The Fear Index

by Robert Harris

  ‘It’s a secret ballot,’ she said primly, and glanced away, irritated that he had got it right.

  Hoffmann’s hedge fund was based in Les Eaux-Vives, a district just south of the lake, as solid and confident as the nineteenth-century Swiss businessmen who had built it: heavy masonry, wide faux-Parisian boulevards webbed with tram cables, cherry trees erupting from the kerbsides to shower dusty white and pink blossom over the grey pavements, shops and restaurants on the ground floors, seven storeys of offices and apartments stacked imperturbably above. Amid this bourgeois respectability Hoffmann Investment Technologies presented a narrow Victorian facade to the world, easy to miss unless you were looking for it, with only a small name tag on an entryphone to betray its existence. A steel-shuttered ramp, watched by a security camera, led down to an underground car park. On one side was a salon de thé, on the other a late-night supermarket. In the far distance the mountains of the Jura still bore a faint rim of snow.

  ‘You promise me you’ll be careful?’ said Gabrielle, as the Mercedes pulled up.

  Hoffmann reached behind Quarry and squeezed her shoulder. ‘I’m getting stronger by the minute. What about you, though? You feel okay, going back to the house?’

  ‘Genoud is sending someone round,’ said Quarry.

  Gabrielle made a quick face at Hoffmann – her Hugo face, which involved turning down the corners of her mouth, sticking out her tongue and rolling up her eyes. Despite everything, he almost burst out laughing. ‘Hugo has it all under control,’ she said, ‘don’t you, Hugo? As usual.’ She kissed her husband’s hand where it lay on her shoulder. ‘I won’t be stopping anyway. I’ll just grab my things and get over to the gallery.’

  The chauffeur opened the door.

  ‘Hey, listen,’ said Hoffmann. He was reluctant to let go of her. ‘Good luck this morning. I’ll come over and see how things are going as soon as I can get away.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  He climbed out on to the pavement. She had a sudden premonition that she would never see him again, so vivid she was nearly sick. ‘You’re sure we shouldn’t both cancel everything and take the day off?’

  ‘No way. It’s going to be great.’

  Quarry said, ‘Cheerio then, sweetheart,’ and slid his neat bottom over the leather upholstery towards the open door. ‘D’you know,’ he said, as he clambered out, ‘I think I might actually come and buy one of your thingamabobs. Go very well in our reception, I reckon.’

  As the car pulled away, Gabrielle looked back at them through the rear window. Quarry had his left arm round Alex’s shoulders and was steering him across the pavement; with his right he was gesturing. She could not tell what the gesture meant, but she knew he was making a joke. A moment later they disappeared.

  THE OFFICES OF Hoffmann Investment Technologies revealed themselves to a visitor like the carefully rehearsed stages of a conjuring trick. First, heavy doors of smoked glass opened automatically on to a narrow reception barely wider than a corridor, low-ceilinged, walled by dimly lit brown granite. Next you presented your face to a camera for 3D recognition scanning: it took less than one second for the metric geometry algorithm to match your features to its database (during this process it was important to maintain a neutral expression); if you were a visitor, you gave your name to the unsmiling security guard. Once cleared, you were clicked through a tubular steel turnstile, walked down another short corridor and turned left – and suddenly you were confronted by a huge open space flooded with daylight: that was when it hit you that this was actually three buildings knocked into one. The masonry at the back had been demolished and replaced by a sheer Alpine ice-fall of frameless glass, eight storeys high, overlooking a courtyard centred round a jetting fountain and elaborate giant ferns. Twin elevators rose and fell noiselessly in their soundproofed glass silos.

