Shadow Banking

by C. M. Albright

  When Miles had called up Al the week before, it had been late, about ten o’clock in the evening. He wanted to check the contact details of a strategist in Hartmann’s Tokyo office. He had called Al’s cell. Krystina had answered. They had exchanged pleasantries and in so doing, she had mentioned that she was on her way to Milan for a few days to promote a movie. In her typically blunt way, she had just come straight out with it.

  ‘We should have lunch together if you’re in Switzerland. Maybe we could meet in Lugano. It’s not so far away, is it?’ It wasn’t so far away. Just over an hour by car. It just so happened he was meeting the Count for lunch at Lake Como so he suggested an early dinner and Krystina had agreed.

  In the days following the phone call, Miles had found his thoughts that were usually so absorbed with the markets were turning to Krystina. He spent plenty of time with beautiful women – his girlfriend, Lyudmila, included. But Krystina was different, intriguing. Miles loved the way she refused to allow her life to be cluttered by bullshit. If she wanted to do something, she did it and damn the consequences. Her impetuous nature was intoxicating. Al seemed to greet this side of her character with bemusement; he didn’t treat it like the gift that it was and embrace it.

  ‘So where’s Al this weekend?’ asked Miles, knowing full well that Al was in Chicago playing golf with some clients.

  ‘He’s in Chicago playing golf with some clients.’

  ‘Oh that’s right, I think he did mention it.’

  Once seated in their table in the window of the Hotel Splendide’s majestic dining room overlooking the lake, Krystina looked at Miles across the table and said, ‘I’m glad that the bad blood between you has gone. Al loves you, Miles. You do know that.’

  Miles felt momentarily wrong-footed by the statement that hung there demanding a response.

  ‘I hope you’re right because I worried that after 9/11 and Fergal that our friendship was doomed.’

  ‘I think for a while, Al worried that it was.’

  ‘He’s not happy at Hartmann’s,’ said Krystina after they had ordered their food: fillet steak with pepper sauce for him and loin of lamb with artichoke pie for her. ‘He’s not happy with the people. He thinks that he’s being sidelined by senior management and I’ll be honest with you, he’s struggling.’

  Why was she telling him this? No sooner had this question formed in his mind than he realised that it formed part of a bigger question regarding the entire meeting and her behaviour towards him. What was she up to? Miles felt suddenly traitorous towards Al. It made him feel uncomfortable and he tried to steer the conversation onto something new.

  ‘How long are you going to be in Milan?’

  ‘Oh I’m done now. I’ll be flying back to London on Sunday morning. I was going to catch up with an old friend from school in Zurich tomorrow but she’s not sure that she’s going to be available.’

  There it was again, an opportunity presented. It was deliberate too. He was certain of that. It made him question his own motives. Was he about to betray Al once again? Or were the plans that were forming in his mind just part of an ongoing betrayal that had started years before? He didn’t have time to decide; there were more pressing matters to attend to, namely a response to Krystina’s statement.

  ‘Well, if she isn’t available, I’ve only got a few errands to run in Zurich tomorrow. If you don’t mind tagging along then it might give us an opportunity to get to know one another.’ As he said this, he thought about having sex with Krystina. The vision was intense and whatever his conscience-related reservations might have been, his body’s response to it was unmistakable.

  ‘I’d like that.’ The way she smiled at him. In his mind, he was already inside her; they were locked together, driving each other towards orgasm, a final release for all the anticipation and tension that had come before. Miles felt exhilarated by thoughts of this end game and aware too that he had reached a decision. As with his day job, he was conducting a trade and he felt compelled to conduct it as effectively and profitably as he could.

  After lunch, Miles drove Krystina over to Samedan airport in his Bentley. There they climbed into Miles’s new Columbia 350 aircraft for the spectacular journey through the mountains to Zurich airport. It was a journey he had taken only once with Lyudmila because she had felt unsafe in a light aircraft. Throughout the flight she had sat there complaining of feeling sick and dizzy. Krystina’s response to the flight was altogether different and he relished her childlike wonder as he pointed out landmarks amidst the epic scenery of snow and rock.

