by Ashton, Hugh
“This is about a fifth of the price that we’d have paid one of the big companies for a traditional exchange alone, you realise?” he said to Vishal, remembering some of the invoices he’d seen in the past for telephone systems in large companies. “And then they’d have charged us a fortune on top of that for setting the thing up and configuring it. Did you get a special price on this?”
“Of course I did,” replied Vishal. “But twenty per cent discount is all the bastards were giving me.”
“But even if you add twenty per cent to this, it’s still cheap. Why aren’t all the banks and businesses using this kind of thing instead of paying through the nose for the overpriced junk that’s on everyone’s desks and that no-one can use?”
“Ask me another,” replied Vishal. “I was trying to get my bank to put in a system like this, at least for the fixed income traders, but they said it was untried technology, and preferred to spend a fortune updating the old system. And even then, it never worked properly.”
“More fools them,” responded Sharpe. “I think Meema’s going to have fun with this toy.”
-o-
Meema was definitely having fun, it seemed. Even before Vishal had connected the live data feeds, she had used a large part of the money Kim had given to Sharpe to purchase a database containing a minute-by-minute history of currency movements over the past six months, and was busy displaying the data in different formats, using a simulation program that Vishal had produced in one of the few moments when he wasn’t busy with the networking and phone systems. She was using this data, which Vishal had persuaded the Katsuyama system to accept as a set of real-time market data, to develop the most advantageous strategies for buying and selling euros, dollars and yen, assuming that she had perfect knowledge of the prices three minutes into the future.
One day she looked up from her screens and called over to Sharpe, her face slightly flushed. “I did it!” she exclaimed.
“Did what?” asked Sharpe. He was on the other side of the room, deep in the throes of a complex official form concerning the number and quality of toilets provided for staff, which apparently had to be filled in and returned to the relevant authorities before trading was able to start.
“I made a million dollars profit in five minutes!” she cried. “That was my goal two days ago. And there was virtually no leverage! Most of it was real money!” Even though she had said “real money”, Meema meant “play money” or “virtual money” that had no existence except in her simulation, as opposed to the “leverage” that allowed her to gamble with far more chips on the table than she could afford in reality. Even though the money she was talking about didn’t actually exist, it was an impressive sum in a very short space of time.
“Bloody hell!” exclaimed Sharpe, taken aback. “If you carry on like that, Kim is going to be able to buy the whole of North Korea, lock, stock and barrel, not just fund a revolution.”
“And Vishal and I will be able to buy the whole hospital, not just get an operation for his sister,” laughed Meema. “You know,” she added more seriously, “that’s actually not a bad idea. We could use the money we make here to set up a hospital in India for this kind of thing and save people there a lot of trouble and expense if they have the sort of problems that Vishal’s sister has.”
The implications of what they were going to do hit Sharpe full force. “You know, until you start talking about things like that, I really had no idea how much power a lot of money could give you, especially when you don’t really want it for yourself.”
“Don’t you?” asked Meema. “Want it for yourself, I mean.”
“Well, I have to say, of course, that I like to be comfortable and it would be nice never have to worry about money for the rest of my life,” replied Sharpe. “But beyond that, no, I don’t really want a lot of money. I mean, you can only fly in one private jet at a time. What about you?”
“Oh, I wish I could say the same as you,” replied Meema. “But I can’t. I want money and all the things it can buy. It comes from having been quite poor when I was a child, I suppose. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want to use it to help other people. But I do want lots and lots of money for me and mine, and I really think we can make that happen.”
“I’ve never thought of you as greedy for money,” said Sharpe. Truth to tell, he was a little disappointed. He’d always thought of Meema as being somehow above that kind of thing, and it was a slight shock to discover these feet of clay.
“Not greedy, Kenneth-san. I just want the best for my child.”
“But…” Sharpe had the feeling he’d missed something.
Meema patted her stomach. “Another seven months or so yet.”
“Oh, congratulations! When did you find out? Have you told Mieko?”
“I found out last Friday, and I told her this morning.”
“What did the proud father say when you told him, then?”
“Oh, he grinned. You know how he is when he gets really pleased? Well, multiply that by a factor of ten or so.”
“Well, that’s wonderful news, Meema.” Sharpe felt a little less censorious about Meema’s sudden lust for wealth now that he knew the circumstances. “You’re feeling all right?” he added, a little worried.
“You mean morning sickness and that sort of thing? Only a little, and not enough to take my mind off the job, if you’re worried about the job, rather than about me.” She smiled, to show that she wasn’t to be taken literally on the last comment.
“No, that’s not what I meant at all,” Sharpe lied.
“By the time things to get a little busy down here,” Meema patted her stomach again, “I think we’ll all be ready to pack up and go home. We’ll have made all the money we want or need.”
“One thing is worrying me, Meema, and it’s nothing to do with you, or what you’ve just told me. If we’re going to do so well at this, won’t we actually have an effect on the prices? I mean, will the bets that we make on the future no longer be true, because our actions will be large enough to affect the movement of the market?”
Meema laughed. “Don’t worry, Kenneth. First thing is, we’re not going to be big enough to affect the market significantly. Do you know how much money gets moved around the money markets each day?”