  Quarry, the showman and salesman, had been stunned by the concept the moment he had first been shown round the place nine months earlier. For his part, Hoffmann had loved the computer-controlled systems – the lighting that adjusted in harmony with the daylight outside, the windows that opened automatically to regulate the temperature, the funnels on the roof that drew in fresh air to remove the need for air-conditioning in all open spaces, the ground-source heat-pump system, the rainwater recycling unit with its hundred-thousand-litre holding tank used for flushing the lavatories. The building was advertised as ‘a holistic, digitally aware entity with minimal carbon emissions’. In the event of fire, the dampers would be shut off in the ventilation system to prevent the spread of smoke and the elevators sent to the ground floor to stop people boarding them. It was also, most important of all, connected to the GV1 fibre-optic pipe, the fastest in Europe. That clinched it: they took out a lease on the whole of the fifth floor. The corporate tenants above and below – DigiSyst, EcoTec, EuroTel – were as mysterious as their names. Nobody from one firm ever seemed to acknowledge the existence of anyone from another. Elevator rides passed in awkward silence, apart from when passengers stepped in and announced which floor they required (the voice-recognition system could differentiate between regional accents in twenty-four languages): Hoffmann, who made a fetish of privacy and loathed small talk, rather liked that.

  The fifth floor was a kingdom within a kingdom. A wall of opaque and bubbled turquoise glass blocked off access from the elevators. To gain entry, as downstairs, it was necessary to present one’s relaxed countenance to a scanner. Facial recognition activated a sliding panel, the glass vibrating slightly as it rolled back to reveal Hoffmann’s own reception area: low cubes of black and grey upholstery stacked and arranged like child’s bricks to form chairs and sofas, a coffee table of chrome and glass, and adjustable consoles containing touch-screen computers on which visitors could browse the web while waiting for their appointments. Each had a screensaver stating the company’s rubric in red letters on a white background:

  THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL HAVE NO PAPER

  THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL CARRY NO INVENTORY

  THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL BE ENTIRELY DIGITAL

  THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED

  There were no magazines or newspapers in the reception area: it was company policy that, as far as possible, no printed material or writing paper of any sort should pass the threshold. Of course, the rule could not be imposed on guests, but employees, including the senior partners, were required to pay a fine of ten Swiss francs, and have their names posted on the company’s intranet, each time they were caught in possession of ink and wood pulp rather than silicon and plastic. It was astonishing how quickly people’s habits, even Quarry’s, were changed by this simple rule. Ten years after Bill Gates had first preached the gospel of the paperless office in Business at the Speed of Light, Hoffmann had more or less brought it about. In a strange way he was almost as proud of this achievement as he was of any of his others.

  It was embarrassing, therefore, for him to have to pass through reception with his first edition of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. If he had caught anyone else with a copy he would have pointed out that the text was readily available online via Project Gutenberg or Darwin.online.org, and asked sarcastically whether they considered themselves to be a quicker reader than the VIXAL-4 algorithm, or had trained their brains to do word search. He saw no paradox in his zeal to ban the book at work and to display it in rare first editions at home. Books were antiques, just like any other artefacts from the past. One might just as well reprimand a collector of Venetian candelabra or Regency commodes for using an electric light or a flush lavatory. Nevertheless he slipped the volume under his coat and glanced up guiltily at one of the tiny security cameras that monitored the floor.

  ‘Breaking your own rules, Professor?’ said Quarry, loosening his scarf. ‘Bit bloody rich.’

  ‘Forgot I had it with me.’

  ‘Like hell. Your place or mine?’

  ‘I don’t know. Does it matter? Okay – yours.’

  To reach Quarry
’s office it was necessary to cross the trading floor. The Japanese stock market would close in fifteen minutes, the European exchanges would open at nine, and already four dozen quantitative analysts – quants, in the dismissive jargon of the trade – were hard at work. None talked above a whisper. Most stared silently at their six-screen arrays. Giant plasma televisions with muted sound carried CNBC and Bloomberg, while beneath the TVs a glowing red line of digital clocks noiselessly recorded time’s relentless passage in Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, Geneva, London and New York. This was the sound that money made in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The occasional soft clatter of strokes on a keyboard was the only indication that humans were present at all.

