"It's a little indulgence," Kettlewell said, bounding up the steps and shaking hands with a small, neat woman pilot, an African-American with corn-rows peeking out under her smart peaked cap. "Once you've flown in your own bird, you never go back." "This is a *monstrosity*," Tjan said as he boarded. "What this thing eats up in hangar fees alone would be enough to bankroll three or four teams." He settled into an oversized Barcalounger of a seat and accepted a glass of orange juice that the pilot poured for him. "Thank you, and no offense." "None taken," she said. "I agree one hundred percent." "See," Tjan said. Suzanne took her own seat and her own glass and buckled in and watched the two of them, warming up for the main event, realizing that she'd been brought along as a kind of opening act. "They paying you more?" "Yup," Tjan said. "All on the back-end. Half a point on every dollar brought in by a team I coach or whose members I mentor." Kettlewell whistled. "That's a big share," he said. "If I can make my numbers, I'll take home a million this year." "You'll make those numbers. Good negotiations. Why didn't you ask us for the same deal?" "Would you have given it to me?" "You're a star," Kettlewell said, nodding at Suzanne, whose invisibility to the conversation popped like a bubble. "Thanks to her." "Thanks, Suzanne," Tjan said. Suzanne blushed. "Come on, guys." Tjan shook his head. "She doesn't really understand. It's actually kind of charming." "We might have matched the offer." "You guys are first to market. You've got a lot of procedures in place. I wanted to reinvent some wheels." "We're too *conservative* for you?" Tjan grinned wickedly. "Oh yes," he said. "I'm going to do business in *Russia*." Kettlewell grunted and pounded his orange juice. Around them, the jet's windows flashed white as they broke through the clouds and the ten thousand foot bell sounded. "How the hell are you going to make anything that doesn't collapse under its own weight in Russia?" "The corruption's a problem, sure," Tjan said. "But it's offset by the entrepreneurship. Some of those cats make the Chinese look lazy and unimaginative. It's a shame that so much of their efforts have been centered on graft, but there's no reason they couldn't be focused on making an honest ruble." They fell into a discussion of the minutiae of Perry and Lester's businesses, franker than any business discussion she'd ever heard. Tjan talked about the places where they'd screwed up, and places where they'd scored big, and about all the plans he'd made for Westinghouse, the connections he had in Russia. He even talked about his kids and his ex in St Petersburg, and Kettlewell admitted that he'd known about them already.