The Ego Has Landed (Dave Hart 3)

by David Charters

  ‘Click.’

  For a moment he stops breathing and turns deathly pale. I imagine brown adrenaline running freely down his legs beneath his perfectly pressed trousers. I smile.

  ‘Just joking.’

  He lets out a huge sigh and when I indicate he should sit down, he flops into a large, low armchair, still staring at the empty revolver in my hand. I place it on the table and get up.

  ‘Doktor Neumann, how very good to meet you at last. I’ve heard so much about you.’

  He goes to stand up to shake my outstretched hand, but I wave him back down in his seat, lean over in my friendliest fashion and give him a big two-handed welcome to my lair. ‘Have you met Fritz?’

  ‘Fritz?’

  I wave across to the elephant, which seems to be staring at us both. It has the sort of eyes that follow you around the room. Or maybe I’m just getting paranoid.

  ‘N – nein. I mean, no.’

  He seems really freaked out. I wonder if he actually thought I’d shoot him. I walk around behind his armchair, out of sight, then lean in suddenly so that my face is inches from his, and whisper so he can feel my breath on his cheek.

  ‘Coffee?’

  The effect is almost as electrifying as the gun. He jumps and stutters, ‘Y – yes, please.’

  ‘Good.’ I smile, and lean in even closer. ‘Me too. It’s over there on the side. I take mine black.’ I get up and walk back to my chair, sit down and watch as he scurries off to pour us a couple of coffees, then brings them back, cups rattling in the saucers in the most gratifying way as his nerves reveal him.

  He’s ready.

  ‘Doktor Neumann, I’ve been having some thoughts about the next private banking conference for super high net worth individuals.’ He looks perplexed. This is his area, and he isn’t used to the Chairman getting involved. Especially a Chairman like me. ‘I believe you call them ‘Rich Weekends’, unless I’m mistaken?’

  He shrugs noncommittally. ‘We try to provide our clients with the service they require.’

  It’s true. The rich are increasingly common, and not just because there are more of them. If they want fawning private bankers paying homage to them over a long weekend away, then that’s what they’ll get – for a price.

  ‘I think the next one’s in Monte Carlo next month, if my information is correct.’ He nods guardedly. ‘I have in mind something rather novel. I want to give it a theme. An African theme.’

  ‘Africa?’ Smooth as he is, he can’t hide his scepticism.

  ‘We look after a lot of African money.’ I have some papers on my desk, positioned so that he can’t actually see them. I can see him staring at them, wondering what they are – he doesn’t recognise the format, it’s not the usual management accounts or business area report, and he’s probably wondering what kind of analysis I’ve got hold of relating to his notoriously private business.

  In fact it’s nothing to do with his business. My birthday’s coming up and this is the itinerary for a special weekend away. I’ve rented a private Caribbean island and I’m flying out a couple of Grossbank jetloads of girls – the dream team from all over the world. I think of them as my ‘All Stars’, Fluffy and Thumper obviously, Crystal and Jade from Hong Kong, Tatiana from Saint Petersburg, Fifi La Poitrine from Nice, Long Suk from Korea, Breathless Beth, you name them, they’ll be there, for a seventy-two hour shagathon, standing room only except when we’re lying down. It’ll be fantastic, as long as it doesn’t actually kill me. Anyway, it takes a lot of organising.

  I hold up my papers. ‘I want to push the boundaries. To go into new territory. And I want to go even further. Enough is never enough, believe me.’ It’s true. I smile warmly, always a dangerous moment. He seems to take it as a compliment and looks as if he’s relaxing. ‘I love your business, Doktor Neumann. And I want to take what you’ve built so carefully over these past decades and really do something with it.’

  He’s not sure how to take this. ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘First, a keynote speaker. President Mbongwe of Alambo. I’d like to invite him over to talk about the economic future of Africa.’

  ‘Mbongwe? But he’s…’

  ‘Not a client?’ I frown. ‘How very disappointing.’

  Now he’s offended. ‘Of course he’s a client. We run most of his money – more than half a billion dollars.’

