The Marketmaker

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘What are they like?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  I left the office at about six, early by Dekker standards. I had to go home and pack before making my way out to Heathrow airport. I was excited at the prospect of the trip, but also nervous. Things were moving fast. Only three days into the job, and I was already on my first trip! Normally, I was confident in my ability to pick things up quickly, but I was afraid that I would be way out of my depth in Rio. I hoped Isabel would be patient.

  I caught sight of Jamie at his desk on my way out. He waved me over.

  ‘How did it go with the insurance company?’ I asked.

  ‘Great! They’re going to commit a hundred million pounds to the emerging markets. And that’s just for starters. If they like the experience they’ll stump up more. And, have no doubt about it, I’m going to make this a wonderful experience for them.’

  Then he noticed my jacket was on, and my battered briefcase bulging. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘Brazil. Ricardo asked me to help Isabel with the favela deal.’

  ‘That should be interesting. Isabel’s good. You can learn a lot from her. Her father’s some big-shot banker out there, so they all listen to her. But remember. Don’t touch.’

  I smiled.

  ‘Oh, Jamie. Just before I go. I got a fax for Martin Beldecos I wanted to discuss with you. I’m not sure what I should do with it –’

  Just then Jamie’s phone flashed. He picked it up. ‘Robert, hallo. It was a good meeting this afternoon, don’t you think?’

  As he listened to the response, he mouthed to me, ‘Later.’

  I could tell the conversation would last a while, and I didn’t want to hang around and risk missing my plane, so I waved goodbye to him and left.

  5

  Humberto Novais Alves, the Finance Secretary for the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro, leaped to his feet and held out his arms. ‘Isabel!’ he said. ‘Tudo bem?’ He kissed both her cheeks and rattled on in Portuguese.

  Isabel broke free and turned to me. ‘Humberto, this is my colleague Nick Elliot. He doesn’t speak Portuguese, but I know English isn’t a problem for you.’

  ‘No problem at all!’ said Humberto, pumping my hand. His round face broke into a grin. ‘Sit down, sit down.’ He gestured to a group of sofas and armchairs. ‘Some coffee?’

  As Humberto organized it, I looked round his office. It was large and well furnished, no doubt befitting his status. The walls were adorned with diplomas and photographs of gleaming new housing projects. The big desk was devoid of paper. The room smelled of new carpet. Every few seconds a pneumatic drill burst into life in the street below. I glanced out of the window. We were ten floors up. The dark flanks of the Mayor’s office rose up a hundred yards away, a tower block just taller than the finance department. And behind that, the sea, mountains and the crowded buildings of Rio de Janeiro.

  We had come here straight from the airport, through the chaotic grime of Rio’s northern suburbs into the shabby administrative centre of the city. Our taxi had parked in what looked like a wire-fenced building site surrounding the finance department, and we had negotiated four sets of security guards, receptionists and secretaries before finally reaching the inner sanctum of Humberto’s office.

  A woman entered with a tray and three small cups of coffee, which she handed to each of us. Humberto added several spoonfuls of sugar to his, and Isabel some drops from a little blue plastic bottle. I took mine straight, and sipped the gritty black liquid carefully. It was strong and bitter.

  ‘And how is your dear father, Isabel?’ Humberto asked, taking a seat at the conference table. He was about fifty, and looked to my eyes more English than Brazilian. Pale and a little pudgy, with thinning dark hair, he wore a smart grey suit and striped tie. He would have blended in well in Whitehall.

  ‘He’s fine,’ she replied. ‘Working hard as usual.’

  ‘With some results. Banco Horizonte is doing very well, these days, I hear. It has quite a reputation. When was it established? Eight years ago?’

  ‘Ten years in October.’

  ‘Well, he has achieved a lot in ten years. Give him my good wishes, won’t you?’

  ‘I will.’ Isabel’s smile was a bit strained. I got the impression that many of her business conversations in Brazil started off with her father.

