Chapter 77

At a 9:15 p.m. Jason’s cell phone began ringing. Not recognizing the number, he answered, “Magill,”

“Hey, old man,” teased Hawk, “what’s going on?”

“Maddie and I are still at the office, waiting for your call. I was just contemplating whether or not to send her home. What’s your location?”

“We’ve just passed Louisville, Kentucky, and should be at Landmark Aviation in about an hour.”

“I’ll have a limo waiting. How many rooms do you need?”

“On this flight, I’ll need two singles and a two bedroom suite. There’s a second flight that won’t arrive before six in the morning. They will need two suites and two singles. We may have some more coming, but not immediately.”

“What about your flight crews?”

“They take care of that. It’s included in the bill.”

“Anything else?” asked Jason.

“Yes, we’re starving. If the hotel doesn’t have room service, then we’ll either need to go to a restaurant or have someone pick up something for us.”

“I’ll let Maddie know all the details, and she can arrange things from there. Do you feel like meeting at least one Senator tonight? We’ve got an early morning meeting, but the one whose office we’re using for that meeting would like a short preview.”

“I think I can make it, even though it’s been a long day. I started off this morning flying to Seattle and now to DC. From sea to shining sea.”

“I’ve had some worse, but I do understand. We’ll see you in about an hour.”

Jason hung up and relayed the room information to his secretary. Then, while Maddie went over the arrangements with the hotel, Jason called Joel. “Joel wants to know where everyone is staying,” called Jason, interrupting Maddie’s call to the hotel.

“The Hyatt Regency in Reston,” Maddie replied.

Jason relayed that information to Joel, who responded, “Excellent. They’re real good about working with security personnel.”

Next, Jason called Bill Wilson. A teen answered, “Wilson residence.”

“Good evening. This is Senator Magill. I need to talk to Senator Wilson.”

“Just a second. I know he’s expecting your call.”

“‘Evening, Jason, have you heard from the people from Phoenix?”

“They were on the Eastern side of Kentucky a few minutes ago, and we’re expecting them to land around ten-fifteen. We’ll meet, and then go straight from the airport to the Hyatt Regency, in Reston.”

“OK, I’ll head that way in a few minutes, and meet you in the coffee shop.”

It was three hours earlier in Seattle, and Sarah O’Doul was exhausted. The scheduled executive meeting had been turned on its ear as a result of her announcement of the proposal she’d received at lunch.

In preparation for the meeting, Sarah needed to verify some of Hawk’s statements. Thus she had called Palo Alto and talked to a friend deeply involved with the company Hawk had hinted was his partner. She not only learned the relationship truly existed, she even talked to one of the tech people who’d flown to Phoenix to see a demonstration. At that point she’d stepped out of the normal channels and asked the retired chairman to attend.

“Sarah,” screamed the head of Operating Systems Development, “were you out of your mind to even listen to such an outlandish offer? We don’t work with other people, we either develop it independently, or we buy the company or their technology. Besides, I’m not sure anyone alive is capable of writing the kind of code he’s talking about.”

“Maybe he’s a ‘ghost writer, ‘“ quipped one of the marketing people.

“I don’t know about a ghost, but I have no doubt this man can write that code. Besides, he’s willing to put up as much as a hundred million to assure our involvement, and the tech people in Palo Alto have verified the hardware’s existence.”

“Sarah,” asked one of the older production managers, “Is he using a proprietary processor.”

“Not from what I understand. It’s just the configuration and the way everything is assembled that’s unique. From what their tech guy told me his prototype is using a standard version of our operating system, except it’s been loaded into flash memory rather than residing on the hard drive. According to him, it does come up from a cold boot about as fast as a computer being activated from ‘stand-by, ‘ and is amazingly fast, even without the operating system being tweaked to utilize the multiple processors and memory.”

The head of marketing asked, “Did you get a feel for Palo Alto’s take on the whole thing?”

“Mark, I got more feels than a Nevada whore on a Saturday night. The R and D guy seriously doubts it’ll work; and even if it does, it’ll be a ‘niche toy, ‘ with only a few thousand ever sold. At the same time, the marketing director is positively drooling in the hope of getting his hands on the product. According to him this could make most of the existing computers in the world instantly obsolete.”

For the first time in the meeting, the ex-chairman spoke, asking, “Why do you think there’s such a discrepancy of opinions?”

“Sir, like in a lot of large companies R and D’s and upper management often take the view of downplaying anything ‘not invented here.’ Since their R and D didn’t come up with the idea it can’t be worth much. Marketing, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with meeting the needs and desires of the customer. To them this thing is a ‘no-brainer.’ The quicker they can get it to market, the better.”

“Interesting,” he answered. “It sounds a lot like the paradigm of the original PC. Even the developers in Boca only estimated a total market of about fifty thousand units, and they thought they were being optimistic at that.”

Everyone in the meeting laughed at the thought, but then Sarah said something profound, “Sir, if they’d saddled the system with CP / M, they might have been right. It was DOS and then Windows that made the system more usable, more friendly.”

“I never thought of DOS as being friendly,” commented one of the people on the far end of the table.

