Dave Hart Omnibus II

by David Charters

I know a few of the other guys in the car – intros are made to the others – and I take my place in a huge armchair with a stunning black girl from Martinique who has an amazing French accent and, obligingly, already has her top off, and a redhead from Warsaw, who starts nibbling my ear.

  Half an hour later and all the guys are sitting back being serviced, sipping champagne and popping pills or snorting nose candy according to taste. In my case both girls have their tops off and are making a serious effort to make me happy. The only fly in the ointment is that once again I have a nose bleed, which I think is my body’s way of telling me something. But whatever it is, I’m going to ignore it for this evening. When it comes to cleaning up my act, there’s always tomorrow.

  In the meantime there’s something about having two beautiful girls simultaneously running their tongues up and down my dick that I really like. I take a sip of Cristal and am enjoying a moment of perfect bliss, when Keith starts coughing. I look across at him, vaguely concerned through the drink-and-drug fuelled haze. He has a girl straddling him, but he pushes her aside – quite roughly, which surprises me – and then he doubles up, falling off his seat on to the deeply carpeted floor. His whole body twists as he convulses and then starts throwing up.

  There are moans and groans as we all stare at him, and I realise that his vomit, which simply looks dark in the subdued lighting of the car, is actually red. He’s bringing up blood. The smell is vile and we cover our faces as all partying stops. Someone bangs on the glass screen to tell the driver to stop, and we watch as Keith gives one more giant convulsion, lets out a slow, rasping breath and lies perfectly still.

  Nobody wants to touch him as the car pulls up at the side of the road. We all look at each other. The girls are scrambling to put their clothes on and as soon as we stop they exit. Finally I reach out and put my hand on Keith’s shoulder. He’s warm, moves when I push him, but isn’t breathing. In fact, now the engine’s turned off and we’re parked, it’s clear that he’s unnaturally still. Dead still.

  ‘Fuck me …’

  ‘Is he …?’

  ‘Shit. What do we do now?’

  There’s a scramble as Keith’s ‘friends’ follow the girls out of the back door and disappear, leaving me alone with him as the driver climbs into the back of the car, a worried expression on his face. I try to feel for a pulse on Keith’s neck, the way I’ve seen it done on TV, but can’t find anything. I turn to the driver.

  ‘Do you know first aid?’

  He nods, but looks sceptical. ‘I don’t think first aid’s going to help.’

  ‘But we should try to resuscitate him. Bring him back. For fuck’s sake, we can’t just sit here and do nothing.’

  The driver feels rather more expertly for a pulse, then lays Keith out on his back, wipes his mouth with a handkerchief and starts alternating between mouth-to-mouth and compressing his chest. I call for an ambulance and sit there, watching uselessly while the driver goes through the motions. Finally we hear a siren in the distance. He pauses for a moment.

  ‘This isn’t doing anything.’ He glances around at the residue of our party – powder and pills are liberally sprinkled around the inside of the car. ‘And you’d better make yourself scarce. I can always say I had no idea what was happening back here or who you all were.’

  He’s right. I reach inside my wallet and take out my stash – a thousand pounds in cash that I keep on me for urgent requirements at odd moments – and pass it to him. ‘Here. That’s for your trouble.’

  He nods his thanks and carries on working on Keith’s body. I take a final look at him – even in this light he looks greyer now – and make my exit just as an ambulance comes round the corner and pulls up next to the car.

  As I walk off into the night I feel as if I’ve been offered a horrible premonition. Is this what the future holds for me? Is this what success looks like? Or freedom? Time to think, Hart, and time to get cracking. As if to pour salt on the wounds, my nose starts bleeding again. The time for thinking is over. I need to act.

  ‘DAVE – look at this.’

  Paul Ryan tosses a copy of the Daily News on to my desk. Before I look at the newspaper I look at him. There’s a darkness in his eyes, a malevolence. Was it always there? And what is it? Envy? Impatience with me and my lifestyle? Anger that I haven’t moved on or been moved out to make way for him at the helm of Grossbank? Whatever it is, it’s festering and he won’t be able to keep it buttoned up much longer.

