Disclosure

"I talked to your wife. Didn’t she tell you?"

"I thought it was eight-thirty."

Johnson shook her head, as if dismissing the whole thing. "Anyway," she said, "in the eight o’clock session, I had to take another approach to Twinkle, and it’s very important that we have some coordination in the light of-"

"Meredith?" Up at the front of the group, Garvin was looking back at her. "Meredith, John has a question for you."

"Be right there," she said. With a final angry frown at Sanders, she hurried up to the head of the group.

Back in the conference room, the mood was light. They were all still joking as they took their seats. Ed Nichols began the meeting by turning to Sanders. "Meredith’s been bringing us up to date on the Twinkle drive. Now that you’re here, we’d like your assessment as well."

I had to take another approach to Twinkle, Meredith had said. Sanders hesitated. "My assessment?"

"Yes," Nichols said. "You’re in charge of Twinkle, aren’t you?"

Sanders looked at the faces around the table, turned expectantly toward him. He glanced at Johnson, but she had opened her briefcase and was rummaging through her papers, taking out several bulging manila envelopes.

"Well," Sanders said. "We built several prototypes and tested them thoroughly. There’s no doubt that the prototypes performed flawlessly. They’re the best drives in the world."

"I understand that," Nichols said. "But now you are in production, isn’t that right?"

"That’s right."

"I think we’re more interested in your assessment of the production."

Sanders hesitated. What had she told them? At the other end of the room, Meredith Johnson closed her briefcase, folded her hands under her chin, and stared steadily at him. He could not read her expression.

What had she told them?

"Mr. Sanders?"

"Well," Sanders began, "we’ve been shaking out the lines, dealing with the problems as they arise. It’s a pretty standard start-up experience for us. We’re still in the early stages."

"I’m sorry," Nichols said. "I thought you’ve been in production for two months."

"Yes, that’s true."

"Two months doesn’t sound like `the early stages’ to me."

"Well-"

"Some of your product cycles are as short as nine months, isn’t that right?"

"Nine to eighteen months, yes."

"Then after two months, you must be in full production. How do you assess that, as the principal person in charge?"

"Well, I’d say the problems are of the order of magnitude we generally experience at this point."

"I’m interested to hear that," Nichols said, "because earlier today, Meredith indicated to us that the problems were actually quite serious. She said you might even have to go back to the drawing board."

Shit.

How should he play it now? He’d already said that the problems were not so bad. He couldn’t back down. Sanders took a breath and said, "I hope I haven’t conveyed the wrong impression to Meredith. Because I have full confidence in our ability to manufacture the Twinkle drive."

"I’m sure you do," Nichols said. "But we’re looking down the barrel at competition from Sony and Philips, and I’m not sure that a simple expression of your confidence is adequate. How many of the drives coming off the line meet specifications?"

"I don’t have that information."

"Just approximately."

"I wouldn’t want to say, without precise figures."

"Are precise figures available?"

"Yes. I just don’t have them at hand."

Nichols frowned. His expression said: why don’t you have them when you knew this is what the meeting was about?

Conley cleared his throat. "Meredith indicated that the line is running at twenty-nine percent capacity, and that only five percent of the drives meet specifications. Is that your understanding?"

"That’s more or less how it has been. Yes."

There was a brief silence around the table. Abruptly, Nichols sat forward. "I’m afraid I need some help here," he said. "With figures like that, on what do you base your confidence in the Twinkle drive?"

"The reason is that we’ve seen all this before," Sanders replied. "We’ve seen production problems that look insurmountable but then get resolved quickly."

"I see. So you think your past experience will hold true here."

"Yes, I do."

Nichols sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked extremely dissatisfied.

Jim Daly, the thin investment banker, sat forward and said, "Please don’t misunderstand, Tom. We’re not trying to put you on the spot," he said. "We have long ago identified several reasons for acquisition of this company, irrespective of any specific problem with Twinkle. So I don’t think Twinkle is a critical issue today. We just want to know where we stand on it. And we’d like you to be as frank as possible."

"Well, there are problems," Sanders said. "We’re in the midst of assessing them now. We have some ideas. But some of the problems may go back to design."

Daly said, "Give us worst case."

"Worst case? We pull the line, rework the housings and perhaps the controller chips, and then go back on."

"Causing a delay of?"

Nine to twelve months. "Up to six months," Sanders said.

`Jesus," somebody whispered.

Daly said, `Johnson suggested that the maximum delay would be six weeks."

"I hope that’s right. But you asked for worst case."