The Paper Factory (Michael Berg Book 1)

by Norrie Sinclair

  Chapter 45

  Augustus had not been home in two days. He’d slept in the bedroom adjacent to his office. He had not eaten. His PA had been told to hold all calls and cancel all meetings. He’d barely moved from the leather couch that sat perpendicular to his desk. Occasionally Augustus gazed out across the trading room floor, from the spectacular bay window. What he witnessed dismayed him even more. Six months before, the place had been buzzing with activity, barely enough space to accommodate the weekly intake of new hires fuelling the banks proprietary trading operations. Now the floor was half empty, those traders that remained blearily following trails of red numbers flickering across their screens.

  Augustus pulled himself from the couch, staggered to his desk. The bottle of brandy he’d consumed that morning had slowed him down, not knocked him out. He hadn’t changed his clothes since Monday, too drunk to notice the smell. He sat in front of the computer, head lolling forwards and did his best to focus on the e-mail he’d written the morning before.

  To: dbradshaw@bbcnews.com; kate.leonard@thetimes.co.uk; sthompson@ft.co.uk

  From: goodfriend@bk.com

  Subject: Beirsdorf Klein, Illegal Trading

  Since January 2008, Beirsdorf Klein, in common with many international banking groups, has been trading illegally. The bank has vastly over leveraged its exposure to Special Investment Vehicles containing subprime CDO’s (Collateralized Debt Obligations) to a point where given the drop in market valuations over the past 12 months, Beirsdorf Klein has a negative asset value of at least EUR 50bn.

  Naturally, given the breach of trust owed by the bank to shareholders and customers, I have with immediate effect tendered my resignation to the European and US Supervisory Boards of the Bank.

  Yours Faithfully,

  Augustus S. Goodfriend

  Chairman

  Beirsdorf Klein Investment Banking, Europe

  The content of the e-mail sickened him. More, even, than when he’d written it. Augustus took another swig of brandy, his head spinning, faced with two choices only. Either would ruin his life. Augustus’s wealth had been predominantly invested in the bank. If it went down, he would lose everything he had worked towards and everything that his parents had fought so hard to protect.

  If he didn’t push the button on the e-mail, the whole house of cards would come crashing down anyway. But he knew this wasn’t necessarily true. It was without doubt in the interests of the bankers, the industrialists and the politicians to maintain the status quo and shore up the system. As long as the bankers knew that they had the support of the political establishment and the guarantee of taxpayer money to fuel the merry-go-round, they would keep the wheel spinning. Rivello would only get the leverage he needed if Augustus triggered the collapse by burying his own bank.

  One thing he knew, though, for certain. If he didn’t send that e-mail, he and his family’s name would be permanently disgraced, the rest of his probably relatively short life being spent in the pedophile wing of a maximum security prison.

  “Fuck you all,” he cried. A man who knew that his time was up.

  The cursor hovered over the “send” key. With a click of the mouse, the e-mail shot into cyberspace.

  Chapter 46

  “You sure you want to go ahead with this?”

  “If you ask me again, I swear this latté will end up in your lap. Do what you need to do and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Let’s do it,” he said.

  They crossed the road separately. Michael entered through the automated double doors of the office building. Tereza waited outside.

  He vaguely recollected the layout. Ahead of him stretched a four meter long, marble reception desk, two young women helping those with appointments to connect with the right person and guiding them to the correct floor. Security was unobtrusive, but present. To the left of the desk were three turnstiles. Behind them lay two banks of three elevators. Before you could enter the turnstiles, a security card was needed to activate the revolving steel bar.

  This was where Michael needed a diversion. He angled away from the reception desk and stood close to the turnstiles. Feigning agitation, he glanced at his watch in the hope that he resembled someone waiting for an inhabitant of the building to descend and whisk him off to lunch.

  “Can I ’elp you, sir?” the voice came from behind him, authoritative with a distinct undertone of menace. Security.

  Michael turned to the peak capped, straight-faced security guard who had indeed been so unobtrusive that Michael had no idea where he’d appeared from.

  “No, thanks. I have a lunch appointment with Augustus Goodfriend. He asked me to wait for him here.”

