That was another sign that something major was happening. The chairman did not rule by committee. He preferred conferring with a few trusted advisers and then sending down a fiat from on high. That modus operandi allowed him to muster support while giving the appearance of total control, keeping himself and his office above the messiness of whatever fray they faced. Nothing ever moved fast. Better to delay a good decision than to hurry a bad one. That had always been the old man’s motto.

“Well, sure, but—”

“Chuck, call the SEC tech weenies. See if you can get their take on this fiasco. We need answers if we’re going to come to some kind of resolution of this mess.”

“Chief, funny you should mention that,” Gruver said. “Catherine Goldman just told me that she has found where the system is dirty. She thinks that we should shut it down. I was just on my way to—”

“No! No!” The chairman shook his head vigorously and squeezed Gruver’s shoulder even harder. He did not want to believe what he was hearing. “We’ll talk about it in the meeting. That’s the kind of thing we need everybody to sign off on. Get input from all quarters. Carefully consider all our options. We can’t afford to go off half-cocked, do something drastic, and start some kind of a panic.”

Start a panic? Gruver thought. The chairman could see the turmoil swirling all around him already. The old man was faced with a true emergency situation this time. A natural political animal, he tended to follow his instincts, and his instincts were telling him the best thing to do was to form a committee, study the problem, and stall for time. Spread the risk around in case things went to hell in a handbasket. Things might just get better by themselves while the group was hashing it over, coming to some kind of consensus.

“Boss, you said it yourself. The system isn’t behaving normally. It’s coming apart at the seams. Let’s be careful, do the prudent thing, and shut it down right now.”

The chairman refused to stick his neck out on this one.

“No, not yet,” he answered firmly. “Let’s see what everyone else says first. It’s just too risky.”

He let go of Gruver’s shoulder, turned, and scurried up the stairs, headed for the womb of his executive suite. Gruver stared at the rear end of the leader of the free world’s financial markets as the man fled the chaos on his trading floor. The CTO shook his head in wonder as he started on down to the computer center to see what the latest damage report was.