Sila's Fortune (20 page)

This was how the whole world turned. Vast capital was needed for all the developing countries, and as for developed countries, they were caught up in an excess of conspicuous consumption fuelled by debt. Salaries were low, what was on offer was vast: everyone bought on credit. The whole world was on a drip-feed of credit, no one had the money to pay for it, but that didn't change anything, the wheel had to turn and go on turning until everything exploded. And the people at the centre of this credit quivered with the movement of the wheel, caught up in a whirl all the more frenzied since in this universe of short-termism and vast fortunes everything could collapse overnight.

How much? How much did you have to earn a year to feel indestructible? How long before the pride of excess took hold?

Now, when he went back to France, Simon was a Polytechnique student who had got himself a job at Kelmann. He was a success. People looked at him with respect, and maybe they were wondering how this idiot had pulled it off, but there was none of the condescension, the humiliating contempt he had endured his whole life. At work, he was just another young quant, which was considerably less glamorous. But even so, when he and Matt went out to dinner, he no longer felt like an outsider. Enjoying the slightly more relaxed sense of hierarchy that prevailed on nights out, he had the impression of being part of this world, although in a way that was more diaphanous, more fragile than the others, a ghostly double of their appetite for living and for money. The gestures, the conversations, the clothes were familiar to him. He was one of them. True he came by tube or took a taxi, he didn't own a Ferrari, but he was one of them. He had crossed over.

He would probably not have gone out as much as he did if it were not for Matt. Matt made a fantastic trader – the dazzling smile, the aggression, the macho posturing. He knew everyone in London. He had friends at Merrill Lynch, Kelmann, Lehman Brothers, SocGen, Deutsche Bank, at some of the hedge fund companies too, a party was not a party without Matt. He had clearly found his niche. He had inexhaustible reserves of energy. He could last all night, intimidating even the toughest party animals. His track record with girls was almost as impressive as in Paris: young, smiling, anonymous, identical blondes threw themselves at him.
Almost
as impressive? That was only because London was a city devoid of women. Bankers for the most part were men, and the tough,
clever women in the business terrified Matt so much he didn't dare try to seduce them. But waitresses, interns, other bankers' girlfriends, foreign students studying English at the London School of Economics, all were perfect prey for a trader with his tongue hanging out. All he was missing was the Ferrari.

Why didn't he buy one? One simple reason. Matt didn't earn a penny. He was a trader who didn't trade. He knew everyone, fitted in perfectly with this world, he spoke the language, understood the gestures, wore the clothes, but he did nothing. Hence his boundless reserves of energy. He told people he worked for a small hedge fund, dealing with Russian investors, Saniak, a murky company whose managers no one knew which made it an ideal cover for Matt. He had no problem lying, a lie came to him as easily as the truth. What difference was there between them? At most an effect of language. In fact Matt probably did not feel as though he was lying: he slipped on his job as he might a new jumper. He needed this hedge fund so he could exist in the eyes of others, therefore the hedge fund employed him. Besides, he could only get a job if he had a job already. People only lend to the rich. Matt was gifted with the magnificent fluidity of the compulsive liar, criss-crossing the porous borders of truth and fiction. When he was clubbing, he told people he worked hard and earned a fortune in a frank, easygoing manner that convinced everyone. He wasn't pretentious, just sure of himself. Simon barely noticed any more, though he was the one who paid the rent, his friend's additional expenses being covered by his savings from Paris and handouts from his parents.

This inactivity remained mysterious. It was true that Matt
had not been to university and had no experience, both of which might have proved awkward. But in England, where things were rather more relaxed than in France, the banking world was more open to highly motivated people from different backgrounds, and lots of arts students worked in the City. You'd often find examples of secretaries or waiters who'd ended up with high-profile jobs, and as everyone kept reminding him, originally traders had been nothing more than the barrow boys of the stock exchange. And it was true that before the 1980s, stewards, out-of-work actors and posh boys with no university education had dabbled on the stock exchange and made money back in the days before deregulation, when finance had been a boring business. Those days were gone now, but there was still a slender opening. But Matt was unable to take advantage of it. His slickness, his lies, the friends he hung out with in the clubs made it easy to get interviews, but he never got called back. He always said he was good in the interviews but that something about him didn't click, something he couldn't explain, something that was starting to eat away at him, some deep-seated, fundamental difference he didn't understand which meant that he was never hired, while people he considered dreary, dull and stupid got hired instead. Over time he arrived to interviews more stressed and consequently more arrogant. Bracing himself for the humiliation to come, he puffed out his chest, became stiff and brusque and lost his greatest asset: his charm. But in any case, even in his early interviews his smile and his drive hadn't helped. He did not please. A terrible discovery for a charmer.

