Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

Humberto took a sip of coffee, and lit a cigarette. ‘Well, Isabel, my dear, we have good news. Very good news. Everything is finally coming together. The Rio de Janeiro Favela Bairro Trust was formally established yesterday, with myself as chairman.’ He placed a hand on his chest and gave a mock bow.

‘The Mayor is completely behind the idea, I mean completely. We have had ten departments working on this.’ He counted them off on his stubby fingers: ‘Finance, Health, Urbanism, Education, Housing, Fire, Water, Environment, Social Development and the Attorney General’s Office. And they are all working together. That, as you know, is quite an achievement.’

‘Great!’ Isabel’s face lit up. This was better than she had expected.

‘You have the documents I sent you?’

‘They’re right here,’ said Isabel, patting her briefcase. ‘I have some comments. Nothing substantial, but we need to make a few changes just to be sure the mechanism works correctly. And then, of course, we’ve got the meetings tomorrow with the rating agencies. They shouldn’t be a problem. They just have one or two final questions.’

The rating agencies were responsible for assessing and publishing a credit rating for each new deal brought to market. Given the complexity of Isabel’s structure, this had required quite a lot of work on their part, but they were almost comfortable with it.

‘Good. Let me get Rafael. One moment.’ He picked up his phone and spoke quickly in Portuguese. ‘He’ll be here in five minutes.’

He placed his hands on the desk in front of us and beamed. ‘But once we have agreed those documents, and satisfied the agencies, there’s nothing at our end to stop us from going further.’

‘Then we can launch the deal at the end of next week, as we planned?’

‘As far as we are concerned, yes.’

Isabel caught something in the civil servant’s tone. ‘Humberto?’

‘There is one small problem. It’s probably nothing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Jack Langton at the World Development Fund has to check some small details with Washington. He says he’ll get back to us at the beginning of next week.’

‘What details?’

Humberto shrugged.

‘I’ll call him,’ said Isabel.

‘Good. Isabel, we are going to do this deal, I promise you.’

Isabel smiled. ‘We certainly are.’

There was a quiet tap on the door, and the lawyer, Rafael, entered. We retired to a meeting room where we went over the documents Isabel had brought with her. I had read them through several times until I thoroughly understood the structure, and I was able to make some useful suggestions. It was good to contribute something for a change.

In the taxi back to our hotel, I asked Isabel how she thought the meeting had gone.

‘I’m pleased. After a year, it looks like we’re almost there. Humberto has always been enthusiastic about the deal. He said there would be no problem getting all the authorizations, but I admit I didn’t believe him. And now it looks like he’s done it.’

‘What was all that about the World Development Fund?’

Isabel frowned. ‘I don’t know. I’ll find out when we get back to the hotel. Oh, by the way, thanks for your help in that meeting. You certainly have picked up a lot.’ She gave me a shy smile, a smile to die for.

‘Thank you,’ I said, my voice hoarse.

The taxi lurched on through the Rio traffic, accelerating through red lights, swerving round holes in the road, cursing and hooting its way through the jams. Eventually we entered a tunnel and the traffic speeded up. We emerged in front of a broad lake. Apartment buildings sprouted up around it, and behind them on all sides rose tall, green, rounded mountains. On top of one of these stood the statue of Christ, arms outstretched as he embraced the city below him. We skirted the lake at a crawl again, barely overtaking the parade of joggers and walkers. Two double sculls glided across the water, their oars moving in perfect time. Surrounded by these breathtaking walls of green, it was difficult to believe we were in the heart of a city.

These next few days in Rio were going to be difficult. Not the business. I had been pleased with the meeting and my performance in it. No, Isabel. Her presence was disconcerting. She didn’t have to do anything, she could just be sitting next to me leafing through a magazine, and that would be enough to distract me. The way she bit her lip as she read, the way her hair caressed her elegant neck, the two knobs of collarbone peeking out of the top of her dress.

I thought I was good at ignoring pretty women when necessary. I had taught a number, eager twenty-year-olds, falling in love with a great literature, and easily impressed with their guide. But tutor-student relations were now frowned upon in the academic world, and I had successfully shown no interest in any of them.

I had tried to strike up a conversation with Isabel on the plane. She hadn’t been rude, but she hadn’t exactly been talkative either. She had shown a sort of shy self-possession that finished each conversation almost as soon as it had begun but which made her, if anything, more appealing. It would have been easier if she had just said, ‘Shut up and leave me alone.’ Eventually I had given up and read loan documents through the night, until the suburbs of northern Rio de Janeiro appeared through the window with the dawn.

In a few minutes the taxi pulled up outside the Copacabana Palace, nestling in the middle of a row of characterless hotels and apartment blocks that faced the famous beach of the same name. It was a squat white building, whose elegantly etched art-deco features recalled its heyday as the leading hotel for the rich and beautiful of the 1930s. Here, I had read, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had danced, and Noël Coward and Eva Peron had gambled. As our taxi rolled to a halt, a man in a crisp white uniform opened the door, and another whisked away our bags. We checked in, and were led through a courtyard past a swimming pool, shimmering coolly blue against the white glare of the hotel walls. A solitary swimmer cut through its lightly ruffled surface as she forged up and down. Two couples, one a pair of bankers and one a pair of middle-aged tourists, drank coffee in the shade of a large, broad-leafed tree. Quite simply, I was overawed. I’d travelled before, to India, Thailand, Morocco, but I had never stayed in anywhere that cost more than twenty pounds a night. The Copacabana Palace cost significantly more than that. Isabel, of course, knew the hotel well, and took it all in her stride.

I went up to my room, took a cold beer out of the minibar, and walked out on to the balcony. Below me was the pool and beyond that, outside the calm confines of the hotel, past the constant stream of traffic on the Avenida Atlântica, was the bustle of Copacabana beach itself. At its near edge, walkers strode purposefully up and down, occasionally pausing to perform a ritual twisting and stretching of limbs. The beach itself was dotted with brown and black bodies. This was a beach where people did things: played volleyball or soccer, sold ice creams or funny hats, milled about, or sat and watched everyone else. Then, beyond all this, there was the sea, swelling gently until a few feet from the shore, when it suddenly erupted into white fluffy waves, which broke tidily and prettily on to the pale sand.

I shed my jacket and tie, took a sip of cold beer, closed my eyes and pointed my face towards the soft heat of the late-afternoon sun. The complementary roar of traffic and waves lulled me. I began to relax.

The turmoil of the last few days began to sort itself out in my brain. The first week at Dekker and my attempts to absorb all the new information thrown at me; the complexities of the favela deal; Martin Beldecos’s fax.