“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.