The Fear Index

today’s scene, not yet. It would take at least a few days for her to calm down.
    She went into the bathroom and stopped, staring in sudden bafflement at the cosmetics and perfume arrayed on the glass shelves. It was hard to know how much to pack if you didn’t know how long you would be gone, or even where you were going. She looked at herself in the mirror, in the wretched outfit she had spent hours choosing for the launch of her career as an artist, and started crying – less out of self-pity, which she despised, than out of fear. Don’t let him be ill, she thought. Dear God, please don’t take him away from me in that way. Throughout she kept on studying her face dispassionately. It was amazing how ugly you could make yourself by crying, like scrawling over a drawing. After a while she put her hand into her jacket pocket to try to find a tissue, and felt instead the sharp edges of a business card.

    Professor Robert WALTON

    Computing Centre Department Head

    CERN – European Organisation for Nuclear Research

    1211 Geneva 23 – Switzerland

12

    … varieties are species in the process of formation, or are, as I have called them, incipient species .

    CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of Species (1859)

    IT WAS WELL after three o’clock by the time Hugo Quarry got back to the office. He had left several messages on Hoffmann’s mobile phone, which had not been answered, and he felt a slight prickle of unease about where his partner might be: Hoffmann’s so-called bodyguard he had found chatting up a girl in reception, unaware that his charge had even left the hotel. Quarry had fired him on the spot.
    Still, for all that, the Englishman’s mood was good. He now believed they were likely to mop up double his initial estimate of new investment – $2 billion – which meant an extra $40 million a year simply in management fees. He had drunk several truly excellent glasses of wine. On the drive back from the restaurant he celebrated by putting a call through to Benetti’s and commissioning a helicopter pad for the back of his yacht.
    He was smiling so much the facial-recognition scanner failed to match his geometry to its database and he had to try a second time when he had composed himself. He passed under the bland but watchful eyes of the security cameras in the lobby, cheerfully called out, ‘Five,’ to the elevator and hummed to himself all the way up the glass tube. It was the old school song, or as much of it as he could remember – sonent voces omnium, tum-tee tum-tee tum-tee-tum – and when the doors opened he tipped an imaginary hat to his frowning fellow passengers, the dull drones from DigiSyst or EcoTec or whatever the hell they were called. He even managed to maintain his smile when the glass partition to Hoffmann Investment Technologies slid back to reveal Inspector Jean-Philippe Leclerc of the Geneva Police Department waiting for him in reception. He examined his visitor’s ID and then compared it to the rumpled figure in front of him. The American markets would be opening in ten minutes. This he could do without.
    ‘It wouldn’t be possible, Inspector, would it, for us to have this meeting some other time? I only say this because we really are feeling pretty frazzled here today.’
    ‘I am very sorry to disturb you, monsieur . I had hoped to catch a word with Dr Hoffmann, but in his absence there are some matters I would like to discuss with you. I promise you it will only take ten minutes.’
    There was something in the way the old boy planted his feet slightly apart that warned Quarry he had better make the best of it. ‘Of course,’ he said, switching on his trademark smile, ‘you shall have as long as you like. We’ll go to my office.’ He extended his hand and ushered the policeman in front of him. ‘Keep right on to the end.’ He felt as if he had been smiling solidly for about fifteen hours that day already. His face ached with bonhomie. As soon as Leclerc had his back to him, he treated himself to a scowl.
    Leclerc walked slowly past the trading floor, examining his surroundings with interest. The big open room with its screens and time-zone clocks was more or less what he would have expected in a financial company: he had seen this on the television. But the employees were a surprise – all young, and not a tie between them, let alone a suit – and also the silence, with everyone at his desk, and the air so still and heavy with concentration. The whole place reminded