Market Forces (2 page)

File #1

INITIAL INVESTMENT

A
WAKE
.

Jackknifed there in sweat.

Fragments of the dream still pinning his breath in his throat and his face into the pillow, mind reeling in the darkened room . . .

Reality settled over him like a fresh sheet. He was home.

He heaved a shuddering sigh and groped for the glass of water beside the bed. In the dream he’d been falling to and then through the tiles of the supermarket floor.

On the other side of the bed Carla stirred and laid a hand on him.

“Chris?”

“ ‘S okay. Dream.” He gulped from the glass. “Bad dream, ’s all.”

“Murcheson again?”

He paused, peculiarly unwilling to correct her assumption. He didn’t dream about Murcheson’s screaming death much anymore. He shivered a little. Carla sighed and pulled herself closer to him. She took his hand and pressed it onto one full breast.

“My father would just love this. Deep stirrings of conscience. He’s always said you haven’t got one.”

“Right.” Chris lifted the alarm clock and focused on it. Three twenty. Just perfect. He knew he wouldn’t get back to sleep for a while.
Just fucking perfect.
He flopped back, immobile. “Your father has convenient amnesia when it comes to clearing the rent.”

“Money talks. Why’d you think I married you?”

He rolled his head and butted her gently on the nose. “Are you taking the piss out of me?”

For answer she reached down for his prick and rolled it through her fingers. “No. I’m winding you up,” she whispered.

As they drew together he felt the hot gust of desire for her blowing out the dream, but he was slow to harden under her hand. It was only in the final throes of climax that he finally let go.

Falling.

I
T WAS RAINING
when the alarm sounded. Soft hiss outside the open window like an untuned TV at very low volume. He snapped off the bleeper, lay listening to the rain for a few moments, and then slid out of the bed without waking Carla.

In the kitchen he set up the coffee machine, ducked into the shower, and got out in time to steam milk for Carla’s cappuccino. He delivered it to her bedside, kissed her awake, and pointed it out. She’d probably drift off to sleep again and drink it cold when she finally got up. He lifted clothes from the wardrobe—plain white shirt, one of the dark Italian suits, the Argentine leather shoes. He took them downstairs.

Dressed but untied, he carried his own double espresso into the living room with a slice of toast to watch the seven o’clock bulletins. There was, as usual, a lot of detailed foreign commentary, and it was time to go before the Promotions & Appointments spot rolled around. He shrugged, killed the TV, and only remembered to knot his tie when he caught himself in the hall mirror. Carla was just making awake noises as he slipped out of the front door and disabled the alarms on the Saab.

He stood in the light rain for a long moment, looking at the car. Soft beads of water glistening on the cold gray metal. Finally, he grinned.

“Conflict Investment, here we come,” he muttered, and got in.

He got the bulletins on the radio. They started Promotions & Appointments as he hit the Elsenham junction ramp. Liz Linshaw’s husky tones, just a touch of the cordoned zones to roughen up the otherwise cultured voice. On TV she dressed like a cross between a government arbitrator and a catered-party exotic dancer, and in the last two years she had graced the pages of every men’s lifestyle magazine on the rack. The discerning exec’s wet dream and by popular acclaim the AM ratings queen of the nation.

“—very few challenges on the roads this week,” she told him huskily. “The Congo bid play-off we’ve all been waiting on is postponed till next week. You can blame the weather forecasts for that, though it looks from my window as if those guys have blown it again. There’s less rain coming down than we had for Saunders/Nakamura. Still nothing on the no-name orbital call out for Mike Bryant at Shorn Associates, don’t know where you’ve got to, Mike, but if you can hear me we’re anxious to hear from you. And so to new appointments this week—Jeremy Tealby makes partner at Collister Maclean, I think we’ve all seen that coming for a long time now; and Carol Dexter upgrades to senior market overseer for Mariner Sketch following her spectacular performance last week against Roger Inglis. Now back to Shorn again for word of a strong newcomer in the Conflict Investment division—”

Chris’s eyes flickered from the road to the radio. He touched up the volume a notch.

“—Christopher Faulkner, headhunted from investment giants Hammett McColl where he’s already made a name for himself in Emerging Markets. Regular Prom and App followers may recall Chris’s remarkable string of successes at Hammett McColl, commencing with the swift elimination of rival Edward Quain, an exec some twenty years his senior at the time. Vindication of the move came rapidly when—” Excitement ran an abrupt slice into her voice: “Oh, and this just in from our helicopter team. The no-name call out on Mike Bryant has broken, with two of the challengers down past junction twenty-two and the third signaling a withdrawal. Bryant’s vehicle has apparently sustained minimal damage, and he’s on his way in now. We’ll have in-depth coverage and an exclusive interview for the lunchtime edition. Looks like the start of a good week for Shorn Associates, then, and I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got time for this morning, so back to the Current Affairs desk. Paul.”

