Dave Hart Omnibus

by David Charters

  ‘And besides, we’ll cover it from what we’ll save by not having a Head of Premises.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Some guy called Skelton. Bad guy.’ I draw my forefinger symbolically across my throat. ‘He’s toast. Had him black-bagged this morning.’ They shrug indifferently. Survival Rule Number One for pond life: don’t attract the attention of a predator. Especially a great white. ‘Anyway, it’s great PR.’

  Two Livers frowns and stares out the window, leaving Paul to take up the cudgel. ‘Dave, exactly what PR benefits are you talking about?’

  ‘The PR. It shows how kind we are. Well, how kind I am. With the bank’s money.’ I grin, hoping they’ll join in, but they don’t.

  ‘But Dave, it’s Africa. No one cares. People really couldn’t give a shit.’

  He’s right. If it was something serious, like the search for drugs to cure obesity, or male-pattern hair loss, we’d throw billions at it. But Africa? That’s when some disconnected circuits in my brain spark briefly back to life.

  ‘Oh, yes – that’s the other thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’ve decided to save Africa.’

  * * *

  TO GIVE them due credit, it takes a couple of hours to bring Paul and Two Livers round. Africa is a basket case. In fact much of it is so bad it could give basket cases a bad name. But that’s the opportunity. Everyone’s written it off, yet there are hundreds of billions to be made out of vast mineral wealth, agri-business, real estate and tourism, to name but a few. The problem is that most firms that could invest in Africa consign it to the ‘too difficult’ tray – there are plenty of easier places in the world to make money, where you don’t get shot or robbed or have the local bully-boys (I mean governments) running extortion rackets (I mean seeking participation in your business).

  If only the place could be developed in a fair, transparent way, without most of the upside going to line the pockets of the ruling elite or being siphoned off in some sweetheart deal by bad foreign governments, rogue businessmen or Evil Empire multi-nationals, all the good guys could get involved – like our corporate clients – and think how much a firm like Grossbank could earn out of that.

  That’s where my plan comes in. If you really want to change something, you need to start at the top, with the guys in charge. In Africa the ruling elite, like ruling elites everywhere, like to squirrel their money away. That’s where private bankers come in. Private bankers look after the money of the rich and the super-rich, politicians, businessmen, the famous and the infamous, offering discreet, private, confidential service away from the prying eyes of the great unwashed who might otherwise think they should get a slice, and certainly a long way from the regulators and the little people who make their living making sure other people pay their taxes.

  If the investment banker is the social and intellectual superior of the commercial banker, the private banker is a breed apart: socially smooth and charming, well connected, mostly from old-established families, private bankers privately ooze venality and cunning. These guys have such a total lack of ethics that they make investment bankers and hedge fund managers look like paragons of moral virtue. Naturally, Grossbank has one of the biggest private banking operations in the world.

  The US military used to say of ‘hearts and minds’ campaigns intended to win the support of indigenous peoples, forget the hearts and minds – just grab them by the balls. Grab a man’s balls and pull them wherever it is you want him to go, and he will follow, because he will always want to go everywhere his balls go. Well, I can’t squeeze these guys by the balls. I don’t have the power to do that. But I have something even more effective. I’m going to squeeze them by the wallet. And when they smile and say ‘Yes, Dave’, the Grossbank legions will pile into Africa. We’re going to finance mining projects, oil and gas, ranching, real estate, hotels, you name it, and we’re going to do it in the places that have been written off. With their support, with them actually holding the door open for us.

  We’ll make billions, and it definitely won’t be boring.

  Two hours after I start, even I’m amazed by my sheer audacity and brilliance. Two Livers isn’t so sure it will work, and we agree to our usual bet. If I win, I get a blow job. If she wins, she gets to give me a blow job. It’s the sort of bet you only get to place if you’re the Boss of bosses.

  * * *

  I’M BACK in Frankfurt, in my office on the fifty-fourth floor of the Grossbank Tower, staring at the elephant in formaldehyde, which seems to be staring back at me, possibly a little resentfully, which given our relative situations in life is understandable.