  Humberto took a sip of coffee, and lit a cigarette. ‘Well, Isabel, my dear, we have good news. Very good news. Everything is finally coming together. The Rio de Janeiro Favela Bairro Trust was formally established yesterday, with myself as chairman.’ He placed a hand on his chest and gave a mock bow.

  ‘The Mayor is completely behind the idea, I mean completely. We have had ten departments working on this.’ He counted them off on his stubby fingers: ‘Finance, Health, Urbanism, Education, Housing, Fire, Water, Environment, Social Development and the Attorney General’s Office. And they are all working together. That, as you know, is quite an achievement.’

  ‘Great!’ Isabel’s face lit up. This was better than she had expected.

  ‘You have the documents I sent you?’

  ‘They’re right here,’ said Isabel, patting her briefcase. ‘I have some comments. Nothing substantial, but we need to make a few changes just to be sure the mechanism works correctly. And then, of course, we’ve got the meetings tomorrow with the rating agencies. They shouldn’t be a problem. They just have one or two final questions.’

  The rating agencies were responsible for assessing and publishing a credit rating for each new deal brought to market. Given the complexity of Isabel’s structure, this had required quite a lot of work on their part, but they were almost comfortable with it.

  ‘Good. Let me get Rafael. One moment.’ He picked up his phone and spoke quickly in Portuguese. ‘He’ll be here in five minutes.’

  He placed his hands on the desk in front of us and beamed. ‘But once we have agreed those documents, and satisfied the agencies, there’s nothing at our end to stop us from going further.’

  ‘Then we can launch the deal at the end of next week, as we planned?’

  ‘As far as we are concerned, yes.’

  Isabel caught something in the civil servant’s tone. ‘Humberto?’

  ‘There is one small problem. It’s probably nothing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Jack Langton at the World Development Fund has to check some small details with Washington. He says he’ll get back to us at the beginning of next week.’

  ‘What details?’

  Humberto shrugged.

  ‘I’ll call him,’ said Isabel.

  ‘Good. Isabel, we are going to do this deal, I promise you.’

  Isabel smiled. ‘We certainly are.’

  There was a quiet tap on the door, and the lawyer, Rafael, entered. We retired to a meeting room where we went over the documents Isabel had brought with her. I had read them through several times until I thoroughly understood the structure, and I was able to make some useful suggestions. It was good to contribute something for a change.

  In the taxi back to our hotel, I asked Isabel how she thought the meeting had gone.

  ‘I’m pleased. After a year, it looks like we’re almost there. Humberto has always been enthusiastic about the deal. He said there would be no problem getting all the authorizations, but I admit I didn’t believe him. And now it looks like he’s done it.’

  ‘What was all that about the World Development Fund?’

  Isabel frowned. ‘I don’t know. I’ll find out when we get back to the hotel. Oh, by the way, thanks for your help in that meeting. You certainly have picked up a lot.’ She gave me a shy smile, a smile to die for.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, my voice hoarse.

  The taxi lurched on through the Rio traffic, accelerating through red lights, swerving round holes in the road, cursing and hooting its way through the jams. Eventually we entered a tunnel and the traffic speeded up. We emerged in front of a broad lake. Apartment buildings sprouted up around
it, and behind them on all sides rose tall, green, rounded mountains. On top of one of these stood the statue of Christ, arms outstretched as he embraced the city below him. We skirted the lake at a crawl again, barely overtaking the parade of joggers and walkers. Two double sculls glided across the water, their oars moving in perfect time. Surrounded by these breathtaking walls of green, it was difficult to believe we were in the heart of a city.

  These next few days in Rio were going to be difficult. Not the business. I had been pleased with the meeting and my performance in it. No, Isabel. Her presence was disconcerting. She didn’t have to do anything, she could just be sitting next to me leafing through a magazine, and that would be enough to distract me. The way she bit her lip as she read, the way her hair caressed her elegant neck, the two knobs of collarbone peeking out of the top of her dress.

  I thought I was good at ignoring pretty women when necessary. I had taught a number, eager twenty-year-olds, falling in love with a great literature, and easily impressed with their guide. But tutor-student relations were now frowned upon in the academic world, and I had successfully shown no interest in any of them.

