by Ashton, Hugh
Vishal led him to a small room with a desktop computer and a laptop and explained the details of Sharpe’s assignment, which was a little more complex than he had originally explained (wasn’t that always the way? Sharpe thought to himself). The regulatory authorities apparently wanted to make sure that all transactions made in a very specialised field of derivatives trading were being faithfully and accurately recorded in a secure database, as well as being accurately relayed in detail through to a central source linked to the bank’s risk management team. Vishal explained that the software used for the trades had been written some years ago by a consultancy in New York, subsequently improved and adapted by another team of consultants in London, and finally localised for the Tokyo market by yet another consultancy in Hong Kong, who had made a poor job of it, chiefly because they’d failed to appreciate the problems involved in data processing in the Japanese language, and had subsequently gone out of business, leaving, as always in these cases, less than half of the software documented, with the rest being described in a weird Chinese version of English.
“I’m sorry, it’s like pushing you into a pool full of sharks,” said Vishal. “But none of us has the time to look at this, and we know you’re good at these jobs. We have here a little of the source code which they were leaving with us, but not enough.” He showed Sharpe where the relevant files were stored on the network. “And here,” pointing to a shelf of loose-leaf files, “are the specifications and their notes. Some of them, anyway. The program’s loaded onto this computer,” pointing to the desktop machine, “and this is how you get it started,” demonstrating. “And here’s your user name and a temporary password. Change it as soon as you log onto the trading system. Test data is all in here,” pointing to a printout of file names. “Use your login ID and password to access those directories. Now I must be going to another meeting, but I will be seeing you at lunchtime, all right?”
Sharpe sighed as Vishal left him with what appeared to be an insoluble technical problem. Mind you, he told himself, almost all problems started like this, and eventually resolved themselves into something a lot easier and simpler to understand. He ploughed through the introductory manuals, fetching himself several cups of coffee during the morning. Several people with whom he’d worked on previous contracts dropped by to greet him, and the morning passed quite quickly, and surprisingly productively.
Vishal came by at lunchtime, and Sharpe told him how far he’d got on. “Better than I’d expected,” said Vishal. “Don’t finish too soon, though. Maybe you can spend the afternoon doing other things.”
-o-
After lunch, Vishal explained how the computer on Sharpe’s desk had been supplied with the market data feeds that Vishal had identified as necessary for the operation of the currency trading program he believed to be lurking buried in the face recognition software, and the Katsuyama board had also been fitted.
“It said that you needed a video camera for the face recognition program, so I’ve left you with one just in case,” said Vishal. “Now I must be leaving you for another stupid bloody meeting. Enjoy yourself, man.”
Sharpe plugged in the video camera, and fired up the Katsuyama program. It looked just the same as before when he and Vishal had first run it and it invited him to register his face. What had Katsuyama said to him in Hanoi? ‘Remember the big K and use it’? He pressed the K key, with and without the Shift key and the Control and Alt keys in different combinations. Nothing happened.
He quit the program and tried double-clicking its icon while holding down the K key and Shift key together.
“Holy shit!” The screen now showed something completely unexpected. He read “Katsuyama FX Predictor” together with a choice of exchanges to which he could supposedly connect. “Tokyo” was the nearest exchange, and he clicked that button.
He was asked for a name and password for trading on the exchange, which of course he didn’t have, so he clicked “Cancel”. To his surprise, the program didn’t quit, but put up a message saying “Trading disabled. Use Preferences to set user name and password, and configure system.” After clicking “OK”, he discovered the Preferences panel (he’d used many commercial programs which were more difficult to use than this prototype) and entered a name and password with a few other details. “You are now authorised to view rates,” the screen told him. “Press Continue”. He did, and was presented with a list of currency pairs, and invited to pick up to three pairs. He picked the yen/US dollar pair and clicked “OK” again. After about 15 minutes fine-tuning the system (surprisingly easy) to use the Bloomberg and other data feeds connected to his computer, the message then told him, “Gathering data. Please wait.”
He waited, and after about three minutes, the screen cleared and a line tracing a light blue graph started to make its way across the screen. A number, also in light blue, appeared at the bottom right of the screen and its value changed every five seconds or so, at irregular intervals as the line wriggled across the screen. The bottom axis of the graph went from 14:17 to 14:37, and the vertical Y axis started at 114 and went up to 117. Obviously the graph was tracing the up-to-date exchange rate as the data came into the system.
After about a minute, Sharpe noticed some odd things. The computer’s system clock at the top of the screen was displaying the time as 14:15 – three minutes before the time marking the end of the light blue line making its way across the screen. He checked his digital watch, which was usually accurate to a minute or so. Yes, the graph appeared to be describing events three minutes into the future. And the part of the graph which had already been drawn wasn’t staying still, either. As Sharpe watched, it twitched and wriggled slightly as the numerical values changed.
Sharpe was still staring at it and trying to work out exactly what was going on, when after three minutes a dark blue line started to appear from the left of the screen, almost perfectly overlaying the light blue line drawn previously. The time corresponding to the end of this new line now matched the time given on the system clock at the top of the screen. Another figure appeared at the bottom of the screen in dark blue, showing the current value of the dark blue line, and another changing figure, hovering around zero, which Sharpe came to realise was the difference between the values shown by the light and dark blue lines.
