THE STERADIAN TRAIL: BOOK #0 OF THE INFINITY CYCLE (26 page)

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L
akshman arrived at the department on his Vespa, pleased but somewhat puzzled. He was plunged deeper into confusion by the sight that greeted him half way between his office and the lab: Joshua and Divya chatting in the corridor, bright smiles on their faces.

‘Hey, you’re late,’ Joshua said and extended his hand.

Lakshman shook it and ushered them both into his office.

‘Gee, I would’ve never guessed that people who specialize in passive voice oratory could be so active,’ Joshua said, ‘so active to get the act together in one day.’

Divya smiled. She had caught up on her sleep. It was she who had helped cracked the whole thing and the exhilaration showed on her face.

‘How did you know?’ Lakshman asked Divya.

‘Prof. Joshua told me just now, sir,’ she said. ‘Edwin Miller’s company, ChiP Tech, it’s part of Pomonia’s group. That’s why it’s named after him, Chi from Chiman and P from Pomonia.’

‘How exactly was he involved? Do you know?’ Lakshman asked Joshua.

‘To make money off arbitrage cycles you need to circulate money. You start with some currency somewhere and have the money rotating through different currencies. Like I said before, the returns will be in decimal points; if you send around a few billions on a joyride, they bring back a few million in profit almost instantly. You return the billions where they came from and pocket the millions. Pomonia and his associate were the guys who mobilized those billions from the banks here, bending all the rules to breaking point. Remember the convertibility and money supply limits you were mentioning yesterday? He was the one who threw them all out of the window.’

‘But wouldn’t it show in the books when the banks tally the accounts?’ Lakshman asked.

‘Not unless you look at every transaction with a microscope . . . How do I explain it?’ Joshua turned his head up for a moment. He found his inspiration right there. ‘Okay, imagine a fan like this and one of the monkeys outside. The monkey doesn’t know what a fan is, so it tries poking it with a twig. What happens? It hits the blade. It tries again, the same thing. No matter how many times it sticks up the twig, it hits the blade. So what would it think?’

Lakshman wasn’t sure. So Joshua turned to Divya.

‘That the blade is standing still at the same spot when it’s actually spinning very fast?’ Divya said.

‘Very good,’ Joshua said. ‘Tallying books, checking accounts are kind of like that. Large scale spot market forex transactions are too risky for margin trading. They have to be settled in cash in one or two days max. So money will circulate fast and the inflow and outflow – payables and receivables, credits and debits – would keep balancing each other every other day if not every day; they won’t cause any problem when they tally the books later, which is kind of like the accounting equivalent of sticking in the twig. You get in and get out so fast nobody would even realize it. That’s exactly what has been happening for the last few weeks. Nobody had a clue till we told them. In fact the brilliant economist that your finance minister is, they got the cause and effect thing beautifully mixed up. They thought the rupee was falling because the stock market was crashing when it was actually the other way round. The papers say they were toying with things like government spending, interest rates and IMF packages when they should have been looking at capital controls; they were going after a tiger with a toothpick instead of casting a net around it.’

‘No wonder they never mentioned the market crisis as the reason for arresting Pomonia,’ Lakshman said.

‘There’s no way they can afford to reveal any of it to people. Not only will they look like complete idiots, it will also raise questions on your financial system and scare off investments into the country. Foreign investors are already pulling out of the stock market, FDI would be hit next. Only now things are looking up for you guys, they wouldn’t want to mess it up.’

The patriot in Lakshman was already feeling a bit better: the country was not being plundered by bloody Americans; it was an inside job by a fellow Indian after all. No, make that two. If the unschooled Pomonia was the fountainhead of turpitude, the PhD finance minister was the wellspring of ineptitude; the corrupt and the inept, yin and yang completing a gloriously Indian palimpsest picture.

But the fact that the black box was still out there, in Edwin’s computer and in Brazil, gave no cause for comfort and Lakshman voiced his concern to Joshua.

‘Like I said yesterday, don’t worry, have some faith in Jeffrey,’ Joshua said. ‘When all gods fail you have no choice but to place faith in the devil.’