  I glance down at the paper. The lead item, not in the business section but across the front page of the main paper, is ‘SPIVs threaten London market’. Arthur James has gone to town, and on an otherwise quiet news day his editor has given him space to do a proper job on the speculators and manipulators in red braces with their Porsche 911s and racy lifestyles who are secretly undermining the financial foundations of the nation. He’s got a pathetic quote from a junior minister at the Treasury: ‘The government is aware of the potential impact of SPIVs on the City and we have measures in mind to address the problem.’ Yeah, right, I feel safer already. The opposition go one better, with a quote from the shadow chancellor: ‘The government should talk less and act more. Urgent action is needed, not hot air. The financial stability of the banking system is at stake as well as the position of the City of London.’ Wonderful. Clearly something must be done, and doing anything is better than doing nothing. A few rapidly drafted speeches written by civil servants in private offices who know nothing about the City, a few sound bites on the Radio Four Today programme, an appearance on Newsnight and Prime Minister’s Questions, and before you know it we’ve talked ourselves into a crisis of confidence in the banks.

  And that’s where I come in.

  We’re going to leave it a couple of days and then call a press conference of our own. The Silver Fox is rounding up not just the business press, but political correspondents as well. Grossbank is going to set the standard not just for the City, but for the whole international banking community. We’re throwing down the gauntlet and the competition had better be ready.

  I love a fight. Especially when it’s not fair. Anyone can fight fair. Fair is for girls. I want to hit the oppo where it hurts, without any warning or consultation. Why? Because I can. And because I must, if I’m ever going to get out of here.

  WHEN I step up to the podium, a delightful, respectful hush descends on the room. I like respectful hushes. Especially when I’m the one being respected. I think it’s what I deserve.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. I’m delighted to see so many of you here today. We’ve invited you here because as a major financial institution, one of the strongest and most powerful in the world, Grossbank feels it has to take a lead in responding to the crisis in confidence that threatens to undermine world markets.’

  Crisis, what crisis? Any of our competitors hearing this would be laughing now. There is no crisis, just a storm in a teacup that will blow over in a week or so. Oh no, it won’t, pal.

  ‘When we reach the point at which members of the public, ordinary people, can no longer trust the integrity of the banking system, then responsible institutions must act. As an industry, the banking sector is too important for any issue of trust or confidence to be left unaddressed. We’re talking people’s savings here, their mortgages, their pensions. Doing nothing is not an option. If we don’t act, then politicians will, and rightly so, because sitting on their hands while the financial system unravels is not an option for them either.’ A few of the wiser heads in the audience are wondering what on earth I’m on. Unless they’ve already guessed what I’m on most days. I point to a large screen on one side of the podium. A picture comes up showing a photograph taken at Davos of the heads of the biggest international banks lined up at some junket to schmooze with politicians.

  ‘These men, the heads of the biggest banks in the world, have to come to terms with a major challenge.’ On cue, the word SPIVs appears on the screen in giant letters over their heads. I pose dramatically, pointin
g to the picture, so that I can be photographed singling out the opposition. ‘Special Purpose Investment Vehicles. A mechanism developed not in order to facilitate transparency, but to undermine it. Billions and billions, possibly trillions, in unknown liabilities, derivatives, complex off-balance-sheet trades, exposures that may be completely unquantifiable. Billions and billions and billions.’ Aren’t numbers great? I pause to allow my words to sink in. ‘No one knows how much. Not the chancellor, not the governor of the Bank of England, not the head of the Federal Reserve. I hesitate even to speculate about how much these firms are putting at risk. It’s terrifying.’ The hacks are scribbling furiously. Words like ‘terrifying’ make great copy. I can see tomorrow’s headlines already.

  ‘But Grossbank is going to be different. With immediate effect we are dismantling any and all such vehicles and either winding up the underlying risks or bringing them on to our balance sheet so that they are fully allowed for and appropriately disclosed. We will take a one-off hit this year in excess of six and a half billion euros, but it’s the right thing to do and we will take the pain. At Grossbank, what you see is what you get. We will no longer use any artificial devices to remove risk from our balance sheet. Full disclosure and prudent capital allocations will be the order of the day. This will impose a new discipline on the business we can undertake, but at a stroke will make us the safest firm in the industry. You can trust Grossbank.’ I smile self-deprecatingly. ‘There are no SPIVs at Grossbank.’

