“Someone should record this.” The supervisor said, with a sigh. “No one’s gonna believe it.”
**
Kerry was standing at the receptionists counter, leaning against it with the phone pressed to her ear. “Alastair you’re not making any sense.” She repeated. “Listen, I realize that was probably a shock getting the phone call but…”
She paused to listen. “What were we supposed to do?” Her eyes lifted and met the receptionists, and she shook her head. “Okay, put yourself in my place. You’re in the white house, you have the senate intelligence committee breathing down your neck, Bridges hauling you into a room with Jacques and that jacktard and telling you to fix it. What do you do?”
She paused. “No, I’ll tell you what you would do, god damn it, you would have picked up the phone and called Dar.”
“Don’t listen Kerry me. That’s exactly what you would have done and so we just shortened the process. So now Dar’s in there doing what we all agreed was the last thing on earth she should do because we ran out of god damned options.”
She heard the sound of tires outside and looked up and through the door. “Oh great. Here’s CNN.” She sighed. “Well, I can’t help it that those jerks you just tossed on their ass decided to go public.” She rubbed her temple. “So now we have the press here rabid about some story that is just bullshit.”
“Should I let them in, ma’am?” The receptionist eyed the gathering crowd outside the door.
“Not yet.” Kerry said. “Alastair, what is it you would like me to tell the national press? You want me to refer them to you?” She listened. “That’s not my place to tell them. In fact, you can’t even tell me to tell them that because I don’t work for you anymore.”
“There’s another news truck out there, ma’am?”
“Jesus.” Kerry covered her eyes. “Alastair, you need to put out a press release. Is Hamilton there? He’s on his way. Okay, well I’m sure the PR people didn’t quit so you should have plenty of them there to write a press release explaining you’ve replaced the board.”
“Is that Alastair McLean?” The receptionist whispered. “Is he back in charge of things?”
Kerry nodded. “Against his will.” She whispered back. “He’s not really happy about it. I volunteered him.”
She listened again. “Well.” She exhaled “I can’t do that. I know things are moving too fast, and I kno… what?” She paused. “Okay so they’ll file lawsuits, big news there but..” She paused again. “Oh hell, Alastair. It’s too late. We’ re here. Dar’s changes are already going in.”
Kerry shot a quick glance at the door. “Alastair, we’re out of time. You need to deal with the press. I need to get Dar out of here before they make an honest to god Federal case out of this. Get off your ass and call CNN. I”ll try to get things normalized here.” She hung the phone up and circled the desk. “Holy crap.”
“Ma’am, you have brass ones.” The receptionist said, in an awed tone.
Kerry stopped at the door and turned. “They already fired me. What exactly do you think he’s going to do? Stall the press as long as you can.” She yanked the door open, resetting the bolt so it would shut after her and headed down the corridor.
“Yes. Ma’am.” The woman turned and put her hands on her desk as the door opened and a cavalcade of press and cameras and over coated handsome men and women stumbled inside. “Hi.” She said. “Welcome to ILS Mid Atlantic. What can I do for you?”
**
Kerry got to the door to the operations room and peered through it, seeing techs very busy at their desks, and her partner seated at the supervisor’s raised platform on the phone. One of the supervisors was perched on the edge of the desk listening, the other was on the far side of the room, watching the monitor board.
She could see the board, and it was looking ugly. “Ugh.” Kerry knocked on the glass, attracting the attention of the supervisor near the desk. He hopped up to come open the door, and Dar looked up as well, meeting her eyes.
Kerry smiled briefly as those blue orbs rolled expressively. She pushed the door open as the lock clicked from the other side and ducked past the supervisor on her way to the raised platform. “Hon?”
Dar held up one hand. “Yes, that’s right. Just give it another fifteen minutes. Thanks.” She hung up the phone and then ignored it’s insistent ringing as Kerry came up next to her. “Hey.”
“What are.. never mind.” Kerry refused to let herself be distracted. “That was Alastair out there. He called here because we’re not answering our phones.”
Dar glanced at hers. “Not getting signal in here. Not surprising with these metal walls and EMF.” She said. “So what does he want?”
“What doesn’t he want?” Kerry lowered her voice. “They kicked the board members out and they went public.”
“Morons.” Dar didn’t look perturbed.
“Yes, who are intending on filing suit against him, against us, and against the Pope for deliberately disrupting operations.”
“Can’t prove any of that.” Dar responded.
“No, except here we are.” Kerry said. “They told the press we did this just so we could disgrace them.”
Dar rested her hands on the desk and drummed her fingers against it’s surface. “Hm. You know, that’s the one single reason I might actually have done it.” She admitted. “Unfortunately for them, we didn’t.”
“But we’re fixing it.”
“They’re fixing it.” Dar pointed at the consoles. “I just provided copies of the previous configuration to them.”
“You didn’t go in there?” Kerry’s voice sounded surprised.
“Nope. Haven’t touched a keyboard.” Dar confirmed.
Kerry sighed. “There are about a hundred press people outside. They told them we were here, and that we also deliberately did this so we could swing the contract away from ILS and make points with the government.”
“Except for the deliberately, that’s what we’re here doing.” Dar mused. “You know, Ker, I don’t know what else they could have done to preserve their reputations.”
“Tank ours?” Kerry said, sharply.
Her partner lifted both hands up and let them drop again.
“So what are we supposed to do?” Kerry half whispered. “Dar, we could get into some serious political and financial crap here.”
Dar put her hand on Kerry’s knee. “We might.” She said quietly. “But right now, we’re in flight here. We can’t just turn off the engines.”
Kerry looked around, at the absorbed faces of the techs, and their quick shifting of attention from the scribbled on pages to their screens. “Yeah, well that’s what I told Alistair.” She admitted. “I told him to get off his ass and have someone in PR call the press.”
“Did you really tell him to get off his ass?”
“I did.”
“Good girl.” Dar took hold of Kerry’s hand and brought it closer, giving the knuckles a quick kiss. “That’s exactly what he needs to do. It’s not our place to solve this press problem.”
“Hmph.” Kerry grunted softly. “But that doesn’t help the fact they’re all out there.” She said. “Or what the bastards told them.”
Dar leaned back in her chair and lifted her shoulders in a mild shrug. “First things first. Let’s get this fixed.” She glanced up at the monitor. “Type faster, folks. “ She raised her voice. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel there, I see some greens.”