‘Let’s see,’ Lakshman said. ‘So are you all set to go home?’

‘You bet,’ Joshua said. ‘Carla called me this morning. I’m sorry it had to be this way, but seems like the Brazilians cleared up the way for me, taking out Edwin for killing Jeffrey, and now your CBI has cleaned up the rest. So I’m off the hook and will remain so as long as I keep my mouth shut, well, all of us keep our mouths shut.’

‘When do you leave?’

‘Tomorrow or day after, as soon as I get the final all-clear,’ Joshua said. ‘But I’d like to take everyone out for dinner before that and let you know how much I appreciate it: you, Divya, that guy Venu, Durai, Nallathambi, Michael, Banerjee, everybody. I owe you one.’

Epilogue

A
few weeks later in Sao Paolo, a man booted up his
desktop and tried to click open an icon titled ‘Forex Black Box’. Instead of the GUI window he was expecting, a strange dialog box popped up the screen:

ERROR!

30-day license expired. Program disabled. Call Jeff within 7 days to reactivate.

WARNING!

If license is not renewed in 7 days, the program will delete all the execution files and uninstall itself.

Joshua had turned out to be right about Jeffrey at least on one count: Frankenstein, he might have been, but he had not given the remote control to his monster to anybody. To make sure his clients didn’t cut him out of his share of the booty, he had created an insurance for himself by setting a monthly expiry date for the software. With him dead, the black box self-destructed itself in every computer it was installed and was no longer available to anyone to haemorrhage money off currency markets.

~

Srinivasa Ramanujan’s modest childhood home on Sri Sarangapani Sannidhi Street in Kumbakonam was bought by Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology and Research Academy (SASTRA), a private university based in Thanjavur. The building was finally converted into a memorial, more than eighty years after his death.

The Ramanujan museum located in the narrow by-lane of Somu Chetty Street in Royapuram continues to showcase the genius’ extraordinary legacy in obscurity, yet to find a mention on any tourist map of the city, attracting only some curious school children and a sprinkling of avid Ramanujan fans who know about its existence.

~

The infamous Travelling Salesman Problem soldiers on without solution, two hundred years after mathematicians formally took it up for study. Though researchers have been successful in developing some algorithms that work under special circumstances, the general version of the original Travelling Salesman Problem continues to confound experts across the world to this day.

author’s note

T
he plotline involving Sulba Sutras was inspired by the
work of David Henderson at Cornell University. He conducted his study at the Sankara mutt in Kanchipuram.

Needless to say, any errors in commission, omission and extrapolation are author’s own.

This is a work of fiction and not investment advice. The author or publishers shall not be held liable for the outcome of investment decisions made by the readers.

acknowledgements

T
he germ of this story has been living in my head since 1996; it started to sprout on the screen in 2003 and finally blooms on the shelves now in 2013. I am grateful to a number of people who helped and supported me over the years in making it happen.

Firstly, my agent John Parker who not only believed in this series from the get-go but also made sure that I did.

Deepthi Talwar for her super-sharp editing, inhabiting the heads of the characters so deeply. Gunjan Ahlawat for the fascinating cover. Gautam Padmanabhan and the rest of his smart set at Westland, particularly Krishnakumar Nair and Shalini Raghavan, for getting behind the book without hesitation.

Colin Murray for his generous reading and clinical feedback, especially insisting that I explore Lakshman more, which added a whole new flavour to the mix.

Ram for his vote of confidence and comments on an early draft and Shyam who never stopped chasing me.

Ravi and Prasanna who read draft after draft after draft over a decade without complaining and always came back with something that helped chisel the story into shape. You guys are the best.

To my kids Nandu and Nanni with apologies for all those days, weeks and months I was around but unavailable. Hopefully you will enjoy this when you grow up, though it’s no excuse for my brand of parenting in absentia.

To Usha, my first reader, editor and critic. True to name, you light up my life. I wouldn’t have made it as far as this line without you. This book is as much yours as it is mine.