‘But Jean-Luc …’
‘Go. I want you on a plane this afternoon. Take the jet if you need it.’
Vikram left the room.
Martel swore to himself and glanced at his screen. The Nikkei had closed one and a half per cent down that day. Because of the time zones, the Japanese market was shut for most of the working day in Jackson Hole. He still checked the closing number several times a day, even though it never budged.
He called Phil Spears, the senior Harrison Brothers equity salesman he spoke to in Tokyo, on his home number. It was four o’clock in the morning there, but Martel didn’t care.
‘Yeah?’ Spears sounded groggy.
‘What’s taking this market down?’
‘Er…?’
‘Come on, Phil. Are you seeing much volume over there? Who’s selling? And why are they doing it?’
‘Is this Jean-Luc?’
‘Of course it’s Jean-Luc. Give me some colour, will you?’
‘Well.’ There was a pause. ‘Er, there’s some selling from overseas and the domestic accounts are net sellers as well. Not many buyers out there. I think a lot of the selling is momentum driven. On the downside. If you know what I mean.’
Martel listened to the information carefully, without really taking it in. ‘Do you see the market bouncing over the next few days?’
‘Er, yeah. It could. Or it could go down.’
‘But a rally’s a real possibility?’
‘Possible, I guess. But I wouldn’t count on it. This market’s hard to read.’
Martel snorted. All these salesmen were useless. He didn’t know why he listened to any of them. ‘Call me when you get in to your office,’ he said.
He stood up and began pacing. One week. That’s all he had until Bloomfield Weiss revalued the JUSTICE notes and demanded cash. Cash he didn’t have. He winced as the pain bit into his stomach. He really should see a doctor about it. There was something physical going on, it wasn’t just nerves. Things were looking tough, but there was still some hope. The market might bounce. It would have to bounce a long way, but it was possible. He was still convinced that at some time in the future the market would climb above ten thousand. The difficulty was to make sure that the Teton Fund was still around when it did. Perhaps Vikram would put together some new scheme with Bloomfield Weiss that would buy them some time. That was what derivatives were supposed to do, after all, shift risk around. Well, he wanted one that would shift the risk from this month to next month. Was that too much to ask?
There was still a chance he could get more cash into the fund. The Artsdalen Foundation had promised him three hundred million bucks. If the market rallied a bit that could make all the difference. Where was that money? They were probably still pissing about with due diligence or documentation or something. He dialled a number in Switzerland.
‘Langhauser.’ It was eight o’clock in Zurich. The man was working late like a good investment banker should.
‘Freddie, Jean-Luc Martel.’ Martel managed to suppress the anger in his voice. He was enough of a salesman not to antagonize a new client.
‘Ah, Monsieur Martel, how are things with you?’ Langhauser said, switching to French.
But Martel stuck to English. He hated the way the Swiss-Germans massacred the French language anyway. ‘Very good, Freddie. In fact, that’s why I was calling you. How are the Artsdalen Foundation coming along?’
‘Pretty well. I know they’re taking their time, but they are careful people, and three hundred million dollars is a serious commitment for them.’
‘And for us as well.’
Langhauser laughed pointlessly. Martel winced. God, this man was irritating. ‘There are just one or two tax details they need to look into and then they’ll be ready to sign,’ the Swiss banker said.
‘I understand,’ said Martel. It was all very well locating hedge funds offshore, and in fact the Teton Fund was technically domiciled in Bermuda, but it did lead to all kinds of tax-related complications any time anyone wanted to invest some money. ‘Just a tip-off. We’re expecting some big gains next month, and if the Artsdalen Foundation can invest by month end they might get a piece of that. There’s nothing like being twenty per cent up on a new investment one month in, is there?’
‘It’s going to be tough to make that deadline, but I’ll see what I can do,’ said Langhauser with enthusiasm. If Martel was telling the truth and the Teton Fund did do twenty per cent in the first month, he, as their adviser, would look a genius to the Artsdalen Foundation.
Martel put the phone down. There was still hope.