  Hoffmann raised his hand to the back of his head and touched the hard puckered smile of his wound. He wondered how visible it was. Perhaps he should wear a baseball cap? He was conscious of being pale and unshaven and he tried to avoid meeting anyone’s gaze, which was easy enough as few bothered to look up as he passed. Hoffmann’s force of quants was nine-tenths male, for reasons he did not entirely understand. It was not deliberate policy; it simply seemed to be only men who applied, usually refugees from the twin miseries of academia: low salaries and high tables. Half a dozen had come from the Large Hadron Collider. Hoffmann would not even consider hiring anyone without a PhD in maths or the physical sciences; all doctoral theses were expected to have been peer-reviewed in the top fifteen per cent. Nationality did not matter and nor did social skills, with the result that Hoffmann’s payroll occasionally resembled a United Nations conference on Asperger’s syndrome. Quarry called it ‘The Nerd World’. Last year’s bonus brought the average remuneration up to almost half a million dollars.

  Only five senior managers got offices of their own – the heads of Finance, Risk and Operations, along with Hoffmann, whose title was company president, and Quarry, who was the CEO. The offices were standard soundproofed glass cubicles with white venetian blinds, beige carpeting and Scandinavian furniture of pale wood and chrome. Quarry’s windows looked down on to the street and across to a private German bank, hidden from view behind thick net curtains. He was in the process of having a sixty-five-metre super-yacht built by Benetti of Viareggio. Framed blueprints and artist’s sketches lined his walls; there was a scale model on his desk. The hull would be lined all the way round, just below the deck, with a strip of lights he could turn on and off and change colour with his key fob while having dinner in port. He was planning to call her Trade Alpha. Hoffmann, who was happy enough in a Hobie Cat, worried at first that their clients might take this ostentation as evidence that they were making too much money. But as usual Quarry knew their psychology better than he did: ‘No, no, they’ll love it. They’ll tell everybody: “D’you have any idea how much those guys are making …?” And they’ll want to be a part of it even more, believe me. They’re boys. They’re a herd.’

  Now he sat behind his model boat and peered over one of its three model swimming pools and said, ‘Coffee? Breakfast?’

  ‘Just coffee.’ Hoffmann went straight across to the window.

  Quarry buzzed his assistant. ‘Two black coffees right away. And you should drink some water,’ he suggested to Hoffmann’s back. ‘You don’t want to get dehydrated.’ But Hoffmann was not listening. ‘And some still water, darling, and I’ll have a banana and some yoghurt. Is Genoud in yet?’

  ‘Not yet, Hugo.’

  ‘Send him straight in when he gets here.’ He released the switch. ‘Anything happening out there?’

  Hoffmann had his hands on the windowsill. He was staring down into the street. A group of pedestrians waited on the corner opposite for the lights to change even though there was no traffic coming in either direction. After watching them for a while Hoffmann muttered savagely, ‘The goddam tight-assed Swiss …’

  ‘Yeah, well just remember the goddam tight-assed eight-point-eight per cent tax rate they let us get away with, and you’ll feel better.’

  A well-toned freckled woman with a low-cut sweater and a cascade of dark red hair came in without knocking: Hugo’s assistant, an Australian – Hoffmann couldn’t remember her name. He suspected she was an ex-girlfriend of Hugo’s who had passed the statutory retirement age for that position, thirty-one, and been found lighter duties elsewhere. She was carrying a tray. Behind her lurked a man in a dark suit and black tie with a fawn raincoat over his arm.

  ‘Mr Genoud is here,’ she said, then added solicitously, ‘How are you feeling, Alex?’

  Hoffmann turned on Quarry. ‘You told her?’

  ‘Yes, I called her from the hospital. She fixed us a car. What’s it matter? It’s not a secret, is it?’

  ‘I’d prefer it if everyone in the office didn’t know, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Sure, if that’s what you want. You’ll keep it to yourself, Amber, right?’

  ‘Of course, Hugo.’ She looked at Hoffmann in puzzlement. ‘Sorry, Alex.’

  Hoffmann raised his hand in benediction. He took his coffee from the tray and returned to the window. The pedestrians had moved on. A tram rattled to a halt and opened its doors, spilling out passengers along its entire length, as if a knife had been passed from end to end, gutting it. Hoffmann tried to pick out faces, but there were too many and they were dispersing too quickly. He drank his coffee. When he turned round, Genoud was in the office and the door was closed. They had been talking to him and he had not realised. He was aware of a silence.

  ‘Sorry?’

  Genoud said patiently, ‘I was just telling Mr Quarry, Dr Hoffmann: I have spoken to several of my old colleagues in the Geneva police. They have issued a description of the man. Forensics are at your house now.’

