Blood Money (22 page)

Alexis is in his element, chatting confidently with the charming sommelier to match fine wines with the haute cuisine they have selected. In between several of the seven courses the attentive waiter brings them a variety of amuse bouches, bite-sized hors d'œuvres that show-off the chef's amazing creativeness. And at every point in the evening the food and wine is impeccable and the girls are well behaved. They chat amicably amongst themselves and exchange flirting glances and discrete touches with Alexis and Nicolas as they know they're required to do. The quiet Eddie remains sober (as always) and has nothing to do with the Latvian girls except to accompany them outside for the occasional cigarette.

“You know Nicolas; you're going to like me once I've made you fabulously rich, which by the way, won't take me very long at all.” Pointing a chubby finger in his direction the Greek continues “But you need to trust my skills and hang on for the ride. I'm good at what I do; I don't see it as running a business. I see it as running money…”

The quantity of alcohol that has been consumed during the evening is beginning to have its effect on Alexis. His tone is becoming slightly aggressive as he responds to the question that Nicolas' has just posed to him on the running of hedge funds. “The problem with you bloody bankers is that you don't have enough appetite for risk, it's like you're scared of the dark or something.” Reinhart has also become emboldened by intoxication and without too much thought he begins to stand up for himself by challenging his host.

“But don't you worry that one day you'll take a colossal loss? And I mean truly colossal. Say something really big blows up in your face and it sends you down into a death spiral that's too big to ever climb out of? The levels of risk you take, don't you feel some sense of responsibility? You could bankrupt your investors. Banks and conglomerates could fall! Mon Dieu! If you were big enough you could put a country's finances into melt down!”

Vasilakos has heard this one so many times before he doesn't see it as a challenge worthy of getting particularly upset about anymore. “The risks I take aren't boundless. My team plays by certain rules so things are never going to get crazy. Ok, so some days we take losses, nobody's perfect but a £20 million loss in a day is nothing when the total fund is many billions. I won't deny the pressure though. We Hedgies only eat what we kill; so we can't afford to be lazy like so many other funds who charge clients for merely shuffling their little portfolios around. Such people are just bullshit machines, trying to rob their clients at every turn, happy if occasionally they manage to beat market average. Me, I'm an absolute-return guy, no profit for you, no bonus for me.”

Reinhart is growing accustomed to Hedge Fund Manager's macho talk “Ok, I'm a banker and I'm paid to be careful. But surely when you're making big individual punts don't you sometimes consider that diversification would be more prudent?”

“Oh please don't do this. You're a nice guy but don't question me about my strategies. You and I are different animals. You belong to a herd. You feel safety in numbers and prefer to blend in with the crowd. You panic easily, look…look at you…I can even see you twitching now. You're not comfortable but that's ok, it's who you are. You've come to me for help, you've got a lot of dodgy money from dodgy sources” Nicolas looks nervously around the room as soon as this is said but doesn't attempt to deny the statement. “…and you sure as hell need to find a way of generating a good return for them. You know I'll make you rich but you're as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Everything will be ok I assure you, but please understand, I don't do diversification; it isn't what I'm about. Diversification is deworsification. At most I hold one hundred positions at any one time, often it can be as low as 50, but of those 50 I'll have about 30 plus that are pure out and out winners. Trust me; you're money is in the best possible place. Think of me as the king of the jungle. I'm the leader of a pride of lions sitting at the top of the food chain. When I see a winner I concentrate my positions and then once all the pandemonium and dust dies down I'm the one sitting down feasting on the kill.”

As they all tuck into their superb orange and vanilla baked alaska with Grand Marnier sauce Reinhart tries one more time to put Alexis on the back foot. He poses a question to the Hedgie that he thinks he'll find awkward. “Alexis, there's been a lot of talk recently of a crackdown on insider dealing in the City; I've heard there was a big conviction only last week. Is there anything in it do you think?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! Yada, yada, yada! So there's a new woman at the FSA and she's managed (at last) to slap some ‘nobody' on the wrist. Big deal! Oh Monsieur Reinhart…if I had a hundred grand for every time someone told me that the regulators were going to start cracking down on insider trading…
I'd be almost as rich as I actually am!”

― Xavier Forneret

John Gibson sits alone at the pine dining room table in his apartment. He's covered it with so many sheets of paper that barely a square inch of wood remains visible.

In addition to the intelligence he'd gathered during Sunday's secretive foray he's now busy making his own personal notes, and lots of them. Working in isolation John's trying to build-up a profile of his enemy, one that's as comprehensive as he can possibly make it. Gradually, he's piecing together a picture (as best he understands it) of how they operate, how they think and what motivates them. And importantly, he's just completed what is probably the key aspect in profiling his adversaries, identifying their strengths and weaknesses.

John sits back to review what he sees as their three main strengths, and interestingly each seems to have an important limitation.

