ForceNet

by William David

  CHAPTER 5

  In the meantime I was in a hotel out at the airport. There had been a pair of walking boots in the car boot, and while they were a little small and were not smart they looked a lot better and less noticeable than the white hospital slippers. They would do for now. I had dumped the car in the long-term car park, caught the courtesy bus in to the terminal and then a hotel courtesy bus to the Hilton. Checking in had seemed to take forever and I had paid cash which all hotels hate, as they like the flexibility of getting and logging the plastic details. To explain the lack of luggage I had told the reception that the airline had lost it and to let me know if the airline rang with any news of it.

  In the shop in the foyer I had purchased a range of painkillers and then gone to my room. I was seriously hurting. There did not seem to be any part of my body that did not ache, even my feet were protesting at being crippled by the undersized boots! I hung the 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the outside of the door, locked it and then closed the room curtains. In the bathroom I opened my pills, got some water and taking what I guessed would not be a fatal overdose, stripped off my clothes as I walked back in to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed. I hoped I had bought some time as I needed to sleep, and I did.

  CHAPTER 6

  In down town Bristol Alec Bell paced his office. It was late, everyone else had gone for the day and he also needed to get home and get some sleep. It had been a long day, not unusual at the moment, but a day that had started early with the news of the car crash and that Martin was in hospital. Martin was his technical director and a good friend. He was a key part of the company's future and a vital part of the team, particularly at the present time.

  Visiting the hospital he had found Martin unconscious or asleep but a doctor had told him that he was not seriously injured, concussion, severely bruised ribs and some severe skin abrasions was the likely verdict. They would know for sure later when he'd had some rest and came round from the sedative. Alec had been surprised to see that the police were still at the hospital, and while they would not say anything specific it appeared that the car smash might not have been a straightforward accident.

  Bell was CEO of Control Networks Ltd., and as he paced his executive office on the 25th floor of the Control Networks building he wondered if this was just an accident or whether something much more sinister was going on. This niggling thought just added to the tension in his gut. For once he was oblivious to the magnificent view from his office looking down over the sprawling city lights of Bristol, with the harbour and the SS Great Britain a marvellous spectacle below him, and in the distance the Clifton Gorge and the illuminated Brunel's Suspension Bridge clearly visible despite the rain.

  CHAPTER 7

  As I opened my eyes I could not, for a moment, remember where I was. Then it came flooding back. The sun light was doing its best to get round and through the clos ed curtains, a nice day perhaps? I rolled over and a pain shot up my side. After a few moments I tried again and slowly put my legs over the side of the bed, grabbed some pills and staggered to the bathroom. In the bathroom I splashed water over my face and washed the pills down with water. I felt groggy, so I stuck my head under the shower and let it run. After a while I lathered those areas not covered by my chest bandage and washed my hair. It never failed, a hair wash always wakes me up and gets me thinking at normal speed, and I almost felt human again. Drying myself as I stepped back in to the room I took a further dose of pills; providing I was careful the ribs seemed to be under control. Sitting on the bed I started to draw up a list of things to do.

  In the short term I needed a pair of shoes. Then I needed to get out of the hotel. I had been careful not to use a credit card but the airport and surrounds were bristling with CCTV cameras so presumably I would be traced before long. Which led me to another thought. If they, whoever they were, were able to trace my card use then I had to use cash that meant I needed more than I was currently carrying and could get from an ATM. I had better get to the bank.

  I dressed, went down stairs, settled the bill, and caught the courtesy bus back out to the airport where in a shoe shop I bought a pair of trainers. Further along the airport mall I bought some underwear and socks, shirts, a pair of Jeans and a corduroy jacket. Next door I bought a cheap travel bag and in the gents bathroom dressed in fresh clothes. I had to get a move on. There had been no alternative but to use a credit card so if and when they did get on to that I did not want to be around.

  I caught the bus in to Bristol and walked to the bank just round the corner from the office. I filled in a withdrawal form for 5,000 cash and after extensive identity checks the cashier disappeared, possibly to check with higher authority; a nerve racking few minutes in the semi paranoid state I was in. After what seemed an age the cashier returned with additional cash from the safe, logged it in to her till and then counted out my? 5,000. At my request it was mostly tens and twentys, although they did top it up with fifties. Apparently the short notice made that necessary. The cashier looked on as I stuffed a thousand in tens and twenties in to my jacket pocket and put the rest in to the travel bag.

  Outside the sun was shining and it was a lovely day. The bank was at one end of a shopping mall and I wandered down the pedestrian precinct until I found a coffee shop. Inside I queued up and ordered a large latte, but in a mug; I hated latte in a glass. It was not on the menu but I established that they could do me a bacon sandwich and picking up a sachet of HP sauce on the way went and found a table in the gloom at the back of the shop.

