The problem is that good-looking, well built, six-foot-three-inch tall, high-achieving men are psychologically ill-equipped to be prey rather than predators. A couple have left, while others – get this – have complained. Officially. Can you believe that?
HR want to initiate a disciplinary procedure. I agree with them. Fire the fuckers. What’s wrong with them? But then the HR people start to give me all this political correctness shit about Caroline Connor, and it’s her they want to fire. I feel like I’ve nodded off and woken up in a short story by Kafka. An attractive woman keeps pestering you to have sex with her, takes you to bed and exhausts you, night after night, and you think it’s a problem?
I say, hell no, she’s one of the most original thinkers in the firm and I won’t lose her. If the guys have a problem with one of my best people, then as far as I’m concerned they’re the problem. We should treat them no differently than anyone else who complains about being harassed by one of our key people – either we find a reason to fire them or we invent one, and if we really can’t do that, we pay them off. This is not the kindergarten – we’re talking investment banking in the twenty-first century. I’m willing to risk a class action suit against the firm on behalf of all the tall, handsome men in the industry, providing it means I get to keep my Amazon. Even if she is too tall for me.
I look at the HR people. ‘Who are we?’
‘Grossbank.’ They say it in a half-hearted, ‘we don’t really get this’ tone.
‘And?’
‘Grossbank rocks.’
Enough said.
* * *
AFRICA IS different. All the clichés in the world are inadequate when it comes to the dark Continent, and Two Livers was right. Dirt poor people with mile wide smiles, amazing sunsets, vast distances, a sense of actually being alive. For a week I’ve been off the drugs and still felt the buzz. It’s been a great trip, and I’ve never felt as close to another human being as I do now to Two Livers.
I’m about to indulge in a glass of my drug of choice in Africa, alcohol, in this case vintage Bollinger, in the back of Air Force One, as I call my favourite Grossbank smoker.
I’m with Two Livers and we’re celebrating the signing of a New Start programme for Lubumbashi, having stayed in a hotel so primitive that it had no air conditioning, only sporadic running water, and food so dire that we were warned by Ralph Jones, ‘If it’s not cooked, or you can’t peel it, leave it on the plate.’ I even took the radical step of skipping ice cubes in my gin and tonic, so great was my fear of infection.
So we visited the markets, went to a special concert given by schoolchildren as guests of honour, and took a river trip to spot crocodiles and hippos, which we named in honour of colleagues in London.
We took a whole day out of our programme and went to the beach and swam in the sea, while our hosts freaked out. The waters around here are shark-infested, and they didn’t want to lose us before we signed. We were relaxed. Investment bankers never get taken by sharks. There is such a thing as professional respect.
Oh, and we had amazing sex, including a great scene in the surf, which should have been filmed as a movie classic.
But now we’ve signed, and General Van Smit has told us how the government forces have cleared out their old friends the warlords, who are mighty pissed off. He reckons they’ve sworn undying hatred of Grossbank and of me personally, and tells me to watch out.
So you can imagine how relieved I am when I’m sitting in the back of the plane with Two Livers, climbing rapidly to cruising altitude and leaving anger, greed and hostility behind – so we can get back to the everyday anger, greed and hostility of ordinary investment banking.
Everyday life, even as an investment banker, is going to be very boring after what we’ve been doing. We now have eleven countries signed up to New Start programmes. We’ve committed thirty of our fifty billions, and the EU are committed to matching amounts. We really are making a difference. And the impact on the bonus pool is going to be astronomical. It definitely hasn’t been boring.
Two Livers and I lean forward and clink glasses.
‘Success.’
She smiles. ‘And the future.’
I wonder what she means. Part of me hardly dares to speculate. Clothes, jewellery, fast cars, private jets? Or something else?
‘Hey, I couldn’t have done this without you, you know.’
