The Ego's Nest (Dave Hart 5)

by David Charters

  ‘I thought you were supposed to be dead?’

  That voice. Deep, husky, unhurried. One of the sexiest voices I can recall. I turn to face her, feeling like a schoolboy caught with his fingers in the biscuit tin. Before I can reply, she continues.

  ‘I never believed it. There were moments, like the memorial service, when I missed you more than you can ever believe. But I always knew you were too selfish to kill yourself. There had to be a plan. It had to be another of your schemes.’ She’s shaking her head, looking down at the pavement, sad and for a moment, lost. ‘You’re too arrogant to believe the world could ever do without you.’

  I take my sunglasses off and stare at her, willing her to do the same so that our eyes can meet. Windows on the soul. I need to see what she’s truly feeling.

  ‘When did you spot me?’

  She shakes her head again, despairing. ‘Don’t apply for MI6.’

  ‘Was I that bad?’

  ‘Worse.’ For a moment I think she’s going to laugh, her deep, throaty, loving-life, ‘come to bed’ laugh that I’ve ached to hear. But she doesn’t. And the sunglasses stay on.

  ‘I came back … for you. I missed you too much. It was all so empty without you.’

  ‘Sure you did, Dave. If you missed me at all, it was because you didn’t have me anymore. If you’d really cared, I’d have been part of the plan and gone with you. I would have, you know.’

  My gut is twisting with guilt, anguish, desperate frustration and a dozen other feelings that make me feel as if I’m going to explode.

  ‘Is there … a chance?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I step forward, wanting to embrace her, but she raises a hand to keep me away.

  ‘First you have to come back from the dead. How are you going to do that?’

  ‘I’ve got a plan.’

  Now she does laugh, but it’s a short, dismissive, angry laugh. ‘I bet you have. You always have a plan. You’ll find some changes.’

  ‘What sort of changes?’

  ‘The City is different. The little people are in charge now – the regulators, the risk managers, the bean counters. They’re having their moment in the sun.’

  ‘And Grossbank?’

  ‘I run the bank now.’

  That much I knew.

  She sighs. ‘And it’s bigger.’

  It is. She’s acquired some of the bank’s smaller competitors in Germany and elsewhere, using Grossbank’s muscle to take advantage of hard times for the small fry.

  ‘You’ve done a great job hoovering up the little guys, growing the firm. Everything I hear is good.’

  ‘The little guys were like a bunch of drunks propping each other up in a bar. It was easy. And besides, I had a good teacher.’

  ‘If you mean me, I love to be praised, but I think you did the teaching – to me. You and Paul.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know who. Paul Ryan – what happened to him?’ Paul would have expected to become co-head alongside her. He was head of Markets whereas she ran Corporates – together the two most powerful people in the firm after me. Paul turned on me at the end, smelling the chance to grab the reins for himself.

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Not literally. I fired him. You can’t have more than one queen bee in a hive. That much I did learn from you.’

  ‘How did you fire him? He must have put up a fight.’ She nods. ‘Took me almost a week.’ ‘Good. Serves him right. Wanker.’ Two Livers offers no further comment. Enough said.

  This woman is impressive. Chairman and saviour of one of the biggest banks in the world and not yet forty, a rock star performance that dwarfs anything I ever did.

  I nod towards the doorway across the street. ‘Just now … were you … ?’

  Finally, she throws her head back and gives a rich and throaty laugh. I want to hug her, but I hold back.

  ‘I thought that would scare the shit out of you,’ she says.

  ‘So, you’re not …’ I gesture towards her stomach.

  ‘Not as far as I know. And I think I would know.’

  Phew. I hope I don’t show it, but the relief is overwhelming. She laughs again, tossing her head back with a characteristic gesture that I’ve dreamt about for months. She can read me like a book.

  ‘Can I see you again?’

  ‘Sure. I’m on CNBC and Bloomberg TV most weeks.’

  ‘I mean … see you.’

