The buildings on Leontievsky Lane are built with the general noble restraint more typical to the environs of Vicenza than Moscow. With their decorative stucco, they look more like the baroque homestead villas of the late Italian Renaissance than the hideous Soviet style I anticipated being thrown into.
Walking down the Tverskaya Street in my statement Louboutins, Armani skirt suit and Prada sunglasses, hiding my hangover, I feel somewhat confused – what the hell am I doing here instead of lying on the beach in the Caribbean?
The distinctive mellow beat playing in my headphones takes me back there as I walk downtown, with the gentle tailwind pleasantly playing with my soft conditioned hair, leading me to my new office right across the street from the Kremlin.
The strict gray monumental buildings jar violently with my recent Rastafarian experience, bursting into the wild perspective of Red Square.
The six lanes of the main street are packed with all sorts of cars, from ancient smelly Ladas to flashy Jaguars and Maseratis. They slowly move to the playful blink of the traffic light, joined by even noisier vehicles, dissolving in a disharmony of beeping, torturing my poor head.
Finally, I approach a futuristic modern building embedded in the façade of an old villa, with the sign of the Swiss Bank amongst ten others on the entrance.
With my head held high, I walk through the glass and chrome extravagance of the empty hall, and take a high-speed elevator to the bank’s dealing room on the top floor.
At 9 a.m. sharp, as my contract requires, I stand in front of a rich mahogany-and-gold front desk with no one behind it.
A few moments later, a friendly, petite girl with unfortunate curly hair and no makeup hurriedly scurries up to me.
‘Hi, I’m Ekaterina Kuznetsova, the new employee,’ I say in a patronizing voice.
‘Good morning, Miss Kuznetsova,’ she politely smiles. ‘I’m sorry for being late. The traffic in Moscow is very heavy on Monday mornings,’ she apologizes.
‘You’ll need to find a way to be on time. What if a client calls?’ I ask arrogantly, feeling my superiority.
‘Of course, Miss Kuznetsova,’ she says sweetly.
Offhandedly, I sign in and patiently wait whilst she ineptly searches for the pass. ‘Please.’ She hands me over the plastic card with my photo on it.
‘Thank you,’ I say formally, and walk to open the mahogany-and-gold doors, entering a new world of serious money and success.
It’s going to be a smaller version of the trading floor in London … but there is … no one here. Not even juniors.
The vast territory of the office is absolutely empty. According to Bruno, the team in Moscow consists of ten dealers, eight sales people, five researchers and another forty support functions. For that amount of staff, one would expect much smaller premises.
The massive, dark cherry wood desks, polished to a mirror sheen, are not set in equal rows as usual, but rather randomly grouped, relatively far away from each other. Between the tables there is a punching bag, right in the center of the floor, overlooking the majestic red towers of the Kremlin from the large soundproofed windows. It is so unbelievably close. I can almost touch it, hear its secrets … smell its power.
Further down there is a bin with some golf clubs, which explains the holes in the slate-gray designer carpet, scattered with abstract patterns. I am trying to follow them with my eyes, when suddenly the main door opens and a small, slightly overweight young guy with a sweaty bald patch enters the room, tucking his loose shirt back into his trousers.
I walk towards him, giving him a friendly, businesslike smile, offering my hand for a shake. ‘Hi, I’m Katya. New sales.’
After giving me a somewhat suspicious glance, he arrogantly introduces himself: ‘Dima. Trader.’ He negligently shakes my hand with his damp one, and quickly goes to hide behind the numerous screens of his desk in the far corner of the room. He must be very busy. Traders in London are usually grumpy on Mondays too, which is understandable. They need to adjust their books to the weekend changes.
Not far from his desk there is an entrance to the spacious office kitchen. I walk in and for a few moments, trying out Richard’s tactics, pretend I don’t know how to switch on the coffee machine, but Dima completely ignores me.
Eventually, two espressos are ready, filling the office with the fresh barista smell and, putting a couple of small Swiss chocolates on the saucer, I walk to Dima’s desk, ready to charm the guy off the boring spreadsheets and graphs.
Approaching his screens from the side, I see his sweaty forehead and a close-up of rough porn.
I almost choke but quickly put my regular smile on when Dima in a flash turns around, quickly taking his headphones off.
‘Ergh, I’m sorry.’ I rapidly walk away, feeling his exasperated glance on my back.
Nervously, I head back to the kitchen trying to summon a professional smile for a couple of nerdy-looking interns passing by … too nerdy … like maniacs might look … Am I the only woman behind the closed mahogany doors?
Distressed, I quickly walk into the lavender-and-citrus-scented five-star ladies’ room, which is double the size of Richard’s apartment. I take a seat on a classic soft beige sofa with carved decoration more suitable for Louis XIV’s chateau, and nervously try to distract myself with Facebook posts.
A quarter of an hour later the door opens, and a tanned, foxy, full-lipped blonde on ultra-high stilettos shuffles her skinny legs across the slippery marble floor. She wears a red miniskirt and a white shirt unbuttoned inappropriately low, providing a generous view of her Silicon Valley.
‘Hi, I’m Katya.’ I quickly get up and approach her, offering a handshake.
‘Olga,’ she breathes in a low, husky voice, barely touching my fingers. ‘I had such a long journey. It’s just unbelievable. I spent forty minutes on that crap …’ She pulls mouthwash out of her bag and vigorously rinses her teeth, using up the remains of the bottle.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ I say politely.
