“Jessica thinks it would be helpful.” He tossed two more forkfuls into the furnace, and added, “What I want is your perspective on corporate matters and negotiations.”
“I know nothing about either, and they don’t interest me.”
“You’re doing fine so far. If your idea for handling this protest works, you will have helped make the company up to three billion a year.”
The cake was history and he pushed away from the table. He said, “So, here’s the deal. A thousand shares as a signing bonus. At today’s market price, that’s a hundred and thirty grand. Salary of five hundred grand, with a possibility of a fifty percent bonus. A three-year contract, and if I breach you get full pay, without bonuses, for the remainder.”
My head was spinning. This was ten times what I made, unless you threw in the bonus, which took it up to fifteen times my salary.
He grinned and studied my face. He said, “In a few years you’ll be a very wealthy man, Sean. You’d be a fool to turn it down.”
I replied, somewhat lamely, “Law’s not all about making money. I’ll have to think about it.”
He shook his head and chuckled. “You know, it’s exactly that kind of values and principles I’m looking for.” He glanced at his watch, and added, “Hey, I have to run. I’m supposed to meet with some customers, otherwise I’d love to spend a few more minutes chatting about this. I’m offering you a great deal… do think about it.”
He was out of his seat and already headed back to the fleet of computer screens sprawled across his desk. Lunch, such as it was, had obviously ended, and I obediently got up and headed for the door. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw him pacing along the line of screens, surveying each of them, looking at… God knows what.
I walked out the door and discovered Tiffany awaiting me. She said, “Wow… five minutes. You two really hit it off. It’s usually three minutes and you’re out.”
I shook my head. “Maybe you’d like to join me for lunch.”
“Oh my God.” She slapped her perfect hand on her perfect forehead. “I forgot to warn you to eat fast, didn’t I?”
“Forget it. I never stood a chance.”
“Nobody ever does.” She laughed. Then she said, “Jason asked me to give you a tour. He said you might be joining us, and I should make sure you know what you’re getting into.”
I pinched myself. I mean, the almost surreal Miss Tiffany Allison shows up wiggling her extraordinary fanny, I speed-eat with a billionaire, get thrown an astounding offer, and now a guided tour by this wind-up Barbie doll. Days like this are why Sean Drummond gets out of bed in the morning.
As we headed back to the elevator bank, I asked her, “So Tiffany, what’s with all those computer screens on his desk?”
“You know what we do, right?”
“Basically.”
“Three of those screens are from the Bloomberg service. Jason is intensely concerned with what’s happening on Wall Street. Our mergers are done with stock, and our employees are heavily vested, so Jason keeps a careful eye on the price.”
“And would most of Jason’s money be in company stock also?”
“Yes, there’s that.”
“Of course there’s that. What’s with the other screens?”
“Five of them track the traffic flow across our networks. Two are for Internet traffic, and the other three monitor special networks, like the Defense Department contract we got last year.”
“Why would he care about that?”
“We’re like road managers. We need to know where the traffic is coming from and where it’s going. Watching those monitors we can divert buildups to other fiber-optic lines to prevent traffic jams.”
“What is he, the Wizard of Oz?”
“Oh God, Jason doesn’t do it.” She laughed. “It’s all done through routers and switches. He just likes to see that they’re functioning efficiently. The last two screens are for video-teleconferencing. That’s our big bread-earner and the future of our corporation, so he uses it for all internal business.”
We had proceeded down ten floors and the elevator opened into a huge, darkened room. The temperature dropped about twenty degrees and about a hundred people were seated attentively behind consoles. Three large screens were on walls with lines of data blinking across them. Another wall was nothing but big gray metal boxes with wires coiling out the backs. Any second I expected Darth Vader to come waltzing out, ordering them all to destroy the universe.
“Operations room six,” Tiffany explained, “where we handle our aviation contracts. Nine of the top airlines use us as their Internet and data backbone.” She pointed at the machines against the wall. “Throw a bomb in this room and the entire U. S. air industry would stop running.” I suddenly wished I’d brought a bomb.
She approached a console. “Mark here is a customer service rep. If American Airlines wants to know why a message they sent to a parts vendor was never answered, Mark traces the problem.”
“You can read everybody’s traffic?”
“Of course. Every customer and every message is coded, so Mark recalls it from the server. Usually, the message was sent to the wrong address, or the airline operator coded it incoherently.”
I said, “How much business do you do?”
“Three billion last quarter. The same quarter last year we did two point six billion. Not bad considering the rotten economy. We have the best technology on the planet, and the most motivated people.”
“Why are your people the most motivated?”
“Because we believe in Jason.”
“I see.” I asked her, “Why do you believe in Jason?”
“Well… he’s just… extraordinary. For the past four years the entire telecommunications industry has been crashing. Dozens of companies have folded into bankruptcy. It’s survival of the fittest, and we’re not only the fittest, we’ve actually stayed profitable and growing. Jason’s a genius.” She studied my expression and said, “But you’re skeptical, aren’t you?”
“Reserving judgment.”
“I have no problem with that. I’ll have a packet delivered that contains our annual statement and a few articles about the company. Read them. If you’re still ‘reserving judgment, ’ or have questions, call me. We’ll talk about it… perhaps over lunch tomorrow?”
It would be discourteous to not at least come up with a few questions to discuss with Miss Tiffany.
But we continued our tour, waltzing through more operations rooms and offices, and ended up at a product display that Tiffany explained was a revolutionary video compression and decompression system. This was a way of crushing billions of bits of information, like voices, or pictures, or whatever, a sort of digital trash compactor, converting it all into light and zapping it down a fiber-optic line, and then yanking all those crushed bits out of the compactor and restoring them all to their former, wrinkleless glory.
This was how I understood the lecture, anyway, but I ordinarily am bored to tears by these sorts of discussions. This whole digital age schmiel-I mean, it’s a wonderful thing, right? Without it, I wouldn’t get all those football games piped into my TV on Sunday afternoons. But spare me the frigging details, you know? But that offer of three-quarters of a million a year in salary and bonus did stiffen my interest in matters technological. Tiffany’s presence sort of stiffened something else.
But all good things must come to an end, and she next deposited me back in the conference room. The packet she promised arrived shortly afterward and gave me something to amuse myself with as the accountants chattered and babbled.
At four o’clock the door opened again and I looked up, hoping to see my new friend. But it wasn’t Tiffany, it was a receptionist from downstairs, escorting a nasty little runt who looked amazingly like Daniel Spinelli in a very bad mood.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