If Alex Calder didn’t blow the whole thing open, anyway. Martel knew he was now in Jackson Hole and he was expecting to hear from him soon. When would this man Luigi do his stuff? Who the hell was he, anyway? Probably just a time-waster. He wished that he could somehow get Bodinchuk involved. Then he would be able to rest easy: Alex Calder was just the kind of problem Bodinchuk could deal with.
He checked his watch. Time to see Pohek and find out what Cheryl had been up to. His stomach flipped again.
They met in the usual place, the isolated turn-off in the Antelope Flats. A low grey cloud had settled over the plain, shrouding the upper reaches of the Tetons. This time they were not quite alone, a solitary moose stood munching something a quarter of a mile away. It paid no attention to them.
Pohek had good news: he had found no sign that Cheryl was seeing anyone. Martel was relieved. He told him to remove the bugs from the ranch in Jackson Hole and the apartment in New York. He hated the idea of Pohek listening to his private conversations anyway, especially his arguments with Cheryl. He also told him to stop following her to New York: she was going there again the following morning for a couple of days. But he should keep an occasional watch on her in Jackson Hole, just in case.
As Martel drove back to his office he was in a slightly lighter mood. Perhaps the man in Cheryl’s apartment was a one-off. That he could live with. All marriages had their indiscretions and this was one he would be happy to forgive and forget. Who knows? Perhaps he had imagined the whole thing all along.
28
It was nine o’clock in the evening and Sandy’s eyes were beginning to hurt. There was something about internet searches as opposed to other forms of computer activity that always gave her a headache. She was wrestling with a report in Spanish about the conviction of three of the leading members of the Zeller-Montanez family. At least they weren’t called García or Martinez: then the search really would have been a nightmare.
Sandy’s deal was dragging on, much to her frustration. It was supposed to be an agreed takeover by a giant American pharmaceutical company of a small British biotechnology outfit, but there were major disagreements over the details and neither side would back down. Sandy’s vacation was suffering.
But she had refused, with some success, to get roped in to other transactions, which meant that she had the occasional chunk of free time as draft agreements were being considered in Hampshire and New Jersey before zipping their way back to her for further processing. She was using this time to help Calder. The internet link in her office was very fast and no one raised an eyebrow that she should be plugged into a computer for hours on end.
She paused, rubbed her eyes and wandered over to the water cooler. That was enough on the Mexicans. Although not impossible, they looked unlikely conspirators with Martel. The Mexican authorities, acting with the US Drug Enforcement Agency, had rounded up fifteen members of the Zeller-Montanez family and their henchmen eighteen months before. Most of them had been convicted. It was clear that there were still many millions of dollars belonging to the family slopping around the offshore banking centres of the world, but there was nothing to suggest that they were still a force in the world of organized crime, or that they had any particular link with Jean-Luc Martel apart from a three-million-dollar investment in the Teton Fund, arranged by Chalmet on a discretionary basis.
Refreshed, she sat down at her computer aga
in, and started on Bodinchuk. This turned out to be much more productive. Bodinchuk had many interests in the Ukraine, and some outside. He was linked to a spate of assassinations in Moscow and Kiev in the late nineteen nineties, when bankers were being shot at the rate of one a week. It was at this time that Bodinchuk, still in his twenties, had risen to prominence. His own father, a former senior officer in the KGB with substantial interests in the Ukraine, had been murdered, probably by a business rival. In the vicious battles that had been fought over the carcass of the Soviet Union, Bodinchuk had emerged a winner.
Sandy stared at a large picture of him in Euromoney. Blond with blue eyes, thick yellow hair, broad smile and a puppy-face he looked more like a friendly Labrador than an international businessman. But as she looked more closely at her screen, blowing up the picture and enhancing the resolution, those eyes gave her the creeps. Deeply set amid puffs of skin above and below, the smile lines that you would expect to see on either side were absent. She shuddered.