  They laugh on cue and applaud. No SPIVs? You must be kidding.

  MY NEXT meeting is in North London, at a vast mansion in Hampstead. This is the part of my plan that even the Silver Fox doesn’t know about. It took me a while to work it out, but in the end it was obvious. The whole point of building an escape tunnel is to be free when you climb out at the other end. I need some people to help set me free.

  Tom drives me in the Bentley. I’ve seen the place in the newspapers but never been there before. It’s the London home of Rom Romanov, a Russian-born Jewish businessman who made his money from oil and uranium, and it’s even more vulgar and tasteless in real life than in photographs. Rom bought a fifty-million-pound mansion, demolished it and put a two-hundred-and-fifty-million-pound mansion in its place. It’s the kind of thing you can do when your net worth is the thick end of twenty billion. Great metal gates swing open as we approach, and as we drive towards the house I’m sure I can see shadowy figures in the bushes. They say he’s paranoid about his personal security, which I can understand if you’re big in the uranium business.

  The mansion itself is the kind of monument to yourself that you might construct if you had unlimited wealth, no education and no taste. It’s a mishmash of styles, everything from Cinderella’s castle, with turrets and battlements, to marble columns straight out of ancient Rome. There’s another car parked in front of the house: a stretch Maybach with the personalised number plate BBL1. Bang Bang Lee is here too.

  Tom lets me out and I walk up to the oversized front door. It’s apparently based on the front door of Number 10 Downing Street, only it’s much larger and double-sided. And armour-plated, just in case someone tries to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at Romanov – for old times’ sake.

  The door opens and an English butler straight from central casting takes my coat and shows me into the drawing room. At least I think it’s the drawing room. There’s marble and gilt everywhere, Old Masters on the walls and thick Persian rugs on the floor. Standing in one corner, also waiting for Rom to arrive, is the other guest today, a diminutive sixty-year-old Chinese from Macao called Bang Bang Lee. Standing beside him is someone I don’t recognise, but who looks like a former sumo-wrestling champion, presumably his bodyguard.

  I always thought Bang Bang got his name from liking his girls two at a time, which I can sort of relate to. But a little investigation shows that it’s actually because in his early days he liked to deal with his competitors by shooting them twice in the back of the head. Presumably he thought that one bullet in the head might not be enough. Either way, he controls casinos, hotels, real estate and shipping companies all over Asia, and he got rich the hard way, growing up on the wrong side of town and taking on all comers, from the Chinese triads to the Portuguese and British authorities.

  Nowadays he’s legit, he gives to all the right charities, he’s a well-known patron of the arts, sits next to Rent-a-Royal at high-profile events and gets invited to Downing Street. But still he feels the need to have a bodyguard standing next to him who makes Odd Job from the Bond movies look like a hairdresser.

  ‘Mr Hart, I presume.’ He holds out his hand. ‘We haven’t had the pleasure.’

  ‘Mr Lee. Delighted.’ We shake hands warmly, like old friends, and when I turn to the bodyguard as if to shake hands with him too, Bang Bang waves him away. Obviously I’m harmless.

  ‘I’m intrigued, Mr Hart. Intrigued by what you have to say to us.’

  So am I. I haven’t met either of these guys before and I’ve no idea if my plan will appeal to them. But they were both in the papers as having attended the opening of the new Romanov Wing at the Tate and I seized the chance of getting two of the biggest hitters in the world in the same town at the same time. And the particular beauty of these two is that, for reasons best known to themselves, they keep their financial affairs well away from the prying eyes of the City and its regulators, not to mention other investment banks.

  Before I can answer, the double doors behind us swing open and Rom Romanov appears. He’s in his early seventies but looks younger. He’s overweight, with a thick growth of perfectly dark – presumably dyed – hair. I guess he’s had surgery, Botox, all the things rich men have to try to keep nature and age at bay. More importantly, Rom is a shrewd, selfish, greedy, calculating, ruthless individual and I can’t help feeling I’m going to like him. A lot. The only fly in the ointment is his religion. This is a man who takes his religion so seriously that he fathered eleven children by the same woman and circumcised all the boys himself. I feel a twinge just thinking about it. I can understand why people are reluctant to mess with him.

