The ironwork of the staircase is too hot to touch. He can feel the heat of the metal even through the soles of his boots. The steps don’t run all the way up to the roof but only to the next floor, which is in darkness. By the crimson glow of the fire behind him he can make out a large space with three doors leading off it. A noise like a strong wind in a loft is shifting around up here. He can’t quite make out whether it is coming from his left or his right. Somewhere in the distance he hears a crash as a section of the floor gives way. He puts his face in front of the sensor to unlock the first door. When it doesn’t respond, he wipes his face on his sleeves: there is so much sweat and grease on his skin it is possible the sensors can’t recognise him. But even when his face is cleaner it doesn’t respond. The second door won’t open either. The third does, and he steps into utter darkness. The night-vision cameras record him groping blindly around the walls for the next exit, and so it goes on, from room to room, as Hoffmann seeks to escape the maze of the building, until at last, at the end of a passage, he opens a door on to a furnace. A tongue of fire races towards the fresh supply of oxygen like a hungry living thing. He turns and runs. The flames seem to pursue him, lighting ahead the gleaming metal of a staircase. He passes out of camera shot. The fireball reaches the lens a second later. The coverage ends.
TO THE PEOPLE viewing it from the outside, the processing facility resembles a pressure cooker. No flames are visible, only smoke issuing from the seams and vents of the building, accompanied by this incessant roar. The fire service plays water on the walls from three different directions to try to cool them down. The concern of the chief fire officer, as he explains to Leclerc, is that cutting open the doors will only feed oxygen to the fire. Even so, infrared equipment keeps detecting shifting black pockets inside the structure where the heat is less intense and where someone might have survived. A team wearing heavy protective gear is preparing to go in.
Gabrielle has been moved back with Quarry to just inside the perimeter fence. Someone has put a blanket round her shoulders. They both stand watching. Suddenly, from the flat roof of the building, a jet of orange flame shoots into the night sky. It resembles in shape, if not in colour, the plume of fire you might see at a refinery, burning off a gaseous waste product. From its base something detaches. It takes a moment for them all to realise that it is the fiery outline of a man. He runs to the edge of the roof, his arms outstretched, then leaps and falls like Icarus.
19
Looking to the future … which groups will ultimately prevail, no man can predict; for we well know that many groups, formerly most extensively developed, have now become extinct.
CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of Species (1859)
IT WAS ALMOST midnight and the streets leading to Les Eaux-Vives were quiet, the shops shuttered, the restaurants closed. Quarry and Leclerc sat in the back of a patrol car in silence.
Eventually Leclerc said, ‘You are quite certain you wouldn’t prefer to be taken home?’
‘No. Thank you. I need to get in touch with our investors tonight before they hear about what’s happened on the news.’
‘It will be a major story, no doubt.’
‘No doubt.’
‘Still, if you don’t mind my saying so, after such a trauma, you need to be careful.’
‘I will be, don’t worry.’
‘At least Madame Hoffmann is in a hospital, where they can treat her for delayed shock …’
‘Inspector, I’ll be fine, all right?’
Quarry put his chin in his hand and looked out of the window to discourage further conversation. Leclerc stared out at the street on the other side. To think that barely twenty-four hours earlier he had been starting a routine night shift! Truly, one never knew what life would throw at you. The chief had called from his dinner in Zurich to offer his congratulations on ‘a swift resolution of a potentially embarrassing situation’: the Finance Ministry was pleased; Geneva’s reputation as a centre of investment would be unaffected by this aberration. Still, he felt he had failed somehow – had always been that crucial hour or two behind the game. If only I had gone with Hoffmann to the hospital at dawn, he thought, and insisted that he stay for treatment, then none of it would have happened. He said, almost to himself, ‘I should have handled it better.’
Quarry gave him a sideways look. ‘What’s that?’
‘I was thinking, monsieur, that I could have dealt with things better, and then perhaps this whole tragedy could have been avoided. For example, I could have spotted earlier on – right from the start, as a matter of fact – that Hoffmann was in an advanced state of psychosis.’ He thought of the Darwin book and Hoffmann’s crazed assertion that the man in the picture somehow provided a clue as to why he had been attacked.
