Robert Harris - The Fear Index

He was interrupted by another outcry from Quarry: ‘Since when did we start leasing an industrial unit in Zimeysa?’

Genoud said: ‘I can tell you exactly, Mr Quarry: since six months ago. It’s a big place – fifty-four Route de Clerval. Dr Hoffmann ordered a special new security and surveillance system for it.’

Hoffmann said, ‘What’s in this unit?’

‘Computers.’

‘Who put them in?’

‘I don’t know. A computer company.’

Hoffmann said, ‘So you’re not the only person I’m dealing with? I deal with entire companies by email too?’

‘I don’t know. Presumably, yes.’

Quarry was still clicking through the emails. ‘This is unbelievable,’ he said to Hoffmann. ‘According to this, you also own the freehold of this entire building.’

Genoud said, ‘That’s true, Dr Hoffmann. You gave me the contract for security. That’s why I was here this evening when you called.’

‘Is this really right?’ Quarry demanded. ‘You own the building?’

But Hoffmann had stopped listening. He was thinking back to his time at CERN, to the memo Bob Walton had circulated to the chairmen of the CERN Experiments Committees and of the Machine Advisory Committee, recommending that Hoffmann’s research project, AMR-1, be shut down. It had included a warning issued by Thomas S. Ray, software engineer and Professor of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma: ‘… freely evolving autonomous artificial entities should be seen as potentially dangerous to organic life, and should always be confined by some kind of containment facility, at least until their real potential is well understood… Evolution remains a self-interested process, and even the interests of confined digital organisms may conflict with our own.’

He took a breath. He said, ‘Hugo, I need to have a word with you – alone.’

‘All right, sure. Maurice, would you mind stepping outside for a minute?’

‘No, I think he should stay here and start sorting this out.’ He said to Genoud, ‘I want you to make a copy of the entire file of emails that originate from me. I also want a list of every job you’ve done that I’m supposed to have ordered. I especially want a list of everything to do with this industrial facility in Zimeysa. Then I want you to start stripping out every camera and every bug in every building we have, starting with my house. And I need it done tonight. Is that understood?’

Genoud looked to Quarry for approval. Quarry hesitated, then nodded. Genoud said curtly, ‘As you wish.’

They left him to it. Once they were outside the office and the door was closed, Quarry said, ‘I hope to God you’ve got some kind of explanation for this, Alex, because I have to tell you-’

Hoffmann held up a warning finger and raised his eyes to the smoke detector above Marie-Claude’s desk.

Quarry said, with heavy emphasis, ‘Oh, right, I understand. We’ll go to my office.’

‘No. Not there. It’s not safe. Here…’

Hoffmann led him into the washroom and closed the door. The pieces of the smoke detector were where he had left them, next to the basin. He could barely recognise his own reflection in the mirror. He looked like someone who might have escaped from the secure wing of a mental hospital. He said, ‘Hugo, do you think I’m insane?’

‘Yes, since you ask, I bloody well do. Or probably. I don’t know.’

‘No, it’s okay. I’m not blaming you if that’s how you feel. I can see absolutely what this must look like from the outside – and what I’m about to say isn’t going to make you feel any more confident.’ He could hardly believe he was saying it himself. ‘I think the basic problem we have here is VIXAL.’

‘Lifting the delta hedge?’

‘Lifting the delta hedge, but let’s say also possibly doing somewhat more than I anticipated.’

Quarry squinted at him. ‘What are you talking about? I don’t follow…’

The door started to open and someone tried to come in. Quarry stopped it with his elbow. ‘Not now,’ he said, without taking his eyes from Hoffmann. ‘Sod off and pee in a bucket, will you?’

A voice said, ‘Okay, Hugo.’

Quarry closed the door and planted his back against it. ‘More than you anticipated in what way?’

Hoffmann said carefully, ‘VIXAL may be making decisions that are not entirely compatible with our interest.’

‘You mean our interest as a company?’

‘No. I mean our interest – the human interest.’

‘Aren’t they the same?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Sorry. Being dim here. You mean you think it’s somehow actually doing all this itself – the surveillance and everything?’

In fairness to him, Hoffmann thought, Quarry at least seemed to be treating the suggestion seriously.

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure I am saying that. We need to take this one step at a time until we have enough information to make a full assessment. But I think as a first move we have to unwind the positions it’s taken in the market. This could be quite hazardous – and not just to us.’

‘Even though it’s making money?’

‘It’s not a question of making money any more – can’t you forget about money just for once?’ It was becoming increasingly hard for Hoffmann to maintain his composure, but he managed to finish quietly, ‘We’re way beyond that now.’

Quarry folded his arms and thought it over, staring at the tiled floor. ‘Are you sure you’re in a fit state to be taking this kind of decision?’

‘I am, really. Trust me, please, will you, if only for the sake of the last eight years? It’ll be the last time, I promise you. After tonight, you’ll be in charge.’

For a long moment they looked at one another, the physicist and the financier. Quarry frankly didn’t know what to make of it. But as he said afterwards, in the end the company was Hoffmann’s – it was his genius that had brought in the punters, his machine that had made the money in the first place, his call to shut it down. ‘It’s your baby,’ he said. He stood clear of the door.

Hoffmann went out on to the trading floor with Quarry at his heels. It felt better to be doing something, fighting back. He clapped his hands. ‘Listen up, everybody!’ He climbed on to a chair so the quants could see him better. He clapped again. ‘I need you all just to gather round for a minute.’

They rose from behind their screens at his command, a ghost army of PhDs. He could see their exchange of glances as they came over; some were whispering. They were obviously all on edge with what was happening. Van der Zyl came out of his office, and so did Ju-Long; he couldn’t see Rajamani. He waited for a couple of stragglers from Incubation to thread their way around the desks and then he cleared his throat.

‘Okay, we’ve obviously got a few anomalies to deal with here – to put it mildly – and I think for safety’s sake we’re going to have to start dismantling these positions we’ve built up over the last few hours.’

He checked himself. He didn’t want to create a panic. He was also conscious of the smoke detectors dotted across the ceiling. Presumably everything he said was being monitored. ‘This doesn’t mean we have a problem with VIXAL necessarily, but we do need to go back and find out why it’s been doing some of the things it has been doing. I don’t know how long that’s going to take, so in the meantime we need to get that delta back in line – hedge it out with longs in other markets; even liquidate if it comes to it. Just get the hell out of where we are.’

Quarry said, to Hoffmann and the room, ‘We’ll need to tread very carefully. If we start liquidating positions this size too quickly, we’ll move prices.’

Hoffmann nodded. ‘That’s true, but VIXAL will help us achieve the optimums, even in override.’ He looked up at the row of digital clocks beneath the giant TV screens. ‘We’ve still got just over three hours before America closes. Imre, will you and Dieter help out with fixed income and currencies? Franco and Jon, take three or four guys each and divide up stocks and sector bets. Kolya, you do the same with the indices. Everyone else in their normal sections.’