Headhunter

by Robert Young

  *

  Campbell gets into it, telling them about the gatecrasher at his party, the memory stick, the blackmail plot and the man behind it. He tells them how he engineered his escape and how he flipped the whole thing to backfire on the man who set it up, the man who had attempted to use the scam to enrich many of his criminal associates, and who had all suffered damage to their precious wealth and more precious pride as a result.

  Lisa is open mouthed the whole time, her eyebrows rising at each new twist, until the final one when she suddenly feels sick. No wonder, she thinks, no wonder he refused to trust her.

  Rookes looks genuinely impressed as he listens and nods his approval at the close.

  ‘Very nice job. I should have sent three guys.’

  ‘Does he know?’ Campbell asks suddenly. ‘Does he know your guys didn’t kill us?’

  Rookes shakes his head.

  ‘Something you said earlier, you asked whether he’d pay to see it twice. Did he watch that?’

  Rookes nods and smiles. ‘Some show.’

  Campbell’s face falls as he suddenly realises that he has seen this man before, on the boat today. The bodyguard with the rich-looking guy with the smirk. Horner.

  ‘Like I said, he really has a thing for you. Seems to me like a real love-hate thing.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ says Lisa.

  ‘Except that it’s just a hate thing.’

  Campbell nods. ‘Still, if he thinks I’m dead - we’re dead - then why not let us go? He’s got what he wants, I can give you what you want. And then we can disappear. Everyone wins.’

  Rookes looks like he’s considering the merits of Campbell’s argument but he’s just a cat toying with its catch. Raising a paw, slamming it down.

  ‘If you’re appealing to my conscience… well, good luck with that. Otherwise, Mr Campbell, you should never look a gift horse in the mouth and you should never, ever pass up an advantage when it presents itself.

  ‘For the first time, I know more than he does, more than any of them. That’s got to be worth something.’

  ‘Whatever you think it is worth I can do. More,’ pleads Campbell. ‘Come on. What will it take?’

  Rookes stares at the two of them, silent.

  ‘Her,’ says Campbell.

  He feels her hand tighten and Rookes’ eyebrow curls.

  ‘Let her go. He wants me, not her. She’s not part of it.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ says Rookes. ‘You don’t really believe that.’

  FIFTY SIX

  Michael Horner has hardly spent long preparing the simple pasta dish for his evening meal, but all the same the timing of Rookes’ phone call is irritatingly inconvenient and he’s being deliberately vague about his need to meet.

  Rookes arrives after ten minutes and as Horner opens the front door to let him in Horner takes a few steps back and stares blank-faced and open-mouthed at what he is confronted with.

  He sees the smile on Rookes’ face and the gun in his hand, and then he sees the young man and the young woman who died earlier that afternoon in a tragic, and well-planned diving accident.

  Horner knows that it happened because he saw it but now they’re standing here in front of him, still wearing the wetsuits they were killed in, hands bound in front of them and looking terrified. The smile on Rookes face seems to tell him that the whole thing has been a hoax, elaborate and convincing but certainly not fatal for the two intended victims.

  ‘Rookes?’ he says.

  ‘First of all,’ begins Rookes, ‘my apologies. My guys were sent to do a job, and they didn’t deliver. Although to be fair to them, and as you saw, they did appear to have been fairly thorough.’

  Horner nods, eyes never leaving Campbell.

  ‘But this guy-‘ Rookes jabs the suppressor at him. ‘-this guy is something else.’

  ‘That he is,’ agrees Horner.

  ‘Long story short, they made it back up and in to shore. Now I want to point out why this is a good thing.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You remember how much you enjoyed watching him die first time?’ he says and Horner looks at him. ‘Now you get another go.’

  Horner frowns for a moment and then spins on his heel, heading for the office. As he turns the handle to looks back at Rookes and speaks. ‘Uh, basement please. I think I need to make a couple of calls.’

  Rookes nods and gestures at them with the gun toward the basement door. Campbell says quietly, without turning his head, ‘Why the basement?’

  ‘Probably wants to avoid getting any blood on his nice carpet.’

  ‘Whose blood Rookes? The man who let him down?’

  ‘Let’s not start this again.’

  Campbell had tried reasoning with Rookes in the car as they drove here, talking constantly as Rookes watched them both in the rear view mirror.

  ‘Are you sure you’re not in trouble now?’ Campbell had said to him, ‘How long after they do me do you think you’ll be given? How long can you stay useful, eh Rookes? If you think you have another week on earth you’re every bit as dumb as Horner needs you to be. Congratulations on living down to his expectations.’

  Rookes had lost his cool at that point, and shot Campell a look of cold murderous fury but here now, in Horner’s house, Campbell calculated that he had nothing left to lose.

  ‘Kill him Rookes. Kill him before he kills you.’

  ‘I may well do that,’ Rookes hissed back. ‘But it won’t be before he’s paid me everything I can squeeze out of him.’

  ‘There is no walking away from this. Not from him.’

  ‘Not for you there isn’t. Now shut up or I’ll make it worse than it needs to be.’

  As he opens the door to the basement and ushers them through, the girl finally cracks and begins to sob. Campbell tries to comfort her, but the beckoning darkness at the foot of the stairs is too much.

