“You’re as good as family here, Vic,” Payne said to Bazhin. “I didn’t want to leave you in the cold. Norbert’s setting up for us here to buy in to a tune of a mil each, minimum. A week from now will be the time.”
“That’s why G and P are about to unload,” Garsten put in while he sized up the table. “They can feel the dirt sliding.”
Payne watched Bazhin as he chalked the tip of his cue. He knew what Bazhin was thinking. Floating bad press in the journals to drive prices into the basement as a setup for a bulk buying operation was hardly a new tactic. And it wouldn’t be the first time that fears would be found to have been baseless, and prices magically recovered, once the right interests were in control.
“Okay, I hear the message,” Bazhin said as Garsten played. “But the big egg in this instance isn’t the company per se, is it, Martin? What we’re talking about is the technology. Having Neurodyne on a leash won’t accomplish much unless the patents come with it. And I can’t believe that’s the case.”
“Heber owns them personally, and leases exclusive rights to the corporation,” Garsten said.
“You see.” Bazhin gestured to Payne as if to say that made his point. “Eric’s a smart guy.”
“His wife, anyhow,” Garsten said. “She’s the business brains.”
“Whoever.” Bazhin waved it away. “But it puts us on time. Leases have dates on, and have to be renegotiated. Then what?” Meaning that Heber could put them through a laundry, or, with DNC given a reprieve by then, walk away and set up a new company that would be eagerly capitalized, leaving them holding a worthless shell.
Payne moved to a corner to take his turn. “You’ll be safe,” he told Bazhin, leaning over and sighting. “I’ll get control of the patents too. Then Microbotics gets full rights, and we buy out Neurodyne as a subsidiary.”
Bazhin frowned. “How are you planning on doing that?”
Colors rolled on the green felt to a rippling of clicks. Payne smiled as he straightened up from sinking a red and moved to line up for the pink. “I’m not at liberty to go into all the details. Let’s just say it gets a little personal. You know how it is, Baz, some things aren’t really appropriate to a conversation between gentlemen.”
“Just don’t go underestimating Heber again this time,” Bazhin said. “Because somebody thinks thoughts into chips all day, that doesn’t mean to say he can’t be a fighter. It caught everyone off guard when he decided to walk and set up Neurodyne. If it’s his company and his patents, a guy like that could still cause a lot of trouble.”
Payne shook his head. “Just trust me for a little while, okay, Baz?” It wasn’t necessary to spell out the implications. In the event, whoever controlled Neurodyne by that time would stand to come out of it very well—and with Microbotics’s stockholders providing the funds. And the eventual yield would in turn recompense the stockholders for their involuntary generosity later, all in the fullness of time. It could work out very neatly. Bazhin nodded.
Outside the French window, the water reflected lights from across the lake. Payne’s yacht lay moored stern shoreward at its dock to one side, white, sweeping curves picked out in a blaze of floodlighting.
Not only his company, but his wife, Payne added mentally. But he hadn’t deemed it tactful to go into that side of things just for the moment. And besides, if all went as planned, in another week Heber would no longer be around to raise objections.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The towers of Seattle center were gouging the darkening sky into orange streaks of cirrostratus edge-lit by dying sun when Corfe parked in a side street off 4th Avenue in the downtown district. He had borrowed Eric’s van from the house so that on the way, he and Kevin could pick up some timber moldings and a door that he needed for a job at his own place that he had planned for the coming holiday weekend. Not that the van had a lot of spare room to squeeze a door and a pile of timber into. The back was filled with electronics consoles, screens, and three operator stations—like one of the mobile surveillance and communications units that backup teams used in the spy movies. Eric had fitted it out as a mobile mec command center in order to give demonstrations to prospective users on their own premises. But using it would explain Corfe’s going to the house from Neurodyne, and make it seem more natural that he should take Kevin along for the ride.