‘You’re the new sales girl, right?’ Olga asks, drenching herself with Chanel No 5.
‘Yes,’ I say, trying to smile through the suffocating cloud of her fragrance.
‘You’re gonna be sitting next to me.’ She unemotionally retouches her makeup.
‘Can you show me my desk?’ I repeat impatiently.
‘One moment,’ she says, slowly putting more red lipstick on her already scarlet over-botoxed lips, puffing them into the mirror, leaving me hanging like an idiot, checking my phone.
Eventually, she is done and slowly walks out, passing Dima’s desk, touring the trading floor with her undulating hips, until they eventually land at the desk right by the window with the impeccable view of the Russian president’s residence.
Languidly, Olga shows me my desk right next to hers and, throwing her Louis Vuitton bag onto the wide windowsill, emotionally types something on her pink phone.
I roll into the office chair and attentively observe my three black screens lazily starting up.
People gradually fill the room. The majority are either skinny graduates or unfit men with bellies and huge attitudes, squeezed into expensive suits. A couple of chicks in short skirts and heels strut past, but no one seems to pay any attention to their bold, expressive outfits. In a London office someone would already be getting a cold shower …
At some point, when everyone seems to have stopped wandering around, the door opens and a moderately overweight person enters the floor with a rapid, masculine gait, focused completely on a cell phone conversation, covering the speakerphone with a palm:
‘Dima, start buying quietly.’ I hear female whispers. The eye makeup and accurately groomed eyebrows suggest it is a woman … and everything about her screams she means business.
‘How much, Val?’ he whispers back.
‘Just buy. I’ll tell you when to stop. Quietly!’
‘OK.’ Dima quickly places the bids on his numerous screens.
‘Yes, Ivan Petrovich,’ she says courteously into the phone, ‘you’ve bought four hundred million dollars vs rouble at the rate of …’ She looks at one of Dima’s screens. ‘24.36. We’ll confirm the rate of 24.38 to your bank and settle the difference as usual … correct … through your Cyprus entity,’ she says joyfully.
I quietly use my iPhone to work out the two kopeks’ difference in the rate on four hundred million dollars. Three hundred thirty thousand dollars is the margin for Ivan Petrovich, whoever he is.
‘How much have you bought?’ she firmly asks Dima.
‘Six hundred twenty million dollars. Blyat, I overbought!’ he exclaims, fuming, ready to put the blame on Val at any second.
‘It’s OK, Dima. Don’t be such a pussy. In five years’ time you’ll look at this rate and regret you did not buy more.’ She calmly switches on her computer. ‘What is the average rate?’
Dima leans back, putting his hands behind his head. ‘24.3450,’ he proudly says, taking the credit for making a quarter of a million dollar net profit. ‘Shall I park it to Valkyrie or book it as a profit to our London office?’
‘Book six tickets of twenty million to sell to Valkyrie and four tickets of thirty million dollars for our London bank to buy from Valkyrie, two points higher on each deal. Keep the book clean. I don’t want any unallocated millions left over,’ she instructs, looking for something in an Hermès Birkin trophy bag that many would die for. ‘I’m off for a coffee downstairs and to interview the new nanny,’ she says, getting up. ‘Ah, and don’t forget to forge the cash-in agreements for Ivan Petrovich for the last month,’ she commands.
Just like everyone else, I am trying to stare at my computer as Val passes by my desk on her way to the exit. But my screen is still starting up, making me involuntarily look around for something else to stare at.
She quickly notices me and slightly deviates from her route. ‘Hi,’ she says in a super friendly tone. ‘You must be Katya. I’m Valeria – head of trading here.’
‘Yes, hi. Nice to meet you.’ I return a friendly smile, standing up for a handshake.
‘Welcome on board. Always nice to have people from London to shake up this Land of Nod we have here in the Sales Department. They’re completely useless.’ She glances at a guy with a gleaming bald head who’s just appeared, dressed in an expensive-looking gray suit with a flashy pink tie. He proudly rattles a large, heavy box.
‘OK,’ Valeria says abruptly. ‘I’m running late. Katya, let’s have lunch later on this week. On Thursday,’ she shouts, confidently walking out, completely ignoring the bald guy.
He is slightly shorter than me, and unlike most of the crowd here, seems to be spending a lot of time in the gym. The relief of his biceps is visible through the shirt, but nothing like Richard’s, of course.
‘The client I just had breakfast with was so grateful he gave me this selection of the best and most expensive bourbons.’ He puts the box down, swelling with pride. ‘If you are good to a client, the client is good to you. That’s what I call a great client relationship. I’m Sergey, by the way,’ he says, with a rather naughty smile that reveals his ultra-white bleached teeth.
‘Nice to meet you, Sergey.’ I put a professional smile on, reaching out to receive a strong handshake from his cold, well-moisturized hand with perfectly polished nails. ‘Let me settle in and we will discuss the clientele,’ I say professionally.
‘I know everyone on this market,’ he says arrogantly. ‘I have done really good business so far and have a few deals in the pipeline I’m working on.’
‘Can I see the pipeline, please?’ I cast my eyes slightly downwards into his ratty eyes.
‘All the client information is in the internal systems,’ he retorts, picking up the box with the bottles and moving it to Dima’s desk. The two of them start laughing, staring at me.