Total Control (31 page)

Now get back in there and sit the fuck down."

Two hours later Sawyer had finished interviewing Gamble and company and spent thirty minutes looking through Jason Archer's office, ordering it off limits and calling for a investigative team to methodically analyze every molecule of the place. Sawyer checked out Jason's computer system, but he had no way of knowing that something was missing. The only remnant of the microphone was a small, silver-plated plug.

Sawyer walked to the elevator bank with Hardy.

"See, Frank, I told you there was nothing to worry about. Gamble and I got along just fine."

Hardy laughed out loud. "I don't think I've ever seen his face quite that shade of white before. What the hell did you say to the man?"

"Just told him what a great guy I thought he was. He was probably just embarrassed by my frank admiration."

At the elevators, Sawyer said, "You know, I didn't get much usable info in there. Sure, Archer pulling off the crime of the century might make for fascinating reading, but I'd prefer to have him in a jail cell."

"Well, these guys just got taken to the cleaners and they're certainly not used to that experience. They know what happened and pretty much how it happened, but all after the fact."

Sawyer leaned up against the wall and rubbed his forehead. "You realize there's no evidence tying Archer to the plane bombing."

Hardy nodded in agreement. "I said before that Archer could've used Lieberman to cover his tracks, but there's no proof of that either.

If there is no connection, Archer's one helluva lucky guy for not getting on that plane."

"Well, if that's the case, then somebody else out there took down that airliner."

Sawyer was about to hit the elevator button when Hardy touched his sleeve. "Hey, Lee, if you want my humble opinion, I don't think your biggest problem will be proving Archer was involved in the plane sabotage."

"So what's my biggest problem, Frank?"

"Finding him."

Hardy walked off. As Sawyer waited for the elevator, a voice called to him.

"Mr. Sawyer? Do you have a minute?"

Sawyer turned to find Quentin Rowe walking toward him.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Rowe?"

"Please call me Quentin." Rowe paused and looked around the hallways. "Would you like to take a short tour of one of our production facilities?"

Sawyer quickly caught his meaning. "Okay. Sure."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The fifteen-story Triton office building was hooked to a sprawling three-story structure that covered about five acres of ground. Sawyer pinned on a visitor's badge at the main entrance to the facility and followed Rowe through a number of security checkpoints. Rowe was obviously well-known and well-liked here, as he received a number of cordial greetings from Triton personnel. At one point, through a wall of glass, Sawyer and Rowe watched lab technicians in white coats, gloves and surgical masks working away in a large space.

Sawyer looked at Rowe. "Geez, looks more like an operating room than a factory."

Rowe smiled. "Actually, that room is far cleaner than any hospital operating room."

He watched Sawyer's surprised reaction with amusement. "Those technicians are testing a new generation of computer chips. The environment has to be completely sterile, absolutely dust-free. Once they're fully functional, these prototypes will be able to carry out two TIPS."

"Damn," Sawyer said absently, having no earthly idea what the acronym stood for.

"That means two trillion instructions per second."

Sawyer gaped at the small man. "What in the hell needs to move that fast?"

"You'd be surprised. A litany of engineering applications.

Computer-aided designs of cars, aircraft, ships, space shuttles, buildings, manufacturing processes of all types. Financial markets, corporate operations. Take a company like General Motors: millions of pieces of inventory, hundreds of thousands of employees, thousands of locations. It all adds up. We help all of them do their jobs more efficiently." He pointed to another production area. "A new line of hard drives is being tested in there. They'll be by far the most powerful and efficient in the industry when they hit the market next year. Yet a year after that they'll be obsolete." He looked at Sawyer.

"What sort of system do you use at work?"

Sawyer put his hands in his pocket. "You might not have heard of it: Smith Corona?"

Rowe gaped at him. "You're kidding."

"Just got a new ribbon in it, baby runs sweet as mother's milk."

Sawyer sounded very defensive.

