Killer Instinct (45 page)

My presentation made a business case for shutting down Entronics headquarters in Santa Clara, selling off its valuable and overpriced Silicon Valley real estate, and moving headquarters to lovely Framingham, Massachusetts, where Entronics already had a building. All it needed was some repair work on the twentieth floor, where a blast had turned my corner office into a charred cave.

The kicker was my slide showing how Royal Meister’s Dallas offices could be sold at an immense profit. The Dallas Cowboys, see, wanted to build a new stadium, and they were willing to pay handsomely for the land.

This impressed them, I think.

I didn’t mention that I had my personal reasons. Like the fact that Kate refused to leave Cambridge. She finally had her dream house, and she’d already furnished the nursery, and she simply wasn’t moving. So either I moved to Santa Clara without my lovely wife and baby, or I turned down the job. But I wasn’t going to tell them that. That would not be good for my image as a killer.

The interviews seemed to go well, if facial expressions are any indication. I didn’t understand a word they were saying. Yoshi Tanaka sat by my side the entire time, throughout every single interview, as if he were my attorney.

In the last interview there seemed to be a really heated exchange. Yoshi spoke to Nakamura-san and another board member in rapid Japanese while I sat there smiling like a doofus. They seemed to be arguing back and forth until Yoshi said something, and they all nodded.

Finally, Yoshi turned to me and said, “Oh, please forgive me, I’m being terribly rude.”

I looked at him in astonishment. He was speaking in a plummy British accent. He sounded like Laurence Olivier or maybe Hugh Grant.

“It’s just that they keep referring to you as
nonki,
which I suppose I’d translate as ‘easygoing,’ and a
gokurakutonbo,
which is more difficult to translate. Perhaps you might say it means a ‘happy-go-lucky fellow.’ But I’m afraid neither is a compliment in Japanese. I had to explain to them that your people regard you as ruthless. They speak of you with a certain trepidation. I told them that’s what I like about you. You have that killer instinct.”

Later on, as Yoshi and I waited for the hiring committee to finish their deliberations, I blurted out, “Your English is amazing. I had no idea.”

“
My
English? My dear boy, you’re too kind. I did my master’s thesis at Trinity College, Cambridge, on the late novels of Henry James. Now there’s a
true
master of the language.”

The realization hit me then and there. Of course. How else could he get people to talk so freely in his presence?

“So when I told you all about my big idea for the PictureScreen, and you just stared blankly—”

“In stunned admiration, Jason-san. That was when I realized you were a bloody visionary. I immediately told Nakamura-san, and he insisted on meeting you in Santa Clara. But alas, it was not to be.”

In the end, I was tapped for Dick Hardy’s job, and after a few nerve-racking weeks, when Kate and I agreed not to talk about it, they also approved my suggestion to move U.S. headquarters to Framingham. And move Royal Meister’s top performers to Framingham, too—those who wanted to leave Dallas, anyway. Now Joan Tureck was working for me, and she and her partner were quite happy to be back in Boston.

So where was I?

Oh, yes. At the hospital, Craig seemed to treat me with newfound respect. He kept talking about the Entronics Invitational at Pebble Beach, what a blast he had last year when Dick Hardy had invited him to join all the celebs, how cool it was playing a few holes with Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh. I guess I was a little distracted, with our newborn baby, but it took me a while to figure out that Craig was angling for an invitation again this year. Now that I was the CEO of Entronics. Poor Craig was sucking up to me.

But I was as friendly as could be. “We’re trying to keep the head count down this year,” I said, “but I’m sure we can work something out. Just contact my assistant, Franny Barber. I’m sure we can arrange it.”

I have to say that I enjoyed that.

We all sat in Kate’s room watching Baby Josie clamp on to Kate’s boobs and suck away like a champ. Finally, she fell asleep, and the nurse came and put her in the bassinet.

I gave Kate a smooch, and said, “I’m married to the greatest woman, and I have the greatest baby, and I just feel like the luckiest man in the world.” I was almost overcome by emotion.

“I thought you said a man makes his own luck,” she said, arching her brows.

“I don’t think I believe that anymore,” I said slowly. “Sometimes the luck makes the man.”

Ethan sat in a corner of the room reading a book about great military blunders in history. This was his latest obsession. Apparently Kurt Semko’s remark about the Battle of Stalingrad had got Ethan thinking.

