Disclosure_ A Novel - Michael Crichton [76]
“I’ll be damned,” he said aloud.
He thumbed back quickly to the first article, to look at the original picture of Johnson. He compared it to the later one. There was no doubt about what she had done. He read the rest of the first article:
As a new arrival to DigiCom, Ms. Johnson brings her considerable business acumen, her sparkling humor, and her sizzling softball pitch. She’s a major addition to the DigiCom team! Welcome, Meredith!
Her admiring friends are never surprised to learn that Meredith was once a finalist in the Miss Teen Connecticut contest. In her student days at Vassar, Meredith was a valued member of both the tennis team and the debating society. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, she took her major in psychology, with a minor in abnormal psych. Hope you won’t be needing that around here, Meredith! At Stanford, she obtained her MBA with honors, graduating near the top of her class. Meredith told us, “I am delighted to join DigiCom and I look forward to an exciting career with this forward-looking company.” We couldn’t have said it better, Ms. Johnson!
“No shit,” Sanders said. He had known almost none of this. From the start, Meredith had been based in Cupertino; Sanders never saw her. The one time he had run into her was soon after her arrival, before she changed her hair. Her hair—and what else?
He looked carefully at the two pictures. Something else was subtly different. Had she had plastic surgery? It was impossible to know. But her appearance was definitely changed between the two portraits.
He moved through the remaining issues of the magazine quickly now, convinced that he had learned what there was to know. Now he skimmed only the headlines:
This final headline ran above a lengthy profile of Johnson, well placed on the second page of the magazine. It had appeared in ComLine only two issues ago. Seeing it now, Sanders realized that the article was intended for internal consumption—softening up the beachhead before the June landing. This article was a trial balloon that Cupertino had floated, to see if Meredith would be acceptable to run the technical divisions in Seattle. The only trouble was, Sanders never saw it. And nobody had ever mentioned it to him.
The article stressed the technical savvy that Johnson had acquired during her years with the company. She was quoted as saying, “I began my career working in technical areas, back with Novell. The technical fields have always been my first love; I’d love to go back to it. After all, strong technical innovation lies at the heart of a forward-looking company like DigiCom. Any good manager here must be able to run the technical divisions.”
There it was.
He looked at the date: May 2. Published six weeks ago. Which meant that the article had been written at least two weeks before that.
As Mark Lewyn had suspected, Meredith Johnson knew she was going to be the head of the Advanced Products Division at least two months ago. Which meant, in turn, that Sanders had never been under consideration to become division head. He had never had a chance.
It was a done deal.
Months ago.
Sanders swore, took the articles over to the Xerox machine and copied them, then put the stacks back on the shelf, and left the press office.
He got on the elevator. Mark Lewyn was there. Sanders said, “Hi, Mark.” Lewyn didn’t answer. Sanders pushed the button for the ground floor.
The doors closed.
“I just hope you know what the fuck you’re doing,” Lewyn said angrily.
“I think I do.”
“Because you could fuck this thing up for everybody. You know that?”
“Fuck what up?”
“Just because you got your ass in the sling, it’s not our problem.”
“Nobody said it was.”
“I don’t know what’s the matter with you,” Lewyn said. “You’re late for work, you don’t call me when you say you will . . . What is