Firstly, Kronos have the advantage of having almost unlimited resources at their disposal, money being no object. If he chooses too, Alexis could employ a small standing army with which to protect himself. But it's impossible for his bodyguard to cover every angle 24/7. Take their intelligence network for example. They probably only react when something marks out a person as a new threat. John's assumption is that they'll first observe, and if they then confirm him to be a real danger he'll either be paid-off (unlikely), intimidated (likely) or killed (if necessary). The clear weakness in this strategy is its reactive nature. If a fresh threat remains hidden, such as the attempted kidnapping for example, or comes in from a new direction quickly enough then the system can do little to prevent such an attack from happening.

Eddie and Alexis's second strength is that they seem free to act with complete disregard to any rules. This gives them a lot of freedom of movement, but the limitation is obvious. All the time they're operating outside of the rules they have to keep their activities hidden. If at any time John can see that they're hiding something it becomes a little nugget of information, a lead and a potential line of inquiry. And eventually even smart criminals make an error. Some scrap of evidence will turn-up, some oversight, some seemingly insignificant detail. A policeman just has to remain patient and vigilant and eventually even the smartest of villains will make some crucial mistake.

Thirdly, they are able to rely on everyone else playing by the rules. The English are known for it and a British policeman is perhaps the ultimate example of it. That's what makes John such a predictable adversary for them to have. Knowing exactly how you're principle enemy is going to act all the time must make it real easy to avoid being caught. The police have documented policies and operating manuals not to mention endless ‘guidelines' which they have to follow. Take any large organisation like the HMRC, the CPS or the FSA. They too are all very, very predictable. As well as being forced to adhere to every piece of legislation that affects them, they are highly bureaucratic and slow to react, overly burdening themselves with paperwork and following whatever direction is handed down through their multi-layered chains of command. No wonder Vasilakos enjoys working in London, with the Brits sticking to rules like trains stick to rails. It's making life so very, very easy for him. But what if an adversary suddenly doesn't play by the rules? What if an enemy became unpredictable and acted outside of the law too? Things might then get pretty interesting perhaps?

These conclusions dictate that the best chance of succeeding against Alexis and Eddie without getting killed in the process is to act quickly, to act alone and to attack from a direction that they'll never anticipate. The only question remaining is whether Gibson truly has the guts to do whatever it takes, without help from outsiders?

The need to act quickly means he's putting himself under a great deal of pressure to target the Kronos operation without delay. Pulling across the plans to the basement for the umpteenth time he looks again at the dimensions and positions of the walls and doorways. Its contents are clearly important to Alexis. He's seen for himself that the single point of access to getting down there is protected with some sort of iris scanner. What can be so darn important to a man like Vasilakos? It can't be bullion or diamonds or anything like that can it? Surely those days are long-gone.

The cacophony of thoughts and emotions inside his head are so deafening that they're confusing and disorientating. He's not even sure yet what it is he's trying to accomplish. Does he want Alexis dead? What if he could inflict lasting damage to his organisation, would that be enough? What if he could expose the bodyguard for the killer he is? What exactly is it that he's trying to achieve?

What would Rebecca want?

Feeling thoroughly demoralised he tosses the schematics he's been looking at over to the far side of the table. If only he'd got someone on the inside prepared to give testimony…that's the sort of breakthrough the FSA would need before taking action. Problem is, Alexis and Eddie seem to be running a very tight ship. Discipline must be being vigorously enforced. Disloyalty from within the ranks being brutally crushed before it has a chance of causing any damage. If he starts approaching employees, even ex-employees (if he could somehow track them down) then it could easily lead to Eddie hearing about it. John would be a dead man in under a week.

He knows he has to play to his strengths. He's got all their police records and has pieces of data on them that are way off limits to everyday members of the public. He's good at examining such information, picking-out the inconsistencies and seeing through the lies. Most importantly he knows the mistakes criminals make that cause them to leave evidence behind. He never thought for a moment that this would become useful in enabling him to work outside of the law and avoid him from being caught. But how should he proceed? If he's going to put his career and even his life on the line he needs to be totally sure that his actions will result in fully exacting his revenge.

The thin steel flap on the letterbox noisily clatters as this morning's post gets pushed through the front door. Having tumbled onto the hall carpet, John ignores it, preferring to remain seated at the table with his head in his hands. The mail lies there for some ten minutes, unacknowledged and overlooked. But eventually, realising he's not making the slightest bit of headway; John pushes back his chair and rises to his feet.

Needing some fresh coffee he despondently walks over to the kitchen. On his way he stoops down to pick the post off the floor before summarily tossing it onto a work-surface.

Whilst waiting for the kettle to boil John paces around the small kitchen racking his brains…then out of the corner of his eye he spots someone familiar, looking up at him from some magazine lying in the pile of post.

Vasilakos's fat face sneers at him. His dark, untrustworthy eyes seem to stare straight out of the magazine's front cover, taunting him, challenging him. For a moment, John doubts that what he's seeing is real; he's been concentrating so hard on the fund manager for so long that it's got to be his tortured mind playing tricks on him. The stress, the shock, the lack of sleep…

He approaches the magazine slowly, but the face on the glossy cover refuses to change. John snatches it up off the work-surface. And only now that he's actually holding it does he believe it's not a fanciful trick of his imagination. Ripping away it's flimsy plastic cover John now holds in his hands this week's copy of The Spectator, one of the many financial periodicals that Rebecca insisted on subscribing to. This week's ‘featured article' is on hedge fund manager Alexis Vasilakos and his Kronos Fund. Below the loathsome man's pock-marked face is the flattering caption ‘King of the Jungle' (a comparison that John finds gut-wrenchingly nauseating).

