by Sam Waite
"I know of him, but the last I heard, he worked at LIFFE."
"Life? Insurance?"
"The London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange."
Alexandra said, "It was purely British, until it was purchased by Euronext. It's still one of the world's largest trading centers for equity derivatives. It also handles more than thirty percent of the world's foreign exchange trading, which ran more than five trillion dollars a day in 2013, according to the Bank of International Settlements. That includes spot trades, swaps, forward contracts, options. Trades in dollars account for more than eighty-five percent of the total."
"Could Mumby have designed the instruments in Trevor's chart?" I asked Bizet.
"Absolutely, but he couldn't have anticipated the forex—that's the foreign exchange—market with such accuracy. No one could."
We thanked Bizet for his time and the donation of his expertise.
"Before you go," he said, "I would like to know if you have told anyone else you were coming here or that you had contacted me?"
I shook my head and looked at Alexandra.
"No," she said.
Bizet nodded slowly and hummed under his breath. "I have one more favor to offer in exchange for a vow from you. I will tell you how to contact my former colleague, Jim Burroughs, an American. He's quite gifted. He has designed a grid of supercomputers specifically for modeling financial data. I believe it is being tested now, but is not yet online for business. He might be interested in this. Actually, I think he should see it."
"What do you want us to promise?" I said.
Bizet laid the charts side by side. "As you see, my chart covers historical data through yesterday. Besides past data, Trevor's chart extends two weeks and a day into the future, to March five. Look at these dates." He pointed to a line sloping downward from March three to five. "Whoever created this expects the dollar to fall thirteen percent in two days. Such a plunge, forgive my understatement, could occur only from a deeply disturbing event. What you must swear is that you will tell no one, including Jim Burroughs, that you have spoken to me about this."
I looked for a hint of showmanship, a little just-kidding-guys, in Bizet's face. There was none. We swore ourselves to silence in exchange for Burroughs' phone number.
I didn't know why Bizet was so concerned about maintaining anonymity. Maybe it was just to preserve the moat around his idyllic existence, or maybe something more sinister. I couldn't guess. In any case, I was glad Alexandra was driving and left me to daydreams of tranquility.
A pristine rill rushed parallel to the road we traveled. A young woman had stopped to let her horse drink. A fisherman walked its banks. Forests, though the trees were bared by winter, exuded aromas of loam and grass. We stopped at a café that served country fare of pork chops, carrots and hearty soups. Bottles of wine were set at each table in preparation for customers.
More than once, I thought about turning back and asking Bizet if he could use another field hand in his vineyards.
Chapter 8
On the way to Bergerac, Alexandra and I had spent the time either studying Trevor's charts or discussing how to approach Bizet. Driving through the countryside, we chatted about wine, music and mountaintop castles. As we approached Paris, the tone changed.
"Are you worried?" I said.
"About what?"
"Here's the short list." I held up one finger at a time. "Trevor's missing, Sabine might have been murdered. Bizet is predicting an event so disturbing that the dollar will fall thirteen percent two weeks from now. You're the last Indian."
"What?"
"You're in the middle of something besides a project to market fuel for power plants."
She turned her face toward the window. The sun was low. Its light reflected streaks of red and gold in her hair. The contours of her cheek and jaw were ideal silhouettes.
When I first met Sabine, within minutes she had let diverse facets of her personality well to the surface. Her office alone had told me more about her than Alexandra had revealed in the entire day we'd spent together. Either there was no depth to her beyond her career or she had learned to conceal anything that might be seen as a weakness. The perfection of her physical beauty ironically made her forgettable. There was no flaw to stick in the mind to imply character. If she had disciplined her psyche to appear flawless as well, the irony was even greater. She would gain only the invisibility of perfection.
"How can I be part of something I know nothing about?"
"Sensible question. Someone might believe you know more than you do, or the study could be a façade."
This was her cue for an arched eyebrow or a sneer, but her face was placid. "We in the firm advise organizations on ways to increase revenue or sales or earnings. That's all. It's a simple career, if you focus on its essence. We don't deal in conspiracies."
Naiveté at that level was hard for me to follow. She'd just defined the goal of ninety percent of all conspiracies ever conceived. Of the rest, eight percent could be written off to psychotic flakes. The last two percent were saints and idealists, who had their own psychoses to deal with.
"Bizet might disagree. He clearly wanted to isolate himself from this."
Alexandra looked toward the window again, but there was little to see. The sky was growing dark quickly.
"So might Trevor," I said, "if he's alive."
"Are you going to call Jim Burroughs?"
"I'll give him a try, but without a reference or introduction, it's likely to be a tough sell."
"I'll search for his name in the firm's data base. If he's worked with Bizet, it might show up. He must be well known in his field. Someone else in the firm might be able to help. If I can find a name you can use as a reference, I'll call you."
During our drive, I managed to learn that Alexandra had never married, was an only child and had graduated from INSEAD on a scholarship. She also had a Chihuahua named Maximilan, after the emperor of Mexico. The original Maximilan had been an Austrian who had ruled Mexico under France's Napoleon III. He was an idealist who bankrupted the nation with social reforms. When France pulled out of Mexico, Maximilan stayed with his beloved people, who promptly executed him.
