Майкл Ридпат - The Predator

The year before, Dick Waigel, an employee of Bloomfield Weiss, had been arrested and charged with operating a complicated scam involving offshore trusts and a bankrupt Savings and Loan in Arizona. The press had been bad.

‘And remember those guys in equity sales who were caught supplying cocaine to their customers?’ said Duncan. ‘Let’s face it, our employer does not have the purest of reputations.’

‘Which is why Calhoun is making such a fuss,’ said Eric. ‘It’s all part of his strategy of making the programme much tougher than it needs to be. By demanding high standards and putting pressure on us, he’ll make the firm a better place.’

‘That may be true,’ said Alex. ‘But I hear it’s pissing some people off.’

‘Good,’ said Duncan.

‘Why?’ Chris asked Alex.

‘The firm spent a lot of money hiring those two guys. Roger’s smart, and you can bet there are some people on the trading floor who’ll be disappointed not to have a pro footballer buddy to go drinking with. Bloomfield Weiss is full of guys who’d have done the same in their situation. They’d fit right in. It was dumb to fire them.’

‘All you have to do is explain that to Calhoun,’ said Duncan.

As they made their way back to class, Duncan pulled Chris to one side. ‘By the way,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the help. I would never have passed if you hadn’t picked me up the night before.’

Chris smiled. ‘You’d do the same for me, mate.’

Spring did arrive eventually. One day they were wrapped up in their new city overcoats, leaning against a bitter wind that whipped round the tall buildings, and the next the sun was out, the trees were bursting with blossom, and the park turned green. The tempo of the programme slowed after the Bond Math exam and they were even given a couple of afternoons off. A number of non-Americans started a Saturday soccer game on the large lawn in the centre of the park. The three Brits were regular participants. Duncan was a good sportsman, well coordinated, and even in a pick-up game a tireless runner. It was a noisy event, Faisal, the Saudi, and a couple of Brazilians made sure of that, and it was fun. Eric and Alex also played, as did Lenka and Latasha James. Latasha was good; she had played soccer at college. Lenka wasn’t, but no one complained. The men were queuing up to pass her the ball and then tackle her.

After one game, Lenka and Latasha persuaded Duncan, Chris, Ian and Alex to join them for a trip to Zabar’s, a delicatessen on the West Side. They bought several carrier bags of goodies: breads, pâtés, cheeses and an exotic fruit salad. Lenka became quite excited by the food she recognized from home and insisted that they load up with some Hungarian salami and pickles: lots and lots of pickles. She was also fascinated by Zabar’s collection of dried mushrooms; she claimed that all Czechs were mushroom experts and she had spent most of her childhood scrambling through forests looking for them. Eventually the others pulled her away, stopped off in a wine shop round the corner to pick up some bottles and sauntered back towards the park. They walked slowly, enjoying the spring sunshine and watching the joggers, roller-bladers, cyclists, lovers and loonies that thronged New York’s playground. As they passed under the statue of King Jagiello riding his horse and waving two swords over his head, Lenka paused.

‘Isn’t it nice to see one of your kings in the middle of the big city?’ she asked Chris. ‘It’s as though he has ridden here directly from the Middle Ages.’

‘One of my kings?’ said Chris.

‘Oh, come on. The man who beat the Teutonic Order at the Battle of Tannenberg? Don’t tell me you have no Polish left in you at all?’

Chris smiled. ‘You’re right. My grandfather would be standing here saluting him. But my father would be looking the other way. I suppose I just take the easy way out and pretend I’m English.’

‘I thought Poles were the most nationalistic people on the planet,’ said Lenka.

‘My grandfather is,’ said Chris. ‘That’s my mother’s father. He escaped to England in nineteen thirty-nine. He was a fighter pilot, a hero. He fought in the Battle of Britain. He’d give his life for Poland, as he has told me on many occasions. But my father didn’t believe in any of that. He was a socialist. Not a communist, but a true socialist. He believed that nationalism divided people. He didn’t like kings. I’m sure he wouldn’t have approved of this one.’

‘What was he doing in Britain if he was a socialist?’

‘He hated Stalinism. And Britain didn’t seem a bad place to go. It was nineteen sixty-six and the Labour Party had just won the election. He thought Harold Wilson was a better socialist than the Soviet apparatchiks in Warsaw. He was a chess player, an international master. He defected at a chess tournament in Bournemouth. He had cousins in Yorkshire, he moved up there, met my mother, and here I am.’

‘I bet her father didn’t think much of him.’

‘You’re absolutely right.’ The rift between Chris’s mother’s family and his father had upset him as a boy. In fact, the whole Polish community in Halifax seemed suspicious of his father. Although he had defected, he was from the new regime, and therefore not quite to be trusted. He didn’t even go to church on Sunday. Even though he was young, Chris had felt this mistrust and had resented it.

‘You talk about your father in the past tense?’

Chris sighed. ‘He died when I was ten.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. It was a long time ago.’

‘I’m still sorry.’ She smiled. ‘Well, I think it’s wonderful that there’s a Slav hero here. Maybe they’ll put up a statue to Vaclav Havel one day.’

‘Now that would be good.’

They found an empty patch of ground near the small boat pond. They broke open the wine, ate, drank, and whiled away the afternoon. Lenka had bought far too many pickles for them all to eat, so Duncan and Alex started throwing them at her, and soon a pickle fight began. It was all quite childish, and Chris didn’t have the energy to join in, but it was good to see everyone forgetting about being investment bankers for a while. Chris lay down on the grass and stared up at the blue sky, edged with the tall buildings of Fifth Avenue. He felt the pressures of the programme lifting away from him. It was actually quite nice in New York, he decided.

The wine made him sleepy, and he closed his eyes. He was disturbed by a drop of water on his face. Then another. The sun was still shining, but an inky black cloud had placed itself over their corner of the park. It opened, and they scurried around, gathering up the remains of the picnic. Latasha, Eric and Alex managed to jump into the only empty cab on Fifth Avenue, but Chris, Ian, Duncan and Lenka hurried back to the shelter of their apartment, Duncan shielding Lenka from the downpour with his coat.

When they arrived, soaked through, Chris made some tea. Lenka had a shower first, and borrowed some of Duncan’s dry clothes to change into. Then Chris and Ian took their turns in the shower. Somehow, in all the toing and froing, Duncan and Lenka slipped away by themselves to go off for a drink somewhere.

Chris and Ian exchanged glances as the door slammed behind them.

‘What do you think?’ said Chris.

‘No way,’ said Ian. ‘She’s out of his league.’

‘He’s quite good-looking,’ Chris said, ‘in that giant puppy kind of way.’

Duncan wasn’t classically handsome, but he had a large, freckled face with curly red hair, blue eyes, and a winning smile that seemed to say, ‘be my friend’. Chris had seen it working on some of the women at Bloomfield Weiss in London. He could imagine Lenka preferring it to, say, the clean-cut good looks of Eric.