Disclosure: A Novel Read Free

that you weren't in."

    "Did he say what he wanted?"

    "No, but he's going into a lot of offices on the floor, one after another, talking to people.
    Something's up, Tom."

    "What?"

    "Nobody's telling me anything," she said.

    "What about Stephanie?"

    "Stephanie called, and I told her you weren't in yet."

    "Anything else?"

    "Arthur Kahn called from KI. to ask if you got his fax."

    "I did. I'll call him. Anything else?"

    "No, that's about it, Tom."

    "Thanks, Cindy." He pushed the END button to terminate the call. Standing beside him, Benedict pointed to Sanders's phone. "Those things are amazing. They just get smaller and smaller, don't they? You guys make that one?"

    Sanders nodded. "I'd be lost without it. Especially these days. Who can remember all the numbers? This is more than a telephone: it's my telephone book. See, look." He began to demonstrate the features for Benedict. "It's got a memory for two hundred numbers. You store them by the first three letters of the name." Sanders punched in K-A-H to bring up the international number for Arthur Kahn in Malaysia . He pushed SEND, and heard a long string of electronic beeps. With the country code and area code, it was thirteen beeps.

    `Jesus," Benedict said. "Where are you calling, Mars?"

    `Just about. Malaysia . We've got a factory there."

    DigiCom's Malaysia operation was only a year old, and it was manufacturing the company's new CD-ROM players-units rather like an audio CD player, but intended for computers. It was widely agreed in the business that all information was soon going to be digital, and much of it was going to be stored on these compact disks. Computer programs, databases, even books and magazineseverything was going to be on disk.

    The reason it hadn't already happened was that CD-ROMs were notoriously slow. Users were obliged to wait in front of blank screens while the drives whirred and clicked-and computer users didn't like waiting. In an industry where speeds reliably doubled every eighteen months, CD-ROMs had improved much less in the last five years. DigiCom's SpeedStar technology addressed that problem, with a new generation of drives code-named Twinkle (for "Twinkle, twinkle, little SpeedStar"). Twinkle drives were twice as fast as any in the world. Twinkle was packaged as a small, stand-alone multimedia player with its own screen. You could carry it in your hand, and use it on a bus or a train. It was going to be revolutionary. But now the Malaysia plant was having trouble manufacturing the new fast drives.

    Benedict sipped his coffee. "Is it true you're the only division manager who isn't an engineer?"

    Sanders smiled. "That's right. I'm originally from marketing."

    "Isn't that pretty unusual?" Benedict said.

    "Not really. In marketing, we used to spend a lot of time figuring out what the features of the new products were, and most of us couldn't talk to the engineers. I could. I don't know why. I don't have a technical background, but I could talk to the guys. I knew just enough so they couldn't bullshit me. So pretty soon, I was the one who talked to the engineers.
    Then eight years ago, Garvin asked me if I'd run a division for him. And here I am."

    The call rang through. Sanders glanced at his watch. It was almost midnight in Kuala Lumpur . He hoped Arthur Kahn would still be awake. A moment later there was a click, and a groggy voice said, "Uh. Hello."

    "Arthur, it's Tom."

    Arthur Kahn gave a gravelly cough. "Oh, Tom. Good." Another cough. "You got my fax?"

    "Yes, I got it."

    "Then you know. I don't understand what's going on," Kahn said. "And I spent all day on the line. I had to, with Jafar gone."

    Mohammed Jafar was the line foreman of the Malaysia plant, a very capable young man.
    "Jafar is gone? Why?"

    There was a crackle of static. "He was cursed."

    "I didn't get that."

    "Jafar was cursed by his cousin, so he left."

    "What?"

    "Yeah, if you can believe that. He says his cousin's sister in Johore hired a sorcerer