  “I see, sir, well let’s see if I can help you out. Let’s go over to Amanda and she can let Mr. Goodfriend know that you’ve arrived.”

  The security guard turned his back on Michael, beckoning him forwards. The guard’s body froze as the shrill scream tore through the reception area.

  “My baby, someone’s stolen my baby, help, help, please help me!”

  A handbag was one thing. Hardened security men were trained how to deal with minor distractions, and in any case, to the toughened inhabitants of one of the world’s largest and therefore most cutthroat cities, petty theft and pickpocketing were barely worth lifting one’s finger for. But a baby? That was something else.

  Tereza sobbed uncontrollably. The security man had ejected Michael from his mind. The receptionists darted from behind their opulent marble haven and dashed over to the hysterical woman.

  Michael glanced towards the elevators. No one approaching. He turned, in two strides was at the turnstile and, one hand on top of the box, leapt over the device as one of the elevators opened and half a dozen people exited. He jumped in, hoping Tereza was able to extricate herself from her momentary celebrity.

  Chapter 47

  The impact was immediate. As soon as she screamed out that her baby had been taken, everyone in the lobby either rushed towards her or towards the door in the direction that she was frantically pointing.

  When she saw that Michael had leapt the security gate, she grabbed the sleeve of the security guard who had swiftly dashed to her side.

  “Help, please help me. She went that way.” Tereza pointed in the general direction of St Paul’s Cathedral.

  “Is it in a pram? What’s she look like?” said the guard.

  “She’s in jeans and a dark top. She’s running. Yellow stroller. Go. Hurry, catch her. Please.”

  The guard ran off in the direction of the non-existent child, Tereza halfheartedly following him. He ran across a lane coming in from the right and narrowly missed being hit by a taxi pulling up to the junction. The driver’s horn blared as Tereza darted down the lane. As she reached the end, and turned into the main thoroughfare of Cannon Street, she heard the sound of at least one police siren, presumably descending on the Beirsdorf Klein building.

  Tereza slowed her pace and stayed with the lunchtime crowd, strolling along Cannon Street, believing herself to stand out less than in one of the more deserted side streets. She had already planned her escape route. Cannon Street underground was five minutes away. Once there she could be just about anywhere in a city of twelve million inhabitants inside one hour.

  She made it in three. Tereza stepped off the pavement onto the road, crossing to enter the underground when she sensed a presence close behind her.

  “Tereza.”

  She swiveled around. Came face to face with a barrel-sized chest. Lifting her head, she froze when she saw the face of the same man that had tried to kill both her and Michael in Visegrad. The impassive, brooding features, dead eyes and malicious intent she sensed just below the surface sent a shiver through her. An object was pushed into her side, below the ribs. A gun. Another voice, to her left.

  She struggled as she felt some kind of cloth being jammed over her mouth. An unfamiliar smell.

  ---

  Jay had been right. Rykov observed Berg as he entered
the offices of Beirsdorf Klein. The girl stood on the door’s periphery. Straight to Goodfriend. Rivello wouldn’t like this at all. He observed the pair from the back of the Audi.

  What happened next surprised him. Berg was approached by a security guard. The girl entered, all hell broke loose. She was shouting and screaming, waving her hands in the air, then frantically pointing out onto the street. Rykov at first thought she was gesturing towards him, then realized she was pointing somewhere farther on down the road. As the guard and other lobby inhabitants gathered around the girl, he observed Berg vaulting over the security gate and walking swiftly toward the elevators.

  The security guard exited the building at a trot with the girl following behind. She continued to do so until she turned right, darting down the alleyway, alongside the building. She’d created some sort of diversion for Berg.

  Rykov had a decision to make. Sirens shrieked in the distance. They’d be here within minutes, he thought. There was no way he’d be able to take Berg off the street with the police crawling all over the place. He needed the girl. She knew the most. Besides, if he had her, he was sure Berg would come running.

