Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

He finished his whiskey and poured another, welcoming a soft Black Jack glow.

He thought of Kathy again. “Damn,” he said quietly.

The answering-service operator in Youngstown had lied to Pace, just as she’d been ordered to. At precisely the moment the reporter called for Cullen Ferguson, the man was sitting with a stiff Cutty in his hand in a designer leather chair in the Converse office of the company’s chief executive officer, George Thomas Greenwood. The sole topic of the meeting, which had been requested by Ferguson, was damage control.

After hashing through the possibilities, Ferguson concluded it was inevitable that the Dulles accident would be hung on a failure of their engine, the mainstay of the Converse Corporation. All the reported eyewitness accounts spoke of an explosion in or a disintegration of the engine, and the four personal phone calls during the day from Senator Harold Marshall to Greenwood, relaying bits and pieces of intelligence from a variety of sources, confirmed those accounts. That he could not sway Greenwood’s unshakable faith that the engine would be vindicated only served to frustrate Ferguson more.

Both men had avoided alcohol during the evening in order to keep clear heads, but the last call from Marshall, thirty minutes earlier, brought the bottle of Cutty out from Greenwood’s cabinet. The call was a classic good-news, bad-news update. On one hand, the NTSB had disclosed in its daily briefing that what appeared to be the remains of a bird had been found in the wreck of the Number Two engine. After all, Converse couldn’t be held responsible for a bird being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the rest of it that hurt. Marshall didn’t disclose the source of his information, and the two Converse executives didn’t ask. Marshall said he’d received a late tip that the Washington Chronicle would carry a story the next morning questioning the ability of the Converse Fan to live up to advertising claims for its capacity to withstand debris ingestion. The story also would disclose the discovery of a cracked turbine wheel in a Converse Fan engine on a TransAm 811 in Seattle three months earlier. If the company had overstated the engine’s capabilities, or if it turned out the turbine disks were brittle or flawed, the news would be devastating.

Converse, for the first time, was on the verge of gaining a solid position among industry leaders, but that hold wasn’t yet strong enough to withstand a severe misstep.

Earlier in the evening, Greenwood and Ferguson, in a conference call with Harold Marshall, devised a two-pronged campaign—on the fronts of public relations and finance—to mitigate the damage to the company. But the campaign was predicated on having a few weeks to work with. The Chronicle’s speculative story would deprive them of any gear-up time at all.

When Greenwood heard about the incident in Seattle, he expressed concern that the cause of the turbine-disk fracture be found as early as possible. Ferguson also was aware of it, and he knew the staff metallurgists studying the fracture were reasonably certain it had been caused by a defect in the titanium alloy, not in the engine design.

“Is it possible we have a subcontractor delivering faulty material?” Greenwood suggested. “That would shift some of the focus away from us.”

“Are you asking me if that is possible or telling me it should be?” Ferguson challenged. “Ultimately, we have to take responsibility for what our subs do.”

“Come off it, Cullen. You see what’s been happening to our stock. This company can’t afford that. If we can lay off any of the blame, by God, we’re going to do it.”

Ferguson shook his head. He didn’t like the drift of the conversation. “The way the public and the industry react to us will be tied to how upfront we are about this situation and how far we’re willing to go to see it doesn’t happen again.”

“Like Exxon did in Alaska?” Greenwood challenged. “They stepped right up and took it, and they’re going to be paying out the ass for the next century.” Then Greenwood leaned forward in his chair to be certain he was heard and understood. “Look, Cullen, we’ll go as far as we can to prevent a recurrence,” he said in a tone of deep conviction. “That was never in any doubt. We can’t let this happen again. If it was our engine, we acknowledge the situation and correct the problem. That is a given, an absolute. But if there are mitigating circumstances and we can bring them out, they can only work in our favor with the airlines and on Wall Street.”

“I hate to be obstinate about this, G.T., but it isn’t going to work very well if the press finds out we bought a United States senator who freaked out and tried to intimidate the NTSB, or that we didn’t dispatch our engineering team to help the NTSB until the day after the crash.” It was ground they’d covered already, but Ferguson felt deeply enough to pursue it further.

“As I said, it was my feeling that our team members should go to Washington together,” Greenwood said. “Walt Havens was in Seattle, and he couldn’t get back in time to go out last night. They all were on a company plane at seven this morning. It hasn’t held up the investigation one little bit, and I seriously doubt the media would be interested even if they knew, which they don’t. As for Marshall, he has become something of a loose cannon. But I can handle him. Now drop it.”

Ferguson inhaled deeply and exhaled loudly through ballooned cheeks.

“You having second thoughts about signing on, Cullen?” Greenwood asked.

Ferguson shook his head. “Any company in this business could have this happen,” he said. “Most have.” He paused, as if to add something, but he didn’t. Greenwood finished.

“But Pratt and Whitney, GE, and Rolls Royce aren’t in our financial shape, is that what you’re thinking? Well, you’re right. This engine is our great opportunity to break through, both personally and professionally, and don’t you forget that. Boeing has been making inquiries about adapting it to their 800 series. To power the Sextons is a foot in the door. But if we could get in with Boeing, there’s no telling how far this company could rise. And aside from corporate pride, do you have any idea what that would mean to incentives, bonuses, and stock options? We’re in on the ground floor on an express elevator to the penthouse, Cullen, assuming nobody’s stupid enough to push the stop button.”

“I’ve thought of all that, G.T. Quite honestly, that was a major factor in my decision to come with Converse. But stock options are the up side of this job, and right now, for better or for worse, I have to deal with the down side, and I don’t like the way it’s going.”

“What, specifically?”

“My posture with the media, for starters. I’m under orders not to go beyond our prepared statement, but it’s the standard pap about our corporate grief and our cooperation with the NTSB and that shit. It gets one day’s play buried somewhere in the news stories then disappears. It’s not doing us any P.R. good at all.”

“We’re just following instructions from the insurance carriers.”

“Fuck the insurance carriers. Maybe we should show some human compassion.”

“You do that, Cullen, and our liability losses will be in the nine-figure range, maybe higher. Let’s deal with the future, my friend, and leave the past to the lawyers.”

“That’s fine. But the calls about the past keep coming to me.”

Greenwood took a deep drink from his glass and studied Ferguson closely. The junior man was exceptional. He was stylish, good-looking, possessed of a quick wit, and good on his feet, the sort of combination that got excellent press when the media came to visit. But he’d been hired out of a newsmagazine background, not out of industry, and the CEO wondered if he could tough it out in a situation that might require him to bend the truth for the good of the company.