Matt Richtel - The Cloud

“You’re going to be fine and Isaac’s going to be fine,” she told me with the utmost confidence when it became clear that things were coming to an end. I was sitting on the edge of her bed, looking not at her, but through slats in the shades as traffic passed by.

What a lie.

“You’re going to get yourself run over.”

The voice shakes me back to the present. I’m standing in the street next to the Audi. Faith studies me like I’m some bizarre creature from the deep that she’s watching on the Nature Channel. I wonder what lies she’s telling me.

“Your eyes are glazed over and you’re standing in the middle of the street.”

“I’m fine.”

“And I’m an African princess who can make you millions of dollars if you email me your social security number.”

I walk around to the passenger side and climb in.

“I need to get to an Internet cafe.”

“Who is that woman?”

I see Jill standing at the gate, glazed over, like me.

“She’s mysterious clue number seven.”

“What does that mean?”

“You tell me, Faith. Who is she?”

Faith punches the accelerator and the powerful Audi practically jumps twenty yards onto El Camino, the thoroughfare. Faith puts on a left blinker. “Usually I’m communicating better than this with someone when I start sleeping with him.”

I swallow my retort: So why did we spend the night together? What are your motives, Faith?

Her phone rings. It’s sitting in the cup holder between us. I pick it up. The caller ID says “Carl_L.”

“Ignore it, please,” Faith says.

I replace the phone. Faith takes a sharp right and pulls to the curb. We’re sitting in front of a cubbyhole of a cafe. In the window, a teenager sits at a counter, tooling away on a computer.

“I’ll wait here.” Faith picks up her phone as I step out of the car.

Behind the cafe counter, a man in his fifties cradles a book about quantum physics. He’s probably one of the overqualified engineers that this region can periodically thrust into low-paying jobs when the start-up economy tanks.

He looks up. “Shatter the orbital?” he asks. Diagnosis-wise, he’s quick on the draw, a rare out-flanking that makes me feel flush. I decide not to mention the hunch in his shoulder that I suspect comes from a mild case of kyphosis, an outward curvature of the spine. I order a large coffee and twenty minutes of Internet time.

I also ask to use the cafe fax. The man shows me an antiquated machine in a cubicle near the back where there is a stapler, hole punch, copier, and a sign: “Business Center.” From my back pocket, I pull the piece of paper I found on Alan’s desk. I make a copy of the Chinese characters. I fax them to Bullseye.

At the front of the cafe, I settle in next to the teenager locked in eerie focus as he shoots cartoonish birds from a slingshot at a target, the casual game du jour . For a moment, I imagine what his brain must look like, coursing with dopamine, the sensory cortices lit up.

I settle my hands over the smudge-stained keyboard and look at the thin screen, as if preparing to mount a horse. Into Google, I call up a Chinese-English translator. I spend a couple of minutes trying to figure out how to enter in the Chinese characters but find myself stymied. I’ll let Bullseye handle this part of the goose chase.

I return to Google. I enter “Alan Parsons” and hit return. Big shock: I get infinite hits, many for the rock band of the same name. I try “Alan Parsons” and “Computer,” and get an equal number of responses.

I need my bad guys to have very unique names, or at least not be named after popular eighties rock bands that, adding insult to injury, I always disliked.

I try “Alan Parsons” and “Andrew Leviathan.” There’s nothing of interest. I’m fishing.

“Andrew Leviathan” and “Sandy Vello” come up empty, and so does “Andrew Leviathan” and “PRISM,” the corporation where the reality-show star works.

I put in “Andrew Leviathan” and “China.” Tens of thousands of hits. I click on the first several, which are news stories from local newspapers, and one in the New York Times , in which the Silicon Valley icon has commented on the importance and challenges to technology entrepreneurs of breaking into the Chinese market.

“It’s the Valhalla, the ethereal empire beneath the sea,” he says of China. “It’s the promised land, but you can’t figure out how to get there, or if it’s even real.”

Andrew is a peculiar breed of source that journalists love. He is a “quote monkey,” someone who can be counted on to say things in such a pithy and accessible way that the quotes elevate a mediocre story to a compelling one.

And yet, for a quote monkey of such brilliant success, Andrew is relatively sparsely quoted. He’s picked his spots carefully. Perhaps not surprising, though. The biggest venture capitalists and others here follow a predictable course in their relationship with the press: they court journalists when it serves their ends in growing their first businesses, grow bored and squeamish of the relationship with media when their businesses boom and when reporters start asking tougher questions, and then, when they are so big that media can no longer harm their efforts, reestablish ties with a few reporters they trust.

It’s this last bit of the evolution that fascinates me; they establish close ties with the media again because they want, more than anything else, a legacy. The riches-the stately house in picturesque Atherton, the $140,000 electric car, the co-owned jet kept at the Palo Alto Airport-all start to feel empty and they chase instead history’s stamp of approval.

But Andrew is so infrequently quoted that I wonder if he’s the rare success story who doesn’t want or need ultimate validation from the media. Or maybe there’s some other reason he’s cautious about having intimacy with the press.

Outside the cafe, Faith sits in the car, talking animatedly on the phone. I’ve let her waltz into my life-rather, I’ve pulled her without reservation onto the dance floor-and aside from her beauty, she’s a blur.

Across the street from the cafe, two moms and their toddlers file into a bookstore. A cutout of Winnie the Pooh hangs in the window.

I glance down the list of Google hits and something catches my eye. It’s a reference to Andrew Leviathan and the China-U.S. High-Tech Alliance. It’s a press release from four years ago announcing that Andrew has taken a board seat on the alliance, which, the press release explains, is aimed at “fostering ties of mutual interest.”

The China-U.S. High-Tech Alliance-the placard on the outside of the building in Chinatown. Right before I got slugged in the face.

Back to Google. I try various other ways to connect the lines between the Chinese alliance and Andrew. I get one hit. It’s another press release-from a year ago. It’s just one paragraph that notes Andrew has resigned his board seat. The release reads: “Mr. Leviathan has been replaced by Gils Simons, a prominent angel investor who provided key early funding and counsel to eBay, Google and PayPal.”

Gils Simons. Andrew Leviathan’s early right-hand and operations man, the bland bean counter who had been at the awards ceremony. Interesting. Maybe. I wonder why the press release doesn’t mention the connection between them.

Maybe a subject I’ll ask Andrew about when we meet for coffee. I look at the clock on the computer and realize I’ve got twenty minutes to get to the nearby Peet’s to see the programmer-turned-entrepreneur-turned-billionaire-turned-mystery man.

Into Google, I try one more search: “Andrew Leviathan” and “charity” and “school.” Up pop tons of mentions about his investment in a half dozen well-regarded schools in the Bay Area that help low-income kids. It’s all part of the man’s vibrant philanthropy, hailed by educators and parents and scholars. But rarely by Andrew himself. The few stories I call up make note that the genius philanthropist prefers not to comment but, rather, to let his charity speak for itself. And, the articles note, the charity speaks loudly to a single point: Andrew, the immigrant genius, has become the champion of American children, committed to world-class education.