“I have to agree with the surly Scot,” said Pearl. “I think you’ve been carried away—but it’s not too late to stop all this. I’m sorry; I should have told you on the phone that Tavish and I have done something in your absence which might change a few of these plans.”
“We had to do it,” he chimed in. “We didn’t realize you were serious about this mad idea of theft. We were only afraid you’d be sent to Frankfurt in the dead of winter—and we’d wind up working for the likes of Kiwi and Karp, without any leverage at all.”
“Oh no,” I said, my heart sinking. “You’d better tell me what you’ve done.”
“We sent an official report to the Managing Committee,” said Pearl, “We recommended the quality circle be taken away from your control.…”
I was blind with fury; they had to calm me down and order another drink. After all my machinations and planning—in one fell swoop—they’d lost both the quality team and my wager for me. I certainly couldn’t whip up another scheme like that one, not on such short notice—and after this one had failed. If I couldn’t see my way out of this, in a month I’d be working for Tor in New York.
They were filled with apologies, but kept pointing out the wisdom of their deed. At last, I was calm enough for them to explain precisely what they’d done.
“We didn’t exactly say that the quality team should not work for you,” Pearl assured me. “We knew Kiwi was planning to seize the group for himself—turn it over to Karp, perhaps—but he needed to make sure that our thrust did not affect any of his own systems. You would have been gone—in Frankfurt. There was nothing we could do about that.”
“So we told them,” said Tavish, “that the quality team—due to the sensitive nature of our work—should not report to any managers in charge of cash-clearing systems. After all, those are the systems we’re supposed to be hitting, right?”
“We thought if they moved the team from your control, Kiwi wouldn’t be so hot to send you away,” said Pearl. “I guess we blew it?”
“Maybe not,” I told her, feeling drained but no longer angry; after all, their intentions had been the best. “Do you know where they’re going to put the team? They can’t give it to Karp—he has money systems, too.”
But when I thought of it, I knew there wasn’t one banker there who would accept responsibility for a group like mine, without diluting its task beyond all recognition. It would be like advertising your colleagues’ dirty-laundry lists.
“Our proposal says we should report to no one,” said Tavish. “At least—not an official line manager. We’re supposed to be above all that.”
“They have to put you somewhere,” I told him. “You’re not like a roving wolf pack—you have an official mission statement, blessed by the highest steering committee at the bank.”
But of course, that’s when I understood. No ruling had been passed yet—perhaps it was still not too late.
“What if I joined the quality circle myself—as coordinator?” I suggested. They stared at me.
“Sweetie,” said Pearl, putting her hand over mine, “you’d be expected to give up your whole division to do that. You’d be down at the bottom of the barrel, floating around with the pickles. Do you know how long it might take to crawl out of there again?”
“You’d do all that,” said Tavish, “just to prove you could rob the bank? You really must be mad.”
“I told you, I’ve made a bet,” I said, smiling again as I thought of it. “And in this case, perhaps there’s more honor among thieves than among bankers. The gentleman I’m talking about has wagered that he’s a better thief than I am. I can’t let him get away with that.”
“Perhaps the whole world has gone mad,” Tavish philosophized. “And to think that only last week, I thought Karp was the biggest problem in my life.” He looked at me, and brushed back a lock of blond hair. “So, who is this friend of yours, who thinks he can—and should—steal more money than you?”
“Have you heard of Dr. Zoltan Tor?” I asked.
They were both silent a moment.
“You’re joking,” said Tavish, his eyes boggling. “Is he still alive?”
“I dined with him last night in New York,” I assured him. “We’ve known each other a dozen years.”
“I’ve read all Dr. Tor’s books,” Tavish told Pearl with excitement. “He’s a genius—a wizard. He’s the reason I got into computers, when I was no more than a child. Good Lord, how I’d love to meet a man like that! But he must be in his dotage by now.”
“Doddering along at thirty-nine, and looking rather well,” I agreed with a smile. “You asked who made the bet with me. I’m afraid this is the sort of game Tor loves best.”
I filled them in on what had transpired, and they sat there in silence through it all. When I’d finished, Tavish was beaming. Pearl rubbed her hands over her face.
“Sweetie, you really take the cake,” she told me. “Here I’ve been abusing you all these years for being a stick-in-the-mud. I take it back; you’re not just a gray flannel banker, if you’re willing to throw it all away on a dare.”
“It’s not just a dare,” Tavish said in my defense. “It’s a principle—and frankly, I think she’s right. Now I’m sorry we sent that letter, and I hope we haven’t messed things up too badly. I’d like to help win your bet.”
“Perhaps you were right to do it,” I told him. “Anyway, now there’s nothing for it but to make it work. Are we a team?”
They both put their hands over mine on the table.
“Then let’s go get a copy of that letter so I can see it. By Monday, we have to have our scrimmage straight.”
Monday, December 7, was the beginning of the third week after my night at the opera. It seemed an eternity.
Pavel was standing at my office door, coffee cup in hand. I gave him the gift I’d brought from New York, in its sky-blue Tiffany box. He exchanged the cup for the box, and followed me into my office, untying the silky white ribbon.
