By the time they had got clearance from the risk managers to coat-tail him, big-time, Jim’s stunning campaign had been practically over. The team’s profits would turn into a reasonable addition to Sebastian’s bonus, but nothing like the bonanza it might have been if Jim had carried on for a few more weeks. Jim had kept up a pitched battle for eighteen hours a day in an orgy of indiscriminate trading. Some of his traders, Jim’s old compadres on the floor at the bank, thought he must have developed some kind of robot that had found a magic trading algorithm, but the IT department had confirmed their software, operated manually, was doing the work. Everyone knew Jim was out there and, once again, he had proved what a bunch of tossers they all were, scratching about for scraps in the dirt.
Now Jim had just made an obscene amount of money while Sebastian had snagged just a tiny part of it. That was very depressing indeed.
Why had the bastard stopped like that?
At that moment life seemed an impenetrable but painful mystery to Sebastian. Now he understood why his great-great-grandfather had hanged himself in one of the stables. Sometimes when things were good, they just weren’t good enough.
“Hi, Al,” said Jim, “nice to hear from you.”
“That was an outstanding set of trading, Jim. Everyone’s talking about it.”
“Really?” said Jim. “I hope you guys can keep it under your hats.”
“Sure,” said Wolfsberg. “What’s up next?”
Jim’s eyes narrowed. For Wolfsberg to call him, they must have made a packet off his back. Of course they had. Now they wanted more. “Don’t know,” he said. “Have another break, probably.”
“You should take a stake in the bank,” said Wolfsberg. “With your sort of money you could have quite a piece and be on the board.”
“Not a bad idea,” said Jim. “I’ll do that next year when the stock price is back at five bucks again.” It was now at forty dollars.
“It’s going to five bucks?” whimpered Wolfsberg, horror-stricken. “You’re kidding me.”
“Yes, I am,” said Jim.
“Ha,” grunted Wolfsberg. “You had me there. Where’s it going?”
“Don’t know,” said Jim. “I’ve got to be careful with my predictions.”
“You’re probably right,” said Wolfsberg. “So, now you’re among the super-rich do you want to put your name to a university or something? I’m fixed up with the philanthropist networks so I can hook you up.”
“Thanks,” said Jim. “I’ll let you know.” He hung up on him, as he used to do with the junior muppets who called him when he was on the trading floor.
Jim was watching the market ticking. Davas had been right. Now he wasn’t yanking the Forex pairs and the international stock indices, the volatility had drained away. He had made the world economy writhe with pain as he had hit the same sensitive spot time and again with his huge trades.
Stafford put a tray with tea and toast next to him. “May I make a suggestion, sir?”
“Go ahead.”
“Perhaps you might consider going out. It’s been approximately three weeks since you left the apartment.”
“Yeah,” said Jim. “That’s quite a long time, isn’t it?” He felt a little told off. “But I did just make eight billion pounds.”
“Eight billion pounds?” The butler’s grey eyebrows rose. “That’s an awful lot of money.”
“Yes,” Jim said, smiling to himself. “It’s a fuck of a lot, isn’t it?”
An SMS buzzed on his phone. It was Smith. “Curry?”
“Bingo,” said Jim. “I’ve got a date.”
“Very good, sir,” said Stafford. “On another subject, sir, if I may, I’d like to invite my two godchildren over to see me.”
“Of course,” said Jim, and picked up his phone to call Smith. Stafford left as he listened for the dial tone.
“Jimbo,” said Smith, by way of greeting.
“Agent Smith,” said Jim, knowing it would be equally annoying to Smith. “What’s up, doc?”
“Well, I could say that I find myself at a loose end, but that would sound like I’m a Billy-no-mates, so instead I’ll imply that I need to see you on a matter of some urgency.”
“Do you?”
“No,” said Smith, “none whatsoever. Just a catch-up.”
“When have you got in mind?”
“Tonight’s a goer but next week’s looking chaotic.”
“Tonight,” said Jim.
Jim looked sceptically at Smith’s phal. It was allegedly four times hotter than the wickedest vindaloo and had been responsible for people keeling over dead of a heart attack.
“I don’t normally eat this particular delicacy in company,” said Smith, “but seeing as it’s you … Did Jane tell you about the Black Hand?” He spooned curry on to his rice.
“Jane? The Black Hand? No,” he said. “We’re not together any more.”
“That’s what she said, and that’s why I wanted to meet.”
“Who are the Black Hand, and why should I need to know about them?” said Jim, thinking of how much he missed Jane.
“They were the robbers you bumped into – or, rather, bumped off – in Paris. The Black Hand is a smallish Serbian terror organisation. They started the First World War.”
“Bloody hell,” said Jim. “They’re a bit old, aren’t they?”
Smith nodded and took his first forkful. As he savoured the moment, tiny beads of perspiration appeared on his forehead. “They are indeed, but that’s Balkan politics for you.”
“So what does that mean for me?”
“Well, you should avoid any trips to Serbia for a start.”
“OK,” said Jim. “That should be easy.”
“Otherwise, I just thought you should be aware – you know, friend to friend.”
“How’s Jane?” said Jim, trying for nonchalance.
