The God Patent (34 page)

Dodge looked at each man in the room and then said, “GoldCon assumed rights to the patent under terms that were modified
after
the patent was submitted and without notification to the inventors—they violated an implied contract.”

Schonders cleared his throat as though about to spit. “That the best you got?”

Dodge pulled a thick file from his briefcase. It felt like turning a nice hole card. “Here are ten cases where juries have made substantial awards to inventors who were misled by their employer by menace, fraud, undue influence, corporate mistake, and any combination thereof.” He tossed the file in front of Royce and pulled a second one out. “Here are another ten cases where inventors were in some other way denied employment by the company who held the rights. Are you aware that Creation Energy rejected Mr. McNear’s application for a job?

“One last point: Mr. Reed is in possession of Mr. McNear’s half of the award so, in fact, Mr. McNear received nothing. The patent waiver has been violated in three different ways. Mr. McNear retains his rights to the patents.”

Dodge waited as Royce looked through each case. Schonders looked at his watch again.

When Royce closed the files, Dodge called the bet. “Do you want to go to court?”

In an offhand manner, Blair Keene said, “No one’s going to court.”

Dodge smiled, as though preparing to collect the pot. “Of course not. No one wins if Professor Emmy, that is, Amolie Nutter, destroys those two patents in front of a jury. Rather like mutually assured destruction, you see?” Dodge pulled a copy of the press release from his briefcase. “Says here that the revenue from their investment in Creation Energy could be in the billions.”

Dodge took a deep breath. He should have been tasting victory, but neither Keene nor Schonders looked worried, and Royce was just angry.

Dodge started putting things back in his briefcase, pretending he was finished, then, as though it had just occurred to him, said, “Or would National Engineering prefer to have their face rubbed in the fact that those patents are bullshit anyway. How many Nobel Prize–winning physicists—maybe even Texas’s own Steve Weinberg—would it take to knock thirty or forty percent off NEG’s stock price, erase those big government contracts, and expose that their investment in
alternative
energy will do nothing more than guarantee another decade of dependence on foreign oil?”

He left the question hanging.

Schonders leaned over and whispered in Blair’s ear, and then Blair mumbled something to Royce, who stood up, nodded to Dodge, and left the room. Schonders said, “We’ll give you a hundred thousand just so I never have to hear your Left Coast voice again.”

Keene handed Dodge a letter. Dodge took a Cross pen from his coat pocket—notably different from the wooden pencils he’d used to take notes. He added two zeros to the number and handed it back.

Schonders looked at his watch. “He should be here by now.”

Keene said, “Mr. Nutter, I really think you should accept our offer.”

“We’re getting there.” Dodge held his hands together, fingertip to fingertip, above the table. “Tell you what. I’ll convince Mr. McNear to accept two million, and we all go to lunch, my treat.”

“You’re missing the point, Mr. Nutter.” This time Keene looked at his watch. “But I think it’s about to be made clear.”

Dodge concentrated on appearing relaxed. Unfortunately, there’s a big difference between doing something and trying to appear to do something. He leaned into his open briefcase so the others couldn’t see him wipe the sweat from his brow. The three were quiet for a minute that dragged into five. Schonders scowled. Keene tapped a pencil. They’d been in the conference room for two hours. Dodge wouldn’t be the one to blink.

Then there was a single knock on the door, and a tall thin man in a black suit walked in. Keene stood and said, “Good to see you, Bill. Thanks for making time to drop by—let me introduce you to Mr. McNear’s attorney, Wayne Nutter.” The man held out his hand. Dodge stood and took it.

The man was also wearing boots, but his suit was European. “Bill Smythe, chief technology officer for the National Engineering Group.” The man turned to Schonders, whose seemingly permanent scowl had been replaced by a smile. “Sorry I’m late. My schedule was set for a nine o’clock. Because of the mix-up, our attorney couldn’t make it. But I can handle this.”

Dodge chose that instant to tighten his grip. “Good to meet you, Mr. Smythe. I have some information that might interest you.” Dodge raised an eyebrow at Keene, but Keene smiled and shook his head.

Smythe said, “I only have fifteen minutes, so let’s settle this right now.”

Dodge took his seat. Smythe showed no indication of sitting. Dodge didn’t want to yield the height advantage but
couldn’t bounce back up, so he leaned back and crossed his legs. “Excellent, we were just reviewing an offer.”

“Mr. Nutter,” Smythe said, “I’d like to clarify a few things. First,” Smythe handed Dodge an envelope, “this is a court order. Because of the potential for the technology to fall into the wrong hands, the patents have been classified. The nation’s security requires your secrecy. If you discuss the technology with anyone, it will be an act of treason. Treason is punishable by death. You must provide the names of every person with whom you have discussed the patents. You must surrender every copy of the patents that you have stored on a computer or printed. If you carry a suit on behalf of Mr. McNear, the particulars of the patents will not be admissible. Do you understand?”

Dodge wanted nothing more than to punch this man.

“You no longer have the ability to leverage the technical feasibility of the patents in favor of your client. Do you understand?”

Dodge could feel his jaw tightening. “Mr. Smythe, do you realize that these patents have no technical value? Are National Engineering engineers that stupid?”