  Rookes cocks the pistol and tells her to move, hoping that the sound of the weapon being armed will scare her into compliance. But she’s frozen in fear now and has perhaps concluded that if she is to be killed, what threat is there here at the top of the stairs that is any worse than down there?

  Rookes places a hand on Campbell’s left shoulder and reaches over his right shoulder with the gun levelled at the back of her head. He moves forward and rests the point of the suppressor at the nape of her neck and repeats his instruction to her to descend. He wants them both in front of him and he wants Campbell to see the gun and to see it pressed up against the crying girl that he seems to be so reluctantly attached to.

  She takes a step forward and he pushes Campbell to follow her but he resists and stays put. Rookes pushes his shoulder to get him moving and after a moment, Campbell relents and Rookes feels his arm give as Campbell moves forward.

  Then it happens. Two things at once. The shift in weight has him slightly off guard and off balance and Campbell suddenly moves against him and swings his head backward, sharp and fast toward Rookes’ face. At the same time, Campbell raises a heel from the floor and kicks at Rookes, aiming for his genitals.

  It is a desperate act, and executed not without some force or expertise, but Rookes has honed his instincts and reactions and manages to move just enough, just in time, to avoid the worst.

  Campbell’s head glances off his cheekbone and he sees stars for a moment. The heel hits his knee on the way up, taking momentum from the blow so that when it finds its target, does not achieve the damage or shock that it might have.

  Rookes attempts to shift himself to the side, out of the way of Campbell’s attack, but the tangled legs and the backward momentum of the other man mean that Campbell can sense the direction of Rookes’ attempted evasion.

  He keeps coming, trying to fall backward onto Rookes, trying to overwhelm him with his weight and bulk and Rookes stumbles and twists as he tries to keep his feet. Campbell is thrusting backward, trying hard to get an advantage but then feels Rookes’ arm move from his shoulder to around his throat and with a vi
olent wrench of his torso, Rookes has flipped him down onto the floor and then he feels a hard blow to the back of his neck and then nothing.

  FIFTY SEVEN

  When he comes to, the room is full.

  Lisa is silent again and sits staring at the concrete floor of the basement. There is a neon strip light and walls of exposed brick. They are surrounded by shelving and storage of the most innocuous kind - pots of paint, boxes of cleaning products. Did he expect some sort of torture chamber? Would that have been any worse?

  Horner and Rookes are here and leaning against the wall, glaring at him are the two men from the boat, no doubt in some sort of trouble for not having killed him as instructed.

  There is a sharp-suited Slavic-looking man with a thin nose and a sinister smile and next to him a short, stockily built oriental man. Thai or Malaysian Campbell guesses. Seated and looking almost as frightened as Campbell feels is an overweight man with a large birthmark covering part of his face. A port-wine stain is what they’re called he thinks and wonders at the mind’s ability to become so preoccupied with something so banal and irrelevant in the face of such peril.

  His face is cold and wet and he realises that the reason he is awake now is because he’s had cold water thrown on him.

  He blows the streaming water from his nose and mouth in a spray and looks up. ‘Thank God for the wetsuit.’

  Rookes grins in spite of himself and looks at Horner who is scowling down at him, holding an empty jug.

  ‘Mr Hogg,’ says Horner.

  The man with the birthmark looks up.

  ‘You’ve been complaining about the workload. How would you like an assistant?’

  Hogg says nothing and stays focused on Horner.

  ‘Good. Daniel here will be on hand to help with all the parts you either don’t understand or don’t want to deal with. Best not to incriminate yourself when we have someone else for that.’

  Hogg looks at Campbell and nods. ‘OK.’

  ‘Daniel. Would you care to enlighten everyone as to what is happening? Have you figured it out yet?’

  ‘Well,’ Campbell sits up and rubs the back of his neck, feels his head swim. ‘Today’s helped clear a few things up. I was wondering if I’d really come across something foul. And here you are.’

  ‘Good to finally make your acquaintance.’

  ‘I wish I could say the same.’

  ’And you Lisa. Worth every penny my dear. Good to see that my recruitment profile was so well followed.’

  She stares at Horner, wounded and afraid, like she’s only just beginning to understand the trap she has been led into. This is the man in ultimate charge, the man who has instructed through Lawson that she be tasked with shadowing Campbell so closely. How willingly she had agreed to it, how easily duped. She feels sick the way she and Daniel have become so close, so intimate, all predicated on a lie, contrived and directed from afar.

  ‘She doesn’t know anything,’ says Campbell.

  ‘Is that what she told you?’ says Horner with a raised eyebrow. He sighs, loud and heavy. 'Well how about this: perhaps I will explain the simple concept of a honey trap, and then you can walk her through the basics of fractional reserve banking and... well - everything else you'd care to share.'

  Honey trap. He looks at her and her eyes drop to the floor. Is Horner bluffing? Trying to get under his skin? Certainly it's precisely the type of tactic he would expect but it doesn't fit with the confession she offered him. And surely she wouldn't have gone as far as she had with him, romantically, sexually, unless she’d gone outside the watching remit she described to him.

  No. He looked at Horner and the smug curl of his lip like a hook or a barb. He was a man that would say precisely what he needed to say, whenever he needed to say it, and to whoever he needed to say it to.

