Disclosure_ A Novel - Michael Crichton [136]
What could he do?
Nothing.
Fernandez said, “Who do you think this ‘Afriend’ is?”
“I don’t know.”
“Suppose you had to guess.”
“I don’t know.”
“What comes into your mind?” she said.
He considered the possibility that ‘Afriend’ was Mary Anne Hunter. But Mary Anne wasn’t really a technical person; her strength was marketing. She wasn’t likely to be sending routed messages over the Internet. She probably didn’t know what the Internet was. So: not Mary Anne.
And not Mark Lewyn. Lewyn was furious at him.
Don Cherry? Sanders paused, considering that. In a way, this was just like Cherry. But the only time that Sanders had seen him since this began, Cherry had been distinctly unfriendly.
Not Cherry.
Then who else could it be? Those were the only people with executive sysop access in Seattle. Hunter, Lewyn, Cherry. A short list.
Stephanie Kaplan? Unlikely. At heart, Kaplan was plodding and unimaginative. And she didn’t know enough about computers to do this.
Was it somebody outside the company? It could be Gary Bosak, he thought. Gary probably felt guilty about having turned his back on Sanders. And Gary had a hacker’s devious instincts—and a hacker’s sense of humor.
It might very well be Gary.
But it still didn’t do Sanders any good.
You were always good at technical problems. That was always your strength.
He pulled out the Twinkle CD-ROM drive, still in plastic. Why would they want it wrapped that way?
Never mind, he thought. Stay focused.
There was something wrong with the drive. If he knew what, he would have the answer. Who would know?
Wrapped in plastic.
It was something to do with the production line. It must be. He fumbled with the material on his desk and found the DAT cartridge. He inserted it into the machine.
It came up, showing his conversation with Arthur Kahn. Kahn was on one side of the screen, Sanders on the other.
Behind Arthur, the brightly lit assembly line beneath banks of fluorescent lights. Kahn coughed, and rubbed his chin. “Hello, Tom. How are you?”
“I’m fine, Arthur,” he said.
“Well, good. I’m sorry about the new organization.”
But Sanders wasn’t listening to the conversation. He was looking at Kahn. He noticed now that Kahn was standing very close to the camera, so close that his features were slightly blurred, out of focus. His face was large, and blocked any clear view of the production line behind him. “You know how I feel personally,” Kahn was saying, on the screen.
His face was blocking the line.
Sanders watched a moment more, then switched the tape off.
“Let’s go downstairs,” he said.
“You have an idea?”
“Call it a last-ditch hope,” he said.
The lights clicked on, harsh lights shining on the tables of the Diagnostic team. Fernandez said, “What is this place?”
“This is where they check the drives.”
“The drives that don’t work?”
“Right.”
Fernandez gave a little shrug. “I’m afraid I’m not—”
“Me neither,” Sanders said. “I’m not a technical person. I can just read people.”
She looked around the room. “Can you read this?”
He sighed. “No.”
Fernandez said, “Are they finished?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
And then he saw it. They were finished. They had to be. Because otherwise the Diagnostics team would be working all night, trying to get ready for the meeting tomorrow. But they had covered the tables up and gone to their professional association meeting because they were finished.
The problem was solved.
Everybody knew it but him.
That was why they had only opened three drives. They didn’t need to open the others. And they had asked for them to be sealed in plastic . . .
Because . . .
The punctures . . .
“Air,” he said.
“Air?”
“They think it’s the air.”
“What air?” she said.
“The air in the plant.”
“The plant in Malaysia?”
“Right.”
“This is about air in Malaysia?”
“No. Air in the plant.”
He looked again at the notebook on the table. “PPU” followed by a row of figures. PPU stood for “particulates per unit.” It was the standard measure of air cleanli ness in