*
The phone rang. It was Kennedy.
“Sergei said he’ll speak to you next week when he’s back in London,” Pat told the CEO hoping to mollify him. “Everything is under control.”
“I hope so. What about China then?”
“I don’t understand Michael,” replied Kennedy.
There was a three hour time difference with London which meant it was six in the evening in the City. Michael was still in his office and was obviously still very tense. Perhaps he was feeling peeved about having let Pat go in his place, though watching kurling or whatever and drinking Vodka wasn’t really his idea of fun or doing business.
“What I’m saying is China is not all that it seems. Perhaps we’re taking a big risk with all of those dodgy wealth management products floating around?”
“We’re not into that kind of stuff.”
“Maybe not, but perhaps our customers are with all that loose shadow banking stuff, not forgetting the Chinese dispute with Japan over those rocks.”
“Well, Lily’s father said ...”
“He’s Chinese Pat and defends their interests.”
Pat said nothing for a moment.
“If we’re objective there are risks everywhere. Europe, Russia, America, China, and what with Brexit even in the UK. It’s part of our business, it’s how we’ve grown over the last ten or more years.”
Fitzwilliams could not refute Kennedy’s words, but it could not stop his growing feeling of unease. There were too many examples of fast growth ending badly whenever risks were not carefully weighed.
LONDON
A week later following the worst market fall since the height of the banking crisis, José Manuel Barroso called for urgent measures to reinforce the eurozone’s bail-out mechanism. Markets continued their downward plunge with trading suspended on several European markets despite the efforts of Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the ECB.
Fitzwilliams concerns grew when like many other bankers he saw the shares of his bank come heavy pressure and hedge funds suffer heavy losses. A strange atmosphere reigned as the CEO gathered his men around him to discuss the growing crisis in the Ukraine and the implications it held for the bank.
The world was not unlike the summer of 1914 described by history books. Politicians ran from one meeting to another and declarations were made on the need for action, urgent decisions, but nothing seemed to happen as the world drifted towards some kind of disaster. Would the flame be ignited by Vladimir Putin, a systemic collapse of the financial system, or would Israel attack Iran?
In 1914, the enemy was clear - Kaiser Wilhelm II. But one hundred years later the dangers were multiple. The world of 2014 was of course different: it was one world where television was omnipresent and more than half the planet connected to Internet. The world was richer, even Africa, though many blight stricken corners of the planet still existed where human suffering was rampant.
It was difficult to imagine the consequences of an all out war in the Ukraine, or of a breakdown in the world’s financial system. In the summer of 2014, Europeans sunned themselves on Mediterranean or Atlantic beaches, one year resembled another, unchanging, as comfort and normality was taken for granted. They saw no immediate threats to their general well-being. Donetz, in the Ukraine, was in another world. Putin’s claims and protestations incomprehensible. The dithering reaction of European leaders as weak as that of mid-twentieth century politicians in the face of tyrants’ threats.
Syria’s Assad massacred his fellow citizens and Gaddafi grimly hung onto his last remaining stronghold in Tripoli. The Arab Spring had turned to dust, as Bahrain, base of the American Fifth Fleet, settled into an uneasy calm with the ruling family tenaciously hanging on to power.
“It only needs one spark to set the whole of the Middle East on fire,” said Pat. “Imagine what it would do to the price of oil.”
Fitzwilliams nodded.
“Gaddafi is still hanging on.”
“Remember what Clausewitz wrote.”
Pat looked puzzled as he wondered which bank Clausewitz was with.
“The only decisive victory is the last one.”
“Hmm,” mumbled Pat making a mental note to check that out.
As the risk of economic or confrontational turmoil continued to rumble in the background, Nicolas embraced Angela, Silvio reassured Zapetero, Obama called David on holiday in Tuscany.
London burned and Tom Barton wondered what would it take to tilt an already disastrous situation into a planetary catastrophe? Was he being paranoid when he imagined huge volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis. But experience told him such threats were far from science fiction, huge active volcanoes rumbled in Iceland and in the Kamchatka Peninsula. An explosive eruption could change the climate or provoke earthquakes and tsunamis. Karakatoa in 1883 and more recent examples were ample evidence. The tsunami of 2004 which if had taken place off the coast of California would have been a catastrophically disruptive event for the US and perhaps the world economy.
The idea of retiring to some distant corner of the world far from wars and crisis was slowly but surely making ground in his mind. He was dogged by the images of weary refugees fleeing Russian mercenaries, or blood thirsty Salafists and their fanatical fighters pillaging high street shops and supermarkets.
He recalled the words written by St Augustine, one and a half millennium earlier, in his work In the City of God:
How like kingdoms without justice are to robberies.
Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity.
Barton was not becoming religious, but he was weary with the world and its never ending injustice. He had been lucky, born where he had been, he accumulated considerable wealth, but to what avail? His partner, Sophie Emerson, was more and more concentrated on her career as an architect in London and Biarittz. Was it his fault he asked himself. His life seemed to have become a senseless whirl, aimless, a mindless pursuit of more wealth.
BATTERSEA
“Did you see that Fitz?”
“What?”
“Battersea Power Station Development has sold ninety five percent of its flats, over eight hundred.”
“So what,” snapped Fitzwilliams
“Remember what you said?” said Kennedy sniping at the CEO
“No.”
Of course Fitzwilliams forgot. It was one of opportunities he had missed, a miscalculation after the derelict power station’s past owner had been put into administration. In 2012, the site had been bought by a Malaysian consortium whose plan was to transform it into a vast residential real estate development. Off-plan sales were launched in May at a lavish marquee party where prospective buyers were serenaded by Elton John, which coincided with an acceleration of the UK economy, encouraging investors to pile-in, buying off-plan, snapping up hundreds units priced at up to three million pounds each in the first few days, and six million for a penthouse suite.
“They’re building the new American Embassy there.”
“Is that a fact,” the CEO replied, feigning disinterest. “When are you leaving for Shanghai?” he asked abruptly changing the subject.