are out there and it's hard to tell who the winner will be.'
'Jesus, we've been through this a million times. You wanna know who's gonna be the winner? We are!'
Spittle darted from his lips as he pounded his chest with a meaty thumb. I was aware that outside the glassed- in office all the engineers had stopped their work. Some of them were drifting over to watch.
I wanted to tell him that I thought he was right, that Revere should have given him the money. But that would have been unprofessional and a betrayal of the partnership. Besides, it would have made a messy situation even messier. Gil was right: while I worked for the firm I had a duty to carry out their decisions. Whether I agreed with those decisions or not was between them and me.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'But there it is.'
'You can't do this, Simon. You're committed in the investment agreement.'
'Not quite.'
'It says if we meet the milestones, Revere will put in another three million bucks. We've met the milestones. Where's the money?'
'We don't feel that the ASIC has been tested sufficiently'
'That's crap! I'm satisfied, what more do you need?'
'We need it to be tested in real working conditions for a period of three months. To see whether it works in a real system.'
'That's impossible, and you know it! Anyway, I say it works fine, and that should be enough!'
Reluctantly I tossed across a copy of the investment agreement, with the words 'will be determined at the sole discretion of Revere Partners' highlighted in yellow.
Craig glanced at it and then scowled. Suddenly his finger jabbed the page. 'What about this then? 'Such approval not to be unreasonably withheld.' I'd say you assholes are being unreasonable.'
I sighed. 'Your lawyers can spend money with our lawyers discussing that if you like. It doesn't really matter. We'll win, and even if we don't, there are two more clauses we can use. Face it Craig, if we don't want to put in more money, we don't have to.'
Craig threw the agreement on to the table and moved over to the window overlooking a car park, and behind that the small ravine that was Hemlock Gorge.
'You gave me your word that we would get the money, Simon,' he said quietly, his back towards me.
'I know,' I replied. 'I haven't been able to deliver. I should never have made you a promise it wasn't in my power to keep.'
'I've put everything into this business, Simon,' Craig said. 'And not just all my money. I gave up a good well- paid job with stock options at a successful company. I hardly see Mary and the kids, now. And I'm not the only one. What about those guys out there?' He waved his arm towards the small crowd gawping at us through the windows of the conference room. 'I promised them Net Cop would be a success. That if they worked their asses off for a couple of years, it'd be worth their while. And if I have to let them down, because you've let me down, I'll…'
He stopped himself. He stood silently for several moments, rocking on the balls of his feet. He was a tight bundle of muscle in jeans, trainers and a black T-shirt with a white dumbbell across his chest.
'Who was it, Simon?'
'What do you mean?'
'Which one was it? Who turned us down? Gil Appleby? Frank Cook? That woman, whatever her name is? The Indian guy?'
I was impressed with Craig's memory of the people who had heard him present earlier that year.
'It was a partnership decision. A consensus.'
Craig spun round. 'Don't give me that bullshit! You at least owe me the truth on this one. Now, who was it?'
He was right. Loyalty to the firm could only stretch so far. I owed as much, or more, to Craig.
'Frank Cook,' I said.
'The bastard! The fuckin' bastard!' Craig shook his head.
'Craig,' I said.
'Yeah, what?'
'You'll get the money.'
'Oh, please! We're screwed, and you screwed us.'
'It's a great opportunity for someone.'
'Oh yeah. Like, some other VC is just gonna leap in with a ton of money once you guys have pulled out. Come on!' Craig's face was filled with contempt.
'You can try. I'll give you the best reference I can.'
'Like they're gonna call you! They're gonna talk to Frank Cook, and you know what that cocksucker's gonna say.'
Craig was right. Frank would make clear his reasons why Revere had pulled out. Craig glared at me, his small blue eyes burning underneath the folds of his brow, his short hair bristling. 'You make me sick, you know that? Just get outta here.'
'Craig, I can help-'
'Just get out!' he screamed.
I nodded slowly and left, passing a series of angry, puzzled faces on my way out. I managed to keep my expression firm until I was safely outside the building. But as the door shut behind me, I slumped back against the wall, cursing Gil and Revere and myself. I vowed never to get myself into that situation again.
When I arrived back at the office, Daniel was scanning a list of stock prices on his computer. He had an ability to recall price histories for certain stocks going back years, just from looking at them every day.
Daniel and I had hardly known each other at business school. He did well in class, and he talked a lot about his investments. For the most part these seemed to be remarkably successful. He had an uncanny knack for spotting take-overs be fore they would happen, and for anticipating the rapidly changing fads of technology investors. He made no secret that his ambition was to make many millions very quickly, and he saw the stock market as the quickest way to that end. He had supreme confidence in his own investment abilities, but all the risks he took were carefully calculated.
Revere had liked the look of him, and he had liked the look of venture capital, although, as he once told me, this was as much because it would give him better information about the markets as because he thought he would make big money out of it directly.
'Craig wasn't too happy, huh?' He looked up from his paper. 'Did he try to kill you?'
'Nearly,' I said.
'Did you use that army self-defence shit on him?'
'No, Daniel. I just stood there and tried to be calm. I think I succeeded.'
'So, what are you going to do?' asked John.
I slumped into my chair. 'I don't know.'
'Tea?' John asked.
I nodded. 'Thanks.'
He was back a couple of minutes later with a cup of tea for me and some complicated latte-type coffee for himself.
'What about me?' squawked Daniel.
John struck his forehead. 'Darn it,' he said. 'I've forgotten again.'
'Huh!'
John looked over Daniel's shoulder at the stock quotes on his machine.
'Forty-three and a quarter, eh?'
We all knew what he was looking at. It was the same little number everyone at Revere looked at every day. The BioOne stock price.
'Edging up,' said Daniel.
John picked up a stack of papers from his desk, and dumped it on Daniel's. 'Enjoy.'
It was the 'cold deals' pile. These were the deals that arrived in the mail from the wide world of wacky inventors and crazy dreamers. There was a virtual pile, just as high, in our computer system, that had been
