“What’s going on here?” Kate’s eyes narrowed as she entered the secure, windowless conference room where Arjun, Marco, Lorna, Ellen McBride from marketing, and Cancura’s lead in-house counsel, Ross Cowan, were already seated.
Jessica couldn’t go straight to the board without sounding a company-wide alert. Instead she’d invited a carefully selected group from Jon’s inner sanctum. She needed to hear what they had to say. Closing the door behind Kate, she took a deep breath and gathered her remaining shreds of inner strength.
“Something of critical importance has come to my attention, and I need your help to fully understand and address it,” she announced.
Jessica now knew Kate and Arjun well enough to recognize their guarded expressions as nonverbal eye rolls communicating, Here we go again . . .
“Anything discussed in this meeting needs to stay here,” she continued, handing out copies of the nondisclosure agreement she’d asked Ross to draft ahead of the meeting.
“What the hell?” Kate asked, staring at the page in disbelief.
“Where’s Jon?” Marco asked. “Why isn’t he here?”
“Jon is in a videoconference with the Gates Foundation for the next ninety minutes,” Jessica said, meeting Kate’s gaze, not adding that she’d scheduled the meeting for 10:30 a.m. precisely because Jon would be engaged in what he did best: charming the pants off yet another unsuspecting mark.
At least the pants, in this instance, weren’t literal.
“But I assume he’s aware of this meeting?” Lorna asked.
“He is well aware of everything we will be reviewing and discussing,” Jessica said carefully.
As soon as all had signed—Kate only after Arjun’s urging—Jessica collected the NDAs and, before sitting down, gave each of them hard copies of key highlighted documents from the OBSOLETE folder on Jon’s hard drive.
“I’ve approached several of you at various times about irregularities in regard to the Revelate and have consistently received pats on the head and assurances that I have no idea what I’m looking at. So I’m very curious to know what you make of these.”
She leaned back in her chair, watching the coworkers she thought she liked most (Marco, Ross, Ellen) and respected most (Kate, Arjun, Lorna) as they began to grasp the implications.
Arjun spoke first, his voice tight with panic. “These reports. They can’t be—”
“This—this is really old data,” Kate stammered.
“The first Apollo rocket exploded on the launchpad, and two years later man walked on the moon,” said Marco, ever the salesman, but his cheeks were uncharacteristically flushed.
“Setting aside any defensiveness or Silicon Valley double-talk, I think we can all agree that, according to this data, the Revelate test results were falsified from the very start,” Jessica said. “Correct?”
Ross shifted in his chair, looking expectantly at the others.
“I don’t claim to understand the science,” said Lorna.
But this time, neither Kate nor Arjun tried to disguise the look of panic that passed between them.
“Where did you get this?” Kate rasped.
Instead of answering, Jessica reached down and pressed “Send” on a text message: Now.
Seconds later, Holly opened the door to the conference room.
“Holly?” Marco said, his shock speaking for everyone.
“So good to see you,” Ellen said, too confused to sound earnest.
Arjun at least stood to greet her, albeit shakily. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better,” Holly said.
With the grace that continually surprised Jessica, she strode over to the table and took an open seat between Lorna and Marco.
“The files Jessica just gave you are from an old hard drive I discovered at home,” she continued. “It was originally installed in a computer Jack used for two years after he founded Cancura, and before all company business was stored on a secure central server.”
“Jesus,” Ross whispered, putting his head in his hands.
“For the last ten years, I’ve been skeptical that it was possible to accomplish what Jack assured me was happening. But I also assumed that, given the size of the investments, the blue-chip names of the investors, and the actual purpose of this project, everyone involved was adhering to the highest ethical standards.”
A pained silence filled the conference room.
“What we need to know from you is what the Revelate can actually do,” Jessica said. “Or, if it’s easier, how many of the promised functions can’t it do?”
“Jon has always kept everyone siloed, and I don’t know if any of us knows the whole picture,” Lorna said, looking down at the table.
“Not easy getting past the Great Wall of Olivia,” Ellen said.
Whose maternity leave had, in fact, allowed Holly to slip in without undue attention.
“I was always assured we were dealing with bugs that would be resolved,” Marco said earnestly. “Or promised that something bigger on the horizon would make the current issues—”
“Obsolete?” Jessica said. “Like a forthcoming announcement about a cure for—”
“That would be a lie,” Kate blurted.
The word lie finally unleashed.
Freed.
Every nerve in Jessica’s body vibrated as Arjun quickly added, “For the foreseeable future.”
By talking at length with Philip and reexamining some of the most difficult-to-explain incidents, Jessica had slowly come to realize she couldn’t have been alone in her suspicions about the Revelate. In fact, she was most likely part of an NDA-silenced majority. As the conversation continued, she didn’t dare make eye contact with Holly, who had agreed that the only way to find out was to present the evidence and gauge everyone’s reaction.
“And Jon knows this is the case?” Ross asked.
“The Revelate can detect a handful of biomarkers,” Kate said. “But the bottom line is that the digestive process is simply too destructive for the effective introduction of nanoparticles via a chewable flavored tablet.”
“Whenever we tell Jon it’s not working, he reminds us that the video of him eating the Flintstones vitamin has fifteen million views on YouTube and says, ‘Make it work,’” Arjun added wearily.
“Then he makes it rain more money, as if that alone will solve the problem,” Kate said. “We keep hoping we’ll find a breakthrough before—”
“Some clever scientist
