Inside Leadership

[Corile]

The morning on Ile du Palais was, for once, somewhat sunny. The place never enjoyed particularly good weather, but that day Dia would have preferred to remain at her New Paris estate instead of making way all the way to the capital of the capital. However, the opportunity to meet the new CEO of IDF Shipping was too good to pass up.

Pomeroy had clearly been overwhelmed by the difficulties that the past year had thrown at Gallia and Ile-de-France Shipping. Dia hoped that the new director, Dimont, would be up to the task. The fact that he decided to get in touch and leverage her privileged position with Crete only confirmed those hopes. She was in best spirits.

She was familiar with the layout of the IDF headquarters, having been there earlier on a couple of meetings in person with Pomeroy as well as to conduct trainings for the company's security. Her appearance, exquisite and foreign taste in jewellery and fashion, demeanour and overall aura made her memorable, to the point where the woman sitting at the front desk of the ground floor of the building did not even ask for her identification. She walked past, smiled at her, nodded, and made her way to the lifts.

The buttons in the lift — specifically the labels in French, a language she still could not get used to after many months spent in Gallia — took her a minute until she figured out which one would take her to the Directeur Général's office. She had the car all to herself, which was in itself surprising at this time of day. She looked at herself in the mirror, adjusted her necklace and rings, smoothed the collar of her cream-coloured turtleneck, yanked the bottoms of her white trousers' legs, combed her hair and struck a few practice expressions. Satisfied, she patiently awaited the lift to slow down as it reached the upper levels of the tower.

* * *

"Dia is perfectly fine. And I'll just take a glass of water, thanks." She glanced at the high-tech table with market data displayed on the holoscreen above it. Making little sense of the graphs, she turned instead towards the window and admired the view.

The director still had time to make his first impression on her, but for a reason she did not fully understand, he reminded her of El Comisario Pepe Ladron, the ancient, seemingly eternal fixture in the ever moving landscape of Cretan politics and diplomacy. A figure she disliked with passion, but at the same time felt a certain homely fondness towards. She hoped Dimont would prove to not be similar to Pepe in terms of his competence.

"Beautiful view," she commented as the secretary brought her a glass of very cold water with a few ice cubes clinking inside. She took it from her and sat on the white couch, a good couple metres away from the director's chair, without waiting for an invitation. "I don't want to take up too much of your time, kyrie. How can I help?"

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