Infinite Exposure

by Roland Hughes

  The place smelled incredible when Jennifer let him in. He had some fine Russian meals over the last few days, but he was dying for some American cooking. Even McDonald's was sounding like good American cooking to him at this point. He made a point to compliment Jennifer on the meal several times. When they were done and just drinking wine she told him to gather and do the dishes.

  It wasn't really something Jeremy had thought about. There wasn't a dish washer in this place like most American apartments had. He had wondered why they bought a bottle of liquid dish soap, now he knew.

  Jennifer disappeared into his bedroom with the black backpack and closed the door. Just about the time Jeremy had finished washing everything, he heard her call his name. He nearly dropped the plate he was drying when he saw her. She had packed a lot more than stockings!

  After an amazing night, Jeremy heard Jennifer get up early. It was barely light out and she was dressing, then stuffing things into the backpack. Apparently the backpack had also contained gym shoes and a jogging outfit because that is what she was wearing and Jeremy didn't recognize it as his. She kissed him lightly and apologized for waking him, but she needed to get back to her hotel and get cleaned up for work.

  “I don't think the boss will dock your pay,” he said groggily.

  She laughed and said, “I don't speak enough Russian to tell Susan to wait for me.” Part of Susan's duties with the car was to play chauffeur on the days she worked. Making her work every day the team was there would have been a burden, but she was on break from university and wouldn't return to taking classes for another few weeks. Jeremy promised she only had to work when she didn't have class once the semester started. Her friends all wanted to work at Jeremy's company when she showed them the car. None of them had a car, but most had a driver's license.

  The last full day Jennifer was there was kind of sad for Jeremy. In all of the hustle and bustle he had lost track of the days. First Global had made their announcement about being the first customer for Pytho Corporation and their stock was climbing dramatically. The nice thing about the brokerage accounts his firm had was that they all participated in after-hours trading. With another office on the other side of the world, Group Lenny could now work their plays around the clock without someone having to sleep at the office or stay up all night at home. Still, Jeremy was going to miss Jennifer. She had spent three nights at his place and cooked him three incredible meals. With her and the rest of the team leaving the next morning, he felt kind of like the vacation was ending and he was the only kid left standing on the beach.

  Susan noticed his sadness the morning after the others had left. At first she thought it was a hang over because they had all gone over to the hotel and drank like fish. When lunch arrived, she struck up a conversation.

  “Don't look so sad, you're not alone.”

  “I'm a long way from home and a fish out of water here,” he responded.

  “At least you will be busy all next week. We have resumes to go through and your computer operator arrives early next week. Should I pick him up at the airport?”

  “That would be wonderful if you could. Do you have his flight schedule and a photo?”

  “Yes, Jennifer got that for me before she left.”

  Hearing the name made Jeremy think about how his nights were going to be from now on. Susan noticed a change behind his eyes and decided it was time to broach the subject.

  “You have some clothes suitable for going to a club tonight don't you?”

  Jeremy's mind definitely spun trying to figure out where that came from. “What kind of club?”

  “A dance club.”

  “I try not to dance unless I'm drunk at a wedding. I'm more of a sports bar kind of guy.”

  “Well, you have plans to go to one tonight.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. It was obvious between you and Jennifer. I asked. She told me about 'other related duties.' I have boyfriend so cannot perform. Five of my girlfriends would like nothing better than to hang out with good-looking, rich American though. Your needs will be taken care of tonight, I am certain of that.”

  “I'm not rich.”

  “They see the car, that is all they need to see. Most people here cannot afford car. One thing I must say though, because I like you and like working here.”

  “Go on,” Jeremy said, dreading where this was going.

  “Most girls at college also cannot afford to be on, how you say, 'pill'?”

  Jeremy nodded.

  “Don't believe them if they tell you that. Girls here, attracted to money, tend to latch onto it with a child.”

  “Good information. I wouldn't want any form of relationship here. There is someone I care about back home, not dating, but sleeping together. I am flying back to see her for New Year's Eve by the way. I do plan on training people here and leaving once they are capable of running the place. It is doubtful I will ever return.”

  “Well, if things don't work out with my boyfriend I would consider performing 'other related duties', but you need to provide for the pill.”

  “You don't have to Susan. I rely on you far too much to lose you.”

  “I know, that's why I offered.”

  ***

  Nikolaus had just gotten off the phone with his liaison provided by the Chinese government. Even with the container of undocumented cash buying everything possible to push the project along, they were still a full three months from having the site up and running.

  Concrete simply took too long to cure. All of the power and utilities had been roughed in, but once all of the footings were poured they had to wait three days for them to cure. The crew erecting the security fence was the only crew that could work during that time. Once the footings had cured, both shifts welded up rebar and poured so much concrete they ran out of forms. Again they had to wait days because there were no more forms to be had. It was the peak of construction season over there. The only crew working then was the truck drivers hauling in concrete mix and rebar.