  I had tried to strike up a conversation with Isabel on the plane. She hadn’t been rude, but she hadn’t exactly been talkative either. She had shown a sort of shy self-possession that finished each conversation almost as soon as it had begun but which made her, if anything, more appealing. It would have been easier if she had just said, ‘Shut up and leave me alone.’ Eventually I had given up and read loan documents through the night, until the suburbs of northern Rio de Janeiro appeared through the window with the dawn.

  In a few minutes the taxi pulled up outside the Copacabana Palace, nestling in the middle of a row of characterless hotels and apartment blocks that faced the famous beach of the same name. It was a squat white building, whose elegantly etched art-deco features recalled its heyday as the leading hotel for the rich and beautiful of the 1930s. Here, I had read, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had danced, and Noël Coward and Eva Peron had gambled. As our taxi rolled to a halt, a man in a crisp white uniform opened the door, and another whisked away our bags. We checked in, and were led through a courtyard past a swimming pool, shimmering coolly blue against the white glare of the hotel walls. A solitary swimmer cut through its lightly ruffled surface as she forged up and down. Two couples, one a pair of bankers and one a pair of middle-aged tourists, drank coffee in the shade of a large, broad-leafed tree. Quite simply, I was overawed. I’d travelled before, to India, Thailand, Morocco, but I had never stayed in anywhere that cost more than twenty pounds a night. The Copacabana Palace cost significantly more than that. Isabel, of course, knew the hotel well, and took it all in her stride.

  I went up to my room, took a cold beer out of the minibar, and walked out on to the balcony. Below me was the pool and beyond that, outside the calm confines of the hotel, past the constant stream of traffic on the Avenida Atlântica, was the bustle of Copacabana beach itself. At its near edge, walkers strode purposefully up and down, occasionally pausing to perform a ritual twisting and stretching of limbs. The beach itself was dotted with brown and black bodies. This was a beach where people did things: played volleyball or soccer, sold ice creams or funny hats, milled about, or sat and watched everyone else. Then, beyond all this, there was the sea, swelling gently until a few feet from the shore, when it suddenly erupted into white fluffy waves, which broke tidily and prettily on to the pale sand.

  I shed my jacket and tie, took a sip of cold beer, closed my eyes and pointed my face towards the soft heat of the late-afternoon sun. The complementary roar of traffic and waves lulled me. I began to relax.

  The turmoil of the last few days began to sort itself out in my brain. The first week at Dekker and my attempts to absorb all the new information thrown at me; the complexities of the favela deal; Martin Beldecos’s fax.

  I still didn’t know what to do about that. I wished I’d had a chance to discuss it with Jamie before I’d left. It seemed very likely that money was being laundered at Dekker Trust. Whether Ricardo and Eduardo knew that, I had no idea. But I also had no idea what it had got to do with me. My instincts told me to ignore it, at least until I got my bearings at Dekker. It could safely wait until I returned.

  There was a knock at the door. It was Isabel.

  ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Do you want a beer?’

  She shook her head. I wandered back out to the balcony and she followed me.

  ‘This is amazing,’ I said.

  ‘Rio is beautiful,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘And if you work for Dekker, you tend to end up in the nicest hotel rooms.’

  She was wearing a simple black summer dress. She leaned back against the railing of my balcony. My throat went dry. I had another swig of beer.

  ‘I tried to get hold of Jack Langton, my contact at the WDF, but no luck,’ she said. ‘I’ve left a message for him to call me tomorrow at the Ministry of Finance.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I’m going to dinner with some old friends tonight. Will you be all right here by yourself?’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘If you do go out, don’t carry much money with you, and if anyone asks you for it, just give it to them.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  She smiled and blushed. ‘I’m sorry, but this town can be dangerous for strangers.’

  ‘That’s OK. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.’

  She moved to leave and then hesitated. ‘I’m having lunch with my father on Saturday. Would you like to come? He’s always enjoyed reading Russian novels. I think he’d like to meet you.’