‘I know.’ She speaks with a beautifully deep, sexy voice. ‘In fact, you couldn’t have done jack shit without me. Or Paul. Or half a dozen other people. But none of it would have happened without you. You really are different, you know. In fact…’
There’s a sudden flash and a bang outside the cabin window, and the plane lurches to one side, emptying our glasses and tipping up the ice bucket, sending the champagne bottle rolling along the floor.
‘Christ, what was that?’
The pilots are both at the controls, the door shut behind them for privacy, but one of them shouts over the intercom, ‘Missile! Someone’s fired a missile at us.’
We stare at each other. This was definitely not meant to happen. The plane is vibrating, shaking and shuddering like it’s about to fall apart. We hear the pilot’s voice again. ‘Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Gulfstream Golf Bravo seven niner, we have been struck by a missile and are losing height, estimated two minutes to impact, our position is…’
Two Livers stares at me, horrified. ‘Christ – we’re going down.’
‘Going down? Then…’ I fumble to undo my seatbelt. Opposite me, she unbuckles hers, throws herself on top of me, rips my shirt open and starts undoing my belt. ‘Two minutes…’
That’s when I see another flash out of the corner of my eye, there’s a much louder bang and a sudden, howling rush of air.
Damn!
THE FOURTH INSTALMENT OF
DAVE HART’S ADVENTURES
IS AVAILABLE FROM
SEPTEMBER 2009
WHERE EGOS DARE
by David Charters
from Elliott & Thompson
I THINK I’m going mad.
I know I can’t be dead. I know because it’s hot as hell, and that simply does not compute. How could I have died and gone to hell? It’s impossible. Hell is for other people. In fact hell is other people. It’s certainly not for me.
There’s a hot wind blowing over me like a giant hair dryer. I’m lying on my back, being dragged across a surface that alternates between smooth and rough, and my body is aching. The whole of my right side is hurting, as if my ribs are broken. Maybe they are. The sun – at least, I suppose it’s the sun – is burning my face and I’m keeping my eyes tightly closed.
But at least I can’t be dead. That’s important. Because where would the world be without me?
My mouth is parched and my lips feel painful and cracked. I slide and lurch forward a few more yards. Whatever it is I’m lying on is being pulled, slowly, across the ground. Somewhere nearby I hear a soft sigh that’s feminine, wonderful, a weak-strong moan of someone exhausted but determined.
That’s when the memories come back.
I was flying home to London, from a business trip to Africa. I was in a private jet – a Gulfstream 5, my personal favourite, about to sip champagne and toast success – when there was an explosion. I recall the pilot’s voice frantically calling in a Mayday, then another loud bang and everything is hazy.
Until now. Now the memories are flooding back.
I’m Dave Hart.
Knowing my name is important, at least it is for me. With that comes a whole avalanche of other memories. I’m a banker. At the tender age of forty, I became Chairman of the Erste Frankfurter Grossbank, one of the largest financial institutions in the world, and took the whole giant organisation into overdrive. I’ve achieved things, made things happen, financed the unfinanceable, poured money into projects in Africa that no one would touch, changed the world. I’ve done things in the world of business that no other human being ever has. And some that no other human bei
ng would ever want to. Either way, I’m a finance rock star.
I’d been visiting Lubumbashi, a godforsaken dump of a place where Grossbank’s New Start Plan for Africa – an investment plan to acquire assets and develop them in return for introducing proper governance and democratic institutions – was re-shaping a nation. I was re-shaping a nation. That sort of thing appeals to me. I like changing things, upsetting people, pissing them off. And I like to think big. If you’re going to bother to think, it’s the only way to go. Only this time someone got really pissed off. Pissed off enough to fire a rocket up the arse of my G5.
There was someone with me. Someone beautiful. An intelligent blonde. Yes, really. Funny too and sexy as hell. And she could drink.
Two Livers.
Laura ‘Two Livers’ MacKay, my head of corporates at Grossbank, my right hand woman, key business winner, planner, strategist, possessor of a brain the size of a planet and a body to die for, was with me when the plane crashed.