“Uncle Jason,” he said, looking up from his book. “Are you aware that the First World War was started because a driver made a wrong turn?”

“Ethan,” said his mother warningly.

“Ethan,” said Craig. “The adults are talking.”

“A wrong turn?” I said to Ethan.

“That’s right. The chauffeur to the Archduke of Austria-Hungary accidentally turned into a street he shouldn’t have, where some guy was waiting with a gun, and he shot the Archduke and his wife, and that led to a whole world war.”

“No, I didn’t know that,” I said. “But it makes me feel better about my driving.”

Kate and Susie were discussing nannies. Kate said she’d found several promising Irish nanny candidates on the
Irish Echo
newspaper’s website. Susie told her that the only nannies to hire were Filipinas. They went back and forth on this for a while, and of course Craig had to join in the dispute. I didn’t care one way or another, of course. I kept thinking about Festino’s warning about how the Barney song would get stuck in my head, and I’d be forced to watch
The Wiggles
.

But when they started arguing about which was better, a live-in or a live-out nanny, I jumped in. “I really don’t want a stranger living under the same roof,” I said.

“She wouldn’t be a stranger once we got to know her,” Kate pointed out.

“Even worse,” I said.

“You really want to be able to leave the baby with the nanny when you two go out,” Craig said. “That’s what was so great about Corazon. We were able to leave Ethan with her all the time. We barely saw him.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said. Kate and I exchanged a look.

He didn’t pick up on my sarcasm. “Whenever he started crying in the middle of the night,” Craig said, “Corazon would come running and change his diaper or feed him or whatever.”

“I expressed my breast milk and put it in the Sub-Zero,” Susie said, nodding. “All Corazon had to do was heat the little bottles up in the microwave. But you have to stir them well. There’s really only one kind of breast pump to buy.”

“I know,” Kate said. “I’ve been on every baby website.”

“Can we not talk about breast pumps?” I said. “I want to go back to the live-in/live-out thing.”

“Why?” Kate said. “It’s decided.”

“The hell it is. Don’t even bother.”

Kate saw the resolve in my face. “Oh, I’ve only just begun,” she said with that knowing smile that she knew always turned me to mush.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Now it’s war.”

Acknowledgments

The fictional Entronics Corporation was built out of the bits and pieces of the giant electronics companies I visited and researched, but none was as helpful and as hospitable and interesting as NEC. Its Visual Display division is one of the largest providers of plasma screens in the world, and a great and innovative company besides. Ron Gillies, formerly the senior vice president and general manager (and now at Iomega), was enormously helpful and patient in answering my most outrageous, most dimwitted questions and in allowing me to talk to a whole range of people there, both in sales and in the more technical end of things. He, and his terrific, charismatic successor, Pierre Richer, were a pleasure to get to know. Thanks as well to Keith Yanke, product manager, Plasma Displays; Patrick Malone, district sales manager; Ken Nishimura, general manager; Bill Whiteside, inside sales; Tim Dreyer, public relations manager; and especially Jenna Held. I did not meet a Gordy there, nor a Dick Hardy, nor a Festino, nor a Trevor, nor a Rifkin. Elsewhere, yes. Not at NEC. And if I got any of my facts grotesquely wrong—well, that’s why they call it fiction, right?

Other excellent sources in the world of high-tech sales who gave me a feeling for the culture, the stakes, and the challenges included: Bob Scordino, area manager, the EMC Corporation; Bill Scannell, senior vice president, the Americas, EMC Corporation; and Larry Roberts of PlanView. All were witty, personable, and generous with their time.

Professor Vladimir Bulovic of MIT shared with me some details of his remarkable breakthroughs in OLED flat-screen technology. I’ve taken some liberties with it, of course.

The best bad guys often require the best sources, and for Kurt Semko, I was fortunate to have my own Special Forces A-Team, including Sergeant Major (Ret.) Bill Combs of the William F. Buckley Memorial Chapter of the Special Forces Association, who introduced me around; Master Sergeant (Ret.) Rick Parziale, former team sergeant of ODA 2033; and most of all Kevin “Hognose” O’Brien, Sergeant First Class, who served with the 20th Special Forces Group in Afghanistan. It’s obvious to them, but I should declare it publicly: Kurt Semko by no means represents the dedicated and brave and genial Special Forces officers I’ve come to know. On the circumstances of Kurt’s court-martial, two of my military-justice sources on
High Crimes
helped immensely: David Sheldon and Charles Gittens. Jim Dallas of Dallas Security passed along his tips on how to track down concealed military records. Linda Robinson’s excellent book,
Masters of Chaos,
provided much valuable insight into the Special Forces.