  “Ivan, the girl. Now.” He banged his fist down onto the driver’s seat to convey the immediacy of the situation. They followed her down the alleyway and then turned left onto Cannon Street where they followed a few meters behind. They were helped by the sluggishness of the lunchtime traffic. Everyone was travelling at a crawl. She was heading for the metro. They would need to move fast.

  “Ivan, chloroform. I’ll engage the target, you dose her and get her into the car.” Rykov had been through this type of operation a dozen times. On a subliminal level, the average bystander would know that someone had just been grabbed, drugged and bundled into a car in front of their eyes. But, they would never validate it. For the average person walking along the street, it seemed so far removed from their everyday reality, that they would simply blank it out and move on. Safer that way, too.

  As the girl stepped out onto Cannon Street, the two men jumped from the Audi. Rykov walked up behind her. Ivan speeded ahead. Rykov tapped on her shoulder.

  “Tereza.” Gun already in his hand.

  She turned to face him. As she did so, her face registered surprise, shock, then fear. Ivan slipped a cloth over her mouth, placing his arms around her back to catch her before she hit the pavement. She was eased into the back of the car. The two men jumped in. The car sped off.

  Chapter 48

  It was eight thirteen a.m. when he heard the e-mail alert ping from his laptop. Rick Delaney felt a small surge of irritation at being interrupted during his hour of respite. For the last ten of his twenty years at Beirsdorf Klein, he had religiously arrived at his office on the eighty-sixth floor at seven thirty and read the morning’s financial papers. Usually this oasis of calm in an otherwise turbulent day went uninterrupted, until around eight thirty when he was routinely required to go into overdrive.

  Still absorbing the intricacies of a story in the Wall Street Journal, he absentmindedly clicked on the e-mail that had just landed in his inbox.

  From: Augustus Goodfriend, Chairman of the Board, Beirsdorf Klein, Europe

  To: Richard Delaney, Chairman and CEO, Beirsdorf Klein LLC

  Dear Richard,

  It is with great regret that I tender my resignation as Chairman of the Board, Beirsdorf Klein (UK) Plc and Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Europe. Whilst I have the greatest respect and admiration for you and also for my colleagues across the Beirsdorf Klein network, I cannot condone recent directives that have effectively pushed significant losses on Beirsdorf Klein US originated deals onto Beirsdorf Klein (UK) Plc. I do not believe that I have any alternative but to resign as, although the transactions that the UK Bank has been requested to take onto its own balance sheet are legally permissible under British law, I believe that it is morally and ethically incorrect for the financial markets to assume that the parent US Company is financially sound. A fact that is undoubtedly not the case.

  I would appreciate it if my resignation was announced immediately and that, given the circumstances, a public announcement was made as I no longer want to be associated with an organization that willingly engages in perpetuating market falsehoods at the expense of its shareholders.

  Yours Faithfully,

  Augustus Goodfriend

  Chairman, Beirsdorf Klein (UK) Plc

  Member of the Supervisory Board, Beirsdorf Klein, Europe

  The newspaper fell from his hand and dropped onto the deep, pile carpet with a soft thud. Delaney reread it twice. The first time in disbelief and the second as a hollow, wrenching feeling spread from his stomach throughout his whole body as it dawned on him that he was in deep, deep trouble. He needed to quash this quickly. Get Goodfriend to keep his mouth shut. What in goddam hell has got into the man? He would have to move fast to extinguish this before it got out of control.

  The sharp-pitched tone of the phone failed to break his concentration. Fear spurred his mind on into top gear, racing through his options. On reflex he picked up the call, mind still churning through the potential implications of Goodfriend’s actions.

  “Mr. Delaney?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sean Thompson, Financial Times, London.”

  Delaney looked at his watch. London was five hours ahead; 1:15 p.m.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Thompson?” Delaney loathed the press and their assumptive intrusiveness, self-justified by “the peoples’ right to know.” Parasites making a living from satisfying a human need for salacious gossip. The Financial Times, in common with its US counterpart, the Wall Street Journal, at least tried to stick to the facts and minimize sensationalism. Still, it never paid to make enemies of them. Journalists had a talent for getting even.

