Sweet Talking Money. Harry Bingham

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      ‘I hadn’t even thought about the travel.’

      ‘As I say, I know you’ll want to talk it through with your wife …’

      Those words – ‘your wife’ – almost sent an unaccustomed spurt of tears through Bryn’s rusted-up tear ducts. His wife. He’d had his problems with Cecily, no question, but she was his wife – or, rather, had been. He felt desolate and betrayed. ‘There’s nothing else?’

      ‘We’d like you to work with Rudy Saddler as his number two, if you could see your way to sorting things out with him. But either way … it’s your call. Let me know when you’ve talked to your wife. Cecily, isn’t it?’

      ‘Yes. Cecily.’ Bryn was stuck in his seat for a moment, cloddish and uncertain. He was a skilled negotiator, but van Ween was no pushover and van Ween held all the aces. Bryn could give up half his empire and more than half his glory to a newcomer he didn’t get on with, or travel the world’s least glamorous corners slogging his guts out for a penny here, a nickel there. ‘Thanks, Pieter. I’ll think about it. Get back to you.’

      There was a third option which neither of them mentioned but both were aware of. Bryn could call a headhunter. Clear out. See what he could get somewhere else. It didn’t feel great, but it was an option.

      ‘OK.’ It was a dismissal, but friendly. ‘And believe me, Bryn. You have a good career here. Think long-term. Don’t make the mistake of moving on because of – because of a hiccup.’

      ‘Yeah. OK.’ He stood up to go.

      Van Ween watched him carefully, appraising his man, knowing that Bryn’s ‘yeah, OK’ was as good as meaningless.

      ‘And Bryn, I understand your frustration, but we’ve put a real offer on the table. We won’t be sympathetic if … if you choose to head elsewhere.’

      Bryn understood van Ween’s meaning. As with any senior banker, much of Bryn’s wealth was tied up in deferred bonuses, a hostage kept to encourage loyalty. The money was Bryn’s as long as he stayed with the bank, but it became the bank’s money if he chose to quit. Sometimes, if the bank nudged people out, it was generous, it decided not to add to the misery by hanging on to the precious cash. But van Ween was telling Bryn not to hope. If Bryn called a headhunter and quit, he’d wave goodbye to three quarters of a million pounds.

      2

      ‘There’s one more here. The last of our hepatitis controls.’

      ‘Oh no, really?’ exclaimed Cameron. ‘That’s too bad.’

      She went over to the cage – hardly a cage, even, more like a rat playground, full of fluffy white sawdust, plastic toys, feeding trays and hidey holes. The last of its inhabitants lay stretched out, nose just poking out of the darkened night area. Cameron snapped off her latex gloves, opened the cage door and reached in, picking out the little white corpse and stroking it, smoothing its whiskers. ‘Dammit,’ she said. ‘It’s Freddie. We didn’t need that. I was hoping that at least Freddie would survive.’

      Cameron’s lab assistant, a delightful graduate student called Kati Larousse, rubbed Cameron’s shoulder and said gently, ‘At least it improves the stats, Cameron. And the experiment’s over now. This is the one hundred and eightieth day.’

      ‘We didn’t need the stats to look any better. They’re good enough already. Hell. I wish I’d stopped all this at a hundred and twenty days. Even ninety. We were way into statistical significance already by then.’

      Larousse gave her boss a hug. ‘You’re the only researcher in the world who’d react like this. You carry out the most successful animal experiment ever undertaken in this field, and all you do is worry about your controls dying on you.’

      ‘How are the others?’

      Cameron reached for the door to the neighbouring cage. A sign above it read ‘Herpes’, along with warnings about animal handling.

      ‘Gloves, Cameron. Careful.’

      ‘Damn my gloves.’

      Cameron reached into the cage. This group of rats had been deliberately infected with the herpes virus one hundred and eighty days ago, and all but four were now dead. The ones that were still alive were lethargic and glassy-eyed, about to follow the twenty-six rats that had preceded them to the pearly gates. Cameron stroked the rats regretfully, apologetically even.

      ‘How about the others?’ she asked after a while.

      ‘HIV, you know. All dead. Hantavirus and Ebola virus, we’ve got eight and six left respectively.’

      ‘And the treated rats? No problems there?’

      Larousse moved to the cages on the opposite wall. The cages were identical, except for one thing. The rats weren’t dead, they weren’t even dying. One hundred and eighty days before, they had all been injected with the exact СКАЧАТЬ