  Miles had phoned ahead to his housekeeper to prepare a light supper and then take the rest of the night off so that he and Krystina could have the house to themselves. It was a clear night and the views from Miles’s living room across the Dolder to the lake were as impressive as ever and elicited a cry of wonder from Krystina.

  ‘You have a beautiful home,’ she said as she strode across the polished oak floor to the window.

  ‘I’m glad you like it. Would you like a drink?’

  Miles made the drinks and joined Krystina at the far end of the room. Standing next to her, looking out over the city that he now called home, he felt an almost overwhelming desire to touch her. If she was one of the girls that he picked up in Zurich on a Friday night, on one of his trawls through the more upmarket bars and clubs he’d be stripping her down by now but he knew that he had to play this much more carefully. This was a trade that he could not afford to screw up. The stakes were way too high for that.

  ‘What made you want to live in Switzerland, Miles?’

  It was a question that he had been asked many times and his answer was well practiced. But just as he was about to explain his love for the mountains and the lakes, Krystina’s phone started to ring.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said and he took her drink as she made her way back to the doorway where she had left her shoulder bag. She took out the phone, looked at the screen and answered it.

  ‘Al, hi.’ Miles felt a knot of tension in his stomach as he heard the words and he watched her in a reflection in the window. The smile she had worn for him had gone; she spoke to Al as though speaking to a colleague. She asked him about his trip to Chicago and listened to his response, going through the motions. Miles heard his name mentioned, heard her say: ‘He’s here now if you’d like to speak to him?’

  Miles watched her in the reflection as she walked towards him, the silhouette of her toned legs showing clearly through the Prada dress and he felt himself subject to the peculiar mental conundrum of pondering sex with a woman whose husband he was about to exchange pleasantries with, a husband who was meant to be his best friend. Miles took the phone from Krystina.

  ‘Hi Al, how’s it going?’

  ‘Good mate, you?’

  ‘I’m grateful for you letting me borrow Krystina for a few hours.’

  ‘I wish I could be there with you. Apart from a cracking round of golf this afternoon, this trip’s been a bit of a waste of time.’

  Any worries that Miles might have had that Al’s untimely intrusion into their day might have derailed his plans for later in the evening were soon dispelled as Krystina pressed herself against him and started hungrily kissing his neck, silently, cat-like in the precision of her movements while Al talked about his round of golf. She started rubbing the front of his trousers. He was already half way there, strangely aroused by the cocktail of excitement and betrayal and as she opened his zip fly, took it out and held it in her hand, his balls began to ache very slightly, pulled up hard beneath his erection.

  ‘Where did you play?’

  ‘Whistling Straits.’

  ‘It’s a great course. Have you ever played at Oakland?’

  Krystina crouched down on her haunches and started to kiss him hungrily, running her tongue up down his stretched flesh before she looked up into his eyes and took him inside her mouth.

  ‘Yeah, funnily enough, I played there last time I was over. But listen, Miles, you’re going to love t
his, I got a hole in one!’

  ‘That’s great, Al.’

  ‘I don’t know if you remember but there’s a short par three on the seventeenth, well I gave it a smooth swing with a six iron and, hey, what do you know?’

  Krystina stopped only momentarily to take off her dress and pull down Miles’s trousers and boxer shorts so that she could caress his hips while she took him in her mouth once more, her soft warm breasts pressed against his tensed thigh muscles.

  ‘I could tell that it was a hell of a strike. You know how you just know sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘You can just feel it, can’t you?’

  Krystina slid a finger between his buttocks as she worked away on him, kneading him with her other hand while her tongue teased his straining skin. As Krystina found his prostate gland and started to press against it while she increased the rhythm of her hungry caresses, he felt an almost irrepressible urge to laugh, such was the absurdity and delicious surreality of his predicament.

