Power Play

by Joseph Finder

  He didn't get up to shake my hand or anything. He sat in a high-backed leather desk chair behind the huge slab of glass that served as his desk. There was nothing on it except for a row of scale models of all the great Hammond airplanes-the wide-bodied 818, the best-selling 808, the flop that was the 828, and of course my plane, the 880.

  Bodine was around sixty, with silver hair, deep-set eyes beneath heavy black brows, a high forehead, a big square jaw. If you'd met him only briefly, you might call him distinguished-looking. Spend more than two minutes with him, though, and you'd realize there was nothing distinguished about the guy. He was a bully, most people said-a big, swaggering man with a sharp tongue who was given to explosive tirades. Yet at the same time, he had a big, bluff charisma-a kind of Jack Welch thing going on.

  Bodine leaned back, folding his arms, as I sat in one of the low chairs in front of his desk. I'm not short-just over six feet-but I found myself looking up at him as if he were Darth Vader. I had a feeling the setup was deliberate, one of Bodine's tricks to intimidate his visitors. Sunlight blazed in through the floor-to-ceiling glass behind him so I could barely make out his face.

  "What's the holdup at Fab?"

  "No big deal," I said. "A bonding problem in the vertical stabilizer, but it's taken care of."

  Was that why he'd called me here? I braced myself for a barrage of questions, but he just nodded. "All right. Pack your bags," he said. "You're going to Canada."

  "Canada?" I said.

  "The offsite. The company jet's leaving from Van Nuys in five hours."

  "I don't understand." The annual leadership retreat, at some famously luxurious fishing lodge in British Columbia, was only for the top guys at Hammond-the twelve or so members of the "leadership team." Certainly not for the likes of me.

  "Yeah, well, sorry about the short notice, but there you have it. Should be plenty of time for you to pack a suitcase. Make sure you bring outdoor gear. Don't tell me you're not the outdoors type."

  "I do okay. But why me?"

  His eyes bored into me. Then the ends of his broad mouth turned up in an approximation of a smile. "You complaining?"

  "I'm asking."

  "Jesus Christ, guy, didn't you hear about the Eurospatiale disaster?"

  The crash at the Paris Air Show, he meant. "What about it?"

  "Right in the middle of the aerial demonstration, the pilot was forced to make an emergency crash landing. An aileron ripped off a wing at thirty thousand feet and smashed into the fuselage."

  "An inboard flap, actually," I said.

  He looked annoyed. "Whatever. The piece landed smack-dab on the runway at Le Bourget about six feet from Mr. Deepak Gupta, the chairman and managing director of Air India. Almost killed the guy."

  "Okay." That I hadn't heard.

  "Mr. Gupta didn't even wait for the plane to crash," he went on. "Pulled out his mobile phone and called Mike and said he was about to cancel his order for thirty-four Eurospatiale E-336 planes. Said those guys weren't ready for prime time. Wanted to talk business as soon as the show was over."

  "That's about eight billion dollars' worth of business," I said, nodding. "Give or take."

  "Right. I told Mike not to leave Mumbai until he gets Mr. Gupta's signature on the LOI." An LOI was a letter of intent. "I don't care how sick of curry he gets."

  "Okay."

  He pointed at me with a big, meaty index finger. "Lemme tell you something. It wasn't just one damned E-336 that crashed at Le Bourget. It was Eurospatiale's whole program. And Air India's just the first penny to drop. This is a no-brainer."

  "Okay, but the offsite-"

  "Cheryl wants someone who can talk knowledgeably about the 880."

  Cheryl Tobin was our new CEO and his boss. She was the first female CEO in the sixty-year history of Hammond Aerospace and, in fact, our first female top executive. She'd been named to the job four months before, after the legendary James Rawlings had dropped dead on the golf course at Pebble Beach. Bodine must have been as stunned as everyone else when the board of directors voted to hire not just an outsider-from Boeing, yet, our biggest competitor-but a woman. Ouch. Because everyone thought the next CEO was going to be Hank Bodine. Hell, he even looked like a CEO.

