Black Glass Read Online Free PDF

red wine, maintaining his own carefully tooled smile as he swiveled to look out at the rusty sky. “Because you plan to make accusations.” He pronounced it ack-kew-ZA-tions, stretching it out with aching mockery. “And one leaked accusation—one public sign of a rupture in trust on the board—can make the stock value shrivel like ...” He smiled. “... a deflated balloon. So it’s best we minimize the danger of hacker surveillance. Meaning we meet in person. Now ... Mr. Hoffman?” Grist spread his hands, looking around at the others, to say: I just want to get this tiresome business over with ...
    And he glanced around, wondering how unified they were behind Hoffman.
    The Japanese nano-synth chief, Yatsumi, sat straight-backed and quizzical. Beside Yatsumi, the only woman here, except for the rep from Poland, was Claire PointOne, the tall, blond, needle-thin Vice President of Systems Marketing. She’d adopted the odd surname for her own obscure reasons; now she seemed coiled in round-shouldered tension, the elbows in her blue silk suit planted on the table, her long, pale fingers clasped in front of her. She looked fragile—but Grist was aware she held black belts in two forms of martial arts, and was always looking for the main opportunity. Ready to leap into any power vacuum.
    The Texas exec, Hank Bulwer—CEO of Southern Cross Inc, a fiber-optics and GPA firm that was now a subsidiary of Slakon—was a thick man with a ruddy face that made grist think of undercooked meat. He toyed with an empty glass, lips pursed.
    The stocky Mexican banking exec, Alvarez, in his creamy sweater, gnawed a knuckle. There was a formless anxiety in his
dark eyes: a natty, darkly handsome man, charming when he wanted to be; vaguely repulsive to Grist at other times. Prone to watching Claire.
    The others didn’t matter as much—they were comparatively minor players: Poland Industrial Consortium, Wang Kwan Timed Investments, Moscow Stock Exchange, London Computer Temps, El-Abid Microchips, and Haim Marchson from GlobalWeb: a slim, amazingly superficial man who got a new face from a model catalogue once a year. Marchson always did exactly what Grist told him simply because of what Grist knew about him and the child-star, Dil Windy.
    As if bored, Grist shrugged and muttered to his console, prompting a movie-theatre-scale sheet of mediaglass to slide soundlessly from the ceiling over the wall to his right, the display already scrolling international financial data in seven categories. Grist pretended to be deeply interested, and the others couldn’t help looking at it.
    Hoffman’s lips compressed, the smile almost squeezed out. “I don’t have time, Hoffman,” Grist said, gazing deep into the columns of data waterfalling-by on the screen, “for these PiP appearances. It is my understanding that you have accusations to make. If you have something real, please share it.”
    Hoffman shrugged. “It was you who demanded the in-person meeting.”
    “We were all in town at the same time anyway, except for Hernando–” Grist nodded at Alvarez, “ and he didn’t have far to come.”
    “Always something useful to do in Los Angeles,” Alvarez said quickly. It was well known he liked escaping from his home in Mexico City and the politically charged social functions his wife was always pressuring him to go to. Consuelo Alvarez had ambitions to be first lady—and if Alvarez didn’t make President of Mexico, largely a symbolic position nowdays after all, she might at least be the wife of the Minister of Finance. Alvarez started to light a cigarette, and everyone instantly turned to glare at him.
    “If you’re going to smoke,” Hoffman said, “please do it hygienically.”
    “Yes, yes, bueno ,” Alvarez said hastily, “Sorry. To be mastered
by smoke—a shame, really. My father made his money in tobacco but he always said ... said I shouldn’t ...”
    He lit the cigarette, then hastily put his cigarette case on the table,