The Ego's Nest (Dave Hart 5)

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The Ego's Nest (Dave Hart 5) Page 8

by David Charters


  ‘My darling – this is Dave Hart. We saw him on the television. He used to run Grossbank. He was very successful and then … he died and came back to life again!’ He says this with a big grin. ‘Dave, this is my wife, Anya.’

  His wife? Fuck. Another guy who takes his wife out in the evening to have a good time. So why does he play around so much? Because he can? Because it’s there? Because he’s too like me?

  ‘A pleasure to meet you, Mr Hart.’ Anya has a deliciously husky voice and a strong Russian accent. I could eat her for her voice alone, but it gets better. We shake hands and she has a bone-crunching grip. Wow.

  I suddenly feel inadequate having only Giselle to introduce. Where is Two Livers?

  ‘Call me Dave.’ I turn to my companion. ‘This is my friend Giselle from Brazil. Giselle – let me introduce Anya and Vlad.’

  Anya sees through her instantly. ‘Of course. We saw you dancing.’

  ‘I liked your dancing.’ Vlad’s trying to pay her a compliment, but it draws a dagger-like glance from Anya. ‘But, my darling, Giselle dances very well.’ Stop digging, Vlad.

  Giselle tries to say something but she still can’t and looks as if her eyes are slightly out of control, rolling upwards when she isn’t concentrating. She’s perspiring too, and seems unsteady on her feet. Probably put too much into the dancing. We sit down and a waiter appears and pours us all more drinks. I’d normally expect to catch up with Vlad on business while the ladies talk shopping. Only Giselle can’t talk.

  ‘So, Dave, I’ve heard a lot about this fund you’ve raised. Eighteen billion, is that right? It’s huge. Where did it all come from?’

  I grin at him. He knows full well where part of it comes from. ‘Well, some of it’s Russian, Vlad.’

  ‘I thought so. Russians are good investors for people who think big. We understand large ventures with big ambitions.’

  On my left, I’m vaguely aware of Giselle, who seems to be staring at someone at the next table. I look across and can see two black men, both with shaven heads and earrings, wearing what look like Armani suits and shoes with no socks. Did no one tell them the Miami Vice look is out? They have one ‘lady’ sitting with them, and she looks as if she’s Giselle’s twin sister. What’s wrong with these guys? Are they planning a reverse threesome? Surely they need at least one girl each?

  One of the men catches my eye and says something to the other, and now they’re both glaring at me with obvious hostility, when Giselle suddenly picks up her champagne glass and throws the contents over the girl. The victim is stunned, looks down at her see-through top, which I’d say has just got a whole lot better courtesy of a fine glass of Cristal, and then grabs a glass from their table and throws it back, missing Giselle but drenching Anya. Everyone stands up and I find myself stepping aside as Giselle, ridiculously, throws a whole ice bucket over the three of them. And then I don’t step aside and get soaked with the contents of their ice bucket. Vlad tries to shield Anya from further damage and, for his trouble, gets a glass of red wine down his jacket.

  Finally, Giselle manages to speak.

  ‘Whore!’ she cries at the girl at the other table.

  ‘You can talk, bitch!’ she screams back.

  This is quite exciting. I want to yell ‘Catfight!’ but think better of it. I realise we’re attracting a lot of attention and can see the club doormen heading fast in our direction. I turn to Giselle.

  ‘Don’t tell me, you two know each other.’

  ‘W-we worked together. Whore ripped me off.’

  ‘Bitch ripped me off,’ comes the screamed reply.

  Then a fist connects with my jaw. One of the black guys has stepped forward and taken a swing at me, sending me sprawling across the table, knocking over bottles and glasses. Giselle sways in my direction. I think she’s going to help me get up, which I’m not sure is a good idea – I’d rather stay down – and then she throws up all over me. Which is probably fortunate, because the black guy has come forward to finish me off, and instead steps back to avoid getting splashed with vomit. It stinks, and my shirt is soaked and sticks to me, and some of it even went on my face, so I almost feel like throwing up myself. Anya and Vlad have leapt back to try to avoid getting splashed, but too late. It’s a fucking mess, and the black guys still want to settle it physically.