  Hoffmann said, ‘The inspector in charge of the case is called Leclerc.’

  ‘Yes, I know him. He’s ready to be put out to grass, unfortunately. This case seems to have him beaten already.’ Genoud hesitated. ‘May I ask you, Dr Hoffmann – are you sure you have told him everything? It would be wise to be frank with him.’

  ‘Of course I have. Why the hell wouldn’t I?’ Hoffmann didn’t care for his tone.

  Quarry cut in: ‘I don’t give a shit what Inspector Clouseau thinks. The point is, how did this lunatic get past Alex’s security? And if he got past it once, can he do it again? And if he got past it at his house, can he get past it here at the office? That’s what we pay you for, isn’t it, Maurice? Security?’

  Genoud’s sallow cheeks flushed. ‘This building is as well protected as any in Geneva. As for Dr Hoffmann’s house, the police say that the codes for the gate, the main door and possibly the alarm itself seem to have been known to the intruder. No security system in the world can protect against that.’

  Hoffmann said, ‘I’ll change the codes tonight. And in future I’ll decide who knows them.’

  ‘I can assure you, Dr Hoffmann,’ said Genoud, ‘only two persons in our company knew those combinations – myself and one of my technicians. There was no leak from our side.’

  ‘So you say. But he must have got hold of them from somewhere.’

  ‘Okay, let’s leave the codes for now,’ said Quarry. ‘The main thing is, until this guy is caught, I want Alex to have some proper protection. What will that entail?’

  ‘A permanent guard on the house, certainly – one of my men is there already. At least two other men on duty tonight – one to patrol the grounds, the other to remain indoors downstairs. As for when Dr Hoffmann moves around the city, I would suggest a driver with counterterrorism training and one security officer.’

  ‘Armed?’

  ‘That’s up to you.’

  ‘And what say you, Professor?’

  An hour ago, Hoffmann would have dismissed each of these precautions as absurd. But the spectre on the tram had jolted him. Little flashes of panic, like brushfires, kept breaking out in his mind. ‘I want Gabrielle looked after as well. We keep assuming this maniac was after me, but what if it was her he wanted?’

  Genoud was making entri
es on a personal organiser. ‘Yes, we can manage that.’

  ‘Just until he’s arrested, okay? Then we can all go back to normal.’

  ‘And what about you, Mr Quarry?’ asked Genoud. ‘Should we take precautions on your behalf as well?’

  Quarry laughed. ‘The only thing that keeps me awake at night is the thought of a paternity suit.’

  ‘RIGHT,’ SAID QUARRY, when Genoud had gone, ‘let’s talk about this presentation – if you’re still sure you’re up for it?’

  ‘I’m up for it.’

  ‘Okay, thank God for that. Nine investors – all existing clients as agreed. Four institutions, three ultra-high net worths, two family offices, and a partridge in a pear tree.’

  ‘A partridge?’

  ‘Okay, not a partridge. There is no partridge, I concede that.’ Quarry was in great high spirits. If he was three parts gambler he was also one part salesman, and it was a while since that crucial part of him had been allowed its head. ‘Ground rules are: first, they have to sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding our proprietary software, and second, they’re each permitted to bring in one designated professional adviser. They’re due to arrive in about an hour and a half – I suggest you have a shower and a shave before they get here: the look we require from you is brilliant but eccentric, if you don’t mind me saying so, rather than sheer bloody crazy. You walk them through the principles. We’ll show them the hardware. I’ll make the pitch. Then we’ll both take them out to lunch at the Beau-Rivage.’

  ‘How much are we looking to raise?’

  ‘I’d like a billion. Settle for seven-fifty.’

  ‘And commission? What did we decide? Are we sticking with two and twenty?’

  ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s your call.’

  ‘More than the going rate looks greedy, less and they won’t respect us in the morning. With our track record it’s a seller’s market, but even so I say let’s stick with two and twenty.’ Quarry pushed back his chair and swung his feet up on to the desk in a single, easy fluid motion. ‘It’s going to be a big day for us, Alexi. We’ve waited a whole year to show them this. And they’re gagging for it.’