Kate reached across and squeezed my hand.
‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she said. ‘It’s just that Jamie drives me mad. His life seems to have been taken over by Dekker. I sometimes feel like he’s sold his soul to Ricardo.’
‘I know what you mean. Ricardo likes to control the people who work for him. He lets them go about things their own way, but he makes sure their interests are tied up completely with his. But I can understand Jamie’s point of view. He needs to pay for all this.’
‘No, he doesn’t!’ said Kate with surprising forcefulness. ‘We don’t actually need all this. Of course it’s very nice, but we could quite happily live in a small flat in Chiswick. And that stuff about providing for me is crap, too. I had a perfectly good job in a City law firm. I could earn a decent salary again. Of course I want to spend the time with Oliver while he’s young, but I don’t have to.’
I was quiet. I didn’t want to get involved in an argument between Kate and Jamie. Especially when I thought one of them was right and the other wrong.
‘Do you know, he was angry with me for letting you stay here?’ she said.
I shook my head.
‘He said it would look bad at the office. I told him not to be so absurd.’
‘I don’t want to stay if – ’
‘You stay,’ said Kate firmly, her eyes blazing. I was surprised. Kate was normally calm, unflappable. I had never seen her so worked up as in the last twelve hours.
The shock must have shown in my face. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, with a slight smile. ‘Jamie wants you here too. I think he realized he was being stupid.’
She took a sip of her coffee, and stared out towards the hill behind the garden. ‘He’s changing, you know.’
I didn’t answer at first. I didn’t want to talk too deeply about Jamie with Kate. But, then, she clearly needed to talk to someone about him. So I stepped delicately into the minefield.
‘Is he?’
Kate shot me a glance. She sensed my reluctance to talk, but went on regardless. ‘You remember him at university. He never took anything too seriously. He was always fun, he was always kind, he was always, well, affectionate. And afterwards, too. He was great when my father died.’
I remembered when Kate’s father had been killed in a car crash. She had been devastated. Jamie had done all that could be expected of a husband, and done it very well. He seemed to know exactly when to cheer her up, and when to let her be alone.
‘He’s always been a good friend to me,’ I said. ‘He got me the job at Dekker, didn’t he? I know that didn’t work out too well, but he stuck his neck out for me.’
‘Yes, he did.’ Kate smiled briefly, but she still wore a frown. ‘But what about Oliver? When he was born, Jamie was wonderful. And now he hardly ever sees him.’
‘He doesn’t have any choice, Kate. I’ve been inside Dekker. You have to work hard, ridiculously hard. Jamie spends no more time there than anyone else. In fact he probably spends less.’
‘But why does he have to work there in the first place? After all it’s done to you. After all it’s doing to him.’
There was a note of anguish in Kate’s voice. I knew the answer. I had played rugby with Jamie. He was one of the most competitive people I had ever come across. And he never gave up. If he had decided to make his fortune at Dekker, there was nothing that Kate or I could do to change his mind.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I really admire what you did.’
‘What? You mean resigning?’
She nodded, looking straight ahead, her coffee mug half an inch from her lips.
‘I had to. I didn’t have any choice.’
‘That’s what I mean.’
She turned to me and smiled her warm friendly smile. The sun shone off her short brown hair. She was wearing a white T-shirt and a long cotton skirt, light summer clothes that gently rested on the soft roundness of her body.
Jamie didn’t deserve her.
So I stayed with Kate and Jamie. I spent a couple of days sorting out my flat. This involved talking to letting agents, getting a plumber in to fix the boiler, tidying up, packing, and hiring a van for a morning to move my stuff, eighty per cent of which was books. The agents were optimistic that they would find a tenant at a rent that would almost cover the mortgage.
I began work again on my thesis. I had thought that resurrecting the missing chapters would be desperately tedious, but actually it wasn’t. I could remember quite well what I had written, and although I needed to dig around in my notes a lot, even that I enjoyed. And the thesis was taking better shape second time round. But I hadn’t made adequate notes of all the references I needed. For these I would have to spend a couple of days at the School of Russian Studies’ library in London. Most of the rest I could do from Dockenbush Farm.
