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Technologies in New Orleans, Louisiana.
    Nicolae spoke fluent French and even tossed in a Cajun flavor, clearly impressing the man. “Jimmy!” he began. “How are things in the Bayou today?”

    “Couldn’t be better, Mr. Carpathia,” James Corona Jr. said. “Just closed my biggest sale ever.”
    “Well, you will be able to break that record in a few moments if we can come to an agreement. This will be your lucky day.”
    “It already is, my friend. But you’ll be hard-pressed to top a one-hundred-and-one-million-dollar deal.”
    Nicolae froze. A hundred and one? What were the odds? He buried his pique and calmed himself.
    “What can I do for you?” Corona said.
    Deflated but determined not to show it, Nicolae outlined his plan to purchase enough hardware and licensing to tie off the Romanian markets first, and then to become the exclusive distributor of Corona’s oral-cellular technology in all of Europe.
    Corona responded with a throbbing silence.
    “This makes your other sale appear insignificant now, no?” Nicolae said, suddenly suspicious.
    “No.”
    “Really? You must be on a roll, Jimmy.”
    “A roller coaster is more like it, Nicolae.”
    “How so?”
    “I cannot sell to you.”
    Nicolae swung his feet from the desk and stood. “You are joking.”
    “I’m not. I wish I were.”
    “Why?”
    “Your territory has been taken.”
    “By whom?”
    “You know I’m not at liberty to reveal—”

    “Tell me who, Jimmy, or never get another dime’s worth of business from me.”
    “You’re a friend, Nicolae, and a treasured customer, but I cannot violate trade laws like that.”
    “You know I will find out soon enough.”
    “I have no doubt, and more power to you.”
    “What else do you have, Jimmy?” Nicolae said, having switched to English now.
    “I don’t follow.”
    “What is on the horizon? Give me something cutting-edge, something I can use to break the back of my competitor.”
    “But you said you would never do business with me again.”
    “Do you want the money or not? I have a hundred million to burn. And I will add two to it just for good measure.”
    “That’s the trouble, Nicolae. It would be too much of a risk. This would be something I have not even dreamed of offering anyone yet. It’s too embryonic.”
    “Try me.”
    “We’re just in the development stage.”
    “Then you could use a hundred million. A hundred and two.”
    “Could we ever. But I wouldn’t do that to you, Nicolae.”
    “I insist. At least tell me what it is.” Carpathia was pacing now, gazing out his glass walls at the mountains that bore his name.
    “Cellular-solar technology.”
    “Tell me more.”

    “This is classified.”
    “You can trust me. I have just been kicked in the teeth by an unnamed competitor, Jimmy. I am what you would call a motivated buyer.”
    “Investor is more accurate. If you buy product, it’s on you to succeed with it. If you invest in this, we become partners and we could both lose everything.”
    “Fine. Stipulated. What is cellular-solar technology?”
    “Just what it sounds like. We launch proprietary satellites far enough from the earth that the sun reaches them twenty-four hours a day, allows them to relay energy and signals and information to each other, and they power your electronic gadgets for free.”
    “I am in.”
    “Nicolae, you’re responding emotionally. I haven’t even bid this out yet, haven’t talked to our top people, haven’t—”
    “Money is going elsewhere if you let this slip through your fingers, Jimmy. Tell me I am in.”
    “Okay, all right, you’re in. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible with the details. You know, of course, there are zero guarantees on this one. We have no idea where it will go, whether it will work, whether there’ll be a market for it—anything.”
    “If it does what you say it will do, there will be a market,” Nicolae said. “And if there is not, I will create one.”
    Irene had always been a