  "What about Fred?"

  "Fred's doctors won't let him travel yet." Fred Madigan, the chief engineer on the SkyCruiser, had recently had a triple bypass.

  "But there's plenty of others." Granted, I probably knew more about the plane, overall, than anyone else in the company, but that didn't make any difference: I wasn't a member of the executive team. I was a peon.

  Bodine came forward in his chair, his eyes lasering into mine. "You're right. But Cheryl wanted you." He paused, lowered his voice. "Any idea why that might be?"

  "I've never talked to Cheryl Tobin in my life," I said. "She doesn't even know who I am."

  "Well, for some reason, you've been asked to go."

  "Asked or ordered?"

  I thought he'd smile, but he didn't. "It's not optional," he said.

  "Then I'm flattered to be invited." A long weekend in a remote lodge in British Columbia with the twelve or thirteen top executives of Hammond Aerospace? I would have preferred a root canal. Anesthesia optional.

  His phone buzzed, and he picked it up. "Yeah. I'm on my way," he said into the mouthpiece. He stood up. "Walk with me. I'm late for a meeting."

  He bounded out of his office with the stride of an ex-athlete-he'd played football at Purdue years ago, I'd heard-and I lengthened my stride to keep up with him. He gave Gloria a quick wave as we hurtled through his outer office.

  "One more thing," he said. "Before we reach the lodge, I want you to find out why that plane crashed in Paris. I want Mike to have every last bit of ammo we can get to trash Eurospatiale and sell some SkyCruisers."

  The executive corridor was hushed and carpeted, the walls mahogany and lined with vintage airplane blueprints in black frames.

  "I'll do what I can."

  "Not good enough. I want the facts before we get to Canada."

  Some other executive I didn't recognize passed by, and said, "How's it going, Hank?" Bodine flashed a smile and touched two fingers to his forehead in a kind of salute but didn't slow down.

  "I doubt I can call Eurospatiale and ask them, Hank."

  "Are you always this insubordinate?"

  "Only with people I'm trying to impress."

  He laughed once, a seal's bark. "You're ballsy. I like that."

  "No, you don't."

  He smiled, flashing big, too-white teeth. "You got me there." Then his smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  We stopped right outside the executive conference room. I sneaked a glance inside. One entire side of the room was a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking downtown L.A. On one wall was a giant screen on which was projected the Hammond Aerospace logo, which looked like some 1960s corporate designer's vision of the future.

  Ten or twelve people were sitting in tall leather chairs at a huge O-shaped conference table made of burnished black wood. The only woman among them was Cheryl Tobin, an attractive blonde in her early fifties wearing a crisp lavender suit with crisp white lapels. Everything about her seemed crisp and composed and efficient.

  Bodine looked down at me. He was a good four inches taller than I and probably seventy pounds heavier. He narrowed his eyes. "I'll be honest with you. You weren't my choice to fill in for Mike."

  Like I want to go? I thought. "I'm getting that feeling."

  "Cheryl's going to ask you all sorts of questions about the SkyCruiser. She seems determined to shake things up, so she's going to want to get involved in every little detail-the weight issue, the software glitches, the quality testing on the fuselage section, all that crap. And I just want to make sure you're going to give her the right answers."

  I nodded. The right answers. What the hell did that mean?

  "Look, I don't want any trouble from you this weekend. We clear?"

  "Of course."

/>   "Good," he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. "Just keep your head down and stay in your own lane, and everything should work out okay."

  I wondered what he was talking about, what kind of "trouble" he was referring to.

  Then again, I don't think Hank Bodine had any idea, either.

  4

  Right after leaving Hank Bodine's office, I drove the twenty miles to my apartment in El Segundo to grab some clothes. I don't travel much for work-unlike my bosses, who are constantly flying somewhere to meet with customers-but my dog, Gerty, understood at once what the black suitcase meant. She put her head down between her paws and watched me gather my clothes with a stricken, panicked look.

  When I broke up with Ali a year or so ago, the first thing I did was get a dog. I guess I'd gotten used to having someone else around, and so I went to the animal shelter and adopted a golden retriever. For no good reason I named her Gertrude. Gerty for short.