“The divine Sarah!” he exclaimed, when he saw the old photo of Sarah Bernhardt Lelia had given me, in its silver art deco frame. “This is from Oscar Wilde’s Salome, just before she makes love to the Baptist’s severed head! I love it—it will go on my dresser at home. But speaking of severed heads, I hope you know what’s about to happen to yours! Lord Willingly’s spent the week in a real snit—hibernating, dark sunglasses like a movie star, curtains drawn, Do Not Disturb sign on the door—wants to see you first thing. It seems your little quality circle has gone over his head. I keep my ear to the wall, you know.”
“I’m not in yet,” I told him, sucking down my tepid transfusion.
“I’m afraid you are,” he informed me with a grimace. “There’s a worse problem. Lawrence rang up this morning, nearly at dawn—I’d just walked in the door. Said you’re to be sent up to see him first thing. Seems the lions do squabble, when there’s only one Christian to be dished up.”
Lawrence’s suite of offices was on the top floor—a cluster of glass-walled spaces that sat like a feudal fortress overlooking the city.
In the banking business, power is measured in yards of carpeting, and Lawrence had cornered the market on gray broadloom. It took ten minutes to navigate the distance from his office door to his desk; but I’d been there before, so I knew the pitfalls of the crossing. If you extended your hand too early in the traverse, you looked like a goose trying to get off the lake in a strong wind—mired in pile before reaching the goal.
Of the many executives at the Bank of the World, Lawrence was the one who never dabbled in politics and intrigue—no locker-room gossip for him. Lawrence believed not in plotting against others, but in gaining complete mastery of them. He was king of the total mind fuck—a banking term designating Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto You.
His office was the key weapon in this game. He liked to conduct meetings there, whenever possible. When you entered this no-man’s-land, the absence of color enveloped you like a battlefield shrouded in mist. E
verything was neutral—shades of gray and taupe—so you knew you were losing ground, without knowing where the ground really was.
There were none of the usual amenities—no papers littering the desk, no diplomas or paintings on the wall, no snapshots of the wife and kids on the credenza—nothing your eye could cling to for refuge. The effect was like a neutralizing gun applied to your psyche, everything so understated it practically vanished. Everything but Lawrence.
Against this voidlike background, his persona burned like a hard, cold flame—a man with no ties, no attachments, no silly emotions to clutter up his decision-making prowess. He was forty, slender, handsome, and lethal.
When I entered his office, he was wearing a gray suit and gold-rimmed glasses. His ash-blond hair, silver at the temples, glinted in the sunlight streaming through the walls of glass. He rose, watching me expressionlessly as I crossed—as a spider might watch an insect entering its web, indifferent whether it arrived in time for lunch or dinner. Lawrence was a born predator, but not the usual species. He was the kind that killed by instinct, not for survival: it was simply rote mechanism with him.
“Verity, I’m sorry I called you here at such short notice. I’m glad you could make the time to get away.”
Lawrence liked to call you by your first name at once so you’d feel at home, though his tone suggested that without his goodwill, you’d find no other home on this planet.
There’s a protocol associated with power. Take the seating arrangements of the power wielder versus the wieldee. Lawrence’s expansive ash desk placed him at least twelve feet away from his prey, and the seat he motioned for me to take would place his head a foot higher than mine.
“Let’s sit over here so we can talk,” I suggested, indicating a seating area near the far windows, where there’d be no desk between us.
Lawrence made the best of the situation by choosing a chair where the reflections of buildings across the street would form squares on the surface of his gold-rimmed glasses. Seeing this, I did something that was likely unprecedented: I moved my chair so I could look him right in the eye.
Looking Lawrence in the eye was not a pleasant experience; he had the unique knack of seeming to snap his pupils shut—as a cat does—when he didn’t want to reveal what he was thinking.
“I understand you’ve just come back from New York?” he began when we were seated. “Ah—I envy you. My first ten years at the bank were in the Manhattan bureau. Tell me how you passed the time—did you go to the theater?”
This preliminary camaraderie was not to be confused with idle banter. Predators have been known to make friends with their food—toy with it for hours—before they eat it.
“I didn’t have time for that, sir,” I told him. “But I went to many excellent restaurants—as you’ll see when you get my expense report!”
“Ha-ha. I can see that you’ve quite a sense of humor, Verity.”
He was the only person I’d ever met who could laugh without smiling.
“You’re perhaps aware, Verity, that in your absence I received a report from the quality circle you manage?”
“It was sent to you upon my advice, sir,” I told him—as Pearl, Tavish, and I had agreed I should.
“Are you aware, Verity, that this document proposes to remove the quality circle from the hands of those who control production systems? Most specifically, those who direct on-line systems handling financial resources of the bank?”
“I’ve read the report,” I said.
Now, if Lawrence wondered how in hell I could have read a fifty-page memo—when I’d just this moment set foot in the bank after a week’s absence—he didn’t show it; he never missed a beat.
“Then you propose that this quality team—whose activities you yourself initiated—be withdrawn at once from your control?”
