“Holy fuck they’re here.”
Max shoots to his feet as an Arab in tight white jeans and cowboy boots, a bit gay and a bit Nashville, with thick greasy hair tumbling down over the collar of a cream jacket, is heading straight towards them with a clenched scowl on his face. He nods to Max. “His excellency will be down shortly,” is all he says, whipping out his phone and speaking in Arabic.
Cream Jacket pirouettes on his Cuban heels and turns his back on them. Then with an almost courtly sweep of his arm, he pirouettes back again, and Max and Harry realise they are being introduced to a short, rotund, moustachioed man in Arab dress. His flesh looks unnaturally soft, like a children’s toy, or another species of human. The super-wealthy.
“Your excellency,” says Max, bowing his head to this other-worldly being. Harry follows his lead, but without saying anything, and is offered a small, soft, limp hand. For one crazy second he wonders whether he should curtsy.
“Max, how are you?” says the Saudi, putting an arm around the middle of Max’s back, and guiding him towards the hotel entrance.
It’s all happening very quickly now. Having given up all expectation that this rendezvous would ever take place, Harry is now confused. The Saudi and Max sweep off, followed by two minders and, behind them, two women both in Western dress – jeans and cashmere. Harry feels a pair of eyes on him now. It is the younger of the two women, who is looking over her shoulder at him in amusement. She looks away when Harry returns her dark, chestnut gaze.
He’s not sure what to do so he hangs back, following the two women, who are ushered out of the doors by one of the minders. The man inspects Harry for a moment from behind dark glasses, and then ushers him out too. A brand new black-on-black Rolls Royce Phantom is waiting immediately outside the hotel entrance, gawped at by a young tourist, who raises his phone as if to take a picture and then thinks better of it when he notices the minders.
The Saudi and Max step in, and Harry spots a second car directly behind – an intimidating black Mercedes 4x4 with privacy-glass windows. The two women head for this, but the minder nods at the back door of the Rolls, where the Saudi and Max are already in deep conversation and Harry slips in beside Max. Softness, fibre optic lights woven into the ceiling and the deep, rich odour of fine leather. The unmistakeable smell of wealth.
They only drive for a couple of minutes, lapping Berkeley Square for no good reason that Harry can see, pulling up beside a house on Charles Street. “This is the one, your excellency,” says Max, pointing through the privacy glass. The driver lowers the window and the Saudi gazes, expressionless, for a while at the redbrick town house. Harry notices the full lips and slightly bulging eyes. Max wonders if he’s blown it.
“How much?” the Saudi asks.
“Eight thousand square feet… seven bathrooms… marble throughout… fully furnished to the highest standard by a very gifted young Italian interior designer… swimming pool and cinema in the sub-terrain floor… It’s beautiful. Do you want to go inside?”
“How much?” repeats the Saudi softly. Harry can’t help staring at the large pink diamond ring on one of his fingers.
“Twenty-five million pounds sterling. In dollars that’s…”
“Very good. Now let’s eat.” He softly lifts the fingers of his already raised hand and the driver, who has been watching for such a signal, puts the Rolls into gear, and they glide off. Deal done.
Max knows where they’re going – to Novikov as usual. After much bowing and scraping, and a spot of flirtatious banter between the Saudi and the blonde Russian maître d’, two suitably well-sited tables are found – one for the men and one for the ladies. Harry takes another look at the Arab girl, but she is studiously ignoring him now and staring into her menu, the ghost of that same ironic smile on her lips. She has lustrous long black hair that Harry would like to run his hands through, push his face into and smell. She looks so naturally beautiful among the bottle blondes on the surrounding tables, their faces paralysed with the botulinum toxin so regularly injected into the muscles of their faces. Max kicks him under the table.
There’s a mix-up as menus printed in Russian are swiftly exchanged for ones in English, before they order vast quantities of tempura and maki. The Saudi, it seems, is drinking tonight and two bottles of 2007 Chassagne Montrachet are brought to the table. Harry takes one more glance at the girl’s table, and now she is looking at him. She holds his stare with dark eyes. She nods very slightly and looks away. The girls are drinking bottled water, Harry notices.
