Zero Alternative (4 page)

‘Eight.’

Luigi grunted, as if suffering a great injustice. ‘You’re done. The usual?’

‘Yes sir, for a grand. Great British Pounds, not your worthless Swiss toilet paper.’

‘Good. At least with your cash I’ll shrug off this damn austerity drive.’

‘You, saving?’

Luigi grimaced and looked at his empty glass. ‘It’s why I’ve scaled down to this cheap Grand Marnier junk, instead of the hundred-year reserve. Too many penny-pinching Protestants around Switzerland are having a bad effect on me, apparently.’

‘Good man. Problem is, when those other scrooges in Brussels and Frankfurt push too hard for cuts, countries implode. Greece is in ruins, Spain has become a German protectorate, for God’s sake. And Italy – there’s a riot in Rome every time Parliament tries to vote a new law. That’s why
I’m sure Rossini will win the elections. He’s the man with a plan.’

‘Leaving the Euro? That’s insane. The country would go under in weeks, and the rest of the world would get a heart attack.’

‘Maybe. But I don’t know if there are any good solutions left at all.’

Luigi sighed, looking annoyed. ‘And here’s the reason you’ve been so damn bearish on the markets, and short. You’re trying to make money as the world slides into a depression. Very nice.’

‘Look – traders react to events, they don’t cause them. I can’t do anything about it, but prepare.’ It was true but it could be sickening at times, and that’s when working with DM helped.

‘React. And make money.’

‘That’s my job.’ Walker sat back on the sofa, sipping his vodka. ‘Come on, you know me – I’m getting tired of all this banking bullshit. One last big trade, if I’m right. Then I can go off, do something useful with the rest of my life. And if I’m wrong and the world gets better, I promise I won’t complain.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Luigi grinned like a wolf cornering its prey. ‘So why have you been whining in the last few weeks, as you got murdered by the market drifting higher?’

‘That was just my bruised ego talking.’ Walker faked a shrug and glanced at his watch
–
9.59 p.m., just one minute to go. ‘Be quiet for a second and let’s check out the exit pools.’

Luigi looked away with a snigger, concentrating on an unseen TV to his right. Walker turned up the volume on the split screen where the Italian politicians had quietened down and a digital clock ticked away the last few seconds. Time seemed to slow, but finally a bell rang in the TV studio and blue graphics flashed on the screen.

Rossini-Three Stars – 38%

PD – 20%

GrandItalia – 14%

FI – 9%

Walker blinked, rereading it to be sure.

‘Holy shit!’ Luigi’s voice boomed from the speakers. ‘That’s unbelievable. The son-of-a-bitch has done it.’

Walker smiled, finishing his vodka in one shot. ‘You owe me some cash. You, and all those idiots in the markets.’

Interlude

The satellite phone rang just as late evening turned into night. The Englishman rushed to answer it, hoping the kids hadn’t been woken by the loud noise
.

‘
What do you want?
’
he asked, annoyed
.

‘
Did you hear about the Italian mess…
’
The American sounded both excited and scared
.

‘
Of course
.’

‘
And does it… did it think…
’

‘
There was a chance for the 1.8 model. I’d guess their 3.1 prototype was surer
.’

‘
Can you deliver some timed-logs, at least? That’s the sort of thing we need
.’

‘
Maybe. I’ll look into it tomorrow
.’

‘
Hurry up. The window might be closing
.’

The Englishman sighed and cut off the call. Had the twat been trying to put pressure on HIM? Ridiculous. And scary how people could get so high up in business without a functioning brain
.

Late Night

How long does pain last?

Twenty-five years was longer than the jail-time you’d do for murdering someone. Walker sighed and put out another cigarette before checking his watch. 1.17 a.m. – he had burnt through a full packet of Marlboros while half-listening to the election analysis of the Italian media and political second-liners, the 42 Below bottle was almost empty and his throat felt like a dry patch of tarmac leading into the Gobi desert.