Why did he fail? Because his career profile was atypical,
because he had only a limited knowledge of the financial sector, even if he could chat about it casually, but mostly because of this
something
. This nameless factor.

‘I don't understand,' he said one day to Simon. ‘I'm good, I'm a born trader. I've got a feel for the market and the coldbloodedness of a killer. I'm capable of giving them results like they've never seen. I know it, I'm sure of it. But they won't hire me. They're cretins. Complete fucking cretins. Just because there's something about me they don't like.'

‘But what?'

‘I don't know what. That's the problem. And obviously they don't tell me. Hypocrites, the lot of them. Otherwise it would be easy. So I end up lugging this problem, this thing from one interview to the next without being able to do anything about it. I should go and talk to them, look them in the face and hiss “What is it? Why won't you hire me, arsehole? What's wrong with me?”'

‘Probably better not. Banking is a small world. You'd only get yourself blacklisted.'

‘It's pathetic,' said Matt, getting to his feet and taking his head in his hands. ‘Here I am desperate for the opinions of these losers who won't hire me because I'm not a loser like them.'

One weekend Simon went back to Paris for Nicholas's birthday, his former colleague at the laboratory. Since the party on the terraces, they'd become firm friends. His birthday was an opportunity to meet up again. Arriving by Eurostar, Simon took a taxi to Nicholas's place, a one-bedroom apartment in the 19th arrondissement. The narrow, run-down stairwell made him feel uncomfortable. He thought of the soft, shimmering
whiteness of his London flat. He rang the doorbell and found himself staring at … Julie, the girl who had a fleeting encounter with Matthieu on the terrace of their old apartment. She gave him a smile; he stood there speechless.

‘Surprised?' she said. ‘Yep, I live here, with Nicholas.'

Embarrassed at this reminder of an amorous escapade, she stood shaking her head nervously. Then Nicholas appeared, all smiles, wearing jeans and trainers.

‘Oh la la … still wearing the broker's outfit then,' he said checking out Simon's suit. ‘I'm afraid it doesn't go with the dress code in this place,' he smiled. ‘You'll have to lose the jacket.'

‘No problem,' said Simon, taking it off.

‘You know Julie, yeah?' Nicholas said smugly, squeezing his lover's shoulder. ‘She's moved in with me. She's my angel.'

Simon found this last comment stupid. He stepped into a room with a sloping ceiling, utterly devoid of charm. There were already five or six people in there, two of whom Simon recognised from the maths laboratory. Nicholas introduced everyone. Everyone noticed his designer suit.

‘Don't worry,' was what Simon wanted to say to them, pleadingly, awkwardly, ‘I'm just like you, actually I'm worse than you, I don't hunger for money, I don't lust after power, I don't even strive for recognition as much as you and I'll never fight for a research post or a university chair. For years I lived holed up in my bedroom, terrified of life like a sick kid, and I'll always be that kid. Don't look at me like that. It's just a twist of fate that pitched me into the world of money, and anyway in that world I'm like a sort of ghost so you're wrong to look at
me like that. It's unworthy of you, all it does is make you seem mean and petty. All I want is for us all to get along, for the sake of the birthday. Please.'

‘Sorry, I've just got in from London,' was what he actually said. ‘I didn't have a chance to change.'

‘London?' asked one of them. ‘And does Monsieur work in finance?'

‘And was Monsieur lured by the golden calf?' joked another in a curious tone, at once jokey and venomous.