  Gerty was all skin and bones when she first moved in, but she was beautiful, and she took to me right away. To be honest, if her new owner was a serial killer and rapist, she'd have bonded with him instantly, too. She's a golden.

  She was also sort of a head case: She followed me everywhere I went in the apartment, couldn't be more than two or three feet away at any time. She'd follow me into the bathroom if I didn't close the door; when I came out, she'd be right there, waiting. Gerty was needy, and extremely clingy, but no more so than some of the women I'd gone out with since Alison Hillman.

  Sometimes I wondered whether her last owner had abandoned her because she was so clingy or whether she got that way because she'd been abandoned. Whatever the reason, her separation anxiety wasn't in the range of normal. She was like a Vietnam vet with post-traumatic stress syndrome who hears a lawn mower and thinks it's the last chopper out of Saigon taking off from the roof of the American embassy.

  "Chill," I said.

  Dogs are underrated as girlfriend-substitutes, I think. Gerty never complained when I came home late from work; if anything, she was even happier to see me. She didn't mind eating the same thing day after day. She never insisted on watching Desperate Housewives when I wanted to watch football, and she never asked me if I thought she looked fat.

  At least, that's what I keep telling myself ever since I screwed up my relationship with Ali. Call it rationalization. Whatever works, right?

  And whatever kept me from dwelling on the first time I saw her.

  Jake Landry?"

  I turned around in my cubicle, almost did a double take. A beautiful woman was standing there, looking angry.

  "Yes?"

  Did I mention she was beautiful? Big green eyes, auburn hair. Small and slender. Really cute. Her arms were folded across her chest.

  "I'm Alison Hillman. From HR."

  "Oh-right. I thought you wanted me to-"

  "I had to be here anyway, and I thought I'd track you down."

  I spun my chair around. Stood up, trying to be polite.

  An Alison Hillman from HR had sent me an irate e-mail, told me to come see her in the headquarters building immediately. I hadn't expected her just to show up.

  I also hadn't expected her to look like this. "You wanted to see me for something?"

  She looked up at me, her head cocked to one side. The light caught her eyes. Golden flecks in her irises. Sunflowers, I thought. They look like sunflowers.

  "Your name is on Ken Spivak's ERT form as the hiring manager." An accusation, not an observation.

  I hesitated for a second. "Oh, right, the transfer form." I usually didn't do that kind of paperwork, was unfamiliar with the acronyms. "There a problem?"

  "A problem?" She looked incredulous. "I don't know what you're trying to pull off, but a Cat C ERT has to be filed with the Hourly Workforce Administration as well as the QTTP and LTD administrators."

  "Do you speak any English?"

  She stared at me for a few seconds, shook her head. I wasn't sure, but it looked to me like she was trying to suppress a smile, a real one. "You put through a lateral transfer on this machinist, from the Palmdale plant to the El Segundo assembly plant, is that correct?"

  "Yeah, so?"

  "You can't do that. It doesn't work that way."

  I tried to look innocent. "What doesn't work that way?"

  "You're kidding, right? You don't have the power to just-just move an hourly employee from one division to another. You can't hire outside the candidate pool. There's a whole posting process that's mandated by the union collective bargaining agreement. There are extensive protocols that have to be followed. So, I'm sorry, but I have to cancel this transfer. He's going back to Palmdale."

  "Moment of candor, please?"

  She looked puzzled. "Yes?"

  "You and I both know that we're about to sell the Palmdale division to some buyout firm, only the news hasn't been made public yet. Which means this guy's going to be laid off."

  "Along with everyone else who works at the Palmdale plant," she said, folding her arms across her chest. "And most of those workers will find other jobs."

  "Not him. He's too old. He's fifty-seven, he's been with Hammond for almost forty years, and he's a good man and a hard worker."

  A half smile. "Moment of candor? We make it hard for a reason, Mr. Landry. It's about doing things the right way."