The ‘contents list' reveals the cover story featuring Vasilakos to begin on page 46. Impatiently, John thumbs through the first half of the light-weight magazine to find the relevant article. He swallows hard before sitting himself down on the cold linoleum floor to read it.

His starving eyes feast on the glossy pictures and their captions at first, before they start to consume each word the piece contains from the first morsel of information to the last.

The way Rebecca used to trawl through these magazines in silence…John always assumed them to be objective, impartial and well constructed. But this??? It's like it's been written by some part-time motivational consultant who's more focussed on flattering the interviewee than she is in doing some proper research and offering unbiased insight. Each short paragraph cranks-up John's levels of frustration and anger until (with some relief) he at last reaches the end. ‘Why would any magazine choose to print such poorly written horse-shit?'

Breathing deeply, he takes a few moments to calm himself down. Now John's brain starts to engage and rather than succumbing to his desire to tear the magazine to shreds he realises that he hasn't (as yet) allowed himself to pick-out the salient information which it undoubtedly contains.

He goes over the piece for a second time. This time he forces himself to look at it with a more receptive frame of mind. The article reads significantly differently on this occasion and John begins to see inside Alexis's brain. As he studies the glossy pictures once more, one in-particular grabs his attention. It shows Alexis stood, half-leaning against a chest high carbon-grey cabinet. Written at 90 degrees to the vertical, etched up the side of the cabinet in large capital letters is the word CRAY. The front of the cabinet is comprised of a hinged door made from white gauze supported on a delicate looking square-lattice framework. Just behind Alexis there is a chair, partially hidden, along with a small desk, on which sits a keyboard and a flatscreen monitor.

John finds himself staring in disbelief at the size of the machine. He'd always thought these things as being huge monoliths filling small rooms and requiring intricate cooling systems to keep them functioning. Technology has clearly moved on a great deal in the world of top-end computer hardware. Awkwardly getting-up off the hard kitchen floor, John shuffles through into the lounge and sits back down at the dining room table, intent on further study. He hits the internet and soon finds the approximate supercomputer model that seems closest in size and design to the machine pictured in the article. He prints himself off its specification sheet ‘for the record'.

Returning to the picture of the fat Greek stood by his supercomputer; John begins once more to study it intently. The picture is clearly all about Alex and his quantitive trading system he has named ‘KATA', but what grabs John's attention is the massive round vault door in the background. It is truly the mother of all portals, it's clearly immensely strong and weighing many tonnes it looks like it'd take something just shy of a small nuclear explosion to break it away from its hinges. John's concentrated stare alternates from the vault door to Alexis's grinning face to the Cray and then back to the vault door.

A fragment of an idea starts to form, fuzzy at first, but as the haze clears it coalesces into the outlines of a plan.

Comparing the photo to the architectural drawings of the basement, Detective Sergeant Gibson determines exactly where Alexis and the Cray are relative to everything else. He even speculates as to where the photographer must have been standing. The huge round door is central. The Cray, beside which Alexis is vainly standing, is to the right and just a little further over is an unremarkable door. Checking the blueprints, John figures that it leads to some sort of small storage room, perhaps a cleaner's cupboard.

The plans also indicate the stairs leading up to the ground floor are on the far left, and there is no lift. What John finds very puzzling is why the Cray is kept in the basement. There is plenty of office space in the floors above. Why not keep it in the server room (wherever that is), under the dutiful care of an IT manager. It's an odd little detail, but one that's nevertheless intriguing.

Exhausted, he puts the magazine down and closes his eyes. Leaning back in the chair he allows his head to fall backwards and soon images form in his mind, drifting and swirling.

Alexis's face, the impaled cat, the vault door, Rebecca's blood draining from her neck, piles and piles of dirty stolen money and the bodyguard's cold, emotionless eyes. He can feel it in his gut that the solution to making Alexis pay for his crimes lies down in that basement.

His next problem is how to get down there himself.

*

By late morning, John stops dissecting through the details on Kronos. He now needs to do some ‘field research' in and around Lombard Street to help him identify a ‘best way' of gaining access down into vault. It's imperative he acts quickly and discretely if he's going to give himself a chance against a man who'd be happy to kill him without a moment's hesitation.

From this point on John knows he's going to have to take every precaution to avoid leaving evidence of his movements. With an insider's knowledge of how people can be traced, he now takes the precaution of leaving his cell-phone at home, along with his credit, debit and oyster cards. John places them on his bedside table safe in the knowledge that they now won't be able to betray his movements. From here-on-in every time he travels beyond Finsbury Park he will stay ‘off the grid'. No mobile phones, no electronic payments and no ATM cash withdrawals. Such precautions are nothing to do with evading Eddie Slater, such details would be impossible for him to monitor. No…they are necessary because in the event of him being caught breaking the law it will make it a lot harder for the police to gather evidence against him and less evidence means less chance of it going to court and of being found guilty.