‘Maybe.’ Quarry sounded unconvinced.
‘Or again, at Madame Hoffmann’s exhibition—’
‘Look,’ said Quarry impatiently, ‘you want the truth? Alex was a weird guy. Always was. I should’ve known what I was getting into the first night I met him. So it’s nothing to do with you, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.’
‘Even so …’
‘Don’t get me wrong: I’m desperately sorry it ended like that for him. But imagine it: all that time, practically running an entire shadow company right under my nose – spying on me, on his wife, on himself …’
Leclerc thought of how often he had heard such exclamations of disbelief from wives and husbands, lovers and friends; of how little we know of what actually goes on in the minds of those we think we know best. He said mildly, ‘What will happen to the company without him?’
‘The company? What company? The company is finished.’
‘Yes, I can see that the publicity might be damaging.’
‘Oh really? You think so? “Schizophrenic genius banker goes on rampage, murders two, sets fire to building” – that kind of thing?’
The car drew up outside the office block. Quarry rested his head on the back of the seat and stared at the roof. He let out a long sigh. ‘What a bugger it all is.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Oh well.’ Wearily Quarry opened the door. ‘I expect we’ll talk again in the morning.’
Leclerc said, ‘No, monsieur, at least not with me. The case has been reassigned to a very able young officer – Moynier. You’ll find him efficient to deal with.’
‘Oh, okay.’ Quarry seemed vaguely disappointed. He shook the policeman’s hand. ‘I’ll wait to hear from your colleague, then. Good night.’
He climbed out of the car, his long legs swinging easily on to the pavement.
‘Good night. Incidentally,’ Leclerc added quickly, before Quarry shut the door. He leaned across the back seat. ‘Your technical problems earlier – I meant to ask – how serious were they?’
The habit of deception still came easily to Quarry. ‘That was nothing – not serious at all.’
‘Only your colleague said you had lost control of your system …’
‘He didn’t mean it literally. You know computers.’
‘Ah yes, absolutely – computers!’
Quarry closed the door. The patrol car pulled away. Leclerc glanced back at the financier as he entered the building. Some shadow passed across his mind but he was too tired to pursue it.
‘Where to, boss?’ asked the driver.
Leclerc said, ‘South on the road to Annecy-le-Vieux.’
‘Your place is in France?’
‘Just over the frontier. I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to live in Geneva any more.’
‘I know exactly what you mean. It’s all been taken over by foreigners.’
The driver started to talk about property prices. Leclerc settled down in his seat and closed his eyes. He was asleep before they reached the French border.
THE GENDARMES HAD gone from the office building. One elevator was cordoned off by black-and-yellow tape and had a sign stuck to it – ‘DANGER: NOT WORKING’ – but the other was operational, and after a bri
ef hesitation Quarry stepped into it.
Van der Zyl and Ju-Long were waiting for him in reception. They rose as he came in. Both looked badly shaken.
Van der Zyl said, ‘It’s just been on the news. They had shots of the fire, this place – everything.’
Quarry swore, looked at his watch. ‘I’d better start emailing the major clients straight away. Better if they hear it from us first.’ He noticed that van der Zyl and Ju-Long were looking at one another. ‘Well, what is it?’
Ju-Long said, ‘Before you do, there’s something you ought to see.’
He followed them on to the trading floor. To his amazement, none of the quants had gone home. They rose as he came in and stood in complete silence. He wondered if it was meant as some sort of mark of respect. He hoped they weren’t expecting a speech. Out of habit he glanced up at the business channels. The Dow had recovered almost two thirds of its losses to close down 387; the VIX was up sixty per cent. The imminent UK election results were being forecast from a nationwide exit poll: NO OVERALL CONTROL. That just about summed it up, he thought. He checked the nearest screen for the day’s P&L, blinked at it and read it again, then turned in wonderment to the others.
‘It’s true,’ said Ju-Long. ‘We made a profit out of the crash of four-point-one billion dollars.’
‘And the beauty of it is,’ van der Zyl added, ‘that that represents only zero-point-four per cent of total market volatility. No one will ever notice, except us.’
‘Jesus wept …’ Quarry quickly did the calculation in his head of his personal net worth. ‘That must mean VIXAL managed to complete all the trades before Alex destroyed it.’