  ‘Without a doubt.’

  Miles had to hold the phone away from his mouth as the electricity exploded throughout his body, Krystina working away on his internal and external pleasure centres, his orgasm reaching an intensity whereby all reservations as to the morality of what he was doing were swept away on a tide of sheer lust.

  ‘It was weird because as I watched it roll towards the hole, I just knew, with total certainty, that the ball was going to go into the hole. I just knew.’

  - BOOK SIX -

  27 Negative Carry

  5yr Xover Credit spread: 195bps

  VIX: 10.75

  Brent Crude Oil: 64

  Al felt wretched. Since their ill-fated and short-lived liaison in Hong Kong four years before, he always dreaded overseas travel with Melody Eales. If ever he had entered into a bad trade, this was it. In the past, he had often felt contempt for colleagues and associates who had allowed their lusts and desires to get the better of them. Yet here he was, sitting opposite Melody in the First Class lounge at Dubai Airport, occupying that atmospheric bubble of awkward conversation and embarrassment that Melody appeared to thrive on and which he found so emotionally draining. But it wasn’t just the situation with Melody that made him feel so downhearted. The past couple of years at Hartmann Milner had been gruelling in so many ways. Although the industry had been booming, he just couldn’t avoid the feeling that he had been marginalised; he seemed to occupy a no man’s land all of his own. He was still one of ‘the guys’ on the trading floor – he was still party to the perennial banter and team play – but his job was now more about clients and managing upwards as opposed to being in the trenches day to day. Al felt like a poor facsimile of his former self. You could still make out it was him but the edges were blurred. And as far as the senior management of the bank was concerned – Melody very much included – he wasn’t seen as one of them or even possessing the potential to be so one day. Whereas a few years ago, he might have been able to force himself to curry favour with the management and speak the MBA bullshit that tripped off their tongues, now he simply couldn’t bring himself to do it. He felt trapped in no man’s land. Melody only made things worse, undermining him at every turn and when they were away on one of the many Far East trips that she organised, she would always attempt a repeat performance of that night in Hong Kong and didn’t take kindly to his continued spurning of her advances.

  He had looked around for other jobs, spoken to City head-hunters and had been offered positions galore but for all the uncertainty and paranoia that he felt, Hartmann’s financial handcuffs, although not quite as golden as he might have hoped for, made it very difficult to make the move. It wasn’t as though his home life offered him any comfort. He and Krystina were pretty much leading separate lives. Her film career had taken something of a nosedive while she stayed at home to bring up little Felix, their baby boy, an addition to his life that he loved with a fierce intensity. But Al couldn’t help but be aware of the bitterness that Krystina displayed towards him for not providing her with the sort of lifestyle that she had grown to expect. His compensation was about half a million a year and whilst it sounded like a fortune, it was nowhere near enough. The fact was that he had lost his self-confidence. Maybe it was part of some sort of mid-life crisis? An early one; he was still only thirty-five.

  There had been a lot of drinking the night before. They had been out with the guys from Hartmann’s HK who were also in Dubai for meetings and he had got drunk. He hadn’t made a fool of himself and everyone else in the party was in a similar state but the savagery of his hangover meant that he was in no mood to indulge Melody and her silly little power games.

  ‘Why don’t you go and get me a coffee, sweety?’ She said it in that faux-girlie voice that she seemingly saved for him alone. He hated it with a passion far more intense than the one that had led him into bed with her in the first place.

  ‘I tell you what, why don’t you get me one instead?’

  The copy of Vogue was lowered to reveal Melody’s half-smile, the one she wore whenever she knew that she had got the better of him.

  ‘Come on, Al, don’t be grouchy just because you’ve got a hangover. We’re all allowed to blow off steam from time to time, aren’t we?’ She might as well have said, ‘like that night we screwed for hours.’

