The Fear Index

office it was necessary to cross the trading floor. The Japanese stock market would close in fifteen minutes, the European exchanges would open at nine, and already four dozen quantitative analysts – quants, in the dismissive jargon of the trade – were hard at work. None talked above a whisper. Most stared silently at their six-screen arrays. Giant plasma televisions with muted sound carried CNBC and Bloomberg, while beneath the TVs a glowing red line of digital clocks noiselessly recorded time’s relentless passage in Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, Geneva, London and New York. This was the sound that money made in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The occasional soft clatter of strokes on a keyboard was the only indication that humans were present at all.
    Hoffmann raised his hand to the back of his head and touched the hard puckered smile of his wound. He wondered how visible it was. Perhaps he should wear a baseball cap? He was conscious of being pale and unshaven and he tried to avoid meeting anyone’s gaze, which was easy enough as few bothered to look up as he passed. Hoffmann’s force of quants was nine-tenths male, for reasons he did not entirely understand. It was not deliberate policy; it simply seemed to be only men who applied, usually refugees from the twin miseries of academia: low salaries and high tables. Half a dozen had come from the Large Hadron Collider. Hoffmann would not even consider hiring anyone without a PhD in maths or the physical sciences; all doctoral theses were expected to have been peer-reviewed in the top fifteen per cent. Nationality did not matter and nor did social skills, with the result that Hoffmann’s payroll occasionally resembled a United Nations conference on Asperger’s syndrome. Quarry called it ‘The Nerd World’. Last year’s bonus brought the average remuneration up to almost half a million dollars.
    Only five senior managers got offices of their own – the heads of Finance, Risk and Operations, along with Hoffmann, whose title was company president, and Quarry, who was the CEO. The offices were standard soundproofed glass cubicles with white venetian blinds, beige carpeting and Scandinavian furniture of pale wood and chrome. Quarry’s windows looked down on to the street and across to a private German bank, hidden from view behind thick net curtains. He was in the process of having a sixty-five-metre super-yacht built by Benetti of Viareggio. Framed blueprints and artist’s sketches lined his walls; there was a scale model on his desk. The hull would be lined all the way round, just below the deck, with a strip of lights he could turn on and off and change colour with his key fob while having dinner in port. He was planning to call her Trade Alpha . Hoffmann, who was happy enough in a Hobie Cat, worried at first that their clients might take this ostentation as evidence that they were making too much money. But as usual Quarry knew their psychology better than he did: ‘No, no, they’ll love it. They’ll tell everybody: “D’you have any idea how much those guys are making …?” And they’ll want to be a part of it even more, believe me. They’re boys. They’re a herd.’
    Now he sat behind his model boat and peered over one of its three model swimming pools and said, ‘Coffee? Breakfast?’
    ‘Just coffee.’ Hoffmann went straight across to the window.
    Quarry buzzed his assistant. ‘Two black coffees right away. And you should drink some water,’ he suggested to Hoffmann’s back. ‘You don’t want to get dehydrated.’ But Hoffmann was not listening. ‘And some still water, darling, and I’ll have a banana and some yoghurt. Is Genoud in yet?’
    ‘Not yet, Hugo.’
    ‘Send him straight in when he gets here.’ He released the switch. ‘Anything happening out there?’
    Hoffmann had his hands on the windowsill. He was staring down into the street. A group of pedestrians waited on the corner opposite for the lights to change even though there was no traffic coming in either direction. After watching them for a while Hoffmann muttered savagely, ‘The goddam tight-assed Swiss …’
    ‘Yeah, well just remember the goddam tight-assed eight-point-eight per cent tax rate they let us get away with, and you’ll feel better.’
    A well-toned freckled woman with a low-cut sweater and a cascade of dark red hair came in without knocking: Hugo’s assistant, an Australian – Hoffmann couldn’t remember her name. He suspected she