Zero Alternative (25 page)

‘
Maybe. But no one needs to get hurt, if you tell me what I want to know. Where is Walker?
’

Luigi struggled to a sitting position, staring wide-eyed at the Australian
. ‘
I… I don’t know, I haven’t seen him…
’

Pienaar’s small gun went off, a muffled sound coming from the silencer. The Italian jumped back as the bullet dug a hole right between his legs
.

‘
Wrong answer
.’
The Aussie circled quickly and reached out to the massive window overlooking the lake, drawing one of the curtains closed. He was about to pull the second one when Luigi shot up and sprang around the sofa, trying to reach his study
.

Pienaar turned in a flash and cut across, diving after him. His hand locked around the broker’s ankle and Luigi tumbled forward, banging his head on a side table and rolling to the floor, groaning
.

The Aussie spat on him, his features twisted in a mask of fury. He lowered his gun into the Italian’s face, pointing it at his forehead
.

‘
You’re a feisty one, yes?
’
His lips turned up in a rictus of savage glee
. ‘
I like those
.’

‘
Please…
’
Luigi panted, his pupils swivelling towards the barrel
. ‘
I have no idea…
’

‘
Turn around
.’

‘
What?
’

Pienaar pulled the Beretta back and lashed at the broker’s face with the barrel, dropping him to the floor again. He picked up his rucksack and snarled
, ‘
If you are not kneeling, palms on the floor, by the count of three, I swear I’ll kill you right now
.’

Luigi coughed, blood dripping from his broken nose. He pushed back on his hands and tried to sit up
.

‘
One…
’

Mosha hurried along a cobbled road, leaving behind a large group of French tourists. After a few steps he swore and tracked back into a side street: it was so narrow and twisty that there were no balconies above them, and Walker realised he could touch both walls without extending his arms
fully. They walked on in silence for a couple of minutes, following the sharp angles as the alley became even smaller, only a sliver of dusky light falling through the buildings.

‘Where are we going?’

‘The Bottini.’ Mosha stopped in front of a low wooden door that looked a thousand years old. He pulled out a key and turned the rusty lock, swinging it back into darkness and disappearing. Walker followed him inside and the big Serb closed the door behind them, fumbling in the pitch-black entrance. A click echoed, and a string of dim light bulbs lit up a narrow stone corridor, with ancient steps disappearing lower into the ground. The air was musky and humid – Walker coughed, shivering with mild claustrophobia.

‘Bottini?’

‘The medieval water-system for Siena. Twenty miles of tunnels, below the city. It’s from the thirteenth century, abandoned now but still useful.’

‘Great.’

‘I have an office down here.’

‘Are you kidding me?’

The Serb grunted and started descending the steep stone staircase, quickly disappearing from view. ‘Afraid of the dark? There’s only rats, I think. Tourists visit another area, below the Palazzo Ducale.’

‘And you have an
office
?’

‘You know Colle is our main bank. I come to Tuscany too often for my liking, and we sometimes need secure lines of communication. Follow me and be careful; it’s slippery down below.’

Walker sighed. ‘As you say, chief.’

Mosha continued into the ancient maze, choosing his way seemingly at random among the stone corridors, going up and down worn steps until they reached a rusted iron door, barely illuminated by the last flickering light bulb. The Serb pulled out a thin magnetic card and pressed it to the centre of the doorframe, waiting.

Something clicked and a stone near the side shifted. Mosha dislodged it, revealing a gleaming steel-and-glass sensor, then rested his thumb on it. The rusted panel sprang open and he pushed it back, turning to glance at Walker. ‘Welcome to my den.’

Luigi struggled to a kneeling position and looked up at his tormentor, wondering what the man had in mind. His heart thumped and his head swam in pain; he tried to force his breathing slower and raised a hand to clear the blood from his nose
.

The Australian pulled out what looked like a second, larger gun from his bag and walked around the sofa, slipping behind him
. ‘
Put your hands on the floor in front of you, and keep staring ahead
.’

