Sila's Fortune (30 page)

‘If his company doesn't pull through, Kravchenko will end up frozen to death under a Moscow bridge.'

‘They've got bridges in Moscow?'

‘I've no idea, but if they have, that's where he'll wind up. Honestly, I have to say, the whole business seems bizarre.'

Jane looked at Matt. She realised he was not as stupid as she had thought. Not stupid at all.

A waiter came to take their orders.

A few hundred metres away, Lev Kravchenko had walked into Central Park, sat down on a bench and was staring into space.

A squirrel hopped across the grass in front of him and scampered up a tree, its paws rustling on the bark. In short, sudden bursts the rodent climbed to the topmost branches then, with a bound, leapt to the next tree. It gripped the branches and, with disconcerting ease, took off for the next treetop.

Lev had not noticed the squirrel. He was thinking about what had happened at Kelmann. He would have to start all over again. Though he had already made and lost his fortune, he would play again for the pleasure of winning or losing, just so that he might feel again the thrill of the game, feel the blood pound in his veins once more. The flash of rage he had felt for Shane had done him good. It was good to experience life directly unmediated by boredom or indifference. He had to gamble to survive, to try to recapture the distant feelings of a past that was so remote that perhaps he had never lived it.

Yet there was one episode. A carnival in Moscow with food stalls and fairground attractions. Out walking with Elena in the first months of their relationship, both bundled up in winter coats, they had happened on the fair in a square and Elena had insisted on looking at the attractions. They found themselves at the shooting gallery. Plastic ducks on revolving plaster pipes that you had to shoot with a rifle firing pellets. Lev had grabbed a rifle, fired … and missed. He tried again and again
but the lead pellet missed its target. Under the slightly mocking gaze of the stallholder, he had tried again and failed. And then Elena began to laugh and laugh … And he laughed too at his ineptness; he had always been clumsy and a poor shot.

He remembered this laugh like some great moment of recklessness. A dazzling fragment against a backdrop of merry-go-round horses prancing to the music of tinkling bells in the whirl of the carnival's multicoloured lights.

Now, sitting on this bench in this city at once familiar and strange, a city of meetings, of hotels he'd stayed in fifty times but barely knew, he thought of this scene, and he thought too about a phrase from Tolstoy which had struck him as a young man, a terse sentence that summed up the peaceful, humdrum life of the magistrate Ivan Ilyich as it faltered after a long howl lasting three days and nights at the age of forty-five: ‘Ivan Ilyich's life had been most simple and most ordinary and most terrible.' And if this phrase had profoundly marked him, it was because he felt he understood its true meaning: ‘Ivan Ilyich's life had been most simple and most ordinary and
therefore
most terrible.' It was because life was life that it was terrible. It was because Ivan Ilyich Golovin, realising his disease was terminal, recognised the absurdity of this life which had been respectable in every way, that he suddenly howled, and that this howl went on for three days and three nights, foundering in the darkness of his torment. And to Lev, the death of Ivan Ilyich had always remained the real issue. Would he too die howling for three days and nights, life's illusion suddenly exploding in his face? Or would he die remembering a laugh heard at a carnival? Lev knew that the answer to these questions was undoubtedly more
important than losing his business or his fortune. Howling for three days and nights or remembering a laugh.

And it was partly because of these questions that he had to stay strong now, for he would not howl so loudly if he risked his life heroically, considering that the only true beauty in life was life itself. So he had to play the game to the end without dwelling on doubts.

Lev, Simon, Matt, Jane, Zadie brought together in the fragmentation of fate. But all these creatures had become tiny, as minuscule as the gleam in the eye of the squirrel. The little creature is bounding still in an endless, headlong rush from tree to tree, high above human lives. He leaps while around him New York looms, vast and vertical, on this public holiday. Around the lush green heart of the city, the skyscrapers soar, ochre, white or translucent, slender or squat, erecting impassible bodies to the ocean's undertow. Begotten of steel, concrete and cement, standing stones along the horizon, the mythology of power. And the squirrel disappears in the tremendous pulse of the city, swelling like some mythical monster, devouring destinies and melting them into a million others.