  Gotcha. Half a billion of international aid money, licence fees for mineral rights that were never developed because the place is in meltdown, ‘taxes’ on investment and profits and breathing and going to the bathroom. In Alambo holding public office seems to get confused with helping yourself to public money. These guys are meant to be politicians, the leaders of their terrified, starving people – it’s not as if they’re investment bankers. If I had a sense of moral outrage, I’d be morally outraged. Luckily I don’t, and anyway, half a billion will do nicely. ‘Good. And just to be clear, I’m not simply talking about the speakers for this conference. I want the guests to have an African angle as well…’

  Two days later, I have the speaker programme from hell, exceeded only by the guest list. There are former generals, politicians, freedom fighters and dictators here that I thought had died years ago, when instead they just retired quietly, slipped away to the south of France or Switzerland or some quiet Caribbean island, trotted along to their local Grossbank private banking office and bingo – shipped in their fortunes to live fat and happy for the rest of their lives. Truly private banking is the best of businesses, and truly my team have done a fine job in winning such a huge market share. I send a message to Neumann and the team saying how delighted I am, and that I will personally be attending the conference.

  The great thing about the Germans, is that once you tell them which direction to go in, they are awesome. The reason the Brits still have to make jokes about the Germans several generations after we last fought each other, is that they nearly whipped our arses. The French, the Spanish, we could deal with, time and again throughout our history – they just never learnt. Despite being such a small nation, Britain could conquer half the world, but the Germans were damned scary. They even kicked the Romans’ arses, and if they hadn’t been fighting the rest of the world at the same time, they might have beaten Russia. Luckily we’ve moved on from those days. Now they’re on my side. In fact they are my side. I love my Germans.

  * * *

  MY NEXT meeting is back in London. I’m meeting Ralph Jones, the head of project finance at Grossbank. Project financiers are to investment bankers what Indiana Jones is to Gordon Gekko. Unlike mainstream investment bankers, these guys are field types. Rather than visiting New York, Paris or Hong Kong, they go to Lilongwe, Yaounde and Lagos. And the biggest difference of all is that they actually make real things happen. Where the rest of us sit at our workstations and move numbers around on screens, these guys put together the finance that builds real things, like dams and mines and ports and power stations. They spend time in offbeat places living in the field with construction engineers, miners and oilmen. And when they get a result and pull together the money to build something, you can actually see what it is they’ve done.

  If I wasn’t such a wuss, I might have become one myself, only then I might not have made so much money, since people in investment banks who don’t quite fit the mould tend to unsettle management and therefore don’t get paid or promoted the way the rest of us do.

  When Ralph enters my office, I don’t invite him to sit down, but leave him standing in front of me. Without looking up, I throw my much-thumbed itinerary on the desk in front of me. He’s terrified. He doesn’t know what the papers are, and fears the worst. The print is too small for him to read it upside down from where he’s standing, and now he’s wondering what bunch of overpriced, under-qualified, no-hoper management consultants I’ve paid to review his business and produce recommendations for how it might be fucked-up in some big corporate restructuring of the sort that all rich, fat, successful corporations indulge in
every few years.

  ‘Ralph, I’m not a happy man.’

  Strictly speaking, this is true. I have no idea what it is I’m seeking in life, all I know is that I want more of it. But I’m not talking philosophy here. I’m talking intimidation. Then I play my ace card. I open a folder on my desk and extract a credit card slip. I say ‘extract’ because I hold it between thumb and forefinger as if I’ve found it lying, heavily soiled, on the floor of the gents. I release it and let it fall onto the desk. His eyes follow it and he tries to make out what it is. When I speak, I do so quietly, almost sorrowfully.

  ‘What – is this?’

  He stares at it, finally picks it up, recognises his signature and scrutinises it. It comes from a mid-ranking, anonymous restaurant near Bank Underground Station.

  ‘It’s a credit card slip.’ I don’t even bother replying to this. Some people are just too straightforward. ‘It’s a bill I submitted.’ He looks vaguely guilty. ‘I was entertaining clients. Three of them. Senior people from the Asian Development Bank.’

