Zero Alternative (3 page)

Walker pulled out another cigarette, lit it and blew a cloud of smoke in DM’s face. The mathematician recoiled, coughing, and shot him a wounded glare.

‘Couldn’t you just nudge me?’

‘It’s more fun this way. So what’s eating you, apart from that idiot Tsun?’

‘I’m…’ DM fidgeted, his left hand rubbing at an old scar on his right arm, just above the wrist: one of his many Burmese civil-war scars. ‘I’m a bit worried, that’s all. Odd things have been happening.’

‘Is it the police again? How much junk have you been doing?’

‘A bit… maybe a bit more than usual.’

‘Shit. Are you still buying it from the same old guy?’ Walker struggled to keep his tone of voice even. DM was a dopehead – not hard stuff, but he regularly bulldozed his way through mountains of weed. His routine was simple: he would get home from work, roll a massive joint and put on some classical music. Then he would smoke more, and more, until he became
properly
stoned. At that point he would fire up the massive mainframe he kept in his house and work through the evening and night, lost in his own drug-sharpened mathematical universe.

‘Yes. It’s not the police though. I think… I think someone is following me, watching me.’

‘Right.’ Walker stared at his friend. ‘Like before the summer, when you couldn’t get rid of that death smell in your place.’ He took a deep breath and stood up, annoyed. DM had been caught up in the millennia-old trap that had entangled many mystics, saints and rock stars before him: being high actually supercharged his brain. But he also suffered the usual side-effects of mild hallucinations, panic attacks, paranoia.

‘You’re having a psychotic episode, mate.’

‘No, I’m not. Not this time. It’s real. After my deputy resigned…’

‘Jim Zhu? What does he have do with it?’ Walker groaned.

‘When he left, five months ago, he tried to take the access codes to the mainframe.’

‘Yeah. And they revoked his FSA registration because of that.’

‘Fucking rightly so.’ DM slammed his paper cup on the bench, spilling a few drops of the dark tea inside. Walker almost recoiled in surprise – his friend practically never swore.

‘So he’s never going to work in the City again.’

‘You’d think so. Well, the idiot somehow resurfaced at Frankel last week,’ DM continued. ‘Senior role, too. Bastards.’

‘Really? They tried to hire you again last year, didn’t they?’ Frankel Schwartz was the Godfather of investment banks. You couldn’t count the numbers of central bankers, ministers and Treasury Secretaries they had produced over the years. Conspiracy theorists all over the world believed they were the master puppeteers behind the scenes. Then again, you could find lunatics screaming that man had never landed on the moon. And Area 51 was full of aliens, or whatever. Walker fumbled with his jacket, looking for another cigarette. He glanced at his watch: seven more minutes before they had to attend the morning meeting. ‘How much did Frankel offer you – three million?’

DM shrugged. ‘Five, actually. When I said no, the offer went up. As if that would make a difference.’

‘Well, they’re investment bankers. They think it’s just a question of price.’

‘They’re fucking crooks, that’s what they are,’ swore DM, his voice starting to rise. ‘What they did with subprime, and LIBOR, and all those nasty bonds they sold everywhere…’

Walker glanced around, noticing a few people were starting to look at them. ‘Calm down, mate. You read too many NoHedge blogs. Besides, they are much bigger than us – most investment banks are, really – and their systems are supposed to be the best. They could have helped with Deep.’

‘Maybe, but I trust the coder quants in Bangalore – it would take years to get such a good group together. No, I’m too close to go anywhere else.’ He looked up, smiling, his words dripping with sarcasm. ‘And it’s not always about the cash, you WOP oaf.’

Walker sighed inwardly; this was more like their usual banter. ‘Beautiful words. So how do you know you’re being watched?’

‘I’ve noticed the same people hanging around a few times. On the Tube, near my grocers. I think they might be renting a flat in the opposite building. I’ve seen light reflecting off something like a telescope in one of the apartments there.’

‘You’ve got to lay off that bloody stuff you’re smoking. For a while at least.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘Me too.’ Walker lit his cigarette, becoming impatient. ‘And who would be following you,
anyway?’

DM glared at him. ‘Aren’t you listening? It
must
be from Frankel, someone high up there. They have Zhu and they’ve known about Deep, at least the Alpha version, for a while.’ The mathematician jumped up, his expression stormy. ‘They want it real bad, I know.’

