“Where are you?” Tresco said, not bothering to hide his irritation at what he had called “all this clandestine bullshit.” It was a judgment that he would be revising very soon.
The yellow path ahead broke right into a solitary gas station.
“I’m about to pull in.”
Bailer eased up to the man’s SUV, stopping only long enough for him to jump in before accelerating again.
“Okay. I’m here. What’s the hell is all this about?”
Tresco was a former oil industry CEO and now was one of Dresner Industries’ most influential board members. He was not, however, an easy man to deal with.
“We have some problems that I want to talk to you about.”
“I just read through your reports about the rollout. It sounds like we’re exceeding projections in every category. And the press has been more positive than any one of us could have hoped — even about the implants. What problems could possibly be important enough to drag me to a gas station in the middle of nowhere on Saturday? My goddamn grandkids are in town.”
“The development of the Merge was a lot more expensive and difficult than you’re aware of,” Bailer said simply.
He didn’t take his eyes from the road, but the fact that there was no immediate response suggested that his statement had been enough to put grandchildren out of Tresco’s mind. He was not a man accustomed to not having all the facts.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying to me, Craig.”
“We incurred expenses and debt that’ve been moved to subsidiaries and partnerships all over the globe.”
Tresco didn’t respond immediately. When he did, he spoke cautiously. “How much debt?”
“Enough to bankrupt the company even if we sell double our projected volume. If we’re clever, we might be able to meet our obligations next month. But the month after that, there’s no way in hell.”
“Why did you keep this from me?” Tresco said, caution turning to fear. “I didn’t know anything about it.”
“I doubt anyone will believe that.”
“Was that a threat, Craig? Are you threatening me?”
Of course, that was exactly what he was doing. But there was no reason to be explicit about it. Tresco was an extremely wealthy man with a carefully crafted and impeccable reputation. He would do whatever was necessary to protect the status he’d spent a lifetime building.
Bailer handed him a tablet and turned onto an even more desolate road that led into the rugged Organ Mountains. Crosswinds buffeted the car, but couldn’t be blamed for Tresco’s increasingly pale complexion as he scrolled through the graphs and charts.
“How…How did this happen? How could you let this happen?”
“I was aware of some of it, but I only recognized the extent about a year ago.”
“But Christian—”
“Christian can’t be trusted anymore. There was a time when he’d listen to financial realities, but as he’s gotten older he’s become more and more isolated. He lives in his own world now. A world he believes he can save. And it’s causing him to make stupid decisions like focusing on a search system that makes judgments about people, and software that’s specific to the financial industry and politicians. It’s also caused him to limit our military sales to only a small percentage of soldiers worldwide.”
Tresco shut down the tablet and stared out at the dead, rocky hills speeding by. His hand shook visibly as he wiped the sweat from around his mouth.
“We need to move Dresner out, David.”
Tresco let out a bitter laugh. “Do you have any idea what that’ll do to our stock price?”
“We’ll do it quietly. Keep him in place as a figurehead.”
“I’m finding it very hard to believe he’s going to just give up his position at a company he spent his life building. And how does that help our cash flow? No. We’re going to have to look for a partner.”
“We can’t sell off a significant interest in the company, David.”
“Why not?”
“There are things that would come to light…” His voice faded for a moment. “Things that need to stay in the dark.”
“The offshore debt?”
“It’s not the financial issues, David.”
“What then?”
Bailer took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Even in the confines of the car, it was hard to say these things out loud.
“The human mind is a very complicated piece of engineering. Maybe the most complicated thing we know of. It’s difficult to find an adequate substitute for it. When the research started, we used chimps—”
“So what?”
“So, there’s only so much you can learn from experimenting on the mind of a monkey. Eventually, we had to move to human subjects.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“Some of the tests — particularly the early ones — weren’t entirely successful.”
Again, Tresco seemed to be struggling to process what he was hearing. “Are you telling me that some of the volunteers were harmed?”
Bailer shook his head, accelerating around a tight curve and looking down the steep slope leading to the valley below. “What I’m telling you is that they weren’t volunteers, David. And they were more than harmed.”
21
“Take it easy,” Jon Smith said. “You don’t want to get spotted.”
Above him, Duane was all nervous energy and heavy breathing as he struggled unflaggingly upward. In truth, the wind was moving the branches around enough to obscure all the flailing, but they were more than ten meters from the ground and Smith wasn’t anxious to test his theory that he could arrest the kid’s fall.
He obeyed, his panting evening out as they continued to rise. Beyond his rifle getting caught a few times, Duane was surprisingly solid. It appeared that tree climbing was like riding a bicycle — once you’d nailed it, no amount of sitting in front of a computer screen was enough to make you forget.
“This looks like a good spot,” Smith said when they came to a place where enough of the bright fall leaves had dropped to provide a clear view of the landscape without exposing them. Grayson had tucked the team into cover and the only person visible below was Carrie, still lying in the riverbed. Dresner’s training software had immediately degraded her Merge to thirty percent operability, but she was now down to twenty-seven as it simulated her decline in the absence of medical attention. At this point, even if she hadn’t been told to stay down, he doubted she’d even have the ability to crawl. For a self-professed pacifist, Christian Dresner could design a hell of a nasty military app.
“Okay, Duane. I know it’s hard in this kind of terrain, but think about where you heard the shot come from and what line of sight the sniper would have had to hit Carrie. Then look for…”
His voice faded when he realized that his advice was pointless — instructions on how to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together given to a student with a lighter. The rain had stopped and the Merge was having no problem at all picking up the sniper at a range of just over four hundred meters. There was a pink body-heat plume seeping from the edges of what Smith assumed was a rain poncho scattered with dead foliage. Even more obvious was the enhanced outline of a rifle barrel, which the Merge now also identified by make and model — an enhancement the coding team had just finished. It should have also determined whether they were in range of the weapon but a glitch they hadn’t been able to find was causing that data to come up garbage.
“Yeah, I got him,” Duane said excitedly. “He’s right there!”
“Okay, good job. Anyone else?”
A brief pause. “Not that I can see. Just him.”