"Nothing we say here must be heard by other ears."
"There is nothing about a bunch of paint-wet cars that I care to keep secret," said the chairman of the board. If he knew nothing else, Bolt knew drama. He took the hand of the chairman of the board and forced it down into the glistening pink of a sedan roof. The chairman yanked it back and was about to wipe it off when he realized it was dry. He rubbed the car again. Glistening and dry. He rubbed another car. The other directors rubbed metal that shone with a luster they had never seen in an auto showroom.
Now Reemer spoke, hushed and precise.
"We can take three hundred dollars off the price of any top-grade auto finish. We can transform the cheapest grades of paint into top quality. In brief, gentlemen, we can hold the entire auto industry hostage to our cheaper method of applying finish paint. In brief, gentlemen, to the robots of Japan, to the workers of Detroit, to the technicians of Wiesbaden, Germany, we say: your car-painting days are over. There is one finish worthy of the name, and only we can apply it."
The chairman of the board hugged Reemer Bolt like a son. He would have adopted him at that moment. "Don't applaud. Don't carry me away from here. Very quietly, as though this was routine, walk to the cars I have rented for you and leave."
They nodded. A few gave Reemer Bolt a wink. One of them said the hardest thing in his life at that moment was not jumping for joy.
"And on your way out, tell that sound-shield guy to turn it off."
When wonderful was made in this world, Reemer, thy name was you, thought Bolt. On his face was the delicious glow of magnificent success. Reemer Bolt loved the world at that moment. And why shouldn't he? He planned to own much of it soon.
Suddenly he heard noise from the cars leaving and knew the sound shield was off. In a few moments he was alone. He waited, whistling. The next phase was about to begin.
Buses pulled up, chugging to a halt. Fifty people got out, some men, some women. Each with a ticket. They poured out onto the field, a few of them stumbling because they were reading their tickets.
The ones who had driven in the cars were gone before the paint went on. The ones who would drive them out would not know that they were freshly painted.
Bolt unpeeled his suit when he realized he was getting glances. He would go out with the last car, and then be dropped off at a nearby town two blocks from where another driver in a normal car would pick him up.
It was massive. It was brilliant. It was, thought Bolt, Boltian, expressing audacity, complexity, and most of all success. And then the little idiots just sat in their cars doing nothing.
"C'mon. Move along," he said. But they just sat there staring at their wheels, straining with something. Reemer went to the closest car and flung open the door. A young woman was at the wheel.
"Start it," he said.
"I can't," she said.
"Well, try turning the key," he said.
She showed him her fingers. They were red. "I have been," she said.
"Move over," he said.
Outside of Kathy O'Donnell, all women were good for only one thing, he thought. He turned the key. There wasn't even a groan. He turned the key again. Not a flicker on the dashboard. The car was still.
"See," said the young woman.
"Proud of yourself, I bet," said Bolt, and he went to a man's car. Again nothing. Not in the Beige Buick or Caramel Chrysler. Not in the Peppermint Pontiac or Sun Shimmer Subaru. Not in the Tan Toyota, the Mauve Mustang. The Porsche, the Audi, the Citroen, Oldsmobile, Bronco, Fairlane, Thunderbird, Nissan, Datsun, or Alfa Romeo.
Even the Ferrari was dead. Dead. Reemer Bolt's fingertips were bleeding as he told everyone they would be paid, just get in the darn buses and go. Go, now. "You can do that, can't you?"
As the buses pulled off, he was left alone with a field full of cars that would not start. Alone was the word for it. Failure nestled sorely inside his belly.
He couldn't move the cars. He wouldn't know where to begin. So he just left them and walked away. No one could trace them, he thought. But two worldwide networks had already zeroed in on the brief and dangerous puncture of the ozone shield. And no one in Moscow or Washington was calling it a window to prosperity.
The President had always known the world would end like this, with his looking on as a helpless bystander. The beam had been shot off; Russia had spotted it, too, and would not, under any circumstances, according to the best reports, accept the fact that America could not find a weapon being activated in its own land. But it was true.
The FBI reported that its search for something that produced a fluorocarbon stream had been fruitless. No one knew what to look for. Was it a gun? Was it a balloon? Did it look like a tank? Did it look like a giant can of hair spray?
But there was one good report as the world stumbled blindly toward its death. This from that most secret of organizations, the one he found out about on inauguration day, when the former president had brought him into the bedroom and showed him that red phone.
The President had used it more in the last week than all his predecessors had during their terms of office. The man on the other-end was named Smith, and his voice was sharp and lemony. It was a voice from which the President drew reassurance.
"We tracked down the source to one place, but it had been moved. It's in Hanoi."
"Are you sure?"
"We will only be sure when we get our hands on the damned thing. But our man tracked it to San Gauta and then that led to Hanoi."
"So the commies have it. Why are they being so mysterious?"
"I don't understand, sir."
"More than anything, I would like to get into the Kremlin and find out what the hell is going on. Could you use the older one for that? The Oriental?"
"He's on sort of a sabbatical."
"Now?" screamed the President.
"You don't order this one around like some officer. They have traditions a lot older than our country, or even Europe for that matter, sir."
"Well, what about the end of the world? What about that? Did you make that clear?"
"I think he has heard that before also, sir."
"Wonderful. Do you have any suggestions?"
"If I were you?" said Smith.
"Yes. "
"One of the problems, perhaps the main one, is that the Russians don't believe we are helpless about this fluorocarbon weapon, if it is a weapon."
"But if it's in Hanoi, they have it."
"Maybe they have it now and maybe they don't. If they do, I think they might step away from the brink. Let's hope they do. My man is only following the best lead we have, and frankly, Mr. President, I am glad we have that man doing it. There is no one better in the world we could have."
"I agree. I agree. Go on."
"I would suggest something I have been thinking about for a long time. Give them something to show that we want their trust in this matter. That we are just as interested in finding out about that fluorocarbon device as they are. We should give them some powerful secret of our own. That secret would be a proof of trust."
"Do you have one in mind?"