Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

‘Such bullshit,’ Ish grumbles.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The whole thing was a fluke. It’s totally obvious.’

‘A fluke?’ Kevin squeaks. ‘He solved the riddle, Ish!’

‘I don’t think that even was a riddle,’ Ish says. ‘What do you think, Claude? Do you think Porter Blankly genuinely knew what was going to happen with the guy setting himself on fire? Or was it all one big coincidence?’

I shrug. ‘I know what we’ll be telling our shareholders.’

Jurgen appears with a fresh bottle of champagne. He tops up our glasses, then raises his own. ‘Exciting times,’ he says, ‘and more is on the way.’

‘Word is that Agron is happening,’ Joe Peston says to Jurgen.

‘Agron is happening?’ I say.

‘Agron is on,’ Jurgen confirms.

‘What?’ Ish says.

‘Barely here a month, and already he’s moving on Agron,’ Gary McCrum says. ‘Now that’s a chief executive.’

‘Look, people keep saying “Agron” over and over and I have no idea what it means,’ Ish says.

‘That is unusual,’ Jurgen says, ‘as the potential Agron bid has been mooted in the last two issues of Torabundo Times , the in-house bulletin that is printed out weekly for your personal consumption.’

‘You read that thing?’ Ish says.

‘What do you do with it?’ Jurgen says,

‘I use it to line the parakeet’s cage,’ Ish says.

Jurgen takes a tiny pad from his shirt pocket and makes a note.

Agron is the Agronomical Bank of Wisconsin. It began life in the 1930s as a small savings and loan, offering succour to farmers affected by the Dust Bowl. However, in the 1990s it began a series of mergers and takeovers, beginning with US investment bank Close Weintraub, then spreading its tentacles across both oceans to devour a Belgian commercial bank, a Swiss reinsurance firm, an Australian gold mine, as well as a host of other, more esoteric investments.

‘However, many of these acquisitions were not as robust as they had thought,’ I tell Ish. ‘The gold mine is the subject of an enormous lawsuit for environmental damage, the Belgians have been hurt by the collapse of the national government, et cetera, et cetera. Agron does not have the reserves to ride out all of these disasters.’

‘The board is looking for a white knight,’ Jurgen says. ‘Porter believes he can convince the market to back us.’

‘Wait a second,’ Ish says. ‘Let me get this straight. Agron was doing famously, until it bought a whole load of dodgy banks and overextended itself and now it’s broke, right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And now Porter wants us to go and do exactly the same thing?’

‘In a sense,’ Jurgen says. ‘But BOT is in a very different position from Agron.’

‘Wasn’t Agron in a very different position from Agron before it bought all these dodgy banks?’

‘That’s what makes this deal so counterintuitive,’ Jurgen says. ‘No one is doing insanely risky takeovers like this at the moment.’

‘Can we raise that kind of capital?’ Joe asks.

‘That remains to be seen. But Porter is determined to expand, one way or the other.’ Jurgen pauses, weighing his words, and then says, ‘What I hear from New York is that Porter was very disappointed not to get the Caliph’s sovereign wealth business. Given his long-standing personal relationship with him.’

‘Business is business,’ Gary McCrum says.

‘Yeah, the guy’s trying to put down an uprising, after all,’ says Joe.

‘This is exactly the point. The Tordale episode has made Porter realize that BOT does not yet carry sufficient weight to be a major force at the geopolitical level. It is still affected by global events, instead of setting its own agenda, reality-wise.’

‘ “Reality-wise”?’ Ish says.

‘A sufficiently large bank would create its own reality as opposed to simply reacting to consensus,’ Jurgen explains.

‘What the —’ Ish shrieks as the man of the hour seizes her from behind. ‘What the fuck, Howie?’

‘I’m creating my own reality,’ Howie says. ‘Can you feel it? Just there against your thigh?’

‘You’re a fucking child,’ Ish says, furiously swiping whiskey off her top.

‘Congratulations on your trade,’ I tell him.

Howie just shrugs. ‘I figured somebody in this operation ought to be making some money.’

Clearing his throat, Jurgen remarks modestly that actually his team has made some money for the bank also, in that we have just submitted BOT’s first ever government-commissioned report. ‘It does not compare to your trade, of course. Nevertheless, from what I hear the Minister is very happy.’

‘Maybe he’ll put you in his will,’ Howie says; then, seeing our blank looks, ‘You haven’t heard? He’s dying. It’s just come out.’

We check our phones in case this is one of Howie’s dubious jokes. It’s not. The Minister has been diagnosed with terminal cancer; somehow a newspaper got hold of it, and broke the news before he even had time to tell his family.

‘Fucking journalists,’ Joe says, shaking his head. ‘Fucking vultures.’

‘It was bloody Royal Irish that did for him,’ Ish states. ‘He turned the whole country inside out trying to keep it going, and himself with it. And for what? No investor’s going to go near that place with a ten-foot pole.’

‘I’ve got a ten-foot pole you might be interested in,’ Howie says.

‘What is wrong with you?’ Ish says.

Howie just laughs and swaggers away.

‘Seriously, what is that guy’s problem?’ she asks.

‘He likes you,’ Kevin says.

‘Fuck off.’

‘He does.’

‘He does like you, Ish,’ I confirm.

‘Howie doesn’t like anyone,’ Ish says. ‘I bet he just wants an I for his creepy BOT sex-alphabet.’

‘I was his K!’ Kimberlee exclaims in passing.

‘Looks like you missed your chance, Kevin,’ Joe Peston says.

The news the following day is dominated by the Minister’s bleak prognosis. Messages of support pour in from allies and opposition alike, as well as conjecture as to who will replace him. One name that keeps cropping up is Walter Corless.

‘Walter?’

‘Well, why not?’

‘Aren’t you supposed to have an ideology to be a politician? Like, believe in something?’

‘He believes in money.’

More importantly, money believes in him. As CEO of a major multinational, Walter has the financial acumen to steer the nation through the present economic cataract — or such is the hope.

‘A BOT client as head of Finance, I like the sound of that,’ Jocelyn muses. ‘Plenty more sweet consultancy work.’

‘Walter’s a fucking nutcase,’ Ish says. ‘Put him in charge and he’ll turn the whole country into a rendition site and sell it to the CIA.’

‘Gotta make the money somewhere,’ Jocelyn says, shrugging.

It seems that the revelation of his illness has pushed the Minister past some point of no return. In his press conferences now he looks not merely sick but, for the first time, defeated. ‘The fundamentals are sound,’ he keeps saying, the same blanket denial to every question, in the same leaden, exhausted tone. His face is suddenly gaunt, wasted. I can’t work out quite what it reminds me of; then I look out and see the grey hulk of the unfinished Royal Irish headquarters, rain lashing in through the empty sockets of the windows.

The international news is even worse. The Germans are castigating the Greeks; the Greeks are burning German cars. In Texas the blackened husk of the self-immolated congressman has made a speech from his hospital bed, declaring that he might not have any skin left but he can still shoot a gun (at least that’s what his press officer says he says; the croaking is to my ears unintelligible); hordes of elderly people storm the streets of El Paso, his home town, waving Confederate flags and flaming torches. In Oran the Caliph’s new fleet of British-made bombers, bought in an oil-for-weapons deal brokered by the ex-Prime Minister, raze what is being called a rebel stronghold, though it looks, in the ‘before’ photos, like a village harbouring nothing more dangerous than goats.