  Time to think and plan what to do now. As I sat there I thought back over recent events…

  CHAPTER 8

  The Company I worked for, Control Networks, a software systems company, was a young company at a particularly delicate stage of development. Control Networks was already a half billion pound corporation, expanding rapidly, and likely to continue to do so if it could continue to survive the growing pains. Alec Bell the CEO, and I had founded the Company some 8 years ago and had managed to build a strong team in Bristol, the same area where both of us had been brought up. With Alec running the company as CEO, I was the Technical Director or CTO and among other things led the team working on the ForceNet project development that was close to stage one completion.

  With the help of a cash injection from a venture capitalist a few years ago growth had been meteoric and exciting if somewhat bumpy and stressful at times. The ForceNet product had been developed as a result of an extensive research and development programme and it was the stage one completion of this development that was currently under test. ForceNet would significantly add to our product offering and this first stage development would provide the product for our next growth phase, although it only represented a part of the long-term plan.

  A successful launch of ForceNet would accelerate sales growth, so as we waited for the outcome of testing and trials the mounting tension in the whole senior team was palpable. All of the senior team had a stake in the future success of the Company, and while at the moment we had to conserve cash and therefore did not pay dividends, that would eventually change.

  An alpha release of software had been on test for some time and those tests were close to completion; I was receiving progress reports daily. Once the tests were completed and all of the fixes and changes had been incorporated in to the core software and satisfactorily retested then we would compile a beta release for a controlled and progressive release at up to 5 sites. These had been carefully selected, and were with some suitable long term committed customers that we could rely on and where the initial application of the product was not critical to their operation. The alpha phase was close to completion and we expected to move to beta in the next week or so.

  Adding to the tension at senior management levels was the fact that Control Networks was about to go for an IPO on the London Market. The prospectus was almost finished, due diligence had been completed and was waiting for a sign off, and the brokers envisaged giving the go ahead to the board in the next 2 weeks.
Once finally approved by the board then the brokers would be watching the market and arranging a float date with the market authorities.

  The Company needed a substantial injection of funds to take ForceNet to market while at the same time getting on with developing stages 2 and 3. Although we were now earning substantial trading income, the heavy research programme meant that we were still consuming significantly more cash than we were earning. It was deemed that the best route to raise more cash was through an IPO rather than another round of Venture Capital or possibly bank finance; the latter would have been difficult to achieve at our development stage. We were looking to raise? 250 million and it was planned that an IPO would provide those funds while at the same time allowing the venture capitalists to sell some or all of their shares in to the float, thereby realising on their investment. Other shareholders would not be able to sell their shareholdings for at least a year but potentially I was going to become a rich man, even if only on paper at first. That did not seem so important at the moment, I just felt glad to be alive and wanted to stay that way!

  In some ways it was unfortunate that we were at such a critical stage of new product development at the same time as raising money on the market. Preparing for the float was a major distraction from the business for the whole team, and in particular for Alec, and Bill Williams our Financial Director, but one had to go to the market when the opportunity was right and the ForceNet product gave the Company the kind of “blue-sky” appeal that gave stockbrokers and bankers wet dreams.

  To further complicate matters, a few weeks ago Alec had received a call from a boutique investment bank, Allied Grampian, who wanted to come and see him. It transpired that an unnamed group was interested to know if the Company was for sale. The price hinted at looked good but not good enough to urgently take back to the board when we were so far down the IPO route, so after an informal ring around the directors we decided not to take it further.

  Despite intense in-house security there were already rumours in the market that the Company was about to introduce a major new product and this was stimulating interest in the Company. The brokers were able to project a high float price to encourage us to take the IPO route. They and the lawyers and accountants would make a killing in fees if the float were successful.

  ForceNet was a powerful piece of software and it had become clear over the past year that its military applications were even more potent than the large-scale commercial applications for which it had originally been developed. Eighteen months ago, Tom Gale, one of the senior developers had asked for a meeting with Alec and I. Tom was a games freak, particularly computer war games, and had a passionate interest in military hardware. He ’d claimed that with some adaptation, ForceNet had the potential capacity to control and manage multiple squadrons or large numbers of unmanned aircraft or drones. If ForceNet could, as Tom believed it could, facilitate a major step forward in the effective a nd instant control of units and /or fleets of unmanned aircraft to allow rapid decision making and action in attack or defence situations the military implications were amazing. The secret was in the user interface of ForceNet that provided a constant detailed overview that allowed rapid decision-making at varying levels. It had the potential, to put whoever had access to it, years ahead in this technology. Drone technology is advancing rapidly not only for military applications but also for commercial use so if our product was applicable then it was a huge potential market for the company.

