The Predator Page 3

  At university Chris had become so fed up with having to spell his name twice at every bureaucratic opportunity that he had gone as far as gathering the forms required to change it by deed poll. But he had stopped at the moment of filling in the new name: 'Shipton' was what he had actually chosen. Szczypiorski was his father's name and he didn't have enough of his father left. He would just have to tolerate it. At least he was able to shorten his first name from Krzysztof to Chris easily enough.

  'Who is this bloke, Rudy Moss?' Duncan asked. 'Did you see the look he gave me when I suggested going out for a drink? It was as though I'd told him his sister was a lesbian.'

  'He's an asshole,' said Alex. 'There are a bunch of people like that on the programme. He's just the worst. Don't take any notice of him.'

  'What do you mean?' asked Duncan.

  'We've spent six months with them,' said Alex. 'A lot of them are brown-nosers. They think if they kiss the right ass, they'll get the best job. And it's not just that, they want to be first to kiss ass. That's Rudy's specialty.'

  Duncan grimaced.

  'There's a culture of competition here,' explained Eric. 'We're all supposed to be competing against each other for the best jobs and the best scores on the programme. Guys like Rudy Moss have bought into all that.'

  'But not you?' said Chris.

  'I guess I'm a team player. I like to work with my peers rather than against them.'

  'So what on earth are you doing at Bloomfield Weiss?' asked Ian. 'That hardly seems the company line.'

  Eric smiled, and shrugged. 'Calhoun was right. Bloomfield Weiss is the best on the Street. I'll go with the best, but I'll do it my way.'

  They all nodded solemnly, apart from Alex, who laughed. 'Don't give me that bullshit. "Doing it your way" means coming home blasted at three in the morning, and not getting up till noon the next day.'

  'I like that attitude!' said Lenka enthusiastically.

  Eric grinned. 'Hey. You're talking about a Bloomfield Weiss investment banker here.'

  Duncan finished his beer. 'Well, I suppose we'd better be going if we're going to make a dent in all that work they gave us.'

  And so they headed uptown on their different coloured subway lines. Chris, Ian and Duncan made their way back towards the apartment they shared on the Upper East Side, Duncan being very careful this time not to assault a whole carriage full of commuters. But he did spend most of the journey speculating on Lenka's charms. She had clearly made an impression. Chris could understand Duncan's point of view, but he was determined to remain faithful to Tamara, his girlfriend back in London. Idle lusting after Lenka wouldn't help.

  The cold night air bit into Chris's cheeks, and helped clear his brain of some of the jumbled financial concepts he had tried to cram into it over the previous three hours. It was early April, and it was supposed to be spring, but it felt to Chris as though there was a frost in the air. He hunched into his old leather jacket and headed along a cross street towards Fifth Avenue and Central Park. On either side of the street awnings reached out from the warm yellow glow of marble lobbies, where uniformed doormen stared blankly into the night.

  Already the work was piling up, and he was finding it hard to make sense of it. He had tried to dust the cobwebs off the maths he had learned at school, but that wasn't enough. Discounted cash flow, modified duration, internal rate of return, what did they all mean? And how could he possibly figure it all out by Wednesday?

  He had done his best to keep quiet when Duncan had spoken anxiously about the training programme. He had his own fears, but he felt it was better to keep them to himself. Ian had perfected the art of confidence, and from what he had seen so far of the world of work, he was sure that that was one of the keys to success. If you didn't know it, pretend you did, and hope no one found out.

  But on the training programme, they would find out. Professor Waldern would find out the next morning when he asked Chris to explain modified duration. Or Calhoun would find out after the exams he had promised them. Duncan was right. It would be a hell of a shame if after all this struggle he was kicked out.

  Chris had worked hard to get to New York. Bloody hard. It had started at eleven, when, with long hours of help and encouragement from his mother, he had scraped into the local grammar school. He had struggled through O- and A-levels, and had surprised himself with the grades he had achieved. He had applied for a place at Oxford to read history. He hadn't wanted to do it, he thought it was a waste of time, but Tony Harris, his history teacher, had persuaded him. Much to his surprise, the Polish boy with the Yorkshire accent was offered a place at Lady Margaret Hall. His mother was overjoyed. She had said that she had always known he could do it, that he had his father's brains. He knew that wasn't quite true, but he felt that his father, wherever he was, was proud of him. And that made Chris feel very good.

