ForceNet

by William David

  A successful day and champagne was broken out in abundance. All staff joined the party that went on until the early evening.

  No news however on Adrian and I tried to call Naismith, but no luck. Lloyd called to ask if I had news and when I said no he was quiet on the other end of the phone.

  “This is proving difficult, ” he eventually said. “We have no real evidence as to who was involved in his abduction or where he is. Other than the initial response reporting the incident of him being taken from the car, and the recovery of your car from the Feeder, there has been no further public information. I am not sure what we can do at this stage, but let's stay in contact daily.”

  “OK.”

  CHAPTER 34

  The following day at the office I received a call from Nicolas Ridley at the MoD. I was surprised because while he had spoken to Alec prior to our first meeting with his people, I had never spoken to him.

  “ Mr Lever, I wanted to talk privately with you, I wonder if we could meet? I am currently in Bristol for a couple of days staying at the Marriott; perhaps we could meet there?

  “Do you have news of my brother?”

  “I think we need to talk face to face, perhaps even this evening? About 6pm in the foyer?”

  “Alright, I will see you then.”

  At the same time Naismith dropped in to Dawson ’s office, to see his PA, Anne, whom he secretly fancied.

  “Martin Lever has been calling you.”

  “Well I don't want to talk to him at the moment, where's the boss?”

  “He's gone,” she said.

  “Gone! Gone where?”

  “Just g one, and rumoured never to be coming back. The grapevine says he has been posted to East Timor! Seems to have really blotted his copy book this time.”

  “Well it couldn't have happened to a more deserving bloke! Fancy a drink after work to celebrate. I have been posted to London to join the big boys with immediate effect so two things to celebrate.

  “Yes OK,” she smiled.

  I walked in to the Marriott at dead on 6pm. As I did so a tall guy in a leather jacket approached, “ Mr Lever?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you follow me please, Mr Ridley is waiting for you.”

  We took the lift to the third floor and knocked on one of the bedroom doors. He then unlocked the door and we both entered.

  He then turned, “before we go any further Mr Lever I have to scan you for recording devices. A routine precaution, I hope you don't mind,” at which point he took a small box from his coat pocket and scanned me front and rear.

  He then led the way through a connecting door in to a large suite. As we entered a man in a blue pin stripe suit walked up to us, “ Mr Lever,” he said proffering a hand. “Please excuse those little theatrics, but I am afraid one has to take precautions these days. My name is Ridley. Thank you for coming, why don't we take a seat over here in the corner.” We sat down in armchairs arranged in a small group in the corner.

  “Can I offer you some tea or coffee, we have both here, or something a little stronger perhaps? Scotch?”

  “A mineral water would be fine if you have it.”

  He got up and poured himself a cup of tea, and retrieved a mineral water from the fridge beneath the bar for me.

  “I think we will be alright now Jack,” he said to the guy who had escorted me upstairs and who then left the room.

  “I am pleased we could get the chance to talk.”

  “Have you got news of my brother?”

  “Maybe, that's what I wanted to talk to you about?

  “ Mr Ridley, who exactly are you?” I said somewhat exasperated, “Alec was under the impression that you are with the Ministry of Defence, is that the case?”

  “Oh yes I am,” he said, “but I also have some other involvements or responsibilities of a confidential nature.”

  “You mean you are with the security services?”

  “In a way,” he said, “suffice it to say that while I was not responsible for what happened to you both, I know what happened and who was involved. A very regrettable series of events for which I apologise?”

  “Apologise! I was beaten up and threatened and my brother has been kidnapped, how can security services do that in this country?”

  “I have said I am sorry and apologised. The people in this country that did this have been dealt with, and are n ot in a position to do it again, and t he subject of your brothers snooping has paid the ultimate price.

  “You mean the suicide rumours are true?”

  “I am sure you have kept up with all of the speculation. I cannot confirm it one way or the other and it is now all history; t he question is where do we go from here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you feel aggrieved at what has been done to you, but on the other hand your brother is under threat of arrest and prosecution for breaking the law. You yourself may be prosecuted for car theft etc.”

  “My car theft was a direct result of the threats from your people, I would enjoy explaining the story in court!”

  “Look Mr Lever, I don't think any of us want to be getting involved with courts. It would not be in any of our interests.”

  “What about my brother, where is he?”

  “Well that is where the problem lies. To some extent his whereabouts are not under my control.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Lets just say he is with 'others'. And the 'others' need to be persuaded to release him.”

  “This is preposterous, you mean the Americans or CIA; you cannot get away with this!”

  “ Mr Lever, if asked I shall deny that this conversation ever took place. Let's look at this rationally. You want your brother back unharmed, and I want you to get him back unharmed. As a quid pro quo 'others' do not want the material that your brother stole released.”

