Tropical Convergence (39 page)

Not immune to flattery by any means, Kerry paused and grinned, showing off her outfit. "Like it? Dar said I needed something a little snazzier the last time we went shopping so..." She shrugged slightly.

"Did la jefa pick that one out? She has a good taste," Mayte said.

"Yes, she did," Kerry agreed. "And I like to think she does." She winked at Mayte. "I'm going to be offsite all afternoon if anyone's looking for me. I'll be at the Intercontinental at a prospective new business meeting."

"Si." Mayte nodded. "Ms. Mariana called for the employee meeting, and she said she would move it to next week. She is going to be off tomorrow for her birthday."

"Oh, yikes." Kerry's eyes widened. "How did we miss that? Can we get a cake in for Friday? Something big and decorated really crazy?" She made a mental note to remind Dar also, who probably would eschew a card but possibly not something far more bizarre...like the spiny cactus she'd gotten Duks for his last birthday.

"We can do that, sure," Mayte agreed confidently. "I will take care of it, Ms. Kerry. No problem."

With a wave of her fingers, Kerry slipped out the front entrance of her office and headed for the elevators. She felt a little nervous, both from the knowledge that their rivals would be there waiting for her and of the bid process itself.

That, she knew down pat. She'd gone on dozens of new business bids, most as Dar's second, but occasionally as the primary contact when her partner was occupied elsewhere. While her usual job was to come in after the contract had closed and make it all happen, she knew the delicate casting landing the deals took.

Dar was, in the terms of business, a closer. She didn't usually do the initial leg work, she left that to the sales directors and regional managers who worked with the new accounts. Her job was to come in when the money talk got tough and lay down the bottom line of what they'd accept on a contract, and what they wouldn't.

Her word was law, even over the highest sales executives, and everyone knew only Alastair could, or would, overrule her and he never had.

Never.

Kerry was more than aware of that going into any new bid. She felt responsible for doing her job, of course, but she was also very conscious of being Dar's personal and professional representative. She knew people had expectations of her because of that, and she focused intently on living up to or surpassing them.

It was easy for people to think she did what she did because of her relationship with Dar. Kerry eyed the floor counter on the elevator, waiting for it to descend to the ground. People here at ILS no longer thought that--they were well aware of her capabilities.

But she knew she was going into a situation where their relationship was known better than they were, and so...Kerry sighed.

That got old real fast. She hoped she could put Michelle in her place before the whole thing got started so they could stick to business for a change. Maybe she'd get lucky, as Dar had said, and Telegenics would send engineers instead of highly annoying marketing heads whose faces made Kerry want to pick up a sledgehammer.

"Hey, boss," Mark greeted her as the doors opened. He had a nerd backpack slung over one shoulder and was dressed in a more reserved, formal suit than was usual for him. "Ready?"

"Ready." Kerry led the way toward the doors. "Let's go make waves."

DAR SAT BACK in the thick, leather conference room chair and let her eyes travel around the table, just watching as the discussion moved from seat to seat. She rested her elbows on the chair arms and interlaced her fingers, trying the best she knew how not to either fidget or explode.

Clueless. "So what you're telling me," she finally interrupted the conversation. "Is that the developer can't control the resources his program needs to operate."

"Well..." The hitherto absent VP Ops, Jason Meyer, sighed. "Not exactly, but there is a problem with the way the code's written."

"Problem?" Dar's eyebrows lifted. "Given the test I just ran, they've offloaded all their processing to the servers, and it's running everything across your WAN links to minimal clients. That's not a problem, that's a design disaster, Jason."

"But, it's an advantage, Dar," Stewart Godson said. "Every time they make changes, they don't have to alter the client, and it's big bucks to us in savings. They just do what they need to do, and it's taken care of."

Dar exhaled silently. "I'm pretty conversant with the economies of the mainframe based distribution model, Stewart. It's been around longer than I have," she remarked dryly. "And I won't even disagree with it, on a local scale. My support desk often wishes for the old days, when the users just flipped a switch and got a green screen. However," she tapped her thumbs together, "GUI based applications are not meant to be pushed across the wide area network if you expect any kind of reasonable response time."