  Campbell had shared things with Lisa; time and tenderness and more of himself than he'd let anyone see in a long time. They had been through much together; the mugging, the diving attack and being left stranded and adrift by the boat.

  Yet here she was, silent where the protest of innocence should be and staring at her feet.

  'No? No need to elaborate I suppose, you seem to have grasped the idea of the honey trap,' Horner says as he casts an admiring glance at her. 'Go on then Daniel. Tell her. Explain it.'

  'It seems like you have everything figured out,' Campbell says, trying to fix on Horner, if only not to look at her. Her and her downcast eyes.

  'Have you though? That's what I’m wondering. Honestly, I'd like to know, because if you've put it together, you are the only person who knows how it works except me.'

  Campbell looks around the room at the fat man with the large birthmark, and the sinewy guys in tight black t-shirts.

  'Come on, don’t let me down now. Not now,’ Horner hisses at him. 'You were headhunted for the job Daniel, and it wasn't for your charm or your repartee.'

  'Fuck you.'

  'Like I said.'

  He sees her head lift then and her expression is strained and hard to read. There's fear there and confusion and plenty of both. But Campbell thinks he sees guilt and a certain pleading in the eyes, not unlike the look she gave him so many feet beneath the waves, in every sense out of their depth.

  He looks around the room. They are all looking at him.

  'A bank takes money in and lends it out,’ he begins. ‘It lends it for interest at a rate higher than the interest it pays depositors. But it doesn't lend everything it takes in, dollar for dollar, pound for pound. It is required to keep some money back for when those depositors want to make withdrawals. But since they are looking for a rate of return, the chances are, most of them won't take it out. Not all at once.

  ‘So you can lend out money and only need to keep a certain proportion of it handy. Technically if you lend it to someone who then deposits that money back with you, you've just increased the deposits you hold, even though it is the same money. So then you've expanded the balance sheet of your bank and grown its assets.’

  He looks up and around the room at everyone staring back and listening. ‘You can also, if you are clever, start reclassifying some of those loans you've made as assets themselves - you expect to get them all back with interest after all. So again you expand the balance sheet, you increase the asset base of your bank. Against which you can continue to lend. The bigger your capital, the more you can lend. And so on. Or maybe to put it another way, if you have say, one million pounds deposited in your bank, and the regulations require that you have a ratio of 10% of deposits compared to loans, you can now lend another 9 million pounds, even though you only hold one million.'

  Lisa shakes her head, though he cannot tell if she is confused about what he is explaining, or why.

  'Why would someone borrow money off you just to deposit it at a lower rate than they are paying you? That makes no sense.'

  'Sure. You wouldn't do that. You'd invest it in your business. Buy a new JCB, or re-stock your warehouse or employ some new staff.'

  She's shaking her head again. Horner watches him, his eyes flitting to the implacable expressions of Hari and Dusan and the hired muscle in the room, the computer guy who looks vaguely interested.

  'Unless of course you don't do things like that. And you actually own the businesses that you are lending the money to. Then you are in control of all of it and are manipulating the whole process for one purpose…’ he opens his hands and moves them up and apart, like he's holding an inflating balloon.

  Horner's thin smile is broad and proud.

  'Creating money,' says Hogg.

  'The nine million comes back and now you have ten million.'

  'So you can lend ninety million,' says Hogg, though it’s not clear if it is a question.

  'A latter day Charles Ponzi no less,' says Campbell as he looks at Horner.

  'Ponzi had nothing on this. Ponzi needed suckers to pump in money, and to believe him when he paid them bits of their own money back to them and told them it was interes
t.'

  'Bernie Madoff then. Take your pick.'

  He snorts dismissively, smug and arrogant. 'No Daniel. It's infinitely better than that and you know it. They didn't have banks, they had pyramids. Please give credit where it is due.'

  'That seems to be your trick.'

  'Very droll.'

  'I'm sorry. Who is Charles and was he a ponce or a pharaoh?' asks the security guy Rookes.

  'Charles Ponzi was a guy who invented a fraud, a pyramid scheme. He got people to invest their money with him, then gave them some back and told them it was their returns, enough that it seemed like great performance and they were all happy. Soon enough other people wanted a piece of the action and the great returns Ponzi seemed to be getting for his investors. So he had more money coming in to pay out the fake returns to other people in the scheme. He'd get new people in to pay the last lot and all the while he was stealing the rest of it for himself. Madoff did much the same sort of thing. Only more. Lots more.'

  'So who are the idiots giving you their money?' asks Rookes. 'I hope it's not these guys,’ he tilts his head to Hari and Dusan, ‘And all the others you're trying to hide from. Aren't they pissed off with you enough already?'

  From the thunderous expression that darkens Horner's face like a storm-front, it appears that Rookes knows a little more than he is supposed to.

  'No, there are none of those here,' says Campbell. 'There are no innocent retired couples handing him the life-savings or the grandchildren's college fund. There's no drug lord with a pile of cash to turn over. He's conjured it all up from almost nothing. He's invented a bank with some seed capital from somewhere.'

  'A bank? How do you invent a bank?' says Lisa, incredulous.

