The Fear Index

10

Hoffmann tried to call her from the back of the Mercedes, but he only got her voicemail. The familiar, jaunty voice caught him by the throat: ‘Hi, this is Gabby, don’t you dare hang up without leaving me a message.’

He had a terrible premonition she was irretrievably gone. Even if they could patch things up, the person she had been before this day began would no longer exist. It was like listening to a recording of someone who had just died.

There was a beep. After a long pause, which he knew would sound weird when she played it back but which he struggled to end, he said finally, ‘Call me, will you? We’ve got to talk.’ He couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘Well, okay. That’s it. Bye.’

He hung up and stared at the mobile for a while, weighing it in his palm, willing it to ring, wondering if he should have said something else or if there was some other way of reaching her. He leaned forward to the bodyguard. ‘Is your colleague with my wife, do you know?’

Paccard, keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead, spoke over his shoulder. ‘No, monsieur. By the time he got to the end of the road, she was already out of sight.’

Hoffmann let out a groan. ‘Is there no one in this goddam town who can do a simple job without screwing up?’ He threw himself back in his seat, folded his arms and stared out of the window. Of one thing at least he was certain: he had not bought up Gabrielle’s exhibition. He had not had the opportunity. Convincing her, however, would not be easy. In his mind he heard her voice again. A billion dollars? Ballpark? You know what? Forget it. It’s over.

Across the gunmetal waters of the Rhone he could see the financial district – BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Private Wealth… It occupied the northern bank of the wide river and part of the island in the middle. A trillion dollars of assets was controlled from Geneva, of which Hoffmann Investment Technologies handled a mere one per cent; of that one per cent his personal stake was less than one tenth. Viewed in proportion, why should she be so outraged by a billion? Dollars, euros, francs – these were the units in which he measured the success or failure of his experiment, just as at CERN he had used teraelectronvolts, nanoseconds and microjoules. However, there was one great difference between the two, he was obliged to concede; a problem he had never fully confronted or solved. You couldn’t buy anything with a nanosecond or a microjoule, whereas money was a sort of toxic by-product of his research. Sometimes he felt it was poisoning him inch by inch, just like Marie Curie had been killed by radiation.

At first he had ignored his wealth, either rolling it over into the company or parking it on deposit. But he hated the thought of becoming an eccentric like Etienne Mussard, twisted into misanthropy by the pressure of his own good fortune. So recently he had copied Quarry and tried spending it. But that had led directly to the overdecorated mansion in Cologny, stuffed with expensive collections of books and antiques he did not need but which required layers of security to protect: a sort of pharaoh’s burial chamber for the living. The final option he supposed would be to give it away – Gabrielle would approve of that, at least – but even philanthropy could corrupt: to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars responsibly would be a full-time job. Occasionally he had a fantasy that his surplus profits might be converted into paper money and incinerated round-the-clock, just as an oil refinery burned off excess gas – blue and yellow flames lighting up the Geneva night sky.

The Mercedes began to cross the river.

He did not like to think of Gabrielle wandering the streets alone. It was her impulsiveness that worried him. Once angered, she was capable of anything. She might disappear for a few days, fly back to her mother in England, have her head filled with nonsense. You know what? Forget it. It’s over. What did she mean by that? What was over? The exhibition? Her career as an artist? Their conversation? Their marriage? Panic welled inside him again. Life without her would be a vacuum: unsurvivable. He rested the edge of his forehead on the cold glass, and for a vertiginous moment, looking down into the lightless, turbid water, imagined himself sucked into nothingness, like a passenger whipped out through the fuselage of a ruptured aircraft miles above the earth.

They turned on to the Quai du Mont-Blanc. The city, crouched around the dark pool of its lake, looked low and sombre, hewn from the same grey rock as the distant Jura. There was none of the vulgar glass-and-steel animal exuberance of Manhattan or the City of London: their skyscrapers would rise and they would crash, booms and busts would come and go, but crafty Geneva, with its head down, would endure for ever. The Hotel Beau-Rivage, nicely positioned near the mid-point of the wide tree-lined boulevard, embodied these values in bricks and stone. Nothing exciting had happened here since 1898, when the Empress of Austria, leaving the hotel after lunch, had been stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist. One fact about her murder had always stuck in Hoffmann’s mind: she had been unaware of her injury until her corset was removed, by which time she had almost bled to death internally. In Geneva, even the assassinations were discreet.