  No doubt about it, Nikolaus was in a pissy mood just like his team doing the harvesting. That situation was nearing open revolt. He couldn't blame them. They worked 12 days straight and got two off. One worked all day harvesting and the other worked all night. The incinerator simply didn't shut off. It was not supposed to happen like this. It was supposed to be another six to eight months before they were trying to handle this quantity. The Lutton bombing had really screwed the operation. Granted, it made selling the second secured location easy, but Nikolaus was thinking about finding a place to build a third now.

  He had sized the second site for about half of the freezer storage of the first site. There were twice as many labs and dorm rooms at the new location. The incinerator was now a double incinerator. Nikolaus still hadn't had time to put together a team to work there. Not a lot of people were going to want to go to China.

  Nikolaus had some people looking for an abandoned factory or some other large site which could be taken over. The party would purchase the land and Nikolaus would pay for the interior modifications with some containers of cash. There had to be a factory in a somewhat remote location which they could obtain. The only trouble was it needed to be within driving distance of the interrogation camp. OK, there were two problems. Nikolaus would need to find a team to work it as well.

  While he was thinking about money, he used his logon ID to check inventory on the special products for Dimitri's distributor. “Egads!” he said when he saw the numbers. “This stuff is piling up like snow in the winter.”

  He clicked over to the page with their latest invoices. Every week they placed close to a $2 million order and paid for it within three days. The latest invoice showed the head corporate office had gotten their way. Some of the premium drugs were on this invoice. They had taken only seven containers of currency, but at least they had cleaned out most of the non-euro, non-dollar currencies. There were still the two containers of Indian currency which Nikolaus hoped Hans would use, but at least
all of the other stuff was gone.

  The problem appeared not to be on the distributor's end. They were taking a few containers each time, just like they said. The problem was the money coming in. Nikolaus did not know how much money was in any given container. His conversation with Hans had educated him about Twinkies. Each Twinkie was a stack of money roughly one third of a meter high. They were only one bill wide and tightly wrapped in plastic shrink wrap. The container Hans had received had five of them in it.

  When you think of someone strongly, there is some force in the universe which communicates that fact to them. Nikolaus was reminded of this force the same way everybody else is reminded. The phone beside him rang and it was Hans.

  “Hello Nikolaus.”

  “How are things going?”

  “We are getting ready to bag three operators, but going to leave the original trainer in play for a few days. We are still trying to determine what his plan is and who the team members are.”

  “I trust in your judgment.”

  “You wouldn't happen to have one of these care packages in a different flavor would you?”

  “Such as?”

  “Euros”

  “Yes. Once again, I don't know how much would be in it.”

  “No problem. One this size should be way more than they need.”

  “I will fax you a shipping address, if you think you can get it shipped to Pakistan.”

  “Why there?”

  “It's where we need to hire the chopper to pick these guys up at sea. We don't have friends in government here. Getting people out of the country means finding a boat to sneak them on and getting them picked up in international waters.”

  “We should consider using some of the care packages to purchase a long-range deep water boat, like a yacht, but a fast one.”

  “I wouldn't. We never know where we will be or how we will need to transport. A nine passenger private jet registered to someone squeaky clean with landing rights in Nuremberg would be more useful. Then again, a Huey set up for troop transport would be even better. They have a 1,200 mile range if I remember correctly. Still, you have to have some place to land it and a crew to fly it and clearance with air traffic. It is probably best we simply grease palms and let others take the transportation risk.”

  “Fax me the address in Pakistan. I will have the shipment arrive there tomorrow. Someone will need to sign for it.”

  “We have one person there now. I will call and make certain they are there tomorrow morning. Then I will let the suit know about his care package.”

  “Can I send you another care package?”

  “I still have two Twinkies left.”

  ***

  Lenny read the article from one of his other analysts and then forwarded it to Jeremy so he could read it when he woke up in a few hours. It was Kent's interview about Pytho Corporation's new banking product. He was even kind enough to state they hoped to save $12 million per year by switching to it. The stock was spiking. The banking sector needed some bright news and this was timed just about perfectly. The company was due to release a quarterly report in a couple of weeks and all of the financial analysts were racing to raise their projections higher than the last analyst.

  It was nice the way Dimitri had set up the company on the other end. Rather than Dimitri making all of the investments, Jeremy was handling most of them through the other division. There was only about $100 million in play through Dimitri.

  He had sent them a very bland email that auditors couldn't charge him on telling them they should start unloading when the stock went up over $18. Of course, by the time he finished typing that email the stock was up over $22 and still climbing. Lenny did something he didn't usually do. He instructed the trading system to do a Market Sell of their entire First Global and Pytho positions. Both were well above the initial targets, which meant there was no reason to hang around. Those who get too greedy go broke or go to jail.

  Due to the way the other division was set up, it had to be an isolated entity on the shared computer system. It ran all of the same software, just had a different database to store account, position, and transaction information. Lenny had the ability to log in and start the selling, but he decided to let that money ride until Jeremy woke up 12 hours from now.

