TUNA LIFE (30 page)

Andrew hadn’t been able to raise his concerns at the meeting where they discussed the new user agreements. He still didn’t know who was behind the possible virus, and what their agenda was. And now they had just been put under the microscope. What if the tech media decided to check out the Tuna Life app’s code? What if they attempted to check what the app could be used to do?

The company was sitting on a potential PR disaster if Andrew didn’t handle this the right way.

He needed to take immediate action.

Without hesitating, Andrew looked up Horne’s private number on his phone. One of the production assistants for the morning broadcast answered. Andrew explained who he was, and asked to speak to Horne on live TV. Seconds later he was on air. He had had to mute the TV to avoid any echo from his voice, but otherwise the sound was good.

Andrew and Horne greeted each other like they were old buddies. They mentioned nothing about their night out on the town, but made some jokes about Andrew’s poor golfing. After the small talk Andrew accepted responsibility and said he regretted the change in the wording of the user agreements. He would take immediate action, and update the user agreement before the end of the workday. He casually mentioned that he believed the changes had been due to changes in the Android and IOS markets, but assured the viewers of Sunrise that Tuna Life would always be on the forefront of taking its users’ privacy seriously. The user agreement would return to what it had been, and Tuna Life would never, ever, access its users’ devices without permission, and they would never sell their pictures.

After hanging up, Andrew wiped a sweat pearl off his forehead. He smiled. He had just averted a disaster.

Then the phone rang. Andrew picked it up.

“Are you an idiot?” Richard Smith was on the other end. He was angry.

“What do you mean? I just saved the company from a potential PR crisis.”

“Never promise something you can’t keep,” Richard said. “Facebook has had these sorts of problems ever since they started out. The media loves to scare people. That’s how they sell papers and get ratings. But this kinda shit always blows over. People are stupid, they’ve got short memory. You on the other hand, have promised them something. Now, Tuna Life is obligated to keep that promise.”

Andrew stared at the muted TV in front of him. He wished he could do the same with his life. Just turn off the sound. Just shut out all the sound.

“We have other problems too,” Richard continued.

“What kind of problems?”

“There are rumours several of our engineers are contemplating quitting.”

“Who said that? I haven’t heard anything, and there have been no resignations.”

“Virtual-U. The rumour is that they’ve contacted the best of our engineers. Offered them to move to Silicon Valley, big pay-packets and options.”

Andrew swore. “I told you and Roman we should have offered our engineers a part of the company.”

“That’s not up to you and me,” Richard replied. “Roman is a bit special when it comes to sharing the pie. But at least we have a much better story to sell him now. If he is not willing to share, the pie may shrink.”

Andrew nodded into the phone. There was no other way. To attract the best people you had to offer more than free food and challenging job tasks. Even though most of the employees weren’t driven solely by monetary matters, they all wanted the opportunity to become filthy-rich. It was also a well-accepted symbol of status among the engineers; to be given shares and options signalled that you were important, it signalled that you were appreciated. And who wouldn’t want to be appreciated these days? Especially when the appreciation could mean paying off your student loan and still having enough left over to buy a house.

“Andrew, we need to fix this before the end of the week. Roman is in the process of raising more money. With our current burn rate we will be down to our last million in a month. Fix it.”

“Ok,” Andrew answered.

65

Scott put away his phone. He had been calling some of the parents of the missing girls, asking if any of them had been going to psychologists. He had learnt that Mark had been doing the same calling round the day he was attacked. Mark had found a connection. It appeared that all of the missing girls had been suffering from various degrees of depression, and that they had been going to psychologists to get help with their problems. But there was a big hole in Mark’s theory: They had all been going to different psychologists.

There was no common denominator – no single psychologist they had been seeing.

It made Scott’s job harder, but not impossible. The police file on Roman Bezhrev had clearly stated that he had been going to a psychologist throughout 2010. The name of the psychologist hadn’t been mentioned in the report, but Scott’s brother could probably dig up that information. Was this the connection? Had Roman met these girls at his psychologist? Had he met them in the waiting room, and lured them into the world of strip clubs and internet porn? Promised them fame and a life of luxury? Scott Davis knew from experience that that was how most serial killers operated. They went for easy targets, people who wouldn’t be missed. A missing prostitute hardly got noticed in all the noise of the news. Nobody cared.

A girl with a documented history of depression. What would be the first thought of the police officer picking up that missing persons case? It was easy to conclude that she had run away or committed suicide. The case would end up at the bottom of the pile. The non-prioritized cases.

Scott leant back in his chair. Finally he had a breakthrough. Should he contact the police? Ask them to investigate the connection? No, there was no point. His brother, Wayne, had said it was impossible to get anything on the Russians. Teflon-covered, he had called them. If the police started nosing around, then Roman would be on the first plane back to Moscow, and that would be the last they ever saw of him.

There was nothing worse than a wealthy criminal. If the crooks had resources, it made work so much harder. There was less chance of them screwing up.

Scott opened the desk drawer. He caught himself thinking that it had been a long time since he had been in the home office. It was mostly his wife who had worked from home. Scott always finished work before he left the office. The evenings and weekends were meant for relaxing, not unpaid overtime for an ungrateful employer. One seldom heard people complain on their deathbed about not having worked harder, about not having racked up more overtime. Scott’s wife, however, she had been like that; always working, unable to disconnect from work when she left the office for the day.

She had been working with the same category of patients many of the missing girls fell into. Young people struggling with traumas experienced during their adolescence. Many of them struggled with depression, and had no real idea where they fit into the world. Suddenly Scott had an idea. He located his wife’s old patients list. It was probably confidential. Most of the stuff in her home office was probably confidential, but that was the risk one took allowing home offices. He skimmed through the names before he found what he was looking for. The letter B. The list of patients, with their last name starting with a B.

