The Twain Maxim (10 page)

Sebastian rang the doorbell on the dot of one o’clock. Jim was sitting on the sofa, mournfully watching the tide go down. He could have been out there a full hour ago and now, in another hour, it would be low tide. By the time he’d finished with his old friend it would be coming up again. Not that there wouldn’t be another tomorrow, but this was a particularly low tide and a large stretch of river would be exposed that he hadn’t yet had the opportunity to explore. It was like missing an important football match.

“Love the butler,” said Sebastian, as soon as Stafford was out of earshot. He got straight to the point. “I need your advice.” He took some charts out of a leather portfolio.

“I don’t do that kind of thing any more.”

“No, mate, just look at these.”

Jim could see it was some crazy-arsed stock.

“I’ve got myself into a bit of a mess, old chap, and I desperately need some guidance.”

Jim got up. “Let me see,” he said, going to his screens. “What’s the ticker?”

“BOM,” said Sebastian.

“Bum?”

“No BOM.”

“Ah, right.”

Jim pulled up the chart. “Ugh,” he said. “This one’s all over the place,”

“Is it going up over a hundred and thirty?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Jim.

“Thank God for that.” Sebastian sighed.

“But it’s going all over the place by the look of it. It might go via 20p.”

“Oh, God, don’t say that.”

“It’ll probably go to the moon too but, like I say, it’s all over the place. This is totally fucking chaotic.” Jim pulled the chart around.

“How far is the moon?”

“Don’t know, mate. This thing’s just too crazy.” He looked at Sebastian, whose face was ashen. “What’s up mate?” he asked, suddenly worried for him.

“I’ve bet the bloody farm on it, Jim. I’ve borrowed from the firm an absolute tonne and I can’t get out. My balls are in a vice on this one and I don’t know what to do.” Sebastian was clearly on the edge of tears.

“It’s going to zoom, mate. Don’t worry yourself – it’ll go well over a hundred and thirty.”

“I can’t sleep, mate, and my fucking hair’s falling out. Jemima’s wondering what’s got into me. Are you sure it’s going over the hundred and thirty?”

“How much of it have you got?”

“At one thirty, at break-even … about three point five bar.”

“Three and a half million? Ouch, so you’re down about a mil.”

“Yup, and I’m worried it’ll cliff and hit, you know.”

“Twenty p.”

“Yup, you’ve got it. That would be curtains.”

Jim looked at the chart. It could certainly go there in a hurry but it might also go to five quid. Which happened first was anyone’s guess.

His tide was sinking fast. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll sell you a put call. You give me 10p a share and I’ll give you a twelve-month put at a hundred and forty. Meanwhile you give me a free call at a hundred and fifty.” He should have made it 140p, but the higher call gave his friend an extra 10p profit, if Jim could be bothered to take his shares off him when it rocketed. It meant his friend could compulsorily sell the stock to him at 140p a share at any time in the next twelve months, and Jim could compulsorily buy it off him in the same period at 150p. When, and if, the price rocketed he could buy Sebastian’s shares off him and sell them for a tidy profit, while Sebastian was covered for all his losses if he chose at any time to unload them on Jim. He had offered his mate a parachute halfway down a nosedive from ten thousand feet.

“Christ, would you?” gasped Sebastian. “Would you really do that?”

“Sure,” said Jim. “I’m going to make a packet.” He looked at the chart. “Maybe.” He laughed. “What is this fucking thing?”

“It’s a mine in DRC. Well, it will be a mine.”

“DRC?”

“Congo – you know, Zaïre.”

“Right,” said Jim. “That’s, like, Africa, right?” He grinned at the unconcealed relief on his mate’s face.

“Yes, old chap, Africa.”

“And what the fuck are you doing buying this kind of shit?”

“It’s a long story, mate, and I’m not exactly proud of myself.”

Even for Jim the chart’s trail was hard to read. In comparison with the big-cap stocks, currencies and commodities he traded, it was like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. And the rabbit was grinning cheekily at him with outsize incisors. He might as well have thrown three of his eight thousand million down the toilet. “Get the paperwork over to me as soon as you can,” Jim said, getting up. “I’m out the window.”

