The line shuffled. I waited. I was good at waiting. I once waited three days in a foxhole outside of Kabul without moving, drinking water from a CamelBak and urinating into a sponge. Standing in a bank line was a luxury vacation.

But the atmosphere was shifting.

I felt it before I heard it. The air pressure in the room dropped. The hushed conversations stopped. It was the specific kind of silence that happens when a predator enters the clearing.

I didn’t turn around, but I saw the reflection in the polished brass of the pillar next to me.

The revolving doors spun.

He walked in like he owned the oxygen we were all breathing. He was a man in his fifties, silver hair swept back with aerodynamic precision. His suit was a shark-skin gray, tailored to hide any softness in his midsection. He moved with a stride that said he had never waited for anything in his life.