  "Yeah, well, Ken Spivak has five kids, and his wife died last year, and he's all they've got. And it's Jake."

  She seemed to be avoiding my eyes. "I-I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I really don't have a choice here. Do you realize what kind of legal nightmare we're going to face when the word gets out in Palmdale that one lucky guy got a transfer and everyone else gets laid off-including people with higher performance ratings? The union's going to be all over us."

  I said quietly, "You know what kind of legal trouble you're going to be in if you revoke his job?"

  She stared at me for a few seconds, didn't reply. She knew I was right.

  I went on: "Don't transfer him back. Don't you do it."

  "It's about doing things the right way," she repeated quietly. "I'm sorry."

  "No," I said. "It's about doing the right thing."

  She didn't say anything.

  "You have lunch yet?" I asked.

  I didn't know what to pack. "Outdoor gear," Hank Bodine had said, whatever that meant. I collected a couple of pairs of jeans, my old Carhartt hunting jacket, a pair of boots. Then I went online and looked up the resort, saw how high-end it was, and threw in a pair of khakis and a blazer and a fancy pair of shoes for dinner, just in case. I quickly changed into a blazer and tie to wear on the corporate jet.

  Then there was the question of what to do with Gerty for the four days I'd be gone. Someone had to feed her and take her out two or three times a day. I called one of my neighbors in the apartment building, a widowed older woman. She had a black Lab and loved Gerty and had taken care of her a few times. Her phone rang and rang. Called a bunch of my friends, who all begged off.

  They knew about Gerty.

  This could be a major problem, I realized, because I really didn't want to board Gerty at a kennel, even assuming I could find one at this point. I glanced at my watch, realized I had about two hours before I had to be at the Van Nuys airport. Just enough time to race over to the office and download the latest files on the 880 and try to find out what caused the crash of that plane in Paris.

  As long as I got Hank Bodine what he wanted, I figured, everything would go fine.

  5

  On the short drive over to the office, I kept thinking about that strange meeting with Hank Bodine and wondering the same thing that he'd asked me: Why had the CEO of the Hammond Aerospace Corporation, who didn't even know who I was, put me on the "guest list" for the offsite? And what was Bodine so concerned about-what trouble was he afraid I might cause? If he wanted to make sure I gave her the "right answers," then what were the wrong ones?

  As soon as I got to my cubicle, I shifted into multitaski
ng mode-plowed through my e-mail while copying files onto a flash drive. Most of my e-mail stack I could safely ignore. One was from the Office of the CEO, concerning the importance of ethics and a "culture of accountability" at Hammond. I saved that one to read later. Meaning: probably never.

  Zoл was watching me. "So what'd Bodine want?"

  "I thought you knew everything."

  "Sometimes the admin gossip network is slow. Let's hear it."

  "He told me I'm going to the offsite in Canada."

  "Get out! For what, to carry their luggage?"

  I gave her a look, then went back to copying files. "Cheryl Tobin specifically requested me," I said with a straight face. "To stand in for Mike."

  "Uh-huh. Like she even knows who you are."

  "Not by name, exactly," I admitted. "She wanted someone who could talk knowledgeably about the 880."

  "And you're the best they could come up with?"

  This was why Zoл and I got along so well. Since she worked for Mike, not for me, she could pretty much say whatever she wanted to me without fear of getting fired.

  "Don't you have work to do?" I said.

  "So you actually agreed to do it."

  I gave her another look. "Think I had a choice? It wasn't a request. It was an order."

  She shrugged. "Like that ever made a difference to you. 'Kick up, kiss down'-that's your MO, right? Piss off as many people above you as you can."

  "I still have a job, don't I?"

  "Yeah. For now. Shouldn't you be at Van Nuys already?"

  "The jet leaves in about an hour and a half," I said. "I gotta ask you a huge favor."

  She looked at me warily.

  "Would you mind taking my dog?" I said.

  "Gerty? I'd love to. It's like rent-a-dog. I get a dog for a couple of days, then return it when it stops being fun."

  "You're the best." I handed her the keys to my apartment. "Don't let her hump you," I said.