  Oxford, and more work. Then the big problem of finding a job afterwards. The recession was beginning to bite: employers were slashing their budgets for graduate trainees. Some regular employers didn't even bother recruiting.

  The competition was intense. Chris knew little about the companies who visited the university, but he applied to fifteen of them, including Bloomfield Weiss. Most rejected him, many without even offering him an interview. In his darker moments he blamed Szczypiorski for that, although he didn't have the string of extra-curricular activities, the carefully constructed CV, of someone like Ian Darwent. But at Bloomfield Weiss he went all the way. Eventually they asked him to the firm's smart offices in Broadgate, in the City, and he was grilled by five different bankers. They all liked him, he could tell. They liked the fact that he came from Halifax, they liked his Polish name, and they liked the determination that they knew breathed within him. When one morning he had gone to the porter's lodge and found the letter with the words Bloomfield Weiss engraved on it, he had known what it would say. They wanted him. And he wanted them. Although it was the only job offer he received, it was the one he most desired.

  Now he was one of sixty overachievers. Sixty men and women who had come top of their class in whatever had been thrown at them. Sixty winners. Winners like Ian Darwent, Eric Astle, Alex Lubron, or the dreadful Rudy Moss. And from those sixty winners, the training programme would squeeze fifteen losers. One of them might well be Duncan. Another might be Chris.

  He reached the low wall on Fifth Avenue that bordered Central Park. He looked over it into the gloom and mystery of the park, ringed with the bright lights of Manhattan's tall buildings. He should go back and get some sleep. There would be a lot to learn the next day. With a sigh he realized that there would be a lot to learn every day for the next five months. Well, he would keep his doubts quiet and his head down, and do his damnedest to make sure he wasn't one of those fifteen losers.

  2

  The work was hard. They used the 'case method', which had been invented at Harvard Law School and adapted by business schools around the country. It involved reading a 'case', which was a detailed account of a realistic problem faced by a business, chosen to illustrate a particular financial concept. This was then discussed in class. The professor would pick on some poor individual to start off the discussion and then bombard him or her with follow-up questions. At its best, this could be a fascinating way of examining the issues. At its worst, it was a series of public humiliations for those involved.

  The difficulty wasn't just getting through the cases the night before. In order to understand them, the trainees had to plough through pages of heavy textbooks. They were expected to grasp at least one complicated concept each night.

  Professor Waldern oversaw two of the courses in the early months of the programme: Capital Markets and Bond Math. These also happened to be the two most important subjects. A good understanding of bond mathematics was vital if you were going to trade or sell the things later on. Waldern was an excellent teacher: he could make the most mundane financial principles seem interesting and exciting. He would tease out glimpses of the solution of a case fr
om different members of the class, and then, under his guidance, the concepts would seem to fall into place. Chris found his sessions intellectually stimulating and exhausting.

  But Waldern was also a bully. Duncan was petrified from the outset that he would be called upon to start the class off, and indeed it happened, on the third day. Chris knew that Duncan had spent hours on the case the night before, about an airline deciding whether it should borrow through a fixed-rate bond issue, or a floating-rate loan. But Duncan just hadn't understood it. He started off waffling, repeating the introduction to the case itself, and Waldern sensed blood. He spent twenty minutes proving to Duncan, himself and the rest of the class, that Duncan had not grasped the most basic principles of how a fixed-rate bond worked. Needless to say, Duncan was a wreck. Some of the trainees, such as Rudy Moss, tittered at the spectacle. Chris was furious. He tried to call out some of the answers, but Waldern was having none of it.

  Professor Waldern wasn't the only tough guy on the programme. Abby Hollis was a little Hitler. She was always to be seen scurrying around before and after class, nagging people left and right.