Food – he needed food. He turned the TV off and called his favourite delivery restaurant. They were normally fast, but the guy said one of their ovens was out and it would take a while. Which was fine. He didn’t have anything better to do and sleeping was out of the question for the time being, anyway. Stirring the ice in his glass, Walker sipped the last of the vodka and tried to ignore the dull ache in his jaw. Then he gave up and grabbed his calculator, a notepad and a pen, trying to think through his trading book. There had never been any real hope of distracting himself with sparring, or alcohol.

The young amateur boxer he had been had somehow grown up to become a Prop Trader – a polite way of saying he spent his days punting around with the bank’s money, using his expertise and Dorfmann’s lightning-quick systems to try and predict the stock market’s behaviour. He now shadowboxed against the Eurostoxx: an index composed of the fifty largest European companies, the Old Continent’s equivalent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. And like half-decent heavyweights who nonetheless carry a packed punch, volatility traders like him could make enormous profits, or losses. It was pure adrenaline at its best, and soul-crushing almost as often. But at least the bad hits hurt his pride more than his body.

Pride
. Did it have a price, too? Walker shrugged, tired, and refused to think about it. He scribbled a few numbers, punched some keys on the calculator and considered another cigarette before deciding it was the one that would make him throw up. He was about to cancel his pizza when he remembered he hadn’t yet spoken to Steph, his junior, and grabbed the phone. The line rang for a few seconds before a rough voice picked up on the other side.

‘Hallo?’

‘Don’t tell me you were asleep.’

‘Boss. No, my…’ Steph’s breathing was a little heavy. ‘My girlfriend is here, from Paris.’

Walker smiled. ‘Good, shove her off and tell her to wait. You’ll make it up to her with the ring you can buy after bonus day.’

‘Sure, hold on.’ Some quick-fire French followed and Walker heard a scraping noise. ‘What’s up, Yours?’

‘What’s up? The fucking market is going to crack tomorrow, that’s what. I need you to be in by five o’clock, at the latest. Fire up the systems, and launch the new spreadsheet. You’ll be trawling brokers from six thirty.’

‘Shit. Are we going to be all right?’

‘Steph. Concentrate, for fuck’s sake. I own a lot of Options, right?’ Walker could understand the Frenchman’s brain being addled by sex, but after six months on the desk he expected better. Even at 1.33 in the morning. He forced himself to be patient: no point in having a confused guy around in the morning.

‘Yes.’

‘And what else did I trade last week?’

Steph paused, and Walker could almost hear his brain clicking into gear. ‘You sold a ton of Futures, short.’

‘About one hundred million. That will turn into over half a billion with the market crashing, because of Option dynamics. Which means?’

‘You’ll… make a fortune when you buy them back cheaper?’

Walker grinned, enjoying the mild torture. ‘That’s right. How much, do you reckon?’

‘Ehrr… just give me a sec.’

Walker counted to three, then answered his own question without glancing at the calculator.
Too slow, really
. ‘Thirteen million, and you should probably add another ten, as Option prices scream up.’

‘
Merde
.’

‘So yeah, we’ll be all right. But to lock in the profits, we’ll have to trade like mad.’

‘I guess –’ Steph almost choked. ‘So… how do we do it, exactly?’

‘That’s where the art comes into it. I don’t know, yet – I’ll have to see how things break when trading starts. Sleep tight, and don’t forget to set your alarm clock. People have been fired, or killed, for less.’

Walker cut the connection and poured another vodka, thinking. Sleep could wait a little longer,
he guessed. He hadn’t wanted to overburden the young man, but the question Steph had asked was absolutely key. Having set up the perfect book for a crash, the real skill would now lie in knowing
when
to hedge: do it too early in a big drop and you could waste most of the potential profit. But cut the Futures’ short-risk too late, and your losses would be catastrophic when the market bounced.

Timing is everything
.

Walker shuddered, suddenly cold. Timing.

He was there when his mother died for the second time.
The hospital room is small and cramped, saturated with the smell of disinfectant. Tubes run into her mouth and arms, under the sheets. She is thinner, almost skeletal, and pale. Her eyes are closed
–
ever since the accident that killed my little sister Sarah. Ever since the fucking double-decker crashed into their car. Almost a month has passed but she’s not waking up. I touch her hand, and it’s cold. It’s hard to think. It’s hard to breathe
.