Rowe shook his head. "A friendly warning. Anyone who doesn't know how to operate a computer in the coming years will not be able to function in society. Don't be intimidated. The systems today are not only user friendly, they are idiot friendly, no offense intended."

Sawyer sighed. "Computers getting faster all the time, this Inter-net thing, whatever it really is, growing like crazy, networks, paging, cellular phones, faxes. Jesus, where's it going to end?"

"Since it's the business I'm in, I hope it never does."

"Sometimes change can happen too fast."

Rowe smiled benignly. "The change we see going on today will pale in comparison to what will take place in the next five years.

We're on the cusp of technological breakthroughs that would have seemed unthinkable barely ten years ago." Rowe's eyes appeared to shine ahead into the next century. "What we know as the Internet today will seem boring and quaint very soon. Triton Global will be a huge part of that happening. In fact, if things work out correctly, we will be leading the way. Education, medicine, the workplace, travel, entertainment, how we eat, socialize, consume, produce--everything human beings do or benefit from will be transformed.

Poverty, prejudice, crime, injustice, disease will crumple under the sheer weight of information, of discovery. Ignorance will simply disappear.

The knowledge of thousands of libraries, the sum of the world's greatest minds, all will be readily accessible by anyone. In the end, the world of computers as we know it today will metamorphose into one enormous interactive global link of limitless potential."

He peered at Sawyer through his glasses. "All the world's knowledge, the solutions to every problem, will be one keystroke away. It's the natural next step."

"One person will be able to get all that from a computer."

Sawyer's tone was skeptical.

"Isn't that a thrilling vision?"

"Scares the shit out of me."

Rowe's mouth dropped open. "How could that possibly be frightening to you?"

"Maybe I'm a little cynical after twenty-five years of doing what I do for a living. But you tell me one guy can get all that information and you know the first thought pops into my head?"

"No, what?"

"What if he's a bad guy?" Rowe didn't react. "What if with one keystroke he wipes out all the world's knowledge?" Sawyer snapped his fingers. "He destroys everything? Or just screws it all up. Then what the hell do we do?"

Rowe smiled. "The benefits of technology far surpass any potential dangers. You may not agree with me, but the coming years will prove me right."

Sawyer scratched the back of his head. "You're probably too young to know this, but back in the fifties, nobody thought illegal drugs would ever be a big problem either. Go figure."

The two men continued their tour. "We have five of these facilities situated across the country," Rowe said.

"Must get pretty expensive."

"You could say that. We spend over ten billion dollars per year on R&D."

Sawyer whistled. "You're talking numbers I can't even begin to contemplate. Of course, I'm just a working-stiff bureaucrat who sits around picking his nose on the public dole."

Rowe smiled. "Nathan 'Gamble delights in making other people squirm. I think he met his match in you, though. For obvious reasons I didn't applaud your performance, but I was seriously thinking about a standing ovation."

"Hardy said you had your own company, hot stock. If you don't mind my asking, how come you hooked up with Gamble?"

"Money." Rowe waved his arm around the facility they were in.

"This all costs billions of dollars. My company was doing well, but lots of tech companies were doing well in the stock market. What people don't seem to understand is that while my company's stock price went from nineteen dollars a share on the day it hit the market to a hundred sixty per share less than six months later, we didn't see any of that enormous markup. That went to the people who bought the s rock."

"You had to keep a chunk of the company's stock, though."

"I did, but with the securities laws being what they are, and our underwriter's requirements, I couldn't really sell any of it. On paper I was worth a fortune. However, my company was still struggling, R&D was eating us up, we had no earnings," he said bitterly.

"So enter Nathan Gamble?"

"Actually he was a very early investor in the company, before we went public. He gave us some seed capital. He also gave us something else we didn't have but desperately needed: respectability on Wall Street, with the capital markets. A good solid business background.

A penchant for making money. When my company went public, he held on to his shares as well. Later, Gamble and I discussed the future and decided to take the company back private."

