by Max Barry
“Hey, I heard about your big move,” Lisa said. Buy looked up. She was smiling, but her eyes were sharp and vigilant, as if she wasn’t ruling out the possibility that he would lunge at her. “Sounds like your thing, Buy. Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
Her eyes softened. “We’re all rooting for you, Buy. Remember that.”
“Thank you, Lisa,” he said. He was now pretty sure he was going to kill himself.
32 Agency
The man in the cell was Jesus Christ, or so he kept telling Billy. This hadn’t been very amusing when he’d first arrived, and had become less so over the next three hours. He sat on the bunk in the cell’s corner and pulled his knees up to his chest.
“Righteous fire!” shouted Jesus. “Damnation for—all you cocksuckers!”
Billy closed his eyes. He wondered if he could bang Jesus’ head into the cell wall and claim self-defense.
Someone rattled keys in the lock. Billy sat up quickly. The door opened. It was the woman from earlier, Jennifer. She was alone.
“Hi,” she said. “Had time to think?”
“I am the Lamb of God!” Jesus said. “The Lamb, the Lamb!”
“Not you. Billy, you thought about my offer?”
“You can’t keep me here.” Billy tried to say it as calmly as he could, but he felt his hands shaking. He really needed another cigarette. “I’m a US citizen. New Zealand can’t lock me up because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I want to speak to someone from the American Government or the NRA.”
Jennifer stared at him.
“What?”
“You’re in the Australian Territories, Billy, not New Zealand. Don’t you even know which country you’re in?”
“I…they flew me—right, Australia.”
“And I am the American Government. This is a USA country. I leave you here overnight, that’s the best you can do?”
“Uh…”
“I’ll come back later.”
“No! Wait! Okay, let’s talk!”
“No more talking. I’ve offered you a deal, you say yes or no.”
“Fuckers!” Jesus shouted. “The fucking nnnnn-nnnnn—”
“Quiet!” Jennifer said.
“All right,” Billy said, feeling hope drain away. “Get me out of here.”
She held open the door. He left the cell, feeling like he was sinking deeper and deeper.
“I’m glad you made the right choice, Billy,” Jennifer said. “I think we’re going to work well together.”
“You’re going to carry this with you at all times,” she said. “Don’t leave it where anyone can see it. Don’t let anyone pick it up.”
“A pack of smokes?”
“There’s a bug inside. I can talk back, if you plug headphones into the little jack down at the bottom. When it vibrates, that’s me telling you I want to talk. Do you smoke Marlboro?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Don’t smoke these.”
He stared at them. “Are they drugged?”
“No, Billy, they’re cigarettes. But if you finish the pack, there’s no reason for you to hold on to the box. If you leave this thing in a trash can somewhere, I will not be happy.”
“Right,” he said, and licked his lips. He wondered if he could have one of those cigarettes now.
Jennifer eyed him. “Maybe you’re not cut out for this.”
“I am, really! It’s just…”He reached for the pack.
She looked disgusted. “What are you, on one of those highnic brands?”
“I’m cutting back.” He lit one with shaking fingers. The taste was incredible.
“Feel better?”
“Ohhh…” Things were so much better with the smoke. Even Jennifer Government looked cute, in a hard-ass sort of way
“Now let’s get this clear. You get in, you get me some people on tape talking about John Nike and NRA jobs, you get out, and you’re in the clear. But if you ditch this device and run back to Mississippi or wherever the hell you’re from, I’ll come after you. I’m the Government, Billy. You can’t escape me. Understand?”
“Yes.”
She was silent for a moment. Billy sucked on his cigarette.
“He killed fourteen kids. Thought about it, planned it, made it happen. I’m not going to tolerate that. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “You’re booked on a flight to Invercargill, New Zealand, in two hours. Don’t mess up.”
“You can count on me.” His whole body was tingling. In this moment, he really meant it.
33 Cecity
She moved quickly, but even so they caught her outside her office. “Jennifer!”
She looked up. Elise and Calvin were by the watercooler. “Oh, hey, Elise.”
“Explain to me why you’re in this building.”
“I’m just collecting some things to take home—”
“Two weeks ago they were stitching your head back together. Now get out of my station.”
“You know, I feel really recuperated,” Jennifer said. “And I saw the shrink again and he said I’d made real progress toward processing the negative experience and resolving my role within it.”
Elise looked at Calvin. “Has she seen the shrink again?”
“Uh,” Calvin said.
“Get out,” Elise said. “I swear, Jennifer, don’t you so much as call in.”
“I’m touched by your concern, but—”
“Did it sound like I was giving you an option?”
She resisted a sigh. “No.”
“Then go home.”
“Fine,” she said, and turned.
“What do you need to go to your office for?”
“I’m getting my jacket!” she shouted. “Is that all right?”
“I’ll drive you home,” Calvin said.
“So,” she said in the car, “now we’ve got this arrest warrant—”
“Don’t even ask.”
“What?”
