The market maker (28 page)

"Ambulance! Quick!" The crackle of a police radio. Someone kneeling

down next to me. "He's breathing. Hit on the head. Check the bedroom!"

1 lay there, playing dead. I didn't have the energy to move, even to open my eyes. My body hurt all over. There was the continued sound of movement around me, the gentle weight of a blanket laid over my semi-naked body, and then the wail of a siren. Strong arms lifted me onto a stretcher. I felt cold air against my face. I opened my eyes.

I was in the street outside my flat. Although it was night, there seemed to be lights everywhere, orange from the streetlamps, flashing blue from the ambulance.

A man dressed in bright green overalls leaned over me. "Hang on. YouTl be all right, son."

They slotted me into the back of the ambulance. Pain screamed throughout my body. I felt enormously weary. Everything went black again.

My second visit to the hospital was briefer than my first. I was let out late the next morning with instructions to come back if my headache got worse. There was a sore spot on my skull, but my head felt fuzzy rather than in pain. I had bruises all over me; one on my back and one on my thigh really hurt.

I took the taxi home with trepidation. Tlie flat was a mess. They had stolen a couple of things, some gold cuff links my parents had given me for my eighteenth birthday, and the video recorder. And my Apple Mac.

Oh, shit! There was three years' worth of unfinished thesis on that! I fell into the sofa and stared at the space on the desk where it had been. Now, think! It can't be that bad. Under the desk were three cardboard boxes. My notes. Please, God, let me have kept the rough printouts!

I rushed to the boxes and tore them open. My notes

were all there and drafts of three of the chapters. But the rest? All gone. I put my head in my hands. It would take months just to re-create what I had written.

I sat on the floor, surrounded by the debris of the attack. Books were every^where, drawers were flung open. My body ached, my head was befuddled. I had no job. I had months of boring rewriting ahead of me. And Isabel was either dead or shut up in some flea pit thousands of miles away.

The phone rang. I crawled over to the patch of floor where it lay and picked it up.

''Hallo."

"Nick?"

I felt cold. I recognized the deep voice. It was Eduardo.

"Yes?"

"How are you doing?"

"You know damn well how Fm doing. You just had me beaten up and my place wrecked!"

"You've been attacked? Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that." Eduardo made no attempt to hide the mockery in his voice. "Now, remember, I'm watching you. And I want you to keep quiet, do you understand me?"

"Fuck you!" I shouted and slammed down the phone.

Tidying up took me a long time. I was dispirited, stiff, and slow. I was interrupted by a police officer, who came to take details of what was missing. I told him. I also told him about Eduardo's phone call. Why the hell not? I doubted very much that they would be able to find any evidence to link him to the attack, but it might make his life a bit difficult. The policeman treated me a bit like a paranoid ex-employee, which of course I was, but he promised to look into it further.

I finally finished clearing up and rang Russell Church,

the head of my old department at the School of Russian Studies.

''Nick, how are you? I was just about to phone you to thank you."

"Oh, really?" What the hell was he talking about?

"Yes. For the Dekker Ward sponsorship."

My heart sank. "What sponsorship?"

"I've just been on the phone with a man called Ross. He says that Dekker Ward would like to provide substantial commercial sponsorship to SRS. They'll start with a trial period of a year, and then see how it goes from there."

"In return for what?"

"Well, they will want access to some of our people and our contacts. They say they're planning to do more business in Russia. But they're willing to pay good commercial rates for any consulting work they commission. It's perfect. It's just the sort of external funding we need! Well done."

"Actually, I knew nothing about it."

"Oh. I rather assumed you were responsible. You must have made a good impression at any rate. So, how are things going there?"

"Well, they're not." I tried not to let my voice sound sulky, but I couldn't help it. "I've left. You said I should give you a call if I decided the City wasn't for me."

Russell was fuU of enthusiasm. "Well, now we might be able to find something for you here. We haven't thrashed out the details of the sponsorship deal yet. But perhaps you could take up some sort of liaison role."

