Chapter Four
'Congratulations, Alex. I'll bet every political columnist in the country's writhing in the light of your greater glory.'
Alex Nordstrum smiled a little uncomfortably as he walked into the conference room, hoping Gordian's comments, coupled with his late arrival, wouldn't give rise to certain impressions about him. That they might be accurate impressions was beside the point. Why be blatant? Conceit was a quality Nordstrum preferred to bear with discretion; he had an old Harvard classmate who'd been wearing his Phi Beta Kappa fraternity key on a gold fob for the past twenty years, and it was never a pretty sight.
'So you've heard about my upcoming submarine ride,' he said, taking his place at the table. And how was that for understatement? Or had he struck a false note right there? Maybe it was a mistake trying to appear blase about being handpicked for the small group of reporters who would accompany the President and several other world leaders — all of whom were intent on milking a treaty-signing event for every bit of public attention it was worth — on a 'ride' aboard a Seawolf nuclear sub.
Yes, maybe he ought to let the others in the room be freely awed.
'May I ask who gave you the news?' he said, knowing Gordian could have gotten it from any number of political and business contacts, including at least a couple of the individuals present at the meeting. Although the list of invited reporters had been released only hours earlier, this was a plugged-in bunch if there'd ever been one.
'My source insisted on anonymity,' Gordian said. 'Anyway, Alex, you'd better pour yourself some coffee. We've got a lot to talk about this morning, and you just might feel like you're already underwater before we're finished.'
A workable segue to more relevant matters of discussion, Alex thought.
He looked around the room, nodding his acknowledgment to the parties who'd arrived ahead of him. Most of the faces he saw were very familiar, belonging to Gordian's core group of friends and advisors. There were two UpLink employees at the table besides Nordstrum himself, who, as Foreign Affairs Consultant, was technically a freelancer: Vice President of Special Projects Megan Breen, seated to Gordian's immediate right, and Risk Assessment Manager Vince Scull at his left. Directly across from Nordstrum was Dan Parker, the congressman from California's Fourteenth District and Gordian's closest confidant since the days when they'd flown bombing sorties with the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing in Vietnam. In a chair alongside Parker sat another government official, Robert Lang, chief of the FBI's Washington, D. C., bureau.
The man poring over a document at the far end of the table was Richard Sobel, founder and CEO of Secure Solutions, a young Massachusetts-based encryption tech outfit. He both rounded out the small group and, by mere virtue of his presence, symbolized all the reasons it had come together this morning. Nordstrum couldn't have said whether it was more significant that a competitor in the field of cryptographic technology was here to offer Gordian his support and alliance, or that Sobel was the only one of fifty leaders in the software business to accept Gord's invitation.
'Okay, let's get rolling,' Gordian said now, the intense gravity of his manner hardly lifted by a cordial smile. 4 'First, I want to thank all of you for coming. Second, I want to be clear about how much I appreciate why you've come. It obviously would have been easy to remain silent and invisible. Our unified stance on the encryption issue has already caused most of us considerable problems, and it's a fair bet they're going to increase exponentially in the next couple of days.' He paused and glanced over at Megan Breen. 'The credit for putting together the statement I'll be reading at our press conference goes entirely to Ms. Breen. Assuming everyone received a copy by fax and has gotten a chance to review it, I believe you'll agree she's done a magnificent job of boiling our concerns down to media-friendly sound bites.'
'Absolutely,' Sobel said, looking up at her from the sheet of paper he'd been scanning. 'Megan, if I thought I had any chance of poaching you from Roger, I'd make an offer right now and be off, never mind the order of the day.'
Megan smiled at the compliment. A tall, slender woman of thirty-six, with huge sapphire eyes and shoulder- length auburn hair currently worn in a French braid, she looked crisp and able in a violet blouse and a gray designer blazer-and-slacks combination. Being that he was a heterosexual male with what he regarded as a good eye for attractive women, Nordstrum had long ago observed that she was a knockout. Being that she was a professional colleague, Nordstrum recognized it wasn't politically correct to give that observation any air time, and had wisely kept it to himself… although he reasonably suspected that many of her other male business associates, a couple of whom were in the room at that very moment, shared his atavistic view. Or hadn't there been a jag of envy in Scull's voice when he'd conveyed the rumors about Meg and Max Blackburn heating up the Russian winter last year?
'While Roger may have put it a bit too flatteringly, I did want to make our comments brief and straightforward,' Megan was saying. 'Still, I hope none of you will hesitate to let me know if there's anything that should be added, removed, or clarified. We have forty-eight hours before President Ballard signs the Morrison-Fiore Bill, which gives me ample opportunity to fine-tune any part of the statement that needs it. I think, though, that our message really is a simple one.'
'Looks that way from where I sit, too,' Vince Scull growled. His fringe of hair in a careless uproar around a shiny expanse of scalp, a frown creasing his bulldog face, Vince appeared to be on the verge of an angry eruption. This was nothing unusual to people who had been exposed to him for any length of time, since his total range of emotions ordinarily seemed as narrow as it was volatile, with splintery annoyance being the lowest gradient on the scale, blistering fury the highest, and radical fluctuations between these extremes occurring once every hour or so. 'We put the crypto out overseas without restrictions, and presto, every bad guy with a computer link can buy himself electronic communications that law enforcement can't crack. If Ballard's got the high-wattage brain they say he does, he ought to be able to understand that without any problem. I mean, it's pretty damn obvious, isn't it, Bob?'
The FBI man shrugged. 4 'In all fairness, there are gray areas. A valid argument says the bad guys have already gotten their hands on the technology through Internet dissemination, not to mention American companies who've circumvented the law by selling crypto abroad through their international subsidiaries. Follow that line of reasoning, and you have to ask whether it pays to restrict our software manufacturers from competing on the foreign market.'
'Can't put the genie back in the bottle, so put him to work instead. That's the same crap I've been hearing for years from people who want to legalize dope. And let me tell you, it doesn't make any sense. Back when I was wearing a cop's badge, I saw—'
'Listen, you asked me something, I answered,' Lang interrupted. 'If I needed to be persuaded, I wouldn't be here today, putting my career and reputation on the line. As Dan can attest, I've argued vehemently against deregulation before a dozen congressional committees.'
'I agree,' Gordian said. 'There's no need to rehash the whole policy debate at this table. Our purpose should be to make sure we haven't overlooked any means of stopping Morrison-Fiore, or effectively presenting our case — and our solidarity — to the public, the government, and the rest of the industry.'
Nordstrum had been thinking precisely the same thing, and was relieved Gordian had gotten the static out of the air before sparks started flying.
'Regarding your last few points, I'd say reading our little declaration to the National Press Club on the day of the signing is perfect strategy,' he offered. 'It will stir up controversy, grab media attention, take a story that would otherwise appear on page nine of the dailies and put it right on page one, above the fold.' Nordstrum paused thoughtfully, adjusting his wire glasses on the bridge of his nose. 'As to throwing some last-minute hurdle in front of the bill… short of locking the President out of his office the day after tomorrow, or conspiring to break his writing hand, I honestly don't see how it would be possible.'
'Any ideas, Dan?' Gordian asked.
'I opt for breaking his hand,' Parker said, but Gordian could only manage a feeble approximation of a smile in response.