It was a very pleasant place to work, especially in May. There was a guest room at the top of the house. I fixed up a table and chair in front of the window, which supported the brand new Apple Mac I had bought in anticipation of insurance money. The view was over the top of the apple trees to a couple of fields of young barley and a low wooded hill beyond. It was idyllic. I worked a full day, eight till eight, with an hour off for lunch with Kate and Oliver. I was able to throw myself into Pushkin’s world and forget my own. Ricardo, Eduardo and Dekker were still there, but they seemed a long way away.
The only reminder was Jamie, who brought with him the smell of Dekker as he returned each evening. It soon wore off: he didn’t want to talk about it; neither did Kate nor I. The atmosphere in the house had improved since their argument on my arrival. We had fun in the evenings: we stayed up late drinking and talking. It felt almost like a holiday.
I phoned the police station in Kentish Town to see how they were getting on in solving Crime Number 1521634/E. I wasn’t surprised to hear that they had got nowhere. None of the stolen goods had turned up. They had interviewed Eduardo, who had denied all knowledge of the burglary, and they had been unable to find any connection between him and it, apart from my suspicions.
I thought intermittently about Isabel, rather than constantly. I felt guilty about this, although I realized it was probably a good thing. Because when I did think of her, I felt anxious, guilty, worried, uncertain, angry. We had spent so few days truly together, and it had been so far away. I kept on asking myself whether the relationship would have worked, and I kept on telling myself it would. Very well. And then I got angry that I’d been prevented from finding out.
I phoned Luís to see if there was any news. He was pleased to hear from me. He said he had introduced KBN, a large Dutch bank with good Brazilian connections, to Humberto Alves, and suggested they talk about favela financing. It would take a couple of months to resurrect the deal, but Humberto was confident something would come out of it. I was glad Ricardo hadn’t been enraged for nothing.
‘No news of Isabel?’ I asked.
There was a heavy silence. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’
‘Have the police found anything yet?’
‘No.’ He paused. I let the silence hang there. ‘She’s still alive, you know. They haven’t found a body yet. If she was dead, they would have found her. I know she’s alive. I can feel it.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ I said. And I had to believe he was.
One evening, in my second week at Dockenbush Farm, Dekker intruded. Jamie was tense when he returned home, and this time the tension didn’t leave after the first glass of wine. It was time for our taboo to be broken.
‘What’s up?’ asked Kate.
‘Things aren’t good at work.’
‘What is it?’
Jamie glanced at me. ‘Nick’ll probably love this. I think we’ve got big problems. The market’s been in free-fall all last week, and it looks like it’s continuing this week.’
‘What happened?’ I asked. I had deliberately stopped reading the Latin American news in the papers.
‘Mexico is up shit creek. Banks are going bust all
over the place, the government has a huge debt-refinancing burden to deal with this year, and everyone’s scared.’
‘And Dekker is still long that two billion Mexican deal they led last month?’
‘Yes, that, and a lot more besides. Mexico is off twenty points and Ricardo keeps buying more. You see, his theory is that the US bailed out Mexico in nineteen ninety-five, and they’ll do it again. As far as he’s concerned, it’s a great opportunity to buy into a panic at the bottom. He’s got extra funding from Chalmet, you know, the Swiss bank that owns twenty-nine per cent of us. We have enough Mexican paper to fill the entire Canary Wharf tower.’
‘Exactly how much is that?’
Jamie winced. ‘We’re long four billion of Mexico, and two billion of other stuff.’
‘Jesus! What happened? Is Ricardo losing his nerve?’
‘Ricardo isn’t. The US Congress is. Have you heard of the Pinnock Bill?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a new piece of legislation that will require Congress to approve any emergency-aid package above a certain size. It’s specifically designed to prevent the US government bailing out Mexico again.’
‘Will it get through? Won’t the President veto it?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. There are deals within deals to be done on this one. Let’s just say that it has made Mexico’s situation more uncertain. Some of the Bradys are down in the thirties.’