‘Come on, trying to buy you out is one thing but… This is ridiculous. Frankel Schwartz is a big investment bank, not the bloody Hydra you make it out to be.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’ DM stepped back, his intense eyes burning with rage. ‘You know what Kissinger said,’ he rasped.

Walker looked at him blankly. ‘What?’

‘Even a paranoid can have enemies, Yours.’

The mathematician swore again, spun on his heel and rushed to the side entrance that would take him down into Dorfmann’s basement. Walker let him go, then he finished his cigarette and stubbed it out. DM was falling to pieces. The man needed to be taken away for a few days, to decompress. He worked through the options for a second, then smiled: Monaco.

They hadn’t been to the Cote d’Azur in years, not since the ’08 crash. A long weekend, roulette, and stunning girls. He knew a trader at a Swiss bank who would rent them his Dossani yacht, a 36-foot sleek beast moulded in carbon fibre, with all the proper toys. Another week to unwind his trading book and make the bank some serious cash, and they’d head off. They both needed a break, badly.

Walker’s BlackBerry beeped and he checked it: two minutes to the meeting. He dodged a pregnant lady wobbling past him and slipped, but as he regained his balance he glimpsed the same well-dressed woman staring at him again from across the plaza. Suddenly uneasy, he pivoted and took a few quick steps in her direction. She dropped her paper, turned and slipped behind a kiosk.

When Walker reached the corner she had vanished into thin air.
What the hell was that?
His phone beeped again and he swore, making his way back to the bank’s entrance.

Chapter Two

The Previous Night. Sunday, September 30th – 7.41
P.M.

The ring swayed before his eyes and Walker stepped aside, twisting and dodging a left hook. The glove grazed his padded helmet, but just as he prepared to respond a right fist clattered into his ribs, winding him. The world slowed as he half-fell to the ropes, barely managing to avoid a straight punch that would have broken his nose. Someone shouted and his opponent danced back, a nasty smile on his lips.

Coach Newstead left his corner and hurried to Walker, helping him climb back up. The old pro stared at his eyes, trying to decide whether to stop the sparring.

‘Are you okay, Scott?’

Walker shook his head, his vision still blurred. ‘Yeah.’

‘You sure? We can have a short break.’

‘No, I’m fine.’ He took a deep breath, ignoring the pain in his lower chest. ‘Just another round.’

Newstead nodded, glancing at Teddy, the seventeen-year-old who was battering Walker. ‘Left hitting only, tiger.’

‘Yes Coach.’

‘Box!’

Walker rushed in, feinting and changing guard to a southpaw stance. He swivelled and avoided a left hook, then pushed off his right heel and slipped a lower cross, aiming for the solar plexus. His opponent swatted him aside as he had expected, his right hand darting through for a jab that rattled the youngster.

Teddy shuffled back and stretched his neck, his eyes narrowing. ‘Not bad, white guy.’ He crouched lower and approached, unleashing a series of left jabs, his fist moving so fast it almost blurred. Walker defended out of instinct, parrying a couple and managing to avoid a third. He tried to slide away from the corner of the ring leaning into the ropes but his foot slipped on a sweat stain and he lost his balance for a split second.

He didn’t even see the punch that knocked him out.

Walker stepped out of the shower, his body still aching from the punishment. A deserved one, since he’d never learnt to stop when he was overmatched. He had needed to while away the hours and the tension before the Italian election results, but the best kids down at Fisher’s Youth club were obviously becoming too quick for him. Sighing, he dried his short dark hair and checked himself in the mirror – no cuts or lumps, just the usual intense grey eyes set under a high forehead.
No worries; at least I’m still a decent-looking bastard
.

He jumped into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and poured himself a drink in the open kitchen in his loft-style living room. After lighting a cigarette, he walked to the ceiling-height windows and looked out at the Thames, swirling darkly four floors below. To his left, less than a hundred yards away, the bright lights of Tower Bridge painted a maelstrom of red, blue and white into the London night. Beyond them shone the skyline of the City, where new buildings continued to shoot up, defying the gravity of another economic crisis. Astonishing, how Finance could still find ways to expand and pay when entire economies crumbled.

