by Jon Land
Lisa recalled those early days following his death. He had left a mess behind, and the soundest advice the lawyers and bankers could give her was to sell off all assets, including the business, in order to settle the estate. Her two brothers were all for it, but Lisa would not hear of it. A strange addenda to her father’s will stated that all decisions relating to the sale of the company required a unanimous vote by his children. Accordingly, since another stipulation named her chief executive officer, by casting her vote against selling she effectively gave the business to herself.
Lisa believed that that was what her father had wanted.
Her first move was to dissolve the board of directors when they refused to back her plans to rebuild TLP and make it solvent again. Dissolution proved costly, and almost fatal, for litigation froze Lisa’s operating funds. Then the unions called a strike at all her factories and warehouses the day after the first paychecks weren’t available. Lisa bypassed the union hierarchy totally and went straight to the workers her father had treated like family. She visited all four factories in a two-day whirlwind tour. She reminded the workers of the various innovative plans TLP had provided them, including low-interest loans for emergencies. She told them that this strike would destroy the business and their jobs. She pleaded for just a little time to get things settled. In return, she would institute a profit-sharing plan: the better TLP did, the better its employees would do. She was going to make the company the largest of its kind. She was onto something big, she told them, and it was her only lie.
After they returned to work, Lisa scrambled to put the pieces of the company back together. Every day was worse than the one before, turning up more and more debts that bled TLP’s meager assets dry. Additionally, the dissolved board of directors had joined with Wally Toys in a hostile takeover effort that Lisa was powerless to prevent.
Unless she found that something big.
She turned her attention to the research and development files and discovered an intriguing report by a pair of recently hired young computer whizzes concerning high-tech toys of the future. They were called “interactive” and were capable of accepting commands from an outside source such as a television program. Her father had rejected the proposal because of its huge costs and controversially violent aspects. Lisa read the preliminary report and was fascinated. She had found what she needed.
The price for bringing the program from the research stages into the marketplace would be in the area of $50 million. Even by selling off all liquid assets and subsidiaries of the company, Lisa would barely be able to come up with a tenth of that, and in so doing would leave herself wide open for the Wally Toys takeover bid. She went to the bank her father had dealt with for years and a dozen more after it. The results were always the same: no one wanted to do business with her failing company.
But Lisa was determined to find the money. For a time her father had been part of a golf foursome that included an old Mafia don named Victor Torelli, head of perhaps the most powerful family in the South. As a child, she had often played with Torelli’s son Dominick, and in later years she was continually turning away his overtures. His father had died several years back, and Dom was running the family now. She hadn’t seen him in months, and she hesitated before calling him. But he was her last resort.
“I assume this isn’t a social call,” he said after pleasantries were exchanged and before lunch was served on the terrace outside his office.
“It isn’t. Remember all those swimming lessons I gave you years ago? I think it’s time I was compensated.”
He laughed. “With interest, what’s the tally?”
“Thirty-five million dollars.”
He stroked his chin dramatically, showing no surprise. “I understand you were after fifty from the banks.”
“I’ve scaled down my plans.”
“Why? You don’t want to enter a brave new market without going all out, do you?”
Her eyes brightened. “You mean you also know about—”
“Of course. Somebody’s gotta look after you, right? I think the idea’s brilliant. I’d like nothing better than to get in on the ground floor. But fifty million dollars …”
“In exchange for twenty-five percent of all company profits for the next fifteen years.”
“I was thinking closer to fifty percent.”
“Look, Dom, I could have come in here and said ten, you would have said fifty, and we would have settled on twenty-five. I’m just trying to spare you some time.”
He laughed again. “Assuming I go along with this, you know where the money will be coming from. Are you sure it won’t bother you?”
“I’m absolutely sure.”
All that mattered to Lisa was saving her father’s company. TLP gained a patent on the interactive toy, and the company’s stock more than quadrupled in the next nine months. The profit-sharing plan was already making rich men and women out of many of the employees who had stuck it out, and Dom Torelli earned four times his initial investment. In another move, more Torelli money was used to finance the buy-out of Wally Toys. Lisa harbored no guilt over the fact that organized crime had played such an important role in TLP’s survival and subsequent flourishing. She had tried to make things work through the system, but the system wanted no part of her. Her father had entrusted her with a duty, and that duty was all she was concerned with.
Lisa herself had not grown nearly as rich as many people believed over these last few years. The profit-sharing plan drained much of her cash flow, and payments to Torelli through what amounted to an elaborate laundering operation took much of the rest. She didn’t care, because she knew her father would have been proud of her. It was strange how close they had been. Though he had a son on either side of her, he had nonetheless chosen Lisa to be the one he would cart to the office with him on school vacations. Most of this was due to the fact that when the boys did come, they chose to spend their time within the TLP display areas fiddling with the latest creations, while her greatest pleasure was sitting with her father in his big office. At important staff and board meetings he would sit her right by his side and give her a steno pad she could doodle on while pretending to make important notes.