Whew! I remembered they were trading in the sixties and seventies a month before. ‘So, no bonus this year?’
Jamie sighed. ‘It’s worse than that. Our capital was one and a half billion dollars at the beginning of this year. At today’s prices our losses are bigger than that now. Technically we’re insolvent. Of course, all the losses are unrealized. And no one outside the group knows about it, not even Lord Kerton. There’s still a chance that the market can bail us out. But until then, we’re relying on money from Chalmet and creative accounting.’
Jamie was right. I was pleased. But I did my best not to show it. He was worried. He didn’t want Dekker to disappear before he had received his first truly fat bonus.
But when I sat down to work the next morning, I found I couldn’t concentrate. The notes that had so absorbed me yesterday now lay spread out on the desk in front of me. My eyes were drawn to the window, and the apple trees below.
So Dekker were in deep shit? Great! My only regret was that I hadn’t put them there. I did feel slightly sorry for Jamie and some of the others who stood to lose their bonuses after all the work they had put in to get them. But Jamie was lucky enough to have Kate. What did he want with all that money?
Dekker would probably wriggle out somehow. Prices of Mexican bonds would bounce. Who knows, maybe Dekker would end up making a fortune instead of losing it? But right now they were weak, vulnerable. If I wanted my revenge, now was the time.
And I did want revenge. Ricardo and his brother had destroyed my career, stolen my thesis, beaten me up and forced me out of my flat, all with apparent impunity. The arrogance of it rankled. I couldn’t let them get away with it. What had Ricardo said? ‘If you’re not with me, you’re against me.’ Well, I was against him all right.
But what could I do?
I remembered Kate suggesting Jamie should get a job at Bloomfield Weiss. That would annoy Ricardo a little, true. But he wouldn’t much care if I joined them. Not that they’d have me, with my experience in finance stretching to less than two months.
Wait a moment. I’d got it. It seemed absurd at first, but the more I thought about it the more sense it made. I pushed Pushkin to one side, and scribbled thoughts down on a clean sheet of paper, smiling broadly to myself.
I would need some luck. But, if I pulled this off, Dekker was finished. And I would be responsible.
24
That afternoon, I asked Kate if she minded whether I made a couple of international calls. She didn’t. I started off with International Directory Enquiries for Bloomfield Weiss’s number in New York. Then the Bloomfield Weiss switchboard for the name of their chairman and the number of his office. Then the chairman’s office itself.
It turned out Sidney Stahl was in London. What luck! I got the London number from his secretary in New York. I tried that.
‘Mr Wolpin’s office,’ a woman’s voice answered.
‘Can I speak to Mr Stahl? I believe he’s in London.’
‘He certainly is. But he’s in a meeting with Mr Wolpin at the moment. Who’s speaking?’
‘Nick Elliot. From Dekker Ward.’
‘Can anyone else help you, Mr Elliot? I think Mr Stahl will be tied up for a while.’
I was being screened out. Unsurprising.
‘No, I need to talk to Mr Stahl myself. Can you tell him it’s about Dekker Ward’s losses on their Mexican position. And can you tell him I’m calling in an unofficial capacity. I’ll give you my number.’ I gave her Kate and Jamie’s.
‘Certainly, Mr Elliot. I’ll tell him,’ said the woman, managing to carry the suggestion that there was not a chance in hell that Mr Stahl would call me back. I had considered going to Bloomfield Weiss through Jamie’s friend Stephen Troughton, but after some thought, I’d rejected that idea. I didn’t trust him, and I would quickly have lost control of events. Much better to hold out for direct access to the top man.
I sat by the phone in the sitting room, reading the newspaper. Kate was in the garden playing with Oliver. She breezed past to get him a drink. ‘Taking a break?’ she asked, with a hint of surprise. I never usually took a break for more than ten minutes or so at a time.
‘I’ve just finished a chapter,’ I said. ‘I’m rewarding myself with the newspaper.’
I was half-way through the sports section when the phone rang. I grabbed it.