  Al was tired of indulging Melody’s little loaded comments. He had put up with them for too long. The one response that he had never tried – mainly because he didn’t want to give her the pleasure of knowing that he was riled – was anger. ‘Just give it a fucking rest will you?’

  Her eyes snapped open in mock amazement.

  ‘Al Denham, why are you talking to me like that?’ ‘Because I’ve had enough. Your constant little quips are doing my head in. We had a grubby little knee trembler in Hong Kong and ever since, you seem to think that you can keep alluding to it, loading every stupid comment you make with some unamusing sexual sub-text. Look, we had sex, it was a long time ago, it wasn’t great, we sure as hell won’t fucking do it again. So let’s just deal with it and move on.’

  Melody was trying to maintain the half-smile because she knew that it irritated him. But she was struggling. She remained silent for a moment as though allowing the storm to blow itself out.

  ‘How dare you?’

  ‘Oh Melody please, don’t make out you’re outraged. You do it all the time. It’s become second nature. Just pack it in.’

  ‘Well I’m sorry that you found what happened between us so distasteful.’

  ‘I did.’

  For a moment, Al felt liberated that he could speak to her like this, that he could allow his feelings free reign. He took a perverse delight in the fact that he was probably damaging his career in some way.

  ‘I’ve done a lot for you, Al.’

  He shook his head and snorted with derision. ‘In what way have you done anything for me?’

  It was Melody’s turn to become spiteful and as she did so, Al knew that he had a fight on his hands.

  ‘I’ve been carrying you ...’

  ‘Oh please.’

  ‘It’s true, whether you want to admit it or not. I’ve been protecting you from senior management. You’re not managing people well and everyone can sense your unhappiness. And because of that, I end up covering for you.’

  ‘Come on, Melody, I know you’ve been undermining me, I’m not fucking stupid. I’ve been at this bank a long time. I know a lot of people. My ear is closer to the ground than yours. I hear what people say. You’ve been deliberately fucking me up.’

  Melody closed the copy of Vogue and slammed it down on the seat next to her. ‘It’s all in your head, Al. You’re just paranoid. The fact of the matter is that without the business that Miles Ratner puts your way, you’d be dead in the water.’

  She was right. Of course she was. It was something he had known for a long time but he couldn’t bear the thought that she might realise that she had wounded him. So he greeted the comment with i
ncreased anger.

  ‘Look Melody, I know what you’ve been doing with my comp.’

  ‘What about comp?’

  ‘I know you’ve been keeping it as low as you can.’

  ‘That’s bullshit, Al, and you know it. You get paid well for what you do, it’s just that unfortunately, you’ve become little more than a one trick pony.’

  She was winning and it hurt. He couldn’t bear to witness the return of Melody’s victorious smile so he stood up and said, ‘I’m going to get a drink.’ He didn’t look back, just walked away, hating himself for his weakness. He should have stayed and done battle but he couldn’t help the feeling that all the fight had gone out of him long ago. Once he had left the first class lounge, he wandered through the shops in Duty Free, enjoying the anonymity of being lost in a crowd.

  ‘Al! Al Denham!’ It was the voice of someone he knew, someone from his past. He spun round to see Sam, his girlfriend from university, smiling at him.

  ‘It is you,’ she said, letting go of a well-stacked luggage trolley and opening her arms to give him a hug. The last time she had held him in her arms was fourteen years before on that morning when they had both gone their separate ways, him to a life in the City and her to a couple of years backpacking around the world.

  ‘God, you haven’t changed a bit,’ she said.

  ‘Neither have you.’

  As they pulled apart, Al noticed all the faces surrounding Sam that were turned towards him.

  ‘Al, this is Mark, my husband.’ Mark was tall and healthy looking with the easy tan of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors in a good climate. He had a firm handshake and a smile that suggested you were already his friend. Sam gestured towards three blond children, two boys and a girl, all three of them complete with Sam’s striking green eyes. ‘This is Freya, this is Ben and this is Todd.’