Eventually they got around to business. He asked why she had wanted to see him. She told him the truth, more or less: She worked for the same part of the CIA as Howard Egan, and had been asked to conduct an investigation into his disappearance. She hoped she could spend some time at Alphabet Capital, reviewing Egan’s trading files and communications, and spending time with his colleagues.
“What are you looking for?” asked Perkins.
“I don’t know yet. But somehow Howard’s cover was blown. The people who kidnapped him knew he wasn’t just working for a hedge fund. I need to find out whether there was a leak.”
“There’s always a leak,” said Perkins, taking off his glasses and looking into her eyes, a few inches away. “Half the people in this room are trying to get inside my computer system right now, trying to figure out whether I am long Argentine government debt or short, or buying Hong Kong equities or selling.”
“This leak is dangerous, Mr. Perkins. We need help. We have to find it and turn it off.”
Perkins nodded, trying to match her seriousness. His forelock fell across his forehead, making him look improbably young.
“I’m game. What am I going to tell my people about you? I mean, if you’re going to spend time on our trading floor, they’re going to wonder what the hell is going on.”
“Tell them I’m a tryout,” said Marx perkily. “Tell them you’re thinking of hiring me as an analyst. I couldn’t pass as a trader, but anyone can be an analyst, right?”
“What are you going to analyze? This work isn’t completely mindless, you know.”
“I used to work in Beirut. I know about oil. So tell people that’s what I’m doing. I’m on a tryout as an energy analyst. Then you can fire me when I’m done.”
“Well, you can’t have too many energy analysts, right? What did you do in Beirut?”
“I don’t know you well enough to answer that,” she said, with a look halfway between shy and sly. “Let’s just say you would have found me entertaining. Spectator sport, except you wouldn’t have understood the game.”
“That’s tantalizing.”
“It’s all you’re going to get.”
Sophie Marx couldn’t have explained why she was flirting with him. Perhaps it was the wine, or the fact that he was better-looking than she had expected. Maybe it was that he was so rich. Sophie had grown up poor with her screwball parents, moving from beach shanty to boat to day hotel, one of them always running off with someone else. There was something inescapably pleasurable about money.
As they were eating dessert, a big, drunken Irishman stumbled toward the table. Sophie had seen him at the bar when she arrived, already inebriated and making too much noise. As he neared Perkins’s chair, he plopped his large bottom on Perkins’s lap and began to moan.
“Oh, it feels so good. Oh, it’s getting hard.” He was trying to be funny.
“Hello, Seamus. Get off my fucking lap.” Perkins gave him a shove.
The big man stood up and bowed unsteadily in Sophie’s direction.
“Sorry, miss. Inside joke.”
“Get lost, Seamus, now. Don’t embarrass yourself any more than you already have.”
“You know, Perkins, you really are an ungrateful cunt. Did you know that?”
Perkins stood up. The bartender and a burly waiter had arrived by now, to escort the loudmouth to the door.
“Go home, Seamus. Stop making an ass of yourself. Come back tomorrow and try to make some money.”
The Irishman wobbled off, flanked by the bouncers. “You are a cunt ,” he said again loudly. “A selfish, ungrateful cunt.”
Perkins shook his head. “I’m sorry about that.”
Sophie leaned toward him and put her hand on his arm.
“What was that all about?” she said. “Why did he use that language?”
“He’s just a loser, that’s all. He’s ruined. His fund is shutting down. Nobody will lend him any more money. He thinks it’s my fault.”
“Why does he think that?”
“Who knows? Because I’m still solvent and he isn’t. We were on opposing sides in some trades. I won and he lost. He asked for a loan, and I said no. His problem is that he is untalented and unlucky, in that order.”
“Well, I must say, that was entertaining: a floor show. You didn’t really get hard when he sat on you, did you?”
Perkins laughed out loud, to Sophie’s relief. He ordered a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem to drink with dessert.
Toward the end of the evening, she got serious. She didn’t want to break the mood, but she had to give him some news so that he could begin making plans.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” she said.
“Something nice?”
She shook her head.
“Howard Egan is dead,” she said quietly. “The Pakistani police are issuing a statement. They’re saying he died in a hiking accident. They will send the coffin here, and we’ll take care of the rest. You’ll want to tell your people. There will be stories in the newspapers, probably. We need to get ready for that.”
She removed a piece of paper from her purse and handed it to him. It was the text of the statement that the Pakistanis would be issuing.
Perkins glanced at it and lowered his head. When he looked up, Marx could see that his eyes were moist, not quite tears.
“I really liked Howard. You know, he didn’t want to do your job anymore. He wanted to stop. He told me that the last time I saw him. He asked me if he could have a real job at Alphabet Capital, instead of a fake job.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said he would be bored. I told him that all we did at Alphabet Capital was make money.”
Perkins’s car and driver were waiting outside. He invited her to come back to his townhouse in Ennismore Gardens for a nightcap, or visit Annabel’s in Berkeley Square. She was tempted, even though she had just flown across the ocean and knew for a certainty that it was a bad idea. She said she would take a rain check.
Perkins insisted on driving her to her hotel. It was an old pile near Marble Arch that had been remodeled by an American hotel chain. Its virtue for Marx was that it wouldn’t bust her per diem. Perkins feigned shock when the driver opened the door at this most ordinary address.
“This won’t do. Not for you. Tell your boss that I won’t talk to you anymore unless you move to someplace more appropriate. This place is insecure: Nobody working for me in real life would ever stay here. It’s a dead giveaway. I suggest the Dorchester. It’s near my office, and it’s where you would stay.”
She moved to the Dorchester first thing the next morning. They gave her a grand room overlooking Hyde Park. Mr. Perkins had called ahead.
20
The trading room at Alphabet Capital was a hedgerow of computer screens, two and sometimes three to a desk. It wasn’t a tidy office. Nobody on the floor wore a tie, one man was dressed in shorts and sandals, and several of the men had ponytails longer than Sophie Marx’s. It didn’t matter what you looked like, evidently, so long as you made money. There were a lot of Asian faces on the trading floor, many Indians and some Pakistanis, it appeared. That was a worry now.
Marx arrived at nine-thirty dressed in a blue suit and a white blouse, much too sensible an outfit for the trading floor. Perkins’s secretary, whose name was Mona, walked her over to see the director of Human Resources. He found her a desk at the far end of the floor where the analysts sat. It had just one computer screen. The morning was spent in tutorials on the Bloomberg Terminal.