“I’m sure it’ll come good for you.” Sebastian was about to make a fast exit. You’ve thrown your money out of it for sure, and God bless you, he thought. He’d get the paperwork sorted that afternoon. The ten-pence option price he’d have to pay, equivalent to £250,000, was a small price for the certainty of escape from impending ruin. At the first tick down of the share, he’d drop the lot on Jim. He’d even make a small profit. If only he could just get ink on the dotted line before Jim changed his mind.

Surprisingly, Jim was actually climbing out of the window. Sebastian didn’t want to ask why so he headed for the door.

Higgins surveyed the camp. It was set on a lush green plateau at the foot of a mountain jungle that led up to a volcanic range and Nyamuragira. Behind them he could see the snaggle-toothed Mount Kikeno, and to the right the giant cone of Nyiragongo. Some Congolese soldiers, a shambolic crowd if ever there was one, were quartered in a separate compound. The fifty men were a ragtag group with no discipline and an unfathomable structure that somehow
contained as many officers as other ranks. They seemed very miserable to be posted in the middle of nowhere – and in a zone that had recently been a killing ground. They were a very unsatisfactory guard indeed.

Once he had got the electrified fence up around the helipad he felt a lot happier. He could fuck off out of there in five minutes and make for Goma, Rwanda or Uganda. The whole region made him nervous. If it wasn’t the area’s dodgy past and present, it was the smoking mountains. The locals were pleasant enough, but he got the distinct feeling that, given half a chance, they’d recommend a swim in the lake with the friendly crocs and hippos.

The staff lodgings were hardly five-star but they were functional. The building crew and support team were Chinese, and they had thrown up the construction with breathtaking speed. There was little in the way of luxury, not that he cared. Now the base camp was sorted, he had everything and nothing to worry about.

Tulip was turning Jim’s insides to jelly and, regardless of her SMS, she clearly hadn’t come for a coffee. He felt himself slip into a different mode of operation. The trading nerd was morphing into a happy, laughing horny animal. He felt great. This girl was like a ripe peach and he wanted a bite. When he brushed her arm, her skin felt hot and she reacted as if he’d done her a favour.

She was smiling at him as if he was the handsomest, smartest guy in the world.

Perhaps he was.

As they bundled down New Bond Street he caught her arm and kissed her. There was no shock or embarrassment,
just a passionate welcome. That look she was wearing meant only one thing – but it was all too obvious and too fast for him, Jim thought.

No, it wasn’t.

They turned and ran hand-in-hand towards the Ritz. He knew London wasn’t going to be like Paris.

When he woke up, it was nine a.m. She had disappeared, but there was a note on her pillow.

“Gone for a hairdo, back in a mo.”

He went back to sleep to be woken again by the door opening. Her hair was done up in the old-fashioned Hollywood style of waves and curls. “Nice,” he said blearily.

She had something sparkly on her wrist. “What do you think?” she said, holding it out.

“Nice,” he said again. “Where did you get it?”

“Downstairs. It’s on kind of approval.” She sat down next to him and batted her eyelids. “Do you like it?”

“Yes,” he said. “It looks good on you.”

“I thought so,” she said seriously. She fluttered her long eyelashes.

The heat of her body rolled over him in a wave. “Would you like it?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, please.” She was smiling. “Are you sure?” she said. “It’s very expensive, but it’s so lovely.” She lifted her hand up to admire the bracelet.

“Of course,” he said.

She jumped on him and started kissing him. “You’re so marvellous to me,” she said, “so very marvellous.”

She made him feel marvellous too.

St George, head of wealth management at the bank and his friendly financial handler, had called and Jim had missed him. Now he was sitting in a cab. Tulip had gone on her delicious way and left him feeling like a well-scratched tabby cat. He returned the call.

“Jim,” said St George, “good of you to ring. I just want to confirm that you’d like us to look after the money in your trading account. The boys in broking don’t want to let it go. They’re making a fortune on interest from it, but it’s not doing you much good just having it sit about doing nothing.”

“Good point, Jules,” said Jim. “Yes, please, get it working.”

“Very good. I’m sorry to ask but they dug their heels in, greedy blighters.”

“Go ahead whenever you like.”

“As a matter of housekeeping, you appear to have bought a fair chunk of a scrappy mine in the back of beyond – off, if I may add, a rather unusual option agreement. We’ll have to make an announcement to the exchange.”

“Blimey,” said Jim. “OK.” Sebastian had bottled it. He wondered what the price of the stock was. Sod it: it was only about three days’ interest.

