Dead Cat Bounce (13 page)

Jonah was twenty yards away from the Bunker when the Baron’s voice hit him like a sledgehammer. “iPod! Where the hell have you been? Get your arse over here now!”

Jonah quickened his stride, holding the file Solomons had given
him as far from his body as possible. It was like being summoned by the headmaster. For a second he felt small, a child among men once more. “I’ve been seeing Amelia and Mr. Solomons like you told me to,” he explained.

“Did I?” The Baron seemed genuinely surprised. “Oh yeah.” He looked at the file in Jonah’s hand. “Is that Pistol’s file of death?”

“That it is.” Jonah grinned, pretending to struggle with its weight. “Why do you call him Pistol anyway? Is it because he shoots the traders down or something?”

“That’s what he thinks.” The Baron laughed, a glint in his eyes. “The reality is we call him that because he’s a small bore.”

Jonah cracked up. “Genius.”

“Yeah. I thought so when I made it up. Anyway, if he’s said you can’t do anything until you’ve read his file of death, forget it.” He paused and grabbed the file from Jonah’s fingers. “Here, let me help you.” He chucked the file into the trash can, a wild expression on his face. “Now, get all the tickets and start inputting.”

Jonah could feel his fingertips tingle with excitement, but he still had his wits about him enough to make sure he’d dealt with all the preliminary nonsense. “What about the meetings you wanted me to have with Clive and the tech boys?” he asked.

“Screw them! Do them tomorrow,” the Baron replied gleefully. “We’re bank bashing, and we’re about to go supersonic!”

“Bank bashing?” Jonah echoed.

“Shorting the crap out of them. Selling their shares,” the Baron explained. “The market thinks that the weekend’s rescues mean the end of the financial crisis. It’s not.”

“No?”

“No!” The Baron smiled. “The banks are going down, and we’re going to help them on their way. He crunched the knuckles on his left hand, then the knuckles on his right. Finally, he kissed the skull-head ring on his finger. “Come now, iPod, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!”

“Yeah!” shouted Dog. Jonah looked across the desk to see he was holding a hammer in one hand and his phone in the other.

Jonah put his new briefcase down, took a deep breath—inhaling the scent of the hunt—and began rushing around the Bunker, collecting the trading tickets from each of the traders. Back at the Cockpit he quickly refamiliarized himself with the computers, making a mental note to be in first tomorrow morning so that he could press the button that made the screens appear. Nothing much had changed in the four years he’d been gone except for a fingerprint security device to activate the computers. Now that was cool.

The Baron was on the phone but signaled to him to put his finger on the pad and mouthed, “It’ll reset with your fingerprint.” Jonah did so, and the screens lit up. After some security wording, it all came to life: there were the numbers, red and blue; the newsfeed in a window on the right; the e-mail chat from the market; the profits and the losses. Jonah scanned the information—absorbing it, understanding it. They were selling bank shares, betting that the share prices would fall and that they could buy them back cheaper in the next couple of days. And they were doing it on a massive scale.

Jonah turned to the Baron. “Jesus. You’re not joking about shorting the crap out of them!”

The Baron raised his arms in the air like a boxing champion and
started singing, obviously enjoying himself. “I’m going supersonic, bring me a gin and tonic.”

Jonah’s fingers started rattling across the keyboard. The Bunker was hunting the banks down one by one. Royal Bank.
Bang.
Hudson Building Society.
Bang.
Banque de Triomphe.
Bang.
Saxo Kash Finanz.
Bang.
Nordic Insurance.
Bang.
The biggest names in European finance were coming under heavy fire from the Baron and the Bunker Boys.

And still the Baron continued to sing, “Going supersonic, their management’s moronic.”

At one o’clock the New York markets opened and they turned their sights to the United States. Allegro Home Finance.
Bang.
National Mutual.
Bang.
OPM Insurance.
Bang.
DebtGroup.
Bang.
Lads Bellowing & Brothers.
Bang
.

“Going supersonic, they’ve all got plague bubonic.”

Jonah struggled to keep up with the volume of trades—they were coming so fast. All afternoon he pounded away at the keyboard, loving the buzz around the desk. His only frustration was that he wasn’t trading himself. After having spent the last four years huddled in his dorm room working with the Baron on his portfolio, it struck him as odd that he’d keep him at arm’s length now when the heat was really on.