Disappointed, he threw the list back on the desk. It had of course been wishful thinking; to hope that Roman could have been a patient of his wife, back when she was practising. That he would be able to find a complete file on Roman Bezhrev in his own home. That his wife had used her extraordinary gift to analyse Roman’s personality, and pinpoint all his weaknesses for Scott to exploit.

Scott hesitated. There had been something familiar with one of the other names on the list. He picked the list up again.

Heidi Voog. Wasn’t that one of the missing girls?

He logged onto the laptop and found Mark’s overview of the missing girls.

Heidi Voog, the first girl who had been reported missing.

Heidi Voog – his wife had had Heidi Voog as her patient.

Scott’s heart started beating like he had skulled a Red Bull. His wife had been seeing one of the missing girls. The first one.

With decisive steps he walked over to his wife’s archives. He opened the drawer with the patient folders. There were hundreds of them. He was probably supposed to have handed them back to his wife’s employer, or some government office when she passed. At the very least he should probably have destroyed them. Now he was glad he hadn’t done either.

Voog. He grabbed the beige manila folder. It was empty.

He rushed back to the desk and found his wife’s address book. He started flipping through the pages, his heart racing in his chest. Was it possible that his wife could be involved somehow? He stopped when he got to the letter C. The pages for the letter B had been torn out.

He could feel fresh sweat making its way down the sides of his eye sockets and cheeks. His shirt was almost soaked through. He picked up his wife’s day planner, and flipped the pages until he arrived at the day of her suicide. The three last pages had been torn from the book.

He had been through the book before, but somehow he had never noticed. He had been looking for a letter, a note or a message. Anything that could explain his wife’s actions, anything that could explain why she had taken her own life. Now he started to wonder whether he had been wrong.

Had his wife really taken her own life, or had she been murdered?

Murdered by the same person, or persons, who were responsible for the disappearance of all the missing girls?

Had she been murdered by Roman Bezhrev?

Scott didn’t want to. But he knew it was necessary.

He had to ask his brother for another favour.

66

“What can
I
do, to make
your
workday better?” Andrew asked the crowd in front of him. He had gathered the entire Tuna Life team in the canteen. The goal was to increase the work-morale, which had been plummeting as a result of increased media scrutiny and the implementation of a corporate culture in Tuna Life.

There were no immediate responses from the crowd.

“I think I know how you feel,” Andrew started. “My career started off in a small company. As it grew, things changed. Suddenly work wasn’t fun anymore. I went from loving my job to collecting a paycheck. And there is no way I’m going to allow the same thing to happen here, at Tuna Life. Every single one of you can speak freely here today. Criticism is not only allowed, it is welcomed. I want to improve this company. But I can’t do it alone. I need your help. So please tell me what is broken, and I will fix it.”

Suddenly several people had something to say. They didn’t like to be measured against others. Richard Smith had implemented a new system, where every member of a group was ranked against the others in that same group. So instead of doing the best possible job, a lot of energy was spent making sure one didn’t end up as the lowest-ranked person in one’s group. The result could be anything from loss of bonus to loss of job. “After we got this system,” one of the employees started, “I’ve been avoiding making decisions, and I’ve been avoiding challenging myself. Why would I work with the best in the company if that could make me the lowest-ranked in the group?”

“Ok. From this moment on, this performance measurement system has been scrapped. It does not exist anymore. I need three volunteers. Together with me, you will come up with a new bonus and incentive system. Fuck the performance measuring. The new system is a reward system. We don’t have to assume anyone is underperforming. I’ve hired most of you. And let me tell you, the normal distribution doesn’t apply to Tuna Life. You are all stars. Next item?”

The employees came up with suggestions. Some would be harder to get through than others. Stock-options and share-plans were something Andrew would have to discuss with Roman and Richard, and that he would. Other issues, such as the fact that Richard had cut down on what was free in the canteen, were immediately fixed. Andrew knew that Richard would disapprove of what he was doing, but there was no alternative. It didn’t matter that they only had money in the bank for a few weeks with the current burn rate. If Andrew wasn’t successful in turning around this ship, it would sink regardless of how much money Richard was able to save by being a scrooge. Sometimes you had to spend money to make money. Sometimes you had to spend a lot.

After a forty-five-minute all-hands meeting Andrew felt better than he had for weeks. He had made decisions, he had inspired. It had been a changed team that walked back up the stairs to the office that afternoon. The enthusiasm they’d had back when Tuna Life had been a tiny untested company had returned.

And Andrew was the reason.

Maybe he wasn’t such a bad CEO anyway, he thought. Maybe he was more than a poster boy for the company. He smiled to himself when one of the engineers came over and shook his hand.

“I’ve received three job-offers this week. I have to say I seriously considered two of them. When I get back home tonight, I’ll toss them in the dustbin. This used to be the best place I’ve ever worked, and I hope it can be once again.”

Andrew’s biggest problem wasn’t solved, however. Most of the employees hadn’t cared too much about bigger pay packets or stock-option plans; they just wanted the freedom of their jobs back. But there was also another issue raised by several of the employees. They wondered when Frank Geitner would return. Frank was the reason many of them had started working at Tuna Life, and they wanted him back.

Andrew understood that would never happen. Frank was a wanted fugitive, a criminal hacker on the run from Interpol. He could never return to Tuna Life. But Andrew could of course not tell his employees this. Instead he just said he would look into it, see if he could persuade Frank to return.

It wasn’t all a lie. Andrew also wanted to speak to Frank. He wanted to get an explanation of why Frank had started the company with Ken and him, when he obviously had never needed the money.

He wanted to get an explanation if Tuna Life was a virus.