I stopped him. "Wait a second, Russell. I'm not sure that would work. Dekker and I didn't see eye to eye when I left."

"Oh."

"What would be useful for me is if we could carry on

our conversation about openings at other universities. And rd like to use you as a reference, if I may."

It clicked. Russell's voice became more cautious. "OK. Let's have a chat."

"Tomorrow?"

"All right. Say eleven? See you then."

I was nervous as I knocked on Russell's half-opened door; as nervous as I had been the first time I met him for that interview five years before.

"Come in!"

I could see Russell had spoken to Dekker as soon as I entered. Neat, with thinning gray hair, he usually greeted me, beaming. This time he rose awkwardly from his desk and shook my hand, not meeting my eyes.

"Oh, hallo, Nick. Have a seat."

It was almost as though he wasn't expecting me. I perched on the small chair crammed against his desk. I recognized much of the debris that cluttered it. Admin. Piles of it. There was not a single page of Cyrillic script to be seen.

He removed his glasses and wiped them, frowning. "Now, what was it you wanted to talk about?"

"I need a job. I wondered if you knew of anything."

"I haven't heard of much since you left here. I think the post at Sheffield might still be open. There's a chance something might come up soon at the University of Surrey. Apart from tliat, not much."

This was my mentor, almost my friend over the last six years. The man who had gone out on a limb for me, despite my lack of formal qualifications in Russian. He could do better than that.

I had to know. "You will be able to provide me with a reference, won't you?"

A reference from Russell was crucial. He was well re-

spected in the academic community in the U.K. Worldwide, for that matter. Without a good one, I had no chance of getting a job.

The glasses came off again for another polish.

"That might be difficult," said Russell. "I can provide you with something, of course. But it will be difficult for me to make it enthusiastic."

"Why? What's wrong? What have they said to you?"

"Mr. Ross at Dekker Ward explained to me the circumstances under which you left their firm."

"Which Mr. Ross?"

Russell hesitated. "I think he said it was Eduardo Ross. Fm not sure."

"Oh, yes. And what did he say?"

Russell shifted in his chair. "He told me that you had been caught bribing the authorities in Brazil over a transaction there, that this had become public knowledge, and that they'd had to let you go."

"That's bullshit!"

"I've seen the newspaper article, Nick." He pulled out a photocopy of the article from Bocci's newspaper.

"But Dekker Ward planted that. I can show you another article that says the opposite!"

"Ross told me you had gone to the press behind their backs as well." Russell's demeanor had changed. He was leaning forward, his jaw jutting out, ready for confrontation.

"But don't you want to hear my side of the story?"

"OK. Fire away"

So I tried to explain. It was difficult without going into too much detail, but I thought I did a pretty good job of it. But Russell wasn't listerung. He didn't hear; he didn't want to hear.

When I had finished, he tapped his pencil on his desk. "Basically, Nick, it's your word against Dekker's.

and the Rio press/' He tapped the Bocci article in front of him. "And at this moment Dekker Ward is crucial to this institution's future. I can't afford to doubt them."

I'd had enough. "Russell! You're being bought!"

"That's an absurd accusation!"

"No, it's not. If I had come to you from a faceless City institution and said I wanted to go back into academia you wouldn't have asked any questions. It's only because these people are promising to pay you money that you're listening."

"I can't give you a reference in good faith when I know you've been involved in bribing government officials."

"You know no such thing. All you have is Eduardo Ross's word, that's all! This sponsorship comes with strings, and the first string is to ditch me. Your first commercial sponsorship deal, and within a day you're letting it compromise your independence!"

Russell held up his hands. "Now calm down, Nick. Let's talk about this Surrey post, shall we?"

"Forget it!" I said, and stormed out.