“Going supersonic, let’s give them some colonics.”

Jonah tried to calm the itch inside him. In the choice between sitting in a classroom at school learning about glacial erosion or being here on the trading floor with the Baron and the Bunker Boys, the answer was obvious.

“Going supersonic, the market’s catatonic.”

Five o’clock passed, then six, and then seven. Jonah was beginning to wonder whether they were going to push on through the night until finally, at eight o’clock, the Baron stopped singing, leaped up, and shouted, “Got to run. Going to Switzerland. Nearly forgot. Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?” To Jonah, he said, “Good work, fella. I won’t be in until lunchtime tomorrow. Go and see Clive and the IT trainspotters in the morning and start on the backlog, will you?” He squeezed Jonah’s shoulder, practically threw his laptop into his case, and headed rapidly for the door, still singing, “Going supersonic, the Baron is iconic.”

Jonah watched him leave, a sense of pride filling his very core. This was the man who had chosen
him
, who had picked him from among the endless number of college graduates who were trolling for jobs in the city. His methods may have been crazy—all the singing and the adornment of the desk with souvenirs of successful trades—but the Bunker’s continued success, in spite of horrible market conditions, didn’t lie.

The other traders, including Dog and the rest of them, trickled out shortly after the Baron, barely nodding to Jonah as they went.

As Jonah input the final trades, he did not let himself be concerned by the dismissive attitudes of the boys in the Bunker—they’d get over his being there just like they did the last time. Neither did he let his mind linger on the bank share prices that had risen on the back of the rescues and the fact that they were sitting on a loss of twenty-four million pounds. Instead, he remembered the complicated tapestry the Baron and his Boys had woven the last time he was here, the patterns that weren’t visible to anyone but those most in the know, and he felt certain that tomorrow all would be made
clear. He stood up and headed for the door, feeling for Creedence’s number in his pocket, convinced that he’d just lived through the first day of the rest of his life.

So long as he didn’t run into his dad at home, the day would be perfect.

Jonah was woken
the next morning by the radio on his alarm clock. He tried to focus on the red numbers that the clock beamed up onto the ceiling. “Four fifty-five
A.M.
,” it read.
Why so early?
his unconscious mind asked.
Work,
his now semiconscious mind replied.
Hellcat! Bank bashing! The Cockpit!

Hit it!
he thought, leaping out of bed and heading to the shower. He lived in the old au pair’s flat at the top of the house, now complete with a 56
”
LCD TV screen, a very substantial sound system, an Xbox, a PlayStation, and two electric guitars, all purchased since he began trading back at school. On the wall were two framed posters from early Rolling Stones concerts in Richmond, bought at auction, and from one of the frames hung his gold medal from the National Under 16 Cross Country championships. He’d cleared the rest of his track cups and medals from the room in preparation for his soon-to-be acquired trading trophies.

In the shower he turned the heat up a fraction more than normal
to really feel the sting and then switched it to cold, gasping as the water crashed onto his head. He brushed his teeth and got dressed so quickly that it was only five fifteen
A.M.
when he quietly opened the front door and slipped out of the house undetected, relieved that he had avoided his father. Logically, Jonah understood that eventually the two of them would be stuck in a room together for more than ten seconds, but still the prospect filled him with horror given the acrimony of their recent encounters.

It was dark and damp outside with a light drizzle filling the air. Sunrise was not for another hour, but Jonah felt invigorated. At Hammersmith Bridge he stopped before crossing the river. He could see a taxi approaching, its yellow light illuminated. He held his arm out to hail it, reasoning that he shouldn’t suffer the crush of the Underground when he could afford the comfort of a cab.

When Jonah arrived at the office, it was still not yet six o’clock. He pushed through the glass doors of the entrance, which were never locked, nodded to the nighttime security guard at reception, went through the turnstiles, up the escalator, onto the trading floor, and over to the Bunker. He was first in. The Cockpit was his. He reached under the desk and pressed the button, mouthing, “We have ignition,” as he sat back triumphant, taking in the grandeur of the double desk coming to life around him.