  “Five minutes ago I received an e-mail from Augustus Goodfriend. He claims to have resigned and that the bank has been trading illegally for the past nine months. He wasn’t available for comment. I thought you might be. We get hoax e-mails all the time, and this one sounds a bit too unbelievable to be true. Can you corroborate it?”

  Delaney’s laughter reverberated around the room.

  “I’m not even sure this isn’t a hoax call, Mr. Thompson. Receiving e-mails like that would make your job a little bit too easy, wouldn’t it? There, you have my comment, I hope you have a good day.”

  Delaney reunited the handset with its cradle, then picked up the whole unit and threw the phone as hard as he could against the wall.

  ---

  Allison Bridges heard the crash from the other side of her boss’s door. She finished the paragraph that she was typing, stood and walked across her own office to the store cupboard set into the opposite wall. Allison’s job was incredibly varied and she thoroughly enjoyed it. Protecting her boss from unobtrusive callers was one of her most important tasks. Whoever had upset Mr. Delaney this time had obviously gotten hold of his direct number.

  One of her other duties that would never appear on any job spec. was to protect him from himself. Or at least hide some of his little idiosyncrasies from the world at large. She opened the door, bent down and removed a wooden box which she then proceeded to perch herself on. Allison was dismayed by what she saw. Only four left. She took one of the four telephones, knocked on Mr. Delaney’s door and then, opening it just wide enough, slipped the telephone inside onto the carpet, gently closing the door behind her. She returned to her desk, seated herself and dialed the stockroom.

  Chapter 49

  Michael glanced at his watch as the elevator glided upwards. It was one twenty-five. What the building lacked in height it made up for in breadth. Each floor consumed fifty thousand square feet, approximately five thousand square meters. He hoped Tereza had been able to extricate herself from the melee in the reception area. Michael knew what he wanted from Goodfriend. His intention was to frighten the man into giving him the background story on Rivello and the BOS sting operation. Depending on what he knew. At the least Goodfriend
was involved in the financial implosion of Vass Holdings. Michael had no intention of taking it easy on the corrupt bastard. He reached the top floor, took a left and proceeded down the corridor to Goodfriend’s suite of offices.

  Michael stood close to the open door, adjusted his tie and took a deep breath before marching into Goodfriend’s personal assistant’s ante room. Prim, tall, pencil thin, with mousy hair tied up in a tight bun and, as was the way with this category of office worker, noticeably efficient and potentially fierce. She sensed his interloping presence before he’d even entered the room.

  “Can I help you Mr. …” her hawk-like eyes sizing him up as soon as he stepped through the door.

  “Good afternoon,” said Michael, maintaining his pace towards Goodfriend’s office, “I have an appointment with Augustus. One thirty.” He’d dropped the first name in a feigned attempt at familiarity. Naively, as it turned out.

  “You cannot go through that door,” her voice boomed as she jumped to her feet.

  “Watch me,” said Michael, who was in no mood to be put off by some middle-aged dragon.

  “Mr. Goodfriend has left specific instructions that he doesn’t wish to be disturbed. Sir, you cannot go in there. I’ll be forced to call security.”

  The woman was shouting, attempting to warn Augustus that he was about to receive a visitor.

  By the time she picked up her telephone and made good her threat, Michael was striding through the doors he had thrown open in front of him. Goodfriend’s office was impressive, Michael would give him that. He’d been there before. It still took his breath away. This time for different reasons.

  At once the stench hit him. Human body odor and alcohol. Cognac or brandy in the air. No sign of Goodfriend. He heard a muffled clattering from behind a closed door on the other side of the room. He walked towards the door. There was a loud crash and then the unmistakable sound of glass shattering, hitting the ground. Michael grabbed the handle and first pulled, then pushed. The door wouldn’t move. He took two steps back then slammed into it with his shoulder. The door flew open. Michael stumbled into the room, slipped and fell forwards onto his hands. Big mistake. The pain was searing as he realized that the tiled floor was covered in razor sharp beads of glass. He looked up to locate the sink to wash the glass off his hands and came face to face with a pair of laced black brogues paddling frantically in the air over the bathtub. Goodfriend’s frantic kicking had shattered the glass shower curtain.