"Well..."

"Did the vendor do any bandwidth testing?" Dar asked.

Godson shrugged. "He said he did, and that it had an acceptable result."

Dar just looked at him for a long moment. "What did he define as acceptable?" she asked cautiously.

Godson looked at Meyer, who looked out the window. "Ah...there's a language barrier," Stewart admitted. "The developer is German, and he doesn't...um...speak English."

It was like being stuck in some bizarro Dilbert world. Dar rested her chin against her folded hands and found herself at an uncharacteristic loss for words. "Um." She finally exhaled, with a slight shake of her head. "What exactly do you want me to do, here?"

The rest of the room's occupants looked at each other, then focused on Godson. "Well, make it work," he said. "You can, can't you?"

"Sure," Dar replied. "Got a million bucks for infrastructure upgrades?"

Godson actually gasped. "Of course not!"

Dar got up and started pacing, her body's instincts finally getting the better of her. "Okay." She lifted both hands and held them out slightly. "You have a new application, written by a firm over in Germany, which is designed to require four times the amount of bandwidth you currently have provisioned for." She turned and leaned against the table. "So, gentlemen, you have one of three possible choices." One hand lifted and indicated a finger. "You can scrap the application, make the developer fix it so it works right, or pay for expanding your network."

Agitated, Godson got up. "Dar, we can't do any of those. We've already paid for the program...it cost us over 10 million dollars! And it's a good program. It'll raise our productivity ten-fold!"

Dar just looked at him.

"But we don't have a half a million dollars to put new circuits in. That's why we called you. You're our network administrator. Fix it!"

"Your network is based on a usage curve you signed off on," Dar shot back. "We don't have to fix it, Stewart. All we have to do is deliver what you paid for, which is the bandwidth you got right now." She pointed at the CIO.

"Dar, put yourself in my shoes. What would you do?" the man replied, a hint of desperation in his voice.

"Fire myself," Dar told him, bluntly.

The entire room save the two of them was frozen, everyone looking at their hands folded on the big wooden conference table. The morning sunlight entered into the room via a row of small windows near the top of the wall, but the effect was almost like that of a fishbowl.

Dar felt like one of her Siamese fighting fish, in fact. "So..."

"Can't you do anything?" Godson muttered. "You guys are supposed to be the best."

Patience. Dar took three or four breaths before she answered, mindful of the fact that she was, after all, at a client's site. "Okay. I'll fix it. Give me the damn source code," she said. "But I'm warning you, I bill by the hour for programming services and I ain't cheap."

Godson's expression brightened, and he turned to his VP. "Can we do that?"

The VP shook his head. "No sir." He cleared his throat. "We didn't get the source code."

Dar circled the table and sat down again in her seat. She propped her chin up on her fists and stared at the lot of them in patent disgust. "You paid ten million for an application and didn't get the source code?" she asked. "Please tell me you have a guarantee the developer will adapt the program to your specifications."

Godson looked at Meyer.

"I think so," Meyer sighed. "I mean, yes," he amended hastily as Dar started to stand up. "Yes, they'll rewrite whatever we need them to, only...um...they kind of have a little problem understanding what it is we need."

Dar sat back down and leaned back, resuming her brooding posture. "You don't have source code, you can't communicate with your developer, you paid for something that doesn't work on your existing infrastructure and you want me to fix it?"

"Well..." Godson leaned on his elbows. "I mean, who else can we go to, Dar? Really? Okay, so we maybe miscalculated a little, but this project is vital to the company. It has to happen."

Across the table, Meyer lifted his hand to cover his mouth, his eyes taking on a dark glint. "Well, maybe we have other options."

Dar remained quiet for a few minutes, considering her own options. They were as few as Godson's, really. She could walk out and tell them it was their problem not hers, but that meant a disaster for them, and they had a contract up for renewal next year with ILS.

She could force them to pay for new infrastructure, but the thought irked her given the fault really lay not with Godson or his clueless git of a VP Ops, but with the developer who sold them a bill of goods and was now probably laughing his German butt off on the other side of the world. Also, they had a contract up for renewal, and Dar knew if she forced a half million dollars worth of gear down Godson's throat, he'd just take it out of her when they were negotiating in twelve months.

