Farkas listened carefully to what Enron had to say, there in the drab little corridor of the unpretentious hotel in the town of Concepci6n on Spoke B of Valparaiso Nuevo.
What Enron had to say was annoying and offensive: for the Israeli’s whole point was that Farkas had casually and negligently introduced a spy for Samurai Industries into this extremely delicate cooperative project. It was an accusation that struck directly at the heart of Farkas’s sense of his own competence and judgment.
The really maddening thing was that Farkas was more than half-convinced that Enron might be right.
“Look at it this way,” Enron said. “We have here a man who committed a very serious error of judgment when he was caught in difficult and complicated circumstances, and got terminated for it, primarily as a public- relations move by Samurai because he stupidly left a bunch of marooned Kyocera people alive to tell the tale, and now has absolutely no future in the megacorp system. So he has turned to a life of crime, right? Right. But when did you ever hear of a Level Eleven salaryman being terminated, cause or no cause, and simply accepting it without appeal?
“As you have said, what Carpenter did was a very serious error of judgment”
“Was it? He had a skinny little iceberg ship with no room for extra passengers, and here were God knows how many Kyocera people looking to come aboard. What would you have done?”
“I would not have become involved to that degree in the first place,” Farkas said.
“Right. But suppose you had, anyway?”
“Why are we talking about this event now?”
“Because I think Carpenter, having completely and utterly destroyed his career in the corporate world but still feeling that he belongs to that world, may very well be planning to redeem himself with Samurai by selling Don Eduardo your ass and mine.”
“It sounds farfetched.”
“Not to me,” Enron said. “Consider. Who is Carpenter’s best friend since boyhood? The Samurai gene scientist Nick Rhodes. He goes running to Rhodes when he gets into trouble, and Rhodes, who is, let me tell you, a confused, cowardly, insipid man who luckily for him happens to be a genius, says to Carpenter, let us suppose, that his only way to put his life back together is to go into corporate espionage. Two wrongs will make a right Catch Kyocera or Toshiba or someone like that doing something despicable, and bring word of it to the high-level slant-eyes of Samurai so that they can slap the villains publicly across the wrist, and you will be rewarded by restoration to the Company’s good graces, Rhodes says. For example, Rhodes tells him, our dear Jolanda is having a certain Kyocera swashbuckler named Victor Farkas as a dinner guest tomorrow night. You come along, and suck up to Farkas, and maybe you can get a clue to something ugly that Farkas is involved in on Kyocera’s behalf, because the odds are about ten to one that Farkas
“You are building something very great out of nothing at all,” Farkas said.
“Let me finish, will you? Carpenter shows up at the party and eventually you and he are talking, as was intended all along. Carpenter is waiting for an opportunity to seize on something useful. And suddenly you are inspired to take him into our project, this total stranger, this refugee from a wrecked Samurai career. Why do you do this? God only knows. But you do. And for Carpenter it is a miracle. He will expose Kyocera’s role in something truly evil, that makes his own abandonment of a few squid catchers at sea look like a child’s tea party. We will be apprehended by Don Eduardo’s Guardia, and this Carpenter will be a hero. He is given a fresh slate and a promotion of two grades.”
“In my judgment there is no likelihood that this hypothesis is in any way—”
“Wait. Wait. More. Do you know that he’s one of Jolanda’s lovers? The night I first met all these people, Carpenter was with her. He took her back to his hotel that night.”
Farkas was startled by that unexpected thrust. But he covered himself as well as he could.
“What of it? She doesn’t seem to be famous for her chastity.”
“Jolanda was in on this plan before you and I were,” Enron said. “It was she who brought me in, do you realize that? So now she has brought her friend Carpenter in as well, because he is at loose ends and she wants to help him. Jolanda knows that Kyocera is one of the factors behind this coup, and then Jolanda finds out that her friend Carpenter’s balls have just been cut off by Samurai as a favor to Kyocera, and she sees a way for him to get them back again. So she arranges the little dinner party where you meet him and very obligingly take him into your confidence and affiliate him with our project Can it be that she has maneuvered you into doing just that, precisely in order that her dear Carpenter can sell you and me and Davidov—who also have been her lovers, of course, but what does that matter?—to the Guardia Civil, and by so doing regain his career with Samurai?”
“You make her sound like a devil,” Farkas said.
“Perhaps she is,” said Enron. “Or perhaps she is in love with Carpenter, and the rest of us are simply toys for her.”
Farkas gave that possibility some consideration.
He felt profoundly uneasy. Enron seemed to be jumping to a whole host of conclusions. But the more Farkas thought back over this affair, the more clearly he saw that he might well have been maneuvered by Carpenter’s friends into a position of doing something useful for the fallen Samurai man. What reason had he had for embroiling Carpenter in the plan, anyway, if not to win points with Jolanda? She had all but asked him directly to do something to help Carpenter get back on his feet. Well, he had, in that wild moment of spontaneity at Jolanda’s party; and by so doing, he had needlessly made them all—himself, Davidov, Enron, the Company itself—terribly vulnerable.
Could it be, Farkas wondered, that this schoolboy infatuation of his with the overexuberant California woman’s silken thighs and glorious breasts had led him into catastrophic foolishness?
“I think I should talk to Jolanda,” he told Enron.
She and Carpenter were sitting in the bar: on opposite sides of the table, nothing very compromising about that. As Enron and Farkas appeared, Carpenter rose and excused himself, and headed off toward the washroom.
“A good idea,” Enron said. “Will you order a Scotch and soda for me, Jolanda?”
Farkas slipped in beside her as Enron went in the direction that Carpenter had taken. In a low voice, as though Enron might be able to hear him even from halfway across the bar, he said, “Stay with me tonight?”
“I can’t. You know that. Marty would be furious.”
“Are you married to him?”
“I’ve been traveling with him. We’re sharing a room here. I can’t just go off with you like that.”
“You want to,” he said. “I can feel the heat coming from you.”
“Of course I want to. But I
“As a matter of fact, so am I,” Farkas said. Her refusal angered him; but it meant he would have to try to find out what he needed to know in just the few moments that remained before Enron and Carpenter returned. He hoped that Carpenter would take his time, or that Enron would find some way to delay him. “What worries me is your friend Carpenter,” he said.
“Paul? Why?”
“What do you know about him? How trustworthy is he, really?”
He could see Jolanda’s emanations changing: she was growing wary now, radiating higher up in the spectrum, a jittery ultraviolet signal. She said, “I don’t understand. If you didn’t trust him, why did you bring him in?”
“You asked me to.”
She went farther up the spectrum at that.
“I suggested that you might know of an opening for him with Kyocera,” Jolanda said. “I wasn’t expecting you to invite him into
“Ah. I see.” Still no sign of Carpenter returning. “Do you think we’re at risk, having him here?”
“Of course not. Why are you suddenly so suspicious of him?”
“Nerves, I suppose. I have nerves too.”
“I never would have imagined.”
“All the same, I do. Tell me, Jolanda: how well do you know Carpenter, anyway?”
“A friend of a friend, actually.”