“Second, Mr. McNear has no rights to the patents. And, third, to address your point, our goal is to increase our shareholders’ value. Our mission is to protect the vital interests of the United States, expand her energy resources, and contribute to her national defense through the development of cutting-edge technologies.” He leaned over the table, staring down at Dodge. “Let me spell it out for you. You have no power here even if the technology doesn’t work—and I’ll give you that it is a controversial invention that requires an element of faith, but faith with a capital
F
that most people in the United States of America are happy to give. You see, our investment in Creation Energy will benefit our shareholders. If that’s all, I have another meeting.”

“Smythe, you can’t put a lid on this.”

“Read the court order, and you’ll see that I have done precisely that.”

“The patent is out there. You’ll have every physicist worth his calculator on the news in a week. Do you understand that—”

“We know exactly what we’re doing.” Looking up at him, Dodge saw in his eyes that the National Engineering Group had considered every scenario and calculated that it would profit from each. Smythe seemed to register Dodge’s capitulation and looked at the other men as though to make sure that no one was in doubt about who was dealing. Smythe nodded to Schonders, patted Keene on the back, and said, “Dinner tonight. Patty’s already got the ribs smoking,” and left the room.

Schonders leaned across the table grinning. “Well?”

Dodge scanned his notes, rearranging them as if looking for a different hand. Getting the patents classified was the kind of trick that Dodge dreamed of pulling off. Finally, he tapped his notes into a nice rectangular pile. “How about we double—”

He stopped midsentence. “My offer is still on the table: two million.”

Schonders jerked out of his chair. “You som’ bitch.” He stomped toward the door. As he stepped out of the room, he spoke to Keene, “Don’t offer him nothin’.”

Keene waited for the door to close. “Mr. Nutter, we want to put this behind us, and Dr. Reed would like Mr. McNear to be compensated for his work.”

Dodge leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, and touched the fingertips of his left hand to those of his right. “I’m sure you’ve enjoyed this meeting, but there’s one item we haven’t covered.” He motioned toward the door. “Something your redneck friend might not be aware of—something regarding the patent officer…?”

Keene said, “We want to put this behind us.”

Dodge savored a raspy chortle. The patent officer had been engaged to Keene’s daughter, and these were the only energy and software patents he’d examined. Like an unturned hole card, that tidbit could go either way. He decided to call. “My offer…”

Keene took the original offer letter. The number at the bottom line was Dodge’s scribbled-in $10 million. Keene erased the last zero and initialed it. “This is the best I can do.”

Dodge thought about it. His cut would be over half a million for the equivalent of about a full-time month, not a bad wage, and it had the added bonus of pissing off a bunch of Bible-thumping hypocrites. He shrugged, initialized the number, and offered to shake Keene’s hand.

Keene said, “You should leave before I change my mind.”

“No barbecue?”

Back in Petaluma, the first thing Dodge did was look for Ryan. He drove along the boulevard, then across the river down to the warehouse district. He found Ryan pushing a water tank along the sidewalk. He stopped the car in the middle of the road, lowered the passenger window, and yelled across, “I need you to sign this right now—I have a feeling it’s a limited-time offer!”

Ryan shut off the hose, wiped his hands together, and leaned in the window of Dodge’s pristine but ancient diesel Mercedes. Dodge handed him the offer letter. Ryan scanned it. “A million?”

Ryan went silent. His brow furrowed. He looked at the offer, then at Dodge, then the offer again. His brow relaxed. He licked his lips. His shoulders relaxed. He looked as though he were about to levitate. It rather irritated Dodge. “You’re only getting four fifty of it, and the taxes will be a bitch.”

Ryan didn’t take his eyes off the number.

Dodge held out a pen. “Sign on the line. We need to cash their check before your girlfriend and her buddies blow this up.”

“Emmy?”

“Yeah, you remember her. My sister is going to be majorly pissed off when she finds out how NEG plans to rape science in the name of religion.”

Ryan signed. Dodge took the offer directly to the UPS office and paid extra to get it to Blair Keene the next day.

Back in the office, Dodge called Keene in Houston and told him that the offer had already been delivered. Keene thanked him with artificial sincerity. Dodge said, “Cut that check today, or the deal’s off.”

“What’s your hurry?”

Dodge was comfortable now. “National Engineering is bulletproof, but you’re not.”

“You have a court order, you can’t even—”

“If that check isn’t cashed by Monday morning, Reed’s dissertation will be in every physics department in the United States.” Dodge lifted the revolver from its gavel pad and twirled it around his finger like a gunslinger in a western movie. “I’ll include a letter quoting Bill Smythe saying that NEG knows the patents are bogus. That their profit motive is in dividing the country in a culture war that will assure their two greatest sources of income: foreign oil and perpetual war in the Middle East.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll go to jail.”

This was the part that Dodge loved. It was better than sex. He pointed the gun at the phone and said, “You know, it’s not so bad. I’ve been there before.” He mouthed the word
bang
and set the gun on its gavel pad.

“I’ll see to it that you get a nice long stay, this time,” Keene said and went quiet.

Dodge waited, letting the silence do the negotiating.

Finally, Keene said, “I’ll get a check to you, but you listen to me, Wayne Nutter, if anything slows down this project, I’ll come after you, and when I’m finished, you’ll be praying for jail.”

T
he check arrived Saturday afternoon just after the banks closed. Dodge waved it under Ryan’s nose before locking it up in a safe. “You can touch it when we’re standing in front of a bank teller.”