  It’s then that the cavalry, in the form of the doormen, arrive at our table. There are eight of them – where did they all come from? – and they take a firm grip on our arms, walk us to the bar, where they demand that we settle our bills, and then take us outside. I’m not even allowed a diversion via the men’s room to clean up.

  It’s only then that the flashbulbs start popping – there’s a no-paparazzi rule inside the club – and people start getting excited. I expect to hear my name being called, but instead they’re shouting about the D Boyz. Who are they talking about? Evidently the black guys, who are clearly much more famous than Dave Hart. They’re shown to a limo with the girl who double-crossed Giselle and, as they get in, one of them turns and makes a gun with his hand and pretends to shoot me. Then he draws his finger across his throat and grins, but not in a nice way, and mouths some words. I can’t be sure, but it’s something like, ‘You’re dead, motherfucker’. Can you believe this? He’s threatening me. On top of everything else that’s happened this evening, this man is threatening me. Is he serious? Is he really planning to come after me? It wouldn’t be hard to work out who I am, or where I can be found. I don’t like threats, especially serious ones. I really don’t like them.

  So I’m left apologising to Vlad and Anya, while Giselle, whose front is also soaked in vomit, leans against me, her eyes rolling upwards into their sockets. The stench alone is enough to make me heave. What was she eating? If I stare long enough at my front, I could probably work it out.

  Vlad thinks the whole thing is a scream. ‘Dave, you are amazing. Wherever you go, things happen. It’s great.’

  Anya evidently doesn’t share his enthusiasm for being amazed. She stares resolutely away and then their car arrives and they too disappear. One of the doormen looks at me with sympathy. ‘Cab?’

  ‘Two.’

  He whistles and a black cab pulls up. I open the door and ignore the driver’s hostile stare.

  ‘If you two are getting in here in that state, it’ll be an extra forty quid.’

  ‘It’s just her.’ I peel off a couple of fifties and pass them through the window.

  Giselle can barely stand and I help her onto the back seat and strap her in.

  ‘Dave …’

  ‘What is it, Giselle?’

  ‘Dave … don’t you want to have sex with me?’

  ‘Not tonight, Giselle. I’ll call you.’

  ‘Dave …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dave … my money.’

  I look down at my vomit-stained front and put my hand to the side of my face, which is aching and starting to swell. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘It’s a thousand … for the night.’

  And because I’m a man, and once again I’m weak, I stand by the open door of the cab and peel off more notes and hand them in to her, trying not to catch the eye of the driver in his rear-view mirror.

  I’ve had better celebrations.

  IT GETS worse the next day.

  My right eye has swollen almost shut and when I prise it open the white of my eye is almost completely red with burst blood vessels. A blue-green bruise covers most of my upper cheek. I took a hell of a punch to the side of my face and I’m lucky nothing’s broken.

  My suit’s ruined, and my shirt, but who cares? The real damage is in the newspapers.

  Apparently the D Boyz are US rap artists touring the UK with their latest album. People outside the insulated world of investment banking have heard of these guys, are interested in them, and of course, the papers will pay for their pictures when they get into trouble. Which is why there’s a photo of me, covered in vomit and propping up a clearly spaced-out Giselle, in al
most every newspaper.

  Shit. Maybe Two Livers is abroad. Perhaps she won’t read the papers today. Maybe she’ll think it was another guy called Dave Hart.

  And then I check my voicemail and it goes from bad to very bad indeed. She was tied up in a board meeting most of the day and well into the evening, but left a message around nine saying she’d love to meet, and how about having a late supper at Wild Honey, a Michelin one-star restaurant in Mayfair. It’s fully booked, but she’s called in a favour and got us a table, and if she doesn’t hear back from me will meet me there. Damn.

