The room didn’t exactly exhale this time. It went into a different kind of tension, the productive kind, the tension of people who had information and needed to decide what to do with it. Gerald Fitch spoke first. “How long before the federal investigators are on site?” “Monday morning,” Marissa said. “And the aircraft, the three other CS7 units inspections begin tomorrow,” Gavin said. “Estimated completion by end of next week, depending on what we find.” “What do you expect to find?” “I expect to find the same TF90 configuration in all three. Whether the documentation falsification extends to those units, that I don’t know yet.” Fitch nodded slowly. He had the look of an old man who’d been around long enough to have seen something like this before. Not in detail, but in shape. The shape of a thing that had been going wrong for a long time inside a structure that was supposed to prevent it.
“What is grounding all four aircraft do to the investor commitments?” Richard Haw answered that. He’d been waiting for this question, and he answered it with the precise unhappiness of a man who’d been running numbers he didn’t enjoy running. The short version was painful. The longer version involved restructured timelines, amended terms, potential penalties for the quarter-end miss, and a secondary set of figures representing what a crash investigation and criminal liability exposure would have cost instead. The second set of figures was considerably larger than the first. Philip Royce, at the far end of the table, had been quiet for most of the meeting. He was quiet now in a way that was starting to be noticeable. The quiet of a man who was managing what he knew and when to say it. Gavin had been watching him since the financial slides. He kept watching him.
“Mr. Royce,” Gavin said. Everyone looked at him. Royce looked at Gavin. “You were on the procurement committee that approved the Veritech contract,” Gavin said. “The committee received documentation showing the TF90 as a cost-saving option. You saw that documentation.” “I reviewed it. Yes,” Royce said carefully. “You’re also listed in the Veritech financial records as a secondary signatory on two contract amendments that expanded the supply scope in the second year.” Gavin kept his voice flat. “Under your personal capacity, not your board capacity.” The room went very still. Royce had the face of a man who’d been hoping this specific piece of information wasn’t in the documents. “Those amendments were—” “Philip.” Marissa’s voice had a different quality when she said his name than it had when she’d said Derek’s. Something colder. Something that had been working its way toward the surface since she’d seen page 12 of the report. “Don’t.” Royce closed his mouth. “I’d recommend,” one of the Dallas lawyers said from the wall, addressing Royce directly, “that you stop speaking and call your own counsel before this board proceeds further.” Royce looked around the room. Then he looked at his hands. Then he said quietly, “I’d like to take a recess.”
The board took a recess. It lasted 22 minutes. Gavin stood in the hallway outside the boardroom and drank bad coffee from a paper cup and watched the building’s foot traffic move around him. Assistants with folders, a facilities person checking something on a clipboard, the ordinary motion of a company’s day continuing while something significant happened in one of its rooms. Wesley Grant texted him during the recess. “How’s it going?” Gavin typed back. “Still going.” “One of Derek’s lawyers called me this morning. Tried to suggest my refusal to fly was an overreaction that put the company in an untenable position.” Gavin looked at that for a moment. “What did you say?” “I said I was following the instruction of my former flight systems instructor and I’d do it again. There’s a pre-written incident report with your name on it in the evidence package.” A pause. Then “I know Marissa told me last night. I’m fine. Focus on the room.” Gavin put his phone away.
When the board reconvened, Philip Royce was not in the room. His chair was empty and nobody addressed the empty chair. The board voted. It took longer than Gavin expected, not because the outcome was uncertain, but because two members wanted specific language in the resolution about the scope of cooperation with federal investigators. And the language had to be negotiated. And that was the kind of thing that took time even when everyone agreed on the substance. In the end, unanimous full cooperation with the federal investigation. All four CS7 aircraft formally grounded pending inspection. Emergency appointment of an independent safety oversight committee with external authority to review all flight operations. Derek Langford’s employment terminated for cause, effective immediately. Philip Royce’s board seat suspended pending the investigation’s findings. And one more item which Marissa had added to the agenda herself and which had not been in the materials sent to board members in advance.
“I’d like to authorize,” she said, “an independent director of flight safety position external to the existing management structure, reporting directly to the board’s safety oversight committee, authority to ground any aircraft, access to all operational and engineering documentation, approval authority over all flight certifications.” She looked around the table. “I’d like to offer this position to Gavin Holt.” Gavin looked at her. “The compensation package is in the supplemental materials,” she said to the board. “It includes salary, equity, and a flexible schedule accommodation that Mr. Holt has not requested, but that I’m including as a condition of the role.” “What accommodation?” Gavin said. He hadn’t been told this part. “The position requires your presence and your judgment,” Marissa said. “It does not require you to be in a building every day between the hours of 8 and 5. You can structure your hours around whatever personal commitments you have, including being available at 3:15 in the afternoon, Monday through Friday.” She said it without emphasis, just a fact, stated plainly. But her eyes when she said it were not uninflected.