“Billions of dollars?” Sharpe guessed.
“Trillions of dollars,” Meema corrected him. “A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
Sharpe laughed. “Is that Bill Gates talking?”
“No, it’s me.”
“Pretty good. Maybe we should adopt it as our company slogan. Hang it on the wall or something.”
“And the other thing is that yes, these trades probably would have some effect on the market if they were big enough and sophisticated enough, but I can allow for that. One of the easiest ways would be to leave a three-minute gap between trades to allow the program to absorb the effect of my trades. But there are other strategies I can use. I can do some pretty smart things with short selling some options and exploiting the arbitrage gap between Hong Kong and Tokyo on the yen/euro …”
Sharpe put his hands over his ears. “Spare me the details at this time in the morning,” he groaned in mock dismay. “Some time, I’m probably going to have to ask you to write all this down, but not right now, please.”
“But it’s actually very simple,” explained Meema. “Bring up this chair and have a look.” She tapped a few keys on the keyboard, and brought up three different graphs in different windows on the huge expensive flat-panel screens that Sharpe and Vishal had connected to her computer a few days earlier. “Now. See how the dollar-euro spread is coming along?”
Sharpe leaned over to get a closer look. He couldn’t help but notice that Meema’s blouse was unbuttoned a little lower than usual, exposing more smooth brown skin than was normally visible, and also, as she leaned forward and more came into view, it was obvious that she wasn’t wearing a bra. It was a highly distracting sight, with the
reality somewhat better than his occasional fantasy, and he tried to avert his eyes before she noticed. Much to his embarrassment, he realised that she had been watching, and was obviously enjoying the effect the sight of her breasts was having on him. He switched his eyes to the screen, keeping them fixed there, and gabbled something inconsequential and meaningless about the figures.
She responded by pointing to another part of the second screen on the other side from where he was sitting. Again trying to avoid her eyes, he moved to have a better look. His hand accidentally brushed against Meema’s blouse. She wasn’t sitting there before, he told himself. She moved there so that I would have to touch her. Even so, he started to move his hand away quickly as if it had been burned, and began to apologise.
Much to his surprise, he found Meema’s hand restraining his, and pressing the palm closer to her breast, so that he could feel her nipple through her blouse, rising and stiffening in his hand. It was obvious, even if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes a moment ago, that she wasn’t wearing a bra. The reality of his past fantasies made him distinctly nervous and uncomfortable, and he tried to drag his hand away, but it was clamped in place by Meema’s hand pressing it against her body.
Like many men who have had casual thoughts about adultery with their friends’ wives, Sharpe found that imagination was much more to his taste than putting the idea into practice. It wasn’t that he found Meema unattractive. Exactly the opposite, in fact, as he found his trousers becoming uncomfortably tight. But after all, Vishal, who was both his business partner and Meema’s husband, not to mention the father of the unborn baby, was in the next room, and Mieko (another kind of partner) wasn’t far away. This was far from being any kind of ideal scenario as far as seduction was concerned, quite apart from the whole business of her being pregnant, which to his mind somehow seemed to make it more wrong than it would otherwise be.
Meema moved her beautiful face closer to his and squeezed his hand tighter. “I think we should all be getting to know each other better if we’re going to be working together on this,” she whispered in his ear, and moved her other hand down to rest on his thigh. “Much better,” she added.
“Listen, Meema,” Sharpe said as he moved away, removing her hand from his leg with his free hand as gently as he could. “I know you’re excited about all kinds of things. I know that you’re doing great work for us all. Believe me, I’m as thrilled about it all as you are. But is this the right time for us to be doing this? One new thing at a time,” quietly but firmly disengaging his hand from her breast. “Let’s wait, shall we?” Her face started to become ugly with dismay. “Listen Meema, I like you a lot. An awful lot,” he babbled. “I find you really attractive, honestly, but I don’t want us to be rushing into anything just now, please.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek, not wishing to engage in any more intimate contact. As his lips made contact, he realised that this was actually the first time that he had ever kissed her.
As quickly as the storm-clouds had gathered in Meema’s face, they went away. As if a switch had been thrown, she returned to her businesslike and professional self again and resumed her lecture about the fluctuations in exchange rates as if nothing had happened.
Was it the pregnancy affecting Meema? Or was it the money? Sharpe remembered an old Hollywood film he’d once watched, starring Humphrey Bogart as a down-and-out who went gold prospecting in Mexico, and who lost his mind at the thought of so much wealth in his grasp. Was the same sort of thing happening here?
One thing seemed certain to him, he’d have keep his eyes wide open whenever he was alone with Meema until he was sure that whatever it was had worn off.
-o-
Mieko seemed to be having fun, but in a rather different way. Before her marriage, she’d worked as a personal assistant to the ultra-wealthy president of a shipping company, arranging his business life for him as he travelled round the world, booking his hotels, reserving places at restaurants for his business meals and generally making sure his life ran smoothly. Thankfully, the tendency to arrange other people’s time and activities didn’t spill over too much into her personal life, Sharpe reflected, but she was having fun arranging the sort of things that Sharpe would never have considered, let alone actually put into practice. For example …
“Why are the gas people coming in tomorrow?” Sharpe had just received a telephone call from the town gas company arranging a visit by their installation engineers.
