ONE
It had initially been a source of disappointment to Sophia that her first trip as the new CFO of the Japanese bank for which she worked should be to Frankfurt. As a twelve-year-old, she had been to Germany to visit her aunt, who worked for a charity in Dusseldorf, and all she could remember, besides a camping trip down the Mosel, was the unremitting bleakness of the landscape. And the rain.
When she landed in Frankfurt, she was pleasantly surprised by the mixture of the old and the modern, and her mood was further uplifted by the sight of the driver who had been sent to meet her. Andreas was the very image of the athletic Teuton - quite unlike the German bankers she knew in London, who were pudgy, near-sighted and possessed of an irritating desire to show that Germans did after all have a sense of humour. Her thoughts immediately turned to Bangkok, to the driver who had been put at her service there: one Ananda, who had blown out of the water the stereotype that Asian men were lacking in the weaponry department. Perhaps this towering blond German - he must have been six two - would prove a disappointment when put to the ultimate test, but Sophia hardly thought so. He had the air of a man who packed a punch and who would not be backward in coming forward.
Her reveries on encounters past and challenges present were cut short by Andreas's announcement in good, if heavily accented, English, that they had arrived at her hotel. Sophia waited in the back seat for Andreas to open the door for her, but in the event he was beaten to it by a hotel employee, who took Sophia's hand and helped her negotiate the gap to the pavement, while his colleague dealt with the blonde woman's bags. Andreas walked with the others through the foyer to the reception desk, part of a retinue that received interested glances from the throng in the atrium, whether employee or guest. Aware that she was the centre of attention, Sophia acted with as much grace as she could muster, thanking those around her with an inclination of the head and just the hint of a smile, while accepting a card that the handsome driver extended to her wordlessly, while fixing her with blue eyes that bored into her own and did his speaking for him.
According to the schedule which her hosts had sent her with typical German efficiency and attention to detail, she was expected for lunch at the hotel's main restaurant at one o'clock, which gave her a little more than an hour to settle herself in and maybe wander round the business district of Germany's financial centre, which the hotel was located a stone's throw away from. Putting on a pair of more comfortable shoes, she ventured out for a half-hour stroll, actually walking away from the business district and into a park, which was situated just five minutes from the hotel. Sophia was surprised at the number of retired people who were out jogging, joining the mothers who were enjoying the fitful spring sunshine with their toddlers and office workers taking an early lunch break.
After walking around the duck pond, Sophia returned to the hotel by a different route, zipped up to her room to freshen up and change back into her heels and took the lift down to the first floor, where the Goethe Restaurant was located. The maรฎtre d', who was clearly expecting her, led her straight to the table by the window, where her welcoming party were waiting for her. There were five people in total, three of whom Sophia had been scheduled to meet, while the identity of the other two was for the moment a mystery. It was Gunther, the head of the Frankfurt office, who Sophia had met on several occasions, who made the introductions: Michael Gotze, head of corporate banking, and Greta Schwartz, chief legal officer, made up the expected trio, while the others turned out to be clients of the bank. One was a local industrialist, with interests in polymers and plastics, by the name of Oscar, while the other, Dietmar ('call me Didi') headed a large pharmaceutical company. While Oscar was overweight and pushing 60, Didi was svelte and lean and didn't look a day over 40. Automatically, Sophia found herself holding the handshake with Didi appreciably longer than she had with the other four. She noticed that he was wearing a wedding band, but then so was she; it merely added to the frisson of excitement that she felt.
Towards the end of the meal, Sophia took advantage of an intense conversation in German involving the plastics man and the bank staff to get to know Didi a little better. She had more than half an eye on that very evening, since the scheduled dinner had been postponed to the following day owing to the inability of one of the main guests to attend. Didi appeared to be on the same wavelength, since he broached the subject almost immediately.
'My new wife and I would be delighted if you would be able to join us at around ten o'clock to sample some of the local night life. I hope that isn't too late for you.'
Sophia indicated her amenability to the idea without appearing to get too excited by the prospect. The possibilities suggested by the presence of the 'new wife' were particularly appealing. Would she be a goddess in the Claudia Schiffer mould, Sophia wondered, or would she be more of a Brunhilda figure, intent on dominating those around her. Either way, Sophia sensed she might be onto a winner. And she could easily imagine Didi playing the role of Thor with his hammer.
The meeting place - a club only a couple of kilometres from the hotel - was arranged and Sophia assured Didi that she would be able to find her own way there. Since Didi and his 'new wife' had a prior dinner engagement, that left Sophia free to eat with Andreas, whose face and physique she was having a job keeping her mind off.
'God, I hope he's well endowed!' she found herself saying almost out loud. 'I must call him and see if he's free.'
'Of course, he will be. I bet right now he's wanking himself off thinking about me.'
On the pretext of fetching one or two things before she went to the bank's offices with Gunther and the others, Sophia went back to her room and called Andreas. Was that a woman's voice she heard momentarily in the background? And did she just catch the opening of a 'Shush!' before he was able to muffle his phone? What was it to her, anyway? She imagined that the driver had called up an old girlfriend because he was fantasising about the blonde Englishwoman and needed an outlet for his lust. She noted a slight wavering in his voice when he accepted her invitation to dine with her in her room at six o'clock. Unable to resist teasing him, she asked him if that was not perhaps a little early for him? Or perhaps he had other plans for the evening?
Desperately attempting to keep his cool, the Adonis replied that it would be an honour to dine with her, asking if there was anything she would like him to bring.
'Just yourself. That ought to be sufficient, no?' she replied in her minxiest manner.
Although Sophia made all the right noises at the bank, and clearly impressed by being able to remember the names of seemingly everyone she met (for this she owed a debt to her Egyptian co-worker Seth, who had drawn up a crib sheet, which matched the senior Frankfurt staff with his quirky mnemonic system for identifying them), her mind was elsewhere. To be precise, it was alternating between Andreas's thrusting manhood and the 'new wife's' luscious pussy. Somehow, Didi got left out, but then there is only so much you can accommodate in a daydream. Real life, Sophia reflected with a smile, could pack in so much more!
Because the atmosphere at the bank was quite casual compared to what she was used to in London, Sophia decided to dispense with her prepared PowerPoint show when the time came to give her presentation, speaking to the twenty or so staff in an informal way, as she outlined what she was allowed to share of the group's plans for the future. She noticed that the attendees were hanging on her every word - many of them making notes - quite different to what she was used to in England. Also, there wasn't a mobile phone to be seen or heard. As a result of the close attention, she spoke for longer than she usually did, stopping every now and then to invite questions, which would never be long in coming, and which showed a more global grasp of issues than she was used to back home, where self-interest predominated.
When the session finished, they had gone well past their scheduled end time of 5 o'clock, but no one seemed to mind, and Gunther closed the meeting by making some very complimentary remarks about their guest, which elicited a hearty round of applause. Now