"In retrospect a good decision?"

"From a dollar perspective, an incredibly good decision."

"But money ain't everything, right, Quentin?"

"Sometimes I wonder."

Sawyer leaned up against the wall, folded his beefy arms across his chest and looked directly at Rowe. "The tour is real interesting, but I hope that wasn't all you had in mind."

"It wasn't." Rowe swiped his card through the reader on a nearby door and motioned for Sawyer to follow him in. They sat down at a small table. Rowe spent a moment collecting his thoughts before he started speaking. "You know, if you had asked me before this all happened who I would suspect of having stolen from us, Jason Archer's name would never have entered my mind." Rowe took off his glasses and rubbed them with a handkerchief pulled from his shirt pocket.

"So you trusted him?"

"Absolutely."

"And now?"

"And now I think I was wrong. I feel betrayed, in fact."

"I could see how you might feel that way. You think anybody else at the company might be involved?"

"My God, I hope not." Rowe seemed stricken by the suggestion.

"I would certainly rather believe it was Jason on his own or a competitor working with him. That, to me, makes a lot more sense. Besides, Jason would have been perfectly capable of hacking into BankTrust's computer system by himself. It's really nor all that hard to do."

"You sound like you speak from experience."

Rowe's face reddened. "Let's just say that I have an insatiable curiosity.

Poking around databases was a favorite pastime in college.

My classmates and I had quite a good time doing it, although the local authorities, on more than one occasion, voiced their displeasure.

However, we never stole anything. I actually helped train some of the police technicians in methods to detect and prevent computer-related crimes."

"Any of those people working on your security detail?"

"You mean Richard Lucas? No, he's been with Gamble it seems like forever now. Again, he's very good at what he does, but not the most pleasant company to have around. However, it's not his job to be pleasant."

"But Archer still fooled him."

"He fooled all of us. I'm certainly in no position to point fingers."

"Did you notice anything about Jason Archer that in retrospect looked suspicious?"

"Most things look different in retrospect. I know that better than most. I've given it some thought and Jason did seem to take a very active interest in the CyberCom deal."

"He was working on it."

"I don't mean just that. Even on the segments of the deal he wasn't involved in he asked a lot of questions."

"Like what?"

"Like did I think the terms were fair. Did I think the deal was going to get done. What would be his role once it was done. That sort of thing."

"He ever ask you about any confidential records you kept regarding the deal?"

"Not directly, no."

"He apparently got everything he needed off the computer system?"

"So it would seem."

The two men sat staring off into space for a few moments.

"You have any inkling where Archer might be?"

Rowe shook his head. "I visited his wife, Sidney."

"We've met."

"It's hard to believe he would just up and leave them like that. He has a daughter too. A beautiful little girl."

"Maybe he didn't plan to leave them."

Rowe looked at him oddly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean maybe he intends to come back for them."

"He's a fugitive from justice now. Why would he come back? Be sides, Sidney wouldn't go with him."

"Why not?"

"Because he's a criminal. She's an attorney."

"This may come as a big surprise to you, Quentin, but some lawyers aren't honest."

"You mean... you mean you suspect Sidney Archer of being involved in this whole thing?"

"I mean I haven't ruled her or anyone else out right now as a suspect.

She's an attorney for Triton. She was working on the CyberCom deal. Seems like a perfect position to cherry-pick secrets and sell them to RTG. Who the hell knows? I intend to find out."

Rowe put his glasses back on and rubbed his hand nervously across the glass tabletop. "It's so hard to believe Sidney would be involved in all this." Rowe's tone betrayed the conviction of his words.

Sawyer studied him closely. "Quentin, do you want to tell me something? Maybe about Sidney Archer?"

Rowe finally sighed and looked at Sawyer. "I'm convinced that Sidney was in Jason's office at Triton after the plane crash."

Sawyer's eyes narrowed. "What proof do you have?"