The Gold Coast

14

When Stewart Lemon hears the bad news—direct from LSR president Donald Hereford in New York—he can scarcely believe it. All of his premonitions have come true in the worst way. While on the phone with Hereford he has to keep cool, take it calmly, make assurances that it’s all still under control, the contract virtually in the bag. In fact, Hereford’s brusque, icy questioning frightens him considerably. So that when the call is done and Lemon is alone, he gets so angry, so frightened, that he locks his office, shuts down all the systems, and runs amok—kicks the desk and chairs, throws the paperweights against the wall, punches the soft backing of his swivel chair until he’s thoroughly killed it.

Breathing heavily, he surveys the room, then very carefully puts everything back in order. He’s still angry, but physically he feels less like he’s going to explode. His health really can’t take the pressures of this job, he thinks; it’s a race between ulcers and heart attack, and both contestants are picking up the pace as they near the finish line.… He swallows a Tagamet and a Minipress, hits the intercom button, says to Ramona in his calmest voice, “Is McPherson back from White Sands yet?”

“Let me check.…” Ramona knows perfectly well that this dead-calm voice means he is furious. All the better, he likes people to know when he’s mad. She gets back to him quickly: “Yes, he’s just in.”

“Get him up here now.”

Actually it takes more like fifteen minutes for McPherson to show up. He looks annoyed in his usual minimalist way, mouth drawn tight, eyes staring an accusation. He’s angry? Lemon stands up the moment he walks in, feels the pressure in him rising again.

Nearly shouting, he says, “I asked you to hurry on the Storm-bee program, didn’t I! And you gave me that what’s-the-big-hurry look, there’s no deadline, and now I’ll tell you what the big hurry was, goddamn it!”

McPherson flinches under this immediate onslaught, then clams up completely. No expression on his face at all. Lemon hates this robot response, and he sets about cracking it open: “They’ve made your superblack program white, do you understand? If we’d gotten the proposal to the Pentagon when I wanted to they wouldn’t have been able to do this, but you had to hold on to it! And now it’s a white program and the RFP is out there for everyone to go after!”

That got him all right. McPherson has visibly paled, his mouth is nothing but a tight white line across his face. “When did you hear?” he manages to say, jaw bunching and unbunching.

“Just now! I’m not as slow as you are, I just got the call from New York. From Hereford himself.”

“But—” The man is really in shock, or else he wouldn’t deign to ask Lemon questions like this: “What happened? Why?”

“Why? I’ll tell you why! You were too fucking slow, that’s why!” Lemon pounds his desk hard. “Let me try to explain the Air Force to you again, McPherson. They like results! They don’t have the patience of a hummingbird, and when they ask for something they want it now! If they don’t get it they go somewhere else. So you didn’t produce as fast as they wanted! It’s been four months, for Christ’s sake! Four months! And so now the RFP for the Stormbee contract is coming out this Friday in Commercial Business Daily, and after that we’re just one of any number of bidders. If the Pentagon had already gotten our proposal and accepted it this couldn’t have happened, but as it is now, we’re fucked! We’re back to square one!”

Lemon has worked himself into a therapeutic frenzy with this outburst, and he can see McPherson is infuriated too, the man’s lips are going to fuse if he doesn’t watch out. If he were a normal kind of guy they’d shout it out, get it all off their chests and be able to go out afterward and drink it off and plan some strategy, the hard words forgotten as things spoken in the heat of anger. But McPherson? No, no, he just holds it all in with an almost frightening compression, till it metamorphoses into a hate for Lemon that Lemon can see just as sure as he can see the man’s face. And it makes Lemon mad. He hates that closemouthed supercilious style, it angers him personally and it loses them business. Disgusted, he waves the man away. He can’t stand to look at him. “Get out of here, McPherson. Get out of my sight.”

“I take it we’ll be making a bid?”

“Yes! For Christ’s sake, do you think I’m going to let all that work go to waste? You get this thing whipped into proper proposal shape and do it fast. Was the test at White Sands successful?”

“Yes.”

“Good! You get this proposal into the selection board first. With the head start we’ve had we should be able to make the strongest bid by a good margin.”

“Yeah.”

“You bet, yeah. I’ll tell you this, McPherson—your ass is on the line, this time. After all the stunts you’ve pulled—you’d better win this one. You’d better.”

Stiffly the man nods, stomps out. Goddamned robot. Lemon can’t believe he’s got such a tight-ass robot working for him still. It just isn’t his style, he can’t work with a man like that. Well—this is McPherson’s last chance, he has tinkered around in perfectionist dilettante style one time too many. Vengefully Lemon hits the intercom and tells Ramona to send a memo: “To Dennis McPherson. Tell him that along with program management for the Stormbee proposal, I want him co-directing the Ball Lightning program with Dan Houston. Tell him Houston remains head, but he is to render all assistance asked of him.”

That’ll give the bastard something to think about.