Carver

93

For the past few months, every time Zorn had landed a major investor, he had started buying ‘put’ options on the shares of the corporations they owned or managed, betting that the value of those corporations would go down. He was, essentially, taking a bet on the value of their deaths. And each had a different price on his head.

A faceless chief executive, for example, who had siphoned off billions from a multinational bank, would not be missed for long. There was always another greedy cipher in a suit waiting to take his place. So his company’s shares would be rocked, but not devastated, by his passing. A brilliant entrepreneur, on the other hand, whose vision had transformed a fledgling computer brand into an iconic global technology brand, was a very different matter. Men like that — and they were almost invariably men — were stars. Their customers were also their fans. Remove them, and the companies they had created might not collapse, but they would be shaken to their very foundations. And their share prices would drop like stones.

During his brief shift as a waiter, Zorn had confirmed the presence of several such individuals scattered amidst the guests thronging the Goldsmiths’ Hall. So now he started buying ‘puts’ on their shares, doubling and even trebling the size of his existing positions, looking for options that needed to be exercised at the earliest possible dates. Since the market was rising, no one was interested in options that depended on prices falling within the next week, or less. That made those options dirt cheap. So Zorn was able to make his money go much further, leveraging his cash so that any fall in the market would net him staggering profits. Of course, by the same token, any rise would render his options worthless. But the prices were not going to rise. That he, and he alone, knew for sure.

As he put the last components of his plan in place, Zorn was struck for a moment by the extraordinary reality of what he was doing. An act of mass-murder was about to take place at his request, the second in the space of just four days. It struck him that he was not remotely bothered. He didn’t feel bad about it at all. He wanted people to die. He wanted other children to feel the same way he had done when fate had robbed him of his parents. He wanted to wallow in death.

A few metres away, Braddock shifted his position and reached for the cord that controlled the window blinds.

He looked at Zorn.

‘It’s show time,’ he said. Then he lifted the grenade launcher to his shoulder.