“To arrange the gas supply.”
“Well, I’d guessed that, but don’t we have gas laid on already for the water heater?”
“Yes, but this is for the trading room where Meema is sitting.”
“Are we going to put a gas heater in there? I think the air-conditioner will take care of heating in the winter. Anyway, with all the computer gear in there, I think she’ll be warm enough.”
“No, we’re putting in a gas cooker.”
“In the trading room?”
“Yes, Meema says she thinks best when she’s cooking, so we thought it would be a nice idea to give her a kitchen and make a partition for it in the corner of her office so that she can cook and trade in the same place. We’re putting in a sink and so on as well. I told you about it, remember?” Sharpe had absolutely no memory of it. “Or maybe I forgot to mention it. And it’ll be very convenient for us all if she’s going to be cooking, so don’t look so grouchy. It’s going to be a bit expensive, but don’t worry about it.”
Sharpe groaned inwardly anyway. “You do realise that this will probably be the only foreign exchange brokerage where the head trader cooks kormas and biriyanis while she’s calculating the point spread on the euro-yen rates? And it’s a lot of work to get all this done.”
“Yes, it is a lot of work, but other people are doing it all, and I’ve arranged for them all to come in before you and Vishal get the trading desk completely set up,” said Mieko happily. “Fun, isn’t it?”
“ ‘Mad’ or ‘loony’ are more the words I’d use,” said Sharpe, shaking his head.
Vishal agreed with Sharpe, but pointed out that once Meema had got an idea in her head, it was pretty useless to try and stand in her way. Sharpe, feeling the same was true of Mieko, agreed, and the two men worked on re-designing the layout of the computer room, including extractor fans to protect the computer equipment from the cooking fumes, something that both Mieko and Meema seemed to have forgotten in their enthusiasm for the idea.
“And get one of those plastic covers for the keyboard,” said Sharpe to Mieko. “I don’t want us missing a trade because a cardamom pod has fallen into the keyboard and is stopping the ‘Buy’ key from working.”
But most of Mieko’s time was spent on more mundane things, such as arranging for bank accounts to be opened, which required an officially registered seal with the name of the company on it, which meant first ordering the seal from a supplier, and then traipsing down to the local city hall to get the impression officially registered with the authorities, and then taking the certificate to the bank. It all took time and planning, but Mieko’s unflappable nature helped things get done smoothly, and helped to prevent Sharpe from exploding at random intervals when he was presented with yet another piece of Japanese bureaucracy seemingly designed purely to obstruct honest citizens in the performance of their business.
-o-
Sharpe was in the crowded train on his way home from the new office when he was tapped on the shoulder from behind. Usually this signalled some kind soul picking up something he had dropped, and returning it to him, but not this time.
“Jon?” he exclaimed, none too pleased to see him again after a silence of a few weeks. “What’s a boy like you doing in a nice train like this?” This time, Jon was in his “yuppie trader” outfit and looking very sleek and prosperous.
“Like the proverbial bad penny,” agreed Jon grinning sheepishly. “Surprised?” Obviously some of Sharpe’s displeasure had made itself apparent, even through his thick skin. “I’ve got news for you. A
nd I’m sure you have some news for me. You’ve been keeping awfully quiet recently.”
“I’ve been busy,” replied Sharpe shortly.
“With what?” asked Jon. “No, don’t tell me here. We’ll chat over a friendly jar. Where are you off to now?” He dismissed all Sharpe’s attempts to decline the invitation. “Just phone her up and tell her you’ll be late.” Gripping Sharpe’s elbow firmly, he steered him off the train at the next station, watched over Sharpe while he made his call, and then guided them both into a branch of a chain that produced plastic imitations of English pubs. The place simultaneously managed to remind Sharpe of all the reasons why he no longer lived in England, and to make him feel homesick.
“Pint of Bass for me,” said Jon. “They pull a good pint here. What’s yours?”
“Mojito,” said Sharpe, determined to choose a drink that fitted least with the ambience of the place. He had to explain the drink to the Japanese bartender, who regretted in atrocious English that there was no mint available. “All right then, a bloody gin and tonic, then,” he snapped.
“A Bloody Mary with gin and no vodka?” suggested the bartender.
“No, a gin and tonic,” said Sharpe in Japanese. “And make it a large one.” He was slightly disturbed by the literal way in which this order was taken. What seemed like half a bottle of gin went into the ice-filled pint glass, topped off with a splash of tonic. Watching the performance, Sharpe had the feeling that he would regret this later.
“Cheers,” said Jon, raising his glass, when they were settled at a corner table with their drinks.
Sharpe said nothing, but raised his glass in return. He took a sip. Jesus, it was almost neat gin. He would have to go back and get some more tonic water in there soon.
“Well, let me tell you the good news,” said Jon. “Tim Barclay’s on his merry way back to the UK, and guess who’s taking his place?”