MORE HASTE
Arrayed like a tribunal on one side of the vast palatial office: G. T. Buckfast, face like thunder; the skeletal Dr. Raphael Corning from State; Hamilcar Waterford and E. Prosper Rankin.
Grouped like victims of a trial where they were denied both counsel and knowledge of the charges: Norman House and Rex Foster-Stern.
“It’s been leaked,” Old GT said, and the three others flanking her nodded in comical unison.
Victoria?
The thought crossed Norman’s mind like a shooting-star, and although he stamped on its traces—the hole, that’s impossible!—it left a charred streak.
He said, “Sorry, GT, I don’t understand. I’d have thought the first inkling of a leak would come from a buying wave in MAMP stock, and that hadn’t happened up to this morning.”
“The fact remains,” insisted Old GT. “Isn’t that right, Prosper?”
Rankin scowled and repeated his nod, his eyes on Norman.
But the past few days of solid and surprising achievement had lent Norman a heady sense of his own capability. He said, “Who’s supposed to be in the secret and how?”
“Common Europe,” Waterford said, biting the name off like crunching a candy-bar. “As a whole, to judge by what our informants are passing along.”
“Accordingly,” said Old GT, “we’re going to have to reconsider everything about the project, which was predicated on secrecy. The costings, the estimated time, the returns, the—”
“The people,” Rankin cut in. “Much more important, GT. We shall have to turn our entire personnel upside-down and shake out their pockets.”
“Which is your responsibility still, Norman,” GT confirmed.
“Now just a second,” Norman said, feeling reckless. Victoria? A search like that would not only waste time, it’d be bound to bring me under scrutiny too, because this case involves not millions but billions.
“I agree with Norman,” Foster-Stern said unexpectedly.
“I don’t appreciate statements like this without adequate evidence to back them, GT. You realise you’re calling in question the discretion of my entire department? We’re the ones who have handled the hypothetical data.”
A vision of endless reams of green printouts from Shalmaneser blinded Norman for a second. Facing the whole thing again from the start, the hypothesis being amended to assume loss of secrecy, appalled him.
Also, despite everything, Victoria had existed in his life.
He said fiercely, “GT! I tell you something straight—shall I? I think you’re doing something you’ve never done before in your business career, overlooking the obvious.”
GT bridled and flushed. Norman had admired her ability for years; finding that she didn’t know one of her own VP’s was a Muslim and hence a non-drinker had breached that wall of unalloyed respect and implied that she preferred to put up with, rather than actively promote, the modern standards that encouraged brown-noses in industry.
But he was surprised at himself, even so; telling off the founder of General Technics was a step clear outside his old patterns of behaviour.
“In what way?” GT demanded frigidly.
“I’ve been too preoccupied with the specifically African aspect of the project to follow what other departments were doing,” Norman said, thinking fast on his feet. “But now I think of it, the data which were fed to Shalmaneser must have been gathered by somebody. Ah … Yes, here’s an example. Our market costings include items like transportation of raw materials once they’re landed from MAMP. Was the information in store or did we have to go look for it?”
GT and Rankin exchanged glances. After a pause, Rankin said, “Well, the African market has been a very minor one for us up till now.”
“In other words we had to send someone out to make inquiries,” Norman snapped. “Add another thing: we’re comparatively ignorant of African attitudes, so we’re anticipating recruitment of former colonial advisors to help us avoid silly mistakes. Shalmaneser had an estimate of the number of potential recruits. How was it arrived at?”
“We had it from our London office,” GT grunted.
“And how did they get it? I’ll wager they commissioned a survey, and somebody noticed that General Technics was interested in something they hadn’t previously considered. Add still another point: who do we have on the spot in Beninia?”
“But—” began Waterford.
“Nobody,” Norman said, without waiting for him. “We have agents in Lagos, Accra, Bamako and other main cities in the West African region, but Beninia is a piddling little hole-in-corner country we’ve never cared about. Bamako is in a former French territory, Lagos and Accra were formerly British—where do the former colonial territories get their commercial and governmental data processed?”
There was a blank expression on GT’s face which was pure joy to Norman.
“I see what you’re setting course for,” Dr. Corning said slowly—the first words he had uttered during the discussion. “The ex-colonial powers offer a discount on computer-time to their former dependent territories, which is substantial enough for them to have relied on the Fontainebleau centre rather than developing their own.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Norman said in triumph. “Do I have to spell it out, GT? This corporation of ours is like a state within a state—as Elihu said to me when he first mentioned the Beninia project, we could buy and sell a lot of the underdeveloped countries. Any move we make is going to attract the attention of European rivals, and you may lay to it that corporations like Krupp and ICI and Royal Dutch Shell have bought themselves codes for the Fontainebleau computers that make a nonsense of attempts at secrecy. In any case, the Common Europe Board has a vested interest in seeing that big profitable projects go to their firms and not ours. They might have passed on the information their intelligence services picked up, quite legitimately; as to the whole of Common Europe knowing about the Beninia project, I think you’re understating the case. I’ll wager it’s already been evaluated by Sovcompex and by now there’s a good chance the data are going to K’ung-fu-tse in Peking!”
Foster-Stern was nodding vigorously, Norman saw with pleasure.
Stunned, GT said, “But if you’re right—and I admit you probably are, blast it!—we might as well cancel the whole idea!”
“GT, I said you’re overlooking the obvious,” Norman exclaimed. “We have one thing Common Europe hasn’t and never can have, and the Russians can’t have and the Chinese can never dream of having. We’ve got MAMP, it exists, and it’s sitting on a strike of raw materials adequate to underpin the Beninia project. Where is Common Europe going to get competitive quantities of ore? They’re the oldest industrialised area of the world; their seams of coal and iron are played out. The only possible competition I’ve been worried about is Australia—the Outback is the last mining region in the world which hasn’t been fully exploited. But Australia is notoriously underpopulated. Where can they find ten thousand spare technicians to move en masse to Beninia for even the preliminary stages, let alone the actual development phase?”
“They couldn’t,” Dr. Corning said with authority.
There was a pause. At length GT said, looking down at her hands to avoid meeting Norman’s eyes, “I owe you an apology, Norman. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that we’d hit a case of conventional industrial espionage. It’s a strange thing for me to admit, but—well, I guess I just am not used to handling projects of this colossal size. At least I can offer by way of excuse the fact that Raphael didn’t correct me on behalf of State, which is used to such mammoth undertakings.”
“State,” Corning said with grim humour, “is also used to highly effective and systematic spying.”
Hamilcar Waterford had been brooding to himself in silence. He said now, “If what Norman says is correct—and especially as regards the ability of big European corporations to penetrate the security of information processed at Fontainebleau, I’m inclined to think he’s on to something—then what can we do to minimise the impact of it? My impression is there’s nothing we can do except accelerate the project to the greatest possible degree.”