In matters of corporate security, I’m particularly indebted to Roland Cloutier, director of Information Security at EMC; and Gary Palefsky, director of Global Security at EMC. Jon Chorey of Fidelity was also quite helpful. Jeff Dingle of Lockmasters Security Institute provided great details on building security.

On the financial shenanigans at Entronics, I received a great deal of guidance from the redoubtable Eric Klein of Katten Muchin Rosenman in L.A., an expert in mergers and acquisitions. Once again, my old friend Giles McNamee, of McNamee Lawrence & Co. in Boston, helped devise some of my more intricate schemes with his customary creativity. Darrell K. Rigby of Bain & Company in Boston helped me understand integration-management teams. And my good friend Bill Teuber, CFO of the EMC Corporation, helped in all kinds of ways.

Matthew Baldacci, vice president and marketing director of St. Martin’s Press, really belongs in two places in these acknowledgments. Not only has he been a steadfast supporter in a key role at my publisher, but he was also, on this book, an important adviser on baseball and softball. Thanks as well to Matt Dellinger of
The New Yorker,
who, among other things, manages the staff softball team. And special thanks to my friend Kurt Cerulli, softball coach and baseball junkie, for suggesting numerous softball stratagems and making sure I got them right. Daniel A. Russell, Ph.D., of Kettering University’s Science and Mathematics Department, advised me on the tricks (and physics) of bat-doctoring. Dan Tolentino of Easton Sports explained the construction of composite softball bats.

Gregory Vigilante of the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Command, helped me to understand Liquid Metal Embrittlement. Toby Gloekler, of Collision Reconstruction Engineers, Inc., helped me finally devise, by a feat of forensic reverse-engineering, an almost-undetectable auto accident. Thanks, too, to the accident investigator Robert W. Burns; Sgt. Stephen J. Walsh of the Massachusetts State Police Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Section (the CARS unit); Trooper Mike Banks of the Massachusetts State Police; and Sgt. Mike Hill of the Framingham, Massachusetts, Police Department. Retired detective Kenneth Kooistra, formerly of the Grand Rapids Police, again helped me on certain homicide details.

On pregnancy and placenta previa, my thanks to Dr. Alan DeCherney, professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA; and to Mary Pat Lowe, an E.R. nurse at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

My gratitude, as ever, to some of my long-term sources and all-around utility players, particularly Harry “Skip” Brandon, of Smith Brandon, in D.C., and my indispensable weapons expert, Jack McGeorge of the Public Safety Group in Woodbridge, Virginia. My former researcher, Kevin Biehl, stepped up to the plate again (as it were) with some crucial last-minute research assistance.

I’d like to thank, once again, everyone at my publisher, St. Martin’s Press. They continue to believe in me and to push so hard to get my books out there, with an enthusiasm that’s almost unheard of, and which I never take for granted. At the risk of leaving important people out, let me mention in particular: President and Publisher Sally Richardson; John Sargent, CEO of Holtzbrinck USA; Matthew Shear, vice president and publisher of SMP’s paperback divisions; Marketing Director Matt Baldacci; Ronni Stolzenberg of Marketing; Publicity Director (and olive-loaf aficionado) John Murphy; Gregg Sullivan and Elizabeth Coxe in Publicity; Brian Heller in paperback sales; George Witte; Christina Harcar; Nancy Trypuc; Alison Lazarus; Jeff Capshew; Andy LeCount; Ken Holland; Tom Siino; Rob Renzler; Jennifer Enderlin; Bob Williams; Sofrina Hinton; Anne Marie Tallberg; Mike Rohrig (now of Scholastic); and Gregory Gestner; and at Audio Renaissance, Mary Beth Roche, Joe McNeely, and Laura Wilson.

Keith Kahla, my editor, deserves his own set of acknowledgments. Thank you, friend, for everything you’ve done. You’re truly the best.

My agent, Molly Friedrich of the Aaron Priest Agency, was great as ever, as supporter and protector and incisive reader. Thanks, too, to Paul Cirone at the agency.