Despite or perhaps because of the tension we’d all felt, I couldn’t sleep well that night, and I wound up going into work early the next morning. Mr. Moffatt always held a post mortem after every big show, and I couldn’t wait to see how this one went.
There was no one around in the executive suite when I got to the office, so I decided to run down to Peter’s area to see if any of his team was there. But when I got to the control room, I was shocked to find Debby bent over her keyboard, crying her eyes out.
“Debby, Debby,” I asked urgently, “what is it? What’s wrong?”
She looked up at me with bloodshot eyes and cried, “It’s gone, it’s all gone!”
“What’s gone?” I asked apprehensively.
“All the footage from the hospitality suite last night,” she said. “I had it all stored on a server, and during the night the server went down. Now it’s all gone and we don’t have a back-up. Everything’s ruined!”
I heard a sound behind me and looked up to see Peter come in. He’d obviously overheard Debby’s words because his face had turned pale. “What are we going to do, Peter?” I asked.
He slowly shook his head from side to side. “I don’t know what we can do. This could turn out bad, very bad.”
Then, to my amazement, he straightened up, went over to Debby and began to console her. “It’s alright, Deb,” he said gently. “It wasn’t your fault. You system worked perfectly and you did a wonderful job keeping everything on plan. Sometimes bad things just happen.”
“I should have made a back-up,” she sobbed.
“Those servers never give us any trouble,” he said soothingly. “No one could have expected a system crash.”
He looked up at me. “You better get up to your office. If there’s any way you can stall Mr. Moffatt, that would be great. I’ll try to think of something.”
I nodded and headed back to the elevator, fighting to hold back my own tears. Not only did we not have Scott’s incriminating show of arrogance and disrespect, but now Peter would have to try to explain why he had misled his fellow director. Everything that seemed so perfect only a short while ago now seemed to have turned to ashes.
When I got off the elevator I hurried to my desk and tried to fix my appearance so Mr. Moffatt wouldn’t see how upset I was. But I needn’t have worried: no sooner had I gotten settled than he came striding in, and it was immediately obvious that he was extremely angry.
“Ms. Martin, call Scott Benson’s office and get him up here immediately,” he barked.
With trembling fingers I dialed Scott’s office and got Karen. After I hung up, I poked my head in Mr. Moffatt’s office. “His secretary said he isn’t in yet,” I told him. “She said he was late getting back from Las Vegas last night and hasn’t made it in to the office.”
“Well, tell her I want to see him the instant he arrives,” he said angrily. “And then get Peter Hammill up here.”
“Yessir,” I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling.
I called Peter’s office and he answered the phone. “Oh, Peter, Mr. Moffatt wants you and Scott up here ASAP,” I said. Then I lowered my voice. “And he’s madder than a hornet’s nest,” I added.
wpDiscuz