Maybe Alexandra was aware of her personal ironies after all.
When we arrived in Paris, she went to her office to make night calls to Venezuela and, I suppose, to look for colleagues who might know Jim Burroughs.
I called Pascal. He asked me to meet him on his "turf." That turned out to be near Gare de L'Est, a major, but dreary, Metro terminal. I spent ten minutes of wrong turns and back tracks through twisting corridors coated in fading paint and concrete stairs rutted from decades of footfalls to get to the street. When I emerged from that dismal underground, I looked back at the station's façade. In Paris fashion, it was grand.
I crossed the Boulevard de Magenta, as broad as a football field, and found the bus stop Pascal had described. He was waiting on a bench.
"You're late, Irish."
"I got turned around." I pointed my thumb toward the station building.
Pascal looked puzzled.
"Lost."
He tilted his head toward the station and frowned.
I left it alone. "Which way?"
"Have you had dinner?"
"No."
We went down another broad street. Garish signboards advertised discount clothing shops and cheap Asian restaurants. I didn't take a nose count, but pedestrians appeared to be seventy percent African, both Arabs and blacks. We turned down an alley, to be greeted by two rows of Indian hawkers outside restaurants. The first guy in line was obviously the top dog. He gave a hard spiel and looked offended when we passed him by. Pascal headed straight for a place farther down. I couldn't figure why he'd chosen one over another. Their menus were posted outside. They all looked the same.
Maybe he liked the ceramic figure of an elephant head on a man's body or the table that needed napkins under one leg to keep it from wobbling or the scenic route
through a waiters' station and another dining area to get to the restroom, constructed of powder-blue plaster unobstructed by doors.
Maybe it had the freshest cumin. I didn't ask.
After we ordered, I put two photos on the table. "Joaquin Ruiz and Enrique Hidalgo, I need to know where they go, who they meet. These came from an associate in Venezuela. They recently traveled with a so-called enforcer for Maduro, but they're based here. They're staying in serviced apartments. I have the address, but I don't know their schedules."
"Two targets and one Pascal. You respect me, Irish. Too much, huh?"
"They work for Petroleos Venezuela. They probably spend most of their time together."
"If they don't?"
"Then pick one and tail him. I trust your instincts."
Pascal shook his head. "Why don't I find someone to help me? I know a woman. She moves like a ghost."
"Give it a day. If you think you need someone else, I'll talk to my client."
"Who is it?"
"Can't say, Pascal. Does it make a difference?"
"Do I get paid?"
"Of course."
"Then no, it doesn't."
I gave him the address and room numbers for Ruiz and Hidalgo. I couldn't give him Bizet's name, but I could give him his warning. "I don't know exactly where this one's heading, Pascal. We had all better move like ghosts."
He shrugged and stuck out his lower lip. Then he smiled and ripped off a bite of tandoori drumstick. "Call me Casper."
When I got back to Sabine's flat, there was a phone message from Alexandra. She'd found a consultant for Winchell & Associates named Richard Atkins who knew Jim Burroughs and who had contacted him on my behalf. He was expecting my call. Burroughs lived in Colorado. It was early afternoon there, but when he answered, he sounded like a bear I'd spooked out of hibernation.
"This is Mick Sanchez. Richard Atkins..."
"Yeah."
"Said you would be expecting ..."
"Yeah."
I figured it was time to get to the point. He didn't interrupt while I told him about Trevor Jones and the chart. "Mr. Atkins suggested you could help."
"I can't see how I'd be any more help than Atkins himself. Why doesn't he look at it?"
Right. "Actually, someone has already seen it. He said it predicts the dollar will fall thirteen percent in two weeks."
"It can predict whatever it wants, but a thirteen percent fall over a year would be notable, two weeks isn't feasible."
"Two days."
"What?"
"The fall would occur over a two-day period two weeks from now. The person who saw the chart believes it might be accurate. He said only a deeply disturbing event could cause it. He also made us promise not to identify him."
"Yeah, well you already have."
I responded with silence.
"You're in France. There's a Winchell connection. It's someone who knows me and can understand the data you described. How many people do you think fit that description? Don't worry Bizet's identity is safer with me that it was with you."
"Will you look at the chart?"
"I'm curious enough to fly over there to steal it. Send it to me. I'll see what I can do."
"The person who gave us your name said you had a computer system that could verify his reading of the data and maybe work out scenarios."
"Just built. The PetaGrid ought to be able to model anything in finance."
"The PetaGrid?"
"Yeah, it's a network of supercomputers that function as a single machine. Theoretically it's capable of more than a hundred peta flops."
"Can you say that in layman's language?"
"That's one hundred quadrillion floating point operations per second."
"More layman."
"Real damn fast. Don't tell anyone, though. It's top secret."
"I won't. Who would I... I mean why would I—"
"Nah, we've been marketing this sucker for six months, and we're not even finished testing." Burroughs laughed.
I didn't.
"Joke, Sanchez. What do you do for humor?"