  There’s a moment of sickening silence. Women never forgive. I left her. There’s no escaping the fact. The tension hangs in the air as she removes her sunglasses, and I’m hugely, massively, overwhelmingly relieved to see tears in her eyes. Tears of happiness, or just tears?

  ‘Maybe. I’ll think about it. Come back from the dead first.’

  I’VE MADE some grand entrances before, but there’s something about dead people showing up that grabs the attention of the media in a particularly intense way. The first reporters are actually on the Air Astana flight from Almaty, having been prepped by the Silver Fox, and I give them ‘exclusives’ on the basis that they’ve already had a lot of advance briefing in London and are going to be friendly. Heathrow, by contrast, is a media scrum, with hundreds of photographers, cameramen and reporters shouting questions at me while I smile and give a friendly wave on my way to the press conference.

  When we get to the actual briefing room, a huge, characterless auditorium filled with rows of cheap plastic chairs, it is packed, standing room only. The Silver Fox has dispensed with the usual desk covered with microphones, to hide behind, and opted instead for a simple canvas director’s chair, where I sit alone and face the world. There are no Powerpoints on the wall behind me, no slides or photographs, nothing that smacks of preparation or slick presentation. I’m dressed in a neutral pale grey suit from a tailor in Almaty, neither sharp nor conservative, a collarless white cotton shirt unbuttoned at the top and grey canvas slip-on shoes with no socks. My hair is cut short. Nothing pretentious, nothing investment-banker-like, just simplicity, modesty – the kind of authenticity that comes from discovering who you are and being in touch with yourself and your inner values. And having a good PR adviser.

  The Silver Fox stands at the front with a hand-held mic and addresses the crowd, some two hundred strong.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Hart has just got off a long flight from Kazakhstan, and so this press conference will be kept short. You all have the press release and the detailed background notes, embargoed until the end of today’s session. Mr Hart will be available over the coming days to speak to many of you individually, but for today he is simply going to make a short statement about his plans for the future.’

  This is smart. The tedious stuff about the Tibetan monastery and the Chinese orphanage, where I might have been tripped up on the detail, are dealt with in the handouts. In real life, Bang Bang has made some real monks and a real orphanage extremely happy – and extremely well briefed – in case some enterprising reporters go there to get the inside story.

  There’s a predictable hubbub, but he calms them down and passes the mic to me.

  ‘Thank you. A lot of us wonder what will be said about us after our deaths. Only a few of us get to find out.’ That gets a laugh. ‘I know many of you will be wondering what happened to me these past months, where I’ve been and how is it that I suddenly appeared after so long, when many people thought I was dead. In fact, when everyone thought I was dead. At times even I thought I was dead.’ Another laugh. A self-deprecating smile in response. ‘I’ll tell the full story in due course. What I want to focus on is not what happened to me. That’s personal and, in the long run, irrelevant. I want to look at the big picture, at what happened to all of us.’

  Like all investment bankers I’m much happier dealing with the big picture. Detail is dangerous. Detail trips you up. Detail is a four-letter word.

  ‘I also want to talk about responsibility. When I jumped off Blackfriars Bridge I wanted to take responsibili
ty – and face the consequences – for failure. I had failed. We all had failed in the financial community. I felt it was right that I should pay the price for what had happened, at least in so far as it affected my firm and the people, the livelihoods, that depended on me. I had done my best in impossible and unprecedented circumstances, and it wasn’t enough. So I decided to take my own life. And I fully intended to do so. But fate intervened.’

  ‘Many of you have heard already about the extraordinary circumstances that occurred on the night I jumped from the bridge. I was rescued from the water that I thought would be my last resting place. I believed it was game over. Instead, I was taken on a journey that would change my life. A journey that has taken me across the world and from which I have returned a changed man. A man who no longer thinks of himself, who has learnt values of a different kind from the ones he used to live by. And a man with the courage to return and attempt to rebuild, to repair the damage done by the old ways, to make good the harm he and others like him have caused.’

  They are scribbling away, but still someone shouts out from the crowd, apparently breaking the convention of first identifying themselves. ‘What does that mean, Mr Hart? What are you actually going to do?’

