Following a (more or less) Darwinian economic model, Leland identified and quantified promising resource development opportunities in the far corners of the world. They had since formed private equity partnerships with local leaders for strip mining in Papua New Guinea, water privatization in Ecuador, marble quarrying in China, oil drilling in Nigeria, and pipeline construction in Myanmar. Anywhere local public and/or private leaders existed with abundant resources, a surfeit of rivals, and a deficit in capital, Leland could be found. And while these projects were theoretically beneficial, the benefits were best perceived at a distance of several thousand miles.

Leland's equity offerings used tedious statistical analysis to mask the fact that their business centered on enslaving foreign people and ravaging their lands. They didn't do this directly, of course, but they hired the people who hired the people who did.

Humanity had always trafficked in oppression. Before the corporate marketing department got ahold of it, it was called conquest. Now it was regional development.Vikings and Mongols were big on revenue targets, too-but Leland had dispensed with all the tedious invading, and had taken a page out of the Roman playbook by hiring the locals to enslave each other as franchisees.

To view Leland fund managers as immoral was a gross simplification of the world. And what was there to replace capitalism, anyway? Communism? Theocracy? Most of the Third World had already suffered nearly terminal bouts of idealism. It was the Communists, after all, who had littered the world with cheap AK-47s in order to «liberate» the masses. But the only lasting effect was that every wall between Cairo and the Philippines had at least one bullet hole in it. But nothing changed. Nothing changed because these alternate belief systems flew in the face of human nature. Of even common sense. Anyone who has ever tried to share pizza with roommates knows that Communism cannot everwork. If Lenin and Marx had just shared an apartment, perhaps a hundred million lives might have been spared and put to productive use making sneakers and office furniture.

Leland bankers told clients that they didn't design the world-they were just trying to live in it. And incidentally, the wonders of the developed world rose from the ashes of conflict and competition, so they were helping people in the long run. For godsakes, just look at Japan.

And while the debate mumbled on, asterisked by legal disclaimers, Leland booked another highly profitable year.

But profitability was not what was bothering Garrett Lindhurst as he approached the CEO's office suite.

Among Leland's C-level executives, only Lindhurst was without decades-old family ties to the organization-but then again, the rapid expansion of computer systems in the corporate world in recent years had outpaced the ability of old-money families to produce senior technology talent. While Lindhurst hadn't written any actual code since working with Fortran and Pascal back in his Princeton days, he had learned over the years how much systems should cost and what they needed to do.

In essence, computer systems needed to do only one of two things: make money or save money. Everything else was just details. Scut work. These tasks Lindhurst delegated to the executive senior veeps, who, in turn, delegated them to someone else…and so on. It was only during times of complete disaster that Lindhurst involved himself with the actual computer systems themselves.

Today was such a time.

Lindhurst pointed at the CEO's temple-like office doors as he passed the executive secretary's desk. "He in?"

"He's leaving for Moscow in an hour."

She barely registered Lindhurst's presence. A stone-faced woman in her fifties, she was many years in the CEO's service and effectively had more authority than any two senior vice presidents put together.

But Lindhurst had more authority than ten. He pushed his way through the towering double doors.

"Garrett!" she called after him.

He ignored her and proceeded into the CEO's cavernous office at a quick pace.

The tanned, pampered face of Russell Vanowen, Jr., CEO and chairman of Leland Equity Group, looked up from reading a letter. He scowled. "Damnit, Garrett, make an appointment."

Garrett heard the doors close behind him, and he took a deep breath. "This can't wait."

"Then just pick up the phone, for chrissakes."

"We need a face-to-face."

Vanowen regarded him like a statue would a pigeon. Vanowen had that obsessively groomed look of the fabulously rich-as though his head were the grounds of Augusta National and a hundred grounds-keepers swarmed over it each morning. The ring of white hair sweeping around the back of his head was perfectly manicured like a green. The pores of his skin were flawless. His suit was masterfully tailored to make his husky form look manly and authoritative.

Yet, for all his obvious fastidiousness, Vanowen did not look soft. He was stocky, intimidating, with a presence that projected itself without having to speak; his eyes scanned a room like twin.50-caliber machine guns. And he had an almost mystical authority in this office, with its bank of tall windows overlooking downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan beyond. This was a fabled seat of power, overlooking the length and breadth of the land.

Lindhurst proceeded toward Vanowen's massive teak wood desk, still thirty feet away. "We have a major problem, Russ."

Vanowen still held a letter in one hand, glaring over his reading glasses. He reluctantly dropped the letter on his otherwise empty desk and removed his glasses. "When you say 'we,' I take that to mean 'you.'" He glanced at his massive watch, tugging a cuff-linked sleeve up to see the face. "I'm heading out to the airfield any minute."

There wasn't any time to finesse it. "We've lost administrator rights to our network."

This did not have the impact Lindhurst hoped.

Vanowen shrugged slightly and now looked greatly irritated. "So what the hell do you want me to do about it? You're the CIO; ride your people until they fix it. Jesus, Garrett."

Lindhurst sat down in one of the uncomfortable leather chairs, pulling it right up to the desk. He leaned in close, still clutching the rolled magazine. "Russ, listen to me: we don't have any control over our databases."

"My response is the same. Now would you let me read this letter, please?"

"WE ARE UNDER ATTACK."

That got Vanowen's attention. "Attack?"

"Attack. All offices, worldwide. Look, I get in this morning, and I have phone calls from six division heads telling me they can't log on as admins to our servers. They think it's a layoff and that they've been shut out on purpose."

"Were they?"

"Not by us. Turns out no onecan get an admin logon-not even here in the main office. All systems rebooted last night. And somehow, somebody took over our network. We have only limited rights to it."

Now Vanowen looked really angry. He pounded his fist on the desk. "Jesus Christ, Lindhurst! Why the hell wasn't I told about this sooner? Our clients must be screaming bloody murder."

"Hold on a second. Our Web sites are up, and we can access data, no problem. So can our clients. We can even change data, so no one outside Leland knows yet."

Confused and getting angrier by the moment, Vanowen gestured, "So what's the problem?"

"The problem is that we can't back up, restore, or change our servers. We can't even export data."

"I may not know much about this stuff, Lindhurst, but I do know we spent thirty million dollars on backup systems. Surely you can take a backup copy and restore it."

"That's just it; our backup SANs are toast. Our off-site replication trashed. The log files were faked. We have no backups newer than four months ago."