But to Corrigan’s surprise, the summons was not for him to be shot. He arrived to find that Victor Borth had come down unexpectedly that morning from New York. Pinder was there also, along with a couple of the other CLC vice presidents. It turned out that Borth had not contacted Endelmyer the night before to vent fury about Corrigan’s performance, but to commend it.
“I was gonna get him fired,” Borth admitted candidly. “I was as mad as hell.” He made a short, stabbing gesture toward where Corrigan was sitting. “This turkey had loused everything up. It was going to be panic out there—backers running in a stampede to get out after some of the things he said.” Corrigan caught Pinder’s eye across the table. They shrugged at each other, both equally at a loss as to guess what might have changed things. Borth went on. “Then I get a call from Milton Perl.” Perl was Chief Executive Officer of Berrenhauser Trusts, one of the major backers, who had marshaled a consortium of commercial banks and investment houses behind the project. “And what do you know—Milt loved it! You see, they had been getting bad vibes for some time over the whole project, and they were talking about pulling out—the whole shooting match, the consortium, the works. Those guys aren’t so stupid. . . . I mean, you don’t get to be worth that much if you don’t know your head from your ass, right? They knew it wasn’t going to happen the way they’d been hearing it. `Vic,’ Milt says to me, `I’ve been worried.’ See, his people knew that nothing even close to this has ever been tried before in history, and that there are all kinds of questions nobody has answers to. But they also know that you never get anywhere if you won’t take risks. `We were willing to take a risk, Vic,’ he says to me. `But in return we expected honesty. All we wanted to hear was somebody tell us to our faces that there could be no guarantees. Then we’d know we were all on the same side and working to solve the same problem, right? But that wasn’t what we got. Instead, all we got was bullshit.’ ”
Borth pointed at Corrigan again. “Until he said it! And now Milt and his friends are happy people.” Borth spread his hands and treated everyone to an uncharacteristically appeasing smile. “Okay, I admit that I laid it on a bit, too, at times. But I’m not one of these tech-whiz geniuses. I guess a lot of people got carried away in the excitement, eh? But now everybody’s feet are on the ground again, and this is a good time to reappraise things.”
Endelmyer looked startled. “Reappraise things? What are you saying, exactly?”
Borth raised a restraining hand. “Oh, it’s okay, Ken. Don’t get me wrong. I used the wrong word. `Consolidate’ might be better. The project stays, no question. But Milt does want to go over the goals and purpose again, now that people are making sense, so we’re probably talking about putting back the start date.”
“I hope he’s not asking for a redesign,” Pinder said apprehensively.
“Nothing like that,” Borth assured everyone. “Like I said, Milt is a happy man today. But he does want to be clear on what the limits are and what can realistically be expected. As far as Oz goes, the technical design, organization, and operations stays with CLC, the way we’ve always agreed. The only thing that Milt did insist on in that area . . .” Borth leveled a finger at Corrigan again, “is that he wants him in charge of it.”
* * *
They stayed for the remainder of the morning discussing details, and then went to lunch, which Borth insisted on standing. And so there it was. After months of rivalry, backbiting, and infighting that had produced nothing but tension and bad feelings all around, Corrigan accepted, as the talk flowed around him, that in under a day he had attained everything he’d wanted. And it had not had to be fought for or conceded grudgingly, at that, but was being thrust upon him eagerly. Just a little integrity had worked wonders when the compounded results of suspicion and fear of failure had been about to bring disaster.