‘No, it's just that I love mint sauce and warm beer,' Simon joked feebly.

They all laughed politely and, now reconciled by this barb at the expense of the English, they passed round the champagne. Julie poured and Simon couldn't help feeling a twinge of bitterness in the pit of his stomach as he stared at her pale, slender hand with its elegant nails which, from the moment he first saw it, had seemed to him the supreme epitome of beauty. So, she had chosen Nicholas … A night with Matthieu, a lifetime with Nicholas. They seemed to get along well. Simon thought sadly – and all the more sincerely since he barely knew her – that Julie was his dream woman. Beautiful, charming, rather funny.

‘So, did you finally get your degree in maths?' he asked.

‘You remember about that? I feel honoured. Yeah, I got it, I even passed my teaching diploma, I work in a secondary school now in Aulnay-sous-Bois.'

Simon felt he had to ask a question, but didn't know what it was. At random, he ventured: ‘You don't find it too hard?'

She smiled. ‘Let's just say it's not exactly easy. But it's so rewarding, working with kids.'

If they stayed on the subject of teaching, the conversation would become difficult. By some miracle, Julie already seemed bored with the subject and suggested everyone sit down to eat. The tablecloth covered the large wooden top of what was probably Nicholas's desk. Two of the chairs were wobbly.

The guests included colleagues of Nicholas and Julie and two friends, an actor and a businessman. The actor talked a lot and managed to keep up the party mood which Julie's two colleagues rather spoiled, as both were clearly exhausted after a long week at school.

‘So what do you do?' Simon asked the businessman.

‘I sell software,' he answered chewing on a piece of lemon chicken dripping with sauce.

‘What kind of software?'

‘It's for banks. Financial markets.'

‘Really? I know the territory, that's what I work in.'

‘So I figured,' said the man, still chewing. ‘Me and my partner, we've been approaching banks directly. We've had a couple of interesting propositions, but not interesting enough.'

‘To buy your software packages?'

‘Actually, there's just one software package, very high-performance. Really high-performance. It was developed at Stanford University, in a lab my partner used to work at. It's the best piece of financial software ever developed.'

‘How much are you selling it for?'

‘Ten million dollars.'

‘Ten million dollars for a piece of software?' Simon choked and was about to go on when he noticed an awkward look flash between Julie and Nicholas.

‘It's a fair price,' the man went on. ‘The banks will earn billions with it. Traders won't be able to live without it.'

‘There's a lot of software like that out there. In fact in my own job, I develop statistical models for traders …'

‘Oh, really?' said the man, giving Simon a broad smile, though his eyes were expressionless. ‘So we're in competition.'

Since people were now staring at them, looking increasingly embarrassed, Simon did not reply. But the businessman was on a roll. He began extolling the merits of his software and the longer he went on the more Simon realised that he knew almost nothing about finance, that under a veneer of technical terms and English words, what he was saying was preposterous. There were thousands of software packages out there whose sole purpose was to help traders make decisions. Setting a ten-million-dollar price tag was insane. He turned to Nicholas, who was listening politely as though to a child. He made an apologetic gesture. Everyone else looked at the smooth talker warily. Julie blushed and stared down at her plate.

‘We've been friends since high school,' she said suddenly, looking up at the businessman. ‘Matthieu has a great imagination,' she stressed the word, ‘and I hope this project gets off the ground.'

‘I hope so too,' said Simon, noticing for the first time that the man bore the same name as his friend.

A liar or a lunatic. Probably not a fraud since he would have been incapable of fooling anyone. Just someone lost in words and dreams. ‘… I'm telling you, it's the perfect tool for a trader. No risk manager will be able to work without it, they'll be recommending it to all their teams …' The most astonishing thing
was that Simon's presence did not faze the man at all. Given that he was sitting opposite a quantitative analyst, he should have shut up, but the prospect of making a fool of himself did not stop him. He ploughed on, eyes utterly blank, speaking easily and fluently like a gifted but superficial actor, caught up in his daydream, an illusionist. ‘A complex collection of algorithms analysing correlations … In fact, our software can even calculate volatility …'