“This is a bit of an illiquid one, Jim,” said Kitson. “It’ll be hellish to get you out.”
“Don’t worry,” said Jim. “It’ll give me something to do.”
“Right you are,” said Kitson. “I’ll winkle out as much stock as possible without moving the price, but it’ll take time.”
“Get as much as you can over the next two weeks. It could blow up pretty fast.”
“I think I should perhaps pay the mine a visit,” said Kitson. “I know you’ll probably scoff but it’s always a good idea to see these things.”
“OK,” said Jim, “but first get the stock.”
“I’ll start right away.”
Baz didn’t like the price of his stock to start misbehaving. It had to go up and down when and if he decided it should. When he made it go up with his news announcements he sold through his fronts, and when it went down, he bought the shares back. It was a slow rollercoaster ride, which he controlled, that pumped his accounts full of money.
Greedy speculators were compulsive gamblers hooked on blowing their hard-earned wealth on the search for a get-rich-quick scheme that usually ended in the reverse. But there was no putting them off. With all the advice against it, and often years of painful experience in getting skinned alive on similar exploits, they kept coming back for more. Like all abusive relationships, the story was powered by an unfathomable love of pain and misery.
Baz was the master of this financial S&M scene and he didn’t like it when something gatecrashed his private dungeon.
Ralph was on the phone: the market-makers – who were essentially share wholesalers – had been on to him looking for a supply of Barron stock. Baz was in a quandary: he had hoped to hoover up a lot of stock at these levels, having sold a bundle of them when the share price had rocketed at flotation, but now someone else was wielding the vacuum-cleaner. He didn’t want any big shareholders in the picture: they might end up being awkward. They might even be able to set the dogs on him.
He could let the buyer run the price up or lose interest, or he could drop stock on him, knowing that in any event the price would be zero sooner or later. It was a question of a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush. It looked as if this buyer was interested in at least a million or two, and if he sold them to him through one of his fronts he’d be that much better off, come what may. “Tell them I can find shares at the float price,” said Baz.
“OK,” said Ralph. He understood that Baz would sell high and buy low, not the other way around. Whoever was buying would be shaken out soon enough, and when he was he’d dump his stock cheap and Baz would buy it. Then when the stock shot up Baz would sell it again.
Kitson had the bank’s market-maker sit on the bid – they made it known that they wanted stock, and as the days passed, they pushed the price around to entice owners to come out and sell to them. In fits and starts the price rose, punctuated with sharp falls when the bank’s market-maker fell away, as if their order had been satisfied. This was the kind of game they played when they were trying to fill big orders and it was the kind of action Baz got up to himself when he was ramping or crashing the price. Nothing made people want to buy a stock more than a rising price, and nothing made them want to sell it more than when it fell, so as the price ran up the speculators piled in, only to pile out as the price fell. Speculators were financially suicidal, and the professionals took advantage of that.
The price jumped from 60p to 75p and the stock exchange was on to Ralph. He had to get hold of Baz to ask whether something was happening with Barron.
Baz laughed. “Well, we’ll have to make an announcement that the company knows of no reason for the share-price rise. Funny how the exchange never calls when it falls.” He laughed again. “It tells you all you need to know about what they think is normal and what they think is strange.”
“OK,” said Ralph. “We’ll get that done.”
The announcement caused disappointment among the speculators. The price dipped and the disillusioned sold. Then it picked up again. At 90p there was a sudden spike of selling. A lot of the pre-and pre-pre-IPO investors decided it was time to book some profit after their hair-raising ride: they knew that, at 100p, a lot of buyers at the IPO price would sell out on the basis that they had made their losses back. At 95p Kitson had got Jim up to his 10 per cent shareholding. The broker had had fun. It wasn’t often he was called on to buy at the small-cap end of the market and it reminded him of his young days when shares were still traded on the floor by men with top hats. The small-cap market was still delightfully archaic and occasionally he hankered for the old ways, with real people gossiping in a colourful financial bazaar with “blue buttons”, “jobbers” and “commission” men running around. The computer had done for all that.