As Sharpe watched, the dark blue line grew in length, almost completely corresponding to the light blue line as it made its way across the screen. Only occasionally was a gap visible between them.
As the lines scrolled across the screen it hit him with full force what he was looking at. All of Katsuyama’s techniques associated with pattern recognition, with the acceleration coming from the associated digital signal processing technology, were being used to interpret the current price data for a constantly changing exchange rate, extracted from the data feeds and treated as a pattern. The system was matching the pattern and extrapolating trends three minutes into the future. Any trader armed with this almost certain knowledge of the future could make a killing on the lightning-fast trades that made up the world of the currency markets using only simple trading strategies. If more sophisticated option trading was figured in, there was probably no limit to the money this program could make.
He found a program menu item allowing him to halt the march of the lines across the screen, and selected a trio of currency rates, involving the yen, dollar and euro.
Once again, the program predicted the three exchange rates three minutes in advance. The result seemed to be slightly less accurate than when it was predicting only a pair of currency rates, but it seemed almost completely accurate when it came to predicting whether the line would rise or fall and when the change in direction would occur – just the amount of change was slightly wrong.
How many people knew about this, other than Katsuyama and now him? Is this really what the Japanese, British and Americans, not to mention Korean gangsters, were all fighting over? Somehow, he doubted it. No-one had given him even the smallest clue or hint that this was what
it was all about.
Using the laptop computer, he logged onto the Internet and did some more searches for Katsuyama’s name and published work. There was nothing visible there that seemed remotely relevant to the trading program, except the papers on image processing that he had seen previously. Maybe, somewhere in the mathematics and equations of the papers, there was a clue as to the existence of this currency program, but it was a very good bet that no-one in the financial world had ever seen these papers, let alone understood their significance, and it was an even better bet that no mathematicians would ever have taken the trouble to apply these algorithms to foreign exchange trading.
After twenty minutes of fascinated watching, he stopped the program and let out a deep breath. He realised that he’d just witnessed the impossible – an accurate forecast of the future, and a technology that could quite probably turn its user into a multimillionaire in a very short space of time if deployed intelligently. How it all worked, he really had no idea. Nor was it his business to know. The immediate question was what he was to do with this knowledge. If he looked carefully at the contract that he’d signed with the bank, it probably said that anything he discovered during his time at the bank belonged to them. Stuff that. Much as he liked the people at the bank where he was now working, he felt that someone other than them deserved a break on this. What on earth would any government do with this, though? Could Jon and Major Barclay be trusted with this? Jon, possibly, but he didn’t trust Tim Barclay an inch. He had very much the same feeling about Ishihara and his outfit. He made up his mind to keep the whole thing to himself for the moment.
Time to go back to the work he was being paid for, even if it was nearly impossible to keep his mind on the job. He ploughed through the almost incomprehensible mass of words that passed for documentation written by the defunct Hong Kong contractor, and attempted to make sense of the first stages of the process.
A few hours later, Vishal poked his head round the door. “Any luck with the other program?” he asked Sharpe, putting a significant emphasis on the word “other”.
“Not a thing,” Sharpe lied. He had no wish to deceive his friend Vishal, but he didn’t want to put him in a position where he was deceiving his full-time employers. For Sharpe as a contractor, the situation was slightly easier in practical terms, even if he did break the contract. At least he couldn’t be fired and lose his bonus and his pension benefits and all the other goodies that came with being a permanent employee. All they could do was cancel his contract and stop him ever working for them again. He doubted if they’d ever bring anything to a Japanese court, especially given the nature of his discovery.
“Too bad,” replied Vishal. “Come on, let’s go to the pub. One of our UNIX guys is leaving for New York, and we’re all going for a drink.”
“All right,” said Sharpe, stretching. “Let me just clean up this lot first,” gesturing to the papers and folders around the desk.
After a few minutes Vishal and Sharpe made their way to the faux-Irish bar which served as a watering-hole for many of Tokyo’s foreign community working in the financial sector. Sharpe knew a lot of the faces at the bar, and even managed to remember some of the names to go with them, and he was soon involved in a heated discussion involving the relative merits of different database systems used by Vishal’s bank.
A few drinks later he was on the train back home.
-o-
“Tadaima – I’m home,” he called as he opened the door.
“O-kaeri-nasai – welcome back,” answered Mieko’s voice.
To Sharpe’s surprise, Katsuyama’s father-in-law, Kim, was sitting on the sofa in their living-room, drinking tea, and obviously very much at his ease. A single hulking bodyguard perched uncomfortably on a chair behind him, looking completely out of place.
Kim half-rose, smiling, as Sharpe entered. “Mr Sharpe, you are a genius,” he beamed, speaking his excellent English. “Thank you for finding my son-in-law.”
“No problems?”
Kim appeared surprised by the question. “Of course not. Why should there be? As long as I know where he is, that’s the main thing.”
“So he’s still in Hanoi?” Mieko looked at Sharpe curiously, but he didn’t elaborate. Later, he mouthed silently to her.