“I wouldn’t know,” said Smith. “All women are a complete and utter mystery to me. When they look happy, they’re sad, and they cry when they should be laughing with joy. You buy them flowers and they think you’ve done something wrong. I’ve long since given up trying to read them.”
“Did she talk about me?”
“No,” said Smith. “Not in any meaningful way.”
Jim looked at Smith’s phal and determined to commit suicide. “Can I have a mouthful of that?”
“Are you sure, Jimbo?”
“Yes,” he said, his fork poised over the dish.
“Gently does it,” said Smith.
Jim forked some into his mouth. Someone had poured molten metal on his tongue. He went bright red. His mouth puffed out and his eyes bulged. “Faaarkin’ ’ell,” he spluttered, reaching for his lager.
Smith was catching the eye of the waiter.
The lager extinguished the pain for as long as it was in his mouth. When he’d swallowed it, the heat came back with a vengeance. He was panting and glaring at Smith.
“I did say.”
Jim emptied his glass. The pain was still fierce.
“Raitha,” Smith told the waiter, “and pronto.” The man smiled and scooted off. “Help is on its way.”
Jim eyed Smith’s beer.
“Beer’s no good,” said Smith. “The active ingredient of chilli is only fat soluble and right now it’s glued to your tongue. Only fat’ll get rid of it.”
Jim nodded, mute.
“Hence my order of yogurt” said John. “Shortly the antidote will be on hand.”
Much to Jim’s relief, after two small dishes of cucumber yogurt the sensation had all but gone.
“Chillies are poison to birds,” said Smith, “which is why the bird-eating spider, usually called the tarantula, has venom made of the active ingredient in chilli. It’s the only poison common to plant and animal.”
“That’s good to know,” said Jim, through a mouthful of his own curry. “I won’t eat tarantula curry and I won’t go to Belgrade.”
Next morning Jim found himself watching the markets. He
wanted to trade but it was pointless. Instead he surfed the Net and looked up the Black Hand. He found nothing that referred to any event later than the 1920s. He listened to music and started to buy hundreds of tracks from iTunes.
He was becoming a little bored when Stafford came in with two gorgeous girls. Jim was immediately on his feet.
“These are my two godchildren,” his butler informed him. “Lavender and Tulip. Lavender and Tulip, this is Mr James Evans.”
“Jim,” he said, shifting from one foot to the other. “Nice to meet you.”
“Come now, girls,” Stafford said, “we shouldn’t waste any more of Mr Evans’s precious time.”
“Don’t worry, that’s fine,” said Jim.
Tulip gave him a cheeky look as they left the room.
Jim felt suddenly invigorated. Blimey, he thought. He sat down and closed his browser. He looked at the desktop wallpaper of Jane and her lovely muddy smile. It had to go.
Later that day he was staring out at the river. He should buy himself a boat and park it outside his window, he mused. Maybe he should extend the basement and build a submarine pen so he could pull out in secret at full tide. How cool would that be? And maybe he’d buy a mansion and fill it with cool toys. He could afford anything and everything. How great was that? Even things that weren’t possible now, he could fund and make happen. But what would bring him the most happiness? He’d never really had much fun. Happiness and pleasure had been in short supply all his life. His training for happiness had been pretty much limited to an unexpected ice-cream, a hoped-for present on his birthday or at Christmas or a quick kiss in the corridor at school. And his adult life had been one of ever-increasing drama and stress. Happiness and pleasure were pretty much strangers to him. He needed some kind of guide, he realised.
Tulip came into the room and headed for his screens. She picked up his phone and dialled a number into it. A phone somewhere on her person rang and she hung up. She smiled cheekily at him and walked out.
Something was wriggling in his guts – and it probably wasn’t last night’s curry.
12
The flotation paperwork was about ten feet thick and the whole process had cost Baz around seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It was all legal cut-and-paste work, put together by well-paid but clueless junior lawyers and accountants’ minions for the fat cats who ran firms that floated companies on the stock market. The firms he used specialised in mining explorers – or mining promotions, as they’d referred to them when they called a spade a spade rather than “environmentally friendly mineral extraction equipment”.
The right fees ensured that his engineering reports were perfectly prepared. Very shortly he would be selling Barron’s story to the institutions. As Higgins had said, it was like shooting ducks in a barrel. The market wanted speculative mines and, by God, it got them. Did they ever turn into billion-dollar mines? It happened occasionally, just as a racing punter got the odd winner in the Grand National.
Still, the City needed speculative mines because the audience loved them, and fund managers, who couldn’t outperform the index if their lives depended on it, relied on mining stocks to give them a shot at a freak win.
There was no perfect market, no random walk: the financial world was just an encrustation of fools, crooks and functionaries driven by fear and greed. Baz fed the greed and the City paid him for it.
Barron was going to be a hell of a ride. Even those who knew what he was up to, and that included many around the table at the completion meeting to finalise the flotation, still thought they could ride along to their advantage. They could own the share on the ride up and drop it on to a greater fool before it turned to shit.
The wild journey might last three years – he never knew how long a story would hold. What he did know was that he would make another fortune and get away with it. In the thirty years he had spent taking the piss, no one had even come close to collaring him. It was caveat fucking emptor.
