Ned Beauman - Glow

Anyway, the cripple in Chiang Mai is asking for two million dollars to keep his mouth shut, which is hilarious. CFIUS are ruling on the bond deal with Xujiabang in August, and if they read in the NYT that we supposedly tortured the wives of a bunch of guys trying to start a union, the whole thing is going to fall apart, or, worse, subpoenas are going to start pounding us like Predator drones. Then Xujiabang back out, the world finds out we can’t service our debts next year, and we all get fucked in the eye sockets. The cripple would be asking for a hundred mil if he understood what he had. So, yes, we’re going to pay him.

As for the other thing, Bezant claims it’s under control. Harenberg keeps saying it’s ten times more important than the Xujiabang deal, which is ridiculous, but that’s Harenberg. No clue why Nollic trusts him with anything. OK, enough of that: still in for that fundraiser this weekend?

Fourpetal wasn’t all that surprised by Pankhead’s blunder because he had recently made a similar one himself: an ex-girlfriend of his friend Rich had written Rich a plaintive email about how the previous night she’d had to trudge all the way across Battersea Bridge at 4 a.m. in the rain with no pants on under her dress after bolting in tears from an imminent one-night stand because even five weeks after their split the thought of having sex with anyone else but him was still too upsetting, and Rich had forwarded it to Fourpetal with a few uncharitable comments, and Fourpetal had replied with a few more uncharitable comments, and Rich had replied with an unrelated YouTube video about a panda, and Fourpetal had forwarded the panda video to eleven people who he thought might appreciate it, including, as it happened, the ex-girlfriend in question, whose maudlin anecdote was still there at the bottom of the circular. It could happen to anyone. So to Fourpetal, a veteran, the next move was clear. But then he realised that the next move after that was clear, too, and the next move after that, and the next move after that. In fact, as soon as he read Pankhead’s email, a plan had come all at once into his head, a magnificent spontaneous birth, detailed and comprehensive and with appendices and footnotes.

Part one: he played Minesweeper for a few minutes and then wrote back to Pankhead, ‘Hi Jim, so sorry to pester you again but I really do need that enviro statement ASAP. Or if you’ve already sent it, many apologies — we’ve been having some trouble with our servers over here so a lot is getting lost.’ Almost instantly, he got a second email with the statement attached, but this time with nothing else below the subject line. Fourpetal judged from the speed of the reply that Pankhead must have realised his error and had been staring at his inbox in paralytic horror the entire time. Later that afternoon, he phoned Pankhead at his office and kept him on the phone with boring questions for as long as he could, because that seemed like the exact opposite of how he would naturally be inclined to behave if he’d read Pankhead’s email and was now wondering what to do about it.

Part two: he phoned a guy he knew who worked upstairs in management, and told him that he was about to give a background briefing to a sympathetic Independent journalist about the challenges Lacebark faced as an ethical company in an unethical industry. Which of Lacebark’s competitors would have the most to gain if it failed? Which executives held the real power at those companies? Which of those executives were known for sanctioning dirty tricks?

Part three: the next morning, before he left for work, he created an anonymous Gmail address of his own and emailed Donald Flory, the Senior Vice-President and General Counsel of Kernon Whitmire Copper and Gold Incorporated. ‘I work at Lacebark Mining. I have information relating to the Gandayaw Concession and the Xujiabang bond deal which could cripple or destroy the company if released. In exchange I want a job with you in New York — undemanding, high paid, lots of exotic foreign travel — and ninety thousand shares of Kernon Whitmire stock transferred to an offshore trust in my name. Are you interested?’

‘we are always happy to exchange ideas with like-minded professionals at other companies,’ Flory replied that afternoon, not from his Kernon Whitmire address but from yet another private account. ‘are you based in nc?’ he asked, meaning North Carolina.

‘No, but I’m flying there in a couple of weeks for a conference. Also on the way back I have an overnight layover in Newark.’

‘let me know your hotel booking in newark. someone will come to your room.’

At eleven o’clock on the night of the layover, Fourpetal stood at the window drinking whisky from the minibar and thinking about all the models he’d probably fuck in his new loft on the Lower East Side. From this distance there was something about the flat amber glare of the airport that strangled your sense of perspective, so that the jets looked like hatchbacks trundling around a supermarket car park, and farther on east all the towers of Manhattan cowered beneath the monstrous gantry cranes of Port Newark. This deal was top secret so perhaps they wouldn’t come until about midnight, he thought, lying down on the bed and turning on CNN. But midnight arrived, and then one, and then two, and there was still no knock at the door. At three, now pretty drunk, he turned on his laptop and wrote an email to Donald Flory: ‘Noones here what the fuck is going on. Im flying back to Londn in four hours.’ Then, wondering for the first time if he might have made some sort of serious error, he Googled Donald Flory again, and on a news website he found a picture of Flory at a recent press conference. He was shaking hands with Yangmin Gao, the jowly chairman of Xujiabang Copper and Gold.

Xujiabang Copper and Gold now owned a forty-one per cent stake in Kernon Whitmire.

It wasn’t even hard to find. It was in the second page of Google results. Before he sent the email to Flory, Fourpetal had only bothered to look at the first page. For the first time in his life, Fourpetal wished he actually read The Economist instead of just telling people he did.

So that was why nobody had come to the room. Flory must have decided that he had more to gain by warning his friends in China that some opportunist was proposing to wreck their bond deal with Lacebark than he did by making a tawdry deal with that opportunist. In fact, he must have thought Fourpetal was a total imbecile for choosing Kernon Whitmire instead of some other corporate rival who had no connection with Xujiabang. Fourpetal was still trying to think through the implications of all this when he dozed off in his clothes.

The next day, on the train back from Heathrow, he called Lacebark’s headquarters in North Carolina and asked to speak to Jim Pankhead.

‘Oh — I’m afraid Mr Pankhead sadly passed away last week,’ said the girl on the switchboard.

‘How?’

‘They told us he had a very bad allergic reaction to a painkiller he was taking.’

At that moment Fourpetal felt a gauze of fear drape itself across the back of his neck, but he immediately dismissed the feeling as preposterous. ‘I see. Thank you.’

The new-build block of flats in Bermondsey where Fourpetal lived had walls and floors that were about as dense as filo pastry, and at least twice a week he would be kept awake by his downstairs neighbour having parties. But she was young and fetching and single, so every time she stopped him to apologise about the previous night in the effusive and passionate tones of someone who has absolutely no intention of curtailing whatever it is they are apologising for, he just waved it off. That day, wheeling his suitcase into the entry hall downstairs, he saw her coming out of the lift.