It felt as if… as if the parasite was killing the host, slowly bleeding it dry. Walker’s mild soul-sickness threatened to return, and again he wondered what he was waiting for. The entire world seemed strained, ordinary people were suffering. Maybe it was time to think of ways to help repair the damage. Not much he could do alone, but DeepShare might…

He coughed a few times, fighting a sudden wave of nausea. He flicked his cigarette away and watched the tip spiral into the water before going back inside. The 60-inch TV on the wall was on, volume muted. A few Italian politicians argued around a cowlicked host who’d seen better days, filling air-time and waiting for the election exit polls to come in.

Another twenty minutes.

He grabbed a bottle of 42 Below from the fridge, picked up his phone and lowered himself gently onto a leather couch. His body felt like he’d just walked out of a car crash but the adrenaline was already starting to pump again. Flights of fancy about helping to shape a better future were all right, and maybe one day he could afford them, but right now he needed to be sharp, focused. If he and DeepShare were wrong and the Italian election went as expected… the next few weeks would turn into a financial massacre for Walker Ltd.

His trading portfolio would take a battering in the market, bleeding away like an unstitched open vein. He would personally lose Dorfmann a fortune in the run-up to Christmas, and that fat idiot Fontaine would lean on Jack Morden to have him fired if he closed the year down fifteen or twenty million. Spineless Jack wouldn’t stand in the way of the head of trading – the idiot didn’t really care, not if it could cost him money when the envelopes were handed down on Bonus Day. Then again, maybe it would be better to be pushed, if he couldn’t jump.

He exhaled and readjusted his legs on the sofa, trying to get comfortable just as his phone rang with the slightly odd melody that signalled a video-call.

Luigi
.

Walker smiled and gestured at the TV, transferring the call onto the big screen. The image split down the middle, Italian politicians still silently jabbering away at each other. Luigi Seu’s ruddy face materialized on the left-hand side of the screen, his blue eyes glinting. His short beard was half-grey, the cropped hair receding beyond a widow’s peak.

It looked as if he had finally lost some weight.

At least a bit.

Maybe a third of one per cent.

He also looked like he was already half-drunk, sitting in his massive kitchen in Lugano, a large brandy glass at his elbow.

‘Yo, bitch. Whassup?’ he smiled.

‘Hi ugly.’ Walker switched to Italian – Luigi’s English was perfect but very flat, while his friend’s funny Sardinian accent shone through in his mother tongue. ‘I’m in pain. Serious pain.’

‘Been down sparring? Those kids are too good for you. You should have quit already, like twenty years ago when they rehashed your nose in the Trials. Why the hell did you pick up that barbarous hobby anyway?’

‘When you’re a skinny orphan at boarding school in Dulwich, it’s not a bad idea to know how to defend yourself.’

‘Maybe,’ Luigi sighed. ‘But now?’

Walker shrugged. ‘I needed to take my mind off things.’

‘Drinking helps.’

‘I can tell. When are the ladies due back from America?’ Walker was godfather to Luigi’s daughter Lia, a feisty three-year-old.

‘Next Friday, I hope. I’ve been eating out for a week and I’m starting to get bored. So, you still think Rossini is going to win the election?’

‘Yep. Was I wrong three months ago when I told you the previous government would collapse?’

‘No, but you’re an idiot now. Rossini’s five to one at the bookies, and it’s a rip-off. The man and his Three Star Party have no chance to get more than fifteen to seventeen per cent of the votes, I reckon. You should get ten-to-one odds.’

Walker smiled: this was the hook. Luigi was an inveterate gambler, even with his closest friends. Casinos, horses, dogs, anything was good for a wager. ‘Are you making me a market?’

Luigi missed a beat. ‘Maybe.’

‘Why do you always try to take my money?’ Walker sniggered. ‘Is it because you’re only a lowly broker?’

‘Yeah. And I want to join the god-like beings, like you. I dream of being a trader, every night.’

‘You’re just jealous, mate.’ Luigi’s job as an Over-The-Counter broker consisted in helping dealers shift risk across banks and hedge funds. He earned a small commission on all trades, working as the ultimate middleman. And, though it paid well, he often got bored with it.

‘Jealous of all those idiots who take enormous punts with other people’s money? Of course I am.’

‘Great. I’ll take those odds, then.’

‘Dream on. Just because of our decade-old friendship, I might offer you seven to one.’