The Mercedes pulled up on the opposite side of the road, and Paccard, his hand raised imperiously to stop the traffic, escorted Hoffmann across the pedestrian crossing, up the steps and into the faux-Habsburg grandeur of the interior. If the concierge felt any private alarm at Hoffmann’s appearance, he allowed no flicker of it to show on his smiling face as he took over from Paccard and led le cher docteur up the stairs to the dining room.

The atmosphere beyond the tall doors was that of a nineteenth-century salon: paintings, antiques, gilt chairs, gold swag curtains; the Empress herself would have felt at home. Quarry had reserved a long table by the French windows and was sitting with his back to the lake view, keeping an eye on the entrance. He had a napkin tucked into his collar, gentleman’s-club style, but when Hoffmann appeared, he quickly pulled it out and dropped it on his chair. He moved to intercept his partner in the middle of the room.

‘Professor,’ he said cheerfully for the others to hear, and then, more quietly, drawing him slightly apart, ‘where the bloody hell have you been?’

Hoffmann started to answer but Quarry interrupted him without listening. He was fired up, eyes gleaming, closing the deal.

‘Okay, never mind. It doesn’t matter. The main thing is it looks as though they’re in – most of them, anyway – and my hunch is for closer to a billion than seven-fifty. So all I need from you now, please, maestro, is sixty minutes of technical reassurance. Preferably with minimal aggression, if you think you can manage that.’ He gestured towards the table. ‘Come and join us. You’ve missed the grenouille de Vallorbe, but the filet mignon de veau should be divine.’

Hoffmann didn’t move. He said suspiciously, ‘Did you just buy up all Gabrielle’s artwork?’

‘What?’ Quarry halted, turned, squinted at him, perplexed.

‘Someone just bought up her entire collection using an account set up in my name. She thought it might be you.’

‘I haven’t even seen it! And why would I have an account in your name? That’s bloody illegal, for a start.’ He glanced over his shoulder at the clients, then back at Hoffmann. He looked utterly mystified. ‘You know what? Could we talk about this later?’

‘So you’re absolutely sure you didn’t buy it? Not even as a joke? Just tell me if you did.’

‘It’s not my kind of humour, old man. Sorry.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’ Hoffmann’s gaze swept jaggedly around the room: the clients, the waiters, the two exits, the high windows and the balcony beyond. ‘Someone’s really after me, Hugo. Out to destroy me bit by bit. It’s actually starting to bug me.’

‘Well yes, I can see that, Alexi. How’s your head?’

Hoffmann put his hand to his scalp and ran his fingers over the hard, alien lumps of the stitches. He had a throbbing headache, he realised. ‘It’s started hurting again.’

‘Okay,’ said Quarry slowly. In other circumstances, Hoffmann would have found his English stiff upper lip in the face of potential disaster amusing. ‘So what are you saying here? Are you saying perhaps you ought to go back to the hospital?’

‘No. I’ll just sit down.’

‘And eat something, maybe?’ said Quarry hopefully. ‘You haven’t eaten all day, have you? No wonder you’re feeling peculiar.’ He took Hoffmann by the arm and led him towards the table. ‘Now you sit here opposite me, where I can keep an eye on you, and perhaps we can all change places later on. Good news out of Wall Street, incidentally,’ he added, sotto voce. ‘Looks like the Dow’s going to open well down.’

Hoffmann found himself being helped by a waiter into a seat between the Parisian lawyer Francois de Gombart-Tonnelle, and Etienne Mussard. Quarry was flanked by their respective partners, Elmira Gulzhan and Clarisse Mussard. The Chinese had been left to fend for themselves at one end of the table; the American bankers, Klein and Easterbrook, were at the other. In between were Herxheimer, Mould, Lukasinski and various lawyers and advisers exuding the natural bonhomie of men charging hourly fees while simultaneously enjoying a free meal. A heavy linen napkin was shaken out and spread over Hoffmann’s lap. He was offered a choice of white or red wine by the sommelier – a 2006 Louis Jadot Montrachet Grand Cru or a 1995 Latour – but refused both. He asked for still water.

De Gombart-Tonnelle said, ‘We were just discussing tax rates, Alex.’ He broke off a tiny piece of bread roll with his long fingers, and slipped it into his mouth. ‘We were saying that Europe seems to be going the way of the old Soviet Union. France forty per cent, Germany forty-five per cent, Spain forty-seven per cent, the UK fifty per cent-’

‘Fifty per cent!’ cut in Quarry. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m as patriotic as the next chap, but do I really want to go into a fifty-fifty partnership with Her Majesty’s Government? I think not.’

‘There is no democracy any more,’ said Elmira Gulzhan. ‘The state is in control as never before. All our freedoms are disappearing and no one seems to care. That’s what I find so depressing about this century.’

