the exit for South Station, Doug could see the eastern face of the Union Atlantic tower shimmering in the morning sun. It was taller than 60 State Street and framed in crisp white lines, its glass much brighter than the dark reflective obelisk of the John Hancock. Jeffrey Holland had built it against all kinds of opposition, striking the deal when prices were low because no one wanted to put up with the Big Dig on their front doorstep, despite the fact that it would eventually be a park leading to the water. The tallest building in the city, it now dominated the financial district and had become the centerpiece of skyline night shots during Red Sox broadcasts and the network legal procedurals set in town, the Union Atlantic logo—the outline of a cresting wave—lit in bright blue along the south-facing superstructure, the whole gleaming edifice a bold announcement of intent, its scale impressing clients and competitors alike. Holland understood well the logic of images creating impressions which became facts. Insider chatter about overreaching had been no match for the persuasion of size and ambition. The foreigners in particular loved it, the Koreans and the Chinese, whose business they were getting hand over fist now. At Doug’s encouragement they’d entered into talks with the Four Seasons about a hotel next door. Union Atlantic alone could fill two-thirds of it with clients.
“Good morning, Mr. Fanning,” the new receptionist on the senior management floor said as Doug stepped off the elevator. He was a twenty-something metrosexual in Banana Republic gear whose smiling deference was so total it almost begged a crude response. “I’ve sent a few packages down to Sabrina for you.”
Doug had gone through three secretaries before he found Sabrina Svetz. She was an aspiring writer looking for a day job. A brunette with the angular features of her Slavic ancestors, her looks were peaking now in her late twenties, the severity of the bone structure no longer hidden by youthful chubbiness, but still on the glamorous side of gaunt. He liked that she fundamentally resented her job and had other ambitions. It clarified their relations. She was a shameless flirt and ill-suited to working in a bank, always nosing around for odd bits of detail about people’s personal lives. He’d waited three weeks before taking her out for a drink and sleeping with her, a perfunctory exercise they’d engaged in two or three times since and which gave Doug what he needed from her: an understanding between the two of them as individual actors, bound by the bargain they had struck, not some bullshit out of a company handbook about what got reported and to whom. He’d made it perfectly clear before they took their clothes off what the sex would and wouldn’t mean. Being a somewhat hardened woman, for reasons he didn’t care to know, she understood right away and consented. She’d often eat her lunch in Doug’s office with the door closed, telling him about her dating life and discussing who was hot and who wasn’t among the staff.
She was writing a novel set during the Spanish Civil War and had a thing for Iberian men, particularly those whose grandparents were old Fascists willing to talk.
“Our Leader awaits you,” she said, not bothering to look up from her screen as he approached her desk. The downside of such close relations was that she felt comfortable indulging a degree of sullenness that would otherwise have been considered unprofessional. The gain, however, was worth it. She did exactly as instructed even if it meant telling the chief of administration to screw off. She had no loyalty to the organization but plenty to Doug.
This was important. When Holland had hired Doug, Union Atlantic had been a regional, commercial bank. It took in deposits, offered checking accounts to the public, and made loans to businesses and real estate developers. It had the conservative balance sheet of the highly regulated institution that it was. But Holland’s plan for the company was much larger. Through acquisition, he wanted it to grow into a financial-services conglomerate with an investment banking arm, an insurance division, and a private wealth management business.
Holland had given Doug two jobs, one as head of foreign operations and the other as the man in charge of the newly created Department of Special Plans. The purpose of the latter was to formulate long-term strategy for how Union Atlantic should navigate the new, deregulated environment, in which Congress was slowly repealing all the