  “Surely, that is not important now following the Vice Presidents death.”

  “Yes, his untimely demise has reduced the seriousness of the issue, although the circumstances means that emotions are high and 'others' do not want the embarrassment of having to deal with the repercussions if your brothers stolen material did beco me public knowledge. As I see it t hey not only have your brother at this time, if they were per suaded to release him they would still have the legal right to demand his extradition to the USA in the future for his crime of hacking in to their systems.”

  I sat there quietly waiting for him to follow through.

  “If they could be assured that the stolen material would not be released then I am sure they would be prepared to forego any prosecution. I think at a push they could also be persuaded to reimburse you both for any out of pocket expenses.”

  “And what if we do not accept?”

  “That would not be in my control but I would expect that your brother could be prosecuted in the USA, and it is my belief that they would probably obtain a conviction.”

  “We don't have much choice, do we? Has this proposal been put to Adrian?”

  “I expect so, but if not then I am sure that if I convey your acceptance it will be.”

  “So when will Adrian be freed?”

  “There will be some paperwork to prepare before they are prepared to do that. I understand you have retained the services of Bill Withers, an excellent choice if I might say so.”

  “What paperwork?”

  “They will need to get an agreement in writing. I suggest that they get their lawyers to talk to Bill Withers and get something drafted, would that be OK?”

  “Alright, I think we can agree. While we are talking what do you know of Mendip Finance and Dalrymple Technology? Are they connected to all of this?”

  “Not directly, I am aware of your allegations about Mendip, but I think their interest is merely on behalf of Dalrymple in making a deal with you and the connection was coincidental. The two matters then merged together when this whole other matter arose.”

  He went on, “I am sure you have done your resear
ch on Dalrymple and don't need me to tell you that they probably need you more than you need them. They are highly respected, particularly in the USA, but have some technical issues that if they don't get resolved will mean they lose some large on-going contracts. Frankly, I would avoid dealing with Mendip, they have connections with too many people that you would not want to be connected to, but as far as I can see Dalrymple and its management are straight if somewhat aggressive.”

  “You have dealt with them?”

  He nodded and stood up. “I think we are done here Mr Lever, I trust this will all work out well.”

  He walked me to the door, “can you see yourself out?”

  Minutes later I was out on the street, half wondering if I had just imagined the events of the last half hour. I called Bill Withers and arranged to see him the next morning.

  CHAPTER 35

  At Dave Wither ’ s office the next morning I explained what had happened. After I had finished he leant back with a sigh and said, “quite a story.”

  “Have you dealt with things like this before?”

  “Not exactly, but I have dealt with other cases where deals have been done on extradition. We will now have to wait for them to contact me. I suspect that in exchange for his release Adrian will have to sign an admission of guilt.”

  “That sounds risky.”

  “Well these deals can never be watertight, and of course from their point of view, regardless of what you give to them, they can never be sure that you have not kept a copy of the material. So risks on both sides.”

  “OK, can you let me know when you hear from them?”

  “It might take a few days. In the meantime what about your car theft situation, do you want me to have a word with Chief Superintendent Fleet?”

  “Yes please, if you would.”

  With that I said goodbye and made for the office where I found Alec and explained what had happened.

  “Well it looks as if it is getting sorted out satisfactorily. I can cancel all the security guards, do you agree?”

  “Yes. So where are we up to on everything else?”

  “Well the float has occurred and the price has climbed about 15 % above the issue price despite the extra volume we issued, so all is good. I think we need to settle the whole team down to getting on with the real business while at the same time we will need to come to terms with being a public company.”

  “Oh and Martin, Armstrong went in and bought shares on the market on the day of the float so they are still a shareholder, about 3 % I believe.”

  “Why on earth would they do that?” I exclaimed.

  “Hedging their bets, I suspect. They obviously believe that the shares have substantial upside potential.”

  “But why not just hang on to some of what they already had?”

  “I am not a venture capitalist, but something to do with maximising the profit realised today in the fund while still having a bit of any upside.”

  “Ah well, what about Dalrymple,” I asked, “have you had any thoughts about them?”

  “Well the comments Ridley made to you are interesting, but I think we should let them chase us, and from what he said I think they will. The real question is are we interested?”

  “Will we get an opportunity to do due diligence on their technology and development plans? If what we are hearing is true, that they need us to help them with the technology, then it will be the marketing advantages not a technology benefit that will drive whether we are interested.”

  “We will have to do due diligence on their books as no doubt they would want to do on ours, but I am not sure whether we will get the opportunity to do in depth due diligence on their technology, they would probably view that as the family jewels that they would not want to reveal in the absence of a formal agreement. I agree however that the strength of their established customer base could get us in to places where it might otherwise take us years to gain acceptance, and therefore justify a deal in its own right. If they follow up then I will talk to Frank, to see if he also wants to pursue it, then we will need to do some real research work on all aspects. Maybe we need to commission an outside party to do it for us. You agree with that?”

