“Bryson.”
Bryson, about to speak, caught his breath. The voice was unfamiliar; it did not sound like Dunne. “Who is this?” he said.
“It’s Graham Finneran, Bryson. You—I think you know who I am.”
Dunne had mentioned Finneran when they had last met in his CIA office. Dunne had identified Finneran as his aide-de-camp, one of the men who had accompanied Dunne to the CIA’s Blue Ridge Mountains facility, one of Dunne’s few trusted aides.
“What is this?” said Bryson guardedly.
“Bryson—I—Harry’s in the hospital. He’s quite ill.”
“Ill?”
“You know he’s got a terminal case of cancer—he won’t talk about it, but it’s obvious—and he collapsed yesterday and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance.”
“You’re saying he’s dead, is that it?”
“No—thank God, no, but I don’t know how long he’s got, to be honest. But he’s briefed me fully on your … your project. I know he was worried, frankly—”
“Which hospital?”
Finneran hesitated, barely a second or two, but it was too long. “I’m not sure I should say just yet—”
Bryson disconnected the call, his heart pounding, the blood rushing in his ears. His instincts commanded him to get off the line at once. Something was not right. Dunne had assured him that no one else would answer this telephone, and he would not violate protocol, even on his deathbed. Dunne knew Bryson, knew how Bryson would react.
No. Graham Finneran—if it was Graham Finneran; Bryson wouldn’t recognize his voice in any case—would never have answered the phone. Dunne would never have permitted it.
Something was terribly wrong, and it was more than the health of the CIA man.
Had the Directorate finally reached its chief adversary within the Agency, finally neutralized the last institutional bulwark against their growing power?
He raced back through the Place Bel-Air, found Layla still standing by the news kiosk. “I have to go to Brussels,” he said.
“What? Why Brussels? What are you talking about?”
“There’s a man there—someone I need to reach.”
She looked at him questioningly, beseechingly.
“Come on. I know of a pension in the Marolles. It’s run-down and shabby, and it’s not in a particularly pleasant part of town. But it’s safe and anonymous, and it’s not where anyone would think to look for us.”
“But why Brussels?”
“It’s a last resort, Layla. Someone who can help out, someone extremely highly placed. A person some people consider the last honest man in Washington.”
FIFTEEN
The headquarters of the Systematix Corporation comprised seven large, gleaming glass-and-steel buildings on a sylvan, beautifully landscaped campus—twenty acres in all—outside Seattle, Washington. There were dining rooms and exercise rooms in each building; the corporation’s employees, who were renowned for their loyalty and discretion, had little reason to leave while they labored away. They were a closely knit community, recruited from the best training programs around the world and compensated generously. They realized, too, that they had thousands of colleagues elsewhere whom they would never meet. Systematix, after all, had offices around the world, and owned controlling stakes in many more companies, though the extent of these holdings remained a matter of avid conjecture.
“I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Tony Gupta, the jovial chief technology officer of InfoMed, told his boss, Adam Parker, as the two were escorted to the meeting room. Parker smiled thinly. He was the CEO of a nine-hundred-million-dollar company, but even he had to feel some slight trepidation as he arrived at the fabled Systematix campus.
“Ever been here before?” Parker asked. He was a rangy man with salt-and-pepper hair who used to run marathons before a knee injury forced him to stop. Now he rowed and swam and, even with the bad knee, played tennis with a ferocity that made it hard for him to keep his partners for more than a few games. He was an intensely competitive man, a quality that enabled him to build his company, which specialized in medical “informatics” and data warehousing. But he knew when he was outmatched.
“Once,” Gupta said. “Years ago. I was up for a job as a software engineer, but at the interview there was a brainteaser that I flunked. And just to get that far, I had to sign three nondisclosure agreements. They were fanatical about secrecy.” Gupta adjusted his tie, which he’d knotted too tightly. He wasn’t accustomed to wearing one, but then, this was no ordinary occasion; Systematix wasn’t known to indulge the self-conscious informality that was de rigueur among so many New Economy corporations.