“Thank you, Liz. First up, the falling rates of production in the manufacturing sector threaten a further ten thousand jobs across the NAFTA territories, according to an analysis by the Glasgow-based Independent News Group. A Trade and Finance Commission spokesman has called the report ‘subversively negative.’ More on the—”

Chris tuned it out, vaguely annoyed that Bryant’s no-name scuffle had knocked his name off Liz Linshaw’s crimson lips. The rain had stopped, and his wipers were beginning to squeak. He switched them off and shot a glance at the dashboard clock. He was still running early.

The proximity alarm chimed.

He caught the accelerating shape in the otherwise deserted rearview and slewed reflexively right. Into the next lane, brake back. As the other vehicle drew level, he relaxed. The car was battered and primer-painted in mottled tan, custom-built like his own but not by anyone who had any clue about road raging. Heavy steel barbs welded onto the front fenders, bulky external armoring folded around the front wheels and jutting back to the doors. The rear wheels were broad-tired to provide some maneuvering stability, but it was still clear from the way the car moved that it was carrying far too much weight.

No-namer.

Like fifteen-year-old cordoned-zone thugs, they were often the most dangerous because they had the most to prove, the least to lose. The other driver was hidden behind a slat-protected side window, but Chris could see movement. He thought he made out the glimmer of a pale face. Along the car’s flank flashed the driver number in luminous yellow paint. He sighed and reached for the comset.

“Driver Control,” said an anonymous male voice.

“This is Chris Faulkner of Shorn Associates, driver clearance 260B354R, inbound on M11 past junction ten. I have a possible no-name challenger number X23657.”

“Checking. A moment please.”

Chris began to build his speed, gradually so that the no-namer would soak up the acceleration without tripping into fight mode. By the time the controller came back on, they were pacing each other at about 140 kilometers an hour.

“That’s confirmed, Faulkner. Your challenger is Simon Fletcher, freelance legal analyst.”

Chris grunted.
Unemployed lawyer.

“Challenge filed at 8:04. There’s a bulk transporter in the slow lane passing junction eight, automated. Heavy load. Otherwise no traffic. You are cleared to proceed.”

Chris floored it.

He made a full car length and slewed back in front of the other vehicle, forcing Fletcher to a split-second decision. Ram or brake. The tan car dropped away, and Chris smiled a little. The brake reflex was instinctive. You had to have a whole different set of responses drilled into you before you could switch it off. After all, Fletcher should have
wanted
to ram him. It was a standard duel tactic. Instead, his instincts had gotten the better of him.

This isn’t going to last long.

The lawyer accelerated again, closing. Chris let him get within about a meter of his rear fender, then hauled out and braked. The other car shot ahead and Chris tucked in behind.

Junction eight flashed past. Inside the London orbital now, almost into the zones. Chris calculated the distance to the underpass, nudged forward, and tapped at Fletcher’s rear. The lawyer shot away from the contact. Chris checked his speed display and upped it. Another tap. Another forward flinch. The automated haulage transport appeared like a monstrous metal caterpillar, ballooned in the slow lane, and then dropped behind just as rapidly. The underpass came into sight. Concrete yellowed with age, stained with faded graffiti that predated the five-meter exclusion fencing. The fence stuck up over the parapet, topped with springy rolls of razor wire. Chris had heard it carried killing voltage.

He gave Fletcher another shove and then slowed to let him dive into the tunnel like a spooked rabbit. A couple of seconds of gentle braking, then accelerate again and in after him.

Shutdown time.

Beneath the weight of the tunnel’s roof, things were different. Yellow lights above, two tip-to-tail rows of them like tracer fire along the ceiling. Ghostly white
EMERGENCY EXIT
signs at intervals along the walls. No breakdown lane, just a scuffed and broken line to mark the edge of the metaled road and a thin concrete path for maintenance workers. A sudden first-person-viewpoint arcade game. Enhanced sense of speed, fear of wall impact and dark.

