The Fear Index

out to the waiting Mercedes. She protested that at least she wanted to drive herself to the gallery in her own car. But Genoud was insistent that it was not safe – not until the man who had attacked her husband had been caught – and such was his blunt professional inflexibility that eventually she surrendered again and did as she was told.

    ‘BLOODY BRILLIANT,’ WHISPERED Quarry, catching Hoffmann by the elbow as they left the boardroom.
    ‘You think? I got the feeling I’d lost them at one point.’
    ‘They don’t mind being lost, as long as you bring them back eventually to what they really want to see, which is the bottom line. And everyone loves a bit of Greek philosophy.’ He steered Hoffmann ahead of him. ‘My God, old Ezra’s an ugly bugger, but I could give him a kiss for that bit of mental arithmetic at the end.’
    The clients were waiting patiently on the edge of the trading floor, all except for young Herxheimer and the Pole, Łukasiński, who had their backs to the others and were talking with quiet animation into their cell phones. Quarry exchanged a look with Hoffmann. Hoffmann shrugged. Even if they were breaking the terms of the non-disclosure agreement, there was not much that could be done. NDAs were bitches to enforce without evidence of breach, by which point it was too late in any case.
    ‘This way, if you please,’ called Quarry, and with his finger held aloft, tour-guide-style, he led them in a crocodile across the big room. Herxheimer and Łukasiński quickly ended their calls and rejoined the group. Elmira Gulzhan, wearing a large pair of sunglasses, automatically assumed the head of the queue. Clarisse Mussard, in her cardigan and baggy pants, shuffled along in her wake, looking like her maid. Instinctively Hoffmann glanced up at the CNBC ticker to see what was happening on the European markets. The week-long slide seemed to have stopped at last; the FTSE 100 was up by nearly half of one per cent.
    They gathered round a trading screen in Execution. One of the quants vacated his desk to give them a better view.
    ‘So, this is VIXAL-4 in operation,’ said Hoffmann. He stood back to let the investors get closer to the terminal. He decided not to sit: that would have allowed them to see the wound on his scalp. ‘The algorithm selects the trades. They’re on the left of the screen in the pending orders file. On the right are the executed orders.’ He moved a little nearer so that he could read the figures. ‘Here, for instance,’ he began, ‘we have …’ He paused, surprised by the size of the trade; for a moment he thought the decimal point was in the wrong place. ‘Here you see we have one and a half million options to sell Accenture at fifty-two dollars a share.’
    ‘Whoa,’ said Easterbrook. ‘That’s a heck of a bet on the short side. Do you guys know something about Accenture we don’t?’
    ‘Fiscal Q2 profits down three per cent,’ rattled off Klein from memory, ‘earnings sixty cents a share: not great, but I don’t get the logic of that position.’
    Quarry said, ‘Well, there must be some logic to it, otherwise VIXAL wouldn’t have taken the options. Why don’t you show them another trade, Alex?’
    Hoffmann changed the screen. ‘Okay. Here – you see? – here’s another short we’ve just put on this morning: twelve and a half million options to sell Vista Airways at seven euros twenty-eight a share.’
    Vista Airways was a low-cost, high-volume European airline, which none of those present would have dreamed of being seen dead on.
    ‘ Twelve and a half million? ’ repeated Easterbrook. ‘That must be a heck of a chunk of the market. Your machine has got some balls, I’ll give it that.’
    ‘Really, Bill,’ said Quarry, ‘is it that risky? All airline stocks are fragile these days. I’m perfectly easy with that position.’ But he sounded defensive, and Hoffmann guessed he must have noticed that the European markets were up: if a technical recovery spread across the Atlantic, they might be caught by a rising tide and end up having to sell the options at a loss.
    Klein said, ‘Vista Airways had twelve per cent passenger growth in the final quarter and a revised profits forecast up nine per cent. They’ve just taken delivery of a new fleet of aircraft. I don’t get the sense of that position, either.’
    ‘Wynn Resorts,’ said Hoffmann, reading off the next screen. ‘A million-two short at one hundred and twenty-four.’ He