‘May I speak with Nick Elliot?’ said a quiet young American voice.
‘Speaking.’
‘This is Preston Morris. I work with Mr Stahl. I believe you called him earlier.’
I looked around. Kate was still in the garden ‘I need to speak to Mr Stahl personally,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible today, sir. Perhaps I can help?’
The screening was in full working order.
‘OK. Listen. I’m a former employee of Dekker Ward. I have details of their recent losses in emerging-markets trading and a suggestion to make. I’d like to discuss it with Mr Stahl tomorrow. It’ll only take fifteen minutes. If he doesn’t like what he hears, he can throw me out.’
‘I’ll check with Sidney and call you back.’
I tried to stay closer to the phone than Kate all afternoon, but didn’t quite manage it. At last, just after six, it rang. Despite my efforts, she got to it first. ‘Preston Morris,’ she said, handing the receiver over to me. She watched as I agreed to a meeting at nine forty-five the following morning.
‘What was that all about?’ she asked.
‘Oh, just someone who wanted to see me,’ I answered.
‘Sounded like a banker to me.’
‘Do you think so? I’ll tell him that,’ I said, as I drifted out of the room, feeling Kate’s puzzled gaze on my back.
Bloomfield Weiss’s offices were in Broadgate, a modern complex of brown marble offices behind Liverpool Street station. I negotiated security guards, reception and secretary, before being directed to a sofa outside a closed door. As I was waiting, I remembered Isabel and my visits to Humberto Alves’s office. I smiled as I recalled the going over she had given him for awarding Bloomfield Weiss the mandate for the favela deal. I would need all her audacity if I was going to pull this off. I felt almost that she was there with me, and I resolved not to let her down.
After half an hour, the door opened and a small, birdlike man in a white shirt and braces came out. He took me in in an instant, and wasn’t impressed. I could almost see him deciding there and then that this was going to take five minutes, not fifteen.
He held out a hand, ‘Sidney Stahl. Come in,’ and he ushered me into a large plush office
with a huge desk and a suite of cream sofas and chairs. Two men, who had been perched on the edge of a sofa, stood up. One young, tall and preppy, one older and more world-weary. Stahl waved towards them. ‘My assistant Preston Morris, who I believe you’ve already spoken with, and Cy Wolpin who heads our emerging-markets unit in London.’
We shook hands briefly. Stahl’s voice was rough New York. He really was very small, scarcely taller than five feet, and he can’t have weighed more than nine stone. He seemed dwarfed by the two men next to him, but you could tell he was the boss. They stood back from him, giving him space, as though they were uncomfortable looking down on him.
‘What can we do for you, Mr Elliot?’ Stahl sat down, and the others took their cue from him, as did I. Stahl’s eyes looked my way, but they weren’t focused. He was thinking of his last meeting, or his next.
I came straight to the point. ‘I worked for Dekker Ward for just over a month. I left a couple of weeks ago.’ So what? said Stahl’s face. ‘I happen to know that Dekker have taken on huge positions in Mexican bonds over the last few weeks.’
‘The whole market knows that,’ said Cy Wolpin. ‘Dekker did that Mexican deal that bombed, and they’ve been buying back bonds ever since.’
I ignored him. I had got half of Stahl’s attention. His eyes were at least focused, and pointed in my direction. ‘Dekker’s positions are much bigger than that. They own four billion dollars of Mexico paper, and two billion of other stuff. Their losses on these positions are so great that they’re technically insolvent. They’re relying on funding from their Swiss shareholder, Chalmet, to keep them afloat.’
Now I had them. ‘Go on,’ said Stahl.
‘Well, I know that Bloomfield Weiss want to expand into emerging markets. And everyone knows that that’s Dekker’s market. So my suggestion is that Bloomfield Weiss acquire Dekker. Then it will be your market, not theirs.’
Stahl laughed. It was a kind of extended cackle that worked its way up through lungs thickly coated with mucus or tar. The other two men’s expressions instantly switched from scornful seriousness to mild amusement.
The Marketmaker Page 25