Abruptly one of the monitors beeps twice, then continuously, with a loud, persistent noise
.

Dad and a nurse rush into the room and Dad grabs me and leads me out. There are tears in his eyes
.

Time stops, sometimes
.

Walker stifled a sob and forced himself up. His hands grabbed the notepad, crumpled the sheets of paper into a ball and sent it flying across the room.

Even Later

The little Chinese man screamed when the cigar burnt his nipple. It was a piercing howl, the type that came up from the diaphragm, bursting through lungs and windpipe before crashing out. Not that it would help him, but it was a good scream
.

The woman waited for it to finish before the tears and blubbering started again. She puffed out some Havana smoke, and sighed
.

‘
How can you possibly not even have a partial copy?
’

The little man’s voice shook and he sobbed
. ‘
I… he always asks me to work on different things, I told you
.’

‘
Yes, yes. All unrelated, all unconnected. Or so you think
.’

‘
Please… I really don’t know…
’

‘
We’ll see
.’

The second scream wasn’t nearly as good as the first one, she thought
.

Chapter Three

Morning Meeting – 6.41
A.M.

Walker crossed the trading floor, barely acknowledging the greetings of colleagues moving about their workstations. The massive hangar-like room was almost full now, phones starting to ring on the hundreds of dealerboards sitting below thousands of brightly lit monitors. A voice echoed around the squawk boxes and speakers – the high nasal pitch of Dorfmann’s Chief Strategist lecturing the troops about the talking points of the trading day. Walker tried to block the noise out; the man was a blubbering fool who hadn’t got anything right for the last five years. He still didn’t get that they were living in a post-Lehman world, with different rules and new Empires rising, ready to fight for the spoils. Walker could hear the words looping in his head, like so many times before:
Look, you guys should tell your clients that today will be a great buying opportunity. The market hasn’t been so cheap for a long while, the forward PEs and the dividend yield…
’

Rubbish. It was the usual claptrap, simplistic bullshit fed to post-grads at over-expensive business schools across the world. Investment banks were populated by idiots. And the fact they still had thousands of clients eagerly listening to such drivel only proved that the rest of the financial world was made up of even bigger idiots. Walker exhaled and told his inner cynic to shut up. He was strangely unsettled, and it wasn’t the market opening in a few minutes that bothered him; he had been preparing for that through the night. But what DM had said – and the blank face of the well-dressed woman outside watching him – still gnawed at his consciousness as he approached Fontaine’s office for the morning meeting.

Frankel Schwartz was run by a bunch of cutthroat bastards, that much was true. Though they had survived the 2008–09 crisis better than most of their peers, the large investment bank had been recently hit with several lawsuits and investigations. Through the years they had gone over the edge too many times, selling toxic rubbish and fudging rules, buying influence and political protection, and now they were starting to pay. Their reputation as the smartest on the Street was taking a beating, a few high-profile clients and hedge funds had cut ties and their underwriting business was suffering. Still, Frankel was a trading behemoth, across all asset classes. Walker
wouldn’t want to work at such a ruthless place anyway – no matter the money – but their research and systems were second to none, and their connections unparalleled. Its share price may have been suffering, but Frankel continued to be the best franchise on Wall Street. By far.
DM is seriously losing it
. Walker swore and forced himself to focus on the bloody meeting. The day was too big to get distracted.

He entered Olivier Fontaine’s office just behind a group of senior traders, a few more already standing in the large glass-bowl room with views over Broadgate. Fontaine himself sat behind his massive desk, a fat man sliding into obesity with thin blond hair that stuck to his skull like dying moss. Walker despised the Belgian. He had climbed high, but only on the backs of broken traders. Ruthlessly taking credit whenever he had a chance, arse-licking the managers he could see were on their way up. The man had no morals, no conscience, and was now supposed to run all the dealers on the damn floor. What a joke.

Fontaine gestured for someone at the back of the office to close the glass door, then started speaking in his monotonous voice. ‘First, all the trading systems and ORK are back online.’ He glanced about, smug, as if they should all be personally grateful to him. ‘Then, as you all know…’