The doors open: the buildings disgorge their human cargo, subways empty. Buses screech to a halt, doors opening, passengers disembarking, then pull away again. People hurry through the streets. Countless unknown quantities merging into vast concordances, billions of possibilities, in a frenzied breathlessness.

A deafening racket winds through the streets. Traffic is at a standstill; horns blare. It is impossible to hear anything. The
horizon is filled with sounds, people, lights, buildings, sparks. A glut.

At the base of the towers the ocean beats. As one gradually pulls away from Manhattan, from the financial district, the Twin Towers, the sound fades, the horizon clears and suddenly there is nothing but the stark immensity, the surface dark with waves flecked with foam.

Everything has disappeared.

The IPO was a success. Simon had done a good job, meaning he had obeyed orders. His risk assessment, picked up by the expert dealing with the portfolio, had been outrageously optimistic, the issue price extremely attractive and, as always, Kelmann's publicity machine had been so powerful that everyone had been able to sing the victory song. The oil company had attracted large and small investors. ELK had become a top-rated company, money flooded in and if Lev was no longer running the show on his own, at least he knew he would be able to save his company.

‘It's a total success,' declared Simon one evening in Zadie Zale's office when it was all over.

She nodded.

‘You don't seem very happy.'

Zadie studied Simon.

‘He's not going to survive.'

‘Who?'

‘The Russian. He was never supposed to survive. ELK will cease to be an independent company. That's how it's going to pan out.'

‘What are you talking about? He can make it. The company's completely sound.'

‘It's completely sound and he won't survive. Now leave me alone, I need to finish dealing with this project.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘Of course you don't understand. You don't understand anything. That's why you were brought on board. To do the maths and not understand things.'

Flabbergasted, Simon said nothing. Zadie got up, took him by the arm and led him out of the office.

‘I'm sorry Simon, I'm tired. Just leave me to it, it's been a bad day.'

Simon related the conversation to Jane.

‘There's obviously something she's not saying. You need to worm the information out of her.'

‘She'll be pissed off,' said Simon anxiously.

‘That's exactly what she needs to be. Otherwise she won't tell you anything.'

The following evening, Simon went to Zadie's office. He had steeled himself to do this.

‘What did you mean yesterday?'

‘About what?'

‘About Kravchenko – and about me, while we're at it.'

Zadie's tired eyes were ringed with dark circles.

‘He's interesting, the Russian, isn't he?' she said. ‘Well, I find him interesting. A lot more interesting than Shane or anyone in this bank. Obviously whether or not I find him interesting makes no difference, but it's something. Even if I'm forced to admit that Kravchenko doesn't exist.'

Once again Simon did not understand anything, though for very different reasons from the previous evening.

‘Kravchenko doesn't exist any more than Simon Judal, renamed Jude, any more than Zadie Zale or even Shane. No one exists in this world. I really should have worked in finance before I studied philosophy. I'd have written much better essays. I finally understood the meaning of life when I came to work in the bank. We are nothing. It doesn't matter that we exist since we exist only to ourselves and a handful of close friends. Kravchenko will disappear and it will be of no consequence: just a ripple on the surface of things. And it's not some capitalist plot to reduce people to nothing, it's simply the irrefutable reality of our world: so many creatures that are so similar that they are nothing. And even if each one of them squawks like a duck loudly proclaiming their existence, it means nothing. Kravchenko is doomed, there's nothing I can do to help him, in fact I'll play a part in his downfall, as will you, and none of it will matter because we don't exist, because we'll be merely a handful of banking transactions.'

‘I still don't understand.'

Zadie sighed. She got to her feet, took a few steps.