I looked directly into Lawrence’s eyes; it was like having an ice pack slapped on my stomach. “It seems to me that’s not the only alternative afforded by this proposal—sir,” I said.
His pupils narrowed briefly, for a flicker. “Indeed? Perhaps you interpreted it differently than I.”
“It says simply that auditors should be separated from what they’re auditing,” I pointed out. “Have you an objection to that?”
His pupils tightened considerably, and I congratulated myself on my choice of seating. But I knew I wasn’t playing the part of the “huntee”—giving no quarter, showing no fear, don’t let them pick up the scent.
“Let’s see if I understand,” he said, inching his way across the crevasse. Lawrence was nobody’s fool; he knew a setup when he saw one. “You mean to say you’re not recommending I take this quality team out of your hands? Perhaps we should review the case so far. You initiate a group to take a hard look at bank security. You approach the Managing Committee for funding—without first obtaining the support of your own management.…”
Hitting below the belt, but I let it pass.
“You travel to New York to garner support from the banking community—Are we tracking so far?”
“We are.”
“In your absence, a report is sent to me—under your auspices, you say—claiming that managers like you, controlling mainframe money systems, should be removed from all involvement in this group’s activities.”
“Correct.”
“Because of possible conflict of interest: to be certain that this group will have no vested interest in examining one system more than others. Or less than others. And yet you’re claiming now that this doesn’t mean you should wash your hands of the quality circle?”
“That’s not the only possibility afforded, sir.”
“You seem to be a person who’s aware of many possibilities,” he said calmly. “The only other path I see is for you to abandon your role as head of money systems altogether.”
“That seems to be it,” I agreed.
He sat there for a moment. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I recognized a look that approached respect—though it quickly turned to something more like calculation. Then he hit me with the left hook.
“Would you recommend that I endorse this proposition, Verity?”
Shit. I should have seen it coming. If I said yes—with no commitments up front—I was screwed. If I said no, I looked like a damned fool, since I was supposedly the one who’d sponsored the proposal.
If I couldn’t get Lawrence to commit, up front, to move me and the team to his department—beyond Kiwi’s control—I’d be at the mercy of whatever prevailing winds might blow. I had to get the ball back in Lawrence’s court—get him to make a serious offer.
“Sir,” I hedged, “what would be your interest in declining this proposal?”
He stared at me. His pupils snapped shut, then opened wide.
“Banks, do you play chess?” he asked, not looking at me.
“Yes, sir—I play a little,” I admitted.
“I would have said you played a lot. Tell me what you want.”
“Pardon me?”
“What do you want out of all this—you—Verity Banks?” He turned and looked at me. “What were your expectations when you came up here? What did you hope to gain for yourself, from this little interview?”
“You invited me here, sir,” I pointed out.
“I’m aware of that,” he said impatiently. “But you expected some decision from me, or you wouldn’t have sent that damned letter. Now, what will it be—the quality circle, or money transfers? You can’t have it both ways.”
But he still hadn’t said whether the circle would report directly to him!
“Sir, I wouldn’t presume—”
“You needn’t presume anything—I’m telling you. Obviously, your letter’s placed me in an untenable position. If I don’t break off this quality circle from all production groups, I’ll be having auditors for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So the quality circle reports directly to me—as of today. Do you come with it—or stay in money transfers with Willingly? Willingly, incidentally, is not
a nice chap to work for when his toes have been stepped on—which you’ve managed to do several times this last month.”
Perhaps it was my expression that caused him to laugh.
“I suppose you’re thinking I’m not much of an improvement over Willingly in that respect,” he added. “But if you do come here—I hope you won’t find your bridges burned behind you.”
“With all due respect,” I told him, “some bridges fall down all by themselves, anyway. I’ll take my chances with you.”
I stood up, and he walked me to the door.
“Banks, I must say that you, for a woman, have got more balls than anyone I’ve ever met. I only hope you don’t trip over them—it can be a painful experience. I haven’t time to fool with these things just now, but I’ll clear out some offices on the west wall for your group. Have premises bring your things up here today. And by the way, try to avoid Willingly for an hour or so, until I can explain to him how things stand.”
He extended his hand for me to leave. I took it, but didn’t leave at once.
“With all respect, sir …”
“Yes?” He raised an eyebrow.
“The east wall has a view of the bay.”
On the way back down in the elevator, I congratulated myself again—for having made sure that Pearl and Tavish had sent copies of that innuendo-riddled report both to the WHIPS group and to internal audit.
I was whistling the “Sword Theme of Nothung”, feeling invincible, as I crossed the floor to my office. Which explains why I didn’t see Pavel—frantically waving his arms at me—until it was too late. He cringed as Kiwi’s voice bellowed from within.
“Buzz me in two minutes, with an urgent call,” I whispered to Pavel.
He nodded resignedly as I slid by him. Inside, Kiwi was installed behind my desk, wearing mirrored sunglasses. More than a decade ago, Tor had taught me how to deal with managers I no longer needed. I had only to play for time.
“Hi, Kiwi!” I said cheerfully, pulling open the draperies so light flooded the room. “What’s up?”
“You’re up! Up to no good!” he informed me, in a voice I didn’t care for at all.