Chris found Fletcher and closed. The lawyer was rattled—telegraphed clearly in the jerky way the car was handling. Chris took a wide swing out into the other lanes so that he’d disappear from Fletcher’s rearview mirror and matched velocities dead level. One hundred and forty on the speedo again—both cars were running dead level, and the underpass was only eight kilometers long. Make it quick. Chris closed the gap between the two cars by a meter, flicked on his interior light, and, leaning across to the passenger-side window, raised one hand in stiff farewell. With the light on, Fletcher couldn’t fail to see it. He held the pose for a long moment, then snapped the hand into a closed fist with the thumb pointing down. At the same time, he slewed the car one-handed across the intervening lane.

The results were gratifying.

Fletcher must have been watching the farewell gesture, not the road ahead, and he forgot where he was. He jerked his car aside, pulled too far, and broadsided the wall in a shower of sparks. The primer-painted car staggered drunkenly, raked fire off the concrete once more, and bounced away in Chris’s wake, tires shrieking. Chris watched in the mirror as the lawyer braked his vehicle to a sprawling halt sideways across two lanes. He grinned and slowed to about fifty, waiting to see if Fletcher would pick up the challenge again. The other car showed no sign of restarting. It was still stationary when he hit the upward incline at the far end of the underpass and lost sight of it.

“Wise man,” he murmured to himself.

He emerged from the tunnel into an unexpected patch of sunlight. The road vaulted, climbing onto a long raised curve that swept in over the expanses of zoneland and angled toward the cluster of towers at the heart of the city. Sunlight struck down in selective rays. The towers gleamed.

He accelerated into the curve.

T
HE LIGHT IN
the washroom was subdued, filtering down from high windows set in the sloping roof. Chris rinsed his hands in the onyx basin and stared at himself in the big circular mirror. The Saab-gray eyes that looked back at him were clear and steady. The bar-code tattoos over his cheekbones picked up the color and mixed it with threads of lighter blue. Lower still, the blue repeated in the weave of his suit and on one of the twisted lines in his Susana Ingram tie. The shirt shone white against his tan and when he grinned, the silver tooth caught the light in the room like an audible chime.

Good enough.

The sound of splashing water ran on after he killed the tap. He glanced sideways to see another man washing his hands two basins down. The new arrival was big, the length of limb and bulk of trunk habitually used to model suits, and long fair hair tied back in a ponytail. An Armani-suited Viking. Chris almost looked for a double-bladed battle-ax resting against the basin at the man’s side.

Instead, one of the hands emerged from the basin and he saw, with a sudden, visceral shock, that it was liberally stained with blood. The other man looked up and met his gaze.

“Something I can help you with?”

Chris shook his head and turned to the hand dryer on the wall. Behind him, he heard the water stop in the basin, and the other man joined him at the dryer. Chris acknowledged the arrival and gave a little space, rubbing away the last traces of moisture on his hands. The dryer ran on. The other man was looking at him closely.

“Hey, you must be the new guy.”

He snapped his fingers wetly. There was still some blood on them, Chris saw, tiny flecks and some in the lines of his palm.

“Chris something, right?”

“Faulkner.”

“Yeah, Faulkner, that’s it.” He put his hands under the flow of air. “Just come in from Hammett McColl?”

“Right.”

“I’m Mike Bryant.” A hand offered sideways. Chris hesitated briefly, eyeing the blood. Bryant picked up on it. “Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was just in a no-namer, and Shorn policy is you’ve got to recover their plastic as proof of the kill. It can get messy.”

“Had a no-namer myself this morning,” Chris said reflexively.

“Yeah? Where was that?”

“M11, around junction eight.”

“The underpass. You take him down in there?”

Chris nodded, deciding on the spur of the moment not to mention the inconclusive nature of the engagement.

“Nice. I mean, no-namers don’t get you anywhere much, but it’s all rep, I guess.”

“I guess.”

“You’re up for Conflict Investment, aren’t you? Louise Hewitt’s section. I’m up there on the fifty-third myself. She was batting your résumé about a few weeks back. That stuff you did at Hammett McColl way back was some serious shit. Welcome aboard.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll walk you up there if you like. Going that way myself.”

“Great.”

They stepped out into the broad curve of the corridor and a glass-wall view of the financial district from twenty floors up. Bryant seemed to drink it in for a moment before he turned up the corridor, still scratching at a persistent speck of blood on his hand.

“They give you a car yet?”

“Got my own. Customized. My wife’s a mechanic.”

Bryant stopped and looked at him. “No shit?”

“No shit.” Chris held up his left hand, the dull metal band on the ring finger. Bryant examined it with interest.