*
Leviathan was a 410-foot yacht with a helipad and enough telemetry on the bridge roof to keep a destroyer informed across most of the electromagnetic spectrum. When Jim had asked Stafford to charter him a yacht for a couple of weeks, he hadn’t expected him to book the biggest on the planet. He didn’t want to query it, though, because he was going to take his butler’s goddaughter away for two weeks of wild abandon. The thought of spending £100,000 a day on a boat that looked more like a cruise liner than a pleasure boat had made him want to laugh. Money meant nothing to him any more. “Why not? Don’t they make a bigger one?”
“I’m sure one could be built for you, sir,” observed Stafford.
For a split second Jim had been tempted.
Tulip looked the part. She was a beautiful mermaid in black sunglasses, and was quite at home on the giant ship. She might have been a princess with several of her own.
He sat under a canopy on the top deck with a beer in one hand and a mouse in the other. He was bored out of his skull. Tulip, however, seemed to be intensely occupied, lying naked in the sun for hours, baking herself.
There was a certain amount of fun to be had from being gawped at when he was pulling into harbour or anchoring in a bay, but Jim soon decided it was much less fun than staying in a hotel. But Tulip seemed to be having a great time and that was reason enough to sit, at vast expense, on an empty boat doing nothing for a couple of weeks except having wanton sex. Life had certainly treated him worse.
Thank God, he thought, when the phone rang.
It was Kitson. “We have your ten per cent,” he said, as if he had apprehended a dangerous criminal.
“Good work,” said Jim.
“It was on the expensive side, at an average 82p.”
“That’s OK,” said Jim. “If you see 400p, get on to me about selling.”
“I most certainly will. There’s one thing I’d like to add. I really do think I should visit the mine now, first, so I can find out more for you, and second, so that I can potentially recommend it to some of my other clients. I shall take the cost from my commission.”
“That’s fine by me,” said Jim. “Where is it?”
“In the western Congo basin, out by Rwanda.”
“Right,” said Jim. “Sounds nice.”
“Well, it’s not known for that but I’m sure it’ll be fascinating. There’ll be an announcement tomorrow about your holding at the stock exchange.”
“Whatever. When are you off?”
“I’ll get in touch with the firm and then we’ll see.”
Jim had an idea. “Why don’t you fly the management down to see me here? I’m on a boat off Sardinia. It’s only a hop and a skip on my jet. I’ll send it for you.”
“What an appealing idea,” said Kitson. “I’ll revert.”
On the yacht, if it could have been made with cloth it was done in leather. If it should have been made of leather it was silk. If it might have been chipboard, it was mahogany. Steel was brass, and brass was gold.
Jim tried to come to terms with why you would dip so much money in brine but had to admit to himself that if you had big money, as he did, and you planned to spend it, this was the route you had to take. If someone w
ith a net worth of half a million would happily buy a £50,000 car, then a £30–40 million boat was about right for a man with a billion or two.
In fact, it was a trifle, because after the first few millions the rest of the money was effectively disposable.
He was determined to seek Davas’s advice when he got home. Without material worries he felt disembodied somehow, a ghost in the real world.
Tulip was lying face down on the white silk sheet, reading. The light gave her skin a reddish hue. He ran a finger up her back and she rolled from side to side letting out little squeals. “Do you think this is the biggest yacht there is?” she wondered.
“I don’t know,” said Jim. “Normally you can be sure that, however big something is, there’s always a bigger one.”
“Think of the fun you could have on the world’s biggest yacht.” Her hand was resting on her curvaceous hip, her arm like a giant shark’s fin.
“We’re going to need a bigger boat,” he said. Where had he heard that line before?
“Fuck me, that’s a big boat,” said Baz, to Ralph and Kitson, as the helicopter swung round to land on Leviathan.
“Rather nice,” said Kitson.