Suddenly it struck him that this was the first time he’d ever been on the trading floor while it was as deathly silent as his father’s house. The thought repulsed him, and he quickly sought to remedy it.

Item number one: Clive. Clive was in charge of Settlements and saw every trade that was made. Rumor had it that he never actually left the office, so Jonah assumed he’d be in despite the
early hour. He was right. Clive came over to Jonah’s desk and told him about how he was the one who made the corrections when the traders input the wrong amounts or client account numbers. He was the safety net, the one who made sure that all the money and the trades went to the right places. Jonah soaked up everything that Clive had to say, mostly because he was a big fan of the Baron’s, and—after Jonah had worked so hard that morning to avoid interacting with someone who felt the opposite—he was happy to talk to an individual with whom he had at least that in common.

Item number two: the tech guys, or IT as they were properly known. There was a large crew of people in IT, and many of them worked late nights and early mornings. Two of them walked over to the Bunker—one fat, Lardy, and one thin, Jez—fixed up Jonah’s new laptop and showed him everything about the state-of-the-art technology on his desk. Neither looked too thrilled to be doing it.

Item number three: the backlog. Jonah punched the keys on his computer and pulled up the mismatched trade folder. He looked at it, memorized it, and closed it down. Next he picked up the pile of unresolved trading tickets and deciphered the scrawls and scribbles against the photograph in his mind.

His concentration was only broken by the incessant ringing of an unanswered cell phone. He looked around to see where it was coming from—other traders had begun arriving at this point—until finally his ears settled on his own briefcase. It was his new cell phone. He hadn’t recognized the ringtone. He put his thumbs on the lock sensors so that they could read his thumbprints and flicked the lock to open the case. He picked up the phone and looked at the screen. It said, “The Baron.”

“iPod,” said Jonah, briefly wondering why the Baron hadn’t called his work line.

“Bloody hell, that took a while,” came the reply.

“Yes, sorry. You’re the first call on the new phone,” Jonah replied, oddly nervous. He suspected it had something to do with the sudden tumult amid the silence.

“That so?” The Baron didn’t wait for a response. “What’s news?”

This has to be a test
, thought Jonah.
As if the Baron didn’t know what was going on!
He scanned the screens quickly. “More of the same from last night really. Overnight markets up. London and Europe opening up as well. Financials ahead. Only bank that got hurt yesterday was Allegro Home Finance, off fourteen percent. Rumors that the deal with the International Development Bank is going to fall through. Wisemen Thryce have put some research out this morning saying that the financial crisis for the banks isn’t as bad as it seems. It’s pushed the sector up further.”

“Nah,” the Baron drawled, “Wisemen’s trying to push their own book. They’re long and they’re wrong”—he meant that Wisemen and others were
buying
stocks because they believed the prices were going to go up, that the banks’ stocks were going to improve. “I want
you
to do some trading this morning—
more selling
.”

For a moment Jonah felt fear rising in his throat, taking him back to his first ever trade three years previously. He had worked hard the previous year and all through the summer holidays to learn the financial and legal stuff the Baron had thought was most important. But still the closest he’d come to betting real money were the few times the Baron had let him make some virtual trades
on the video-game training tool. When it came to actual investing, his mentor would still only allow him to run a shadow portfolio of stocks and shares. And it was a good thing too—the first five trades Jonah did were disastrous. If he’d had real cash invested, it would have been gone in a few weeks.

However, a full year after Jonah had begun his training with the Baron, Jonah woke up at seven o’clock on the first day of the new term and went straight to his computer to check his e-mails. There was a new message from the Baron:
Playtime over. Account is activated.

Jonah’s heart rate accelerated, his mind raced—he could finally trade for real! His hand hovered over his mouse, about to pull the trigger on his first trade when another message came from the Baron:
Show me that I was right to believe in you
. Jonah pulled his hand back, hesitating. From there, he came up with one reason after another for why he should wait—he needed to unpack everything for the new term; he had to buy groceries; there were classes to attend; the timing wasn’t right. The reality was he couldn’t bring himself to put actual money on the table. If he did, and he was wrong, would the Baron abandon him, leave him to his own devices, to school, to running, to his father? It was as if a wall of anxiety and indecision had been erected around him.