“Yes, yes. Very safe and in Hanoi,” a little testily. “I said I would compensate you if you succeeded in your search, and here you are.” He said something in Korean to the bodyguard, who handed a black attaché case to him. Kim stood up and used both hands to hand the case to Sharpe formally. Sharpe, equally formally, used both hands to receive it. “Open it,” suggested Kim.
Sharpe snapped the catches and opened the lid. The case contained five bricks of ten-thousand yen notes. Probably about ten million yen there, Sharpe thought to himself. He resisted the urge to pick up one of the bricks and count it.
“Is that enough, do you think?” asked Kim. “It’s all the real thing, by the way,” he smiled. “None of the fake rubbish that North Korea’s been pushing over here.” He was referring to the counterfeit foreign currency that North Korea had been producing in large quantities, to the embarrassment of the United States, Japan, and the other countries whose currency had been counterfeited.
“The thought had never crossed my mind,” said Sharpe. The germ of an idea came to him. “Mr Kim, I’m not ungrateful. In fact, I’m more than grateful, and I thank you most sincerely for all this, but I’d sooner not accept the money at this time. I’d like you to keep it safe for me, but I may ask you for it in a little while.” He closed the lid of the case and handed it back to Kim.
Kim raised his eyebrows. “You’re turning this down?”
“No, not at all, but I’m asking you to look after it for me for a little while, if you don’t mind.”
“As long as you don’t expect me to pay you interest.” Kim laughed, and passed the case back to the bodyguard. “Can I ask why?”
“I don’t feel this is a particularly safe place to have so much cash, and I’m not that happy about walking into a bank with all this money in cash.” Sharpe gestured to the still unrepaired broken window, whose temporary cardboard was beginning to come adrift. “Thank you very much for all your help with the Americans, and so on, while we’re talking about that sort of thing.”
“I hope it didn’t cause you too much trouble, especially the left baggage at the station,” said Kim, blandly. Mieko looked curiously at Sharpe, then at Kim, and then at Sharpe again. She failed to gain anything from their innocent expressions.
“I think everything went as smoothly as could be expected, under the circumstances.”
“Good, good,” purred Kim.
Sharpe sat down in a chair facing Kim and accepted a cup of tea from Mieko. “I don’t want to appear too nosy, but may I ask you a few questions?”
“You can ask them, but I don’t promise you I’ll answer them.” Kim threw his arms behind his head and leaned back in Sharpe’s sofa, making himself comfortable.
“Fair enough. First question. Your family is from North Korea, I understand?”
“Yes, indeed. I’ve been there several times in the recent past, but I’ve not actually lived there since I was a teenager. All my mother’s family lives there and most of my father’s family as well. The ones who are left, that is.” He paused. “Many of my aunts and uncles have died in the prison camps.”
“I suppose that answers the next question I was afraid to ask,” said Sharpe.
“You were going to ask if I support the current government of North Korea, then? I fear that you might not have got a very flattering or accurate picture of me from my son-in-law, who believes I am a puppet or a stooge or some kind of agent for the North Korean government or Chongryon or something. He confuses my love of my country with a love of its government. I fled from those accursed devils of Kim Il-sung and his evil henchmen to the USA as soon as I was able to do so.” Sharpe raised his eyebrows. “Forgive the melodramatic language, but I find it difficult to think of
those people in any other terms. I did quite well in my line of work in America for a few years, but then moved my operations to Japan. The business opportunities were better, I found.”
Sharpe decided not to enquire too deeply into the nature of Kim’s business interests. “What about the military? Do you think they’re a better future for the North Koreans, then, if they were to take over the country from the Party?”
Kim made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Who told you the Party and the soldiers were different from each other? They’re just different sides of the same coin. You may think I’m totally mad, but I really believe that the only hope for the people of North Korea is for the people themselves to throw off the Party and ask to join the South.”
So much for Major Barclay’s theory about the military fighting the Party in North Korea, Sharpe thought to himself. “What about China taking over North Korea through a puppet party?” he asked. This had been a view put forward by a German journalist recently at a lecture that Sharpe had attended.
“China’s just more of the same. Don’t you think the people of North Korea have had enough of dictators pretending to be Communists? And there’s no way that Koreans would put up with a foreign power ruling them yet again.”
Sharpe had to agree that this sounded probable.
Kim continued, “I’m probably a little strange in my ideas. I do quite a lot of things that many governments don’t like, but you know why I do these things, Mr Sharpe?” Sharpe obediently shook his head. “I do them to make money. But,” and he held up a warning finger, “I don’t make this money for myself. As I’ve just shown you,” and he gestured towards the attaché case, “I’m perfectly happy to give large amounts of it away to people I like.”
Sharpe nodded, and Kim continued. “You should see my house. Believe it or not, it’s not that much bigger than this apartment, and it’s not as well-furnished. I don’t want to make money for myself, as I say. When my son-in-law needed money to help his business, I was there. When he needed money to go to Stanford to pursue his research, I was there. But mainly, Mr Sharpe,” and here he leant forward, “I make money to help my people. If I can make enough money, maybe I can work for my people to gain their freedom.”