“So, our new shareholder is seriously minted – I mean not just jet minted but super-yacht minted.”
Kitson didn’t reply, he just smiled and nodded.
Fuck, thought Baz, that’s not good. He looked at Ralph, who was sweating with the motion sickness the helicopter was causing. “His real name’s not Evanovich, is it?” He laughed, but inside he was hoping someone nasty wasn’t lying in wait behind the scenes.
Kitson smiled and didn’t reply.
Ralph was thinking there were two sorts of super-rich people: those who would skin you for a penny and those who didn’t give a damn about losing the odd million. It would be inconvenient if Evans was of the former persuasion.
“Bit of a mystery man,” said Baz, for the umpteenth time.
Kitson nodded again as they swung into land.
Fucking bulge bracket banks, thought Baz, so fucking smug.
Ralph looked as if he was going to throw up if the pilot didn’t land soon on the pad at the prow of the boat.
Jim had decided to play it cool, like a Bond villain, and waited on the upper sun deck under a canopy, surfing the markets on his Alienware notebook.
The chief steward met the party at the helipad and took them along the side of the ship, then brought his guests up to him.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” said Jim, continuing to stare at his screen. “I’ve been expecting you.”
The steward stepped in. “Can I fetch you something to drink?”
“I’ll have a beer,” said Baz.
“Glass of white wine,” said Kitson.
“Me too,” said Ralph.
“A martini for me,” said Jim.
The steward vanished.
Kitson introduced Baz and Ralph, and as he did so, Tulip walked past them, dressed in a silk wrap. She ruffled Jim’s hair but didn’t say a word.
Kitson’s mouth was still open although he’d finished speaking some time ago.
Baz was looking at Jim keenly. With his Cockney voice he was way too young to have this kind of money. If he had sounded like a scion of some big family fortune, Baz would have understood that some waster was blowing the family silver. This kid was not only a complete unknown but also an aberration.
The moment Baz had seen the stock-exchange announcement that a James Evans had bought more than three per cent of Barron at a stupid price, he had put a firm of top-notch investigators on his trail. They had come up with nothing. It didn’t help that James Evans was hardly an uncommon name, but even so, someone with this kind of cash should have come out in highlighter. Instead there was a plethora of James Evanses and not one that fitted the picture. He wished he had the dossier in front of him now so he could check it again.
“Lovely ship,” he said.
“Yeah,” agreed Jim.
“If you don’t mind,” said Baz, “how much does one of these cost?”
“Don’t know,” said Jim. “I’m just chartering it for a couple of weeks.”
“If it flies, floats or fucks, rent it, eh?” said Baz.
Ralph winced.
“One out of three anyway,” said Jim.
“Like your thinking,” Baz responded.
The steward laid out the drinks. Baz picked up his beer. “Welcome on board, if you will, the good ship Barron Mining.” They clinked glasses. “You’ve made a very shrewd investment. Can I ask you what got you interested?”
“Technicals,” said Jim. “I like the chart.”
“Really?” said Baz. “I didn’t think we had much of a chart. We’ve only been listed for a few weeks.”
“Looks pretty good to me,” said Jim.
“Well, great,” said Baz, “and now you’d like to know more.”
Kitson broke in, “Yes I certainly would.” He was worried that Jim would say no, in his technical-trader arrogance.
“Well,” said Baz, “as long as you can’t remember what I’m about to tell you, you can’t be an insider.”
“I don’t want to be inside,” said Jim.
“Don’t worry,” said Kitson, screwing up his eyes and smiling. “Baz won’t make you inside. Will you?”
“No, mate,” said Baz, “couldn’t possibly.”
Ralph drank some of his wine.
“OK,” continued Baz, “there’s good news and bad news.”
“What’s the bad?” said Kitson.
Baz clucked. “The drilling for cobalt’s not going well. It’s slower than we’d like and it’s not turning up trumps as we hoped. We might be a busted flush on the cobalt data.”