“You’re not coming along, Jen.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said, nettled. “That’s not even what I meant.”
“Oh,” Calvin said. “Good.”
There was silence.
“So how many agents are you going in with?”
“Depends who’s available.”
“You’ll let me know how it goes?”
He stopped at a light and turned to her. “I will keep you informed, Jen.”
“Good. Thanks.”
“You know, the break could be good for you. Take some time to step back, cool down, get some perspective. Hang out with Kate.”
“I have perspective,” she said. “I have shitloads of perspective. That’s why I don’t want to sit at home while John Nike is still out there. I want him in jail. I want to know that when Kate goes to the shops, nobody’s going to shoot her. That’s my perspective.”
“Okay, okay,” Calvin said. “I get it.”
“If you let him get away, I’ll be really pissed.”
“Jen, I am a competent human being.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” She rubbed her face. She felt frustrated. “Don’t take Church Street.”
Kate was waiting for the bus at the school gate. “Mommy!”
“Hiya,” Jennifer said. “What’s that on your face?”
“A sticker. See, it has a star on it.”
“Oh yeah.”
“How come you’re here so early?”
“I’m on vacation.”
“Oh, yay!”
“I thought maybe we could go to the park and play soccer. Do you want to do that?”
“And, after, can we go to the dog shelter?”
“It’s a bit late tonight, honey. Come on, Calvin’s driving us home.” She took Kate’s hand.
“Alex’s dog rolls on its back every time you go near it,” Kate said. “It’s weird.”
“Our dog will be much cooler,” Jennifer said.
“Can we go to the s
helter tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow or the weekend,” Jennifer promised. The codes to Billy’s bug were in her pocket. “I have a couple of important things I need to do first, honey.”
34 Competition
John Nike was reading a novel called The Space Merchants; it had been reissued and he’d seen a review in Fast Company. They called it “prescient and hilarious,” which John was having a hard time agreeing with. All these old science-fiction books were the same: they thought the future would be dominated by some hard-ass, oppressive Government. Maybe that was plausible back in the 1950s, when the world looked as if it might turn Commie. It sure wasn’t now.
In The Space Merchants, the world was dominated by two advertising companies, which was closer to the truth. But still, there were so many laws the companies had to follow! If these guys had all the money, John wondered, who could stop them doing whatever they wanted?
“We’re about to commence our descent, sir,” a flight attendant told him. John looked at her cleavage. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
Manual relief, John thought, but didn’t say; this was United Airlines, not American. “No.”
He started to put his novel into his briefcase, then tucked it into the seat pocket instead. It was turning into a sly, anti-free market statement, and irony irritated him. There was no place for irony in marketing: it made people want to look for deeper meaning. There was no place in marketing for that, either.
He was in a cab less than ten minutes after touchdown. He’d visited the States a couple of times before the last barriers to free trade had come down and there had been hassles with taxes, with what you had in your suitcase, with changing money—it was ridiculous. And when you made it through, the culture was so different you didn’t even know how to order a beer properly. Now things were much better: the only sign you were in Los Angeles instead of Sydney was that the air was lousier.
Nike’s L.A. office was a single floor in an anonymous building on Santa Monica Boulevard. Los Angeles was not a big deal for Nike: Nike was born in Portland, Oregon, and had never left home. He wondered why Gregory was meeting him here.
He paid the cabdriver and bounded into the building. The receptionist sent him to the eighth floor, where a woman told him Gregory would be a few minutes. This was a good sign: “a few minutes” meant Gregory still intended to see him. John had been braced for “unexpectedly called away.”
He wished he’d held on to that novel now. It would have been good to be seen reading it: relevant yet left-field, demonstrating initiative and a creative approach to problem solving. He sifted through the magazines on offer. The best available was Sports Illustrated. He sighed.
Twenty minutes later, Gregory appeared from a side door. “John, VP Guerrilla Marketing, Australian Territories?”
John rose. “Gregory, it’s a pleasure to—”
“Sorry I’m late.”
“You’re not late at all,” John lied. “I just got here.”
Gregory looked at him in annoyance. Maybe that had been too much. “Come through.”
He followed Gregory past a small, shabby cube farm of what had to be low-level managers—possibly even Merchandising Officers. Maybe Gregory was trying to humiliate him.
“You’ll forgive the surroundings,” Gregory said, holding open the door to his office. “I’m only in town to meet with US Alliance.”
John sat. No coffee was on offer, apparently. “US Alliance is based in L.A.?”
“Yes.” Gregory planted himself behind the desk and leaned forward. It was a cheap desk, but Gregory made up for it, John decided: he was ominous even with bad props. “This is a critical time for us. Which is why your antics aren’t appreciated.”
John wondered if now was a good time to produce his sales report. “I apologize again, sir. I’m looking forward to being brought up to speed on Nike’s vision.”
Gregory folded his hands. “What I’m about to tell you is strictly confidential. It’s covered under trade secrets in your employment contract.”
“I understand.”
“You better. We don’t screw around with breaches of trade secrets.”