Good question. While I was trying to work that out, it occurred to me that I should be asking Burroughs for another favor. "There is something else that might be related. Do you think your system could break an encryption?"
There was a long silence, before he answered. "What language is the data in?"
"I assume English."
"Go ahead and send it, but let me think about it some more. It might be an interesting test, maybe even good for marketing. You do have a right to the data?"
"It was on the computer of a Winchell partner. He's missing, and it might help us find out what happened. A director in the firm authorized me to have it." While the statement was literally true, the implication that a director had given me data from Trevor Jones's office computer was at best misleading. I felt a twinge of guilt in using Sabine's persona, even though I expect she would approve. It was also effective.
"All right then," said Burroughs. "As soon as I get your stuff, I'll see what PetaGrid can do."
Chapter 9
There was an uncharacteristic tremble in Alexandra's voice. I couldn't tell if she had been crying. It sounded like she had. She wouldn't say what was troubling her over the phone, but she asked me to meet her right away.
It must be important, but so were the flash drive with the encrypted files and the paper with notations on foreign exchange derivatives. For reasons best explained by paranoia, I didn't trust Sabine's computer security enough to send the data electronically. I can't speak French, so I stopped at a hotel on my way to the Metro and tipped the concierge to call a parcel delivery service. The man who showed up to take the package for Burroughs said it would be in his hands in two days.
I was able to meet Alexandra an hour after she'd called.
She was waiting at an upscale café in the Opera district. Lots of trees, elegant ambience. Perhaps most important, it was far from Winchell's office. Her expression was tense. She glanced at me and looked away as I said good morning and ordered espresso. When she did respond, it was only one word spoken in a strained voice.
"Trevor."
Bad news.
"There was a call this morning. He..." She pulled at her scarf and looked me in the face. Not a glance this time, she held my gaze. "His body I mean...was found."
I'd sensed that was coming, but it didn't soften the shock at hearing the words.
"In England, well outside London, in a thicket." She gave a dry cough that almost sounded like an embarrassed laugh. "His body had been disturbed by animals. That's what they said. 'Disturbed'." She coughed again.
Translation, he'd been partially eaten, maybe foxes, maybe crows. That could complicate an investigation. "Do they know how?"
She shook her head. "It's all I heard."
"How long since his death?"
"A day they said, day and a half, no more than that."
The news landed like a ramrod to my gut. He'd been alive when Sabine had told me she believed he was well but scared. She had trusted I would figure it all out and bring him home. Not only had I failed. I worried that somehow I might have been responsible for Sabine's death. This time I was the one to look away, out the window into a world where mothers pushed prams and couples held hands. A world where rationality was at best a veneer concealing chaos.
I wanted to warn Alexandra to be careful, but that would have sounded obvious at best, inane at worst, so I just said good-bye. I would be in touch when I found out more about Trevor's death. Then I went back to Sabine's flat and called McNulty, the Scottish investigator.
He answered on the first ring. He said he'd been trying to contact me. The coroner's report was in on Trevor. The animals that had "disturbed" his body had been identified as dogs by their bites, probably about the size of shepherds.
McNulty's voice was flat. "Variances in teeth marks indicated five individual hounds. I don't know how they got the pictures, but one of the tabloids
ran photos of the scene right after his body was taken out. They haven't picked it up in the story yet, but there was a spray of blood to the left side of the body."
"A spray?"
"Yeah. Couple of feet, I'd say. Pretty thick with it. I'll send you a copy of the photo. Have a look. Tell me what you think."
I already knew what I thought. The next thing McNulty said confirmed it.
"His left forearm was chewed up a good bit more than his right. That was the work of two different hounds."
The spray would have come from a severed artery that still pulsed with blood. The left arm would have been used in a defensive move. That meant Trevor had been alive at the time of the attack. I stayed silent, absorbing that information while McNulty read my thoughts.
"The tabloids will have some fun with dogs as murder weapon." He grunted a dry laugh. "Won't they now?"
I nodded to the phone.
"I checked out your finance guy, Mumby. He had worked at LIFFE until about a month ago, when he left for an investment bank. That was before Trevor transferred twenty-five thousand euros to the same bank. "
I decided I might need an interview with Mumby whether he agreed to one or not, but that could wait. I called Pascal, my Paris investigator, and asked him to meet me and to engage the lady he called a ghost.
This time, the venue was close to my neighborhood. We met at the Sacre Coeur Basilica in Montmartre. I stood at the edge of the bluff overlooking the city. The winter sky was mostly clear, but still a haze lay above the cityscape stretched out for miles below. Among the chattering of small bands of tourists, I heard a familiar voice.
"We should have met indoors, Irish. Cold out." Pascal stepped next to me. "This is Marie, the phantom."
She was an elfin young woman, with a delicate face and deep-brown eyes that seemed as big as a deer's. She stuck out her hand and squeezed hard when I took it. She was stronger than she looked.
"How long have you been doing this kind of work?" I asked her.
"Counting today?"
"Yes."
"Including the time it took to get here, about forty-five minutes."
I scowled at Pascal. "I thought you'd worked with her."