A group of beautiful young people stood in the hall outside. Beautifully dressed, beautifully tanned, slim, athletic and many-accented, they were among the wealthiest, laziest, most easily bored young people in Europe, George’s friends of the last eleven years. A petite, bird-like French girl headed the deputation.
‘Georges!’ she exclaimed, using the French pronunciation of his name. ‘You aren’t even up and we’re already late. You need to be ready this moment or we’ll miss the races. Papa’s horse is running at two-thirty, remember.’
‘Oh God, Kiki. Is it Deauville today? I’d completely forgotten.’
In his previous life four centuries ago – or was it only four days? – George had suggested chartering a plane to take them to the races at the French casino town of Deauville. The plane had been due to leave at midday, so they were already holding it up and incurring extra charges.
‘But Georges, of course it is Deauville today. And we are due at the casino this evening. You can’t have forgotten because, look, I have remembered, and I have even got up early, and I never get up early and I never remember anything, so you must have remembered, except you haven’t.’
Kiki’s illogical proof tumbled out in a single breathless flurry. Her dark brown hair fell down her slim neck in artful wisps, positively inviting male touch. She wasn’t beautiful, Kiki, but she was pretty.
And she spoke the truth. It was a minor miracle that she had remembered an appointment and been ready on time, something George had never known before. Damn! He fancied Kiki desperately and had arranged the trip mostly to be with her. If she had got herself ready, did that mean she returned his affection? Possibly, possibly not. But if he jumped on the plane to Deauville he could hardly get out of paying his share, and the last thing he needed was an evening of champagne and roulette at five hundred francs a chip.
‘Kiki, I’m so sorry. I’ve been terribly ill. Stomach upset. I don’t think I’m up to flying. You go on anyway. I’ll come another time.’
‘Oh, poor Georges! You don’t look well at all. Very pale and your hair is all stuck down one way and sticking up the other way. You should be in bed.’
‘I was in bed.’
George didn’t look ill, or at least no iller than normal. Of the four kids, he’d drawn the short straw in the genetic sweepstakes and ended up every inch his father’s son. He had Bernard Gradley’s pale English skin, his piggy little eyes, his stockiness, his uncontrollable ginger hair. The sick-as-a-dog look came naturally.
‘Well you must go straight back and eat a lot of chicken broth.’
‘OK, Kiki. Have a good time.’
Kiki left in a swirl of the young and beautiful. A handsome young man, playboy son of an Italian billionaire, positioned himself next to her as they left. George crawled back into bed, pulled the covers over his head and groaned.
4
And as George lay in bed groaning, Josephine was making grunting sounds of her own. She had rummaged round in the attic of her mother’s Kilburn house and found something she’d remembered playing with as a child. She grunted as she lugged the heavy typewriter downstairs into the kitchen. It weighed a ton and the attic had covered her in dust.
Never mind. There are worse things in life than dust. She sat down at the ancient keyboard and opened a battered textbook. ‘ASDF are the home keys for the left hand.’ She spread her fingertips over the dusty keys, thumbs resting lightly on the space bar. It’s a new feeling, but one she’ll need to get used to. She can forget about A Levels. She can forget about Oxbridge.
It is Wednesday 15 July 1998. There are three years less one day to go until Bernard Gradley’s deadline: 1095 days.
5
Thursday morning. The red lights of digital clocks display the times around the world’s financial centres. News messages roll incessantly across a dot matrix wall panel while the glow from banks of computer screens fights back the dark. Every now and then a phone rings briefly in the silence. But apart from a few early-morning cleaners there is no one here to check the screens or answer the phones. No one except Matthew. It is five fifteen am.
Matthew was attached to a group of four traders dealing in the smaller European currencies: the Swiss franc, the lira, the Dutch guilder, the Swedish krona, the peseta, a few others. Between them his four traders mustered six passports, thirteen languages, and a shared passion for dealing.
Matthew’s job was to support the group in any way it wanted. He was meant to forage for information, calculate spreadsheets, run errands, and get the coffees. So far the only job he’d done at all was getting the coffees. He couldn’t stand the trashy coffees from the vending machines, so four times a day he went to the Blue Mountain Coffee Company’s boutique to get the world’s most heavenly cappuccinos at £1.80 a cup. If it weren’t for this unaccustomed service, the traders would have had Matthew fired weeks before. As it was, they rated his survival chances at just about zero. As Luigi Cuneberti, the Swiss-Italian who traded Swiss francs and lire, put it: ‘Matteo, we give you a job when Italy has paid its national debt and the lira is worth more than the dollar.’
That needed to change.
All banks have the same information from Reuters, Bloomberg, Telerate. A million computer screens can be accessed with a few key strokes. Data is updated every second, news reported as it happens. It’s not information that makes the difference but judgement. And judgement requires the right facts in the right format at the right time.
Matthew set to work. He scrolled through the overnight news stories on Reuters, printed off the full list of headlines plus the handful of stories he thought important. Next, he called the bank’s main Far Eastern offices: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney. Some markets were quiet, others not. After every call, he made detailed notes.
Then, he went out on to the street to an international paper stand, where he bought eight European newspapers plus the European edition of the Wall Street Journal. He wasn’t fluent in any language other than English, but he had spent enough time skiing in Courcheval and Zermatt, enough time in the bars of Tuscany and the beaches of Mallorca, and enough time with girls in all these places to get the gist of what he read. He made clippings of the articles he thought important, and added them to his growing stack.
He looked at his watch. Six forty-five am. He had more to do, but was out of time. He collected up his work and ran it through the copier five times: once for each of his traders, once for himself.
As the pages copied, Matthew realised three things.
First, he had absorbed a surprising amount since being at the bank, despite his weeks of indolence. Second, there was an almost infinite amount of research he could do. Today’s effort was only a start. And third, he had eight weeks of his summer job remaining. At the end of those weeks, he had to convince Madison not just to hire him, but to hire him right away without waiting for him to complete his degree. That was unheard of. But if Madison turned him down and forced him to return to Cambridge in October, he’d have failed to meet his father’s goal before he’d even started.
6
Through the glass doors at the end of the room, Luigi came in. He exchanged insults with the Italians working in fixed income and blew a kiss at a secretary he was trying to seduce. Then he arrived at his desk, banged down a coffee and bagel, and stared at Matthew.
‘Santa Maria!’ said Luigi. ‘You have the time wrong, my friend, no? Or a brain disease? It is serious, I hope? Hey, what is this?’ Luigi held the neatly stacked papers on his desk at arms’ length.
‘It looks like work. It smells like work,’ he said, sniffing, ‘but, there is nobody here except Matteo.’ Luigi’s face grew sombre. He swept some clutter off his desk and knelt on it.