slight
accent. He shook their hands, then motioned towards the table. “Ms. Clarke
wanted me to give you a demo.”

Sitting in the
middle of the table were a pair of sun glasses and a small plastic box about
the size of a book of matches.

“Ms. Flaherty, Mr.
Higuera, I give you the future.” He swept his hand towards the table with a
flourish. “Delphi will replace every computing device you own today.”

Chris stopped and
gulped in a deep breath of air as he approached Kathy Nguyen’s office. As her
text messages over the weekend had grown increasingly terse, his anxiety level
ratcheted up. What did she want from him and why did he care so much? Normally,
he’d just say “What the hell,” and go about his business.

“Where have you
been?” Kathy looked up from the pile of papers on her desk.

“I was in LA this
weekend with my friend, Ted.”

Her icy stare cut
him to the bone. “Look, Hardwick, I don’t care about your name. Let’s forget
you’re the boss’s son, okay? When I need something from you, I need it now. Got
it?’

Chris felt the
heat rising in his cheeks.
What the fuck? Weekends are supposed to be my
time.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me.
I’m going to be the youngest partner in the history of HB&J. Even if it
kills you. I own you. You’re mine. Call me silly, but I think you might just be
the paralegal to put me over the top. Don’t screw it up.”

Chris couldn’t
stand her fiery glare, so he looked down at his shoes.

“So, what have you
got for me?” Kathy’s voice lost some of its hostility.

“I’ve scanned all
the documents into LA, copied all the files from the CD and found tons of stuff
on the Internet.” Chris took a breath and looked Kathy over. He was so startled
by her attack that he completely forgot what a fox she was.

Chris had gone
straight from the airport to the office last night, finishing scanning the last
of Metcalf’s documents into Legal Assistant, the document storage and retrieval
system HB&J used to data mine hundreds of thousands of documents. Once the
documents were digitized, Chris could search through them looking for any kind
of connections imaginable.

Scanning and
organizing the paper documents took him a week. Uploading and inputting the
electronic files from the CDs was only day's work. His big push last night, to
prepare for this meeting, was to sift through the over thirty-two thousand
documents he found on the Internet about Terry Metcalf. The man was a legend.

“So, have you been
able to find anything yet?” Kathy sipped at her ever-present mug of tea. In a
week of working with the gorgeous woman, the only thing Chris had managed to
learn about her personal life was her father had given her the mug when she
graduated from college. There were some sort of Asian characters on the mug
that said good luck or something.

“I haven’t found
anything that would substantiate Metcalf’s claim that Clarke did anything
illegal in taking over the company.” Chris settled into the chair across the
desk from Kathy. He didn’t think he had ever seen such beautiful hair. It was
so dark, it almost seemed blue. “Millennium Systems was headed down the drain
when Clarke took over. Metcalf had invested in several big dot coms, companies
that would deliver groceries to your home or arrange walking your dog. MS sold
products to some other dot coms and took stock as payment. They carried the
stock on their balance sheets at par.”

He saw Kathy raise
an eyebrow. "That’s all you’ve got?”

She didn’t know
about his superpower yet. This would be a chance to show off a little, maybe
impress her.

“For several
years, the dot coms went wild and MS was one of the top moneymaking companies
in the world. But it was all on paper. Metcalf looked like a genius. I read his
book. He was more impressed with his power and success than he was with running
the company.”

“I got the same
feel from his book.” Kathy turned to the credenza behind her and took Terry
Metcalf’s
The New World Order
from the shelf. “When I take on a new
client, I learn everything I can about them. Haven’t you got anything new for
me?”

When she takes
on a new client?
Chris had been around his dad’s office all of his life. He
knew Kathy was one of the most junior attorneys in the firm. She made it sound
like she went out and found clients, not that she was assigned as a gopher to
some partner’s or associate’s case. If one of her cases ever went to trial,
she’d sit in a dark suit next to the lead attorney and work her laptop. It
would be years before she was allowed to say a word in open court.

“When the dot com
crash hit, Metcalf’s investments were virtually worthless.” Chris never
referred to the leather-bound notebook in his lap. “MS wrote nearly two billion
dollars off of their books in 2001.”