Parker didn’t have a good feeling about the impending acquisition, and had made no secret about it to Gupta, who was the man he trusted most among his colleagues. “The board isn’t going to let me stop the deal,” Parker said softly. “You realize that, don’t you?”
Gupta looked at their escort, a blond, lithe woman and shot his boss a warning glance. “Let’s just listen to what the great man has to say,” he replied.
Moments later, they took their seats along with twelve other men and women on the top floor of the largest building, with a breathtaking view of the surrounding hills. This was the centerpoint of the seemingly diffuse and decentralized company that was Systematix. For most of the assembled—the directors of InfoMed—it was their first time face-to-face with Systematix’s legendary founder, chairman, and chief executive officer, the reclusive Gregson Manning. In the past year, as Adam Parker knew, Manning had acquired dozens of such companies in cash transactions.
“The great man,” Gupta had called him, and though the words were arch, they were not ironic. Gregson Manning was a great man, almost everyone agreed. He was one of the richest men in the world, had created from nothing a vast corporation that manufactured much of the infrastructure of the Internet. Everyone knew his story—about how he dropped out of CalTech when he was eighteen, lived in a communal house with his techie friends, started Systematix out of a garage. Now it was hard to think of a single company anywhere that didn’t rely upon Systematix technologies for some part of their operations. Systematix was, as Forbes once said, an industry unto itself.
Manning had also emerged as a major philanthropist, albeit a controversial one. He had given hundreds of millions of dollars to help bring inner-city schools on-line, to use modern technology to help further educational goals. Parker had heard rumors, too, that Manning had anonymously given billions to help underprivileged children in the form of scholarships to institutions of higher learning.
And, of course, the business press idolized him. For all his vast wealth, he always came across as unassuming and unpretentious; he was depicted not as reclusive so much as retiring. Barron’s once dubbed him the “Daddy Warbucks of the Information Age.”
But Parker could not shake his feeling of unease. Yes, some of it had to do with the unpalatable prospect of relinquishing control—damn it, he’d nurtured InfoMed as if it were his own child, and it pained him to think of it being reduced to a tiny component of a giant conglomerate. But there was something more than that: it was almost a clash of cultures. At the end of the day, Parker was a businessman, plain and simple. His chief investors and advisers were businessmen. They talked the language of finance: of return on invested capital, market value added. Of cost centers and profit centers. Maybe it wasn’t high-minded, but it was honest and Parker could understand it. Yet that wasn’t how Manning’s mind seemed to work. He thought and spoke in sweeping terms—about historical forces, global trends. The fact that Systematix was immense and exceedingly profitable seemed almost incidental to him. “Look, you’ve never cared for visionaries,” Gupta once said to Parker, after one of their marathon strategy sessions, and no doubt he was on to something.
“I’m so pleased you could come, all of you,” Gregson Manning told his visitors, shaking their hands firmly. Manning was tall, well built, and slender, his hair dark and
glossy. He was ruggedly handsome, square-jawed and broad-shouldered, with an unmistakably patrician air. His features were fine, his nose aquiline and strong, his skin unlined, nearly poreless. He radiated health, self-assurance, and, Parker had to admit to himself, charisma. He wore khakis, an open-necked white shirt, and a lightweight, cashmere blazer. He gave a warm smile, revealing white, perfect teeth. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t respect what InfoMed has accomplished, and you wouldn’t be here if…” Manning trailed off, his smile widening.
“If we didn’t appreciate the forty percent premium you’re offering for our shares,” the rumpled, big-bellied chairman of the InfoMed board, Alex Garfield, interjected, laughing. Garfield was a venture capitalist of limited imagination who happened to have provided a much-needed infusion of cash during InfoMed’s infancy. His interest in the company didn’t go much beyond the terms for which he could swap his equity stake. Adam Parker didn’t admire Garfield, but he always knew where he stood with him.
