Jeff finds himself in Silicon Valley where he is asked to investigate claims by a gregarious Frenchman that his neural network electronic technology actually works. He meets up again with the enchanting Nancy, the FBI agent he had worked with in Atlanta where they fell in love while he was still married, and again in Washington DC Kathy puts romance back into Jeff’s life as he finds himself hounded by financially-desperate Europeans so determined to push their questionable technology―men so desperate that they will stop at nothing, even Jeff’s murder. The excitement will make the reader gasp, tragedy will make the reader cry, romance will make the reader sigh.
Chapter 20 of Silicon Gulch … They decide to expose the Frenchman!
Thursday 1:44 PM: The Final Vote
At the meeting that afternoon they consider the alternatives, and decide to do the Sherlock Plan which will put Gerard and Mikl in the same room after they tell Gerard his gravy train is cut off and Mikl that Gerard is a fraud.
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- Chris Lamela
Author contact: chris@chrislamela.com, 707-566-8790 PST
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Thursday
1:44 PM: The Final Vote
Ten minutes later they walked into the ops room. Jeff looked along the
wall near the couches seeing sandwiches stacked along with salads and drinks.
He pulled Nancy by the arm walking up to the table, heaping plates full of
food, grabbing sodas with Jeff balancing things carefully with his folio tucked
under his right arm, heading into the conference room.
The table was surrounded by mouths happily chomping on sandwiches and
potato salad and coleslaw and slurps of sodas were heard all the way around.
"Okay people," Arnie stood up wiping his mouth, setting his
napkin down. "It's exactly one o'clock, we have only an hour. Tim!"
he pointed to the spy-guy who was just taking a big bite of sandwich, "can
we get those transcripts around please?"
Tim motioned with his hand standing up still chewing, passing a stack of
stapled sets of transcripts to his right, the stack making its way around the
table.
"Take a look at this, but I think Nancy and Jeff can pretty much
give us a synopsis," he waved to them sitting back down, food immediately
back in his mouth.
Nancy looked around the table, took a long drink of her soda, "Not
much to say, as you can see. Jeff and I both stayed up late last night. We really
boned up on these guys' technology called radial basis function compound
classification. It's a big mouthful of words for technology that has the
ability to do advanced image recognition and tracking, possibly for other
advanced uses like true speech recognition, not just speaking and typing."
She glanced to Jeff, "That about summarizes it, right?" He nodded
chewing.
"Anyway, we discovered two most important things today. The first
is that their technology is actually pretty primitive. It certainly has the
capability to become more advanced to meet the needs for the UAV application,
there's almost no question about that. As for speech recognition, nobody knows."
She reached for her drink.
"But here's the bombshell." She looked around to see some
people holding the transcript reading as they ate. "But first I've got to
tell you that Jeff played this soooooo well."
Jeff finally had his mouth empty, "No, I didn't, we played this so well!" He turned
to the faces around the table, "We both equipped ourselves with just
enough information to be dangerous. And we were lethal. When you read the transcripts you should try to picture
that Nancy and I were actually having fun
with this guy. We circled around him like a python squeezing the damned
truth right out of him." He patted Nancy on her right shoulder, "It was
exquisite!"
"So we found out that this guy is not the inventor of the technology for Neurotek! It turns out that
the patents were actually filed by his brother!
The brother died two years ago in a car accident so this asshole has been
trotting around the planet saying that he is the inventor. The best part of it
is that this guy does not have a clue about
the technology. He knew all the blah-blah terms, but when Jeff wrote down the
equations for the recognition algorithms, Gerard couldn't even point to the
right one on the page! We didn't ask him to write the equations―well actually
we did but he couldn't―but he couldn't even point
an equation out!"
There was a small gasp mixed with laughs.
"So now we have big, and I mean really
big news here. Mikl, his financing partner doesn't know this!"
Jeff laughed turning to Arnie, "You said you wanted to be a fly on
the wall last night at the restaurant, man I'd like to be a fly on the wall
when Mikl finds out that he has been scammed by this guy for eleven million
dollars for the last two years!"
Arnie pushed his plate away. "Okay, Nancy, you said that you and
Jeff did some analysis and may have something for us to vote on."
"Yes," she motioned to Jeff's folio which he handed to her.
She opened it tearing out the second page, handing the folio back to Jeff who
laid it open in front of him. Holding the paper up, "We came up with a
list of eleven facts in this case related to this phase of the investigation.
From that list we came up with six possible paths, but scratched two of them.
The four remaining paths, hold on." She looked behind Arnie, on the wall
was a white board. "Arnie can I get in there?" He said sure, moving
his chair to the right of the board, half-turning his chair toward Nancy.
She reached for a felt blue pen, standing at the board writing the words
ARREST EVERYONE. "This is an obvious path, but there are way too many
problems. We don't have a deep-fried case yet. All that will happen is that
these guys will lawyer-up and we are off to the races for the next five years
in court."
She wrote NEGOTIATE. "Actually, if you read the transcript,"
she reached for her copy flipping pages, "look on the top of page four
where Jeff and I are making suggestions―well not really making suggestion, more
like trying to find out if there is any viable path for these guys. If you read
that section, Jeff and I agree that this term describes more of that. The
problem is that we both really believe this guy is afraid to work with people
smarter than him. We suggested people that if he was serious he would have
already been in contact with them or others, but he hasn't. Also he has never
managed a company, he doesn't know how organize and actually manage a company.
