At noon the next day—two days before Cole was to leave for his hearing in front of the SEC administrator —he made certain he wasn't being followed and took Diana with him to see Willard Bretling's laboratory.
Located in an old part of the city, it looked like a derelict warehouse surrounded by old Cyclone fencing and guarded by snarling dogs. The few cars that were parked outside looked older than the building.
Inside, it was antiseptically clean with every kind of state-of-the-art electronics equipment.
'This is right out of—of a James Bond movie,' Diana exclaimed excitedly. Willard Bretling was thin and tall with slightly bent narrow shoulders, wire-rimmed glasses, and a perpetual, absentminded frown. He was standing at a table in a corner of the lab, arguing with his two assistants about how to use their new toaster oven.
'Ah, Cole!' he exclaimed. 'Do you know how these damned things work?' He apologized to Diana, who was trying not to show her reaction to his dilemma. 'Such knowledge is limited to those with lesser minds than ours,' he said. He smiled at her, and it was the first time Cole had ever seen the eccentric old man grin.
'If that's the case,' Diana said, downplaying her own excellent mind, 'it should be right up my alley.' The most important scientific brain in the world stood back and watched—his Pop-Tart in hand—in tense expectation as she fiddled with a knob and pressed a lever. Nothing happened.
'Useless gadget,' Bretling stated.
'There we go,' Diana declared. She pressed down all the way on the lever, and the smell of a new electric appliance being put into use emanated from it.
'What did you do?' Bretling demanded, looking a little affronted.
Diana leaned very close to him and put her hand on his sleeve; then she whispered in his ear as if she had sensed how sensitive he was about being made to look foolish.
He'd left Cushman Electronics because they'd made him look foolish by refusing to let him work on his patents and ultimately assigning him to work under a younger, less gifted scientist. Diana's simple action made the temperamental Bretling into a teddy bear, right before Cole's amused eyes.
While Bretling wandered around the lab, he chatted endlessly with her. Cole couldn't imagine what they had to talk about. He could barely spend an hour with the man without feeling as if his brain were overloaded with scientific mumbo jumbo.
On a table off to their left was another of Bretling's pet projects, an ultrathin television set with a perfect picture that Cole was determined to announce very soon and thus put to shame Mitsubishi's latest introduction. At the moment, Unified Industries' candidate for Television of the Century was a flickering, white screen.
Tables at the far end of the gigantic room were cluttered with rows of would-be ultra-long-life rechargeable batteries.
Willard Bretling watched Cole's restless movements from the corner of his eye; then he looked at Diana as he said, 'Your husband is not a patient man. He is a man of vision, though.'
Diana nodded, watching Bretling's arthritic fingers handle a wire as fine as a human hair. 'He thinks very highly of you, too.'
The fingers stilled, faded blue eyes stared sharply over the rim of his glasses. 'Why do you say that?'
Diana told him all the things Cole had told her on the way there, and he seemed genuinely astonished. 'He thinks you are going to 'save the universe' with that battery someday very soon,' Diana said.
'The thin television first, then the battery,' the old man announced stubbornly. 'The Japanese already have one out, but the picture is not the same as a regular set. Ours will be.'
Diana had the oddest impression that the scientist, and not Cole, was determining the order in which the two products were developed. 'He needs the battery very badly.'
Without replying, Bretling bent over a microscope, examining something Diana couldn't see or imagine. 'Every entrepreneur has his favorite thing to want. Cushman wanted their stupid computer chip and took the people I needed to work on my projects to work on it. They put me in charge of testing. I am a creative genius, and they put me in a testing lab.'
Diana had been around a few people with genius IQs before, and like Willard Bretling, they had seemed exceptionally sensitive to any kind of opposition. She answered with the answer she would have used to calm a frustrated child. 'That must have been very embarrassing for you.'
He changed slides without looking up. 'I told them it was not reliable.
So they fired me. The founder was a good man, but his sons, they are pigs. I had worked for them for forty years, and they fired me. They escorted me out of the building as if they thought I would steal something if I stayed longer.'
Diana slid off the stool beside him and clutched his sleeve, unable to draw breath through her lungs. 'You tested their chip and it's no good?'
'Yes.'
It was all she could do not to scream or shout. 'Did you tell my husband that?'
'I told him it was no good, yes.'
'But did you tell him you had
'Why would I boast at being reduced to a—a flunky? I told him it was no good.'
'Mr. Bretling, don't you read the newspapers or watch television or listen to the radio?'
'No. I prefer classical music on disk. It is soothing to the creative spirit.' He lifted his head and glanced at her; then he looked at her again, and his mouth fell open. 'Why do you have tears on your face?'
Chapter 58
For the next two days, Cole stayed home, but Diana hardly saw him when he wasn't on the telephone or meeting with people. The visitors arrived and departed from the house under the watchful eye of a new security guard posted at the gate to keep reporters and everyone else out.
Cole was a man with a mission now; he was mobilizing his own forces and he was awe-inspiring to see in action. She watched him sitting behind his desk in the library, his fingers steepled in front of him, as he listened to advice from his Dallas lawyers, discarded most of it, and issued orders of his own. He worked out strategies with attorneys from Washington, made plans with Murray, the chief of security, and simultaneously ran his company from his home. When she least expected it, he would suddenly materialize at her side, pull her into his arms for a long kiss, and then go back to the next meeting, the next phone call.
Diana loved to watch him, and she hadn't been entirely idle either. She had made some phone calls of her own, and she had finally located Barbara Hayward in Vermont and spoken to her. Diana spent the rest of her time talking to her own office and reassuring Spence and Corey, her grandparents and mother, that all was well. And then reassuring them again. She even called Willard Bretling twice on a wild hunch that he was lonely and that with a little gentle urging and sincere compliments he could be hurried up with his projects.
Diana and Cole were to leave for Washington the following morning, and they expected to be there for two days at the most.
Chapter 59
Willard Bretling, Joe Murray, Travis, Cole, and Diana flew to Dulles in Cole's private plane; he made the attorneys fly commercial. It was a funny little quirk of his, Diana had discovered. Cole didn't like lawyers. Even his own. Also on board were four well-dressed men whose fashion accessories included concealed weapons, for which they had licenses.
Cole told her it was just a whim of Joe's, but Diana knew better. Joe was certain that Cushman had hired people to find Bretling, and within the next forty-eight hours, Cole was determined to give the Cushman brothers a reason to want him dead.
The Washington law firm that specialized in SEC matters met with Cole in his hotel suite at eight the next morning, before they went to his eleven o'clock hearing. They argued with each other, and with Cole, about Cole's nonnegotiable request for a hearing that would be open to members of Congress and the SEC.