  I tried to hide my surprise. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, and was gone.

  I sat and watched evening descend upon the beach. Then I grabbed a few reais and joined the evening promenade along the Avenida Atlântica.

  The meetings with the rating agencies on Friday went well. They seemed to be satisfied that everything hung together. The only slight worry was that we didn’t hear from the WDF. So during a break for lunch Isabel called them, and discovered that Jack Langton was out all day and would call back on Monday.

  On Saturday morning I called Pedro Hattori at the office, on the off-chance he was in. He was. My Argentine Discounts were down a point following an unsubstantiated rumour of a general strike the following week. Pedro told me not to worry, there was nothing in it. But I did.

  I spent the morning exploring Rio. It overwhelmed my senses. It was an extraordinary city, physically the most beautiful I had ever seen. It was an absurd mix of sea, beach, forest and mountain, all four in such close proximity that it seemed impossible to fit a city in among them. Everywhere you went there seemed to be a beach in front of you and a mountain behind. The buildings themselves were nothing special, anything old in Rio was run down and shabby, but even the starkest modern building was overwhelmed by the beauty surrounding it.

  I returned to the hotel at one o’clock to meet Isabel. We jumped into a taxi to Ipanema where her father lived. Ipanema beach was subtly different from Copacabana. It had the same white sand, and it was surrounded by similar lush green mountains, but the apartment buildings seemed newer and better kept, and the beach-goers were different, more relaxed. Phone booths like giant motor-cycle helmets in yellow and orange sprouted up in clusters every hundred yards or so. In most of them girls in shorts and bikini tops laughed and chatted. On my walk the other night along Copacabana the girls had looked like hookers; here they looked like middle-class schoolgirls fixing up the day’s entertainment on the beach. Ipanema had sun, sea, sand, and money.

  But, at the far end of the beach, behind a rectangular hotel, I could see a jumble of small buildings, little square boxes clinging to the edge of a mountain, looking at any moment as if they would tumble into the sea below. They were packed tightly together, no line was quite straight, no building quite complete. A favela.

  ‘It’s extraordinary to see the two so close together,’ I said. �
��The rich and the poor. It’s almost obscene.’

  ‘It is obscene,’ replied Isabel.

  We pulled up a side-street and stopped outside some iron gates adorned with a small video camera and an electronic combination lock. Above us rose a sand-coloured apartment building. The gates whirred and opened, and the taxi drove us up to the black smoked-glass entrance.

  We walked into a cool lobby, and a uniformed doorman greeted Isabel with a grin. A boy, also in uniform, ushered us into a wood-panelled lift, and we headed up to the fifteenth floor. The doors opened, into a hallway.

  ‘Isabel!’ a deep voice cried. A tall middle-aged man with a slight stoop stood waiting for us. He opened out his arms.

  ‘Papai,’ she said, and gave him a hug.

  Isabel’s father had her long Roman nose, which on him looked distinguished. He peered at me over the half-moon glasses.

  ‘I’m Luís. Welcome.’ He shook my hand and smiled. He was very tall. Even with the stoop I had to look up at him, and I’m six foot three. His hair was still black, but was thinning. He had a good-humoured face, wrinkled by sun and laughter. ‘Come through, come through.’

  He led us in to a large living room. The furniture was low, and either of dark wood or cane. Bright colourful paintings covered the walls on large canvases. The sun streamed in from big windows that looked out on to a balcony. Beyond that stretched the shimmering blue sea.

  Suddenly there was a clattering sound followed by heavy thumping from the hallway behind us. ‘Isabel!’ screamed a hoarse voice, and a large black woman wearing a dark uniform and an apron charged into the room. She grabbed Isabel and kissed her hard on both cheeks, breathing deeply from the exertion of her gallop. Isabel beamed and spoke to the big woman rapidly. They exchanged laughs and hasty comments, and then the woman caught sight of me. She whispered something that made Isabel blush, and turn and hit her playfully on the shoulder.

  ‘Maria has been my maid since I was a little girl,’ Isabel said. ‘She still thinks she can tell me what to do.’