Disclosure

Jafar of course was not ill; he had never been ill. That had been a little story that Kahn had contrived with Meredith.

He pushed the DAT videocassette into the machine, and turned to Fernandez.

"You going to explain?" she said.

"I hope it’ll be self-explanatory," Sanders said.

On the monitor, the following appeared:

5 SECONDS TO DIRECT VIDEO LINKUP: DC/M-DC/C

SEN: A. KAHN

REC: M. JOHNSON

On the screen, he saw Kahn at the factory, and then a moment later the screen split and he saw Meredith at her office in Cupertino.

"What is this?" Fernandez said.

"A recorded video communication. From last Sunday."

"I thought the communications were all erased."

"They were, here. But there was still a record in KL. A friend of mine sent it to me."

On the screen, Arthur Kahn coughed. "Uh, Meredith. I’m a little concerned."

"Don’t be," Meredith said.

"But we still aren’t able to manufacture to specs. We have to replace the air handlers, at the very least. Put in better ones."

"Not now."

"But we have to, Meredith."

"Not yet."

"But those handlers are inadequate, Meredith. We both thought they’d be okay, but they aren’t."

"Never mind."

Kahn was sweating. He rubbed his chin nervously. "It’s only a matter of time before Tom figures it out, Meredith. He’s not stupid, you know."

"He’ll be distracted."

"So you say."

"And besides, he’s going to quit."

Kahn looked startled. "He is? I don’t think he-"

"Trust me. He’ll quit. He’s going to hate working for me."

Sitting in Sanders’s office, Fernandez leaned forward, staring at the screen. She said, "No shit."

Kahn said, "Why will he hate it?"

Meredith said, "Believe me. He will. Tom Sanders will be out in my first forty-eight hours."

"But how can you be sure-"

"What choice does he have? Tom and I have a history. Everybody in the company knows that. If any problem comes up, nobody will believe him. He’s smart enough to understand that. If he ever wants to work again, he’ll have no choice but to take whatever settlement he’s offered and leave."

Kahn nodded, wiping the sweat from his cheek. "And then we say Sanders made the changes at the plant? He’ll deny that he did."

"He won’t even know. Remember. He’ll be gone by then, Arthur."

"And if he isn’t?"

"Trust me. He’ll be gone. He’s married, has a family. He’ll go."

"But if he calls me about the production line-"

"Just evade it, Arthur. Be mystified. You can do that, I’m sure. Now, who else does Sanders talk to there?"

"The foreman, sometimes. Jafar. Jafar knows everything, of course. And he’s one of those honest sorts. I’m afraid if-"

"Make him take a vacation."

"He just took one."

"Make him take another one, Arthur. I only need a week here."

"Jesus," Kahn said. "I’m not sure-"

She cut in: "Arthur."

"Yes, Meredith."

"This is the time when a new vice president counts favors that will be repaid in the future."

"Yes, Meredith."

"That’s all."

The screen went blank. There were white streaking video lines, and then the screen was dark.

"Pretty cut and dried," Fernandez said.

Sanders nodded. "Meredith didn’t think the changes would matter, because she didn’t know anything about production. She was just cutting costs. But she knew that the changes at the plant would eventually be traced back to her, so she thought she had a way to get rid of me, to make me quit the company. And then she would be able to blame me for the problems at the plant."

"And Kahn went along with it."

Sanders nodded.

"And they got rid of Jafar."

Sanders nodded. "Kahn told Jafar to go visit his cousin in Johore for a week to get out of town. To make it impossible for me to reach Jafar. But he never thought that Jafar would call me." He glanced at his watch. "Now, where is it?"

"What?"

On the screen, there was a series of tones, and they saw a handsome, dark skinned newscaster at a desk, facing a camera and speaking rapidly in a foreign language.

"What’s this?" Fernandez said.

"The Channel Three evening news, from last December." Sanders got up and pushed a button on the tape machine. The cassette popped out.

"What does it show?"

Cindy came back from the copying machine with wide eyes. She carried a dozen stacks of paper, each neatly clipped. "What’re you going to do with this?"

"Don’t worry about it," he said.

"But this is outrageous, Tom. What she’s done."

"I know," he said.

"Everybody is talking," she said. "The word is that the merger is off."

"We’ll see," Sanders said.

With Cindy’s help, he began arranging the piles of paper in identical manila folders.

Chapter 27

Fernandez said, "What exactly are you going to do?"

"Meredith’s problem is that she lies," Sanders said. "She’s smooth, and she gets away with it. She’s gotten away with it her whole life. I’m going to see if I can get her to make a single, very big lie."

He looked at his watch. It was eight forty-five.

The meeting would start in fifteen minutes.

The conference room was packed. There were fifteen Conley-White executives down one side of the table, with John Marden in the middle, and fifteen DigiCom executives down the other side, with Garvin in the middle.