Manning’s eyes sparkled. “Our interests converge.”
“Mr. Manning,” Parker said, “I do have some concerns—they may be moot in light of such financial considerations, but I may as well voice them.”
“Please,” said Manning with a tilt of his head.
“When you acquire InfoMed, you’re not only acquiring a vast medical database, you’re acquiring seven hundred dedicated employees. I’d like a sense of what’s in store for them. Systematix is one of those companies that people know everything and nothing about. It’s privately held, tightly controlled, and a lot of what it does is pretty damned mysterious. And the obsession with privacy can be a little unsettling, at least if you’re outside it.”
“Privacy?” Manning tilted his head, his smile fading. “I think you have things precisely backward. And I would very much regret if you found our larger aims here to be mysterious.”
“I don’t think anyone exactly understands your organization chart,” Parker said testily. Looking around the room, sensing the awe with which the others regarded Gregson Manning, Parker realized that his remarks were less than welcome; he also realized that this was his last opportunity to voice them.
Manning fixed him with a stare, forthright yet not unfriendly. “My friend, I do not believe in the regalia of the traditional organization, the partitions and barriers and ‘dotted-line reporting’ relations. I think everyone here knows that. The key to our success at Systematix—our not inconsiderable success, I think I can say without immodesty—has been to jettison the old ways of doing things.”
“But there’s a logic to any corporate structure,” Parker said, pressing the point, as the other men in the room looked at him with unfriendly stares. Even Tony Gupta reached over and put a cautioning hand on his arm. Still, Parker wasn’t used to holding his tongue and he was damned if he was going to start now. “Subsidiary divisions and whatnot, there’s a reason for flowcharts, I hate to say it. I just want to know how you intend to integrate the acquisition.”
Manning spoke to him as if to a slow child. “Who invented the modern corporation? Men like John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil, and Alfred Sloan of General Motors. In the postwar era of economic expansion, you had Robert McNamara at Ford and Harold Geneen at ITT, Reginald Jones at General Electric. It was the heyday of multiplex managerial strata, with chief executives assisted by staffs of planners and auditors and operations strategists. Rigid structures were necessary to conserve and manage the scarcest resource of all, the most valuable asset of all: information. Now, what happens if information becomes as free and copiously available as the air we breathe or the water we drink? All that becomes unnecessary. All that gives way.”
Parker recalled a quote of Manning’s that had once appeared in Barron’s—something to the effect that the goal of Systematix was “to replace doors with windows.” And he had to admit that the man was mesmerizing, as supernally articulate as his reputation had suggested. Still, Parker stirred in his seat uneasily. All that gives way. “Gives way to what?”
“If the old way was vertical hierarchy, the new way is the forging of horizontal networks, cutting across organizational boundaries. We’re about building a network of companies that we can collaborate with, not direct from above. The boundaries are down. The logic of networking puts a premium on self-monitoring, information-driven systems. Continual monitoring means we eliminate risk factors within the organizational structure and outside of it, too.” The setting sun behind Gregson Manning cast an aura around his head, adding to his unsettling intensity. “You’re an entrepreneur. Look ahead of you, and what do you see? Atomized capital markets. Radically dispersed labor markets. Pyramidal organization yielding to fluid, self-organizing means of collaboration. All of which requires that we exploit connectivity, not just internally but externally as well, arriving at common strategies with our partners, extending control beyond the purview of ownership. Informational channels are recombinant. There must be transparency at all levels. I’m merely giving words to an inkling, an intuition I think we’ve all had about the future of capitalism.”
Parker was baffled by Manning’s words. “The way you’re talking, it sounds as if Systematix isn’t really a corporation at all.”