“Were the
investments legit? Did the write off cover everything?”

“This stuff is way
too complicated for me, Kathy.” Chris took a sip of his Starbucks. “It'll take
an army of forensic accountants to crawl through all of MS’ balance sheets and
operating statements to see if there was anything out of the ordinary. And,
even if they did find evidence of misdeeds, that would be against Metcalf.
Clarke wasn’t at MS yet.”

Kathy sat
motionless, glaring at him for a moment. Her iron gaze unnerved him. Had he
done something wrong? Had he misinterpreted her instructions?

She finally
sighed. “What did you find since Ms. Clarke took over?”

“As a stockholder
or an employee, I wouldn’t find anything to object to. Her first year was
rough, but it wasn’t her fault. She was cleaning up Metcalf’s mess.”

“Give me specifics.”

Chris switched on
the computer monitor in his head. All of his life he had been able to pull up
images in his mind and go back and search them as if they were in front of his
eyes.

“MS had the single
worst performing year of any Fortune 500 company in history.” He saw the cover
of the November 2001 issue of
The Economy
magazine floating in his
brain. “Most industry analysts thought that MS wouldn’t survive.
The
Economy, The Wall Street Journal
and a bunch of other periodicals all
predicted that MS would either declare bankruptcy or be swallowed up by some
other large corporation.”

“But Ms. Clarke
saved them. . .”

“She was
ruthless.” Chris finished off his coffee and tossed the cup in the garbage.

“You can recycle
that, you know.” Kathy reached over and removed the cup, took the plastic lid
off and tossed it back into the garbage can, then handed the cup back to Chris.
“Don’t forget that HB&J is a green company. We’re on track to be carbon
neutral by 2009.”

Chris felt heat
rise in his face as he set the cup on Kathy’s desk. He would never forget to
recycle around her again. “Clarke laid off tens of thousands of employees, sold
off any division that wasn’t part of MS’ core business, even if it was
profitable, closed down the remaining ones that were unprofitable.” Chris
wanted to get Kathy’s attention back on the case. “She took a salary of one
dollar the first year she worked there. She cut her executives’ pay, eliminated
executive bonuses, ordered an across the board pay cut for the staff.”

“I bet she wasn’t
exactly Miss Popularity.”

“That’s the
amazing thing.” Chris flipped though the magazine article in his head until he
came to a blue-shaded sidebar. “Several of her execs quit, but the staff loves
her. The first thing she did was to give up her parking space and order all of
her execs to do the same thing. She said that if they wanted to park close to
the door, they’d have to get to work before anyone else. She closed the
executive dining room and made it an employee lounge. She eats lunch every day
in the cafeteria with her staff. They have unprecedented access to their CEO’s
ear.”

“Hmmm . . .” Kathy
furiously took notes on a yellow legal pad.

“She set a new
spirit of leadership at MS. Everyone, from the CEO down to the lowest janitor
has to have a development plan. She meets once a quarter with her direct
reports to review their progress and requires all of her managers do the same.
She’s built a corporate culture of innovation and personal performance. She
gives bonuses for outstanding performance. An employee can make more in a year
earning bonuses than they do in salary. Her staff loves her. They have the
lowest turnover rate in the industry, even though they pay the lowest base
salaries.”

“Okay.” Kathy
looked up from her notepad. “What’s not to like? What is she doing that has
Metcalf after her?”

“You mean besides
pushing him out of the seat of power?” Chris was enjoying this. Flaunting his
newly-won knowledge without notes, a PowerPoint presentation or a handout for
Kathy clearly impressed her. “She’s pumped nearly a billion dollars into a
research project called ‘Delphi.’ I haven’t found out what Delphi is yet, but
she’s staked the company’s future on that one product. If it fails, MS will go
broke.”

“No wonder Mr.
Metcalf thinks that she has been reckless.” Kathy sat back in her chair, closed
her eyes and ran her hands through her long, dark hair. “Okay, good work so
far, but now I need for you to get off of your butt. Find out what Delphi’s all
about. What kind of product could be that important?”

****

“Gopi likes to be
a little melodramatic,” Alison waved away Gopi’s claim that Ted and Catrina
were about to be introduced to the future.

