The Fear Index

Company 4 per cent, Mazda Motors 5 per cent and Nikon 3.5 per cent. The Shanghai Composite was down 4.1 to an eight-month low. This is turning into a rout, thought Hoffmann.
    Suddenly, before he realised what was happening, the screens in front of him blurred and he started to cry. His hands shook. A strange keening note emerged from his throat. His whole upper body shook convulsively. I am coming to pieces, he thought, as he laid his forehead on the desk in misery. And yet at the same time he remained oddly detached from his breakdown, as if he were observing himself from high up in the corner of the room. He was conscious of panting rapidly, like an exhausted animal. After a couple of minutes, when the spasm of shaking had subsided and he was able to catch his breath again, he realised that he felt much better, even mildly euphoric – the cheap catharsis of weeping: he could see how it might become addictive. He sat up, took off his spectacles and wiped his eyes with his trembling fingertips and then his nose with the back of his hand. He blew out his cheeks. ‘God,’ he whispered to himself, ‘God, God.’
    He stayed motionless for a couple of minutes until he was sure he had recovered, then he rose and went back over to his raincoat and retrieved the Darwin. He laid it on his desk and sat down before it. The 138-year-old green cloth binding and slightly frayed spine seemed utterly incongruous in the surroundings of his office, where nothing was older than six months. Hesitantly, he opened it at the place where he had stopped reading shortly after midnight (Chapter XII: ‘Surprise – Astonishment – Fear – Horror’). He removed the Dutch bookseller’s slip, unfolded it and smoothed it out. Rosengaarden & Nijenhuise, Antiquarian Scientific & Medical Books. Established 1911 . He reached for the telephone. After briefly debating in his mind whether this was the best course, he dialled the bookshop’s number in Amsterdam.
    The phone rang for a long while without being answered: hardly surprising as it was barely eight thirty. But Hoffmann was insensitive to the nuances of time: if he was at his desk, he assumed everyone else should be at theirs. He let it ring and ring, and thought about Amsterdam. He had visited it twice. He liked its elegance, its sense of history; it had intelligence: he must take Gabrielle there when all this was sorted out. They could smoke dope in a café – wasn’t that what people did in Amsterdam? – and then make love all afternoon in an attic bedroom in a boutique hotel. He listened to the long purr of the ring tone. He imagined its bell trilling in some dusty bookshop that peered out through small whorled panes of thick Victorian glass, across a cobbled street, through trees to a canal; high shelves accessed by rickety stepladders; elaborate scientific instruments made of highly polished brass – a sextant, perhaps, and a microscope; an elderly bibliophile, stooped and bald, turning his key in the door and hurrying to his desk, just in time to answer the phone—
    ‘ Goedemorgen. Rosengaarden en Nijenhuise .’
    The voice was neither elderly nor male but young and female; lilting, sing-song.
    He said, ‘Do you speak English?’
    ‘Yes I do. How can I help you?’
    He cleared his throat and sat forward in his seat. ‘I believe you sent me a book the day before yesterday. My name is Alexander Hoffmann. I live in Geneva.’
    ‘Hoffmann? Yes, Dr Hoffmann! Naturally I remember. The Darwin first edition. A beautiful book. You have it already? There was no problem with the delivery, I hope.’
    ‘Yeah, I got it. But there was no note with it, so I can’t thank whoever it was who bought it for me. Could you give me that information?’
    There was a pause. ‘Did you say your name was Alexander Hoffmann?’
    ‘Yeah, that’s right.’
    This time the pause was longer, and when the girl spoke again she sounded confused. ‘You bought it yourself, Dr Hoffmann.’
    Hoffmann closed his eyes. When he opened them again it seemed to him that his office had shifted slightly on its axis. ‘That is not possible,’ he said. ‘I didn’t buy it. It must have been someone pretending to be me.’
    ‘But you paid for it yourself. Are you sure you have not forgotten?’
    ‘Paid for it how?’
    ‘By bank transfer.’
    ‘And how much did I pay?’
    ‘Ten thousand euros.’
    With his free hand Hoffmann grasped the edge of his desk. ‘Wait a second. How could this happen? Did someone