  'Easier than you'd think. And it isn't what you're picturing either, with a giant walk-in safe and a marble lobby, or offices over ten floors. More likely it's a plaque on a wall on a shack down the road. A hundred other plaques next to it. You've been here long enough now Lisa, does this look like the type of place where hundreds of large companies do business? Banks and hedge funds and trust corporations?'

  She shakes her head. 'More hotels than banks. It’s a tiny little holiday island.’

  He starts to nod but then stops and starts to shake his head. ‘Only at first glance. There are almost three hundred banks in the Cayman Islands. Three hundred. It is the fifth largest banking centre in the world. But only about fifty five thousand people live here – bit less than Bognor Regis. Hedge funds: there are more than ten thousand here I think.'

  'Ten...?' Again, Hogg with the half statement, half question.

  Campbell nods. 'And you've got all the other accountancy firms and auditors and lawyers that go with them, lots of them all plugged in to it, feeding off it. Front companies, anonymity and low tax rates, it’s where the hot money comes to hide.’

  Rookes looks at his two colleagues in black and raises eyebrows. 'I thought we were the scumbags here. Starting to feel like the good guy.'

  'All relative,' says Campbell.

  ‘A network of fake companies, a fake bank. So the money’s fake too… right?’ Lisa asks.

  ‘How would you know? It’s all just numbers on a screen. There’s no real, physical cash anywhere, no notes printed up by the bank. You ever get paid in notes for your salary at any job? Of course you haven’t. All money now is basically electronic. The plastic in your wallet hooks into the network and moves numbers from one screen to another. Move it around enough and you can make it look real enough and legitimate enough.’

  ‘The point is,’ Horner cuts in, ‘if you make it look real, well, perception is reality isn’t it?’

  ‘But it isn’t real and it doesn’t look real.’ Lisa has found her voice it seems, or perhaps she’s just trying to let Campbell know that she’s not still on Horner’s payroll by challenging the man. ’None of these companies actually do anything do they? They don’t make anything or provide any tangible goods or services. They’re an illusion. Soon enough someone will see that and the whole thing will collapse.’

  Horner still has a smug smile on his face. ‘Perhaps, yes.’

  ‘But they’ve done their job. They were there to be loaned to and then to deposit that money back again. Pump things up.’

  Horner bobs his head in a way that says Campbell hasn’t got it all quite yet.

  He looks at the man for a moment longer, then at Lisa and recalls her words, the whole thing will collapse, and the look on Horner’s face when she said it.

  ‘It’s supposed to collapse,’ Campbell says with widening eyes.

  The smile on Horner’s face gets wider and smugger than Campbell thought possible.

  FIFTY EIGHT

  Giles Lawson has scarcely seen the sunshine and is barely even aware of that fact. Since they touched down and he dropped Campbell and Lisa at the hotel, he has been as busy as he’s ever been working this job.

  Horner gave him a five minute run-down of what he was required to do and told him not to show up again for 24 hours, at which point he wanted to be told that the task was complete.

  Lawson had done the sums and negotiated with himself that 24 hours was more than enough to complete that job twice over and have time to spare. Since he only intended to do the job once, he would be fine to pursue some of his own interests.

  That would have to wait. Horner wanted the business dealt with via New York and London and that meant using the daylight hours to hit a terminal and the phones and start finding people that were willing to sell him what he needed.

  London was harder to find interest, possibly due to the lateness of the day and the proximity of a wine bar to most of the traders he spoke to who had probably done their target for the day anyway, or maybe they just had risk managers and compliance officers all over them.

  It was still early in the day for the US market though and he got things happening in New York and Chicago with people keen to get deals on the books for the day and feel like lunch was paid for before they called the restaurant.

  Several fought him on the price but he figured that what Horner wanted it for, a few percentage points was worth giving up, so long as his willingness to pay didn’t look too obvious.

  Horner had been keen to ensure that the deals were spread around enough that they would not arouse suspicion with market makers or traders talking to each other and for the most part Lawson was careful to keep the deals spread thin but he also knew that doing this for a day or two would not be enough to be flagged anywhere, not on this scale. It was too small given the size of the market, so he kept the calls going, kept searching for issuers to offer him terms and kept striking deals until he’d gone 20% past the target Horner had set just to see if there was a way to get more than brusqueness from the man and to see whether that might mean a bigger pay-packet when the job was done.

  But what he was buying could not be bought by individuals; only institutions. Otherwise he’d have enjoyed taking stakes himself as he began to picture how it would play out. As it was, he would need to find something to make up for it.

  He found a hotel with a casino and a table to play for a few hours and had achieved two startling wins in succession; not only had he managed huge back to back wins at the blackjack table, but he’d also stood and walked away in a winning position, $120,000 in his pocket. Walking away was arguably the bigger victory for Lawson.

  That good fortune and good sense had lasted with him all the way to the foot of the casino steps when he’d been offered the chance to play a proper game of cards.

  A car ride, a labyrinthine set of corridors and a plush hotel suite later and every dollar was back in play.

  There were a half dozen faces around the table, all implacable and unreadable when the cards were dealt, smiles and warmth in between hands.

  But now it was dark outside and inside the room lights were going out for Lawson fast. The $120,000 was gone and he was being offered a line of credit, the terms for which were not outlined but would almost certainly not be ma
rket competitive.