With a bit of luck Evans would be bailing out of the stock he’d bought as soon as they took off from the helipad. “There’s cobalt there, all right, but the deposit is shallow, and at a lot lower grade than we had expected. It’s not looking commercial. On top of that, we’ve blown a lot of our money drilling the bores. Pretty much everything that could go wrong has.”
Jim nodded. “What’s the good news?”
“We’ve come up with some kimberlites, three to be exact. They might be diamond bearing.’
“Only about one in a hundred kimberlites contains diamonds,” said Kitson.
Ralph nodded. “Yes,” he said, “but this is a very fruitful area for diamonds so we’re hopeful.”
“And that’s why your price crashed, right” said Jim.
“Maybe,” said Baz, “but we haven’t announced the cobalt news yet. It’s still not certain that we’re bombed out on cobalt. We’re going to exhaust all possibilities. You never know.”
“How did the news get out?” asked Jim.
“Fucking drillers,” said Baz, looking mournful for about two seconds.
“So what you’re saying,” interjected Kitson, “is that your mine is dry and there’s a tiny chance you may have diamonds.”
“Yeah,” said Baz, “that’s about it. But we’ve got forty square miles of property in some of the richest mineral land on earth so something might still turn up.”
“Sounds pretty hopeless,” said Kitson.
Baz looked down at the table. “We’ll come up with something,” he said, “you mark my words. We’re still very hopeful.” The price of Barron would be 30p within days, he thought, and he’d buy back all the stock at the price he’d planned all along.
“Good,” said Jim. “I’m sure you’re right.”
“Thanks,” said Baz, suddenly confused.
“I’m tempted to buy some more,” said Jim. “Do you know anyone who wants to sell?”
“No,” said Baz, rather too sharply. “We don’t keep track of the stock that closely.”
“What about you Ralph? You’re the broker.”
Ralph grimaced. “I can look into it.”
Jim caught the eye of the steward, who was standing well back. “Another round, please.”
“I’d like to v
isit the property,” interjected Kitson.
“Really?” said Baz, squirming. “It really is in the arse of nowhere, mate.”
“I know,” said Kitson. “I used to know Zaïre well under Mobutu.”
“Oh, right,” said Baz. He laughed. “Well, sure, come on down.” Shit.
“Changing the subject a bit,” he went on, “can I ask you a personal question, Jim?”
“Go ahead,” said Jim.
“What kind of business is it that allows a young guy like you to afford all this?”
Jim wanted to say, “Drugs and guns,” so he did.
Baz went red and Ralph went white.
Jim laughed. “Only joking.”
“Ker, ker, ker,” laughed Baz, “good one.” He fixed Jim with a stare. “So, go on, what do you do?”
“I’m a trader.”
“What do you trade?”
“Anything that moves.”
18
Four hours later Kitson was on the phone to Jim from London. “Jim, I’m afraid, in my opinion, you’ve bought a lot of valueless stock.”
“Could be,” said Jim, his flambé cherries getting cold, “but the chart says it’ll go to a fiver maybe even thirty quid.”
“That’s insane,” said Kitson, his voice in a higher register than normal, “and I mean that, with due respect.”
“I can afford the mistake,”
“I know,” said Kitson, “and I don’t doubt your abilities to read the charts but, even so, this is such a simple example of a dud mining promotion I can’t entertain anything but the gravest of doubts.”
“Don’t bother yourself,” said Jim. “It’s OK. If it goes to a fiver sell it, if it goes tits up forget it.”
“Well, I’m going to take a look. If it’s as good as you think, I’d be a fool not to fill my own and my clients’ boots. So I’m going to take a look for both of us.”
“Cool,” said Jim. “I might come along.”
“I shouldn’t,” said Kitson. “There really isn’t much to recommend it unless you like boiling heat, hundred per cent humidity, terrible food and no amenities. If it was, say, Mozambique I’d encourage you, but in this instance I positively recommend against it.”
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