The Fear Index

set off towards the boardroom. ‘One o’clock,’ he called, turning round and walking backwards. He cocked his finger. ‘Good man.’ He already had his cell phone in his other hand and was entering a number.
    Hoffmann pivoted on his heel and headed in the opposite direction. There was no one in the corridor. He quickly put his head round the corner of the alcove and checked the communal kitchen with its coffee machine, microwave and giant refrigerator: also empty. A few paces further on, Ju-Long’s office door was shut, his assistant away from her desk. Without waiting for a reply, Hoffmann knocked and went in.
    It was as if he had disturbed a group of teenage boys examining pornography on the family computer. Ju-Long, van der Zyl and Rajamani drew back quickly from the terminal and Ju-Long clicked the mouse to change the screen.
    Van der Zyl said, ‘We were just checking the currency markets, Alex.’ The Dutchman’s features were slightly too large for his face, giving him the look of an intelligent, lugubrious gargoyle.
    ‘And?’
    ‘The euro is weakening against the dollar.’
    ‘Which is what we anticipated, I believe.’ Hoffmann pushed the door open wider. ‘Don’t let me keep you.’
    ‘Alex—’ Rajamani began.
    Hoffmann interrupted: ‘It was LJ I wanted to speak with – in private.’ He stared straight ahead as they filed out. When they had gone, he said, ‘So you say that account is on our system?’
    ‘It comes up twice.’
    ‘You mean it’s one of ours – we use it for business?’
    ‘No.’ Ju-Long’s smooth forehead creased into an unexpectedly deep frown. ‘Actually, I assumed it was for your own personal use.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because you asked the back office to transfer forty-two million dollars into it.’
    Hoffmann studied the other man’s face carefully for evidence that he was joking. But Ju-Long, as Quarry always said, though possessed of many admirable qualities, was entirely devoid of a sense of humour.
    ‘When did I request this transfer?’
    ‘Eleven months ago. I just sent you the original email to remind you.’
    ‘Okay, thanks. I’ll check it out. You said there were two transactions?’
    ‘Indeed. The money was entirely repaid last month, with interest.’
    ‘And you never queried this with me?’
    ‘No, Alex,’ said the Chinese quietly. ‘Why would I do that? Like you say, it is your company.’
    ‘Yeah, sure. That’s right. Thanks, LJ.’
    ‘No problem.’
    Hoffmann turned at the door. ‘And you didn’t just mention this to Gana and Pieter?’
    ‘No.’ Ju-Long’s eyes were wide with innocence.
    Hoffmann hurried back towards his own office. Forty-two million dollars? He was sure he had never demanded the transfer of such a sum. He would hardly have forgotten. It had to be fraud. He strode past Marie-Claude, sitting typing at her workstation just outside his door, and went straight to his desk. He logged on to his computer and opened his inbox. And there indeed was his instruction to transfer $42,032,127.88 to the Royal Grand Cayman Bank Limited on 17 June last year. Immediately beneath it was a notification from the hedge fund’s own bank of a repayment from the same account of $43,188,037.09, dated 3 April.
    He performed the calculation in his head. What kind of fraudster repaid the capital sum he had stolen from his victim, plus exactly 2.75 per cent interest?
    He went back and studied what purported to be his original email. There was no greeting or signature, merely the usual standard instruction to transfer the amount X to the account Y . LJ would have put it through the system without a second’s hesitation, confident that their intranet was secure behind the best firewall that money could buy and that the accounts would in any case be reconciled electronically in due course. If the money had been in the form of bars of gold or suitcases of cash, they might perhaps have been more careful. But this was not really money in the physical sense at all, merely strings and sequences of glowing green symbols, no more substantial than protoplasm. That was why they had the nerve to do with it what they did.
    He checked what time he was supposed to have sent his email ordering the transfer: midnight exactly.
    He tilted back in his chair and contemplated the smoke detector in the ceiling above his desk. He often worked late in the office, but never as late as midnight. This message, if genuine, would therefore have had to have come from his