Everything was ready to go into phase two and he felt as bullish as hell.
He was going to place 49 per cent of the business for £30 million ostensibly to fund the mine and he would start sucking that money out of the business almost immediately. Then he would ramp the stock price higher with exciting but bogus news, secretly selling shares as it rose. Then the bad news that the mine had chewed through the money raised in the float would collapse the price. He would buy back the stock he had sold, closing his short for a massive profit, and the cycle would continue until the market tired of the Barron story and it was time for Baz to lie low and drop his notebook into the lagoon.
13
I don’t fucking need this, thought Baz, as the DC-9 started its approach to Goma international airport with a tight, bumpy swerve. None of the planes that flew into Goma were allowed to fly anywhere other than domestically – the EU listed them as too dangerous to fly at all but, as usual, standards were different in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It would be ironic if, after all his hard work, a dodgy junk aircraft was his undoing.
The millions were raised and now it was just a matter of siphoning the money away without leaving any obvious clues that it was all one big con. In theory the location was perfect. The forty square miles of prospect were north of Goma and between a set of volcanoes. It really was the arse end of the world. Not only had it been a war zone until recently, but the two volcanoes went off as regularly as clockwork. No one in their right mind would go there and he was suddenly regretting being quite so thorough in his selection of a site that no one would check up on.
He was going to stay in Goma and make arrangements for his expatriate construction party. They would fly in and put up the mining compound. Then he would ship in the putative drillers and appear to be prospecting. He had to get the ball rolling: soon enough people would be enquiring about progress and he’d need photos of how things were going to keep them happy.
The plane was shaking as if it was about to fall apart. He took a slug from a miniature of vodka and gritted his teeth. He could see Nyiragongo through the window.
Fuck me, he thought. That really is a mean-looking bastard. McCoy was a fucking idiot: this certainly was the place where the devil would put the pipe in to give the world an enema. Lava had flowed across much of the city and had even swept over the end of the runway. Perhaps the enema had already happened.
When the two men met in the airport building, Higgins looked happy enough. He was worth every cent Baz paid him. But Baz was either getting softer or the world was getting harder: whichever it was, he promised himself that this would be his last ramp. He’d have enough from this job to last him for all time. Once it was over he’d sit on his beach and screw and drink himself to death.
“Good news and bad,” said Higgins, as he slammed the jeep’s door.
“Tell me the good news first,” said Baz. “I could use some after that flight.”
“Well, we’ve got a nice hotel on the lake. Good grub, clean, friendly and a pretty view over the water.”
“And the bad news?”
“If there’s an earthquake we’ll get gassed.”
“Gassed?”
“Yeah, the lake’s full of carbon dioxide from the volcano, and if there’s the wrong kind of seismic activity, up it comes and goodbye, Vienna. Everyone around the fucking lake dies.”
“Ah, choice,” said Baz. “Ker, ker, ker, ker, ker, ker.” The jeep was bouncing over potholes. “This is going to be a riot. Anything else I need to know?”
“Oh, nothing much,” said Higgins. “The civil war’s about to break out again and there’s still genocidal militias rampaging around the area.”
“Anything else?”
“We’re a bit too close to the gorillas for comfort.”
“Can we buy them off?”
“No,” said Higgins. “Or not without tonnes of bananas at any rate.”
“What?”
“Not guerrillas. The animals. We’re on the edge of a reserve. We might attract a
bit of tree-hugger attention if we’re not careful.”
“Christ, that’s all we need.”
“And there’s a pygmy problem. They’re swarming all over our forty square miles.”
“And what are they doing that’s a problem?”
“Just being there. Some of the locals are scared of them. They’re, like, magical.”
“Magical?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ve got magical pygmies?”
“That’s right.”
The jeep took a particularly big jolt.
“And this is a problem?”
“Yeah, because it could prove hard to hire local people and stuff.”
“I see,” said Baz. “Anything else?”
“That’s about it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, there’s …”
“Shut up, Mark!” Baz was laughing again. “Just don’t tell me about the cannibals.”
“Funny you should say that …”
“No shut up, will you? Just shut up.”
The volcano had what looked like a cloud of steam perched over it, and now he could see the lava that had flowed through the city in tar-like solid rivers. He marvelled at how two million people could place themselves, their families and their worldly goods in the lap of disaster. All you had to do was leave and go somewhere else. Anywhere would do, so long as it wasn’t beside an exploding mountain. How hard could it be?
As long as the mountain didn’t go bang in the short term he and his plans would be fine. But the benighted citizens of Goma had ended up and would spend their whole lives in this perverse location. It seemed like a basic form of self-preservation to leave. But if a smoking mountain and streets full of lava couldn’t convince you to get on your bike then nothing would.
Hotel Ihusi would be their base, and Baz would marshal his forces from the side of Lake Kivu. Then, when everything was in place, he might venture out to see the property. Or maybe not this time. Once they had the compound sorted, he would helicopter in and cut out all the nonsense of driving a hundred kilometres over barely passable roads.
The Twain Maxim Page 7