De Gombart-Tonnelle was still going on: ‘… even Geneva is forty-four per cent.’

‘Don’t tell me you guys pay forty-four per cent,’ said Iain Mould.

Quarry smiled, as if he had been asked a question by a child. ‘Theoretically you have to pay forty-four on salary. But if you take your income as dividend and your business is overseas-registered, then four fifths of your dividends are legally tax-free. So you only pay the forty-four on the one fifth. Hence a marginal top rate of eight-point-eight per cent. Isn’t that right, Amschel?’

Herxheimer, who lived in Zermatt but by some feat of teleportation was actually based in Guernsey, agreed that it was indeed so.

‘Eight-point-eight,’ repeated Mould. He looked sick. ‘Good for you.’

Easterbrook called down the table, ‘I’m coming to live in Geneva!’

‘Yeah, but try telling that to Uncle Sam,’ said Klein gloomily. ‘The IRS will hunt you down to the ends of the earth as long as you have a US passport. And have you ever tried getting rid of American citizenship? You can’t do it. It’s like being a Soviet Jew trying to emigrate to Israel in the seventies.’

‘No freedom,’ repeated Elmira Gulzhan, ‘as I say. The state will take everything from us, and if we dare to protest, we will be arrested for not being politically correct.’

Hoffmann stared at the tablecloth and let the discussion flow around him. He was remembering now why he didn’t like the rich: their self-pity. Persecution was the common ground of their conversation, like sport or the weather was for everyone else. He despised them.

‘I despise you,’ he said, but nobody paid him any attention, so engrossed were they in the inequities of higher-rate taxation and the inherent criminality of all employees. And then he thought: perhaps I have become one of them; is that why I am so paranoid? He examined his palms under the table, and then the backs of his hands, as if he half-expected to find himself sprouting fur.

At that moment the doors swung open to admit a file of eight tail-coated waiters, each carrying two plates capped with domed silver covers. They stationed themselves between their allotted pair of diners, set the plates down before them, grasped the twin covers with their white-gloved hands, and at a signal from the maitre d’ lifted them away. The main course was veal with morels and asparagus, served to everyone apart from Elmira Gulzhan, who had a piece of grilled fish, and Etienne Mussard, who had a hamburger and chips.

‘I cannot eat veal,’ said Elmira, leaning confidingly across the table to Hoffmann, offering him a brief glimpse of her pale brown breasts. ‘The poor calf suffers so.’

‘Oh, I always prefer food that’s suffered,’ said Quarry cheerfully, wielding his knife and fork, his napkin back in his collar. ‘I think fear releases some especially piquant chemical from the nervous system into the flesh. Veal cutlets, lobster thermidor, pate de foie gras – the nastier the demise the better, that’s my philosophy: no pain, no gain.’

Elmira flicked him with the end of her napkin. ‘Hugo, you are wicked. Isn’t he wicked, Alex?’

‘He is wicked,’ agreed Hoffmann. He pushed his food around his plate with his fork. He had no appetite. Over Quarry’s shoulder he could see the Jet d’Eau probing the dull sky on the opposite side of the lake like a watery searchlight.

Lukasinski began calling across the table some technical questions about the new fund, which Quarry laid down his cutlery to answer. All money invested would be subjected to a one-year lock-up, with a redemption day thereafter four times per annum: 31 May, 31 August, 30 November and 28 February; all redemptions would require a notice period of forty-five days. The structure of the fund would be as before: investors would be part of a limited-liability company registered in the Cayman Islands for tax purposes, which would retain Hoffmann Investment Technologies to manage its assets.

Herxheimer said, ‘How soon do you require an answer from us?’

Quarry said, ‘We’re looking to hard-close the fund again at the end of this month.’

‘So three weeks?’

‘That’s right.’

Suddenly the atmosphere around the table was serious. Side conversations ceased. Everyone was listening.

‘Well, you can have my answer right now,’ said Easterbrook. He waved his fork in Hoffmann’s direction. ‘You know what I like about you, Hoffmann?’

‘No, Bill. What would that be?’

‘You don’t talk your book. You let your numbers do the speaking. I made up my mind the moment that plane went down. There’ll have to be due diligence and all that crap, blah-blah-blah, but I’m going to recommend that AmCor doubles its stake.’

Quarry glanced quickly across the table at Hoffmann. His blue eyes widened. The tip of his tongue moistened his lips. ‘That’s a billion dollars, Bill,’ he said quietly.

‘I know it’s a billion dollars, Hugo. There was a time when that was a lot of money.’