There was a limit to how much she could get from the internet or the press reports that were referred to there. How to find out more? Did she know anyone who knew Russia? It was an area of the world with which Trelawney Stewart had very little to do. There was a two-man office in Moscow, but Sandy knew neither of the two men. And Sandy knew very few men outside Trelawney Stewart.
Then she remembered a Russian investment banker she had met when she had first moved over to London. They had been introduced at a party given by one of her Trelawney Stewart colleagues and he had asked her out to dinner. They had gone to a trendy restaurant in Mayfair and had had a good evening. He had called a week or so later for a follow-up. After a month and three cancellations later, he stopped calling. What was his name? Oleg something.
Sandy checked her Palm. There he was! Oleg Kalachev. Harrison Brothers. She was just about to dial his home number when she checked the time. A quarter past midnight. Another late night, but for once she felt she was doing something useful. She’d call him the following morning.
They met in a small French restaurant in a narrow street in Soho. A less flashy location than their previous encounter and more intimate. She soon remembered why she had made the effort to see Oleg Kalachev two years before. He was in his early thirties, well-dressed, tall, fair-haired, good-looking without being vain, and had impeccable manners. His accent was American, with only a trace of Russian, but he affected a diffidence and relaxed charm that were more British. A wealthy young banker at ease with himself.
‘I’ve been dying to ask this ever since you called me,’ he said. ‘Why did I hear from you all of a sudden? I must confess I’d given up on you ages ago.’
‘I’m really sorry about that,’ Sandy said. ‘It was nothing personal. You should know that I’ve managed to stand up every man I’ve tried to go out with since I’ve been in London. After a while I called it quits.’
‘Ah. So I’m very privileged to see you here now?’
Sandy smiled. ‘For once, no. I’m going back to the States in a week or so, which means that for the first time in two years I actually have some free time. So I thought I’d call some of my friends here to see them before I left.’
‘What a good idea,’ said Oleg.
Sandy smiled shyly. ‘And you’re still at Harrison Brothers two years on?’
‘Yes. Miraculously I’ve survived all the downsizing and reorganizing. In my world there is no substitute for local knowledge and contacts. And I understand the American investment bankers quite well. I know how to do things their way.’ Oleg’s long fingers were fiddling with a tiny salt cellar as he said this, sending it on a little dance around his wine glass.
‘Do you cover the Ukraine as well as Russia?’
‘Oh, yes. The Ukraine is a bit of a basket case, but there are still some privatizations to go for.’
‘So you know the people there?’
‘Some.’
‘What about Mykhailo Bodinchuk?’
The salt-cellar stopped dead. ‘Not well.’
Sandy smiled. ‘That bad, is he?’
‘Let’s just say that he’s not someone a nice girl like you would want to get to know.’
‘Is he part of the Russian mafia?’
‘He’s his own mafia. He’s got to be one of the richest men in the Ukraine by now. But he arrived there the tough way. Starting with his father, who was a mean sonofabitch himself.’
‘I read that he was murdered.’
‘That’s right. By his own son.’
‘By Mykhailo Bodinchuk? How do you know?’
‘Everyone knows. You don’t find out what’s going on in Russia, or the Ukraine, by reading the press. Everybody knows Bodinchuk got his father killed. And that anyone who ever competed against him in any business deal wound up dead too.’
‘I read about the spate of bankers murdered in Moscow a few years ago. Was Bodinchuk involved?’
‘He was. He won that war. And a similar war in Kiev in two thousand and two. You don’t mess with Bodinchuk. No one wants to be his enemy. In fact, no one wants to be his friend, either. That’s almost as dangerous. He’s not a client, is he?’
‘No,’ said Sandy, shaking her head vigorously. ‘Nor is he ever likely to be.’
‘That’s good to hear,’ said Oleg, cutting into his fish.
‘Do you know if he has anything to do with Jean-Luc Martel? The hedge-fund manager.’
‘I know Martel. Or know of him,’ Oleg said. ‘And to answer your question, there is some connection. The rumour is that Bodinchuk is a major investor in the Teton Fund, a fifty- to a hundred-million slug. Also, I’ve seen them together, and they looked like good buddies.’