  Whenever I visit the Fatherland, the Meat Factory get to carry real guns. It’s something to do with German firearms laws, and the fact that in the past other large German banks have had their top people murdered by whackos. So today I’m sitting at my desk playing with a Walther PPK that normally sits in an ankle holster around Scary Andy’s meaty lower leg. He doesn’t like me playing with it, and has thoughtfully removed the bullets, since he seems to have some kind of aversion to his enthusiastically amateur boss playing with real weapons.

  A low chiming sound comes from a discreetly concealed speaker, and I hit the intercom button and say ‘Enter’. Then I turn my chair around so I’m facing away from the door and looking out over the Frankfurt skyline. Behind me I hear the thick oak doors swing open and footsteps getting closer. I wait until they have covered roughly three quarters of the distance to my desk before saying, half to myself, ‘Damn, this is a good weapon. But I need to fire some live rounds. I need to shoot someone. Who the hell can I shoot?’

  Right on cue, I hear a discreet cough behind me, and spin the chair around, pointing the gun at an early fifties, fit-looking, tall guy in a conservative suit with silver grey hair and a too perfect suntan. His name is Neumann – ‘New Man’ – after his father, who was one of countless Germans who found themselves in 1945 lining up to be circumcised, prior to shipping out to Argentina with their brand new names and brand new passports, claiming their families were wiped out by the Nazis and how all they were seeking was a new start. Gerhard Neumann is head of private banking at Grossbank, and he’s meeting me today for the first time.

  When he finds himself staring at the little black hole at the end of the barrel of the Walther he jumps. I pull the trigger.

  ‘Click.’

  For a moment he stops breathing and turns deathly pale. I imagine brown adrenaline running freely down his legs beneath his perfectly pressed trousers. I smile.

  ‘Just joking.’

  He lets out a huge sigh and when I indicate he should sit down, he flops into a large, low armchair, still staring at the empty revolver in my hand. I place it on the table and get up.

  ‘Doktor Neumann, how very good to meet you at last. I’ve heard so much about you.’

  He goes to stand up to shake my outstretched hand, but I wave him back down in his seat, lean over in my friendliest fashion and give him a big two-handed welcome to my lair. ‘Have you met Fritz?’

  ‘Fritz?’

  I wave across to the elephant, which seems to be staring at us both. It has the sort of eyes that follow you around the room. Or maybe I’m just getting paranoid.

  ‘N – nein. I mean, no.’

  He seems really freaked out. I wonder if he actually thought I’d shoot him. I walk around behind his armchair, out of sight, then lean in suddenly so that my face is inches from his, and whisper so he can feel my breath on his cheek.

  ‘Coffee?’

  The effect is almost as electrifying as the gun. He jumps and stutters, ‘Y – yes, please.’

  ‘Good.’ I smile, and lean in even closer. ‘Me too. It’s over there on the side. I take mine black.’ I get up and walk back to my chair, sit down and watch as he scurries off to pour us a couple of coffees, then brings them back, cups rattling in the saucers in the most gratifying way as his nerves reveal him.

  He’s ready.

&n
bsp; ‘Doktor Neumann, I’ve been having some thoughts about the next private banking conference for super high net worth individuals.’ He looks perplexed. This is his area, and he isn’t used to the Chairman getting involved. Especially a Chairman like me. ‘I believe you call them ‘Rich Weekends’, unless I’m mistaken?’

  He shrugs noncommittally. ‘We try to provide our clients with the service they require.’

  It’s true. The rich are increasingly common, and not just because there are more of them. If they want fawning private bankers paying homage to them over a long weekend away, then that’s what they’ll get – for a price.

  ‘I think the next one’s in Monte Carlo next month, if my information is correct.’ He nods guardedly. ‘I have in mind something rather novel. I want to give it a theme. An African theme.’

  ‘Africa?’ Smooth as he is, he can’t hide his scepticism.

  ‘We look after a lot of African money.’ I have some papers on my desk, positioned so that he can’t actually see them. I can see him staring at them, wondering what they are – he doesn’t recognise the format, it’s not the usual management accounts or business area report, and he’s probably wondering what kind of analysis I’ve got hold of relating to his notoriously private business.