If they re-signed at all. Something like this could cause them not to, no matter how good a deal she cut them.

So.

On the other hand, Dar reasoned, if she could pull this off, and fix Godson's problem, she had his cojones in a blender when it came time for him to sign on the dotted line in those same twelve months. The only problem with that was...

Shit. "Okay," Dar finally said. That meant she had to stay. "Call your developer, and have him put a coder on a plane before close of business today. When he gets here, he's gonna do exactly what I tell him to do, and I'll see if that, plus what I can squeeze out of the pipes, will get your Frankenstein walking."

Godson looked so relieved, Dar suspected he'd need to change his underwear before leaving the room.

"But..." Meyer spoke up, giving Dar a wary look. "His people only speak German."

"I speak German," Dar informed him wryly. "Just don't tell them that, okay? Not until the little bugger gets here and pretends he doesn't know what's going on." She casually took out her PDA and flipped the top open, frowning slightly as she started to scribble on it. After a second, she glanced up to see them all watching her. "Well?"

"Call him." Godson slapped the table, pointing at his VP. "Get that guy here...what's his name, Gunther?"

"Hans." Meyer opened his cell phone. "Okay, I'll get him here. It'll be tomorrow morning, though before he's landed."

"Fine," Dar muttered as she scribbled. "Tell you what. I'll bill THEM for having to teach the bastard how to write a decent application, how's that?"

For the first time, Godson chuckled. "Listen, Dar, I know this was a bitch of a thing to dump on you, but you know we really had no choice. You were the best option we had to salvage this...this..."

"Clusterfuck is the technical term we use." Dar leaned back, calculating the days. If the programmer got here tomorrow, and she was very, very lucky, maybe she'd get the hell out of here by the weekend.

Damn. She didn't want to stay here that long. She wanted to get to the airport, get on a plane, and just...

Her PDA chirped, and she glanced down, to see a hand drawn sad face appear on the screen. Then a second message appeared, and she clicked on it.

I am sitting here in this freaking oatmeal colored hotel conference room having to listen to freaking Michelle Graver go on and on about how wonderful her company is and how they're going to revolutionize Quest's business, and you tell me that??? Augguuhhh!!!!

Dar half listened to Meyer's halting conversation with the programmer as she answered.

Sorry, Ker. More complicated than I thought. I'll talk to you later about it. Might get out of here Friday night.

She sent the message. The PDA beeped almost immediately.

FRIDAY!!!!!!??????????????

"Dar?" Meyer called her name and waited for her to look up. "They can do it. The guy'll be on a flight that gets in here at eight a.m. tomorrow. How's that?"

"Good." Dar nodded, and then went back to her messaging
. I'm not happy about it either. I have to go get a couple spare pairs of clothes, and these bastards are going to cope with them being jeans and T-shirts
. She tapped the stylus a few times.
Sorry. Didn't mean to stick you with the crap. Or the crappy jerks.

"Here's the game plan." Dar looked up after she sent the last message. "We start with laying out the design changes tomorrow morning. I'll give our German friend a framework to start with, and then I'll see what I can do with our existing infrastructure to maximize it. You may end up being a beta site."

"Okay." Godson nodded, a bit nervously. "Do we get a rebate for that?"

Dar stared at him, both eyebrows lifting.

"Just kidding," the CIO smiled weakly.

The PDA beeped. Dar's eyes dropped to it, scanning the message and gaining a faint twinkle as a ghost of a smile crossed her face.

I think Michelle and Shari got my silent mental message because they've been leaving me alone. My turn to lie like a fish is next, and then we're all supposed to have lunch. If I throw chicken Kiev at them, will you fire me so I can fly to NY and be with you instead?

"Dar?"

"Hm?" Dar glanced across the table. "All set?" She realized the room had been watching her, and shrugged, holding up the PDA. "Telling my staff back in Miami not to expect me. I've got a couple of hot irons someone's having to cover."
BRB
She scrawled hastily, hitting send.