“Would you like to
see it first?” Gopi handed the glasses and box to Catrina.

“No,” Catrina
said. “Let Ted check it out. He’s the geek.”

Ted looked at the
sunglasses. Nothing unusual here. A little heavy. Stylish, maybe a bit feminine
for his taste. He preferred aviator glasses to these classy plastic shades.

The box was an
enigma. It had a belt clip on the back and an on/off button marked with an I/O
in the middle of the front side.

“Go ahead, clip it
to your belt and turn it on.” Gopi grinned so hard Ted thought his face would
crack open. “Put the glasses on.”

Ted did as
instructed. “Okay, so what now?”

“You have to learn
how to communicate with her and she needs to learn your speech patterns.”

“Her?” What the
hell was he talking about? Communicate with who?

“There’s a full
tutorial available online, but I’ll walk you through it.”

Ted took a long,
hard look at the slight Indian man. He was about Ted’s age, but his ID badge
said “Gopi Singnapoora, PhD.” How did someone so young get a PhD already? He
looked sane enough, but was clearly off of his rocker.

“There are certain
key words that the computer recognizes.”

“What computer?”

Ted felt a
whirring sound inside his head. He saw the Microsoft Windows logo floating in
front of his eyes.

“You’ve just
learned the first command. Any time you want to talk to her, address her as
‘computer.’ Just like on Star Trek.” Gopi chuckled at his own joke.

“You’re wearing
the cloud computing interface of tomorrow.” Gopi’s voice took on the
semi-monotone of a college professor. “The computer responds to voice commands.
The monitor is a heads up display projected through the glasses. If you move
your eyes, you’ll notice the cursor moving over the screen.”

Ted couldn’t quite
comprehend what he was seeing. A 3-D computer screen floated in front of his
eyes. Transparent, like a hologram, he could see right through it. He reached
out his hand and passed it right through the screen.

“It responds to
eye commands and hand commands as well,” Gopi said. “To start with, you need to
tell it what you want to do. Say ‘Computer. Open Microsoft Word.’ ‘Computer,’
‘Open’ and ‘Word’ are key words. You’re telling the computer that you want it
to execute a command, ‘Open’ and the subject of the command is ‘Word.’”

Ted stared at Gopi
for an instant.
Holy shit. This changes everything
. “Computer, Open Microsoft
Word.”

He felt the slight
whirring inside his head again. On the monitor in front of his eyes the
Microsoft Word logo appeared, then a second later, a blank Word document opened.

“Holy shit.” Ted
jumped back.

“Mr. Higuera, you
have just stepped through the portal to the first great scientific discovery of
the Twenty-First Century. Now, tell the computer that you want to enter text
and start speaking.”

Ted flashed back
to visiting his great-grandfather as a teenager. He remembered a conversation
between his great-grandfather and grandfather.
Abuelo
had said that the
automobile was the single biggest scientific invention of his lifetime. Tata
said that it was the atom bomb. Would this be the technological turning point
of Ted’s life?

Ted thought for a
minute.
How do I tell it I want to enter text?
Gopi was letting him
discover as he went along. “Computer. Enter text.”

“Entering text,” a
soft female voice sounded inside Ted’s head. The sound must be transmitted from
the glasses to his skull, because he wasn’t hearing it with his ears.

“Four score and
seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth onto this continent. . .” As he
spoke, the words to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address appeared on the screen in
front of him. The capitalization and punctuation were perfect.

“She will get
better once she learns your speech patterns.” Gopi’s grin split his face. He
pulled a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. “I’m going to
follow along with you. We can share an application from any distance.”

Ted looked at the
tool bar on the top of the floating monitor. The cursor hovered over the tool
bar.

“Let me take
control for a minute,” Gopi said.

Ted watched as the
cursor highlighted a portion of the text, then moved to the tool bar and
clicked on the “
I”
icon. The highlighted text turned to italics.

“You have all the
functionality of the desktop application. The application is actually running
on a server in Singapore. The data is saved to a SAN in Malaysia. You’re connecting to it via WiFi though the Delphi.”

Singapore? Malaysia?

“Our WiFi network
bounces off of geosynchronous satellites. You can use Delphi anywhere in the
world.