  “Seems good to me,” and with that set off to find out what was on my desk.

  Later that afternoon Dave Withers called. “I have heard from a law firm in New York and now that I have confirmed I am representing you they expect to send me a draft document tomorrow. So things are moving forward. I have also spoken to Fleet and she believes that in the circumstances the car theft charge can be dropped. The difficulty is the owner who is still annoyed. I have said we can agree some reasonable compensation for the owner. I think that can be covered by the out of pocket expenses in this agreement. Is that OK?”

  “Sounds good, let me know when you have something from New York.”

  “It will be a day or two before I get back to you. There will no doubt be some amendments I will want agreed before I show you anything.”

  Two days later there was still no news on Adrian, so I called Dave Withers.

  'I was just about to call you; there has been a little bit of a hitch. They want a list of the people who have seen the material that your brother down loaded, do you know who that would be, and would you be prepared to warrant that the list is complete?”

  “We have shown nobody the material, although I did describe it to Alec Bell, but even then I did not mention the identity of anyone on the video.”

  “That should do, I will get back to you but I am beginning to think this could take some time, more than just another few days.”

  “Poor Adrian, do you know where he is?”

  “No, I don't and there is no discussion of his abduction at all. This is all about agreeing not to prosecute him. The silent assumption is that he will appear once this agreement is finalised, in fact I am assuming that he will be required to sign it before he is released. I will email you a copy of the draft agreement to read. Is your work email address OK for that?”

  “Yes, please do, I will let you know if there are any issues, speak to you later,” and with that I hung up.

  Over the next few days I was fully absorbed in over seeing the beta release of ForceNet. It all seemed to be going well. Already we had received a number of useful inputs from the first beta site and the decision was now made to release it to another two sites. This was an extremely tense time for the team, particularly the development boys. Normally they would not be involved in 'holding cust omer hands' during this process; it would be handled by the product people, but this release was so large that it needed quite a few of the senior software engineers to also be involved. This generated a number of arguments over priorities, arguments that were in essence healthy, but they were arguments that did n ot need to involve the customer; a fact that the software people would sometimes tend to forget. Times were interesting and very demanding and I spent a lot of time out on site with the clients making sure that our issues did not disrupt their businesses.

  In the midst of this I was summoned urgently to Alec’s office one afternoon to find him having a meeting with Frank Whittle, Bill Williams and Ron Armstrong. Alec turned to me as I walked in, “Sorry to drag you away Martin, I know you are under the gun, but I thought you might want to be involved in this.”

  “No problem, what is going on?”

  “The subject of Dalrymple has come up again, Ron perhaps you would explain.”

  “It appears that Dalrymple may be short of cash. I hear that their banks are refusing to extend them any further credit and that they are out looking for funds on the secondary market, possibly even VC's like us?”

  “How come, they have a huge share of the US market?”

  “That's what I said,” said Alec.

  Frank butted in, “I have heard rumours of this in the city as well, and in fact more than that, I have had an informal approach. The story is that they have a number of very large partially completed contracts that have technical problems.
”

  “What technical problems?”

  “It appears that they have oversold their current control package and it is not performing to spec. The end result is that they are not getting paid; this has been going on for some time and is beginning to cause them serious cash flow problems. They have been unable to convince their banks that they can fix the problem so their banks are hesitating to support them.”

  “The rumour is that they might seek chapter 11, in the next week or so.”

  “Chapter 11? What on earth is that?”

  'It’s a form of protected administration, quite common in the US.” responded Alec.

  “Wow! So much for them buying us out.”

  “Yes,” said Alec, “it is a bit of a turn around. The question is, is this the end of our interest in them or is it an opportunity for us?”

  “You mean buy them out of administration?”

  “Possibly,” said Frank, “but administration is never good for the reputation and it might not go well so their banks could face losing quite a bit of money. Ron believes that gives us leverage. This company probably has the technology to fix their technical issues and if we were interested their banks might look more favourably on supporting them.”

  “In which case we have to do Due Diligence on those contracts,” I said, “we don’t want to take over a never ending contractual wrangle on specs.”

  “I agree,’ Alec said.

  “If the banks face the possibility of a haircut then presumably the shareholders are dead in the water,” added Frank.

  “Yes probably, but I think this may answer any queries we had about Mendip Finance's aggressive interest in us. The shareholders were desperate to retain some value to their investment in the business and thought they could conceal their cash flow issues by raising funds to acquire us and at the same time have a technical solution to their contractual completion problems. I think they identified us as the only solution for them and they were therefore desperate to buy us.”

  “Neat,” I said, “Is this why I got beaten up and both Alec and I got threatened?”