A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville (best time to read books .txt) 📗

over the financial industry than any female banker in America, perhaps in the world. And naturally, the first task I would set myself in that position would be to ensure that major money-center banks like the Bank of the World had adequate security to protect their investors’ deposits.

The proposal I’d sent out today was just to get the ball rolling. And once I was at the Fed, Kiwi could hardly turn down my suggestions, as he had with every improvement I’d proposed in the past.

“The proposal is mine, sir,” I admitted, still smiling to myself in the darkness. “I know that security is a subject very close to your heart.” So were gas pains, I thought.

“Quite true.” His voice in the dusk had a tone I didn’t care for. “Which explains my surprise when I learned you’d put together a proposal without consulting me. I might have helped; after all, it’s a manager’s job to grease the wheels for his staff.”

Translated, this meant that I worked for him, not the other way around, and that he knew more important people at the bank than I, whose wheels he could grease. But not for long—as I tried to remind myself while he ranted on. I was gloating so, that I nearly missed it when the hammer fell.

“I’m not the only one, Banks, who thinks you’re your own worst enemy. The head of marketing has read your proposal, too. How’s he supposed to advertise the fact that the bank needs to improve its security? What will our clients think if we say that? They’ll pull their money out and cross the street to another institution! We can’t waste funds on new systems like this, on things that won’t attract a new and expanded client base. This lack of concern for the business side of banking has forced me to explain to the Fed that you’re not the right candidate—”

“Pardon me?” I snapped to attention. There was a cold, icy lump forming in the pit of my stomach. I was hoping I hadn’t heard correctly.

“They phoned this afternoon,” he was saying as I gripped the arms of my swivel chair. “I’d had no idea you were being considered for a position like that, Banks. You Indians should really keep your chief more informed. But of course, after this proposal fiasco, I had to tell them the truth—that you’re just not ready.…”

Ready. Ready? What was I—a goddamned whistling teapot? Who was he to decide what I was ready for? I was so numb with shock, I could barely breathe—let alone speak.

“You’re a brilliant technician, Banks,” he was saying, in his let-me-rub-salt-in-those-wounds-for-you voice. “With proper guidance and a little patience, you could learn to be a halfway decent manager. But as long as you insist upon favoring sophistry over our grass-roots business needs, I’m afraid I can’t give you the backing you’d like.”

I heard him shredding my proposal—slowly, deliberately—in the gloom. I was speechless with fury. I felt my hands shaking, and was grateful he couldn’t see them. Ten years, I’d worked toward this goal, and he’d crushed it all with a single phone chat. I counted to ten, and rose to leave; I’d never needed fresh air so badly in my life. I thought briefly of coshing his head with the bronze desk plate near my hand, but I wasn’t sure I could find him in the suffocating darkness—I might miss, and I’d already had enough disappointments for one day.

As I reached the door he added, “I’ve bailed you out this time, Banks, and I’ve assured everyone you won’t lose your head again by churning out foolish proposals. Besides, our security doesn’t need improvement—our ship is as watertight as any in the industry.”

So was the Titanic, I thought as I made my way to the executive powder room to change for the opera. I yanked the pearls out of my attaché case and tossed them on, staring all the while in the mirror at my drawn, white face.

I was still fuming now, more than an hour later, as I pushed my way back through the glass doors of the bank data center and stalked across the polished granite lobby. The guards were standing and chatting behind the massive control panel that ran the mantraps and electronic cameras all over the building. I suppose they took me for a bedraggled drunk who’d careened in off the streets, because one of them started toward me in alarm.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said the other, touching him on the arm. “That’s Miss Banks; she lives here, don’t you, ma’am?”

I agreed that I did indeed live in a goddamned data center.

That’s what was wrong with me, I thought as I squished across the lobby to the elevator bays: I had the social life of an adding machine. I’d spent every waking hour in the last ten years eating, drinking, breathing, and sweating high finance—cutting out of my life everyone and everything that might interfere with my obsession and my goals.

But banking was in my blood; it was, after all, the family business. When my parents died, my grandfather—“Bibi”—had raised his granddaughter to be the first woman executive vice-president of a major financial institution. And now, in the space of a few short hours—during a self-elected opera entr’acte—I was likely, instead, to become the first female white-collar worker to knock over a world-class, money-center bank.

Of course, I thought as the elevator doors swished shut and I ascended to the thirteenth floor, I wasn’t really planning on stealing any money. Not only do people question sudden wealth among bankers—because of my lofty position, for example, my own accounts were audited quarterly—but also, since I’d spent my life around it, money didn’t mean all that much to me. Because I moved so much cash each day, I’d developed an esoteric awareness of the transitory nature of money.

It might sound odd to a nonbanker, but there are two big mistakes most people make about the nature and well-being of money. The first is