Why was that phrase in his head so much? Sell-by date. The numbers had gone, but the phrase stayed. Probably something to do with that blasted Aberdeen Drilling data room. All those piles of contracts and accounts. Random phrases stuck around just like the numbers. Zack got into bed again and turned off the light. The yoghurt sat in his stomach feeling funny. It probably had been off. He tried to sleep. Sell-by date. Sell-by date.
Five minutes later, he threw off the covers and turned the light back on. Frowning with concentration, he began to bring a page from the data room into his mind’s eye. The page came, blurry at first, then in sharp focus: ‘Standard Warranties for Consultancy-type Agreements’. Zack read the words below the title. It was drafted in legal language so dense you could saw it into blocks and build with it, but to Zack the meaning was clear. He brought another page to mind. It appeared, then cleared, like the one before: ‘Insurance Arrangements: Provisions and Exclusions’. Zack gazed at the remembered page. Things were becoming clear. No wonder he couldn’t sleep. Just one more check to make: ‘Schedule of Principal Consultancy Projects, 1988–98’. The page began to clear, but Zack hardly needed to look at it to know what it said.
He turned off the light and slept like a baby.
10
Through the slatted blinds behind the students, the Hudson River emptied into the Atlantic Ocean. The waters were crowded with traffic and in the late summer sun, the Statue of Liberty waved her torch, calling order to the congested skies. The gateway to the free world isn’t too keen on the weary and dispossessed these days, but it sure has time for anything which can be packaged, shipped and sold. Away to the south west, too far to be seen in the haze, the port authority’s cranes kept the flood of goods moving swiftly on.
None of the students had their eyes on the scene. You could stack up all the cargo passing through the air and sea ports of New Jersey and New York in a year and you’d have a mountain big enough to boast a skiing industry. But the whole enormous pile wouldn’t be worth a thousandth part of the invisible cargo which passes noiselessly down the electronic thoroughfares of Wall Street.
The market for US government bonds is worth over six trillion dollars. The foreign exchange market turns over a trillion dollars each and every working day. The US stockmarkets are capitalised at fourteen trillion bucks. The market for corporate bonds and bills, and certificates of deposit, and a hundred other varieties of security add trillions more to the total. And each of these bits of paper belongs to investors, skilled and unskilled, wise and foolish, twisting and turning to dodge losses and snuffle out profit.
Wall Street does various things, some good for the world, others not so good. But its main function is simple: it’s a bureau de change where investors can sell one bit of paper and buy another. And every time a bit of paper changes hands, leaving an investor happy and excited about the future, there is another person even happier. That person is the Wall Street trader who did the trade. For every dollar that changes hands, a tiny amount of change stays in the hands of the trader. In some markets, the amount of change is almost microscopic. In the foreign exchange markets, the Wall Streeter might keep just a few hundredths of a cent. In the stockmarket it might be half a cent, sometimes as much as two or three.
But traders don’t care that their take is small. If you multiply by a million dollars, one tenth of a cent is worth a thousand bucks. Multiply by a billion, and that tenth of a cent is worth a million dollars. And if you’re sharp enough and smart enough to squeeze out two tenths of a cent, then the investor still hardly cares – what’s two tenths of a cent to him? – but you’ve doubled your take to two million bucks. Keep at it and before long you’ll have your nice house in Long Island, your German sports car and your decent sized yacht. Your kids will go to the right schools, your wife will be invited to the right parties, and you will no longer keep in touch with your pals from college who got better grades than you but who made the life-destroying error of opting for a career in engineering or civic service.
Life as a Wall Street trader can be very sweet. And that, of course, is why the students were there.
Matthew looked around. Sophie was sitting diagonally in front of him. He caught her eye and smiled at her. She smiled back. It hadn’t been his imagination. She was still gorgeous, with her perfect figure and a complexion so nice you wanted to sing to it. Matthew definitely wanted to get to know her.
A tall blond Californian barged along the row of seats and sat down next to Matthew.
‘Mind if I sit here? My name’s Scott Petersen. Nice to meet you.’
Scott Petersen was an inch or two taller than Matthew, an inch or two broader and maybe an inch or two better looking. Matthew disliked him at once.
‘Hi. Matthew Gradley.’
They shook hands.
‘From England, right?’
‘Right.’
‘At least that’s easy,’ said Petersen, looking round the room. ‘We’ve got twenty-two North Americans, same number of Europeans, then maybe fifteen or twenty from everywhere else. Mostly Pacific Rim, I guess, but I bumped into a couple of South Americans earlier and I know there’s a Russian and some kind of Middle Eastern oil princess.’
Matthew nudged his neighbour. Down the row to Matthew’s right came a plump dark-skinned girl, her hair piled up and fastened with a couple of heavy gold clips. Gold glittered and clunked at her fingers, wrist and neck. She walked looking straight ahead, her heavy-set face impassive.
‘That’s her,’ whispered Petersen. ‘I’ve heard she only just managed to graduate from college and her English is none too good either. But her family controls oil reserves worth tens of billions of dollars and –’
Petersen shrugged. He understood it, but he didn’t like it. At Madison merit is the only way to get ahead, but merit comes in different shapes, and the podgy figure of the oil princess was one of them. Matthew turned to her.
‘How do you do,’ he said. ‘Matthew Gradley.’
‘Yes. How do you do,’ replied the girl in a heavy accent. ‘Fareshti Al Shahrani –’
Anything further she had intended to say was interrupted as the entrance door opened and a man strode across to the podium. The students fell silent. The man was Dan Kramer, the Lion of Wall Street.
The old-fashioned walnut podium concealed a battery of switches controlling the sound system, lights, blinds, screens, projectors – everything. But Kramer stood away from the podium. He hadn’t any slides, and his voice needed no amplification. He was not a large man, but with a mane of dusty blond hair bristling round a granite face, he didn’t need to be large to be awe-inspiring. When Time magazine had done a cover story on Kramer entitled ‘The Lion of Wall Street’, the nickname became permanent. When he was calm, he looked fierce. When he was angry, he was terrifying. Today Kramer was not angry, but he was emphatic.
‘My name is Daniel Kramer. I am the Chairman and Chief Executive of Madison. I would like to welcome you all to this training programme today.’
He grinned, but his smile cheered no one. It showed too many teeth and lasted a few seconds too long.
‘You succeeded in obtaining a job here because the people who interviewed you believed that you have what it takes. We try hard to be right because it’s a waste of our time being wrong. But we do get it wrong, about one time in three. When we screw up, we say sorry and ask you to leave. We don’t want you to have a nasty life, but we want you to lead it outside of this organisation.
‘Those of you who remain with us will sometimes wonder if you made the right choice. The work is hard, the pressure is relentless. Each time you think