Subject: For All Nails, pt. 4 - The Traitorous Eight

Kramer Associates Security HQ - Taipei, June, 1967

Richard Kennedy, head of Kramer Security, was on the telephone.  His
right-hand, Taichung Complex security chief Raul San Martin, sitting in front
of Kennedy's desk, listened in on the conversation.

"Yes Mr. Salazar.  8 men have left the country... yes, 8 from Taichung.

A pause.

"San Martin is here.  He found a letter among what was left.  Shall I read it
 to you?"

Another, longer pause.

"Okay.  I'll also have Liz telecopy it to you after we finish here."

He began reading:

	 To the Kramer Associates:

	 For 10 years we have worked on making Kramer business run more
	 efficiently.  The tools we have developed have allowed the company
	 to reduce paperwork, costs, and turnaround time for analyses.

	 Several times we have proposed turning our work into a potentially
	 profitable arm of the company.  Several times we were refused,
	 citing "Company Confidentiality" and "World Security".

	 We weren't talking about publishing plans to the Bomb, we were
	 talking about automation of information flow.  Our projects -
	 primarily the Benedict System and its follow-on projects - are not
	 usable as tools to aid Vincent Mercator in claiming his vengance on
	 the company.

	 Ever since the Bomb, this company has become less an profit-driven
	 enterprise and more an armed camp.  Police everywhere, people living
	 not where they choose, but where the company chooses - even in a
	 country such as Taiwan, where there's company locations everywhere.

	 We cannot sit idly by and fall victim to oppression that Garcia,
	 Mercator, and Dominguez have foisted back in our home.  We therefore
	 are severing our ties with the Kramer Associates, and hope that we
	 can find ourselves in a place that allows men to build their ideas
	 however they see fit.

	 Sincerely,
	 ...

Kennedy didn't need to continue with the names.

"Sir?  Are you sure?  I'm pretty sure we've tracked them to either Tokyo or
 Burgoyne."

A small pause.

"No sir, the sentence about 'however they see fit' indicates to me that they
 wouldn't go back."

Another small pause.

"To be honest, San Martin tells me it wasn't all that different from the
 evacuation of '51.  They had chartered one of the airmobiles, presumably for
 a retreat, then just vanished."

A longer pause, with much volume.

"Our man was drugged and left behind.  Finding him led us to this in the
 first place."

The longest pause.  Then Kennedy sighed.

"Yes sir.  We'll look into it.  San Martin believes they have no financial
 information, nor anything beyond Project Benedict and its follow-ons."

Kennedy hung up the phone.

"Raul - gather up every shred you can find.  We're burying this and burying
 it deep.  Hopefully they'll just fade into nothingness in," he grasped for a
 province name, "Vandalia, or something like that."

.   .   .

"Salazar ultimately didn't think it was a great loss.  He was far more
 worried about the bomb, and he figured if their ventures were successful,
 Kramer could just replicate the business model and jump in to any forming
 market."

"Yes, in hindsight the mistake was not listening to the 'Traitorous Eight' as
 he called them later."

					Stanley Tulin, as interviewed in the
					New York Journal for the piece
					"General Computing Turns 10, Keeps
					Turning the World", December 16, 1979

.   .   .