Read Online Project Northwest by C. B. Carter - Free Book Online Page B

fact,
you’re not really doing anything illegal—sure some protocols are
being bent, but that’s the extent of it.”
    She paused, waiting for James to process and
continued, “Each day, I’m going to read off these questions,” she
continued, tapping the file with her pen. “The questions are all
straight forward enough and you will simply give me the answer out
loud.”
    “So, you’re going to ask questions and I’m
going to give you the numbers by saying them? By saying them out
loud?” James restated.
    “Exactly, how else would you communicate the
numbers? There’s far too much information to cart out of here
without drawing suspicion, right? Only the summary report will be
taken each day and that’s just not enough data, there are over two
hundred questions and queries we will run through each day. Think
of me as a superior asking a question about this line item or that
line item, except I will be asking for a lot of line items.”
    “Oh, I see, so Mr. Wright has a clone of you
somewhere writing down the answers as I say them.”
    “I assure you, James, there is no clone of
me,” she playfully answered, trying her best to bring him on board
and ease the tension.
    “What about the confidentiality agreement?
Certainly this would be considered inside information.”
    “Rules, guidelines, vision statements,
employee conduct, confidentiality agreements, non–disclosure
agreements—these are items of language for lawyers to dissect and
argue over. Hell, I watched you sign it and you didn’t even read
it. My point, James, is this will never come back to haunt you
professionally. It’s just a job and will be over before you know
it. Think of me as another auditor and we will get along
smashingly.”
    James wasn’t buying it. It felt wrong and he
knew that even though much of what she said danced on the edge of
truth, he was being asked to knowingly break the law. His only hope
was they would slip up somehow and Mark would be relaying valuable,
ass-saving, information in a couple of days. How much damage could
he do in a couple of days?
    “Fair enough, let’s get started,” James
remarked.
    “Oh, and before we do get started, Mr. Wright
asked me to tell you that you’re a lucky, lucky man. I’ve heard of
the infamous Green Lake recording. They offered to play it for me,
but I suggested I might like to find out for myself.”
    James now realized they had followed him and
Bridget to the lake and were now gossiping about their love making.
“Now that would be criminal,” rebuked James. “Which book are we
looking at first?”
    Shelly wasn’t used to having her flirtations
shot down so effortlessly. In fact, her flirtations were never
rebuffed. “Let’s pull up this morning’s outflow, filtered on the
top one hundred business accounts in real-time,” she commanded as
she removed her jacket and opened her file.
    “What’s the name of the largest institution?”
she coldly asked.
    “Goldman.”
    “We’ll start there.”
     

Chapter Six
    ~ Life, Death and a Mustang
~
     
    Five P.M. couldn’t
come fast enough for James. The physical act of announcing every
number that was the result of a query was exhausting and quickly
became mind numbing. James, like many paper-pushers, hated dealing
with reports. It seemed his whole life was for the purpose of
producing one report or another for someone up the chain. In fact,
many of the cartoons on the wall in his old cubicle and on the
walls of his co-workers cubicles delivered ‘the report’ as the
punch line. Everyone immediately understood the jokes and could
relate. Their lives revolved around reports. He would joke with
co-workers, in his best Mr. Stone impression, “I want a report on
the status of all reports.” His co-workers laughed at the irony,
but its true comic value was the fact that it wasn’t too far from
the truth. Today had him blessing those damn reports. He couldn’t
imagine doing this volume of work without them.
    Shelly was