Decision Made by Michael Anderle

Author:Michael Anderle [Anderle, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781649715999
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2021-02-22T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Gary Brooks had barely fallen asleep when the phone rang. It wasn’t his phone, of course, but the phones he had bugged while he was in the woman’s apartment. And, at three AM, it wasn’t likely to be anything normal. Either he’d have an urgent piece of information to shelve for later or he would learn more about what she was up to.

She truly had been a chump. He’d chuckled all the way to his hotel room at the way she’d welcomed him in, even after the mix-up. People liked to think of themselves as being polite to maintenance workers, which meant they forgave all kinds of discrepancies.

He’d had unfettered access to everything for days, which had been mostly good.

With a massive yawn, he struggled awake. He was running on far too little sleep these days and had finally turned the bathroom feed off. The noises coming out of that place were unreal. Some of them didn’t even sound human. And the search history that went along with them was unsettling, to say the least.

That said, she was indisputably involved in some shady business with Anna Price and Diatek.

This wouldn’t be the first time a company had tried to hold back on the Department of Defense when it came to leaps forward in technology. When countries bid against each other for something like AI, a company could walk away with a fortune and everyone knew it. So, instead of taking the guaranteed—and still obscenely high—payout from the US Military, some preferred to take their goods to a bidding war, often pretending to operate in other countries to avoid eminent domain.

Those were the companies Gary Brooks went after, and he did so ruthlessly.

He felt no shame about it whatsoever. The Department of Defense had a budget that eclipsed most countries, let alone most countries’ military spending, and they were generous with the money. They preferred to have people do business with them voluntarily. They treated their civilian contractors well.

It was when people didn’t play ball and tried to give vital developments to rival nations that people like him got involved. Because like hell would any other country get AI before them.

Now, he watched the recording start on the screen and listened in as the woman picked up.

“Si?” she said muzzily.

“I apologize for the late hour.” Price’s voice was crisp.

Gary closed his eyes for a moment and smiled. The CEO had laid low for a few days now, and even he had begun to think he was on the wrong track. Every time he was about to pack up and go home, though, another trickle of information came down the pipe—a patent, an email, and now a phone call.

She probably thought he had left.

“What can I do for you?” There was a rustle of blankets that sounded like someone sitting up, and a sleepy murmur in the background. The boyfriend must be over again, although they never seemed to do anything sexual.

He could understand why, given the sounds that came from the bathroom, but it would have been nice to have some blackmail material.

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