  ‘Three of them?’ My voice is deathly quiet.

  He nods, trying to be confident, yet trying to assert his frugality.

  ‘And you were representing this firm?’ I raise my voice, almost shouting. ‘My firm?’

  ‘Y – yes. Look, if there’s a problem, I’ll pay it myself.’

  ‘Of course there’s a problem. You spent six… hundred… pounds…’

  ‘Look, Mister Hart, I’m sorry. Next time…’

  ‘Next time, you’ll fucking do it properly!’ I shout the words, leap to my feet and start pacing round the office, while he stands awkwardly in front of my desk like a schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s office. I almost feel it’s a shame to do this to him. But he needs to be ready for what comes next. I like to soften my people up – shock and awe and all that – or maybe I’m just a bully. I lean in close to him, so I can clearly see his curiously twitching right eyelid. Don’t ever play poker, pal.

  ‘Ralph – if you ever again spend so little on what I’m laughingly told is a top ten target for the project finance team, you’ll have a black bin-liner on your desk before dessert.’

  ‘Y – you mean I didn’t spend enough?’

  ‘Of course you didn’t fucking well spend enough. This…’ I point dismissively at the six hundred pound credit card slip. ‘…This lunch for four was a disgrace. We’re Grossbank. Grossbank thinks big. Grossbank is big. Do you understand big, Ralph, or are you happy to stay in your comfort zone, keeping the business small? Do you know what they say, Ralph? If you’re going to bother to think, think big.’

  He nods, unsure what to say next, this might be the end. He swallows hard, preparing for the worst.

  ‘Which brings me to Africa.’

  ‘Africa?’ He almost squeaks the word. He’s ready.

  ‘I’m not happy with our project finance business in Africa.’

  Silence. Fear. Dilated pupils. Slightly faster breathing. They might be project financiers, but they still have mortgages and school fees and mistresses and drug habits to pay for.

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘Why not? Why indeed not.’ I realise I haven’t prepared a set speech. ‘Maybe you could tell me.’ Now he’s really puzzled. So am I. This tends to happen when I ad lib too much.

  ‘Look, Mister Hart, if you’re worried about our African exposure, we hardly do anything over there as it is, and if you want we can cut it out altogether. Risk Management have no appetite for it, and frankly I don’t blame them. Just say the word.’

  I flop back down into my chair, leaving him standing awkwardly in front of me. Now I remember. I shake my head, despairing. ‘Ralph, we’re not coming out of Africa. We’re going in. Grossbank is going to commit fifty billion euros to investment projects in Africa over the next three years.’

  ‘F – fifty billion? But, Mister Hart, there aren’t fifty billion euros worth of projects in the whole continent.’

  I lean forward and stare at him. Maybe I got the number wrong again. I hadn’t really thought about it, but it seemed like a good number when I said it. Maybe I’m just not that good with numbers. When I speak, I do so slowly, as if talking to an infant. ‘Not now, no. But there will be. Africa’s changing, Ralph. A lot of places where it’s not wise to do business today are going to be safe very shortly. Trust me on this.’

  ‘R – right.’ He’s clearly unconvinced, swallows hard and bites his tongue. He thinks his boss is whacko. For all I know, he may be right.

  ‘Ralph, I want you to do me a favour. I want you to pretend that all the worst places where you would never dream of doing business changed, and suddenly became business friendly. What would be your dream list of projects for the bank to finance? We all know there are great projects out there, if only we could get to them. And the margins would be so fat. Are you with me so far, Ralph?’

  He nods, but definitely looks sceptical.

  ‘And because the margins are so great, and we’ll be making so much money, we’ll do this business in an ethical way.’

  ‘E – ethical?’

  ‘That’s right. With an ‘e’. Look it up when you get back to your office.’ He’s looking at me now as if he expects me to burst out laughing, as if it’s all a wind-up. ‘We have to be consistent with the firm’s image and reputation, Ralph. This has to look right.’

  ‘Oh, I get it.’ He grins at me and very nearly winks. ‘It has to look right.’