  What to do? If all else fails, tell the truth. I wanted to see you but couldn’t get hold of you. So I waited half an hour, then called a Brazilian hooker instead, and she was out of her mind on drugs and puked on me and caused a fight and I got thumped and thrown out of the club and that’s why my face is in the papers. Oh and, by the way, some rapper is threatening to kill me. I know I’m sad, and I feel like a total loser. I’d rather have been with you, and I really am committed to our relationship and seeing if we can make things work. Honestly.

  Would she believe me? Maybe not.

  MARIA AND Tom are sitting in the outer office, looking out at the trading floor. Tom will be driving me to my next meeting and has come up for a coffee and a chat with Maria. No doubt he wants to take the temperature of how I’m feeling. He’s read the papers.

  My door’s open and I tune into their conversation while I pretend to stare at something on one of the screens on my desk.

  Maria is talking. She’s very kindly removed all the newspapers from the office and binned them. My black eye is reminder enough of a less than successful evening. What pleases me more is that the conversation isn’t just about me messing up again.

  ‘… the fund’s up half a billion Euros!’

  ‘Half a billion?’ Tom sounds impressed.

  ‘On paper, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Our conglomerates play has worked out so far.

  Tom looks out at the trading floor. Happy Mboku is waving his arms around and shouting down the phone, stamping his feet and looking as if he might injure someone.

  ‘What’s that one doing?’

  ‘He’s ordering lunch. They have deliveries every day.’

  ‘Funny bunch, aren’t they?’

  It’s true. From time to time in the City, a trader is found to be a criminal. He breaks the rules, deals on inside information or ahead of a client order, or in some other way falls foul of the law. Occasionally he even gets prosecuted. But nowhere is there a firm that only employs criminals. Fortunately, for the authorisation of this firm by the Financial Services Authority, none of them has a criminal record in any jurisdiction that shares information with the Brits.

  Sitting next to Happy is Nobukatsu Yokoyama from Osaka. Nob was training to be a sumo wrestler – he’s six foot five and weighs thirty-two stone – but took a pay-off early on from the wrong guys, got kicked out of school and ended up working for the Yakuza. I’m told his body is covered in tattoos, though I didn’t bother to check in the job interview. His left hand is missing the pinkie – apparently another Yakuza idiosyncrasy. Fuck with me and I’ll cut your pinkie off – or better yet, make you cut it off yourself. Strange lot, the Japanese. Nob is here on behalf of Bang Bang Lee. I thought the Triads and the Yakuza didn’t get on, but it turns out there are eight hundred thousand Chinese living in Japan, and most of them are online gaming clients of Bang Bang’s. So he has business in Japan and trusted lieutenants to look after his interests there. Nob has only limited English, which is one reason why we can call him Nob.

  We also have Sly, from Miami, representing the US East Coast syndicate, a tall, lean Latino panther of a man who never rushes anything and always looks as if he’s working out how best to kill you before he answers a question. Sly has a scar running down one side of his face from his hairline to his chin, via his eye – which is covered by a black eye patch. Apparently his right eye socket is empty, though again I never felt the need to check during the job interview. Timur is from Kazakhstan, a former Kazakh wrestler with a shaved head and a pony tail, who looks like he just rode into town with Genghis Khan, and there are a bunch of others of equally impressive parentage. I look at them with pride. My team. My boys. My dirty dozen.

  ‘Tom – let’s go.’ I take my jacket from the back of my chair and straighten my tie. Normally I don’t wear one. In ‘hedge fund alley’ around St James’s, the uniform for the rich and successful, as well as for those who want to look as if they’re rich and successful, is a serious business suit, crisp white shirt, but open neck – and a tie in the desk drawer in case you need it.

  But today I’m going to the Treasury. Her Majesty’s Treasury in Whitehall, and I want to look the part. There was a time when hedge funds, country funds and emerging markets funds used to buy up the debt of smaller countries, or pick up assets cheaply in those same countries, and joked about buying the places. Today I’m going to see if I can buy a chunk of Britain. The way I see it, after all this country’s been through, it’s a bargain, and there’s no harm in trying.

