Bond Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

fibers flat and thin, talking, laughing, cursing. Some wore ties and jackets. Most wore khakis and their moods tattooed on their foreheads. We wove in and out of people as we approached the small staircase that led down to the floor, and for the first time I could see huge banners hanging from the ceiling marking the accolades the division had earned over the years, the way the championship banners hung in Madison Square Garden. The room was enormous. A girl could get lost in there and need the dog teams from the New York City Police Department to be found. I felt my legs begin to tremble.
    Chick spoke insanely fast, like his lungs didn’t need oxygen at the same rate as a normal person’s. His smile was friendly and his demeanor was welcoming, but at the same time I had the sense that if I screwed up he would make sure I spent the rest of my Cromwell career stuffing FedEx envelopes in the mailroom. We made a left before we hit the small staircase that led to the floor and walked down a hallway lined with glass-enclosed offices. Small plaques mounted next to the doors displayed the occupants’ name, a small sign of stature that differentiated the office-endowed from their peers. Only very senior managers received offices, because they were a scarce commodity on the floor. The majority of employees only had a seat on “the desk” on the trading floor; no hope of privacy, no direct-dial phone numbers, no chance of having two minutes of solitude during the day unless they locked themselves in the bathroom. Chick wasn’t one of the majority.
    We walked past his secretary, who Chick quickly introduced as Nancy, and pushed open a heavy glass door into his office. I found myself staring through floor-to-ceiling windows on the opposite wall that afforded an uninterrupted view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Photographers could have used Chick’s office to shoot postcards to sell in Times Square—I wasn’t entirely convinced they didn’t. If I had this view, I’d sit in here all day, but it didn’t seem like Chick spent much time in his office at all. His shiny lacquered desk and aerodynamic chair were squarely in the middle of the room, and there were two leather-backed chairs facing his desk. The walls that abutted the adjacent offices were completely bare, although with the view I guess he figured artwork was unnecessary. I scanned his desk, which held a monitor with two keyboards, and a phone, and was covered with disorganized stacks of papers and books. A mini basketball hoop was attached to the rim of an empty wastebasket on the wall on the right, next to a large fish tank containing three tropical fish. That was about it.
    He sat down behind his desk, with his back to the view of the water. I found it kind of funny that the people who occupied these offices sat with their backs to one of the most iconic New York landmarks, but I guess Cromwell figured the view was meant to impress guests, not employees. “Take a seat,” Chick commanded from his chair as he motioned to the empty chairs facing him.
    I did as I was told and placed my hands on my knees to keep them from shaking. This guy terrified me.
    â€œOkay, Alex,” he said as he put his hands behind his head and his feet up on his desk, so that I was staring at the soles of his brown Gucci loafers. He leaned back in his chair and talked to me while he stared straight up at the ceiling. It was very disconcerting having a conversation with someone when the only way you knew for sure he was actually talking to you was because you were the only other person in the room. “I run my group pretty openly. There aren’t a lot of rules you need to know, but I’ll go over the basics. You’re smart, I know, because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here. I promise you, though, that you aren’t the smartest person in this building. What that means is that I expect you to work hard; I expect