Baz sat forwards in his chair. “What the fuck’s that?” he muttered. Someone had bought about four per cent of the company at three times the current price. He checked the share register. It had to be the stake of the prat who’d got greedy in the pre-IPO; it was the only block of stock that fitted the size traded. What the fuck was going on?

He’d been expecting to pick the stock up at 40p to cover some of his shorts and some idiot had bought the shares at a
ridiculous price, impossibly far above the current bid offer. It didn’t make sense. Ralph knew a ramp was coming up but he wouldn’t be so stupid as to fuck around like that.

“I’ve seen it,” Ralph said, when he called and before Baz had said a word. “I’ve got someone digging under the nominees to find out who it is. Maybe it’s just a paperwork shuffle.”

“That would be news to me,” said Baz.

“Me too,” said Ralph, “but these big bank people are always up to tricks.”

“I don’t like it, Ralph. I don’t like it one penny piece.”

Jim had a hell of a time remembering the name of the stock Sebastian had dumped on him. He didn’t want to call either him or St George to find out what it was – either conversation would be embarrassing. Finally he remembered the ticker: BOM.

News had come in that drilling results would be delayed as, having finally got the rig in from Rwanda, it had fallen down the mountainside and been wrecked. Another was apparently being sourced. The share price had touched 30p. He felt less annoyed with Sebastian when he saw the price: he’d saved his mate’s skin as, in a way, Sebastian had saved his only a year or so ago in Venice.

He chuckled at the chart. It was the weirdest thing he’d ever seen, and pretty soon it was going to take off vertically. He called up his broker, Kitson. “I want you to pick up as much of Barron as you can, please,” he said.

“Of course. Cobalt in the Congo, if I recall. It’s a thin market. Hold on.” Kitson pulled up a screen. “It’s forty to forty-five p in ten thousand shares.”

“Buy it up to a pound a share and try to get me, say, ten per cent of the company.”

“This is a bit of an illiquid one, Jim,” said Kitson. “It’ll be hellish to get you out.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jim. “It’ll give me something to do.”

“Right you are,” said Kitson. “I’ll winkle out as much stock as possible without moving the price, but it’ll take time.”

“Get as much as you can over the next two weeks. It could blow up pretty fast.”

“I think I should perhaps pay the mine a visit,” said Kitson. “I know you’ll probably scoff but it’s always a good idea to see these things.”

“OK,” said Jim, “but first get the stock.”

“I’ll start right away.”

Baz didn’t like the price of his stock to start misbehaving. It had to go up and down when and if he decided it should. When he made it go up with his news announcements he sold through his fronts, and when it went down, he bought the shares back. It was a slow rollercoaster ride, which he controlled, that pumped his accounts full of money.

Greedy speculators were compulsive gamblers hooked on blowing their hard-earned wealth on the search for a
get-rich
-quick scheme that usually ended in the reverse. But there was no putting them off. With all the advice against it, and often years of painful experience in getting skinned alive on similar exploits, they kept coming back for more. Like all abusive relationships, the story was powered by an unfathomable love of pain and misery.

Baz was the master of this financial S&M scene and he didn’t like it when something gatecrashed his private dungeon.

Ralph was on the phone: the market-makers – who were essentially share wholesalers – had been on to him looking for
a supply of Barron stock. Baz was in a quandary: he had hoped to hoover up a lot of stock at these levels, having sold a bundle of them when the share price had rocketed at flotation, but now someone else was wielding the
vacuum-cleaner
. He didn’t want any big shareholders in the picture: they might end up being awkward. They might even be able to set the dogs on him.

He could let the buyer run the price up or lose interest, or he could drop stock on him, knowing that in any event the price would be zero sooner or later. It was a question of a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush. It looked as if this buyer was interested in at least a million or two, and if he sold them to him through one of his fronts he’d be that much better off, come what may. “Tell them I can find shares at the float price,” said Baz.

“OK,” said Ralph. He understood that Baz would sell high and buy low, not the other way around. Whoever was buying would be shaken out soon enough, and when he was he’d dump his stock cheap and Baz would buy it. Then when the stock shot up Baz would sell it again.