  The Treasury building had a revamp a few years ago and went from being impressive on the outside and impractical on the inside, to still being impressive on the outside but with a large dose of tacky modern ‘style’ on the inside – including a cafeteria where senior mandarins can go to fetch their own coffee, this being an egalitarian age – and, of course, it remains impractical.

  You enter the building through airport-style security, manned by what I guess are minimum wage job-creation victims who’d rather be on the dole and whose motivation and attention to detail achieve the same high levels as their counterparts at Heathrow. But it’s only the Treasury, afterall.

  I’ve arranged to meet my legal team there and asked them to send someone via Café Nero and load up with trays of coffee. We enter the building like a visiting delegation, and you can see the people in the entrance looking and wondering who the visiting politician is with the secret service bodyguard.

  The senior civil servant present is a pugnacious, grey-haired man with a Village People moustache.

  ‘Mr Hart, good morning and welcome. Do sit down. I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything to drink.’

  I glance at my watch. It’s 10 a.m. ‘No problem. It’s pretty rare that I drink at this time of day.’

  He smiles wanly. ‘I meant tea or coffee, Mr Hart. It’s the austerity measures. Tap water?’

  ‘Never touch it. But we’ve arranged our own coffee.’

  On cue, there’s a discreet knock at the door and the two last members of our team, junior lawyers, arrive with trays of coffee. Treasury civil servants being sharper than most, they look at the trays and gratifying looks of relief spread across their faces as they realise we’ve brought enough for them as well.

  Civil servants are used to humiliation, but even they find it infra dig to start meetings by apologising that due to the austerity measures they can’t offer their visitors tea or coffee. So today is a bonanza. A well-prepared visitor – briefed by the Silver Fox – has done a coffee run. What bliss. One of them steps outside and I hear a whispered conversation, and then I’m told that the minister is coming too. Nothing to do with the large café latte going spare at the end of the table, I’m sure. Once Britain controlled the finances of the Empire from this building. Cash for access? How about coffee?

  The civil servants are clearly in awe of my legal advisers. I’ve brought six of them, including the coffee team, and they sit on either side of me. It’s good, because it diverts attention from my black eye. At least I think it does. I really don’t need six lawyers with me, and it’s a silly indulgence, but if you’re going into someone else’s territory, you might as well be fully armed. So the Treasury team are outnumbered and outgunned on their own turf. Nice. I like to feel in charge on other people’s turf. Probably comes from me being short, like Hitler and Napoleon.

  I still haven’t introduced them, and their appearance
is quite intimidating, so Village People takes me to one side and whispers, ‘Mr Hart – who are these people?’

  ‘My lawyers. DLR Strummer. They’re huge.’

  ‘I can see they’re huge.’

  ‘No. They’re a huge law firm. Biggest in the world.’

  ‘Oh. Why are they here? Why so many?’ He looks at the tall, dark-suited, heavily built men in dark glasses, sitting at the conference table, setting up laptops and unloading briefcases of paperwork, and I can see he’s sceptical.

  I pat him on the back. ‘Relax. They may be lawyers, but they also do coffee. Very handy if the meeting overruns.’

  ‘They fetch your coffee? You mean they’d go for more?’

  ‘If I ask nicely.’

  The minister who joins us isn’t a real minister at all. He’s a friend of the party, suddenly elevated to the peerage after the election and given ministerial office to bring to bear the benefit of his business expertise for the sake of the government. I have mixed feelings about this. Jobs (and peerages) for the boys without the inconvenience of exposure to the electorate, who get to pick up the tab, doesn’t seem quite right in the twenty-first century. On the other hand, we need people in government who actually understand how things work in the real world. We can’t get by just with MPs who can handle a mean garden fete or play cards in the local working men’s club, or, worse still, professional politicians who have only ever worked in Central Office since leaving university and wouldn’t have a prayer of holding down a real job without a team of advisers to delegate it to.

  So when Lord Bigmann comes in I stand along with everyone else, incline my head, smile nicely when we shake hands and call him ‘my lord’, which rather takes him and everyone else by surprise, because they know I don’t mean it. In return he tries not to stare at my black eye.

 

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