Zeb called in, confirming the appointment.
So today might not be a banner day, he thought. Still, he should remain gainfully employed for another month or so if everything turned out right.
Funny how time changes things. Improvisation had always been Zeb's specialty. To him, the well-known military adage adapt or die was more dare than warning, and one he met almost universally with success.
That was then.
Now a simple sales agent, he preferred things to go as planned, all the time.
Dalton's new mantra? No surprises are the very best surprises.
"First and Stewart," were Zeb's only words to the elderly cab driver. With ten minutes or so to his destination, he might as well use the time to prepare. Out came the bulky file holding the customer's profile and the pitch guiding Dalton's best case for his services.
Only two paragraphs in Zeb stopped, mid-page, pulled out of cost profiles and email summaries by something not at all related to this account and the approaching meeting. Small hairs rose along the back of his neck, bristling against the cotton collar of his green polo. For much of his adult life Zeb had relied on this sensation as an indicator of trouble ahead.
Today, he merely passed it off as tension from a rough start.
FIVE
Monday, March 11, 2013—7:45 am, Beijing Time Zone (UTC+8:00)
Beijing, People's Republic of China
Industrial smog seemed an ever present aspect of the modern Chinese Capital. Even at that, it hung in an especially noxious manner this morning. Slow, thick. Ponderous.
Junjie Zang sat quietly, staring into the unnatural cloud bank forming on the other side of the clear, clean glass of his forty-third story office suite. The barely penetrable gray outside the towering floor-to-ceiling windows provided a perfect metaphorical match for the young man's state of mind. Just as clarity could not be found in the air surrounding the monstrous skyscraper, the same could be said of this thirty-one-year-old CEO's thinking and emotions. It had been this way for quite some time.
On a good day the view from here was breathtaking. The pricey vantage point in and above the heart of the Chaoyang District afforded a panorama of gleaming steel and glass structures, the happy result of an early 2000's construction boom in the downtown corridor. On a good day one could behold many of the architectural wonders gracing this city's always modernizing skyline. This would be on a good day.
Today was not such a day. Yet it served as an apropos day.
Junjie peered, deeper still into the fume-laden void.
It only stared back, unfeeling, unmoving.
His heart and mind foundered in the same manner, going nowhere anytime soon. For all his efforts he stood no nearer an acceptable set of solutions now than he had at any time in the last six months. The clock ticked away, like being force-marched toward commitments he wasn't ready to make. And these particular quandaries, when fully considered, shook him to his core. Assessments and verdicts loomed, hounding him during both waking and sleeping hours. They robbed him of contentment, exacting from him an inordinate price—a debt that he alone could pay. These unwelcomed yet constant guests of the soul had taken up residence for far too long. Where might he turn for help, for counsel? The possibility of open and honest conversation, even among trusted friends, seemed too risky. Surely, those closest to him had noticed the heaviness he carried.
Was there a real-world limit to living in this kind of tension?
Likely, and in private moments like this, he wondered if he might break.
Yes, a healthy storm and cleansing rain would be needed to recast these normally dynamic views to the more affluent of Beijing's 21.5 million residents.
The healing of Junjie's anguish would require much the same.
The smartphone vibrated, sliding sideways on the sleek, onyx-toned desk.
Junjie picked it up, depressing the appointment reminder icon with his right thumb. The mundane act of viewing and responding to the notice blazed a narrow, momentary pathway out of his numbness. It was something to do, providing a simple yet needed respite from overwhelming moral concern. The business owner's next steps were critical for both his family and future. He knew this and would give these issues all due and deserved consideration. So, with phone dangling in hand, Junjie let these matters envelope him for a while longer.
Twenty minutes later he entered the presence of powerful men.
"Mr. Zang."
A bow offered and responded to in kind, as well as a standard handshake, set the mood for a business interaction both Chinese and Western at the same time.
"Please, please come in. We have a good deal to discuss."
"General," Junjie replied. "I am honored again to be here."
The conference room was filled with men, all older and more important than himself. They stood in place around a table some twenty-five feet long and a full seven feet at its widest point. Junjie, not knowing its composition guessed, correctly so, that the wood was something rare, expensive.
Probably hewn from the last of an irreplaceable stand of trees out of a tropical forest somewhere, he thought.
Safe to say Green Peace or ELF reps have never attended a briefing here.
The unheard humor helped to settle Junjie's nerves, even if only a little.
Teak. Mahogany. Gold filigree.
Everywhere he looked, high-end finishes indicated that questions of no small matter were taken up and acted upon here. Beyond the lavishness of the space, the relational calculus was being measured in the amount of oxygen depleted from the room simply by virtue of these men's auras. The bottom line here became obvious: make no mistakes, none at all. Weakness, incompetence will not be tolerated. Fools will not be suffered. In halls like this one, men measured other men. Those found lacking would not merely be dismissed to other duties. No, they would be swallowed whole, consumed, and then discarded. Fail and you were done. Not a few men had left these halls destroyed, careers and hopes ended prematurely by what in other venues would be minor miscues, forgivable errors. Junjie needed to exercise care or this could be his fate as well.