“Better take that down,” he would say to her occasionally, and that became a signal to the underlings gathered before him that a report had particularly pleased him.
When he died, it created a void in Lisa that she filled by hard work and intense dedication to the company he had founded. The world had to know that Burton Eiseman had been the best at what he did, even if it was left to his daughter to demonstrate that. And yet such a relentless pursuit had led to so many complications, the most recent of which was the bizarre claims made by this man Kimberlain.
Her intercom buzzed again.
“Yes, Amy?” she said into the speaker.
“Miss Eiseman, er, Mr. Kimberlain is here to see you.”
“Just tell them downstairs not to let him up.”
“That’s just it. He’s not downstairs. He’s here. In the office.”
“I thought I told you—”
“I did. I informed the guards to deny him entry, but he’s standing right here … Wait a minute, he’s gone. He was right here a second ago but now he’s …”
It was then that Lisa felt the motion behind her, which was strange because she had no sense of someone having entered the room and her eyes for much of the time had been aimed straight through the open door.
“You must want to die awfully bad, Miss Eiseman,” said the Ferryman.
“I’ve been fed better lines,” she replied.
“Allow me to introduce myself.”
“Don’t bother. Your reputation precedes you.”
“Excuse the intrusion, but I got the feeling I wouldn’t have gotten in to see you otherwise.”
“Orders were to deny you entry. Apparently they didn’t do much to impede you.”
“Not the orders, your security people. Terribly lax. Might as well fire them all
if someone can get to you this easily.”
“And that’s what brought you here, isn’t it? The fact that you believe my life will soon be threatened.”
“The indications are there, Miss Eiseman.”
A pair of green-clad security guards charged through her office door with guns drawn.
“It’s all right,” she told them. “Mr. Kimberlain will be leaving soon. I’ve granted him a few moments of my time first.”
The security guards backed warily out. One of them closed the door behind him.
The Ferryman moved around to the front of the desk so the woman would be more comfortable. “I appreciate the few moments.”
“What would have happened if I had ordered the guards to escort you out?”
“I suspect they would have been injured.”
“And if I had ordered them to use their guns on you?”
“I suspect they would have been even more injured.”
“You seem quite sure of yourself, Mr. Kimberlain, or would you prefer I call you Mr. Ferryman.”
“I see you’ve done your homework.”
“You weren’t a difficult man to research.” Her stare turned contemplative. “I suppose you would best be described as an avenger, wouldn’t you say?”
“No, but go on.”
“A Lone Ranger without the mask. The three years of your life for which there is no record, I assume you were working for the government in some capacity.”
“Some.”
“Your story becomes quite an interesting one not long after that gap. Rescuing kittens from trees, walking old ladies across the street—you are one for good deeds, aren’t you?”
Kimberlain showed two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“You’d be more comfortable sitting.”
“Wouldn’t be able to move as fast.”
“And you think you might have to.”
“There’s always that possibility.”
Lisa paused. “I didn’t see you come into the office.”
“I kept myself where you weren’t looking.”
“Neat trick.”
“I have my moments.”
“This isn’t one of them, Mr. Kimberlain. I have no need for your rather unique services. Nothing to avenge on my account.” Then, softer, “I’ve handled that myself.”
“Do I detect a note of disapproval in your voice?”
“Only for your presence here, not for your chosen profession.”
“It’s what I am, not what I do.”
“Very profound, but I’m still not clear on what you’re doing in my office.”
Kimberlain looked at her closely. Her strength and vitality made her beauty even more radiant. She had clear brown eyes and auburn hair. She wore little makeup and was dressed in a fairly simple suit that cast her as anything but the Joan Collins type of female entrepreneur.
“All you have to be clear on is that your life may be in danger.”
“But I didn’t call on you. I mean, that’s how it works, isn’t it? Someone calls you as—how would you describe it?—a last resort? And never a penny earned for your efforts.”
“I like helping out my friends.”
“Like the woman whose husband was killed by the youth gang in Detroit? I understand the police couldn’t find enough evidence for an arrest but that the gang mysteriously dropped out of sight two months later and hasn’t been heard from since.”
“She sends me Christmas cards.”
“What about the owner of that housing project who was found suspended from the ceiling in one of his apartments with rats just out of reach of his honey-coated fingers and toes?”
“The same rats had already eaten a couple of kids.”
“You’re a busy man, Mr. Kimberlain. I’m surprised you could fit me into your schedule.”
“It’s off season.”
“I don’t need you.”
“I think you do.” The Ferryman sat down at last, and somehow it made him look more menacing to Lisa. He seemed too coiled to be able to keep from springing for very long. “There’s a pattern to a series of killings that have been occurring all over the country. Heads of companies either directly or indirectly involved with the military are being systematically eliminated.”
“Then you’ve come to the wrong place, Mr. Kimberlain. I have nothing to do with the military.”
“But you’ve been approached with regard to the POW! toy line.”