  The guy’s a plant, organised by the Silver Fox, because I don’t have time to waste on drivel about my ‘journey’ and finding my inner self. I want tomorrow’s story to be the super fund that’s going to turn the world economy around.

  ‘What am I going to do? I’m going to raise a fund – I call it the Salvation Fund – that will mobilise capital on a scale never previously attempted, and invest to undo the damage caused by the crash. It will be huge and, if I succeed as I intend, it will have a profound impact on all of our lives.’ Most especially mine. Oh, and along the way I’ll become a saint and get the girl, but we needn’t go into that now.

  A forest of hands go up and I look to see who the Silver Fox is looking at.

  ‘Yes?’ I meet the glance of a grey-haired reporter in the front row, a face I think I remember from television.

  ‘Mark Foster, BBC Financial Insight – Mr Hart, what kind of fund do you have in mind? How big will it be? And what will it do?’

  I pause, as if I have to reflect on my answer, giving due weight and gravitas to his question.

  ‘I’m going to do something that I don’t think has ever been done before. I’m going to raise a private fund that will invest specifically in order to support global economic growth and prosperity. In the past, investing institutions didn’t care where their money went, just as long as the returns were good. The hedge fund community was particularly notorious. They could sell a company’s shares and bring it to its knees, or they could boost its stock price and send it through the roof – they didn’t care. All they wanted was returns. I’m going to be different. I’m going to produce returns, of course – but I’ll be doing it in a way that helps to turn the global economy around, taking risks to support the businesses that will help us grow our way out of trouble. And without being immodest, I don’t think anyone understands the financial markets the way I do.’

  I check with the Silver Fox and nod to a woman in the second row.

  ‘Melanie Crowther, Evening Post. Mr Hart, how do you know you’ll be able to raise a fund like this? These are hard times and money is in short supply. And you’ve just come back after, let’s just say, a period of absence. What if you can’t find people to back you?’

  ‘Melanie, one thing I’ve come to believe is that if you do the right thing, you’ll get the backing you need. I’m confident I can present a proposition for investors so compelling that they’ll be queuing out the door. I anticipate raising ten billion dollars – minimum. For the first closing. Probably more later.’

  More laughter, and a few shaking heads. The more financially astute think I’ve lost it. Too much time in the sun or doing yoga with monks. They wouldn’t doubt me if they knew who was really waiting in the wings.

  ‘One more question?’

  They all go mad. They want to ask about my personal journey rather than the stuff that might make the finance pages. I follow the Silver Fox’s eye and nod to a young woman reporter standing at the back.

  ‘Jill Fairfax, Finance Magazine. Mr Hart, how will you judge whether your fund is successful?’

  Another respectful pause. ‘I’ll double it. In a year, maybe less. Maybe six months. And I’ll do it by backing winners, not by preying on the weak and the suffering. I’ll do it by investing for good.’

  The Silver Fox is on his feet, thanking them, pointing them towards more piles of handouts and ushering me out of the room. Tomorrow’s headlines should start the ball rolling. Tomorrow is Day One. That gives me a hundred and eighty more, give or take, to make a fortune and save the world.

  I HEAD towards the Ritz, where I’ve taken a suite on a long-term arrangement. The Ritz is classic, rather than trendy – it still has an irritating dress code – and it certainly isn’t cheap, which helps to keep out the riff-raff. On the other hand, they really understand service, which is important for me because I don’t want to do anything even vaguely domestic – ever. Plus they’re conveniently located on Piccadilly in the heart of hedge fund world, and just around the corner from Duke’s. When I get there they already know who I am, greet me by name and make me feel like I’m a long-lost member of the family who’s just come home – the prodigal Mr Hart.

  My possessions were all packed up and placed in storage while my ex-wife disputed the terms of my will. The Silver Fox asks if I want him to arrange to get them out of storage. But why would I? In order to have belongings you need to belong. I don’t belong anywhere.

