The First Billion

It's bullshit, Gavallan thought, perusing the summaries. Everything the Private Eye-PO had said is patently false. Unadulterated garbage. And again, he wondered who the man could be, why he was trying to savage Mercury, and why he was making the issue so personal, repeatedly mentioning Gavallan's pride.

When they'd finished with section one, Meg directed them to section three, titled "Company Infrastructure," which contained questionnaires filled out by Mercury's management. In an expectant silence, Gavallan and the others read one job description after another, all dictated by the eager and capable executives who worked at Mercury Broadband. Finally, he came upon one provided by a man he knew, Václav Panišc, Mercury's CTO- chief technical officer- of European operations, a Czech-born doctor of electrical engineering, formerly a professor of computer science at Brno University.

Gavallan had toured Mercury's Prague office in Panišc's company. In his mind, he saw the cool marble floors, the legions of busy workers glued to their workstations, the aisles of servers, routers, and switches housed in trim glass cabinetry. One wall in the office's conference room displayed a map of Mercury's European operations and highlighted its expansion plans. Red fairy lamps depicted network operations centers, white lines denoted the cable or satellite connections, blue lights indicated cities with over twenty thousand subscribers, and green lights showed areas where service was to be offered within twenty-four months. Mercury was driving west to Berlin, south to Budapest, north to the Baltic republics, and east to the oil and mining boomtowns of Siberia. Standing there, Gavallan had felt the company's pulse as surely as if it were his own.

"There's not a scrap in here," said Tony Llewellyn-Davies. "Mercury's as clean as a whistle. Bravo, Meg. Well done, Jett. There's absolutely nothing to worry about, at least nothing we could see."

"That doesn't excuse us if we're wrong," cautioned Gavallan. "Our name's still on the prospectus."

"Not my name, Jett," Bruce Jay Tustin pointed out frankly. "She goes south, you're on your own."

"Thank you, Bruce. You're comforting as usual."

"My pleasure," replied Tustin. "Naturally, I do expect to get your office while you're doing your time in the pokey- oh, excuse me, I mean the men's correctional facility. I've always loved the view."

"Please, Bruce," cut in Tony Llewellyn-Davies, his cheeks pink with anger. "You're being exceptionally rude, even for yourself." He offered Gavallan a look of perfect exasperation, then turned back to Tustin. "You know damned well we agreed I was to get the office."

"No, me," said Meg. "The office is mine. Age before beauty, gents."

Everyone laughed, and the tension in the room was cut by half.

"Thanks, fellas. Thanks, lady," said Gavallan. "I appreciate your efforts. Now if we can finish up, I believe we're scheduled to talk to Silber, Goldi, and Grimm."

Meg Kratzer punched some numbers on the phone. "I've got Jean-Jacques Pillonel, their MD, on conference when we're ready"- "MD" in this case meaning "managing director."

Gavallan reached a hand over the notebook and activated the speakerphone. "Jean-Jacques, it's Jett Gavallan. Good morning."

"Bonjour, Jett. Ça va?"

"We've got a minor problem over here. Just a headache, I'm sure. Meg tells me she's gone over it with you. Can you help?"

"Jett, this is nonsense. I read this web page already. Mercury is here in Geneva with us. We spent a week camping in their offices. Certainly there's no question of revenues; we've got the bank statements from UBS and Credit Suisse."

"Jean-Jacques, no one is questioning the revenues. It's a matter of the physical assets." Gavallan leaned over to Meg Kratzer and whispered, "They handled that too, right?" She nodded, and he said into the speakerphone, "Who did the on-site inventory?"

"Mostly, we hired independent specialists," Pillonel replied. "Systems engineers, information technology guys, you know. I supervised the project myself. A favor for my American friends. I know this is a big deal for you."

"Thank you, Jean-Jacques," said Meg, as Gavallan and everyone else at the table rolled their eyes.

"Jett, listen, no worries, my friend. We checked Mercury up and down. We even look in their shorts and count their pubics, you know. Forget this guy on the Net. Je te dis, ça va."

Tustin lobbed an arm across the table and punched the mute button. "Ça va, ça va. Same thing the fuckin' frogs said about the Maginot Line. It ees inveencible! Look how that turned out."

"He's Swiss, Bruce," Meg pointed out.

Tustin shrugged. "Swiss. French. Whatever. A frog's a frog."

The room tittered nervously and Tustin turned off the mute.

"And Moscow?" asked Gavallan. "Who did you send?"

"I went myself."