taken the only available space. Quarry was left standing sweating in his ski jacket.
He said, ‘But surely if you did make money then you could use the profits to pay for more research? It would be what you’re trying to do now, only on a vastly bigger scale. I don’t want to be rude, man, but look around. You need to get some proper premises, more reliable utilities, fibre optics…’
‘Perhaps a cleaner?’ Gabrielle had added.
‘She’s right, you know – a cleaner wouldn’t hurt. Look, Alex – here’s my card. I’m going to be in the area for the next week or so. Why don’t we meet up and talk this through?’
Hoffmann had taken the card and put it in his pocket without looking at it. ‘Maybe.’
At the door Quarry had bent down and whispered to Gabrielle, ‘Do you need a ride? I’m driving back to Chamonix. I can drop you in town somewhere.’
‘It’s all right, thanks.’ A smile as sweet as acid. ‘I thought I might stay here for a while and settle your bet.’
‘Suit yourself, darling, but have you seen the bedroom? Best of bloody luck.’
Quarry had put up the seed money himself, used his annual bonus to move Hoffmann and his computers into an office in Geneva: he needed a place where he could bring prospective clients and impress them with the hardware. His wife had complained. Why couldn’t his long-discussed start-up be based in London? Wasn’t he always telling her that the City was the hedge-fund capital of the world? But Geneva was part of the attraction to Quarry: not just the lower tax, but the chance for a clean break. He had never had any intention of moving his family to Switzerland – not that he told them that, or even acknowledged it to himself. But the truth was, domesticity was a stock that no longer suited his portfolio. He was bored with it. It was time to sell up and move on.
He decided they should call themselves Hoffmann Investment Technologies in a nod to Jim Simons’s legendary quant shop, Renaissance Technologies, over in Long Island: the daddy of all algorithmic hedge funds. Hoffmann had objected strongly – the first time Quarry had encountered his mania for anonymity – but Quarry was insistent: he saw from the start that Hoffmann’s mystique as a mathematics genius, like that of Jim Simons, would be an important part of selling the product. AmCor agreed to act as prime brokers and to let Quarry take some of his old clients with him in return for a reduced management fee and ten per cent of the action. Then Quarry had hit the road of investors’ conferences, moving from city to city in the US and across Europe, pulling his wheeled suitcase through fifty different airports. He had loved this part – loved being a salesman, he who travels alone, walking in cold to an air-conditioned conference room in a strange hotel overlooking some sweltering freeway and charming a sceptical audience. His method was to show them the independently back-tested results of Hoffmann’s algorithm and the mouth-watering projections of future returns, then break it to them that the fund was already closed: he had only fulfilled his engagement to speak in order to be polite but they didn’t need any more money, sorry. Afterwards the investors would come looking for him in the hotel bar; it worked nearly every time.
Quarry had hired a guy from BNP Paribas to oversee the back office, a receptionist, a secretary, and a French fixed-income trader from AmCor who had run into some regulatory issues and needed to get out of London fast. On the technical side, Hoffmann had recruited an astrophysicist from CERN and a Polish mathematics professor to serve as quants. They had run simulations throughout the summer and had gone live in October 2002 with $107 million in assets under management. They had made a profit in the first month and had gone on doing so ever since.
Quarry paused in his tale to let Leclerc’s cheap ballpoint catch up with his flow of words.
And to answer his other questions: no, he was not sure exactly when Gabrielle had moved in with Hoffmann: he and Alex had never seen one another much socially; besides, he had been travelling a lot that first year. No, he had not attended their wedding: it had been one of those solipsistic ceremonies conducted at sunset on a Pacific beach somewhere, with two hotel employees as witnesses and no family or friends in attendance. And no, he had not been told that Hoffmann had had a mental breakdown at CERN, although he had guessed it: when he went to the loo in his apartment that first night, he had rummaged through Hoffmann’s bathroom cabinet (as one does) and found a veritable mini-pharmacy of antidepressants – mirtazapine, lithium, fluvoxamine – he couldn’t remember them all exactly, but it had looked pretty serious.