  Lenka's distrust of Abby turned to contempt after an incident in the second week of the programme. Lenka dressed dramatically. She eschewed the boxy suits of most of the American women; she wore stylish dresses, short skirts, tight blouses, cashmere sweaters and elegant silk scarves. She looked more like a Parisienne than a New Yorker. The men on the programme all loved this, of course, but many of the women were intimidated, and Chris overheard some of them speculating on how she could have amassed such a wardrobe on a trainee's salary.

  One morning she was chatting to Chris and Duncan in the hallway by the classroom when Abby approached. Lenka was wearing a trouser suit. It was an inoffensive light grey, and perhaps the most conservative outfit she had yet tried.

  'Lenka, a word,' Abby said, taking her by the arm.

  Abby murmured something to her that Chris and Duncan couldn't quite hear. But they could hear Lenka's response: 'My clothes are inappropriate! What do you mean, they're inappropriate?'

  Abby glanced at Chris and Duncan. 'I feel you ought to know that it's just not appropriate to wear pants at Bloomfield Weiss,' she said.

  Lenka snorted. 'That's absurd! Look at Chris and Duncan. They're wearing pants. Most of the people on the training programme wear pants. Sidney Stahl, our Chairman, wears pants. Why shouldn't I?'

  'You know what I mean,' said Abby. Her face had turned red, but having gone this far she wasn't about to back down. 'It's inappropriate for women to wear pants.'

  'So it's OK for men, but not for women, is that it? And whose idea is that? I bet it was a woman's.'

  'I don't know whose idea it was,' said Abby. 'But women just don't wear pants around here.'

  'Well, they do now,' said Lenka, and marched off into the classroom.

  During the break she joined Chris and the others at the coffee machine. 'I can't believe that woman,' she said. 'And did you see the suit she was wearing, and that horrible little ruffled blouse. That should be banned.'

  'You know she was one of us last year,' said Alex.

  'What do you mean?'

  'She was a trainee, just like us. Apparently, she didn't do too well. She couldn't get an assignment after the programme so she ended up as programme coordinator. The theory is that she has to prove herself to George Calhoun to escape from here and get a proper job.'

  'Oh, God,' groaned Duncan. 'What if that happened to me? I couldn't face it.'

  They were all silent for a moment, thinking of the fate that would befall those among them who didn't make it out of the bottom quartile.

  'It's OK for most of these guys,' said Alex. 'They've all got MBAs; they've done a lot of this stuff before. But I've got to admit I'm finding it pretty tough.'

  'You're telling me,' said Duncan.

  'There's just so much of it,' said Chris, glad that Alex had admitted what he hadn't been prepared to. 'I mean, the second you understand one concept, they throw another two at you.'

  'Look, do you guys want to come back with us this evening? Maybe if we help each other out we can crack this.' Alex glanced at Eric who nodded his encouragement.

  'Sounds good to me,' said Chris.

  'I'm up for it,' said Duncan.

  'So am I,' said Ian.

  'Do you allow in women wearing pants?' asked Lenka.

  'Not usually,' said Alex. 'But in your case, we can make an exception.'

  Eric and Alex's apartment was a long way up the West Side. It was large, but in bad repair. Apparently it was rent-controlled, and therefore not in the landlord's interests to look after. The furniture was basic and there was plenty of student clutter about the place. But what struck them all as they entered were the walls.

  Four or five large canvases hung about the room, each one depicting petrochemical plants or oil refineries at different times of day and night. Pipes, gantries, cylinders, towers and chimneys were displayed at odd angles, forming intricate geometric networks. Orange glows, bright red flares and piercing white halogen lights added to the mystery of the massive chemical processes taking place within. The overall effects were unexpectedly beautiful.

  'These are amazing,' said Lenka. 'Who did them?'

  'I did,' said Alex.

  'You?' Lenka turned to him, her reappraisal obvious. 'I didn't realize you were a painter.'

  'I spent a couple of years after college trying to make it as a professional artist. I had a couple of exhibitions, sold some paintings, but I could barely make enough to live on. I didn't like the idea of a life of poverty. So here I am.'

  'That's a shame,' Lenka said.

  Alex shrugged. 'That's why we're all here, aren't we?' There was a defensive edge to his voice: Lenka had obviously touched on a sore point.