‘It will be a simple process,' she said wearily, ‘extremely simple. Now that the IPO's gone well, now that a little time has passed, Kravchenko will call us, in a couple of days maybe, a couple of weeks tops. It will be a pleasant conversation. We'll congratulate each other for the umpteenth time on our success. And then Kravchenko will ask for his money. Hardly surprising, he needs that money, he's fighting off his creditors. Everyone's cash poor. There'll be a silence on the phone. Then we'll tell him it's not possible. At that point he'll ask in that gruff Russian accent: “And why is it not possible?”
And we'll tell him the truth. We'll tell him that Liekom, having acquired a controlling share via an investment fund, has taken over ELK and that Lianov is now his boss. We'll tell him the whole deal is fraudulent, that it was based on falsified business valuations and if word of that spread, the share price would tank. We'll tell him that Lianov controls ELK but Kelmann controls the information. Incidentally I should tell you that we sold all the ELK shares at a healthy profit so we have nothing to lose. We'll tell him he no longer controls ELK and that his fate is in Lianov's hands. We'll tell him that, as far as he's concerned, it's all over.'

‘That's completely immoral!'

Zadie stared at him in astonishment.

‘Only you could come out with something like that in a place like this! Immoral! Am I hearing things? What exactly is immoral? Stripping an oligarch of a fortune he owes to the carve-up of the Soviet Union? A man who expanded his empire by taking over dozens of other oil companies using money or threats? Kravchenko's fate will be exactly the fate he forced on others, the same way that I'll be tossed aside for the very reasons I've been successful. It's possible some of the directors of Kelmann will end up in prison some day when the rules of the game are changed. Is that immoral? No, it's something much worse. It's a trap, we're all caught up in it. And I don't know how to get myself out.'

‘But you liked Kravchenko! I saw you with him! He charmed you. I've never seen you like that with a man.'

‘He charmed me and we are going to ruin him. That's the trap, Simon. It's just the trap. No one escapes. The moment you
try to move, fate springs the trap. Make one movement to join the ranks of humankind and it's all over.'

‘I don't want to be a part of that. Shane can do what he likes. In fact I think I'll tell Kravchenko what's going on.'

Zadie shook her head.

‘Who did the valuations, Simon?'

He drew back.

‘You're involved, Simon. The IPO dossier was based on your valuations and your risk assessment. I'm telling you this as a friend, Simon: if there's anyone who might suffer as a result of that dossier, it's you. If anyone's to blame, it's you.'

The colour drained from Simon's face.

‘You were the one making the decisions, not me.'

Zadie gave a sad little smile.

‘We'll see what the SEC have to say. There are malicious rumours that they're very soft on billionaires,' she added, ‘but I can assure you, they won't be soft on you. And American jails don't exactly have a good rep.'

‘But I obviously work for Kelmann, you're the ones who'll be held responsible. You're the ones who told me to overvalue the assets.'

Zadie's expression hardened.

‘I personally gave you no such order. And anyway, I hardly know you. You're a junior quantitative analyst, as far as I know, one of my team in London. Like I said, Simon, no one gets out of the trap.'

Simon left the office. It was a cold night. He buttoned his coat, turned up his collar and plunged into winter. Zadie was right: the trap had sprung shut. He felt scared. He felt as
though he was about to be crushed. But terrible as his fear was, the thought that he had been hired for his gullibility pained him most. He had thought he was competent; with his work on the POL product he had felt on top of the world. But his greatest talent was his stupidity: Zadie had kept him on her team in order to con him, to use him, to exploit his naivety. The goldfish was back in his bowl.

A thin drizzle started falling. He pulled his collar tighter. His personality leached away into the dark night. The gangster's suit, his recent illusions, everything was dissolving and slipping away. His terrible fragility was once again rolling out its baneful power – with its cortege of doubts, of misery, the black banner of failure. He was swept up by the rain, by murky drizzle, by dark thoughts. He felt so stupid, so powerless, with nothing to protect him. The streets were deserted, no flicker of life brightened the darkness of the city. Simon quickened his pace. He needed warmth. He needed Jane to reassure him. She would find the words.

The news came as no surprise to anyone in a capital pervaded by excess. Many such incidents had happened before. And every day there were comparable events that no one mentioned, since the victims were unknown.