They made a pile in one corner, and Remo addressed the board. The Master of Sinanju stood behind him like an emerald-and-gold genie, his hands tucked in his sleeves.
"The scam is out in the open," said Remo, his voice clipped. "So tell us where the bronto is and maybe you won't have to end up like Skip King."
"How-how did Skip King end up?" a man quavered.
"Breathing his own puke."
The board of directors looked queasy and the CEO said, "We have no idea what has happened to the poor animal. We agreed to allow Dr. Nancy Derringer to transport it to a secure place, and the hauler did not arrive. We were just discussing what it could mean when you two barged in."
"You aren't trying to tell me this hasn't anything to do with Bronto Burgers?" Remo said skeptically.
"Obviously Dr. Derringer has tricked us."
Remo started to scoff when the Master of Sinanju said thinly, "He is speaking the truth, Remo."
"I can smell their sweat," said Remo.
"As can I. But it smells of truth."
Remo looked dubious. He lowered his tone. "Their pulses are racing. That means they're lying, right?"
Chiun shook his head coldly. "It means that they are frightened. If they lied, their pulses would jitter."
Remo looked from the Master of Sinanju to the board and back again. "So who hijacked the Bronto? It sure wasn't Nancy."
"There is only one person left," Chiun intoned.
"Can't be Colonel Mustard. He's in a pile with his beret in his mouth." Then it hit him. Remo snapped his fingers. "King?"
Chiun nodded firmly. "King."
"Damn." Remo slipped from the room, calling back, "Anyone who interferes is hamburger. Literally."
Chiun hung back a moment. "I have spared you your miserable lives," he told the trembling board. "I will expect your gratitude to be without measure."
Then he was gone.
"I move we all submit our resignations," the CEO said stonily.
When no one answered right away, he added, "On the condition that the severance packages are commensurate with our contributions."
The motion was seconded, voted on, and passed unanimously. That left only the dicey question of to whom to tender their resignations.
Skip King was gone when Remo and Chiun reached his former office. They followed the trail of partial footprints to the elevator bank. King had stepped in his own vomit and tracked it along the carpet.
The head of security in the lobby confirmed that King had left the building.
"What kind of car does he drive?" asked Remo.
"Why should I answer that question?" the guard wanted to know. "Did you two sign in? I don't remember buzzing you in."
"We do our own buzzing. Watch."
The man had a computer terminal at his station and Remo laid a hand on it. He described a quick circle and reversed it.
The guard noticed that the data on his screen was breaking up. An electronic beeping came from the system. It sounded panicky. "How are you doing that?" he gulped.
"This?" Remo said. "This is nothing. Watch this." And Remo ran his hand back and forth along the side. The glass cracked and the broken screen hissed in the guard's face like an upset alley cat.
The guard spat out information in quick bursts. "Red. Infiniti. License plate says KING 1."
"Let's go, Little Father. It's time to crown the king."
They floated out of the building.
Chapter 23
Skip King had climbed the corporate ladder the hard way.
He had started working the drive-in window of a Burger Triumph in Timonium, Maryland, was soon catapulted to store manager, then regional supervisor, and by the tender age of twenty-eight he was working out of the corporate headquarters.
There was one and only one reason for his success. He saw himself as a cog in the corporate machinery. On the franchise level, that meant maximizing the profit even if it meant returning to work after hours and salvaging the unsold burger meat and stale fries and bringing them in the next morning before the day crew arrived.
He saved the company twenty thousand dollars in his first six months as manager. As regional supervisor, he saved six figures by shuttling leftovers between stores. The board never questioned his methods. They only saw the bottom line and the bottom line was what they cared about.
And what Burger Triumph, Inc. cared about, Skip King cared about. He had no social life, acquired no friends, and didn't care.
When he had been promoted into the heady, button-down atmosphere of the main office, at first Skip King didn't think he could make it. There was no spoilage to salvage. He wasn't going anywhere as a junior product researcher until he requested what was thought to be the dead end of all dead ends. A transfer to the company cafeteria. As manager.
Within three months, the subsidized cafeteria actually showed an unheard-of profit. The board didn't care that the plastic utensils were being cleaned in Skip King's apartment sink every night for reuse and only the cheapest army surplus food was being served to lower echelon staff. The board ate in their private clubs and fine restaurants, so they didn't hear the complaints of staff. They only saw the bottom line. And they only cared about the bottom line.
One gleaming rung at a time, Skip King scaled the shiny ladder of success. It had not been easy. His lack of business education had caused many doors to slam shut in his glowering face. Middle management looked more and more like Skip King's destiny.
Until the night he slipped an updated resume into his employee file, listing himself as a graduate of Wharton Business School. Magna cum laude. Because he had never heard of summa cum laude.
It was a potentially dangerous move, but King, noticing the high turnover in Burger Triumph personnel-even at its corporate headquarters-figured he was even money to get away with it.
The next time he put in for a vacant position higher up in the company, he talked up his degree in business administration-and found himself in the marketing division. From that day on, Skip King was a Wharton man. And he made sure everyone-from the secretaries to the janitorial staff-knew it.
His fellow employees found him insufferable about it, but not one called him on it. They preferred to change the subject, or duck into a men's room stall when they saw him coming.
Five years after first entering the building, Skip King was made VP of marketing and found himself sitting with the big boys in marketing meetings.
He adapted well. He learned to read the board. To sense when it was safe to agree or disagree. He was one of them. A comer. The organization man. There was no limit to the heights he might reach.
Until the Bronto Burger project unraveled.
It had been a bitter pill to swallow. Demoted overnight. And on the verge of his greatest fame. It had been Skip King's idea from start to finish. It had been Skip King who had stood before the board and vowed to fall on his sword if anything went wrong. With an agreed-upon golden parachute in place if he was forced to resign to preserve the company's good name.
Demotion wasn't honorable. Demotion was not something Skip King had bargained for. And working for a woman who'd never seen the inside of Wharton was intolerable.
Briefly, Skip King had contemplated suicide. For what was life without the reassuring steel rungs of the corporate ladder under one's climbing feet?
Then he got angry. Angry at the board of directors who would humiliate him, Skip King, who dared go into the heart of deepest Africa to make their bottom line the greatest in fast-food history.
It was in that cauldron of righteous anger that Skip King decided to get even. And as long as he was in the getting-even business, he thought, no sense in not getting rich in the process.