  In fact it’s nothing to do with his business. My birthday’s coming up and this is the itinerary for a special weekend away. I’ve rented a private Caribbean island and I’m flying out a couple of Grossbank jetloads of girls – the dream team from all over the world. I think of them as my ‘All Stars’, Fluffy and Thumper obviously, Crystal and Jade from Hong Kong, Tatiana from Saint Petersburg, Fifi La Poitrine from Nice, Long Suk from Korea, Breathless Beth, you name them, they’ll be there, for a seventy-two hour shagathon, standing room only except when we’re lying down. It’ll be fantastic, as long as it doesn’t actually kill me. Anyway, it takes a lot of organising.

  I hold up my papers. ‘I want to push the boundaries. To go into new territory. And I want to go even further. Enough is never enough, believe me.’ It’s true. I smile warmly, always a dangerous moment. He seems to take it as a compliment and looks as if he’s relaxing. ‘I love your business, Doktor Neumann. And I want to take what you’ve built so carefully over these past decades and really do something with it.’

  He’s not sure how to take this. ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘First, a keynote speaker. President Mbongwe of Alambo. I’d like to invite him over to talk about the economic future of Africa.’

  ‘Mbongwe? But he’s…’

  ‘Not a client?’ I frown. ‘How very disappointing.’

  Now he’s offended. ‘Of course he’s a client. We run most of his money – more than half a billion dollars.’

  Gotcha. Half a billion of international aid money, licence fees for mineral rights that were never developed because the place is in meltdown, ‘taxes’ on investment and profits and breathing and going to the bathroom. In Alambo holding public office seems to get confused with helping yourself to public money. These guys are meant to be politicians, the leaders of their terrified, starving people – it’s not as if they’re investment bankers. If I had a sense of moral outrage, I’d be morally outraged. Luckily I don’t, and anyway, half a billion will do nicely. ‘Good. And just to be clear, I’m not simply talking about the speakers for this conference. I want the guests to have an African angle as well…’

  Two days later, I have the speaker programme from hell, exceeded only by the guest list. There are former generals, politicians, freedom fighters and dictators here that I thought had died years ago, when instead they just retired quietly, slipped away to the south of France or Switzerland or some quiet Caribbean island, trotted along to their local Grossbank private banking office and bingo – shipped in their fortunes to live fat and happy for the rest of their lives. Truly private banking is the best of businesses, and truly my team have done a fine job in winning such a huge market share. I send a message to Neumann and the team saying how delighted I am, and that I will personally be attending the conference.

  The great thing about the Germans, is that once you tell them which direction to go in, they are awesome. The reason the Brits still have to make jokes about the Germans several generations after we last fought each other, is that they nearly whipped our arses. The French, the Spanish, we could deal with, time and again throughout our history – they just never learnt. Despite being such a small nation, Britain could conquer half the world, but the Germans were damned scary. They even kicked the Romans’ arses, and if they hadn’t been fighting the rest of the world at the same time, they might have beaten Russia. Luckily we’ve moved on from those days. Now they’re on my side. In fact they are my side. I love my Germans.

  * * *

  MY NEXT meeting is back in London. I’m meeting Ralph Jones, the head of project finance at Grossbank. Project financiers are to investment bankers what Indiana Jones is to Gordon Gekko. Unlike mainstream investment bankers, these guys are field types. Rather than visiting New York, Paris or Hong Kong, they go to Lilongwe, Yaounde and Lagos. And the biggest difference of all is that they actually make real things happen. Where the rest of us sit at our workstations and move numbers around on screens, these guys put together the finance that builds real things, like dams and mines and ports and power stations. They spend time in offbeat places living in the field with construction engineers, miners and oilmen. And when they get a result and pull together the money to build something, you can actually see what it is they’ve done.

  If I wasn’t such a wuss, I might have become one myself, only then I might not have made so much money, since people in investment banks who don’t quite fit the mould tend to unsettle management and therefore don’t get paid or promoted the way the rest of us do.