Max is admiring the Saudi’s diamond ring. He himself had brokered the stone in Geneva last year, and now the man has had it set in platinum. Before the first tuna maki has been nibbled, Max has received an order for a new diamond – preferably another pink but anything really unusual will do.
“Sixty grand for me and twenty for you,” says Max as they eventually hit the pavement, a respectful ten minutes after the Arab party has made their departure, leaving them at the table with the unpaid bill. Just under one grand seems a small price for such a bounteous windfall and anyway it will be a business expense claimed as investor entertainment. Harry uses the company credit card and folds the receipt into his jacket pocket.
“Beats working for a living,” he says as they step out into the Mayfair night. He thinks it will take some poor bastard a year to earn what he’s just hoovered up in one night; it would probably take his mother two years. Follow the money – it was one of Max’s favourite appropriated sayings.
“They never even looked inside the house,” continues Harry. Then he notices Max appraising him as if seeing him for the first time – not a sensation Harry ever relishes; Harry likes Max to take him for granted.
“This is just to start,” Max says at last, in deadly earnest. “This is fucking peanuts.” He’s a bit drunk, as is Harry.
“We need to get in with the Russians,” blathers Harry, who has downed most of a bottle of the Chassagne Montrachet.
“The Russians have their own people,” Max says sternly. “They have got all their own concierges now. They love their art. But the Saudis have simpler tastes. Right… I’ve got to rush. Ring the agent in the morning and offer twenty-two mill. Don’t let him talk you up… I know he’ll take that. And can you give Rachel a quick ring… tell her I’ve gone to Geneva to see a man about a diamond.”
Harry doesn’t understand why Max can’t call Rachel himself, but somehow it seems to have fallen to Harry to liaise with Max’s wife about Max’s comings and goings. Part of Harry’s amorphous role seemed to be that of a glorified secretary. “I’ll see you on Friday,” says Max.
“A good evening’s work,” says Harry.
Max navigates his iPhone apps and books an Uber Lux. In the back of the pristine black S-Class Mercedes, as new as a toy taken out of its plastic wrapper but a cheap feeling compared to the Saudi’s Roller, he texts his friend Simon, asking what time his plane is leaving for Geneva.
“On board by 11:30. S,” a text pings back less than a minute later. Max smiles and wonders once again how Simon, a trader like himself, manages to run a private jet. He leases it, he knows that, but not much more than that: aeroplanes don’t interest Max – especially when he can bum a lift in one, like tonight. Cars don’t interest him either, not to own anyway. Stuff in general doesn’t engage him – it merely exists in order to be traded.
The guy at the passport desk, who has a little goatee beard and an ill-fitting suit, bristles involuntarily against whatever it is that Max represents, but waves him through. No luggage. And at twenty past eleven he slides into a deep leather seat opposite Simon, who has brought a girl along for the ride.
“Max, this is Genevieve… Genevieve, Max,” says Simon absently, pouring Max a flute of champagne. “Genevieve is going to Geneva.” Simon then pours one for the girl, who is all long legs and short sequined dress. She looks she might have been plucked straight out of a nightclub. Genevieve giggles. She looks stoned.
“We have a slot –
ten minutes to take off,” comes a relaxed, mature male voice – the timbre of airline pilots the world over.
Simon scoops up his laptop and starts to stare into it, light reflecting on his face, which registers neither boredom nor interest – just a flaccid compulsion. He is a currency trader – “stat-arb trader” is how he puts it himself. What he really means is that it never stops – this automated pair trading of the yen, dollar, euro, rouble and pound sterling, these never stable G8 rates of exchange whose smallest movements can be bet for or against. Unlike Max, Simon had made a fortune on Brexit. He’d made the right call. “You should mix more with the common people,” he’d said to Max a few days after the vote. He meant girls like Genevieve. “It was obvious to me we’d vote leave.” But Max doesn’t envy him his sickness, however well remunerated.
“Put it down,” the girl says woozily, standing up and folding herself in Simon’s lap. The tiniest flicker of irritation passes over Simon’s face before being supplanted by a big fat, indulgent smile. They kiss noisily, tongues slurping and the laptop down by his side seemingly forgotten but still glowing with its own self-importance. The machine knows who Simon would rather be devouring.
