Robert Harris - The Fear Index

Professor Robert WALTON

Computing Centre Department Head

CERN – European Organisation for Nuclear Research

1211 Geneva 23 – Switzerland

It was well after three o’clock by the time Hugo Quarry got back to the office. He had left several messages on Hoffmann’s mobile phone, which had not been answered, and he felt a slight prickle of unease about where his partner might be: Hoffmann’s so-called bodyguard he had found chatting up a girl in reception, unaware that his charge had even left the hotel. Quarry had fired him on the spot.

Still, for all that, the Englishman’s mood was good. He now believed they were likely to mop up double his initial estimate of new investment – $2 billion – which meant an extra $40 million a year simply in management fees. He had drunk several truly excellent glasses of wine. On the drive back from the restaurant he celebrated by putting a call through to Benetti’s and commissioning a helicopter pad for the back of his yacht.

He was smiling so much the facial-recognition scanner failed to match his geometry to its database and he had to try a second time when he had composed himself. He passed under the bland but watchful eyes of the security cameras in the lobby, cheerfully called out, ‘Five,’ to the elevator and hummed to himself all the way up the glass tube. It was the old school song, or as much of it as he could remember – sonent voces omnium, tum-tee tum-tee tum-tee-tum – and when the doors opened he tipped an imaginary hat to his frowning fellow passengers, the dull drones from DigiSyst or EcoTec or whatever the hell they were called. He even managed to maintain his smile when the glass partition to Hoffmann Investment Technologies slid back to reveal Inspector Jean-Philippe Leclerc of the Geneva Police Department waiting for him in reception. He examined his visitor’s ID and then compared it to the rumpled figure in front of him. The American markets would be opening in ten minutes. This he could do without.

‘It wouldn’t be possible, Inspector, would it, for us to have this meeting some other time? I only say this because we really are feeling pretty frazzled here today.’

‘I am very sorry to disturb you, monsieur. I had hoped to catch a word with Dr Hoffmann, but in his absence there are some matters I would like to discuss with you. I promise you it will only take ten minutes.’

There was something in the way the old boy planted his feet slightly apart that warned Quarry he had better make the best of it. ‘Of course,’ he said, switching on his trademark smile, ‘you shall have as long as you like. We’ll go to my office.’ He extended his hand and ushered the policeman in front of him. ‘Keep right on to the end.’ He felt as if he had been smiling solidly for about fifteen hours that day already. His face ached with bonhomie. As soon as Leclerc had his back to him, he treated himself to a scowl.

Leclerc walked slowly past the trading floor, examining his surroundings with interest. The big open room with its screens and time-zone clocks was more or less what he would have expected in a financial company: he had seen this on the television. But the employees were a surprise – all young, and not a tie between them, let alone a suit – and also the silence, with everyone at his desk, and the air so still and heavy with concentration. The whole place reminded him of an examination hall in an all-male college. Or a seminary, perhaps: yes, a seminary of Mammon. The image pleased him. On several of the screens he noticed a slogan, red on white, as in the old Soviet Union:

THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL HAVE NO PAPER

THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL CARRY NO INVENTORY

THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL BE ENTIRELY DIGITAL

THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED

‘Now,’ said Quarry, smiling again, ‘what can I offer you, Inspector? Tea, coffee, water?’

‘I think tea, as I am with an Englishman. Thank you.’

‘Two teas, Amber, sweetheart, please. English breakfast.’

She said, ‘You have a lot of calls, Hugo.’

‘Yes, I bet I bloody do.’ He opened his office door and stood aside to let Leclerc go in first, then went straight to his desk. ‘Please, take a seat, will you, Inspector? Excuse me. I won’t be a second.’ He checked his screen. The European markets were all heading south fairly quickly now. The DAX was off one per cent, the CAC two, the FTSE one and a half. The euro was down more than a cent against the dollar. He didn’t have time to check all their positions, but the P amp;L showed VIXAL-4 already up $68 million on the day. Still, there was something about it all he found vaguely ominous, despite his good mood; he sensed a storm about to break. ‘Great. That’s fine.’ He sat down cheerfully behind his desk. ‘So then, have you caught this maniac?’

‘Not yet. You and Dr Hoffmann have worked together for eight years, I understand.’

‘That’s right. We set up shop in 2002.’

Leclerc extracted his notebook and pen. He held them up. ‘You don’t object if I…?’

‘I don’t, although Alex would.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘We’re not allowed to use carbon-based data-retrieval systems on the premises – that’s notebooks and newspapers to you and me. The company is supposed to be entirely digital. But Alex isn’t here, so don’t worry about it. Go ahead.’

‘That sounds a little eccentric.’ Leclerc made a careful note.

‘Eccentric is one way of putting it. Another would be stark raving bloody bonkers. But there you are. That’s Alex. He’s a genius, and they don’t tend to see the world the same way we do. Quite a large part of my life is spent explaining his behaviour to lesser mortals. Like John the Baptist, I go before him. Or after him.’

He was thinking of their lunch at the Beau-Rivage, when he had been obliged to interpret Hoffmann’s actions to mere Earthlings twice – first when he didn’t show up for half an hour (‘He sends his apologies, he’s working on a very complex theorem’), and then when he abruptly sped away from the table midway through the entree (‘Well, there goes Alex, folks – I guess he’s having another of his eureka moments’). But although there had been some grumbling and eye-rolling, they were willing to put up with it. At the end of the day, Hoffmann could swing naked from the rafters playing the ukulele as far as they were concerned, as long as he made them a return of eighty-three per cent.

Leclerc said, ‘Can you tell me how you two met?’

‘Sure, when we started working together.’

‘And how did that come about?’

‘What, you want the whole love story?’ Quarry put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his favourite position, feet up on his desk, always happy to tell a tale he had recounted a hundred times, maybe a thousand, polishing it into a corporate legend: when Sears met Roebuck, Rolls met Royce and Quarry met Hoffmann. ‘It was around Christmas 2001. I was in London, working for a big American bank. I wanted to have a crack at starting my own fund. I knew I could raise the money – I had the contacts: that was no problem – but I didn’t have a game plan that would sustain over the long term. You’ve got to have a strategy in this business – did you know the average life expectancy of a hedge fund is three years?’

Leclerc said politely, ‘No.’

‘Well it’s true. That’s the lifespan of the average hamster. Anyway, a guy in our Geneva office mentioned this science nerd at CERN he’d heard about who apparently had some quite interesting ideas on the algorithmic side. We thought we might hire him as a quant, but he just wouldn’t play ball at all – wouldn’t meet us, didn’t want to know: mad as a hatter, apparently, total recluse. We had a laugh about it – quants! I mean, what could you do? But there was just something about the sound of this one that got me interested: I don’t know – a pricking of my thumbs. As it happened, I was planning to go skiing over the holidays, so I thought I’d look him up…’