The certificate is only worth what it costs me to refuse signing it. Victoria was very still. I didn't understand that, she said quietly. I know, he said. She picked up the tab seven page and looked at it again.
Her eyes moved across the procurement records the way his eyes moved across a maintenance log carefully, systematically, like she was looking for something she could fix. "What would you do?" she said. "If you were in my position, if you found out that someone inside your operation had been running a procurement fraud for 4 years, and you'd been too distracted to catch it, what would you do?" Malcolm thought about it. Really thought about it the way he thought about a problem in an aircraft. Not emotionally, but structurally.
Where does the failure originate? Where does it branch? What has to come out before the system can be trusted again? I'd ground the fleet, he said. All of it today.
She closed her eyes briefly. I'd bring in an independent inspection team, he said. Not your people. Outside people with no relationship to your procurement chain. And I'd tell them to find everything, not just the apex vector components.
Because if the culture was loose enough to let one supplier run counterfeit parts into your aircraft, it was loose enough for other problems, too. And the cost doesn't matter, he said. Ms. Sterling, if one of your other aircraft goes down because you knew there was a problem and didn't ground the fleet. He stopped.
You know what that looks like? She opened her eyes and for the first time since she'd walked into his shop, he saw something in her face that wasn't composure and wasn't calculation. It was fear. Real fear. The kind that has nothing to do with money or reputation and everything to do with the sudden concrete understanding of what could happen to real human beings in a real aircraft at real altitude.
I need to make some calls, she said. I know. She stood up. She picked up her bag. She looked at Malcolm.
I'll have my finance department wire your full invoice amount today. She said with the advances and interest. I'll need your banking information. Rachel has it. He said she's in the back.
Victoria nodded. She took two steps towards the back of the shop then stopped. Malcolm. She didn't turn around. The pilots who refused this morning, seven of them.
A pause. I offered the last three significant bonuses. We're talking about amounts that would have changed the financial situation for most people. I know, he said. They still said no.