Kitson had the bank’s market-maker sit on the bid – they made it known that they wanted stock, and as the days passed, they pushed the price around to entice owners to come out and sell to them. In fits and starts the price rose, punctuated with sharp falls when the bank’s market-maker fell away, as if their order had been satisfied. This was the kind of game they played when they were trying to fill big orders and it was the kind of action Baz got up to himself when he was ramping or crashing the price. Nothing made people want to buy a stock more than a rising price, and
nothing made them want to sell it more than when it fell, so as the price ran up the speculators piled in, only to pile out as the price fell. Speculators were financially suicidal, and the professionals took advantage of that.

The price jumped from 60p to 75p and the stock exchange was on to Ralph. He had to get hold of Baz to ask whether something was happening with Barron.

Baz laughed. “Well, we’ll have to make an announcement that the company knows of no reason for the share-price rise. Funny how the exchange never calls when it falls.” He laughed again. “It tells you all you need to know about what they think is normal and what they think is strange.”

“OK,” said Ralph. “We’ll get that done.”

The announcement caused disappointment among the speculators. The price dipped and the disillusioned sold. Then it picked up again. At 90p there was a sudden spike of selling. A lot of the pre-and pre-pre-IPO investors decided it was time to book some profit after their hair-raising ride: they knew that, at 100p, a lot of buyers at the IPO price would sell out on the basis that they had made their losses back. At 95p Kitson had got Jim up to his 10 per cent shareholding. The broker had had fun. It wasn’t often he was called on to buy at the small-cap end of the market and it reminded him of his young days when shares were still traded on the floor by men with top hats. The small-cap market was still delightfully archaic and occasionally he hankered for the old ways, with real people gossiping in a colourful financial bazaar with “blue buttons”, “jobbers” and “commission” men running around. The computer had done for all that.

Leviathan
was a 410-foot yacht with a helipad and enough telemetry on the bridge roof to keep a destroyer informed across most of the electromagnetic spectrum. When Jim had asked Stafford to charter him a yacht for a couple of weeks, he hadn’t expected him to book the biggest on the planet. He didn’t want to query it, though, because he was going to take his butler’s goddaughter away for two weeks of wild abandon. The thought of spending
£
100,000 a day on a boat that looked more like a cruise liner than a pleasure boat had made him want to laugh. Money meant nothing to him any more. “Why not? Don’t they make a bigger one?”

“I’m sure one could be built for you, sir,” observed Stafford.

For a split second Jim had been tempted.

Tulip looked the part. She was a beautiful mermaid in black sunglasses, and was quite at home on the giant ship. She might have been a princess with several of her own.

He sat under a canopy on the top deck with a beer in one hand and a mouse in the other. He was bored out of his skull. Tulip, however, seemed to be intensely occupied, lying naked in the sun for hours, baking herself.

There was a certain amount of fun to be had from being gawped at when he was pulling into harbour or anchoring in a bay, but Jim soon decided it was much less fun than staying in a hotel. But Tulip seemed to be having a great time and that was reason enough to sit, at vast expense, on an empty boat doing nothing for a couple of weeks except having wanton sex. Life had certainly treated him worse.

Thank God, he thought, when the phone rang.

It was Kitson. “We have your ten per cent,” he said, as if he had apprehended a dangerous criminal.

“Good work,” said Jim.

“It was on the expensive side, at an average 82p.”

“That’s OK,” said Jim. “If you see 400p, get on to me about selling.”

“I most certainly will. There’s one thing I’d like to add. I really do think I should visit the mine now, first, so I can find out more for you, and second, so that I can potentially recommend it to some of my other clients. I shall take the cost from my commission.”

“That’s fine by me,” said Jim. “Where is it?”

“In the western Congo basin, out by Rwanda.”

“Right,” said Jim. “Sounds nice.”

“Well, it’s not known for that but I’m sure it’ll be fascinating. There’ll be an announcement tomorrow about your holding at the stock exchange.”

“Whatever. When are you off?”

“I’ll get in touch with the firm and then we’ll see.”

Jim had an idea. “Why don’t you fly the management down to see me here? I’m on a boat off Sardinia. It’s only a hop and a skip on my jet. I’ll send it for you.”

“What an appealing idea,” said Kitson. “I’ll revert.”

On the yacht, if it could have been made with cloth it was done in leather. If it should have been made of leather it was silk. If it might have been chipboard, it was mahogany. Steel was brass, and brass was gold.

Jim tried to come to terms with why you would dip so much money in brine but had to admit to himself that if you had big money, as he did, and you planned to spend it, this was the route you had to take. If someone with a net worth of half a million would happily buy a
£
50,000 car, then a
£
30–40
million boat was about right for a man with a billion or two.