  ‘I think perhaps I should bow out here,’ he says though another part of him stays desperate to ignore his survival instinct and snatch the offered loan.

  ‘Not my day,’ he says and slides his chair out to stand.

  There’s a hand on his shoulder before he is fully upright and he turns to see the man who drove him here. He is still smiling, still friendly and he ushers Lawson toward the selection of food and drink laid out in the adjoining room of the suite.

  ‘You’ve been playing hours,’ says the man. ‘Please enjoy something. At your leisure.’

  Lawson sees the clock on the wall and sees that the man is not wrong. It is approaching midnight and cannot remember when he last ate. The scotch looks inviting too; single malt, 18 years old and just the thing to take the edge off a hundred and twenty grand blowout.

  FIFTY NINE

  Rookes clears his throat to speak again, but he sees Dusan stand and defers to the Croatian.

  ‘Supposed to collapse, is what he said.’ Dusan is pointing at Campbell but looking at Horner.

  ‘He did.’

  Dusan nods slowly, uncertain what Horner’s trying to do, either in the course of this exchange or the wider plan.

  ‘How exactly,’ Hari says, his hand on Dusan’s shoulder, ‘does that make me not gut you? Right now, I’m thinking I just get that done before I’m too angry to enjoy it. Make a noose for you with your own intestines.’

  Horner feigns shock at the violence of the threat and Campbell, weak and nauseous though he is - from the too-fast ascent from the water or from the blow to the neck - he still wants to stand up and pound the look off the man’s face.

  ‘Things collapse,’ says Dusan. ‘That’s bad. When is that not bad?’

  ‘When you have insurance.’ Campbell replies.

  Horner looks at Campbell as he stands slowly and smiles at him for answering the question so succinctly.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he says, hands open and gesturing at Campbell as though he’s just won something by getting it right.

  ‘Daniel has it spot on. Nice to see he’s sharper than everyone else here, even after we tried to kill him. Almost makes me glad your goons failed.’

  Rookes wags a finger at the sheepish looking pair who frown and watch their shoes. They don’t know they’re dead yet but they are and by the look Horner gives them, he can see it will be soon.

  ‘So, the hour is late and tomorrow there is much to do. Rookes, take Daniel here with Caspar and get them acquainted. Best they get some sleep before they get at it in the morning.’

  Campbell cannot stop the laugh escaping him and he doesn’t try to.

  ’Something funny?’ says Horner.

  ‘I cannot begin to explain to you just how much you can go and fuck yourself. There’s no chance. Just none.’

  Horner says nothing but raises his eyes at Rookes who spares no time in pulling out his handgun and levelling it at Campbell’s temple.

  ‘Go on then. You’ve been pointing that thing at me for hours, just get on with it.’ Campbell is looking Rookes in the eye when he says it. He’s so weary now that he thinks he might even mean it.

  Rookes thinks for a moment then swings the gun around to point it at Lisa. He sees something flash in Campbell’s eyes for the briefest moment.

  ‘How about now? You want to say something now?’

  There is a heartbeat or two when Campbell considers whether to call their bluff and pretend that her betrayal has cost her his loyalty but he does not get as far as making a decision.

  He sees Dusan move for the inside of his jacket and a burst of panic explodes in his chest and the adrenaline slows everything all the way down.

  He sees the fluid natural motion of the hand slip in and back out, the snub nose pistol in Dusan’s hand. Lisa is looking right at Campbell, oblivious to what is happening out of her eyeline.

  Dusan extends his arm, levels the jet black steel at her head and Campbell watches the muscles in his forearm tighten, sees each sinew slide and strain under the skin, sees his knuckles whiten as the finger around the trigger squeezes.

  His eyes are closed when he hears the shot, the sound of which smashes off the walls of the basement, loud and angry. He hears a popping, bursting sound that tears at his guts, which is followed by something liquid that glugs and splashes and he drops to the ground with a shout of wild, uncontained anguish.

  He screws his eyes closed and he shouts, trying to push it all back and away, trying to stop all the sensory overload that is assailing him. He can hear those sounds again in his head like some hideous echo; glug and splash. And behind his closed eyes he sees her head and a dozen ways that it might have burst under the point blank gunshot impact.

  There are voices raised and angry curses but he cannot pick out words or recognise who is saying what beyond the din of his own deafening horror.

  ‘Daniel,’ Horner is saying and he is clapping a hand on his shoulder. ‘Daniel!’

  He flails an arm in Horner’s direction and howls in fury, a primal cry from deep in his chest. He springs up and clamps a hand around Horner’s throat and thrusts him across the floor toward the wall, the other man startled and off guard.

  Rookes and his men move fast but Campbell has Horner pinned to the wall and both hands tight on his neck now, eyes wild and nostrils flared in unchecked rage.

  He can feel hands on him, heavy and powerful as they try to prise him off Horner but he can see the skin of Horner’s face begin to darken and a flicker of genuine fear in his eyes so he holds on tighter and tries to shake them off.

  It is not the sound of Rookes or his men shouting at him that breaks the trance but someone else.

  He is not certain at first and wonders if it is in his mind, or if she is haunting him already but he cannot mistake the sound of Lisa’s voice as she sobs loudly and then shrieks in fear.