John had ruined a few ex-employees in his time. “I understand, sir.”
“All right. You’re aware of Nike’s participation in the US Alliance customer loyalty program. What do you think of it?”
John considered. He thought loyalty programs were useless, especially to an image-centric consumer goods company like Nike. But obviously that wasn’t the answer Gregory was looking for. “I believe they can be very valuable, in the correct application.”
“Loyalty programs aren’t worth dick to us,” Gregory said. John cursed silently. Tricked! “You think anybody buys Nike because they get frequent flier miles? Give me a break.”
John rowed hard. “Sir, I feel the same way. Our brand is weakened by discounting and giveaway promotions. If anything, the higher our price, the more we sell.”
“And yet Nike considers the US Alliance loyalty program to be the most important strategic initiative it has taken in twenty years. Why?”
John kept his mouth shut.
“You know how US Alliance got started, John?”
“Some kind of…airline miles?”
“That’s it. You bought a tank of gas on American Express, you got flier miles for American Airlines. If you didn’t have an AmEx, well, you thought about getting yourself one pretty quick. And right there, the competitive environment changed forever. Because suddenly credit card companies were in competition with airlines.”
“Right.”
“So Visa goes out and gets itself a frequent flier miles deal. They think, ‘Hey, what can we do to make our program more attractive?’ And they realize—”
“More ways to earn points. More services. More companies.”
“And ten years later we have US Alliance and Team Advantage, and there aren’t more than five major companies in the world that haven’t signed up with one of them. The more companies joined in, the more customers signed up, and so the more companies want in. At the end of last month, US Alliance had five hundred million subscribers. T.A. has two-ninety million.”
“Five hundred million…I didn’t realize.”
“Believe it. US Alliance only accepts one company from each industry, but we’ve got the biggest and best. General Motors, IBM, AT&T, Boeing—they’re all here.”
John hesitated. “But Boeing only has industrial customers. What does it gain?”
“The battle lines have been drawn. Every Alliance company is in competition with every Team Advantage company. Every customer who flies on a T.A. airline will buy a computer from Compaq instead of IBM. Boeing is with us because otherwise United Airlines won’t buy from it.”
“And the Police is…”
“Not with us,” Gregory said. “It’s in Team Advantage.”
“Ah,” John said. “You know, I want to stress that that situation is now resolved—”
“Good. Because we have bigger concerns. A week ago, the US Alliance member companies, including us, began offering rewards for customers who throw away their Team Advantage cards. We’re forcing everyone who signed up with both programs to make a choice.”
John sat back. “This is very impressive. I had no idea that initiatives of such…scope…were in motion.”
“It’s a war,” Gregory said. “I’m not exaggerating when I say that. We’ve only seen skirmishes so far, but the war has started. And you don’t want to be doing business with the enemy. You understand me?”
“Completely.”
“I’m glad we had this talk,” Gregory said. “I’m impressed by your quick grasp of the situation.”
“Tell me what to do,” John said.
“Exactly,” Gregory said. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
35 Serendipity
A bunch of college students got it into their heads to protest at a downtown Starbucks, so Calvin got no backup for Nike. Starbucks was a big Governme
nt client: when they had trouble, agents scrambled. “You can wait, if you want,” Elise said. “We’ll free up Johan and Emma by three—”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, knowing Jen would blow an artery if she found out. He drove to Nike and parked in a visitor’s bay. The front doors parted, enveloping him in air-conditioning. The receptionist was attractive and looked like she ran track in her spare time.
“Welcome to Nike. How may I help you?”
“I have an appointment with John, Vice-President, Guerrilla Marketing.”
“Your name, sir?”
“Calvin McDonald’s.” He smiled. Trespass was an assault against property and therefore a crime, but fraud was fine: fraud was practically a constitutional right, like free speech.
“Just a moment, sir.” She murmured into a microphone. “I’m sorry, John’s P.A. has no record of your appointment. Are you sure you have the right time?”
“I’m very sure. Goddammit, what’s going on here?”
“I don’t know, sir, you’ll have to ask her.”
“I think I will.” He grabbed the visitors’ book. “I sign in here? What floor is she on?”
“Ah—the fourteenth.”
“What’s her name?”
“Georgia.”
He took an ID tag from the box. The elevator boomed pop music at him. Calvin hummed along with it. On the fourteenth floor, he pushed through glass doors to enter a large, tasteful reception lined with wall-sized pictures of sportspeople Calvin recognized from soda commercials. A woman in her late twenties rose. “Calvin McDonald’s?”
“Where the hell is John Nike? I’ve got an appointment.”
“Vice-President John is on an overseas business trip. He has no appointments.”
“Overseas!” Calvin said. Jennifer was not going to be happy. “Where?”
“Sir, I don’t believe you ever made an appointment for John to see you.”
“Maybe I’m getting confused. Is there another John in Guerilla Marketing?”
“There is Operative John, but he’s in a hospital. If you had an appointment with him, we would have called you.”