  When Ralph enters my office, I don’t invite him to sit down, but leave him standing in front of me. Without looking up, I throw my much-thumbed itinerary on the desk in front of me. He’s terrified. He doesn’t know what the papers are, and fears the worst. The print is too small for him to read it upside down from where he’s standing, and now he’s wondering what bunch of overpriced, under-qualified, no-hoper management consultants I’ve paid to review his business and produce recommendations for how it might be fucked-up in some big corporate restructuring of the sort that all rich, fat, successful corporations indulge in every few years.

  ‘Ralph, I’m not a happy man.’

  Strictly speaking, this is true. I have no idea what it is I’m seeking in life, all I know is that I want more of it. But I’m not talking philosophy here. I’m talking intimidation. Then I play my ace card. I open a folder on my desk and extract a credit card slip. I say ‘extract’ because I hold it between thumb and forefinger as if I’ve found it lying, heavily soiled, on the floor of the gents. I release it and let it fall onto the desk. His eyes follow it and he tries to make out what it is. When I speak, I do so quietly, almost sorrowfully.

  ‘What – is this?’

  He stares at it, finally picks it up, recognises his signature and scrutinises it. It comes from a mid-ranking, anonymous restaurant near Bank Underground Station.

  ‘It’s a credit card slip.’ I don’t even bother replying to this. Some people are just too straightforward. ‘It’s a bill I submitted.’ He looks vaguely guilty. ‘I was entertaining clients. Three of them. Senior people from the Asian Development Bank.’

  ‘Three of them?’ My voice is deathly quiet.

  He nods, trying to be confident, yet trying to assert his frugality.

  ‘And you were representing this firm?’ I raise my voice, almost shouting. ‘My firm?’

  ‘Y – yes. Look, if there’s a problem, I’ll pay it myself.’

  ‘Of course there’s a problem. You spent six… hundred… pounds…’

  ‘Look, Mister Hart, I’m sorry. Next time…’

  ‘Next time, you’ll fucking do it properly!’ I shout the words, leap to my feet and start pacing round the office, while he stan
ds awkwardly in front of my desk like a schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s office. I almost feel it’s a shame to do this to him. But he needs to be ready for what comes next. I like to soften my people up – shock and awe and all that – or maybe I’m just a bully. I lean in close to him, so I can clearly see his curiously twitching right eyelid. Don’t ever play poker, pal.

  ‘Ralph – if you ever again spend so little on what I’m laughingly told is a top ten target for the project finance team, you’ll have a black bin-liner on your desk before dessert.’

  ‘Y – you mean I didn’t spend enough?’

  ‘Of course you didn’t fucking well spend enough. This…’ I point dismissively at the six hundred pound credit card slip. ‘…This lunch for four was a disgrace. We’re Grossbank. Grossbank thinks big. Grossbank is big. Do you understand big, Ralph, or are you happy to stay in your comfort zone, keeping the business small? Do you know what they say, Ralph? If you’re going to bother to think, think big.’

  He nods, unsure what to say next, this might be the end. He swallows hard, preparing for the worst.

  ‘Which brings me to Africa.’

  ‘Africa?’ He almost squeaks the word. He’s ready.

  ‘I’m not happy with our project finance business in Africa.’

  Silence. Fear. Dilated pupils. Slightly faster breathing. They might be project financiers, but they still have mortgages and school fees and mistresses and drug habits to pay for.

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘Why not? Why indeed not.’ I realise I haven’t prepared a set speech. ‘Maybe you could tell me.’ Now he’s really puzzled. So am I. This tends to happen when I ad lib too much.

  ‘Look, Mister Hart, if you’re worried about our African exposure, we hardly do anything over there as it is, and if you want we can cut it out altogether. Risk Management have no appetite for it, and frankly I don’t blame them. Just say the word.’

  I flop back down into my chair, leaving him standing awkwardly in front of me. Now I remember. I shake my head, despairing. ‘Ralph, we’re not coming out of Africa. We’re going in. Grossbank is going to commit fifty billion euros to investment projects in Africa over the next three years.’