  'I'm sorry, I guess you're right. But it's an odd subject. Why these?'

  'I come from New Jersey,' said Alex. 'We have a lot of oil refineries. When I was a kid I used to stare out of the car window at them as we drove by. I was fascinated. Then later, at college, I thought, why not paint them? It became a kind of obsession.'

  'They're stunning,' Lenka said. She moved round the room. 'Don't tell me this is New Jersey?'

  She was standing in front of a dramatic picture of an installation rising out of the sand, throwing its flare into a wide desert sky. The contrast of the hostile rugged terrain with the dramatically engineered structures, and the variations in the natural and man-made light, produced an effect that was startling in its beauty.

  'That's the Industrial City of Jubail in Saudi Arabia,' Alex said. 'A chemical company saw my work and sponsored me to go over there. I sold every painting I did there, apart from this one.'

  'I'm not surprised,' said Lenka.

  'I wish I'd kept more of them.'

  'In the meantime, I feel like I'm living in a goddamn factory,' said Eric. 'What's wrong with sunflowers, for Christ's sake?'

  'Bourgeois philistine,' muttered Alex.

  'I like them,' said Duncan. 'Have you ever painted a brewery?'

  'Not yet,' said Alex. 'But I take it that means you'd like a beer?'

  'I thought you'd never ask.'

  So that evening, and several evenings a week over the following months, the six of them studied together, usually meeting at Eric and Alex's apartment. It quickly became clear who knew how much. Eric seemed to take in everything that was thrown at him, and to understand it instantly. For Duncan, it was all a struggle. Alex and Chris got there in the end, Chris with more work than Alex. Ian acted as though he understood everything, and indeed he was quick to grasp the principles. But when it came to the nitty-gritty of number work, he was hopeless. This was a secret he somehow managed to keep from everyone in the class outside the study group, who did their best to cover for him. Lenka seemed to have almost as good an understanding as Eric, although she had a tendency to throw in off-the-wall solutions to what seemed to the rest of them to be simple problems. The group helped each other out and
, with the exception of Duncan on that third day, they got by.

  Alex wasn't alone among the trainees in having an unusual background. While there were a number of white male Anglo-Saxon MBAs, Bloomfield Weiss was careful not to recruit exclusively from that pool. There were women as well as men, Indians, Africans and Japanese. Quite a few were about Chris's age, twenty-two, but most were a couple of years older: some were in their thirties. Amongst the Americans was a professional gambler, a woman who had started and sold her own mail-order business in designer computer accessories, and a professional football player with a limp. Amongst the foreigners was an ex-submariner from the French navy, a super-cool Japanese man who liked to be called Tex and wore his shades at every opportunity, a Saudi who knew he was unsackable and hence did nothing, and an older Italian woman who struggled to understand the English spoken rapidly around her, and did her best to keep up with the course while looking after her three-year-old daughter.

  Everyone was treated equally, whatever their background, everyone except for Latasha James, the black American woman who sat next to Chris. Professors, even Waldern, were careful to deal with her with respect and politeness at all times. This drove Latasha crazy. The firm wanted to place her in the Municipal Finance department, where she could sell Bloomfield Weiss to black civic leaders. She just wanted to be treated like everyone else.

  Eric and Alex were proved right; there was lots of brown-nosing. The sixty trainees, who cowered behind their desks when Waldern was teaching, suddenly leapt into action whenever one of the managing directors came to talk to them. These people were in charge of the different departments of the firm, and they gave talks between the more formal classes, explaining what their departments did. They were the ones who would be hiring the trainees out of the programme. They were the people to impress. The sight of sixty young investment bankers all trying to make an impression on one human being at the same time was sickening. Chris knew he should join in, but couldn't quite bring himself to. Ian asked the odd question, in his laconic, casual style, which had the virtue of being memorable. Eric restricted himself to single immensely perceptive questions directed to managing directors in the key departments of the firm. Duncan blabbered occasionally. Lenka didn't have to thrust herself forward; they asked her questions. It was pitiful to see so many different middle-aged men pick her out, supposedly at random, to emphasize a point they wanted to make.