‘That didn’t put you off going into business with him?’
‘What? The fact he wasn’t “normal”? Good Lord, no. To quote Bill Clinton – not necessarily a fount of wisdom in all circumstances, I grant you, but right in this one – “normalcy is overrated: most normal people are assholes”.’
‘And you have no idea where Dr Hoffmann is at this moment?’
‘No, I do not.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘At lunch. The Beau-Rivage.’
‘So he left without explanation?’
‘That’s Alex.’
‘Did he seem agitated?’
‘Not especially.’ Quarry swung his feet off the desk and buzzed his assistant. ‘Is Alex back yet, do we know?’
‘No, Hugo. Sorry. Incidentally, Gana just called. The Risk Committee is waiting for you in his office. He’s trying to get hold of Alex urgently. There’s a problem, apparently.’
‘You surprise me. What is it now?’
‘He said to tell you that “VIXAL is lifting the delta hedge”. He said you’d know what that meant.’
‘Okay, thanks. Tell them I’m on my way.’ Quarry released the switch and looked thoughtfully at the intercom. ‘I’m going to have to leave you, I’m afraid.’ For the first time he felt a definite spasm of anxiety in the pit of his stomach. He glanced across the desk at Leclerc, who was regarding him intently, and suddenly he realised he had been gabbling away much too freely: the copper didn’t seem to be investigating the break-in any more so much as investigating Hoffmann.
‘Is that important?’ Leclerc nodded at the intercom. ‘The delta hedge?’
‘It is rather. Will you excuse me? My assistant will show you out.’
He left abruptly without shaking hands, and soon afterwards Leclerc found himself being conducted back across the trading floor, preceded by Quarry’s glamorous red-headed gatekeeper in her low-cut sweater. She seemed in a hurry to get him out of there, which naturally made him slow his pace. He noticed how the atmosphere had changed. Here and there around the room several groups of three or four were gathered in anxious tableaux around a screen, with one person seated, clicking on a mouse, and the others leaning over his shoulders; occasionally someone would point to a graph or a column of figures. And now Leclerc was reminded much less of a seminary and more of doctors assembled at the bedside of a patient displaying grave and baffling symptoms. On one of the big TV screens a network was showing pictures of an aircraft crashing. Standing beneath the TV was a man in a dark suit and tie. He was preoccupied, sending a text message on his mobile phone, and it took Leclerc a moment to recollect who it was.
‘Genoud,’ he muttered to himself, and then more loudly, moving towards him, ‘Maurice Genoud!’ at which Genoud looked up from his texting – and was it Leclerc’s imagination, or did his narrow features tense slightly at the sight of this figure bearing down on him from his past?
He said warily, ‘Jean-Philippe.’ They shook hands.
‘Maurice Genoud. You’ve put on weight.’ Leclerc turned to Quarry’s assistant. ‘Would you excuse us a moment, mademoiselle? We’re old friends. You’ll see me out, won’t you, Maurice? Let me look at you, lad. Quite the prosperous civilian nowadays, I see.’
Smiles did not come naturally to Genoud; it was a pity he bothered, thought Leclerc.
‘And you? I’d heard you’d retired, Jean-Philippe.’
Leclerc said, ‘Next year. I can’t wait. Tell me, what on earth do they do here?’ He gestured to the trading floor. ‘Presumably you can understand it. I’m too old to get my head around it.’
‘I don’t know either. I’m just paid to keep them safe.’
‘Well you’re not doing a very good job of it!’ Leclerc clapped him on the shoulder. Genoud scowled. ‘I’m only joking. But seriously, what do you make of this business? A bit odd, wouldn’t you say, having all that security and then allowing a complete stranger to wander in off the street and attack you? Did you install it, I wonder?’
Genoud moistened his lips before replying, and Leclerc thought, he’s playing for time; that’s what he used to do back in the Boulevard Carl-Vogt when he was trying to think up some story. He’d distrusted the younger man