  He turns finally to look and sees that Dusan has grabbed a fistful of her hair and is pressing the handgun to her head. The tears are streaked across her face and the look of abject terror is every bit as real as Campbell’s own.

  ‘I don’t miss twice,’ he says and Campbell lets Rookes pull him away from the choking Horner as he stares at her and at the ruptured paint pot on the shelf behind her and the splash of thick white paint across the floor, the liquid still dribbling from the gaping hole in the side of the pot where the bullet has torn it open.

  SIXTY

  They throw a mattress on the floor and toss him a blanket.

  ’Sleep,’ they tell him and he is left staring at the closed door and just Hogg for company.

  ‘Take a shower if you want,’ says Hogg pointing toward the bathroom. ‘I guess we’ll get at it in the morning. I’ll take you through everything.’

  ‘Why not now?’ Campbell says, looking the other man in the eye.

  Hogg shrugs. ‘Because I’m tired and I could do with getting my head down before it all starts again.’

  ‘Boo hoo,’ Campbell shoots back. ‘I’ve been killed once today and those fuckers are shooting off guns. I’d like to get this figured out.’

  ‘You might look dead but you whine just fine. Get under the shower and stick some clothes on.’

  Campbell stares back a moment and then complies, jumping into clean shorts and an oversize t-shirt from Hogg’s pile of fresh laundry.

  ‘So what’s the deal then?’ Campbell begins as he sits next to Hogg at the workstation. There are two PCs, powerful judging by the noisy humming sound coming from the processors and fans, and there is a Bloomberg terminal too. It is a slightly old-fashioned looking machine, clunky black keyboard some bright green and yellow keys and a screen that lacks the slick graphics of the machine next to it. But Campbell knows from experience that this is essential kit for any trader or analyst and the vast wealth of real-time financial data available through the network it supports is mind boggling.

  ‘Well,’ Hogg begins, ‘You sort of had the basics of it earlier so I can begin from t
he start or fill in the blanks.’

  ‘No. With you. What’s your deal?’

  Hogg pauses and returns Campbell’s gaze. ‘I guess you’d say I’m sort of the architect, or the builder maybe. I built the whole thing from Horner’s spec. I guess that makes him the architect. But then it was fairly vague. I’ve really designed and built it…’

  His rambling words trail off as he watches Campbell shaking his head.

  ‘Those guys I get. Horner, doing his twirly-moustache thing, wanting everyone to know how smart and evil he is, like some sort of chinless Moriarty. The hired muscle there, the two guys lurking in the background looking like they’ve not decided who they’re going to kill and in what order. They scare me, all of them. You though…’ again Campbell is shaking his head.

  ‘What, you were expecting a hacker that looks like Jason Statham?’

  ‘I don’t know. You don’t fit, either way. Your eyes. You look like Lisa did earlier, way too deep and no idea what to do about it.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Yeah, you say that like you really want to believe it, like you’re making yourself believe it. But who are you kidding?’

  ‘You want to do the run through now, we do it now. You want to sleep first, sleep. Otherwise, stop wasting your breath.’

  ‘When did you realise you’d bitten off more than you could chew? When the muscle showed up? Maybe Horner took a while to let the mask slip, maybe you just took the job thinking it would be easy money and you didn’t do your due diligence?’

  ‘I’m fine here Campbell. Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘Oh, OK. You’re in control are you? That why they keep you locked up in a rabbit hutch, little bunny?’

  ‘When the job’s done I’m gone pal. You’re the one they tried to kill,’ Hogg snaps, his temper fraying.

  Campbell’s nodding. ‘Right on both counts. You are gone when they’re done with you. How are you going to cope when they dump you in the ocean?’

  Hogg says nothing but his eyes are fixed on Campbell, blazing with anger. He stares right back, wondering whether Hogg is angry at being challenged or at being forced to confront a truth he’s been ignoring.

  ‘Come on Hogg. Open your eyes man. You’re dead. You were when you took the job. You think you’re just going to walk out of all this? You can’t even walk out of this room without permission.’

  ‘Hell with you. Worry about yourself. He obviously has a thing for you. He doesn’t give a damn about me.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You’ll say anything right now. I’m the one with the money in the bank.’

  ‘Really? Your bank account is it? Your own?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You set it up yourself?’

  Pause. ‘I didn’t have a Cayman account.’

  ‘They set it all up for you?’

  He nods.

  ‘OK. Got all the paperwork and the cards? Sole access?’

  Pause. ‘Horner said he wanted a measure of security so that I wouldn’t just route cash to myself and disappear.’

  Campbell nods.

  ‘Spent much?’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘Some? Like what? A new-Rolex-some? Or a candy-bar-from-the-vending-machine-some?’

  ‘Some,’ he snaps, his anger flaring at Campbell’s prodding tone.

  ‘They’ll never let you have it and they’ll never let you leave. That money no more belongs to you than it does to me.’

  He’s staring at the floor. ‘Fuck them and fuck you,’ Hogg says, equal parts misery and anger.

  Campbell nods again. ‘Pretty much.’

  They sit a long time in silence, Campbell wanting to press Hogg some more but wondering whether it is best just to let the silence do that job. Eventually Hogg speaks.

  ‘What do you think happens next? We form a pact, steal their guns and escape? You’ve already lost Campbell.’ He looks up and meets his eyes. ‘Why would I join forces with someone who’s lost?’