  More alarmingly, he’s also dealing with the police. It seems they want to interview me, and not just because they’re star-fuckers. He threatens them with a thousand kinds of hellfire and they back off, at least for now. As if I didn’t have the right to try to take my own life. It’s their fault if they wasted time investigating it. The good thing about having the Silver Fox speaking on your behalf is that he’s the man who advised the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police on that little personal matter that none of us needs to know about.

  Britain has changed since I went away. There’s a coalition government. Whoever would have thought it? Liberal Democrats used to be able to indulge in free-thinking about impossible policies the proper parties wouldn’t go near. Now they have responsibility, accountability, the pressures of office. Worse still, they’re in power as the junior partners of a bunch of young, desperately inexperienced Old Etonian Conservatives, who believe in nothing except being very tough about whatever it is they don’t believe in.

  So the country has been plunged into a regime of austerity, cuts, general discomfort and, of course, banker bashing – we caused it all, after all, with our unbridled greed. Unbridled? Naturally – anyone who had a chance of making what we could as quickly as we could would have been daft not to go for it. Fucking hypocrites. It had nothing to do with the regulators, who were asleep at the wheel and saw nothing, knew nothing, and even if they had wouldn’t have had a clue what to do about it. And it certainly wasn’t the politicians’ fault. They really were ignorant. Still are, in fact, except for a few new sound bites in the briefing pack from Central Office. Ignorance didn’t stop them cosying up to the City when they thought that was where the money was, holding their hands out for contributions to the party and dangling knighthoods and ermine in front of the people who controlled the purse strings. And nor will it stop them in the future. Memories are short and it won’t take long to get back to normal.

  The challenge for me will be to distinguish myself from the rest of the City. Although, that shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ve spent most of my career doing it, after all.

  TO DO what I plan to do, I need to hire a law firm. Not just any law firm. The sheer scale of the undertaking, simultaneously in markets across the globe, is going to stretch the resources of any firm. So I’m not only hiring the best, I’m hiring the big
gest.

  DLR Strummer is the biggest law firm in the world. They’re so big you could fill a small stadium with their lawyers. They’re the legal equivalent of Star Trek’s Borg: relentless, virtually indestructible, and they’re almost everywhere on the planet. It may be that they haven’t yet opened in Antarctica, but as soon as they sniff a deal or spot a likely client, they’ll be there. And, just like the Borg, when they come up against a competitor, they either destroy them or absorb them. Anyone who’s any good ends up being part of DLR Strummer – individuals, teams, entire firms. Eventually, they could be the only law firm in the world.

  As I contemplate what’s going to happen next, I’m certain of one thing – size matters. If you’re going to war, you want a Panzer Division on your side, not a troop of Boy Scouts.

  When I speak to their managing partner about what I’m planning, he asks what I’ll need from them.

  ‘Here in London I want your biggest lawyers. Bring them in from wherever you have to. Cost is irrelevant. I want impact.’

  ‘Our biggest? You mean our most senior, high-profile people – the “names” in the legal world? Or the ones who’ve worked on the very largest transactions?’

  ‘Neither. I want physically large lawyers. Huge ones. I’ll pay double the rate your partners charge for all the lawyers you’ve got who are over six foot three, regardless of seniority. Men or women. And I’ll want them to wear Ray-Bans. Even indoors. In every meeting with our target companies. It’s a personal quirk of mine. When I enter a meeting room I want people to think the Godfather’s arrived. I want them to look at my legal team and think that if they don’t sign, these guys could throw them out the window.’

  I NEED an office and a trading platform, ideally a hedge fund type of operation trading all kinds of securities round the clock in markets across the world, staffed by some pretty high-calibre people who don’t need me backseat driving all the time.

  Mike Fisher runs Caveman Associates, a London-based hedge fund with about three billion dollars of assets investing in what they describe as a global macro strategy, spotting big trends and following them. Why did they call it Caveman? Because they could. They left larger, more conservative firms to set up on their own, and in these politically correct times the name made a statement. I’ve met Fisher socially a few times but can’t call him a friend. Can I actually call anyone a friend? Good question.