‘Where was this?’
‘Saint Moritz. Last year. A lot of the big guys from the former Soviet Union like to ski there, so I end up going to the place at least twice a season.’
‘It must be tough.’
‘Oh, it is. It is.’
‘When exactly was it you saw them?’
‘About a year ago. Let me think. Early March, I’d guess?’
‘Just before Italy quit the euro?’
‘About then.’ Oleg sipped his wine. ‘Why, may I ask?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sandy said. ‘It’s hard for me to say.’
‘You mean it’s for a client?’
‘Oh, no. It’s for me. Or a friend of mine.’ Sandy thought of Jen, and the warm glow brought on by the wine, the atmosphere and Oleg’s company left her. ‘Yeah, a friend.’
Oleg reached across the table to touch her hand. Well, if it’s personal, this is a personal message from me to you. Stay well clear of Mykhailo Bodinchuk. You understand?’
Sandy smiled quickly, pleased but a little confused by his concern. ‘I understand.’
Later, as they left the restaurant and were making their way up a narrow lane towards a larger road and taxis, Oleg spoke. ‘I’m glad you called me up. Even if it was only to pump me about Bodinchuk.’
‘So am I,’ said Sandy. ‘And it wasn’t just that. I did enjoy myself tonight.’
‘Look,’ Oleg paused on the kerb. ‘I wouldn’t normally ask this so early, but since it looks as if this might be my last chance before you leave for the States, would you like to come back to my place tonight?’
Sandy smiled. ‘No. I’m sorry Oleg. Not tonight.’
‘All right. But if you ever need to ask anyone about some other Russian thugs, you know who to call. Seriously. It would be nice to see you again.’
A taxi pulled up beside them, and Sandy kissed him on the cheek and jumped in. As the cab navigated through the late-evening Soho crowds she smiled to herself. Maybe she should have gone back to his place. She did like him. And it had been a long long time since she had spent the night with a man.
Vikram looked down upon the city of Boston and beyond that the bent arm that was Cape Cod. Only an hour until they landed at JFK. As he had expected, his day in London had been a waste of time. Justin Carr-Jones had been nervous but firm.
Bloomfield Weiss were up to their limit for the amount of business they could do with the Teton Fund. He had politely dismissed the transaction that Vikram proposed, which would have provided Bloomfield Weiss with a fee of thirty million dollars. When it was clear that Carr-Jones would not be tempted, Vikram beat a retreat. He was in no doubt that there would be a disastrous revaluation of the JUSTICE notes at month end, less than a week away now. He didn’t want to bring that problem forward.
If only Martel had sold out a chunk of his position the week before, as Vikram had suggested. At the time, Vikram had smarted under Martel’s ridicule: he had been made to feel like a wimp. But now it looked as if he was right after all.
But was he? There had been several moments in Vikram’s career at the Teton Fund when he had been convinced that he was right and Martel was wrong. Sometimes it had been a question of pure mathematical brainpower. Although Martel was good at the math, he wasn’t as good as Vikram. Very few people were. At high school in California, college and graduate school, Vikram had always been the first to find the solution to a complicated problem. Which was what had attracted him to finance. In the world of derivatives, the guy who found the solution made the money.
He had honed his skills at an investment bank on Wall Street, but had leapt at the opportunity to join Martel. Vikram truly believed that he was smarter than everyone else. In a hedge fund, he could prove it. And that meant he would make millions.
That, at least, had been his plan. But working for Martel, he had learned something he hadn’t expected. You needed more than simply being smarter than everyone else to succeed. Martel’s success wasn’t a function of the size of his brain. It wasn’t even a result of a rational weighing of risks and rewards, which at least was something Vikram could aspire to. Martel had something else, a talent that was missing in Vikram’s make-up, but that he desperately wanted. Martel seemed to know when to take the big bets and when to stick with them. There had been so many times when Vikram would have flinched: the failure of the technology bubble to burst in late 1999, the resilience of the Italian bond market the year before, and now the continued weakness of the Japanese stock market.
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