The Fear Index

algorithm, thought Hoffmann, I would quarantine it; I would shut it down.
    ‘ In Great Britain, voters are going to the polls today to elect a new government. The centre-left Labour Party is widely expected to lose office after thirteen years in power …’
    ‘Did you use your postal vote, Gabs?’ asked Quarry casually.
    ‘Yes. Didn’t you?’
    ‘Christ, no. Why should I bother with that? Who’d you vote for? Wait – no – let me guess. The Greens.’
    ‘It’s a secret ballot,’ she said primly, and glanced away, irritated that he had got it right.
    Hoffmann’s hedge fund was based in Les Eaux-Vives, a district just south of the lake, as solid and confident as the nineteenth-century Swiss businessmen who had built it: heavy masonry, wide faux-Parisian boulevards webbed with tram cables, cherry trees erupting from the kerbsides to shower dusty white and pink blossom over the grey pavements, shops and restaurants on the ground floors, seven storeys of offices and apartments stacked imperturbably above. Amid this bourgeois respectability Hoffmann Investment Technologies presented a narrow Victorian facade to the world, easy to miss unless you were looking for it, with only a small name tag on an entryphone to betray its existence. A steel-shuttered ramp, watched by a security camera, led down to an underground car park. On one side was a salon de thé , on the other a late-night supermarket. In the far distance the mountains of the Jura still bore a faint rim of snow.
    ‘You promise me you’ll be careful?’ said Gabrielle, as the Mercedes pulled up.
    Hoffmann reached behind Quarry and squeezed her shoulder. ‘I’m getting stronger by the minute. What about you, though? You feel okay, going back to the house?’
    ‘Genoud is sending someone round,’ said Quarry.
    Gabrielle made a quick face at Hoffmann – her Hugo face, which involved turning down the corners of her mouth, sticking out her tongue and rolling up her eyes. Despite everything, he almost burst out laughing. ‘ Hugo has it all under control,’ she said, ‘don’t you, Hugo? As usual .’ She kissed her husband’s hand where it lay on her shoulder. ‘I won’t be stopping anyway. I’ll just grab my things and get over to the gallery.’
    The chauffeur opened the door.
    ‘Hey, listen,’ said Hoffmann. He was reluctant to let go of her. ‘Good luck this morning. I’ll come over and see how things are going as soon as I can get away.’
    ‘I’d like that.’
    He climbed out on to the pavement. She had a sudden premonition that she would never see him again, so vivid she was nearly sick. ‘You’re sure we shouldn’t both cancel everything and take the day off?’
    ‘No way. It’s going to be great.’
    Quarry said, ‘Cheerio then, sweetheart,’ and slid his neat bottom over the leather upholstery towards the open door. ‘D’you know,’ he said, as he clambered out, ‘I think I might actually come and buy one of your thingamabobs. Go very well in our reception, I reckon.’
    As the car pulled away, Gabrielle looked back at them through the rear window. Quarry had his left arm round Alex’s shoulders and was steering him across the pavement; with his right he was gesturing. She could not tell what the gesture meant, but she knew he was making a joke. A moment later they disappeared.

    THE OFFICES OF Hoffmann Investment Technologies revealed themselves to a visitor like the carefully rehearsed stages of a conjuring trick. First, heavy doors of smoked glass opened automatically on to a narrow reception barely wider than a corridor, low-ceilinged, walled by dimly lit brown granite. Next you presented your face to a camera for 3D recognition scanning: it took less than one second for the metric geometry algorithm to match your features to its database (during this process it was important to maintain a neutral expression); if you were a visitor, you gave your name to the unsmiling security guard. Once cleared, you were clicked through a tubular steel turnstile, walked down another short corridor and turned left – and suddenly you were confronted by a huge open space flooded with daylight: that was when it hit you that this was actually three buildings knocked into one. The masonry at the back had been demolished and replaced by a sheer Alpine ice-fall of frameless glass, eight storeys high, overlooking a courtyard centred round a jetting fountain and elaborate giant ferns. Twin elevators rose and fell noiselessly in their