Bandwidth

by Angus Morrison

  It was Derek. He had returned early from a shoot in Zambia. He looked into Eatwell’s terrified eyes.

  “Graham, stop. It’s me. It’s me!”

  Eatwell pushed himself away, horrified at what he had almost done. Derek gently took the knife and set it on a table. Eatwell stood up and stared at Derek.

  “I’m sorry,” Eatwell said, shaking. He began to sob.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Eatwell strolled into his office in the Commission with an assuredness that masked his concern about Kuipers’ murder, and what it might mean for him. “Never let them see your emotions,” had always been his motto. And he never did.

  He was scheduled to meet with his chef de cabinet — an officious,

  difficult Frenchman named Albert Janeau, who had earned his stripes as a lawyer in the French ministry of foreign affairs. Janeau was a political animal. Eatwell was impressed with his fox-like ability to maneuver in and out of tight situations. He and Eatwell had never been particularly close, but Janeau was the kind of troublemaker you wanted on your side. He also had an uncanny knack for getting into Eatwell’s brain - an essential job requirement for a chef de cabinet, but an equally uncomfortable trait at times.

  Janeau would want to discuss the Cheyenne acquisition. The Frenchman had been almost giddy in recent days about his ability to creatively find a way to keep the acquisition at bay – something that Eatwell had clearly signaled him to do. The two had never articulated their mutual disdain for men like Cannondale; it was just evident. They were both hard-core socialists. Still, Eatwell was about to severely disappoint Janeau. Things had changed. Other forces were at work. He needed to stall Janeau until he figured out how he was going to play his next card. For the first time in a long time, Graham was scared.

  “Monique,” Eatwell shouted out from his office.

  “Yes,” his secretary said, walking in.

  “Could you please have Albert come in?”

  “He’s already here, sir,” she said with a slight roll of the eyes. She and Eatwell harbored a mutual annoyance at Janeau’s eagerness.

  Janeau hurriedly walked into the office. “Sir,” he said, almost out of breath.

  Eatwell half expected him to click his heels. “Sit down, Albert.” “Thank you, sir.”

  “Albert, I’d like to talk to you about Cheyenne. It’s important. I’ve seen the helpful analysis that our lawyers put together on the proposed acquisition.”

  “It is superb, Commissioner. There are some final details that need to be addressed, but I think we have an excellent case. It will be extremely difficult for the Americans to make a convincing argument in favor of the acquisition. Shall I take you through the details?”

  “Not necessary.”

  “Sir?”

  “It’s not necessary, Albert,” Eatwell said, fixing his steel blue eyes

  on Albert in a dissatisfied stare. “I’m not convinced.”

  “Sir?”

  “It’s leaky, Albert.”

  “Leaky?”

  “I’m not convinced that it is going to hold up.”

  Albert glared at Eatwell, baffled. The legal analysis was one of the best he had ever supervised; he knew it instinctively. Something else was at play. His mind raced through the possibilities. Had Cannondale gotten to Eatwell? Was Eatwell susceptible to bribery? Was Eatwell getting pressure from somewhere else? What had changed?

  “What are you suggesting, sir?”

  “I’m suggesting that the lawyers take another crack, Albert.” “Can you offer some guidance on what changes need to be made, sir?”

  “You’re a lawyer, Albert,” Eatwell shot back, “figure it out.” “But sir ...?”

  “Albert. It’s just not going to fly. Okay? See this bit here,” Eatwell said, holding up his own copy of the analysis. “The whole section on the effect on the common market is flawed, Albert. Flawed. The Americans will crucify us.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, you’ve seen that section before and cleared it.”

  Once again, Eatwell used his penetrating eyes. He gave Albert a look that said, “Don’t make me repeat myself.” Albert was on the brink of implosion. Absolutely nothing was wrong with the section. In fact, Eatwell had complimented him on the good work weeks ago. What the hell was going on?

  “Very well, sir. I’m not clear why you suddenly have an issue with that section, but I will have the lawyers fix it.”

  “There’s nothing ‘sudden’ about it, Albert. I’ve taken another look at it and I’m not happy with it. Is that difficult for you to understand? Shall I explain it further?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Of course.”

  Albert rose slowly, seething. He began to walk out of the room. “Oh, one more thing, sir,” he said, pausing. He wasn’t going to let Eatwell off that easily.

  “Yes, Albert.”

  “What shall I tell the staff?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What shall I tell them?”

  Eatwell knew what Albert was doing. He had done it before. The Frenchman had a way of delicately letting him know that he didn’t intend to shrink away, that he fully intended to add a couple of coins to the gossip machine about Eatwell’s about-face around the commission.

  “Whatever you like, Albert. Whatever you like.”

  Eatwell swiveled his chair around to look at Rond Point Schumann out of his window. It was a particularly sunny day in the capital of Europe. He pulled Jagmetti’s telephone number from his pocket and began to dial from his cell phone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  "Otto Jagmetti, please,” Eatwell said somewhat sheepishly.

  “This is Graham Eatwell. I’m calling because …”

  “I know why you’re calling.”