  He picked up a disposable cell phone and called the office in the Ukraine. When he got Jeremy's voicemail, he left a message. “Jeremy, dump all of your Pytho and First Global as soon as you get in. It is up well over our target. Watch it in after-hours and start shorting when it looks like it has hit a plateau.”

  He couldn't wait for Jeremy to start finding Russian and European stocks worth a play. Group Lenny would really be able to grow then. Indeed, after this series of plays, they were going to need to find some losses or issue some loans to get the cash out of the accounts.

  Lenny decided to run the intra-day position report. When he scrolled down to the bottom and looked at total cash on hand his mount went dry.

  ***

  Stacie was dressed for success today. Kathryn had tapped her to assist with the Friday presentation to Granite National. The Pytho sales rep had gotten nowhere trying to go through the Director of IT. Stacie's impression of the guy was that all he could do was fill out an order form when it came to sales. Kathryn managed to pull some strings and now Big Four Consulting was leading the presentation to the board.

  The Director of IT was dead set against this deal. Kathryn had been unsuccessful in keeping him out of the conference room. He wasn't invited, but he barged in anyway. This was going to be a cut-throat presentation. Since the man barged in, Kathryn wasn't pulling any punches. After George got done with a small Pytho dog and pony show about the wonderful new reporting, Web accessibility, and international aspect of the software, Kathryn went into her PowerPoint presentation.

  Kathryn went straight for the jugular. Her first slide was a spreadsheet showing what Granite National listed in their last quarterly report as IT expenditures. She admitted to using a national average when figuring in the cost of benefits for the large IT staff. She had brow beaten George into low balling the price to them so the “after” picture looked so much rosier. Of course Big Four Consulting would be getting a cut from helping train all of their locations. Naturally, when you totaled up the proposal and compared it to their cost now, the bank would be saving over $2 million per year.

  The Director of IT was putting up quite a struggle in the conference room, but Stacie admired the way Kathryn handled him, by answering some questions, ignoring and diverting others. Her killer stroke was asking the board if they had heard about First Global's purchase of this system. She pointed out Stacie had just gotten back from France, having helped train the tellers for the French roll-out, which completed in only a couple of weeks and was running smoothly.

  When the Director of IT took the bait and asked the board if they could afford to be down for a couple of weeks operating only a handful of locations, Stacie volunteered the two week roll-out was because First Global had to put standardized PCs on the teller desks and they opted to do it as part of the roll-out instead of in advance. If their tellers already had PCs running at their windows, then the bank could literally bring them in for a Sunday afternoon training session and start operations on a Monday, assuming the data mapping and conversion was completed either late Saturday evening or early Sunday morning.

  Kathryn was loving this girl! The other skirts and heels were simply there to drain blood from the brain, but this girl could drain and punch. She continued on, “Since your tellers already have PCs at their windows, a flash cut will work best for you. Simply have them log into the new application on Monday morning. If some horrible problem is discovered they can simply log back into the other application and we can migrate the transactions they did over to the new system once that problem is rectified.”

  The only friend the Director of IT had on the board spoke up to try and save his friend's job. “This is all well and good, but the conversion won't
be free and the cash position of the bank is not such we can do a huge cash outlay to purchase a new system which does what our existing system does.”

  Finally, George did something. “We can set up a payment schedule so you don't begin paying until you have started to recognize the savings of the new system. We realize you will want to have it in place for at least a quarter to give you time to reap the benefits of staff reduction and terminate the maintenance contracts on your heritage equipment. Coupled with the other business changes your company has spoken about publicly, this system should have the bank off the FDIC watch list in less than a year.”

  There was the knife in the back. The bank was on the watch list and in danger of being seized by the government to prevent a failure. Migrating to this system and showing the regulatory agency the amount of money they will save in salary and benefits alone would buy them a good six months, if not longer. If the first payment wouldn't come until the quarter following installation, the board had no choice. Were a proposal like this leaked to the shareholders after it was turned down they would all be summarily tossed out. It was no longer a sales pitch, it was a bum rush.

  Of course the board of directors thanked them for the presentation and said they had to discuss matters among themselves. They would get back to Pytho Corporation some time next week with a response. Everyone in the room knew there was little they could do other than stall the payments off for as long as humanly possible. If they opted to take a pass, news of this presentation would be leaked to financial analysts and all over the business news a few hours later. Then they would be seized. Nothing like holding a gun to their heads to make a sale, thought Kathryn. She made a mental note to have her broker buy some more Pytho stock.

  Stacie returned home and dashed off an email to Jeremy telling him about the sales pitch today and that Pytho was sure to be announcing another sale in about a week. She asked him if he was going to buy some more Pytho stock for her based on this news or just let it ride. In closing, she told him she loved him. Truth was, she knew they would both sleep with other people while apart, but she was starting to fall for this guy. Perhaps it was just the thought of the life she could lead with the money he was going to make. At this point, she didn't care. He was fun to be with and great in bed. When you add in about to be very wealthy it was difficult for a girl not to imagine herself wearing a ring.