Two Livers is different from any woman I’ve ever known, and yes, I’ve known a few. When God made blondes, I truly believe he took all of their brains and gave them to this one woman. In my rare moments of lucidity I’ll admit – privately – that most of my success I owe to her.
She was also my lover.
‘Aaaaaagh…’ A woman’s voice. Weaker now. I’m not being pulled forward any more. My hand slips from the side of what I guess is a makeshift stretcher and touches hot sand. Desert sand. I’ve been pulled across the desert. By her. I feel the end of the stretcher slowly being lowered to the ground, gently, so that I’m resting on the desert sand, hot through the canvas.
Damn. I guess it means I have to get up.
I open one eye cautiously. No need to worry. I can see her kneeling a few yards from me, her head slumped forward, her beautiful blonde hair falling forward over her face, the tattered remains of what was once a beautiful Chanel dress hanging loosely over her perfect body. She’s barefoot. Walking barefoot on the hot desert sand. Like a slave girl. The fantasy part of my brain whirrs into action. It’s like a scene from a movie. If I wasn’t in so much pain I’d think about jumping her right now. Although having sex on a dune is always a bad idea. Sand gets in all the wrong places.
My own clothes are just as badly torn, my shirt hanging in shreds around me. I ease myself up painfully onto one elbow and watch as she slowly rolls forward until her head touches the sand. She’s instinctively curled into a tight ball, exhausted, vulnerable, her last reserves gone.
Bugger. Now I’ll have to get up and start walking.
I pull myself over and slowly stand up. I’ve certainly cracked several ribs, and I feel weak and slightly dizzy. I’d kill for a drink. In fact several, plus a decent meal and maybe a sharp, reviving line of white powder. But at least I’m alive. The sun is unreasonably hot, and I stare in wonder at the tracks left in the sand, extending far away into the distance. She’s been pulling me for miles, for hours, through the heat of the desert, on a makeshift stretcher made out of two twisted metal poles and a length of canvas. Why would an investment banker do that? Would any banker truly rescue his boss, if he had the choice not to and no-one would ever find out? How much more would Two Livers stand to make each year without me top-slicing the bonus pool?
I walk over to her and crouch down beside her, gently stroking her hair. She’s gone, dead to the world. I put my hands under her shoulders and struggle to pull her onto the stretcher. It’s an effort, but once she’s there I pick up the end and prepare to walk forwards, dragging her in the same direction she was pulling me.
Damn, it’s hard. She may be delightfully slim, but to me in this heat she feels heavy. Forget heroics. This is no fun at all. After a couple of paces I ease her back onto the ground. I don’t know if I’m exhausted or lazy, but there’s no way I’m dragging her across the desert. I stare into the distance. It looks the same in each direction, just miles of undulating dunes.
I analyse things the way that only a senior investment banker can. This is a truly desperate, life threatening situation. It’s not like the ordinary, everyday problems I have to endure in London, like not getting my favourite table for an early evening martini at Duke’s Hotel, or getting stuck in traffic on my way to see Fluffy and Thumper from the Pussy Cat Club for a private performance. I could actually die. I could really fucking die!
I look at Two Livers, exhausted and unconscious from her ordeal. Damn. Two of us certainly won’t make it, at least with me pulling. For both our sakes I need to leave her here – obviously after first checking she’s comfortable – and then head off by myself to fetch help. I know I’m fond of her and all that, but it’s in both our interests. Honestly. In fact it’s because I care for her that I have to leave her now. I’m doing this for her.
Phew, that was easy.
Having taken my decision, I start to head off by myself, but I’ve only gone a few paces when I seem to hear a strange sound. Perhaps I’m imagining it, but I’d swear I can hear a tacka-tacka-tacka noise. Maybe it’s just in my head. Fuck it. Must be the heat. Or the drugs. What have I been using lately? Not much, travelling in Africa. In fact I’ve been remarkably clean. I shake my head to clear it and prepare to head off once more in search of salvation – for us both, of course.
That’s when the helicopter appears over the nearest ridge of sand.
Dave Hart Omnibus Page 43