The Paper Factory (Michael Berg Book 1) (14 page)

Chapter 43

  He replaced the handset and lifted the Cohiba from the ashtray. He took a deep draw on the pungent, robustly flavored smoke, held it for just a moment, letting it sting the roof of his mouth and then ejected it through his nose and mouth simultaneously.

  Rykov had been right about Dmitri. D
mitri had earned his ten thousand dollars. Probably been more than amply compensated for the finger too, depending on how much he had managed to frighten out of Goodfriend.
How could someone so stupid have gotten into a position of such power
? Even after Goodfriend had been blackmailed into losing his bank and the best part of two hundred million euros, he kept going back for more. It didn’t occur to him that Jay would find his new playground of choice and keep a close eye on his perverted obsession? Powerful people, brought down by their own uncontrolled base instincts.

 
That was what kept Jay separate from the rest of them. He controlled his urges, focused on the endgame, allowed nothing to get in his way, distract him or compromise his purpose.

He lifted th
e handset and called Switzerland.
  “Bonjour, Banque Privé de Genève. Puis-je vous aider?” the receptionist answered.

  “
Marcel Blanc.”

  “
Of course, sir, one moment.”

  “
Marcel Blanc.”

  “Marcel,
Jay Rivello, I want you to execute my order.”

  “
Of course, monsieur. Right away.”

  “
Marcel, no, not right away. You execute now, it’ll scare the hell out of the markets. Do it over seven days. This is ten billion in negative positions.”

  “
Of course, Monsieur Rivello, I will instruct my colleagues to do exactly as you have requested.”

  “
That’s all, Marcel, tell me when you’ve placed the orders.” He rang off.

 
Rivello had more than one billion euros cash in his personal account at the Banque Privé de Genève. The eighty plus million euro contribution from the pugnacious, yet fatally overconfident Mr. Berg had taken him over the one billion mark. While not the bank’s wealthiest customer, he had made sure that he’d chosen an institution where he was important enough to get red carpet treatment. No questions asked. 

 
Rivello was placing the biggest, one-off personal bet that the financial markets had ever seen. He was able to leverage his one billion, ten times over. He was shorting the market, wagering ten billion euros that banking stocks would universally fall in the coming weeks. If his bet came off, he would generate close to one hundred billion euros.

 
Most people would have thought him insane to take such a risk. Rivello knew he couldn’t lose. The game was rigged. Beirsdorf would go down and the resulting panic would send dozens of other banks into an irreversible tailspin.

  He
had the human key that would unlock the floodgates so dramatically that nothing would stop the contagion. Elisabeth Kennedy’s love for her son would cause her to do something completely unexpected when Beirsdorf Klein was torpedoed. She would let it go down. Share prices would plummet. Even the healthiest banks would see their shares fall faster than a stone. Rivello would emerge as one of the world’s richest men. He would be able to pick his way through the world’s choicest companies, assets and real estate and buy anything he wanted for cents on the dollar. He dialed a London number.

  “
Augustus.”

  “
Jay, is that you?”

  “
The day after tomorrow. Wednesday. You know what to do.”

  “
Jay,” Augustus pleaded, “the bank will go bust. We’ll have to seek funding from the Fed. This bank’s more than a hundred years old. You’ll destroy it.”

“
Exactly,” said Jay, “do it or you’ll be spending a hell of a long time in prison. Depending, of course, on how long they let you live.”

  “
Listen, Rivello, I have it on good advice that for a first time offense against a minor, I may spend two, maybe three years in prison, following which I’ll be let out on good behavior if I keep my nose clean. You thought I wouldn’t become fully informed after the last, shall we say, unfortunate situation?”

  “
Sure, Augustus. Listen, a tip. Next time you feed horse tranquilizer to an underage whore, make sure you’re not jerking-off in front of a video camera.”

Chapter 44

Pisti,

I’m so sorry. I had no choice. You’d have stopped me if I’d waited to say good-bye. I’ll call.

XXX

Tesz

  István stood by the table in the kitchen. He’d found the note only moments before. It was seven a.m. He’d been awake since six.

 
They had to have left soon after dawn, perhaps earlier. He could’ve kicked himself for being so stupid. He had taken a risk pleading with Berg to leave without her. He should’ve known that Berg would tell her and Tereza would do the only thing she could. Now they’d both die. He’d done what he could to stop it.
  As he slipped the note into the pocket of his dressing gown, he heard footsteps outside the front door.
Ahh, of course, I knew she couldn’t just walk out on me like that
. Relief flowed through him as he hastily made his way towards the front door. As he reached for the handle, the door imploded, the leading edge missing his head by a fraction of a centimeter. The handle smacked into the wall, taking a chunk out of the plaster before ricocheting backwards, the door this time prevented from completing its trajectory by a heavy black boot on the foot of a leg the width of a tree trunk. István was transfixed, frozen to the spot by the ferocity of what had happened. The man on the other side of the door was a goliath, his face devoid of emotion, eyes as cold as any István had seen. The man was poised to rush into the house, gun already drawn and grasped in his right hand.

