Contract With God Read Online Free

an insignificant old idiot. When I go to bed each night I say to myself: tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the day. And the next morning I get up and my resolve has vanished, just as my teeth are doing.’
    ‘We’d better make a start, sir,’ said the assistant, who had heard countless variations on this theme.
    ‘Is it absolutely necessary?’
    ‘You’re the one who requested it, sir. As a way of controlling any loose ends.’
    ‘I could just read the report.’
    ‘It’s not just that. We’re already at Phase Four. If you want to be a part of this expedition, you’ll have to get used to being around strangers. Dr Hocher was very clear on that point.’
    The old man pressed a series of buttons on his remote control. The blinds in the room came down and the lights went out as he sat down once again.
    ‘There’s no other way?’
    His assistant shook his head.
    ‘Very well, then.’
    The assistant headed for the door, the only remaining source of light.
    ‘Jacob.’
    ‘Yes, sir ?’
    ‘Before you leave . . . Would you mind letting me hold your hand for a moment? I’m frightened.’
    The assistant did as he was asked. Kayn’s hand was still trembling.

4
    HEADQUARTERS OF KAYN INDUSTRIES
    NEW YORK
     
    Wednesday, 5 July 2006. 11:10 a.m.
     
    Orville Watson was nervously drumming his fingers on the bulging leather portfolio on his lap. He had been sitting on his well-padded rear end in the reception area of the 38th Floor of Kayn Tower for the last two hours. At 3,000 dollars an hour, anyone else would have been happy to wait until Judgement Day. But not Orville. The young Californian was growing bored. In point of fact, the fight against boredom was what had made his career.
    His college studies had bored him. Against his family’s wishes he had dropped out during his second year. He had found a good job at CNET, one of the companies on the cutting edge of new technologies, but once again boredom had set in. Orville was constantly hungry for new challenges and his real passion was for answering questions. By the turn of the millennium, his entrepreneurial spirit had prompted him to leave his job at CNET and start up his own company.
    His mother, who read in the newspapers each day about the failure of yet another dot-com, objected. Her worries didn’t deter Orville. He packed his 300-pound frame, blond ponytail, and a suitcase full of clothes into a dilapidated van and drove right across the country, ending up in a basement apartment in Manhattan. Thus Netcatch was born. His slogan was ‘You ask, we respond’. The whole project could have remained nothing more than the crazy dream of a young man with an eating disorder, too many worries, and a singular understanding of the Internet. But then 9/11 happened, and straight away Orville understood three things that it had taken the Washington bureaucrats much too long to figure out.
    First, that their methods of handling information had been obsolete for thirty years. Second, that the political correctness brought on by eight years of the Clinton administration had made it even more difficult to search for information, since you could only count on ‘reliable sources’, which were useless when dealing with terrorists. And third, that the Arabs were turning out to be the new Russians when it came to espionage.
    Orville’s mother, Yasmina, was born and had lived in Beirut for many years before marrying a handsome engineer from Sausalito, California, whom she met while he was working on a project in Lebanon. The couple soon moved to the United Status, where the lovely Yasmina educated her only son in both Arabic and English.
    Adopting different identities on the web, the young man found out that the Internet was a paradise for extremists. It didn’t matter physically how far apart ten radicals might be; online, the distance was measured in milliseconds. Their identity might be secret and their ideas insane, but on the Net they could find people who thought just like