‘
What…?
’

The silenced handgun went off again, and a shower of plaster fell from the ceiling, near his feet. Luigi followed the order and closed his eyes, images of his wife and daughter flashing in the darkness. Thanking God that they were away, he felt a cloth slip around his head to tighten on his mouth. Then a loud noise, followed by a shock of unbelievable pain from the back of his leg
.

Luigi screamed but the cloth muffled him, before another popping sound caused a second, monstrous explosion in his other knee. He fell forward and blackness overtook him as the floor crashed into his face
.

‘Hackernym.’ Mosha leaned back in his plush chair, staring at the ceiling.

The hidden office was a high-tech space filled with monitors and computers, with a small side bathroom and even room for a secretary in a closed-up corner. Dozens of monitors covered the walls, the largest one silently tuned to Bloomberg TV and CNBC. ‘Those cyber-pirates are the only ones who might be able to figure something like this out.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because they did it to me!’ The Serb groaned and stood up, pacing about the narrow room. ‘They first called about eighteen months ago, threatening to expose a few of my… investors. They had all sort of insider documents, amazing.’

‘Hackernym broke through your firewalls? Nothing ever came out, though.’ Walker was nonplussed, and suspicious. Why was Mosha opening up so much? The DeepShare data he’d been shown was good, but he’d hardly offered anything until then. Maybe he was in more trouble than
Walker thought.

‘How did you stop it?’

‘We cut a deal.’ Mosha sat back down with a grimace and poured himself a whiskey from a squat crystal bottle, offering a second one to Walker. ‘I give them stuff, and they keep quiet.’

‘Stuff? You mean money?’

‘No. Data, information. They have plenty of money, I think.’

‘What type of information?’

‘All sorts. From central banks’ backdoor meetings to political pressures, anything. The murkier it is, the happier they are.’

Walker hesitated, surprised. Hackernym had pulled a few spectacular stunts in the last few years, like attacking the servers at Eurex or paralyzing Wall Street’s settlements for a couple of hours, but they weren’t known for any Wikileaks-type operation. They seemed more like a cyber-terror underground, trying to cause havoc in payments and financial market systems, attacking the infrastructure. ‘Why?’

‘No clue. But I got the feeling we were only small fish to them.’ The Serb chuckled, his fat jowls wobbling.

‘With over ten billion under management?’

Mosha nodded and finished his drink with a gulp. ‘Yep. Those guys, they’re very smart. And I think they are planning something… scary big. But they hold me by the balls.’

‘Do you know if anybody else…?’

‘Know? No.’ Mosha shrugged. ‘We all have our secrets, and weaknesses. But when their name comes up in casual conversation – I’ve seen a few worried faces. Famous faces, in our world.’

‘I had no idea.’ Walker paused, considering.
Maybe
. He needed all the help he could get.

‘Few do. You should talk to them. They might find your story interesting.’

‘How?’

‘I’ll make a call. Hackernym has a man in Rome, I think.’

Rome was only two hours away. An easy call. ‘Great. I can go tomorrow.’

‘Okay.’ Mosha poured another drink and gestured at one of the monitors, switching it to a screenful of data. Walker recognised some of the analysis he had been sending over in the previous week. ‘Now let’s talk business, Yours.’

Luigi woke slowly, his blurred eyes struggling to focus. He tried to lift his cheek from the floor and his head exploded in pain, but his mouth refused to open in a scream, some sort of tape sealing it shut. He groaned instead, staring at the gleaming steel circle that stuck out from the back of his right hand
.

His bruised brain failed to comprehend what was happening for a second, before recoiling in horror
.

A nail
.

His right hand had been NAILED to the floor
.

Suppressing another scream, Luigi shifted his weight to his left palm and more pain shot up from his legs, almost breaking him. His head turned inch by inch, carefully, as he pushed off the floor on his good arm. He couldn’t shift his knees…

The agony coursed through him like fire, as if sight had reawakened his shattered nerves. Two more large metal heads stuck out from the back of his legs, the steel going through his kneecaps. He was… almost crucified. His eyes started watering as fear and suffering flowed through his body, in waves, relentless like the tide
.