  Campbell sees that the argument is over, at least for now, and shrugs then lets his shoulders drop. But he cannot resist the last word, if just to make himself feel like he’s not surrendered yet, even if this man has.

  ‘Solidarity?’

  SIXTY ONE

  Hogg is up and at the terminal when Campbell wakes and he wonders whether the keys are being hit a little harder and noisier than usual. He sits and checks the time, sees that he has been permitted to sleep until 6.30am, which means he has around 4 hours sleep to operate on after the exertions of the previous day and the jet lag that’s lingering. It will have to do.

  He is cheered momentarily by the fact that though he feels tired and sore from what has happened to him, he does not have any of the tell-tale signs of decompression sickness. The ascent to the surface with nothing but the heavy air tank strapped to him with the weight belt must have been slow enough without the assistance of the Buoyancy Control Device to avert it.

  ‘Shall we get started then’ Hogg says without taking his eyes from the screen.

  ‘No juice or pastries?’

  ‘Funnily enough,’ says Hogg and Campbell braces for the sarcasm that doesn’t come. Instead Hogg points across the room to the table where a jug of fresh juice and a box of pastries sits.

  ‘Room service? These really are gentlemen thugs.’

  From the angle on the floor he can see Hogg’s profile and watches the big man crack a smile and fold creases in the auburn skin of the birthmark.

  He gathers a glass of juice and a large fresh Danish and pulls up a seat.

  ’They’ll be back with coffee soon,’ says Hogg. ‘I ordered for you.’

  ‘Thanks. What did you order for me?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Two coffees? My favourite.’

  ’Try to keep the crumbs off the keys.’

  ‘You know Caspar, after the near-drowning, near-shooting and actual pistol-whipping yesterday, four hours doesn’t seem like quite enough sleep. But you still seem to be in a worse mood than me. Why is that?’

  ‘Because I’ve heard you moan about all that so many times I’m beginning to think it happened to me.’

  ‘Hang in there big guy, it will.’

  Finally Hogg makes eye contact and the fire in his eyes dances a long time before it fades. Then he just looks sad and can’t sustain the fury.

  ‘From the top then. Horner’s new scam. Talk me through it,’ says Campbell. He feels oddly upbeat as he gets through his breakfast. Perhaps it is a natural euphoria from surviving a near death experience, or the relief of having all his paranoia from recent weeks confirmed and discovering he’s not deluded, or maybe he’s just high from the exhaustion and lack of sleep. He wonders how long it will take for Hogg to squash it.

  Hogg looks for a moment like he’s running through a dozen different responses from angry to indifferent, desperate to defiant, but it passes and he turns back to the screens.

  ‘Everyone on Horner’s list of friends, associates, whoever they are, they all get an anonymised ID and we’re in contact with them all,’ he begins. ‘We’ve communicated enough details and instructions to them that they know what to buy and when to buy it and we supply the capital via the bank so they don’t need to risk their own money. We’ve moved the capital around like you said yesterday, repackaged it, moved it between the shell companies and made it look as though they’re all real operating outfits with brief trading histories. When they trade the shares, they’ll buy in concert, inflate the share price because they’re small volume these stocks, but high demand that drives up the price. Then they sell, and take the profits.’

  ‘Who’s going to buy this crap off them?’

  ‘Who cares? Someone sees the share prices spiking and wants in maybe. If not, the bank steps in.’

  ‘Why not just send them the cash direct from the bank?’

  ‘Not enough layers. It has to look at least vaguely legitimate. Just creating the money and handing it over to a random list of suspicious chara
cters is the reddest of flags, no? At least create the semblance of transactional market activity and try to cover the tracks. Besides, if they sell shares into the market they have legit cash from legit sources, rather than from the bank. Then the buyer finds they’re stuck with crap and either dumps it at a loss to some other mug, or they write it off as a bad deal. Bigger losses are made every minute of every day.’

  ‘Rewind for me,’ says Campbell finishing the juice and sending the last of the Danish after it. ‘Stop me if I’m wrong anywhere. Horner has somehow got himself a banking licence - bribery, extortion, Rookes and his goons kidnapping someone’s daughter, whatever it was - and uses some seed capital from somewhere, probably his own money, to set it up. Then he creates a series of shell companies… Seven Mile Solutions, Bodden Ventures, Barracuda Trading. Wait - that’s where the names are all from. Seven Mile Beach? Bodden was the guy that founded the Caymans right? OK, so I get that now.’

  ‘Some were random, like Orbit Capital and Forward Solutions, and some he came up with just staring out the window.’

  ‘So he sets up the shell companies and lends money to them from his bank. Which one’s the bank?’

  ‘Icarus Financial.’

  Campbell begins to slowly shake his head. ‘Which will soar too high and then crash back to earth. Of course. So then the money comes back in as deposits, meaning more lending. Then the layering - the companies all buy each other’s shares, or issue debt to each other. Make it look as though there are more assets on balance sheets, a trading pattern and history.’

  Hogg is nodding and pouring himself another juice, tops up Campbell’s glass.

  ‘And then…?’

  ‘And then get everyone in place to buy their allocation, sell it again and make their money. All his friends get rich.’

