The Fear Index

terminal at home. Was it possible that if he checked the computer in his study he would find a record of this email, along with the order to the Dutch bookseller? Could he be suffering from some kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde syndrome that meant one half of his mind was doing things the other half knew nothing about?
    On impulse he opened his desk drawer, took out the CD and inserted it into the optical drive of his computer. The program took a moment to run, and then the screen was filled with an index of two hundred monochrome images of the inside of his head. He clicked through them rapidly, trying to find the one that had caught the attention of the radiologist, but it was hopeless. Viewed at speed, his brain seemed to emerge from emptiness, swell into a cloudburst of grey matter, and then contract again to nothing.
    He buzzed his assistant. ‘Marie-Claude, if you look in my personal directory you’ll see an entry for a Dr Jeanne Polidori. Will you make me an appointment to see her tomorrow? Tell her it’s urgent.’
    ‘Yes, Dr Hoffmann. What time?’
    ‘Any time. Also, I want to go to the gallery where my wife’s having her exhibition. Do you know the address?’
    ‘Yes, Dr Hoffmann. When do you want to go?’
    ‘Right away. Can you fix me a car?’
    ‘You have a driver at your disposal at all times now, arranged by Monsieur Genoud.’
    ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, I forgot. Okay, tell him I’m coming down.’
    He ejected the CD and put it back in the drawer along with the Darwin volume, then grabbed his raincoat. Passing through the trading floor, he glanced across at the boardroom. Where a section of the blinds was not properly closed he could see Elmira Gulzhan and her lawyer boyfriend through the slats, bent over an iPad, watched by Quarry, who had his arms folded: he looked smug. Etienne Mussard, the curved turtle shell of his back turned towards the others, was entering figures with elderly slowness on to a large pocket calculator.
    On the opposite wall Bloomberg and CNBC were showing lines of red arrows, all in the descendent. The European markets had shed their earlier gains and had started falling fast. That would almost certainly depress the opening in the US, which would in turn make the hedge fund much less exposed to loss by mid-afternoon. Hoffmann felt his spirits lighten with relief. Indeed, he experienced a definite thrill of pride. Once again VIXAL was proving smarter than the humans around it, smarter even than its creator.
    His good humour persisted as he rode the elevator down to the ground floor and turned the corner into the lobby, where a bulky figure in a cheap dark suit rose to greet him. Of all the affectations of the wealthy, none had ever struck Hoffmann as quite as absurd as the sight of a bodyguard sitting outside a meeting or restaurant; he had often wondered who exactly the rich were expecting to attack them, except possibly their own shareholders or members of their families. But on this particular day he was glad to find himself approached by the polite, thuggish-looking man who flashed his ID and introduced himself as Olivier Paccard, l’homme de la sécurité .
    ‘If you would wait just a moment, please, Dr Hoffmann,’ said Paccard. He held up his hand in a polite plea for silence and stared into the middle distance. He had a wire trailing from his ear. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘We can go.’
    He moved swiftly to the entrance, hitting the exit button with the heel of his hand precisely as a long dark Mercedes drew up at the kerb, with the same driver who had picked Hoffmann up from the hospital. Paccard strode out first, opened the rear passenger door and ushered Hoffmann inside. His palm briefly brushed the back of the physicist’s neck. Before Hoffmann even had the chance to settle himself into his seat, Paccard was sliding into the front, the car doors were all closed and locked, and they were pulling out into the noonday traffic. The whole procedure must have taken less than ten seconds.
    They made a sharp left, tyres squealing, and shot down a gloomy side street, which opened at the end on to the lake and the distant view of the mountains. The sun had still not broken through the cloud. The high white column of the Jet d’Eau rose 140 metres against the grey sky, dissolving at its top into a chilly rain that plunged to detonate against the dull black surface of the lake. The flashes from the cameras of the tourists photographing one another at its base winked bright