In fact, it was a trifle, because after the first few millions the rest of the money was effectively disposable.

He was determined to seek Davas’s advice when he got home. Without material worries he felt disembodied somehow, a ghost in the real world.

Tulip was lying face down on the white silk sheet, reading. The light gave her skin a reddish hue. He ran a finger up her back and she rolled from side to side letting out little squeals. “Do you think this is the biggest yacht there is?” she wondered.

“I don’t know,” said Jim. “Normally you can be sure that, however big something is, there’s always a bigger one.”

“Think of the fun you could have on the world’s biggest yacht.” Her hand was resting on her curvaceous hip, her arm like a giant shark’s fin.

“We’re going to need a bigger boat,” he said. Where had he heard that line before?

“Fuck me, that’s a big boat,” said Baz, to Ralph and Kitson, as the helicopter swung round to land on
Leviathan
.

“Rather nice,” said Kitson.

“So, our new shareholder is seriously minted – I mean not just jet minted but super-yacht minted.”

Kitson didn’t reply, he just smiled and nodded.

Fuck, thought Baz, that’s not good. He looked at Ralph, who was sweating with the motion sickness the helicopter was causing. “His real name’s not Evanovich, is it?” He laughed, but inside he was hoping someone nasty wasn’t lying in wait behind the scenes.

Kitson smiled and didn’t reply.

Ralph was thinking there were two sorts of super-rich people: those who would skin you for a penny and those who didn’t give a damn about losing the odd million. It would be inconvenient if Evans was of the former persuasion.

“Bit of a mystery man,” said Baz, for the umpteenth time.

Kitson nodded again as they swung into land.

Fucking bulge bracket banks, thought Baz, so fucking smug.

Ralph looked as if he was going to throw up if the pilot didn’t land soon on the pad at the prow of the boat.

Jim had decided to play it cool, like a Bond villain, and waited on the upper sun deck under a canopy, surfing the markets on his Alienware notebook.

The chief steward met the party at the helipad and took them along the side of the ship, then brought his guests up to him.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” said Jim, continuing to stare at his screen. “I’ve been expecting you.”

The steward stepped in. “Can I fetch you something to drink?”

“I’ll have a beer,” said Baz.

“Glass of white wine,” said Kitson.

“Me too,” said Ralph.

“A martini for me,” said Jim.

The steward vanished.

Kitson introduced Baz and Ralph, and as he did so, Tulip walked past them, dressed in a silk wrap. She ruffled Jim’s hair but didn’t say a word.

Kitson’s mouth was still open although he’d finished speaking some time ago.

Baz was looking at Jim keenly. With his Cockney voice he was way too young to have this kind of money. If he had sounded like a scion of some big family fortune, Baz would have understood that some waster was blowing the family silver. This kid was not only a complete unknown but also an aberration.

The moment Baz had seen the stock-exchange announcement that a James Evans had bought more than three per cent of Barron at a stupid price, he had put a firm of top-notch investigators on his trail. They had come up with nothing. It didn’t help that James Evans was hardly an uncommon name, but even so, someone with this kind of cash should have come out in highlighter. Instead there was a plethora of James Evanses and not one that fitted the picture. He wished he had the dossier in front of him now so he could check it again.

“Lovely ship,” he said.

“Yeah,” agreed Jim.

“If you don’t mind,” said Baz, “how much does one of these cost?”

“Don’t know,” said Jim. “I’m just chartering it for a couple of weeks.”

“If it flies, floats or fucks, rent it, eh?” said Baz.

Ralph winced.

“One out of three anyway,” said Jim.

“Like your thinking,” Baz responded.

The steward laid out the drinks. Baz picked up his beer. “Welcome on board, if you will, the good ship Barron Mining.” They clinked glasses. “You’ve made a very shrewd investment. Can I ask you what got you interested?”

“Technicals,” said Jim. “I like the chart.”

“Really?” said Baz. “I didn’t think we had much of a chart. We’ve only been listed for a few weeks.”

“Looks pretty good to me,” said Jim.

“Well, great,” said Baz, “and now you’d like to know more.”

Kitson broke in, “Yes I certainly would.” He was worried that Jim would say no, in his technical-trader arrogance.

“Well,” said Baz, “as long as you can’t remember what I’m about to tell you, you can’t be an insider.”