  “Do you, now? Well that’s jolly good, then, isn’t it?”

  “Please accept my condolences. Kuipers didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

  “Thank you. No, he didn’t. I imagine you saw it on the news?” “I did. Tragic.”

  “Now look, I’m not clear on why Menno asked me to ring you, but …”

  “Because I can help, that’s why.”

  “Help with what exactly?”

  “With that annoying company, Cheyenne.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, Mr. Jagmetti, what interest is it of yours?”

  “It’s of considerable interest to me.”

  “How?”

  “This is something that is better discussed in person. I will be in Brussels next week. Could we arrange dinner?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Good. It’s settled, then. We can finalize when I get to town.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  Jagmetti imagined the puzzled, slightly worried look on Eatwell’s face as they hung up. This was going to be beautiful.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Graham and Jagmetti had agreed to meet at Atelier de Grand’ Ile in Brussels, a Russian place that smelled of burnt wood where vodka flowed freely and beautiful women, drawn by the smell of money, stood like statues on the arms of short, round men who resembled stuffed cabbages. A large, annoying man who meant well played a violin near people’s tables.

  Jagmetti arrived first, as he liked to do when meeting someone for the first time. It gave him the opportunity to absorb the place. If there was one thing that made him nervous, it was the unknown. He never quite understood why people put themselves at a disadvantage by showing up to a meeting late. He carefully placed his bowler hat on the seat cushion next to him. He never liked it to be too far away.

  These Russians made him uneasy – so loud, so crass. Why couldn’t they just eat like normal people? Why all the carrying on? Across the room a man with sausage fingers raised a large prawn high above his mouth to the clear amusement of his friends at the table. Jagmetti nursed a Russian Standard vodka - so clean, so pure.

  “Jagmetti?” Eatwell asked quietly, walking up to the
table. “Sir Eatwell.”

  “Please, call me Graham. May I sit?”

  “Of course.”

  Eatwell motioned for a vodka from one of the waiters. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Graham. I have followed your deliberations in the mergers world since you came to Brussels.”

  “Have you, now? Look, Mr. Jagmetti …”

  “Otto, please.”

  “Otto, look. I’m not exactly in the best frame of mind these days.

  I’ve just lost a dear friend. I’ve got my cabinet breathing down my neck about … well … breathing down my neck, that’s all.” “About the Cheyenne acquisition?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let it go through.”

  “What?” Eatwell said, startled by Jagmetti’s directness. “Let Lyrical acquire Cheyenne. It is the best course of action.”

  “Forgive me, Jagmetti, but you won’t mind me saying that I think it’s a bit early for you to be offering me advice on … well … anything, frankly.”

  “I understand. We have just met, but I get the impression that you decided to meet me here tonight for a reason. You didn’t come here for petty conversation. You came here because you have a problem that you need to solve – one in which your dear friend Kuipers thought I might be helpful. So rather than chit chat, or waste your time, or even give you a shoulder to cry on, I am here to offer advice, and my advice to you, sir, is to let the acquisition go through.”

  Eatwell paused to take in Jagmetti’s monologue. Part of him wanted to get up from the table right then and there, but the gentleman was right, he did have a problem that needed to be solved. He hated the situation he was now in, but he knew enough to know that Kuipers had given him Jagmetti’s name for a reason. Besides, Eatwell had already decided to let the acquisition go through. This Swiss banker was simply confirming his gut on this.

  “How did you know my friend Menno, Mr. Jagmetti?”

  “I helped him with a problem once. He was a good man.”

  The violin player made his way over to their table. Jagmetti waved him off. “Would you like to hear my thinking on this, Graham?”

  “Yes. Please continue.”

  “As much as it pains you, as much as every fiber of your body is telling you to block this acquisition, you must address some real issues that have been swimming in your head. Candidly, they are:

  “One: Kuipers is not coming back. He would not think less of you for reversing your decision, particularly considering the circumstances.

  “Two: Whomever went after Kuipers clearly wants this acquisition to happen. If anything, his death appears to have been a direct message to you. I get the impression that he would have wanted you to heed that message. You are right to think that you are probably the next target.

  “Three: As you know, N-tel is looking to develop a high-bandwidth product of its own. They are one of my clients. They are desperate to understand Cheyenne’s technology. If details of Cheyenne’s technology were to somehow find their way into N-tel’s hands and Ntel were to use its breadth and competitive advantage to take on Cheyenne … well … let’s just say that knowing a good capitalist when I see one, Mr. Cannondale may be less inclined to nurture Cheyenne going forward with as much gusto as he has to date. You see, Graham, you win all the way around. You may need to do some dancing with your people in the Commission, but by doing what I have outlined, you effectively get this monkey off your back. You help transform Cheyenne into a thorn in Aaron Cannondale’s rib cage, and you put European technology back into European hands by effectively handing it over to N-tel.”

  Eatwell grinned. Jagmetti was smooth. He had done his homework. He knew which buttons to push.

  “How, exactly, do you propose to feed information to N-tel?”

  “You wouldn’t need to worry about that.”

  “What do you mean I wouldn’t have to worry?”

