“But we don’t know exactly where—”
“It doesn’t matter exactly where. Just do it.”
“That means Baretto plus somebody else knows about this. . . .”
“And who gives a damn? Nobody. Just do it, Diane.”
There was a short silence. Kramer stared at the floor, frowning, clearly still unhappy.
“Look,” Doniger said, turning to Gordon. “You remember when Garman was going to get the contract and my old company wasn’t? You remember the press leak?”
“I remember,” Gordon said.
“You were so worried about it,” Doniger said, smirking. He explained to Kramer: “Garman was a fat pig. Then he lost a lot of weight because his wife put him on a diet. We leaked that Garman had inoperable cancer and his company was going to fold. He denied it, but nobody believed him, because of the way he looked. We got the contract. I sent a big basket of fruit to his wife.” He laughed. “But the point is, nobody ever traced the leak to us. All’s fair, Diane. Business is business. Get the goddamn car out in the desert.”
She nodded, but she was still looking at the floor.
“And then,” Doniger said, “I want to know how the hell Traub got into the transit room in the first place. Because he’d already made too many trips, and he had accumulated too many transcription defects. He was past his limit. He wasn’t supposed to make any more trips. He wasn’t cleared for transit. We have a lot of security around that room. So how’d he get in?”
“We think he had a maintenance clearance, to work on the machines,” Kramer said. “He waited until evening, between shifts, and took a machine. But we’re checking all that now.”
“I don’t want you to check it,” Doniger said sarcastically. “I want you to fix it, Diane.”
“We’ll fix it, Bob.”
“You better, goddamn it,” Doniger said. “Because this company now faces three significant problems. And Traub is the least of them. The other two are major. Ultra, ultra, major.”
:
Doniger had always had a gift for the long view. Back in 1984, he had sold TechGate because he foresaw that computer chips were going to “hit the wall.” At the time, this seemed nonsensical. Computer chips were doubling in power every eighteen months, while the cost was halved. But Doniger recognized that these advances were made by cramming components closer and closer together on the chip. It couldn’t go on forever. Eventually, circuits would be so densely packed that the chips would melt from the heat. This implied an upper limit on computer power. Doniger knew that society would demand ever more raw computational power, but he didn’t see any way to accomplish it.
Frustrated, he returned to an earlier interest, superconducting magnetism. He started a second company, Advanced Magnetics, which owned several patents essential for the new Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines that were starting to revolutionize medicine. Advanced Magnetics was paid a quarter of a million dollars in royalties for every MRI machine made. It was “a cash cow,” Doniger once said, “and about as interesting as milking a cow.” Bored and seeking new challenges, he sold out in 1988. He was then twenty-eight years old, and worth a billion dollars. But in his view, he had yet to make his mark.
The following year, 1989, he started ITC.
:
One of Doniger’s heroes was the physicist Richard Feynman. In the early eighties, Feynman had speculated that it might be possible to build a computer using the quantum attributes of atoms. Theoretically, such a “quantum computer” would be billions and billions of times more powerful than any computer ever made. But Feynman’s idea implied a genuinely new technology — a technology that had to be built from scratch, a technology that changed all the rules. Because nobody could see a practical way to build a quantum computer, Feynman’s idea was soon forgotten.
But not by Doniger.
In 1989, Doniger set out to build the first quantum computer. The idea was so radical — and so risky — that he never publicly announced his intention. He blandly named his new company ITC, for International Technology Corporation. He set up his main offices in Geneva, drawing from the pool of physicists working at CERN.
For several years afterward, nothing was heard from Doniger, or his company. People assumed he had retired, if they thought of him at all. It was, after all, common for prominent high-tech entrepreneurs to drop from view, after they had made their fortunes.
In 1994, Time magazine made a list of twenty-five people under the age of forty who were shaping our world. Robert Doniger was not among them. No one cared; no one remembered.
That same year he moved ITC back to the United States, establishing a laboratory facility in Black Rock, New Mexico, one hour north of Albuquerque. A thoughtful observer might have noticed that he had again moved to a location with a pool of available physicists. But there were no observers, thoughtful or otherwise.
So no one noticed when during the 1990s, ITC grew steadily in size. More labs were built on the New Mexico site; more physicists were hired. Doniger’s board of directors grew from six to twelve. All were CEOs of companies that had invested in ITC, or venture capitalists. All had signed draconian nondisclosure agreements requiring them to post a significant personal bond in escrow, to submit to a polygraph test on request, and to allow ITC to tap their phones without notice. In addition, Doniger demanded a minimum investment of $300 million. That was, he explained arrogantly, the cost of a seat on the board. “You want to know what I’m up to, you want to be a part of what we’re doing here, it’s a third of a billion dollars. Take it or leave it. I don’t give a damn either way.”
But of course he did. ITC had a fearsome burn rate: they had gone through more than $3 billion in the last nine years. And Doniger knew he was going to need more.
:
“Problem number one,” Doniger said. “Our capitalization. We’ll need another billion before we see daylight.” He nodded toward the boardroom. “They won’t come up with it. I have to get them to approve three new board members.”
Gordon said, “That’s a tough sell, in that room.”
“I know it is,” Doniger said. “They see the burn rate, and they want to know when it ends. They want to see concrete results. And that’s what I am going to give them today.”
“What concrete results?”
“A victory,” Doniger said. “These dipshits are going to need a victory. Some exciting news about one of the projects.”
Kramer sucked in her breath. Gordon said, “Bob, the projects are all long-term.”
“One of them must be nearing completion. Say, the Dordogne?”
“It’s not. I don’t advise this approach.”
“And I need a victory,” Doniger said. “Professor Johnston has been out there in France with his Yalies for three years on our nickel. We ought to have something to show for it.”
“Not yet, Bob. Anyway, we don’t have all the land.”
“We have enough of the land.”
“Bob . . .”
“Diane will go. She can pressure them nicely.”
“Professor Johnston won’t like it.”
“I’m sure Diane can handle Johnston.”
One of the assistants opened the door to the conference room and looked into the hall. Doniger said, “In a goddamn minute!” But he immediately began walking toward the door.
He looked back at them over his shoulder and said, “Just do it!” And then he went into the room and closed the door.
:
Gordon walked with Kramer down the corridor. Her high heels clicked on the floor. Gordon glanced down and saw that beneath the very correct and corporate black Jil Sander suit, she was wearing black slingback heels. It was the classic Kramer look: seductive and unattainable at the same time.
Gordon said, “Did you know about this before?”
She nodded. “But not for long. He told me an hour ago.”
Gordon said nothing. He suppressed his irritation. Gordon had been with Doniger for twelve years now, since Advanced Magnetics days. At ITC, he had run a major industrial research operation on two continents, employing dozens of physicists, chemists, computer scientists. He’d had to teach himself about superconducting metals, fractal compression, quantum qubits, and high-flow ion exchange. He’d been up to his neck in theoretical physicists — the very worst kind — and yet milestones were reached; development was on schedule; cost overruns were manageable. But despite his success, Doniger still never really confided in him.
Kramer, on the other hand, had always enjoyed a special relationship with Doniger. She had begun as an attorney in an outside law firm, doing work for the company. Doniger thought she was smart and classy, so he hired her. She was his girlfriend for the next year, and even though that was long over, he still listened to her. She’d been able to head off several potential disasters over the years.