‘Goddamn.’
Hiram Conley stared out from the screen at Ethan, a serious expression on his features and a clay-burner pipe jutting from his mouth. Ethan looked at the title of the photograph.
SURVIVORS OF THE BATTLE OF
GLORIETTA PASS, NEW MEXICO
March 1862
Ethan took one more look at the photograph handed him by Doug Jarvis, and then printed out the photograph from the computer terminal and carefully folded all the documents into his pocket, still unable to come to terms with what the evidence was telling him.
With a brief thank you to the clerk, Ethan hurried out of the hall.
16
‘I can assure you, Mister Oppenheimer, that your investment in my company will represent a guaranteed return of between twelve and fifteen percent in real terms over the next five years.’
Jeb Oppenheimer sat behind a broad glass desk, uncluttered except for a speaker phone and an unobtrusive plasma screen connected to a mini hard-drive and keyboard. The office was carpeted with deep white pile, the walls painted ice white with massive windows looking out over the Petroglyph and the state park beyond.
‘Fifteen percent?’ Oppenheimer murmured as he caressed the top of his walking cane, the finely polished chrome handle gleaming in the sunlight.
‘Guaranteed.’
The earnest young man sitting opposite Oppenheimer was one of a dozen or so potential investment partners who variously groveled, promised or lied their way into his office each week for the chance to buy into the SkinGen fortune. Oppenheimer only allowed them this far as a means to relieve the boredom of signing endless legal documents and firing employees who had failed their targets for the month. Oppenheimer liked targets: they provided leverage, especially when they were kept mostly out of reach of his legions of staff striving desperately to achieve them and their promised bonuses.
‘Twenty percent then, if we can achieve it,’ the young man said.
Oppenheimer blinked. He was instantly disappointed — the man’s will had broken before Oppenheimer had given any indication that he was even interested, let alone willing to barter. Just like all those who had come and gone before him he was spineless, a runt begging for scraps from the feast of Oppenheimer’s table, willing to crawl on his knees through the detritus below to nibble on what meager crumbs he might find.
‘Twenty percent?’ Oppenheimer murmured, to an eager nod from William Hancock.
Hancock’s plan was to harness the remarkable datastorage power of Flash-Ram Memory and the abundance of trashed outdated home computers in order to build small, cheap, portable, solar-powered laptop computers for distribution to Third World countries. Built-in advertising for major firms would cover manufacturing and distribution costs, leaving the rest for profit. No batteries, no demand on electrical grids, the computers themselves built from the recycled plastics of their forlorn predecessors now languishing on garbage heaps countrywide. Minimal outlay, Hancock reckoned, something in the order of twenty-five million dollars. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of disadvantaged children would benefit across Africa, India, the Malay Archipelago and a thousand other territories both obscure and irrelevant to Oppenheimer.
‘And who is paying for these laptops,’ Oppenheimer asked wearily, ‘upon delivery?’
‘The governments of the countries concerned.’ Hancock smiled.
Oppenheimer nodded as though he understood.
‘I see. Mister Hancock, much as I admire the principal behind your business plan, it behooves me to remark upon the astonishing imbecility that seems to have infected your puny brain.’
William Hancock’s smile collapsed. He opened his mouth to protest, but was silenced by Oppenheimer’s wrinkly hand.
‘Charity is a remarkable thing,’ Oppenheimer said slowly, choosing his words. ‘It makes ordinary men commit acts of near suicidal economic stupidity as though, having made successes of themselves, they should then hurl themselves off cliffs. Tell me, Mister Hancock, why you wouldn’t instead have built more advanced, more expensive computers and sold them here in America for ten times the profit?’
Hancock, his jaw agape, struggled for words.
‘But we’re both successful people, and we can afford to invest in technologies that can help disadvantaged families from poor countries who need access to—’
‘They need clean fucking water!’ Oppenheimer exploded, smashing his cane down across the glass table between them with a deafening crack. ‘They need food, clothes, medicines and homes! You know what they’ll do with your pissy little computers when they get their dirty little hands on them? They’ll sell them on the black market to stall traders or slave dealers or witchdoctors or whoever the hell they can, in exchange for a bottle of water and a goddamned chicken nugget!’
Oppenheimer reined himself in, taking a deep breath as he felt his heart fluttering dangerously within the narrow cage of his emaciated chest. His voice rattled when he spoke, dislodged strings of mucus clinging damply to the walls of his throat.
‘The only reason for the starving and suffering of the masses in the Third World is the incompetence of their leaders. We are asked day in and day out to give a dollar for little children dying of starvation in Africa, give a dime for the digging of wells in India, give a few bucks to sponsor some fucking baby panda in China. Doesn’t it ever cross your tiny little mind that if their own governments spent a little less on blowing the crap out of each other and a little more on charity at home, then we may not have to keep shoring up their pathetic legions?’
William Hancock stood bolt upright from the table, his face flushed with impotent fury.
‘Bad things happen,’ he said, ‘when good people do nothing.’
Oppenheimer, with some strain, pushed on the top of his cane and got to his feet, leveling Hancock with an uncompromising glare.
‘Bad things happen when good people act like idiots,’ he snapped back, pacing round the desk toward him. ‘When governments overtax their citizens while reducing social services and medical care; when bureaucrats waste millions of taxpayers’ money on useless initiatives which are then abandoned; when bankers screw up the economy time and time again and then expect ordinary people to foot the bill while they award themselves billions in bonuses and retire on million-dollar pensions; when criminals are pampered in jail by spineless human rights activists while elderly war veterans freeze in their apartment blocks because they can’t afford the heating bills. But do you know who the idiots are? Not the governments, not the bureaucrats, the bankers or the criminals. It’s people like you, because you’re so busy pissing about trying to solve the problems of people in distant lands who’ll never actually receive the help you’re offering that you’ve forgotten about your own damned countrymen!’
William Hancock stared at Oppenheimer, no longer able to speak. Oppenheimer jabbed him sharply in the chest with his cane.
‘Get out of my office before I take this and shove it up your ass.’
The horrified Hancock turned in stunned silence and walked stiffly out of the office, passing an attractive young blonde woman who had obviously been waiting outside. Oppenheimer watched her with interest as she glided in, closing the door behind her and briefly displaying the backs of her long slender legs that disappeared up into a short white skirt so tight it made her ass look like two peaches wrapped in silk.