He was trying to win me over by being reasonable, by actually explaining —to some degree, at least. But I wasn't going to get sucked in that easily. "So why not send one of your flunkies from Kyoto?" I shot back. "There's got to be hundreds of keeners just dying to— to kiss hoop, is what I started to say, but at the last moment I reconsidered—"to do the executive veep a personal favor. Neh ?"