I pedaled back to Primrose Hill in record time, ignoring the pain in my aching back and leg. Russell's reaction was all too predictable but nonetheless severely disappointing. Since he had become head of the department three years ago, he had made conunercial sponsorship the central plank of his strategy for preserving the funding base of the department. Until now, he'd had little concrete success. His position internally within the School was not yet secure. And he was ambitious. So why give it all up for some promising Russian lecturer who still hadn't got his Ph.D. under his belt? Because that would have been the right thing to do!

Because he was my friend and supporter. Because the School of Russian Studies wasn't Dekker Ward.

Bastard!

So why had Dekker done it? Was I really that important to them that they wanted to shell out a million or two to keep me out of work? I supposed it was an intelligent move on some level. The School of Russian Studies did have good contacts and knowledge of Russia that Ricardo could tap. And of course, all Russell had at the moment was promises; Dekker would have plenty of opportunity to back out before they actually put up hard cash.

I stopped at the pub just around the comer from my flat and bought a pint and a ham sandwich. I thought practicalities. It would be very hard to get a job teaching Russian in a university now. And I probably couldn't get another job in the City even if I wanted it. I still had six months or so to go on my Ph.D., not including the three or four months it would take just to get me back to where Fd left it. I should probably get my head down and finish that. I had three thousand pounds in my bank account, mostly the residue from the money Ricardo had lent me for clothes. I would try to live on that.

The mortgage payments on my flat were once again going to be impossible to meet. There was still no chance of selling it for more than the amount of the loan. I looked at the ham sandwich in front of me. I wouldn't be able to eat out like this in future.

And what future? I looked toward it with an almost total lack of interest. If Isabel was around, or even if I knew she was alive, things would be different. But the uncertainty surrounding her disappearance weighed on me, dragging me down into a sort of pessimistic apathy. I was losing the ability to believe in her survival, and without that, the future looked unbearably gray.

I went back to the flat. It was almost tidy now. Workmen had put up a temporary door where the French windows had been. They would install something more permanent in the afternoon. Luckily the insurance covered that.

I paced through the four small rooms: kitchen, sitting room, bathroom, and bedroom. It would be a shame to leave. When Joanna had first bought it, the fl^t had seemed extravagant, and then it had become a millstone. But there were all those l>ookshelves that I had spent hours, no days putting up, shelves that ingeniously held two thousand books. There was the tiny garden: I knew every plant, every weed.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, a rush of anger swept through me. I risked losing my flat because of Dekker. I had screwed up my career because of them. They had arranged to have me beaten up. Who the heU did these people think they were? Couldn't I do something to stop them? Or at least something to hurt them? I wanted revenge, and I wanted it right then.

But what? Exposing Ricardo's manipulation of Bocci had hurt them, but not enough. They would recover soon. I wanted to do something that would cause them pernnanent harm.

But what could I do? One unemployed investment banker with two months' experience. I'd have loved to have been able to blow this money-laundering thing up in their faces. But it would require an extensive international investigation to uncover more, and it didn't look like the DEA was about to start one, at least not into Dekker itself. I believed Dave when he talked about the indifference of the U.K. authorities.

I hated the feeling of powerlessness. There had to be something I could do.

My brooding was interrupted by the phone.

"Nick? It's Kate. I heard the terrible news. I was just phoning to see how you were."

"Which terrible news?"

I caught the hesitation on the other end of the phone. "Well both things, I suppose. Isabel. And then you losing your job. It must be awful."

"It is. And I've been broken into and beaten up."

"Oh, God! When?"

"The night before last."

"Were you badly hurt?"

"I was knocked out. My head still hurts. And my back. And leg," I said, moving my stiff leg into a more comfortable position.

"What are you going to do now?"

"Rewrite my thesis, I suppose. Maybe try to finish it."

"Can't you get another job?"

"No. Dekker Ward has suddenly decided to sponsor the School of Russian Studies. My continued unemployment is the condition."

"Oh, no, that's terrible. Look, why don't you come here for supper this evening? You can stay the night, and worry about sorting the flat out tomorrow."

Suddenly there was nothing I wanted more than to do what Kate suggested.