"Trademark-registration concerns," Smith said flatly.
"Bingo!"
"qNM headquarters is in Seattle, Washington. Go there. Now. Remain in touch by telephone. I will dig deeper."
"On our way," said Remo, hanging up so hard the receiver cracked like an ice sculpture.
"Looks like we're back in the game," he told Chiun.
"That is not enough. We must be ahead of the game."
"Right now I just want to stay one step ahead of the next flock of stewardesses I meet," said Remo.
Chapter 43
It was a long way from sunny Massachusetts to rainy Seattle.
For Reemer Murgatroyd Bolt, of Quantum Neutrino Mechanics, it was almost exactly eleven years, three thousand miles and four career changes ago.
It had almost come to a crashing halt back at Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts on Route 128, the symbol of the Massachusetts Miracle. The Massachusetts Miracle had gone south somewhere around the time of the 1988 presidential elections, taking a certain Greek governor, the Bay State and America's Technology Highway with it, as Route 128 was known back then.
The DataGen and GenData and General Data Systems that had dotted 128 back in the booming eighties were gone now. As was Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts. As was Director of Marketing Reemer Bolt, who got out before the sky fell and it all came crashing down.
For a while, the entire world almost ended. And now history seemed to be repeating itself.
In his office, with the eternal rain pattering at the Thermopane windows that kept out the winter chill, Reemer Bolt shuddered as his mind went careening back to those heady days in which the planet Earth came perilously close to being incinerated. All because Reemer Bolt had charge of a product whose utility at first eluded even a marketing genius like himself.
It was called the Fluorocarbon Gun. It shot fluorocarbons, chemicals that had been banned by most industrialized nations because they ate away at the ozone shield high in the atmosphere. Holes in the ozone allowed dangerous solar radiation to penetrate. One hole accidentally knocked out a Russian missile battery, precipitating an international incident that almost ended the world-and Reemer Bolt's promising corporate career.
It was a huge marketing debacle. The biggest since the Edsel. ChemCon was forced into strategic bankruptcy.
Through it all, Bolt remained unscathed. In fact, his corporate future improved. On the strength of a new resume that showed he had been in charge of a fifty-million-dollar project with global ramifications; Bolt moved from director of marketing of ChemCon to president of Web Tech. He knew nothing about Web Tech and, when he left to become COO of Quantum Neutrino Mechanics three years later, he knew even less about Web Tech. It didn't matter. No one ever got fired or laid off or punished for screwing up a billion-dollar corporation. They were handed golden parachutes, stock options and golden handshakes and wished well by anxious stockholders delighted to be rid of them.
It was middle managers and workers who invariably ate failure in corporate America. Not the Reemer Bolts. No matter how high the tides rose, their necks always stretched farther and their chins always lifted over the lung-quenching flood.
It was true that the corporate-downsizing mania threatened even the Reemer Bolts of the world. Somehow he got himself involved in the military-industrial complex. He didn't realize it for several weeks until he walked in on a Web Tech management research-and-development conference and saw the scale-model tank.
"Who brought that toy in here? This is a place of business," he snarled, knowing that no one ever snapped back at a snarling executive, never mind questioned him. They were petrified for their jobs.
"It's our next project," he was told by a more than brave technician.
"Scrap it," Bolt told him.
"Why? The Pentagon has accepted it."
Bolt froze inwardly. This was in 1991. He knew that if there was one thing an executive never did, it was reverse a decision. No matter how disastrous. He had been caught. He could not retreat. To retreat showed weakness. Worse, it showed a complete and unforgivable ignorance of the product line. That simply would not do. Not in corporate America, where smiling, two-legged sharks circled the office water cooler hoping to take a bite out of an unwary coworker's ass.
"It has Failure written all over it," said Reemer Bolt. "Scrap it."
No one questioned the decision. It saved Reemer Bolt's high-six-figure salary and perks for three years, while Web Tech, six million dollars in development costs and a fat government contract down the drain, stumbled aimlessly until Reemer Bolt could smell the stench of decay seeping into his air-conditioned office and hired a head-hunting agency to find him a safer hole.
At first, the interview with Quantum Neutrino Mechanics didn't go well. Then the interviewer noticed the blank spot in the resume.
"The years 1984 to 1987 are blank."
"Yes," Reemer Bolt said, knowing that he could not deny the obvious.
"Were you employed at that time?"
"Yes."
"In what position?"
"I cannot answer that," Bolt said in his most firm and sincere tone.
The interviewer blinked. "Say again, Mr. Bolt?"
Bolt cleared his throat and made it deeper. Much deeper. "I am contractually forbidden from, and cannot answer, that question."
The man blinked again. This was unusual. Even in corporate America.
"Was this government work?"
"I cannot confirm that," Bolt said truthfully.
"Did it-can you at least whisper something, Mr. Bolt? A blank spot does not look good"
Bolt shook his head. Here was the difficult part. He knew that some resume blank spots reflected alcohol or cocaine addictions. If they jumped to either conclusion, he was dead.
The interviewer looked around furtively. "Did this position by chance have anything to do with national security?" he breathed.
It was a wild guess, and Reemer Bolt answered, not entirely untruthfully, "I can neither confirm nor deny that assertion."
The interviewer relaxed. He leaned back in his chair. His entire face softened. "Mr. Bolt, I think I can say you've moved to the top of the list. Quantum Neutrino Mechanics is looking for a man like you."
Bolt smiled. He was the kind of man who had progressed in life from his mother's breast to one easy teat after another. He knew the scent of fresh milk. He was smelling it now.
The trouble was, the milk was running out for the defense industry, and since Quantum Neutrino Mechanics was courting Reemer Bolt, he never bothered to look into their product line. Only his personal package.
"Congress is backing away from Star Wars," Reemer was told one day a year or two after the Berlin Wall fell and he had been with qNM long enough to feel he could bluff his way through any meeting on any level of the company. He had all the latest buzzwords down. This year synergy and outsourcing were in vogue.
"I have no problem with that," said Bolt in a brusque, take-no-prisoners-and-suffer-no-fools voice.
The managers seated around the boat-shaped fumed-oak conference table hesitated. One finally gathered the strength to speak up. "It leaves us out in the cold."
"Build a fire," Bolt said.