  At first Alec and I had been a bit shaken by this and somewhat sceptical, but asked Tom to let us have a short confidential report on his ideas, while we considered what to do next. Tom had said he would do so and also told us that he had an old student friend at the Ministry of Defence whom he thought it might be worth talking to.

  It turned out that the “old student friend”, Dean Jones, was more than just any one at the MoD, he was a recognised expert on military drones or unmanned aircraft! He ’s co me to see us and I immediately smelled a rat. Although he did not refer to it directly he seemed to have a “feeling”, for ForceNet.

  Afterwards Alec and I had grilled Tom but he denied that he had leaked any ForceNet information, although under pressure it became clear that he and Dean Jones had on several occasions had free wheeling speculative discussions on the issues involved in controlling and developing squadrons of unmanned aircraft.

  Two days later Alec had received a call from a Nick Ridley, a 'mandarin' at the Ministry of Defence. He wa nted some of his team to come a long for an informal chat, and a few days later a deputation of five people from the MoD had arrived. They understood that we had a new product called ForceNet, could they have some detailed information? Did we design the product for military application? Who were we planning to sell it too? Were there any prospective customers; if so who were they and had they seen the product in detail? They were also interested in our security set up. What were our procedures? How was the software protected?

  The Company has what all of the staff believe are draconian security procedures controlling premises, staff vetting, and software control and compilation. We were targeting our new software at very large corporations, and they were limited in number, and there were some key competitors in the market, particularly in the US, so we did not want our concepts and designs leaking. Alec in particular, was anal at ensuring security procedures were followed.

  Present at the meeting with the MoD had been a somewhat dour looking Scotsman called Gordon Stewart, who seemed to have a 'watching' brief and contributed little to the meeting. At the end of the meeting however, as everyone was leaving, he took Alec to one side and suggested that the MoD interest should not be taken lightly and could be an interesting opportunity for the company.

  “In what was the MoD interested?” Alec had asked.

  “Not for me to say on that.”

  He ’d then offered to send people in to overview our security arrangements. Alec had accepted the offer but his jaw dropped when Stewart asked if we had recognised that it was possible that the ForceNet development could be restricted and classified in the national interest. He had refused to clarify what he meant and left.

  CHAPTER 9

  Life for me had become further complicated with the arrival of my brother at my house one evening. Now, as I sat there at the back of the coffee shop drinking a second coffee I recalled that evening.

  Adrian is 10 years my junior and is at Cambridge where he is studying Mathematics. As brothers go we are very different. We both share the interest in Mathematics but whereas I am competent and managed a good degree, he is much cleverer and is probably going to be recognised as a brilliant mathematician one day. Whereas I am reasonably conventional and joined the commercial world when I graduated, he has stayed on to do a PhD at Cambridge and is something of a nerd with limited social skills and a passion for playing with computers. We are not particularly close but as my younger brother I had always looked after him following the de ath of our parents when I was seventeen. These days he didn't really need much looking after except for the occasional 'loan' to supplement his student finances. When I ’d opened the door to him that evening that was what I expected he had come for.

  “Hi Adrian, this is a surprise, good to see you. Come on in.”

  “Thanks, sorry I didn't call first.”

  “No matter, good to see you; get your coat off and come on through to the lounge. Do want a beer?”

  I ’d retrieved beers for us both from the kitchen and we ’d both sat down in front of the log fire that was glowing in the old fireplace. It was a cold night and as I had not brought any work home I had planned to sit in front of the fire and watch a movie. “Well, how are you?” I ’d asked, “how is the thesis going, are you nearly there? I don't expect I will fully understand it but I would love to read it when you are finished.”

  “It's going well,” he ’d responded. “I am working with a team in the area of quantum physics and I am focused on probability problems. We have been making some good prog
ress and hopefully I will have enough for my thesis in about six months time. It's a really fascinating subject and I have been offered a job working with this team when I have finished the PhD.”

  “That sounds like good news. Have you eaten, I was just going to knock together a pasta, easy for me to increase the quantity for you?”

  “That would be great,” he said as he ’d followed me through to the kitchen, where I ’d put water on the stove to cook the pasta and began grating the Parmesan, and chopping the tomatoes and smoked bacon. “You have a really nice place here.”

  “Well it is nice to have it all finished and not be coming home to a builders mess every night.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Fifteen minutes later we ’d sat down again in front of the fire with a bowl of pasta and a glass of Brolio, my favourite Chianti.

  “This is good, I see you have not lost your culinary skills,” said Adrian, “worth the journey just for the food!”

  I ’d smiled, “talking of journeys, I assume you will stay tonight? The spare bedroom is ready and waiting.”

  “Yes, OK thanks.”

  We had cleared the empty food bowls in to the kitchen and the dishwasher and sat down again with a second glass of wine.