“What’s that, steel?” He caught on and grinned suddenly. “Out of an engine, right? I’ve read about this stuff.”

“Titanium. Got it off an old Saab venting chamber. Had to resize it, but apart from that—”

“Yeah, that’s right.” The other man’s enthusiasm was almost childlike. “Did you do it over an engine block, like that guy in Milan last year?” The finger snap again. “What was his name, Bonocello or something?”

“Bonicelli. Yeah, like that, pretty much.” Chris tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice. His engine-block-altar marriage predated the Italian driver’s by some five years, but went almost unnoticed in the driving press. Bonicelli’s ran for weeks, in full color. Maybe something to do with the fact that Silvio Bonicelli was the hell-raising younger son of a big Florentine driving family, maybe just that he had married not a mechanic but a former porn star and blossoming manufactured pop singer. Maybe also the fact that Chris and Carla had done it with a minimum of fuss in the backyard at Mel’s AutoFix, and Silvio Bonicelli had invited the crowned heads of corporate Europe to a ceremony on a cleared shop floor at the new Lancia works in Milan. That was the trick with the twenty-first century’s corporate nobility. Family contacts.

“Marry your mechanic.” Bryant was grinning again. “Man, I can see where that would be useful, but I’ve got to tell you I admire your courage.”

“It wasn’t really a courage thing,” Chris said mildly. “I was in love. You married?”

“Yeah.” He saw Chris looking at his ring. “Oh. Platinum. Suki’s a bond trader for Costerman’s. Mostly works from home these days, and she’s probably going to quit if we have another kid.”

“You got kids?”

“Yeah, just the one. Ariana.” They reached the end of the corridor and a battery of elevators. Bryant dug in his jacket pocket while they waited and produced a wallet. He flipped it open to reveal an impressive rack of credit cards and a photo of an attractive auburn-haired woman holding a pixie-faced child. “Look. We took that on her birthday. She was one. Nearly a year ago already. They grow up fast. You got kids?”

“No, not yet.”

“Well, all I can tell you is don’t wait too long.” Bryant flipped the wallet closed as the elevator arrived and they rode up in companionable silence. The lift announced each floor in a chatty tone and gave them brief outlines of current Shorn development projects. After a while Chris spoke, more to drown out the earnest synthetic voice than anything else.

“This place have its own combat classes?”

“What, hand-to-hand?” Bryant grinned. “Look at that number, Chris. Forty-one. Up here, you don’t go hand-to-hand for promotion. Louise Hewitt’d consider that the height of bad taste.”

Chris shrugged. “Yeah, but you never know. Saved my life once.”

“Hey, I’m kidding.” Bryant patted him on the arm. “They’ve got a couple of corporate instructors down in the gym, sure. Shotokan and taekwondo I think. I do some shotokan myself sometimes, just to stay in shape, plus you never know when you might wind up in the cordoned zones.” He winked. “Know what I mean? But anyway, like one of my instructors says, learning a martial art won’t teach you to fight. You want to learn that shit, go to the street and get in some fights. That’s how you really learn.” A grin. “Least, that’s what they tell me.”

The elevator bounced to a halt. “Fifty-third floor,” it said brightly. “Conflict Investment division. Please ensure you have a code seven clearance for this level. Have a nice day.”

They stepped out into a small antechamber where a well-groomed security officer nodded to Bryant and asked Chris for ID. Chris found the bar-coded strip they’d given him at ground-floor reception and waited while it was scanned.

“Look, Chris, I’ve got to run.” Bryant nodded at the right-hand corridor. “Some greasy little dictator’s uplinking in for a budget review at ten and I’m still trying to remember the name of his defense minister. You know how it is. I’ll catch you at the quarterly review on Friday. We usually go out after.”

“Sure. See you later.”

Chris watched him out of sight with apparent casualness. Beneath was the same caution he’d applied to the no-name challenger that morning. Bryant seemed friendly enough, but almost everyone did under the right circumstances. Even Carla’s father could seem like a reasonable man in the right conversational light. And anyone who washed blood off his hands the way Mike Bryant did was not someone Chris wanted at his back.

The security guard handed back his pass and pointed to the twin doors straight ahead.

“Conference room,” she said. “They’re waiting for you.”