  This kind of pisses me off. Someone like this really should not piss me off. ‘And the best way to look right, is to be right.’

  ‘Be right?’

  ‘Exactly. Anything we finance has to have a full environmental and social impact study – a real one, not the sort we usually pay for.’

  ‘A real one?’

  ‘Sure. There must be some consultants out there who can actually produce real ones?’

  He looks nonplussed. Maybe there aren’t. I press on. ‘And our projects must source everything they can from the local economy, institute anti-corruption policies…’

  ‘Anti-corruption? You mean…?’

  I nod. ‘That’s right. No more ‘Oh, Mister Deputy Minister, is that your wallet you appear to have dropped under the desk with five thousand dollars in it?’ Those days are gone.’

  At this he really does relax. ‘We don’t do that, Mister Hart. It’s against the law.’

  ‘So what do you do?’

  Now he’s nervous again.

  ‘Come on, spill – unless you want one of these?’ I open my desk drawer and pull out a black bin-liner and put it on the desk. He’s transfixed. It’s the equivalent of Long John Silver offering one of his pirate crew the Black Spot.

  ‘W – well, we help our friends.’

  ‘Help? What sort of help?’

  ‘It depends on them. Sometimes they want to buy a house in London. We help them find bargains.’

  ‘Bargains?’

  ‘That’s right. There are amazing bargains out there if you just… know how to look. And if they ever want to sell, we help them get a good price. A really good price. Or they want their children to get into good schools, and we help them do that – special scholarships, donations to the schools’ endowment funds… and of course they sometimes want special healthcare, and there are waiting lists…’

  I hold up my hand to stop him. ‘I get the picture. But we don’t pay bribes.’

  He shakes his head. ‘We don’t pay bribes.’

  ‘Good.’ I put the bin liner back in the drawer and he relaxes again. ‘So when can I have my list? We’re about to witness a new scramble for Africa, and I want Grossbank leading it. And the number, to be clear, is fifty billion.’ Or was it a hundred? I scratch my head – I’m sure I said fifty just now.

  Pause. A long silence. He’d better say something soon, because I’m starting to get bored.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Nah, just kidding.’

  ‘Just…? You are serious, aren’t you?’
He rubs his chin, thinking hard, and for the first time he actually looks excited. ‘What you’re asking is huge. An enormous task. I hardly know where to begin.’

  ‘If you’re not up to it, let me know.’ I allow my eyes to wander towards the drawer where I keep my bin liners.

  He nearly panics. ‘No, we’re up to it. It’s just that it’s so… huge.’

  ‘Who are your biggest competitors in the market?’

  ‘Prince’s and Schleppenheim.’

  ‘Raid their teams. Poach their best people. I’ll sign the authorisations. Call them today. Buy them.’ Now I really am bored. I glance at my watch. ‘Look, I’d love to carry on talking about this all day – Africa, the wealth grab, changing the future, all of that, you know, but I’ve sort of got this bank to run…’

  I usher him out of the office and tell Maria I’m going to see my chiropractor. I haven’t had a blow-job since before breakfast. I think I might be addicted to sex.

  * * *

  I’M HAVING a weekend away. I’m taking a Grossbank corporate jet to Capri to a private villa owned by the bank and kept for senior management offsites and ‘weekends of reflection’ for board members.

  Helping me reflect on this occasion will be Paula Hayes, wife of Sean Hayes, who now runs syndicated loans at Grossbank. Sean thinks his luck’s in, which in a manner of speaking it is. Having been poached to run Grossbank’s business on the kind of package he never dreamt of at this stage in his career, he’s been amazed by the firm’s commitment to what most banks see as a capital intensive, low return business. He’s piling on market share, driving himself like he’s never worked before in his life, because no matter how well he does, we always want more. Or at least I do. And it’s working – he’s made us number one in the league tables and this weekend, at my insistence, he’s taking his team for an offsite in Bermuda which is part strategy session and part celebration.

  It’s a shame, because Paula hardly sees him as it is, and whenever we meet for a coffee on the King’s Road, she’s torn between thanking me for the break I’ve given them, and wishing she saw more of him.