  “Cheyenne is Cannondale’s first real foray into Europe,” Jagmetti said. “He may understand business. He may understand the North American market, maybe even Asia, but it has never been clear to me that he really understands Europe beyond his Austrian ski holidays and Mediterranean sailing trips. Like most American businessmen, the further he gets away from home, the less confident he becomes.”

  “You may be right about that,” Eatwell said.

  “I’ve seen it play out before.”

  Eatwell was pensive. A plate of gravalax with capers and onions appeared at their table, along with some grainy bread. Jagmetti delicately spread butter on the bread, placed a thin slice of the fish on top of it, and took a bite. It was his way of letting Eatwell mull over the wisdom that he had just imparted.

  “So what’s your motivation here, Jagmetti?” Eatwell asked, throwing back a bolt of vodka.

  “Money, and boredom, I guess. Helping people fix problems staves off the boredom.”

  “Well, that’s just splendid. I’m about to put my faith in a gentleman whose enthusiasm for helping me land on my feet isn’t greed or vengeance, it’s boredom.”

  “That, and a dislike for people like Cannondale. Besides, boredom isn’t an awful motivator, is it?”

  “Ok then, Jagmetti. Here are the ground rules. We never had this conversation.”

  “Done.”

  “Whatever you do, you do on your own time and in manner that you deem fitting.”

  “Done.”

  “We never meet in person again.”

  “Fine, although that is unfortunate.”

  Eatwell raised his hand for another vodka. “What strange bedfellows we are, Jagmetti,” he said, raising his empty glass in an awkward toast.”

  “Indeed.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  There was a certain resonance to it. Men chained together in the hull of a creaky, Roman ship, tethered not so much to the instrument of their burden as to one another — hopelessly rowing somewhere, anywhere, because the alternative, death, was not an option.

  “You are all condemned men. We keep you alive to serve this ship.

  Row well, and live,” the voice boomed from Braun’s TV.

  It could have been the refrain of any of the sonofabitches Braun had come across on the trading floor at any bank on Wall Street. But on this particular evening it was Arrius, the hard-nosed Roman officer who kept the slave galley running in Ben Hur. Goddam, Heston could act, Braun thought to himself as he sipped a Diet Coke on his couch. Arrius had summed up a lot of things – row or be thrown overboard.

  The testosterone of Wall Street occasionally got on Braun’s nerves, but he put up with it because it paid. Hell, who was he kidding? He had bought into it. Like just about every other guy on the Street, he was biding his time until he arrived at his “number,” his magic “fuck you” figure that would allow him to say sayonara to the Street once and for all at age 45, take up jazz guitar, buy a MiG or move to Florence to become a cobbler. He had crunched the numbers. His figure in liquid assets was $80 million.

  He had come far in a short amount of time. In his early days as an analyst, it was pretty cut and dry. The bankers had their fancy lunches, ran their deals, and chaperoned Fortune 500 executives around the Street to unload vast quantities of equities in a dance that hadn’t really changed over the decades. At that stage of his career, guys like him were chained to their desks, rowing along while people threw perks their way like Knicks tickets, or seats behind home plate at Yankee Stadium, or a constant supply of hot women and invitations to dinner at bankers’ homes in the Hamptons.

  Then something happened. He couldn’t quite pinpoint when it was. It could have been in ‘92 when Tim Berners Lee introduced the World Wide Web. Maybe it was in ‘94 when Andressen and Clark started Netscape, or when the venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road suddenly overtook the bankers as the big swinging dicks, or when the telecom barons set off on their odyssey to build phone networks to the sky for every man, woman and child on the planet.

  Who knew? Who cared? All Braun knew was that things had changed for him on a grand sca
le. Somewhere along the way, the bankers started coming to him. Somewhere along the way he was inviting the telecom barons to his boat and his beach house.

  He had known what they wanted. He had known exactly what they wanted. They wanted him to throw a little positive coverage their way. They wanted him to keep the good times rolling. They wanted him to verify that it truly was a new world order and they were shaping it with their bold, maverick moves into a cyber frontier that promised to create the kind of better, faster, more nimble world that human beings everywhere deserved.

  The companies he had written about in the 90s were full of promise. They were so far out on the cutting edge that he occasionally thought it ridiculous to even attach quantifiable measures to them. It was game-changing stuff. No one ever tried to put a price tag on democracy, or freedom, or peace. How could they? he used to think to himself. Wasn’t it equally unrealistic to slap a price tag on the impending possibilities that the new technologies would offer? Wasn’t it silly to assume that by crunching numbers and pulling together spreadsheets one could even hope to quantify what the future held – a future based on clean technologies, brain power, and meritocracy?

  For a brief period of time in the later part of the 20th century, Braun and his clients had made long-term bets that would liberate humanity from the soul-sapping yoke of doing things the way they had always been done, and nobody was going to tell them otherwise. Then the bottom fell out. But it didn’t have to stay that way. Sure, he knew history never fully repeated itself, but an echo wasn’t out of the question. He remained confident that the market was about to awake from its slumber, and when it did, he was going to be damn sure that he was there.