T
HE LAST TIME
Chris had been face-to-face with a senior partner was to hand in his resignation at Hammett McColl. Vincent McColl had a high windowed room, paneled in dark wood and lined along one wall with books that looked a hundred years old. There were portraits of illustrious partners from the firm’s eighty-year history on the other walls, and a framed photo of his father shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher on the desk. The floor was waxed wood overlaid with a two-hundred-year-old Turkish carpet. McColl himself had silvery hair, buttoned his slim frame into suits a generation out of date, and refused to have a videophone in his office. The whole place was a shrine to hallowed tradition, an odd thing in itself for a man whose primary responsibility was a division called Emerging Markets.

Jack Notley, Shorn Associates’ ranking senior in Conflict Investment, could not have been less like McColl if he’d been on temporary reassignment from an inverted parallel universe. He was a stocky, powerful-looking man with close and not especially well-cropped black hair that was just beginning to show a seasoning of gray. His hands were ruddy and blunt-fingered, his suit was a Susana Ingram original that had probably cost as much as the Saab’s whole original chassis, and the body it clothed looked fit for a boxing ring. His features were rough-hewn, and there was a long, jagged scar under his right eye. The eyes were keen and bright. Only the fine web of lines around them gave any indication of Notley’s forty-seven years. Chris thought he looked like a troll on vacation in Elfland as he moved across the light-filled, pastel-shaded reception area.

His handshake, predictably, was a bonecrusher.

“Chris. Great to have you aboard at last. Come on in. I’d like you to meet some people.”

Chris disentangled his fingers and followed the troll’s broad back across the room to where a lower central level housed a wide coffee table, a pair of right-angled sofas, and a conspicuously unique meeting leader’s armchair. Seated at either end of one sofa were a man and a woman, both younger than Notley. Chris’s eyes focused automatically on the woman, a second before Notley spoke and gestured at her.

“This is Louise Hewitt, divisional manager and executive partner. She’s the real brains behind what we’re doing here.”

Hewitt unfolded herself from the sofa and leaned across to take his hand. She was a good-looking, voluptuous woman in her late thirties working hard at not showing it. Her suit looked Daisuke Todoroki—severe black, vented driver’s skirt to the knees, and square-cut jacket. Her shoes had no appreciable heel. She wore long dark hair gathered back from pale features in a knot and minimal makeup. Her handshake wasn’t trying to prove anything.

“And this is Philip Hamilton, junior partner for the division.”

Chris turned to face the deceptively soft-looking man at the other end of the sofa. Hamilton had a weak chin and a fat bulk that made him untidy, even in his own charcoal Ingram, but his pale blue eyes missed absolutely nothing. He stayed seated, but offered up a damp hand and a murmured greeting. There was, Chris thought, a guarded dislike in his voice.

“Well now,” said Notley, in jovial tones. “I’m not really much more than a figurehead around here so I’ll hand over to Louise for the moment. Let’s all take a seat and, would you like a drink?”

“Green tea, if you’ve got it.”

“Certainly. I think a pot would be in order. Jiang estate okay?”

Chris nodded, impressed. Notley walked up to the large desk near one of the windows and prodded a phone. Louise Hewitt seated herself with immaculate poise and looked across at Chris.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Faulkner,” she said neutrally.

“Great.”

Still neutral. “Not entirely, as it happens. There are one or two items I’d like to clear up if you don’t mind.”

Chris spread his hands. “Go ahead. I work here now.”

“Yes.” The thin smile told him she hadn’t missed the counterblow. “Well, perhaps we could start with your vehicle. I understand you’ve turned down the company car. Do you have something against the house of BMW?”

“Well, I think they have a tendency to overarmor. Apart from that, no. It was a very generous offer. But I have my own vehicle and I’d rather stick with what I know, if it’s all the same to you. I’ll feel more comfortable.”

“Customized,” said Hamilton, as if naming a psychological dysfunction.

“What’s that?” Notley was back, settling predictably into the armchair. “Ah, your wheels, Chris. Yes, I heard you’re married to the woman who put it together. That is right, isn’t it.”

“That’s right.” Chris took a flickered inventory of the expressions around him. In Notley he seemed to read an avuncular tolerance, in Hamilton distaste, and in Louise Hewitt nothing at all.

“That must give you quite a bond,” Notley mused, almost to himself.

“Uh, yes. Yes, it does.”

“I’d like to talk about the Bennett incident,” Louise Hewitt said loudly.

Chris locked gazes with her for a beat, then sighed. “The details are pretty much as I filed them. You must have read about it at the time. Bennett was up for the same analyst’s post as me. Fight lasted to that raised section on the M40 inflow. I swiped her off the road on a bend and she stuck on the edge. Weight of the car would have pulled her over sooner or later—she was running a reconditioned Jag Mentor.”