  ‘Friends huh? He told you that.’

  ‘Not so much.’

  ‘Seem like the sort of guy has a lot of friends?’

  Hogg shakes his head. ‘Seems like the kind of guy that might try to buy friends though.’

  ‘Kind of,’ says Campbell. ‘How much of this did he tell you and how much have you worked out for yourself?’

  ‘He tries to limit the information but I’ve put so much of this in place it’s impossible to not figure most of it. Only thing I can’t grasp is who these guys are.’ He is pointing at the list of anonymised IDs listed on screen.

  ‘Let’s just say he owes them all an apology.’

  ‘Why?’

  Campbell raises an eyebrow. ‘You want to hear a story about Michael Horner?’

  SIXTY TWO

  ‘A few years ago, I’d thrown a housewarming party and this guy turns up, total stranger. First I knew was when I heard this awful sound of breaking glass and he was lying in a pool of blood in the kitchen and a wine glass in his neck, like he’d fallen on it. Big spike, right in the throat. Anyway, not long after that I found a little USB memory stick hidden away beneath the oven. I check it but what’s on there doesn’t make much sense until I see this thing in the local paper about a break-in and the names match. So I figure; industrial espionage. But I can’t understand what it is doing in the kitchen, until a lot of people come looking for it and they all seem very upset that I’ve seen it.

  Hogg looks at the door and the departed goons. ‘Those guys?’

  ’No, no. Nothing to do with this lot. But after a long time and a lot of running scared it turns out that Horner was behind the whole thing. Some big scam to rig a few foreign aid contracts - you know, where western governments help developing nations with things like infrastructure? Anyway, by that stage, I thought the only way to stop Horner coming after me was to get someone to go after him. He’d set it up so that a lot of his contacts and associates - we aren’t talking about golfing buddies here - would profit too. When it went the other way, they were upset.’

  ‘And here he is.’

  ‘And here he is. Same shit, different day.’

  ‘Only this time, he’s not taking the risk of trying to influence something, he’s just making the whole thing up.’

  ‘That’s what it looks like. The whole thing is smoke and mirrors. The illusionist gets everyone believing what they’re seeing until he pulls the sheet away and there’s nothing there. Never was.’

  Hogg sips at his coffee and looks back at his screens. ‘And if he makes them all some money like he was supposed to, he figures they’ll forget about the original mess.’

  Campbell nods. ‘Money talks. Specifically money says, “sorry about that old boy, let’s just forget the whole thing.” And I guess, if there’s enough money talking, they will forget.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Hogg says looking distant.

  ‘These guys are all signed up though right? Whoever they are?’ he says pointing at the ID list.

  ‘Yes,’ replies Hogg. ‘But I don’t know if that means all is forgiven. What if they’re just playing along to get the money and then…’

  ’Sure,’ Campbell picks up his train of thought. ‘For some of these scumbags it won’t just be about the money they lost. If they lost face too, then that will hurt. They’ll want payback for that as well.’

  Hogg nods, sips coffee. ‘And the idea that Horner somehow emerges from the shadows to grant them some compensation… like he’s giving them the opportunity to forgive him. With all the arrogance that would befit the man.’

  ‘Good to see this all hasn’t passed you by,’ says Campbell, wondering if Hogg’s refusal to even consider cooperation last night was shifting in the cold light of day.

  ‘But that’s just it. They haven’t forgiven him. I mean, I can’t say all of them. But when the Malaysian and the guy in the suit turned up they had someone with them. Nasty looking guy, raging angry at Horner. He didn’t care a bit about the money, he just wanted blood.’

  ‘Christ,’ says Campbell, shocked to hear that Horner’s plan had already shown signs of weakness. ‘Where’s he now?’

  Hogg shrugs. ‘Where they tried to leave you I would guess. The guy in the suit shot him.’

  Campbell frowns. ‘They brought him along to see Horner and then shot him?’

  ‘Shot him down right there in his office. A demonstration of will I suppose. They wanted Horner to know that they wanted their money and how far they were willing to go to make sure it got done.’

  Campbell ponders that for a while, sipping at his cooling coffee. Seeing them all in that basement, Campbell had assumed they were all part of the plan. Rookes was Horner’s man, no question of that, and the muscle were entirely disposable. Having failed with him and Lisa, having seen and done what they had at Rookes’ order, there was no chance they’d be allowed to walk away.

  But he’d seen Hari and Dusan standing apart and watching it all play out and now he saw why. They weren’t part of it; they were one of the names on the list. They had come to make sure Horner got it right and to show him, with the execution of the man who wanted revenge, that Horner was under their protection. But protection could mean a lot of things. What Horner was being shown he needed to be protected from was right there in the room with him, watching every move.

  ‘He’s dead too.’

  ‘What?’ says Hogg, frowning at Campbell. ‘That’s what I said. They shot him and now he’s gone.’

  ’No, not him. He was a prop for the act. Horner I mean. Horner’s dead. As soon as this is done and Hari and Dusan get paid, they’ll kill him.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Why else come here? Why else track him down and get past all his precautions? That will have taken time and effort, money. They want paid and they want pride. Everything that was taken from them, repaid with interest.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ’And you know what that means for us right?’

  Hogg does but he doesn’t want to say so. ‘Means we have work to do.’