There was a pause, and then Ju-Long said quietly, ‘He didn’t destroy it, Hugo. It’s still trading.’
‘What?’
‘VIXAL is still trading.’
‘But it can’t be. I just saw all the hardware burned to the ground.’ ‘Then it must have other hardware we don’t know about. Something quite miraculous appears to have taken place. Have you seen the intranet? The company slogan has changed.’
Quarry looked at the faces of the quants. They seemed to him to be both blank and radiant at the same time, like members of a cult. It was eerie. Several of them nodded at him encouragingly. He bent to examine the screensaver.
THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL HAVE NO WORKERS
THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL HAVE NO MANAGERS
THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL BE A DIGITAL ENTITY
THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL BE ALIVE
IN HIS OFFICE, Quarry was writing an email to the investors.
To: Etienne & Clarisse Mussard, Elmira Gulzhan & François de Gombart-Tonnelle, Ezra Klein, Bill Easterbrook, Amschel Herxheimer, Iain Mould, Mieczyslaw Łukasiński, Liwei Xu, Qi Zhang
From: Hugo Quarry
Subject: Alex
My dear friends, by the time you read this you will probably have begun to hear the tragic story of what happened to Alex Hoffmann yesterday. I will call you all individually later today to discuss the situation. For now I just wanted you to know that he is receiving the very finest medical care, and that our prayers are with both him and Gabrielle at this difficult moment. Of course it is too early to talk of the future of the company he founded, but I did want to reassure you that he has left systems in place which mean that your investments will not only continue to prosper, but will, I am confident, go from strength to strength. I will explain in more detail when I speak with you.
The quants had taken a vote on the trading floor and agreed to keep what had happened confidential. In return, each would receive an immediate cash bonus of $5 million. There would be further payments in the future, on a scale to be agreed, dependent on VIXAL’s performance. No one had dissented: he supposed for one thing they had all seen what had happened to Rajamani.
There was a knock at the door. Quarry shouted, ‘Come!’ It was Genoud.
‘Hello, Maurice, what do you want?’
‘I’ve come to take out those cameras, if that’s all right with you.’
Quarry considered VIXAL. He pictured it as a kind of glowing celestial digital cloud, occasionally swarming to earth. It might be anywhere – in some sweltering, potholed industrial zone stinking of aviation fuel and resounding to the throb of cicadas beside an international airport in South-East Asia or Latin America; or in a cool and leafy business park in the soft, clear rain of New England or the Rhineland; or occupying a rarely visited and darkened floor of a brand-new office block in the City of London or Mumbai or São Paulo; or even roosting undetected on a hundred thousand home computers. It was all around us, he thought, in the very air we breathed. He looked up at the hidden camera and gave the slightest bow of obeisance.
‘Leave them,’ he said.
GABRIELLE WAS BACK where her day had begun, sitting in the University Hospital, only this time she was beside her husband’s bed. He had been put into his own room at the end of a darkened ward on the third floor. There were bars on the windows and gendarmes outside, a man and a woman. It was hard to see Alex under all the bandaging and tubing. He had been unconscious since he hit the ground. They told her he had multiple fractures and second-degree burns; they had just brought him out of emergency surgery and connected him to a drip and a monitor; he was intubated. The surgeon declined to offer a prognosis: he said only that the next twenty-four hours would be critical. Four rows of glowing emerald-green lines processed hypnotically across the screen in gentle peaks and troughs. It reminded her of their honeymoon, watching the Pacific breakers forming far out at sea and following their progress all the way in to land.
Alex cried out in his sedated sleep. He seemed terribly agitated by something. She touched his bandaged hand and wondered what was passing through that powerful mind. ‘It’s all right, darling. Everything’s going to be all right now.’ She laid her head on the pillow next to his. She felt strangely content, despite everything, to have him beside her at last. Beyond the barred window a church clock was striking midnight. Softly she began singing to him a baby’s lullaby.
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Copyright © Robert Harris 2011
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Table of Contents
About the Book
About the Author
r /> Also by Robert Harris
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Copyright
Robert Harris, The Fear Index
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