Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

‘Most of our lenders have rolled over the loans we need to keep operating today,’ Jurgen says. It is morning, just about; outside, first light struggles against twisting cords of rain; Jurgen has a curiously antic quality about him, that maniacal energy that comes with lack of sleep. ‘However, in return they are seeking significantly more margin, which is proving problematic. We could sell off some bonds in order to raise the cash, but the fear is that this might be interpreted as a sign that we are in trouble.’

‘The market seems pretty clear that we’re in trouble, Jurgen.’

‘Yes, however, they don’t know yet how much trouble,’ he says.

Panicked eyes meet in momentary panic-embraces.

‘One of our hedge-fund clients has requested we return the cash they have given us to administer,’ he explains. ‘This will leave a serious hole in the bank’s balance sheet.’

‘What about the Caliph? The line of credit?’

The Caliph remains incommunicado. ‘His secret service is reporting a security breach, presumably some handful of militants that escaped the bombing. There is no threat to the Caliph himself, but personal access is limited to his Imperial Guard.’

‘We don’t want to access him. We just want him to give us some money.’

‘We are monitoring the situation,’ Jurgen says.

After the briefing there is nothing to do. All our meetings have been cancelled: no one wants to trade with us. In limbo, people start acting strangely. Some leave without explanation for long, fugue-like breaks, return muttering to themselves, attended by unfamiliar smells. Others throw their feet up on the desk and make long-distance calls, or sit motionlessly for hours, staring at online poker hands. On the way to the toilet I encounter Kimberlee the receptionist emerging furtively from the handicapped stall with Dave Davison, the back of her skirt snarled up in her tights.

Who could blame them? As the share price falls, and our lives are hollowed out proportionally, I yearn for something physical — the touch of a hand, a smile, anything that could deliver me from all this abstraction. But it feels like the physical world is ever less available, like we’re trapped in a car that’s plunged into the sea and we can’t get the windows to roll down …

Then a cry goes up. ‘Porter’s making a statement!’

Instantly a crowd gathers under the big screen, weary faces burnished by hope. Banking being essentially a confidence trick, to insist publicly on your solvency is a risky move: unless it’s pitched exactly right, it could be taken as an admission that the game is up. But this is Porter Blankly! Of course it will be pitched right! Porter will explain everything, and we will come back bigger and better than ever.

‘… beleaguered bank,’ the news anchor is saying, ‘amid mounting fears of a debt downgrade …’ At the bottom of the screen, the crawl reads, 11 per cent drop in twenty-four hours …

‘Eleven per cent!’ someone behind me moans.

‘Shh!’

‘Don’t shush me, I took out a loan to buy those shares!’

‘Shut the fuck up!’

‘… failed to calm a hostile market, causing an escalating series of margin calls, amid speculation that at least one Wall Street firm has refused any further trade with Agron Torabundo and that restructuring is becoming unavoidable …’

‘Fuck you, bitch, Porter’s going to restructure your ugly face!’

‘… go live as these questions and others are put to the bank’s Co-Vice President of Global Equities, George Death.’

The crowd in front of the TV falls silent. ‘What?’ someone says.

The picture cuts to a conference room where a very small man is crossing a stage to a lectern.

‘Who the fuck is this guy?’

‘Did Porter shrink in the wash?’

The man has begun to speak; however, only the top of his head is visible over the top of the lectern, and it quickly becomes evident the microphones are too far away to pick up his voice. An aide runs on and frantically begins adjusting the mikes; the Co-Vice President, apparently unaware of any issue, continues to read inaudibly. Muttering can be heard from the unseen press corps. There is a crunch of static. ‘—iderable upside,’ the top of the Co-Vice President’s head says. ‘That is all I have to say at this time. Thank you, gentlemen.’ He stumps away from the lectern in a fusillade of flashes and hollering.

For a moment, silence. Then:

‘Christ, that’s not going to help.’

‘Couldn’t they have found someone more than four feet tall?’

‘Couldn’t they have found someone whose name isn’t Death ?’

‘Actually, I think it’s pronounced Deeth .’

‘Oh, great, call the Wall Street Journal .’

‘Shares have just dropped another two points,’ Gary reports.

The room churns with exclamations of gloom, until Rachael appears in the doorway. Clapping her hands in a teacherly fashion, ‘You heard the Co-Vice President,’ she says. ‘The bank is fully capitalized, so please concentrate on your —’ She pauses, as her secretary clatters in at top speed to whisper in her ear; then, turning pale, she rushes back to her office. A minute later, the news comes across Bloomberg that AgroBOT’s long- and short-term credit rating has been downgraded to junk.

The grumbling of a moment ago resolves into a single, consensual moan: it might be the bank’s death-cry.

‘What’s going on?’ Kevin asks, tugging my sleeve.

I explain that the big institutional investors, the pension funds and so on, are prohibited from putting their money in anything with a rating of BB+ or lower, and so the downgrade means that at the stroke of a pen we have lost most of our lenders, and with them the money we need to do the things we do. It seems I can feel a physical snap, a breaking-away, and I go to the window, half-expecting to find Transaction House now floating down the Liffey. But of course everything is where it always is.

In the lobby the lift doors hiss open. Brent ‘Crude’ Kelleher, who to judge by his jubilant expression has not heard the latest news, saunters into the office bearing two large paper bags. ‘They’re giving away muffins at the hippie place!’

In the general indifference, I feel like an icicle has stabbed me in the heart.

‘Some sort of closing-down thing,’ Brent says, then, clearly troubled by my reaction, ‘I got one for you, Claude.’

I push past him, jab the button for the lift, almost immediately think better of it and crash down the stairs.

Rain is falling again, in dense needles that seem to surround and isolate the people dashing across the plaza, like some ingenious, ever-shifting force field, the ultra-fine bars of some immanent cage. After weeks of downpour, floods have beset Dublin; the underground rivers that criss-cross beneath the city’s foundations have come to the surface and found the plains where they would in the past have dissipated now occupied by the tax-relief malls, car parks and apartment blocks of the boom. And the Liffey’s rising, too: on the far side of the plaza, trash laps the mossy tops of the quays, jackals feeding on the slimy corpse of some enormous beast.

In the Ark, it looks like the end of the world is expected any minute. Rain-soaked consumers jostle past each other, deliberately avoiding eye contact, arms loaded with pastries, crêpes, organic prune juice. At the counter, the staff have a besieged look. With some difficulty, I elbow my way through to Ariadne.

‘Claude!’ she exclaims when she sees me, but in an instant her delight turns to sadness. ‘Where have you been?’ she says, with an unconcealed note of accusation.

‘Busy,’ I say guiltily, and then, ‘What’s happening?’