“By the government, not the military.”
“They don’t advertise themselves that way, Miss Eiseman, because it makes them seem too eager and presents too much of a security risk if they decide to go ahead with the purchase. The man who visited you is known as a procurement officer. He evaluates new discoveries that have potential military benefits, and if his evaluation is positive, his job is to obtain the discovery at the lowest possible price. Then he makes recommendations as to which military branch can best utilize it.”
“And now the military is interested in toy soldiers?” Lisa said incredulously.
“It’s the interactive principle that interests them, I’d guess. A kid turns on his television and, zap! the figures on his table or the floor start playing out the actions going on on the screen, thanks to signals decoded by chips in your toys.”
She was nodding, as impressed with his research as he had been with hers. “The commands you’re referring to are hidden as rasps, barely audible computerized noises on the sound track. The decoder box sends these sounds through the television to a computer console. The console translates the sounds and transmits them through a small attached antenna to the individual figures.”
“Wires?”
“Not anymore.”
“Then look at it from the standpoint of the procurement office. They look into the future and see us shipping a toy soldier to some Soviet spy. Then send the right signal and, bam! the toy shoots the poor dumb bastard.”
“You’re stretching things.”
“I’m just getting started, Miss Eiseman. How about a division of life-size toy soldiers programmed like your plastic monstrosities on Saturday-morning television? Give them titanium shells and equip them with the latest weaponry and they could take over your average Third World country within days.”
“Hardly cost effective.”
“When it comes to new toys for the military to play with, other balance sheets come into play.”
Lisa could feel herself weakening. Fear began to rise in her like a dull ache. She gazed across the desk and saw Kimberlain in a different light. He looked far less menacing, in spite of the piercing blue eyes which seemed able to delve deep inside her.
“Why me?” she wanted to know. “There must be others this procurement office deals with. Dozens, hundreds.”
“Yes, but you fit the pattern of the more recent victims. Each one has been responsible for a more attractive discovery than the one previous. Yours has the greatest military potential so far, in my humble opinion.”
“What would you suggest I do?”
“For starters, you stay alive.”
“And that’s your job?”
“Until I’m convinced you’re safe it is.”
She made herself look brave, though her father’s desk and chair seemed bigger than ever. “I don’t scare easily, Mr. Kimberlain.”
“But you’ll die just as easily as the other victims. Maybe more easily. Most of them had better security.”
The phone buzzed, and Lisa lifted it this time, hand trembling slightly. “Yes, I know… . Tell them I’ll be right down.” She lowered the receiver and said to the Ferryman, “I’m late for a demonstration of our latest POW! line. Since that’s what might be about to cost me my life, maybe you should see it in action.”
Chapter 11
“THE INTERACTIVE TOY MARKET represents the wave of the future,” Lisa Eiseman explained as they stepped into the private elevator that would take them down to TLP’s research and development department. “Kids want more from their te
levision programs and more from their toys. POW! brings the two of these together.”
“Sort of takes the imagination out of playing, doesn’t it?” Kimberlain said. “I mean, all the kids do is flip on the set, tune in the right channel, and their toys play all by themselves. Regular toy soldiers are more to my liking.”
“I’m not surprised,” she snapped, intent clear. “But your comment about imagination doesn’t hold. Television has become such a crucial part of children’s lives, it was only natural that eventually they would expect more from it. The next generation of POW! toys will allow children to control their army against one being controlled by a chip interpreting signals from the television.”
Kimberlain shrugged, not convinced. “I’ve got a friend who designed a multidimensional television for me. He knows I love movies, and now when I watch them I’m right in the middle of the action.”
“Same thing.”
“Not really. I’m just a spectator, and I know it. No signals from the system telling my pots and pans to do swan dives into the kitchen sink.”
She looked at him harshly as the elevator stopped at their floor. The doors slid open to reveal a long empty corridor. Forty yards ahead a steel fence ran from floor to ceiling.
“This floor isn’t listed on the standard building elevators,” Lisa explained. “You need a special coded pad like the one I inserted upstairs to gain access.”
They stepped out and walked side by side down the corridor.
“It might seem overdone,” Lisa continued. “But industrial espionage in the toy business is a way of life. If you can’t do the research yourself, the maxim goes, steal someone else’s. My father built this wing. I’ve updated it a bit to handle the POW! line.”
They reached the steel gate and Lisa greeted the pair of guards on duty.
“Decent security against industrial espionage,” Kimberlain told her. “But right now that’s the least of your worries.”
“So you say.”
Once they’d been cleared for entry, a guard unlocked a gate carved out of the security fence and they went through and then straight down the hallway beyond. A left turn headed them toward another door guarded by a second pair of uniformed men. Kimberlain thought there were five at first until he realized that three of them were actually life-size models of futuristic soldiers from the Powerized Officers of War collection. All three had square wheelbases for legs and stood about six feet tall, not including the small antennae that sprouted from their heads.