Harry Bingham - Sweet Talking Money

Outside his tall, white-fronted Chelsea home, he paid off the cabbie, climbed the steps, let himself in, called upstairs and downstairs, got no answer – and then saw it, a note, folded on the hall table. He opened the note and read it.

And read it again, in a mounting blur. ‘Dearest Bryn,’ – that was nice, wasn’t it? A good affectionate start. No problems there. ‘This is just to say that I’ve decided to leave you.’ Bryn gripped the banister and collapsed heavily down on the lower stair. What do you mean, ‘ just to say’? What’s just about that? ‘Dearest, this is just to say I’ve burned the house down, murdered the kids, slaughtered the neighbours, eaten the cat.’ Bryn breathed deeply. Maybe he was missing a trick here. Maybe she’d meant to say something else altogether. ‘Dearest Bryn, I’ve decided to leave you … some breakfast in the oven, some gloves in your pocket, a photo, a love letter, a billet doux .’

No, it didn’t say that. Definitely not.

He rubbed his eyes roughly, and blinked to focus. Try though he might, he missed the next few sentences and only caught up with Cecily’s beautiful handwriting several lines later. ‘I’m sorry, darling, I could see you really trying to mend things, but I believe it wasn’t meant to be. I’ve realised that it’s important to me to begin again, and that’s what I intend to do. Please don’t be silly and try to pursue me – it won’t work. You know me well enough by now, to know that my decisions are for ever.’

He did, and they were.

For a long time, at the foot of the long staircase, Bryn sat stunned and stupid, yet in a way not even surprised. These last few months, he’d felt like a man trying to rebuild a house during the earthquake-volcano-hurricane season: heroic, maybe; a loser, for sure. He crumpled the letter and threw it away. The scrumpled ball hit Cecily’s bow-legged rosewood table and made one of her Meissen vases ping with amusement.

Work. There was always work. At least at Berger Scholes he could harness all his energy into bullying the world into submission. It didn’t compensate for a failed marriage, but, by God, it was a good distraction. He heaved himself up and stumbled off to work.

A mistake.

On his desk waiting for him was a corporate memo, sent from Head Office, addressed only to him.

‘What the hell is this?’

Bryn shook the memo furiously at his boss, a Dutchman, Pieter van Ween, head of the bank in Europe. Van Ween – blue eyes, fine silver hair swept back over a clear complexion – spoke calmly.

‘I’m sorry you found out this way. I tried to phone. I couldn’t reach you, so I thought it better to drop you a line –’

‘I don’t care how I found out! I do care about Rudy Saddler coming to piss on my patch.’ Bryn’s voice came across as unnecessarily gruff – the voice of a man two hours after getting off an overnight flight, forty minutes after finding his wife had left, three minutes after finding out his job was dissolving. He rubbed his chin, which was rough and unshaven.

‘No one’s going to be pissing anywhere.’ Van Ween was puritan enough to dislike foul language, banker enough to tolerate it. ‘The pharmaceutical industry is a big area. Plenty of transactions. What was it? Sixty billion dollars’ worth we did –’

‘ I did –’

‘The bank did last year. Saddler’s going to co-operate, not steal your show. He’s already told me how much he welcomes your local knowledge. I know he respects your work.’

‘Respect, bullshit. I’ve built the best pharma team in Europe and he gets to put his name on the door. Are you trying to send me a message?’

Van Ween understood this game. He played it often. He played it well.

‘There’s no message. I didn’t ask for Saddler. He wanted to come. I have guys I wanted to send to New York. It was all part of the deal.’

‘You traded me.’

‘This is a bank, Bryn. I did what was best for the bank.’

‘I don’t know about that. I do know that I work my arse off and my reward is to be demoted –’

‘There’s no demotion –’

‘– demoted to second in command of the team I built. You may say there’s no message, but I’ve got to tell you, Pieter, I’m hearing one.’

‘Are you saying you will not accept the position which is being offered?’

The question shifted things into van Ween’s favour. Bryn could act the martyr, but unless he had something lined up elsewhere, he couldn’t afford to reject anything. Van Ween wanted to make him say it. Bryn sighed. He was devastated by his wife’s disappearance, shocked by the news about his job. ‘I’m not here to give you any ultimatums,’ he said wearily. ‘I just wanted to let you know I was unhappy.’

‘I understand. It had occurred to me you might not be altogether happy. There is something else I had in mind. It’s a critical area. Something we’re keen to expand. Begin to make some real money. And from your point of view, I think it’s a good career move. It’s the kind of position that gets noticed in New York.’

Bryn opened his hands to invite more information. He didn’t want to sound excited. In truth, he wasn’t excited. Pieter van Ween would have pitched the position the same way whether it was running the trading floor or counting paperclips. The Dutchman paused to register the fact that Bryn was making a request, then continued.

‘It’s emerging markets: Russia, former Soviet Union, all of Eastern Europe, Asia as far as India, Africa. You’d have the biggest territory of anyone in the bank and everything except trading would report to you. You’d report directly to me. I’d give you time to get to know the area, then we’ll sit down and talk. If you think the business flow will justify increased resources, you can have them.’

‘Do we have lending authority?’

‘We can lend money in Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey. Maybe South Africa, I’d have to check.’

‘Not Russia? Not India?’ Van Ween stayed silent. He wouldn’t participate in Bryn’s effort to belittle the job. ‘How much did we make last year?’

‘In emerging markets? About fifteen, twenty million bucks. But focus on the future.’

‘That’s less than I made on the Claussen deal alone.’

‘The job’s about possibilities, Bryn. You’re giving reasons why we need to beef up our effort, why we need you.’

Bryn thought about it. Half the world under his command, but the wrong bloody half. If the bank wouldn’t risk its money – for fear of coups, collapse, or craziness – then there wasn’t much Bryn could do to earn it. There was always consultancy work, but in these Godforsaken markets the businesses were too small, too cheapskate to stump up real cash. He was being offered an empire, but it was an empire of sand, a dirt track into the desert.

Van Ween noticed the hesitation. It was a lousy deal, he understood that. But he needed to accommodate Saddler’s arrival and he needed somebody to do the emerging markets job. Hughes was a good guy, headstrong and cocky for sure, but most decent bankers were. Van Ween decided to offer some more inducement.

‘If it’s the travel that’s worrying you, then I understand that. It’s demanding. We’ve got some big energy projects in Kazakhstan right now. A privatisation in South Africa. We’ll need you to be there on the ground, of course, but I don’t want you to compromise your family life. Take time off when you need to. I know I can trust you to strike an appropriate balance.’

‘Jesus, the travel. I hadn’t even thought …’

Bryn trailed off. Nothing on earth could afford less pleasure than business travel to the places van Ween had outlined. He’d heard nightmare stories – true stories – about bankers stranded on an airfield someplace in Russia, minus fifteen outside and falling, the plane’s pilot pointing to an empty fuel gauge, telling the Westerners to buy fuel or stay grounded. Mobile phone two thousand kilometres from the nearest signal. Company Amex card a stupid joke. Dollops of cash, pushed across a table in a green-painted hut; men shouting in an alien language, arguing over maps and cash and vodka; and all the time the temperature outside falling.