The young man crossed the room's threshold. His heels sunk into the plush, maroon carpet as he approached, like a goat prepared for sacrifice. Circling the table, the committee's serious, responsibility-worn faces gauged his worthiness even before his first words were spoken.
At his predetermined place Zang pulled out the very substantial chair that he would not use at any time in the next two hours and then stood there in the empty space, breathing evenly and settling into the earnestness demanded of such moments.
The general nodded.
Everyone else took their seats.
Leather-bound folders creaked open, each one holding the report Junjie came to deliver. At the touch of a remote the overhead room lights dimmed and a well-hidden 72" LED wall came to life, ready to add visual support to Junjie's words. The stage now awaited its actors.
The elder-statesman soldier probed first, inviting the younger man to begin.
"Mr. Zang, you bring good news of our venture?"
"Yes, sir. Good, indeed."
A wave of the general's hand gave Junjie the green light.
"Then please proceed. We are all quite anxious to hear about the current status of the program."
"As you can see from the summary page we are on target in both hardware and software beta runs. Fail-points and overall systems integrity numbers: all well within acceptability norms. We have had slower developmental partner response on some fronts than anticipated, specifically the components needed to build and maintain our server configurations; they truly are one of a kind. Yet even at this we have been able to stay online and moving toward launch."
As he spoke, Junjie noted the technical details were not being lost on this audience, reflected in subtle expressions of comprehension as well as the lack of remedial inquiries posed so far. Defining every term, having to make every connection, would weigh them down considerably. Thankfully this was
not the case. Still, understanding that brevity on his part would be both expected and appreciated, Junjie continued as briskly as he dared.
Fifteen minutes of charts, synopses, and spec sheets later he concluded. That was the easy part. The questions, some of which he knew could sink him outright, came without delay.
"May we assume you have resolved your personnel problems, Mr. Zang?"
This question came from a lesser-known man at the far end of the room. It was an unwelcomed query—one Junjie didn't want to think about now, or ever, for that matter.
"Yes," he said, delaying while speaking as candidly as he felt he could. "The new hires suggested have been of great benefit."
Junjie looked across the room widely, not at the man directly. To do otherwise would be a display of patent disrespect. It would also be the tell revealing his unease.
But it was hard to hold back. It still stung so much. Friends and colleagues, many of whom had labored alongside him for years, ones who had risked so much in joining this communications upstart when more lucrative opportunities were theirs for the taking. That they had transformed suddenly from long-term coworkers into a debilitating weakness—one requiring immediate action, no less? The idea was still so unsettling.
On the one hand, Junjie's reply was truthful; the new replacements were performing competently. Privately, he was highly skeptical of the whole affair. They were all unknown to him personally. And they seemed far too intimately related, much too loyal, to their governmental overseers for his liking.
Really—such specialized skill sets, both available and interested in this no-name enterprise?
In the right quantities? At their exact moment of need?
How convenient.
Junjie had a hard time imagining the broad scale failure of so many of his key people. Good, competent people. Yet the evidence seemed inescapable. Pouring over it for days he searched for some inconsistency, some way out from under its conclusions. None had surfaced; at least not anything of significance. Nothing compelling enough to question the process and the parties behind it. No, if he were to put any stock at all in the formal findings of the Progress and Effectiveness Task Force, then as CEO he had no other choice.
They needed to go. All of them.
Even now the massive fall of his former managers landed with the pain of a sucker punch in a darkened room. And it added only one more untimely event, just another big bump on a very fast ride that his company, Dawn Star Integrated Systems, had occupied the front seat of now for three-plus years.
It hadn't been like this at first. After opening their doors in 2005, Dawn Star experienced lean yet reasonable early growth. More bacon burger than filet mignon. Getting by. That was about all you could say for this ragtag squad of geeks and their equally geeky entrepreneurial leader. Everything changed in year six.
A white paper presented by Junjie and some of his best technicians at the annual meeting of the China Computer Federation received great excitement among their peers. Soon enough came the visit from government representatives, and then a succession of engineering and development deals totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars with far-reaching impacts for both his company and his people.
Could they handle it?
The answer of course, was yes.
These contracts, all publicly funded work, came as a boon to the fledgling team and its very green captain. But along with the money came the tensions taunting him daily, beginning with whether he was in over his head and ending with whether he was totally losing control of where all this was going. The work, intriguing and challenging, had pushed them all immensely in the previous thirty-six months. Throughout the building, all contributed herculean efforts because they believed deeply in two things: their mission and those working beside them. The rush of deadlines and producing work not yet seen in their field was exciting. It also turned out to be quite demanding.