The listeners laughed. They would remember this moment. It would be an anecdote to savour on the quaysides of Antibes and Palm Beach for years to come: the day old Bill Easterbrook of AmCor put up a billion dollars over lunch and said it used to be a lot of money. The look on Easterbrook’s face suggested he knew what they were thinking; it was the reason he had done it.

‘Bill, that is so generous of you,’ said Quarry hoarsely. ‘Alex and I are overwhelmed.’ He glanced across the table.

‘Overwhelmed,’ repeated Hoffmann.

‘Winter Bay will be in as well,’ said Klein. ‘I can’t say how much exactly – I’m not cleared to Bill’s level – but it will be substantial.’

Lukasinski said, ‘That goes for me too.’

‘And I shall speak to my father,’ said Elmira, ‘and he will do as I say.’

‘Do I take it that the mood of the meeting is that you’re all planning to invest?’ asked Quarry. Murmurs of assent ran around the table. ‘Well, that sounded promising. Can I ask the question a different way – is anyone here not planning to increase their investment?’ The diners looked from one to another; several shrugged. ‘Even you, Etienne?’

Mussard looked up grumpily from his hamburger. ‘Yes, yes, I suppose so, why wouldn’t I? But let’s not discuss it in public, if you don’t mind. I prefer to do things in the traditional Swiss way.’

‘You mean fully clothed with the lights off?’ Quarry rose to his feet on the tide of laughter. ‘My friends, I know we are still eating, but if ever there was a time for a spontaneous toast in the Russian manner – forgive me, Mieczyslaw – then I think this must be it.’ He cleared his throat. He seemed on the point of tears. ‘Dear guests, we are honoured by your presence, by your friendship, and by your trust. I truly believe we are present at the birth of a whole new force in global asset management, the product of the union of cutting-edge science and aggressive investment – or, if you prefer, of God and Mammon.’ More laughter. ‘At which happy event, it seems to me only right that we should stand and raise our glasses to the genius who has made it possible – no, no, not to me.’ He beamed down at Hoffmann. ‘To the father of VIXAL-4 – to Alex!’

With a scrape of chair legs, a chorus of ‘To Alex!’ and a peal of clinking cut glass, the investors stood and toasted Hoffmann. They looked at him fondly – even Mussard managed to curl his lip – and when they had all sat down they carried on nodding and smiling at him until he realised to his dismay that they expected him to respond.

‘Oh no,’ he said.

Quarry urged him softly: ‘Come on, Alexi, just a couple of words, and then it’s all over for another eight years.’

‘Really I can’t.’

But such a good-natured round of ‘No!’ and ‘Shame!’ greeted his refusal that Hoffmann actually found himself getting to his feet. His napkin slid off his lap and on to the carpet. He rested one hand on the table to steady himself and tried to think of what he might say. Almost absently he glanced out of the window at the view – which, because he was now elevated, had widened to take in not only the opposite shore, the towering fountain and the inky waters of the lake but also the promenade where the Empress had been stabbed, directly beneath the hotel. The Quai du Mont-Blanc is especially wide at this point. It forms a kind of miniature park with lime trees, benches, small trimmed lawns, elaborate belle epoque street lamps and dark green topiary. A semicircular embankment with a stone balustrade radiates out into the water, leading down to a jetty and a ferry station. On this particular afternoon a dozen people were queuing at the white metal kiosk for ferry tickets. A young woman with a red baseball cap skated by on rollerblades. Two men in jeans were walking a large black poodle. Finally Hoffmann’s eyes came to rest upon a skeletal apparition draped in a brown leather coat standing under one of the pale green limes. His skull was gaunt and very white, as if he had just vomited or fainted, and his eye sockets were deeply shadowed by his bulging forehead, from which all his hair had been scraped back into a tight grey ponytail. He was gazing directly up at the window from which Hoffmann was looking down.

Hoffmann’s limbs locked. For several long seconds he was unable to move. Then he took an involuntary step backwards, knocking over his chair. Quarry, staring at him in alarm, said, ‘Oh God, you’re going to faint,’ and began to rise, but Hoffmann held up his hand to ward him off. He took another step away from the table and his feet became entangled in the legs of the upended chair. He stumbled and almost fell, but that seemed to those watching to break whatever spell he was under, for suddenly he kicked the chair sideways out of his path and turned and ran towards the door.

Hoffmann was barely conscious of the astonished exclamations swelling behind him, or of Quarry calling his name. He ran out into the mirrored corridor and down the sweep of staircase, grabbing the handrail to pivot around the landings. At the bottom he jumped the last few steps, sprinted past his bodyguard – who was talking to the concierge – and out on to the promenade.