Luigi blacked out again for an instant, but came back immediately as his face struck the floor, searing lightning into his mind. His chest shook in muffled heaves as his eyes refocused on a pair of scuffed brown shoes, just inches away
.

He looked up into the Australian’s placid eyes and tried to open his mouth. To plead, to beg. Anything, just to make the pain stop
.

Pienaar grunted and cleared his throat, a slight smile on his thin lips
. ‘
Now you’ll behave better, won’t you?
’

Luigi nodded, the tiny movement spreading more fire through his limbs
.

The Australian knelt lower, taking the Italian’s good hand almost tenderly, and lifted the nail-gun from the floor
. ‘
I’ll pull the tape off your mouth in a second, mate. But there’s something I need to finish off, first
.’

Luigi watched the weapon move up in slow motion, drifting through the air. He let the big man push his left hand down without resistance, the rational part of him already broken, unable to fight
.

The kiss of the steel barrel on the back of his hand was cool, quite pleasant
.

Then a click, and hell opened up for him as iron went though flesh, his hand now entombed on the floor. Luigi thought it looked a bit like a dead crab on a brown beach, waiting for the tide. Then, thankfully, darkness overtook him again
.

Underground Blood

‘The market swings you forecast were impressive, and the logs match.’ Mosha sat back and grabbed another one of Walker’s cigarettes, putting it in his mouth unlit. ‘And how Deep predicted the Italian mess… that’s just astonishing.’

‘There’s more. It thinks the Euro could really break because of this. Rossini, Spain…’

‘What probability?’

‘Over sixty per cent. In less than five months.’

‘Shit. And I can’t get my hedge fund out of this fucking country.’

Walker smiled and lit his own Marlboro. ‘There might be a way.’

‘No. I’ve tried, but Banca Colle is basically state-run now, since the morons almost went bust a few years ago. The Minister and the Bank of Italy know where our capital comes from and they won’t go after it – if I leave it here. But I’m not allowed to take it out.’

‘Still, you can manage the fund as you want.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you have credit lines abroad. That you could lever up, in London and the US.’

‘They won’t let me hedge for Italian or Eurozone risk, here or abroad. It sends bad signals, apparently. That was made
very
clear.’

‘What about betting against a big bank, like people did in ’08? You might even get to do a good deed, for once.’

‘Maybe.’ Mosha looked at him askance, trying to guess where this was going.

Walker took a deep breath and sipped his drink, his mind rushing through the steps he’d been working on for the last few days. He pulled the tablet out of his backpack and logged onto DeepShare.

‘If you set up the trade correctly,’ he said, ‘taking one side in Italy and splitting the opposite hedge abroad, you could lose here and make the money back in safe havens. A small risk if the bet doesn’t come off, but if it works you effectively transfer a big chunk of your cash wherever you want, Switzerland, Cayman, anywhere.’

The Serb stood up again, his eyes losing focus as he started considering the process. He was silent for a couple of minutes, pacing, then came over to Walker’s chair, his hand out for a lighter. ‘I need to think about it.’

‘It could be almost symmetrical. Or you could go all-in, and make a fortune abroad.’

‘Only if there’s an event that suits. Something that will make my big trades look unimportant.’

‘Deep seems to think that something bad is brewing at a bank. A massive one.’

Mosha stepped aside, staring at one of the screens flashing through market information. A few graphs appeared and vanished as he gestured at the monitor, then he took a long drag of smoke and coughed. ‘The market is awfully quiet for something like that to be lurking in the background.’

‘It was the same when the London Whale almost sank JP Morgan. Or when Long-Term Capital went under.’ Walker sniggered. ‘You never know what investment banks are running, and when it’ll blow up. Maybe someone liked Italian assets way too much. Or maybe something exotic we have yet no idea about will crack.’

‘And your software has forecast this?’

‘Possibly. Your capital might be the final trigger that Deep is looking for.’

Mosha shrugged and finished his own drink. ‘So you say. But for something like this, logs are not enough. I’d need my tech people to look at your DeepShare. The entire code.’

Walker nodded, expecting this. ‘I guessed as much. But I don’t have Omega with me now.’