  ‘What a pleasure.’ His voice is lifeless, unemotional, calculating. He has unnaturally pale skin and dark circles round his eyes. Drugs? Partying? Impossible. He’s not the type. His hand is cold and clammy as we introduce ourselves. Maybe he’s really one of the undead, stored in a freezer and jolted back to life with electricity in time for his meetings.

  ‘Shall we?’ He gestures towards another set of doors, which open as if by magic and two more butlers show us into an even bigger, more garishly decorated room with a huge pond with a fountain and giant-sized koi carp swimming around it.

  ‘Magnificent. Rom, you have a magnificent home.’

  He looks at me as if he knows I’m taking the piss. Bang Bang nods in my direction and I could swear he winks at me.

  ‘Let’s sit down.’ Rom gestures towards some overstuffed armchairs and a sofa, plonks himself wearily between us and waits in silence while the butlers fuss around us, delivering champagne – Cristal, which I approve of, though Rom passes – and canapés, which I guess are kosher, probably very expensive, and which I pass on. They don’t offer me a line of coke or a couple of girls, but I guess hospitality has to stop somewhere.

  ‘Mr Hart, I’m flattered that you’ve come to see us and intrigued about the proposition you want to put to us. Normally neither Mr Lee nor I would do business with such an august institution as Grossbank.’

  Rom’s right. It’s not that the bank’s particularly choosy about its clients – pretty much anyone with money will do – but we’re frightened of the biggest bully of them all, the US government. Neither of these guys can travel to the States, because if they did they’d probably be arrested. And we don’t want to get on the wrong side of the Americans when it comes to minor matters like uranium smuggling and people trafficking, which Rom and Bang Bang are each alleged to have been involved in.

  ‘Gentlemen, first let me say how delight
ed I am to be here and to have the chance to talk to you both. I wanted to meet you because I think that great events are about to unfold in world markets.’

  ‘Really?’ If his voice wasn’t so lifeless, it would sound as if Rom was taking the piss.

  ‘Really. I don’t know how familiar you are with the way the banking system works around the world, but it’s clear to me that we’re on the verge of a major, systemic crisis. One that could produce turmoil … and opportunities.’

  ‘What sort of opportunities?’ It’s Bang Bang, and for the first time I think I’ve got his attention. In fact I think I’ve got the attention of them both. How marvellous.

  PAUL RYAN is seriously mad at me.

  We’re sitting in my office and he’s staring at a piece of paper on the desk as if by looking really hard at it he could incinerate it and make the events it describes not happen.

  ‘Why, Dave? Why? Norman Grimm’s been a good client to this firm. He brings us good business and we value it. This is like a slap in the face. And it’ll cost him a fortune. It’ll cost us a fortune – he’ll never deal with us again after this.’

  The piece of paper he wants to incinerate is a press release by the German motorcycle company Motorrad saying that in a private, off-market transaction, Grossbank has acquired a twenty-per-cent stake in the company from its founding family. We’ve paid a very low price, so we’ve got an instant paper profit, but we’re leaving the voting rights that attach to our shares with the family. In other words, they get the cash, we get a very good price, but they keep control. We also get all their corporate banking business from now on, and we’re starting by increasing their loan facilities dramatically, so they can invest in the business and take on more workers. Finally, we’ve agreed not to sell the shares for five years, so any wolves that were circling in the hope of easy pickings had better be damned patient if they want to see this company in play.

  Bizarrely – or maybe not – the stock market reaction has been to mark the share price down by almost a quarter, which still leaves us in profit. It had run up on the back of rumours that Norman Grimm and a bunch of activist hedge fund investors were going to force through changes and snatch a windfall profit for speculators. That’s all history now. Motorrad has Grossbank standing behind it, the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of the financial jungle, and Norman and his pals are going to have to unload their stock at a massive loss. Shame.