* * *
Harry wanders down to The Arts Club in Dover Street. Max had made him join. The doorman nods as he passes through into the bar and orders a large glass of vintage cognac. He swipes idly through Tinder – the friendly smiles of the women blurring into one. He gets a lot of one-night stands out of Tinder. His profile picture with the expensive suit and promise of a free meal (he always pays and the women appreciate that) usually secures a date, and often more. One of them had even told him that he didn’t look like the type of man to send pictures of his penis. No, agreed Harry, he wasn’t.
He comes out of Tinder and scrolls down to ‘r’ in his phone’s contacts list. Rachel is slow to pick up.
“Harry,” she says in a drowsy voice. “I was asleep.”
“Max is in Geneva… can I come over?”
“I’ve got an eight o’clock tomorrow,” she says. “You sound drunk. Don’t phone me when you’re drunk.”
“Okay, sorry, speak tomorrow”, says Harry, trying not to slur his words. He calls up Uber for the drive home. The doorman bids him goodnight as he steps out into the cold March night and Harry spots the car already drawing up to the kerb.
“Goodnight,” replies Harry. “A very good night. Very good indeed.”
CHAPTER THREE
Omar crosses the main concourse of Rome’s Termini, towards the steps leading down to the Metro. He’s wearing a dark brown suit that fits him surprisingly well, as do the shirt and the shoes that were also left in the closet of the hotel room in Syracuse. Inside the jacket pocket was a wallet with 500 euros in crisp new notes, and an ID card, Italian passport and driving licence in the name of Amal Abulafia. With the clothes was a pistol in a holster – a slate-grey Browning 9mm semi-auto, ex-French military.
They hadn’t asked any questions at the reception desk, just handed the key as if expecting this ragged immigrant as their guest of honour. It was a mafia-owned hotel, recommended by the people traffickers in Tripoli.
The food was delicious and the bed comfortable enough and he decided it was safe enough to sleep, having first ascertained that the Browning was fully loaded. He slipped it under the pillow and was out cold for over twelve hours. No dreams, just a deep sense of replenishment. Reception told him that there was a ferry to the mainland leaving later that morning. He thanked them, checked out, and walked across the square. He’d wait and watch the morning ferry and then take the evening ferry, just in case anyone was double-crossing him.
Now he’s finally in Rome, at Termini, where he’s to catch the Metro to somewhere called Laurentina. He’s bought a seven-day travel pass and a news magazine from a kiosk outside the station, noticing as he did two Arab boys of about twelve or thirteen sitting on a low wall, speaking to men as they passed. Occasionally a man would stop, and Omar noticed a tall, well-dressed man in his fifties walk away with one of the boys.
He waits for them to disappear down a side street and then Omar walks towards the other boy, who is now kicking his heels and nonchalantly chewing gum. He perks up when he sees Omar approaching, and then seems unsure, and looks away.
“Ahlan,” says Omar casually by way of greeting. The boy steals a quick glance at him and doesn’t seem to like what he sees.
“What’s your name, kid?”
The boy kicks his heels and chews hard. Omar steps round in front of him and takes his chin in a forceful grip, wrenching the young head to face him.
“Hey!” he yelps. And then something about Omar’s eyes, the way they don’t seem to reflect any light, makes him stop. “What can I do for you, sir? I’m forty euros an hour, but twenty for a good Muslim man.”
Omar’s expression remains unreadable. “Where are you from, boy?”
“Syria, sir.”
“Where are your parents?”
The boy shrugs.
“You sell yourself to the infidels?”
“I have to eat, sir.” He’s looking down the road, where a soft-faced middle-aged Italian in a baggy, ill-fitting suit is appraising him. When the man catches Omar’s stare, he turns briskly and walks off.
“You like going with men?” he asks the boy.
“No, sir.”
“You prefer girls?”
“Oh, yes sir. I love girls.” And with his hands he moulds the shape of female breasts from out of his own concave chest.
“I might have a job for you then, one which gives you all the girls you want. The prettiest girls, all unblemished. And what’s more it will put you right with God.”