  “
You’re too late, Rykov,” snapped István, his teeth gritted in irritation, “they’ve gone. And next time give me some warning, will you? You almost took my damn head off.”

Chapter 45

  Augustus had not been home in two days. He’d slept in the bedroom adjacent to his office. He had not eaten. His PA had been told to hold all calls and cancel all meetings. He’d barely moved from the leather couch that sat perpendicular to his desk. Occasionally Augustus gazed out across the trading room floor, from the spectacular bay window. What he witnessed dismayed him even more. Six months before, the place had been buzzing with activity, barely enough space to accommodate the weekly intake of new hires fuelling the banks proprietary trading operations. Now the floor was half empty, those traders that remained blearily following trails of red numbers flickering across their screens.

 
Augustus pulled himself from the couch, staggered to his desk. The bottle of brandy he’d consumed that morning had slowed him down, not knocked him out. He hadn’t changed his clothes since Monday, too drunk to notice the smell. He sat in front of the computer, head lolling forwards and did his best to focus on the e-mail he’d written the morning before.
To:
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
; [email protected]

From:
[email protected]
 

Subject: Beirsdorf Klein, Illegal Trading

Since January 2008, Beirsdorf Klein, in common with many international banking groups, has been trading illegally. The bank has vastly over leveraged its exposure to Special Investment Vehicles containing subprime CDO’s (Collateralized Debt Obligations) to a point where given the drop in market valuations over the past 12 months, Beirsdorf Klein has a negative asset value of at least EUR 50bn.

Naturally, given the breach of trust owed by the
bank to shareholders and customers, I have with immediate effect tendered my resignation to the European and US Supervisory Boards of the Bank.

Yours Faithfully,

Augustus S. Goodfriend

Chairman

Beirsdorf Klein Investment Banking, Europe

 
The content of the e-mail sickened him. More, even, than when he’d written it. Augustus took another swig of brandy, his head spinning, faced with two choices only. Either would ruin his life. Augustus’s wealth had been predominantly invested in the bank. If it went down, he would lose everything he had worked towards and everything that his parents had fought so hard to protect.

  I
f he didn’t push the button on the e-mail, the whole house of cards would come crashing down anyway. But he knew this wasn’t necessarily true. It was without doubt in the interests of the bankers, the industrialists and the politicians to maintain the status quo and shore up the system. As long as the bankers knew that they had the support of the political establishment and the guarantee of taxpayer money to fuel the merry-go-round, they would keep the wheel spinning. Rivello would only get the leverage he needed if Augustus triggered the collapse by burying his own bank.

 
One thing he knew, though, for certain. If he didn’t send that e-mail, he and his family’s name would be permanently disgraced, the rest of his probably relatively short life being spent in the pedophile wing of a maximum security prison.

  “Fuck you all,” he cried. A man who knew that his time was up.
  The cursor hovered over the “send” key. With a click of the mouse, the e-mail shot into cyberspace.

Chapter 46

“You sure you want to go ahead with this?”

  “If
you ask me again, I swear this latté will end up in your lap. Do what you need to do and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Let’s do it,”
he said.

 
They crossed the road separately. Michael entered through the automated double doors of the office building. Tereza waited outside.

 
He vaguely recollected the layout. Ahead of him stretched a four meter long, marble reception desk, two young women helping those with appointments to connect with the right person and guiding them to the correct floor. Security was unobtrusive, but present. To the left of the desk were three turnstiles. Behind them lay two banks of three elevators. Before you could enter the turnstiles, a security card was needed to activate the revolving steel bar.

 
This was where Michael needed a diversion. He angled away from the reception desk and stood close to the turnstiles. Feigning agitation, he glanced at his watch in the hope that he resembled someone waiting for an inhabitant of the building to descend and whisk him off to lunch.

  “
Can I ’elp you, sir?” the voice came from behind him, authoritative with a distinct undertone of menace. Security.

Michael turned to the peak capped, straight
-faced security guard who had indeed been so unobtrusive that Michael had no idea where he’d appeared from.

  “No, thank
s. I have a lunch appointment with Augustus Goodfriend. He asked me to wait for him here.”

  “
I see, sir, well let’s see if I can help you out. Let’s go over to Amanda and she can let Mr. Goodfriend know that you’ve arrived.”

  The security guard
turned his back on Michael, beckoning him forwards. The guard’s body froze as the shrill scream tore through the reception area.

  “
My baby, someone’s stolen my baby, help, help, please help me!”

 
A handbag was one thing. Hardened security men were trained how to deal with minor distractions, and in any case, to the toughened inhabitants of one of the world’s largest and therefore most cutthroat cities, petty theft and pickpocketing were barely worth lifting one’s finger for. But a baby? That was something else.

 
Tereza sobbed uncontrollably. The security man had ejected Michael from his mind. The receptionists darted from behind their opulent marble haven and dashed over to the hysterical woman.

 
Michael glanced towards the elevators. No one approaching. He turned, in two strides was at the turnstile and, one hand on top of the box, leapt over the device as one of the elevators opened and half a dozen people exited. He jumped in, hoping Tereza was able to extricate herself from her momentary celebrity.