"I get it," Remo said.
"I do not," said Chiun. "Is this not the villainous clique which once unseated you, Emperor?"
"That was many years ago," Smith said, wincing at the memory. "And was only one IDC executive. A renegade."
Chiun stroked his wisp of a beard thoughtfully. "Perhaps this time we will eliminate the entire treacherous tribe."
Smith raised a warning hand. "Please. Initiate no violence, either of you. This is a delicate matter. I want answers, not bodies."
"We'll get on it, Smitty."
Remo started for the door. Smith's fearful voice stopped him.
"Remo!"
Remo turned, raising an eyebrow.
"Did I forget to say 'May I?' " he asked.
"My secretary is stationed outside that door," Smith hissed. "She did not see you enter. She cannot see you leave. "
Remo and Chiun exchanged quizzical looks.
"Please," Smith said. "Leave as you came. By the window. "
" I refuse," Chiun said tightly.
"Not you, Master Chiun. You must be seen leaving the normal way, otherwise my secretary will wonder how you left the building."
"Are you insinuating that I am too old to depart as Remo has entered?" Chiun sniffed.
"No, I am not."
" I will leave by the door, but only because it befits my dignified station as Master of Sinanju," Chiun said loftily.
Chiun pushed past Remo, flung open the door, turned dramatically, and announced, "Farewell, Smith. I have enjoyed our private conversation, to which no outsiders were a party."
The door was drawn closed with such speed the papers in Smith's out basket fluttered like nervous white hands.
"Better get the phone fixed," Remo said, putting one leg out the empty window frame. "In case I have to report soon. This doesn't sound like much of an assignment."
"The last time you said that," Smith reminded him, "we nearly lost Chiun."
"Point taken," Remo said, bringing his other foot outside and dropping out of the frame so fast that Smith had to blink the stubborn Cheshire-cat afterimage of Remo's grin from his retina.
He regarded the empty frame and the severed phone line by turns. After several long, difficult months, in which Chiun was presumed dead and later Remo had fallen into the hands of the enemy, things were back to normal.
Harold Smith didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Chapter 4
Antony Tollini had joined International Data Corporation in 1971 as a salesman. He had been promoted to head of sales in 1973 when the CEO of IDC, T. L. Broon, had died. When Broon's successor, Blake Corbish, had passed away after the shortest tenure as company president, Antony Tollini had found himself director of marketing.
It was like being on an elevator that moved up one step at a time, according to a halting mechanism. Through most of the seventies and eighties, Antony Tollini had been stuck in neutral, a vice-president in an ocean of gray-suited vicepresidents, all serene in the knowledge that they worked for the finest corporation in the world. A corporation so advanced that after World War II the Japanese had come to study it and appropriated its corporate model to create the economic powerhouse now called Japan Inc. A corporation so insular that U.S. business leaders were studying the second-generation Japanese model in order to compete in the global marketplace, unaware that the first-generation model was prototyped under the big blue logo IDC. A corporation so on the cutting edge of information services that no rival firm contemplated going head-to-head with it. They either went plug-compatible or they went their own way-usually out of business. Cloning IDC PC's and mainframes was the sole survival strategy in the field of information systems.
But in the early nineties, when the marketplace was going as soft as a candle stored in a July attic, mainframes were outdated. Any small company could compete in the new era of linked PC's and networking. IDC, bloated and arrogant, had found itself on the verge of becoming a dinosaur.
In these hard times, Antony Tollini almost wished he was working for one of the also-rans. He had been Peter Principled up to the level of director of marketing, a solid steppingstone to the stratospheric IDC boardroom, and suddenly there was no market.
That alone was enough to make a grown man cry. Antony Tollini refused to cry, however. He was a comer. He put his capped teeth together and his nose to the grindstone and set about the heroic task of identifying new markets, chipping away at the computer industry's diminishing market share.
He was polished. He was direct. He was everything an IDC employee should be. But the economy had been disintegrating faster than he had been innovating.
Then he had had a vision. One that would give IDC a brand-new client base none of the little guys could touch.
He would just have to work out a few minor bugs first.
As he drove in from his White Plains home, soothing New Age music on the sound system of his red Miata, Antony Tollini decided that the bugs warranted laying the entire matter before the board. The time had come. Definitely.
Yes, Antony Tollini thought as be guided his Miata into the parking slot in the south wing of the IDC parking lot, in the very shadow of Bold Blue--as IDC was affectionately called-he would make no excuses. He would stand up and be a man in the true IDC tradition. No more evasions. No more ducking the issue. If IDC was to get out from under this dark cloud, the board would have to be notified.
Why, this was IDC. Presidents listened when IDC men talked. Cabinet members, once their public-service careers were completed, often found seats on the IDC board-and then had to prove their business worth or be terminated like any common inventory-control person.
Who were these new clients to make unreasonable demands of International Data Corporation?
Squaring his Brooks Brothers shoulders, Antony Tollini strode past his personal secretary and asked, "Any messages?"
"Just . . . the Boston client."
Tollini felt his heart squeeze in his chest like a spongy fist. His resolve melted.
"What . . . did . . . they . . . say?" he asked, going ashen.
"They wanted to know where the new repairman was. They sounded impatient."
"Did they say what happened to the old one?" , "Generally. It had something to do with a cranberry bog."
Tony felt a stab of fear in his stomach. "Did they sound angry?"
They always sound angry. This time they sounded impatient too."
"I seeee . . ." Antony Tollini said slowly, his eyes acquiring a hazy glaze. "Any new resumes come in today?"
The secretary pulled open a drawer and extracted a sheaf of employee resumes only a little less thick than the Manhattan phone book. When IDC placed want ads, millionaires applied just for the thrill of being able to tell their friends they had been granted preliminary interviews.
Bent double with the weight of the latest batch of IDC aspirants, Antony Tollini bore himself into his office and collapsed behind his polished mahogany desk.
His eyes, if anything, glazed over even more. It would take forever to go through all these. Then there was the hard-no, agonizing-selection process. In the old days it had been easy to hire for IDC. One merely skimmed the cream and chose the pearls one found floating in it.
For the position of senior customer engineer newly created to deal with IDC's latest crisis, Tollini had at first looked for the pearls. When the best simply never returned, Tollini knew it was hopeless.
So he began to send the halt and the lame out into the field. It made the most sense. It bought the company time, and in a curious, almost fitting way, it was like survival of the fittest.