“Then, you never had to deal with the cryptic and illogical commands of CP / M,” came the response from their former chairman. “It was designed by computer geeks - for computer geeks. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion it was made that difficult on purpose. That’s why our goal from the beginning was to make it easier for the customers and to generally move them away from having to have an in-house guru just to do even the most mundane tasks. In light of that,” he continued, “How do we know this guy is able to deliver on his end?”

“Sir, I’m not certain of the meaning, but I feel one comment was intended to answer this very question. He asked, ‘when was the last time you spoke to the trio from NC State: Matt, Chris and Bill.’“

The man responded sadly, “When the fourth musketeer was reported killed in a fiery auto accident.” With that thought wandering though his head he stared at the vivacious redhead, almost mentally asking her a question he wasn’t sure he wanted answered. When she looked back and gave him a slight nod he no longer had any doubt. He knew John Grayson could write the code. Standing before the group he said, “OK, everyone. I know I no longer have any legal standing in this group, but it’s my recommendation we pursue this with every available resource, because the alternative could be the beginning of the end for this company.”

“But Sir...” started the guy from product development.

“Robert, this is not that different from the day when IBM wanted an operating system for the PC. Gary Kendall ignored them, and I didn’t. The rest is history. If this system can do what Sarah has reported, then its impact will be much greater than the original PC.”

Looking back at Sarah, the real leader in the room asked, “Sarah, is there stock available in this company?”

“No, Sir. And from the impression I got, there won’t be an IPO, either.”

Note: IPO means initial public offering, and refers to the original sale of a company’s stock to the public, with the proceeds, less various fees, going to the company to fund expansion, additional assets, reduce debt, etcetera Since this a capital transaction, there was no tax incurred by the company on these proceeds. For many companies, an IPO is a crucial point in their development and is a great source of paper income to the initial founders and often to those who helped get the company started. It usually will greatly increase the net worth of early investors and employees who purchased the stock at a nominal cost, or received stock options for a similar amount.

“Interesting,” remarked the ex-chairman. “I would leave everyone with this thought - if you have any Zelk stock, you might want to sell it sometime during the next few weeks.”

It was after midnight in DC. Hawk and his wives had gone to bed, and Jason had sent Maddie home to be with her family. Jason, on the other hand, was in his suite with Bill Wilson, Deke Templeton, and Hap Donaldson discussing the information from Ron Gonzales’ laptop. “Agent Donaldson, what are your thoughts?” asked Senator Wilson.

“Sir, are you referring to the illegality of the proposed or reported actions, or how do we put these guys in jail?”

“Both.”

“I easily found documentation of conspiracy and corruption. I also think a good case could be made that the terminating of the lease just as the trees are ready to be harvested, was theft by taking. Adding to that, the general tone of these emails would indicate these actions could be classified as ‘hate crimes.’ The problem is how to obtain evidence that will make these charges stick.”

“But, what about what we’ve found on the laptop?” asked Jason.

“It’s a start, but the evidence could be suppressed as being tainted since it wasn’t discovered by official investigators using a warrant, nor was the chain of evidence maintained in a way that a good lawyer couldn’t attack. Hawk did as much as possible to maintain that chain, but it’s still very vulnerable to attack. What we need is corroborating evidence obtained in a judicious manner. We also have some severe jurisdictional problems.”

“Such as?” asked Jason.

“Well, the computers here in DC are within the control of the executive branch. The proper people to do the investigation would be the General Accounting Office, the Justice Department and / or the FBI. The problem with that is the Attorney General and the FBI Director are cronies of the Vice President, plus the GAO’s subpoena powers are limited and are often ignored by the various departments of the Executive Branch.”

“And when they’re not ignored the President claims ‘executive privilege, ‘“ added Deke.

“So this isn’t as open and shut as we thought. Is there any hope?” asked Jason.

“Of course there’s hope,” proclaimed Hap. “We’ve just got to be smart about it.”

“And that would be?” asked Senator Wilson.

“Senator, you need to rally support among those in both parties who wouldn’t immediately tell someone in the administration. Also, in the initial stages, keep discussions concerning this among yourselves. No secretaries, pages, aides, assistants, or chiefs of staff should be anywhere around those discussions. Hell, I’d make sure no one even tells their wives.”

“Agent Donaldson, I’m not sure that’s realistic,” sighed an exasperated Senator.

“Not even for tomorrow, and possibly over the weekend?”

Feeling a little brighter, Senate Wilson responded, “We might manage that.”

“Good. Then, from your end, lay the groundwork for calling congressional hearings on the matter as early next week as possible. In the meantime I’ll try to get warrants to obtain the computers of the Indian Agency, and the president of the lumber company. Those warrants will be executed after the Vice President leaves his office tomorrow afternoon. We can use the time zones and the week-end to minimize the flow of information back to DC, and also the anticipated response.”

“And what will this accomplish?” asked Jason.

“Hopefully we can find parts of the same emails on these computers. That will establish a more solid connection back to here, and give the Congressional investigation more standing. Finally, early Sunday evening some of this stuff will be leaked by an unknown staff member to the press, starting with Matt Drudge. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the more racially biased remarks spread from one end of the internet to the other by midnight.”

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The Hawk and the Chipmunk

Mike Lowe aka The Scot

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