The last and most important reason why this is not a good path is that this guy
has already burned through nineteen million dollars, maybe he has two million
dollars worth of results to show. There is no reason to believe that it could
be anything but a big money pit."
FINESSE appeared next on the next line on the white board. "This is
just keeping on like we're doing trying to get results. But we think this is
hopeless. These guys will keep having expensive dinners with us until we all
get bored and want to just go home. This is not a good path."
"The last path we came up with," she wrote the two words
SHERLOCK PLAN, "is the plan that we discussed in our last meeting. The
downside is the possible ethical issues. But they are big boys and should know
how to take care of themselves, right? Assuming we are okay with that, there
are lots of advantages to this path. First, we don't know who has rights to the
patents. So we don't know who actually owns the technology. Second, they have
tried to commit murder by hiring those hit-men, but our only evidence comes
from tapes. They are frauds stealing from the U.S. government. But most
important, they are foreign nationals that will be impossible to prosecute!
Arresting them will turn this into an international relations nightmare. Plus
this man is a dishonest plagiarizing hit-man hiring murderer. I'd like to take
him down."
She reached down, lifted her can taking a
long drink, setting the empty down.
"Any questions?"
A hand raised, "Do you think you can pull off the Sherlock Plan?"
Nancy glanced to Jeff, "Well if Atlanta is any indicator, the
answer is yes. We still have a couple pieces to put into place, but we should
know for sure by the next time we meet."
"What is your recommendation, or do we need to ask?" Arnie
mused.
She glanced at Jeff, back to the table. "We recommend the last
option. Assuming we can get the pieces in place, I am confident those
sons-a-guns will solve the problem for us," she glanced between Jeff and
Arnie, "just like they did in Atlanta."
"Thanks Nancy," Arnie stood, Nancy stepping around him sitting
down again. "We need to make the offer once more that anyone having a
problem with the fourth option should leave the room now. There will be no
prejudice, no repercussions at all. We would look at it as a personal moral
decision, or a decision based on career concerns." He looked from face-to-face
around the table. Not a single person stirred.
"Okay, very well then. On a show of hands let me see hands for path
one." Nobody moved. "Path two," he turned pointing to the line
on the board. No movement. "Path three," moving his fingers down.
There was a hesitant hand up in the room that slowly pulled back down.
"Path four."
All hands shot up high.
"Okay Nancy, you have your orders. The Sherlock Plan it is."
"Jeff, can you outline it for us?" Nancy turned to Jeff.
He was surprised, standing up reluctantly. "I'm not sure why you
are calling on me Nancy."
"Because it was your plan!" came from the room, the room rose
in laughter.
"Okay, let me think." Jeff sat back down. "We need to
find a way to lull the two into a meeting. I've already reserved the same room
again for tomorrow. Parlor three. We believe that we have fomented the relationship
between them. But the icing on the cake will be when Mikl finds out that Gerard
not only did not invent the technology, but that he also doesn't own the
rights. Those rights probably belong to his brother Gaston's heirs. That should
be like gasoline to get the other side fired up."
Jeff paused, his right fingers to his chin. "Gerard should be easy
if we make it clear to him that his gravy train is gone. I already thought that
he was spending a horrific amount of money, but to have burned through nineteen
million dollars in two years is incomprehensible. At that burn rate he
literally cannot go a day without funding. My guess is that if we can find some
way to communicate to him that Mikl is cutting him off, then he will become
desperate muy pronto! My concern is
that he could go out of his mind, do something even crazier than he already
has."
"So how are you going to set this up?" Arnie leaned forward.
Jeff looked to Nancy, he shrugged, "We don't know yet. Until we
hear from this Uncle Mondo guy, we can't be sure how he plays into this. He is
the wild card." Jeff turned to Nancy.
"We really don't know until we see how this Mondo character fits
in," she nodded.
"When will you know?"
Nancy glanced to Jeff, "We don't dare try to contact him. Jeff
needs to look like the intended victim, so we can't make the first move."
"Tim," Jeff leaned forward to look past the people between
them, "have our guys been talking on the phone at all?"
"Yes. Well, not quite. Gerard left another message for the shooter.
Mikl has left three messages with Gerard who has not returned his calls."
"He's trying to figure out how to get his story straight. That
slimy bastard is right this minute conniving to get his ass out of this fix
that we know he's not the inventor," Nancy smirked.
"Yes," Jeff turned to her, "but it also means that he is
going to lay low as long as he can. My guess is his next event will be Mondo
contacting him. He may meet with Mondo to convince him to finish his nephews'
job. In fact, I know that's what he's
going to do. He may even offer him more money. He has no idea that the whole
FBI is listening into his calls and knows about this meeting we had today. I'll
bet that he is thinking there is still a way out of this!"
"So we are in a wait mode." Arnie said matter-of-fact. "Is
there anything more we can do here this minute?"
"We voted on the Sherlock Plan. Now we just have to figure out how
to put it in place." Nancy looked around the room, "Right?"
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NOW READ THE NEXT EXCITING CHAPTER OF
SILICON GULCH!
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