The boy looks away now. Omar notices that the pudgy businessman has not gone; he’s hanging back at the end of the street.
“Look at me,” says Omar, and the boy obliges.
“Will you recognise me again?” Omar watches as the boy’s eyes trace the scar down his cheek. It’s a look he knows well of late.
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’re always here?”
“I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
“Don’t the cops hassle you?”
“Oh, no, sir, they can’t be bothered with a little immigrant kid. Too much paperwork and anyway, it’s not as if I’m stealing or anything.”
Omar takes out the wallet from his inside jacket pocket and the boy catches a glimpse of the pistol butt. Omar knows he’s seen it.
“You know how to keep your mouth shut?”
“Yes, sir.”
He takes two crisp fifty-euro notes from the wallet and hands them to the boy.
“What’s your name, kid?”
Adnan thinks of lying, but the man’s blank eyes are so immoveable, so darkly penetrating, that he just stutters the truth.
“Adnan, sir.”
The man nods. “Family name?”
“Ahmadi, sir”
“Good, and which town is your family from?”
The boy hesitates before naming a small town to the east of Deir al-Zour.
“That’s good, Adnan,” says the man. “I can help your family. Give them money, protection… even get them out if they want. Islamic State run your town now, don’t they? Would your family like to get out? Maybe come to Italy, or even better to Germany. I can arrange this. I have connections.”
“I don’t know, sir,” says Adnan, who starts looking down the street again, resuming the gum chewing. The pudgy Italian man is still there, pretending not to look.
“Listen, Adnan, your family will starve to death, or worse, if they stay there. The world has woken up to Islamic State, the Russians, the Americans, the French, the British… they’re all bombing them now. What is your family’s address – just give me the street name – and I’ll make sure they’re safe. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir, it’s Rammadi Street.” And this was no lie.
CHAPTER FOUR
This they don’t teach you at school – not even
at the expensive public school that Max and Harry attended. They don’t teach you that it is entirely possible to be paid a steady two per cent annual ‘management fee’ for just sitting on other people’s money. Here’s ten million dollars… take $200,000 for yourself… have a nice day. Why did his teachers not tell him that, instead of the subjunctive tense of the verb ‘to be’? Be that as it may. Far be it for me to say. If truth be told.
Max was a ‘star prop trader’ with the right pedigree needed to go it alone and attract ‘sticky’ hedge fund investors – that’s to say investors who will stay around for the long-term: institutions, pension funds and endowments. He earned his trading stripes on a proprietary trading desk at Goldman Sachs, that infamous spawning ground for the best of the best, and he had enough cash accumulated from bonuses to stump up the $2 million working capital needed to launch his own fund management firm, and the $10 million he needed to invest in it himself, a critical act to demonstrate his self-belief to savvy and demanding investors.
Star traders earned their reputation by making consistently strong returns, across all market conditions, whilst keeping to their investment strategy. Max was a high concentration short seller, spotting future price declines time after time and betting big. His investment strategy was fundamental equity long short, the most ‘vanilla’ of all but one that needs detailed research and analysis coupled with large and leveraged trades.
Max had the necessary steady hand, mentally and physically, for this. He sailed close to the wind but could never be proved to be an inside trader for any of his past or present trades. He knew and, more importantly, respected the rules – never would he be a cheat or be cheated. Did this extend into his personal life, Harry wondered time and time again as he slipped between the sheets with Rachel? It worried him that perhaps on some level he knew about their affair.
If truth be told, with assets under management, or ‘AUM’ in hedge speak, of $150 million (dollars… dollars… Harry only thinks in dollars now) that’s $3 million a year earned for the business before they’ve even started to gamble with the investor’s money. Naturally the business has costs: salaries, rent and so on, but many of the big costs get charged back to the fund – that’s right – to the investors in the fund. Harry often thinks about some of these investors and knows that teachers, librarians and all the other Guardian-reading liberals that he used to count himself among, and how they had no idea that some – okay a tiny – percentage of their precious pension was being allocated to Max and his industry peers to play with at the biggest casino on the planet.
The Concierge Page 2