“Call it what you like. When boundaries are truly permeable, there isn’t anything so localizable as a traditional firm. But we’ve already lived through an era of managerialism answerable to no one. Ownership can only be fragmented, risk disaggregated only for so long. The poet Robert Frost said good fences make good neighbors. Well, I don’t believe that. Porosity, walls you can see through, walls you can move whenever you need—that’s what the world requires these days. To succeed, you’ve got to be able to walk through walls.” Manning paused briefly. “Which is easier when there aren’t any.”
Alex Garfield turned toward his CEO. “I don’t pretend to follow all this, but, Adam, the record speaks for itself. Gregson Manning doesn’t have to defend himself to anyone. I think all he’s saying is he doesn’t believe in a collection of sealed-off business units. He’s talking about integration in his own way.”
“The walls have to fall,” Manning said, sitting up very straight. “That’s the reality behind the rhetoric of reengineering. You might say we’re turning back the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was about the division of work into tasks; we’re trying to go from tasks to process, and to do so in a domain of absolute visibility.”
Frustrated, Parker pursued his line of questioning. “Yet so many of the technologies you’ve been investing in—these networking technologies and the rest—well, I don’t understand the thinking behind it,” Parker said. “And then there’s that FCC report that Systematix is about to launch another fleet of low-earth-orbit satellites. Why? There’s already so much bandwidth available. Why satellites?”
Manning nodded as if pleased by the question. “Maybe it’s time to raise our sights.”
There were grunts of assent and laughter around the room.
“I’ve been talking about business,” Manning went on. “But think about our own lives, too. You mentioned privacy earlier. The conventions of privacy treat the private sphere as a domain of personal freedom.” Now Manning’s expression became grave. “But for many, it may be the sphere of intimate violation and abuse, neither free nor personal. The housewife who is raped and robbed at knifepoint, the man whose home has been invaded by armed marauders—ask them about the value of privacy. Information in its full amplitude means freedom from—freedom from violation, freedom from abuse, freedom from harm. And if Systematix can move society toward that goal, then we are talking about something we’ve never had before in human history—something very near to total security. To some degree, surveillance has played a larger part in our lives, and I’m proud of the role we’ve had in that—the cameras in elevators and subways and parks, the Nannycams and all the rest of it. And yet truly sophisticated surveillance systems, what you might call panic buttons: these things currently remain the luxuries of the
rich. Well, let’s democratize them, I say. Bring everyone into view. Jane Jacobs wrote about ‘eyes on the street,’ and we can go even beyond that. The rhetoric about the global village has been just that, rhetoric, but it can be real, and technology can make it so.”
“That’s a lot of power for one organization to take on.”
“Except that power, too, is no longer a discrete location, but a web of sanctions throughout society. In any case, I think you’re looking at it too narrowly. Once truly meaningful safety and security become pervasive, all of us end up finally having power over our own lives.”
Manning was interrupted by a knock; his personal assistant stood at the door looking concerned.
“Yes, Daniel?” Manning asked, surprised by the intrusion.
“A phone call, sir.”
“Not a good moment.” Manning smiled.
The young assistant coughed quietly. “The Oval Office, sir. The president says it’s urgent.”
Manning turned to the assembled. “You’ll forgive me, then. I’ll be right back.”
* * *
In his large, hexagonal office, sun-bathed yet cool, Manning settled into his chair and put the president on the speakerphone. “I’m here, Mr. President,” he said.
“Listen, Greg, you know I wouldn’t bother you if it weren’t important. But we need a favor. There’s a pattern to the terrorism, and we’ve got a missing link in the skies over Lille, in France. A dozen American businessmen were killed in that tragedy. Yet none of our satellites were overhead at the right time. The French government’s been hammering us for years to stop the overflights, stop invading the privacy of their citizens, so the eyes are usually switched off over that segment of the continent. Or so my experts tell me, it’s all Greek to me. But they’re telling me that Systematix satellites were in position. They’d have the imagery we need.”
“Mr. President, you recognize that our satellites haven’t been approved for photo reconnaissance. They’re strictly licensed for telecommunications, digital telephony.”
The Prometheus Deception Page 27