Growing from a handful of young engineers and techs into a bustling corporation of over 3000 in such a compressed span of time was akin to riding a Tsunami from deep in the Pacific onto the shores of an unsuspecting island nation. Exhilarating, exhausting, unpredictable. Thrilling? Yes, but also complete chaos. And as the lead dog of this outfit, Zang proved his mettle just like the rest of them.
On most days, fourteen to sixteen hours sated the volatile expansion of business and technology. For Junjie the toll mounted, a greater sacrifice given with each year that passed. The couch in his office saw far more of him at night than his wife and young son. When he slowed enough to look back, which he rarely did, he worried that those days and hours were now traded away with little to no chance of commensurate return.
Junjie loved his work but he adored his family. They were a bright and lovely part of his sojourn on this planet. He longed for more time with them and thought himself fortunate, no, more than that—blessed—when his mind shifted from the ever-mounting pressures of the workday to his home life.
I will make this up to them was the silent promise, nurtured daily in his heart.
SIX
The Q&A portion of the presentation halted as two men at the table engaged in a subject of no importance to anyone but themselves.
Regardless of whatever was whispered back and forth, their attempt at some kind of rebellion would be lifeless without the expressed approval of the more senior individuals in the room. The needless sidebar, while inhibiting their work, did create a moment in which Junjie drew up pleasant images of home. His beautiful wife. His energetic, inquisitive son.
Zang's half-conscious bliss was broken into far too soon by the general's authoritative voice. Ignoring the would-be collaborators, the soldier refocused the room toward their primary topic, rendering dissenting voices and intentions mute.
"Then let's not waste any more time," the military leader insisted. "Today is a day of strides forward for our people. For too long we have followed behind others. Our communication abilities have lagged both in quality and technological advancement." A crescendo grew, his voice gaining a preaching-like timbre.
"And we shall soon rise to the level of our glorious purpose!"
The general waited, making sure he controlled the room before going on. Assured this was the case, notably by cowered looks from those he'd chastised, he motioned to a central figure seated across the table.
"Minister please, lend your voice to this destiny, for all of us."
The leading political official in the room, Zhou Dhe, exuded an air of authority, one engendering a ready submission to his desires and directives. His inset eyes focused unwaveringly, powerfully. A big man, six feet two inches tall, he ranked in the 99th percentile in height of adult males with respect to his countrymen. Dhe understood how to make good on these physical advantages. In a room full of subordinates or an intimate exchange, his bearing often left people feeling lesser and weaker at the end of an encounter with him.
He liked it that way.
Though he presumed power and influence, Dhe was nothing more than a common coward. For him the ancient adage, "Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting" was an escape and not a position of strength. Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War and originator of this ideal, would not have approved. Still Dhe was suited, even if mostly functionally, for the role that had been his for the better part of two decades.
Established in the mid-1970s with minimal oversight by the broader executive body, the Strategic Communications Ministry was a well-funded yet largely unknown organ in an already secretive system. The ministry operated in the realms of deepest darkness, where decisions were made by only a few, enjoying the privileges of limitless resources and hidden budgets. As the Director of SCM, Dhe held enormous clout. His word stood virtually unchallengeable, except by those outranking him in the Party apparatus. Even at that, countering him was never taken on lightly. He was a man charged with immense influence in the smallest and elitist of power chambers, in this most populous of nations. These were realities he
both embraced and relished. A highly placed fall-man, his life's work encouraged those above him to engage in misdeeds while protecting them from being called to account for anything—officially.
Failure? Exposure?
Dhe would suffer the consequences alone. He had accepted this fact decades ago. In the final assessment, to him, the pleasures well outweighed the risks. Far more pragmatist than patriot, his greatest fear was a worthy opponent rising up and unmasking him. To Dhe, a fair fight was something to be avoided at all costs. He was a man for whom rumors and legend held as much leverage as the truth. At 73 years of age the director's formerly imposing stature now bent forward of the rigid spine, chest-out presentation of his youth. The air of accumulated secrecy he carried more than made up for it. The man knew where every single metaphorical body was buried and had dug many of the holes himself.
Yes, people feared Dhe, and for good reason.
Ten minutes of rehashed propaganda later he shifted, orienting his body toward Junjie. The move and his words bore down heavily. The young man found it a challenge to look anywhere near the minister's direction as Dhe's eyes burned into place, never lifting off Junjie even as he addressed the rest of the men.
"Today is a momentous day my comrades. The last three years have seen both ample investment and significant gains, promising tremendous returns for many more years to come. I assure you this: our leaders are watching with keen interest and anticipation."
Dhe then changed tack abruptly, directing his comments exclusively to Junjie. Walking over beside him, he leaned in so close that his breath brushed off the CEO's cheek.
When Totems Fall Page 3