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tomorrow and hook it up so you have your old set-up but
the bugged machine isn t actually on the network. It ll be a
kind of deception. Frankly, I don t know what they re
playing at. I d rip the bloody things out if I was them. Some
silly ploy by Security. It s their chance to play at being
policemen again, I suppose.
I was wondering, said Jim, whether this might be to do
with the big day .
Fuch-Smith raised his eyebrows. Why?
Well, something s been bothering me that I don t under-
stand and this kind of feels connected.
How so?
We supported the market on the day, and when I d
thought a bit, I couldn t see why we would. I mean we
trade, right, we don t support anything. We buy, we sell, we
don t care why, how or when. Then there was the time when
you said about the customer choking. What customer? It s
like I don t understand any of it.
Fuch-Smith screwed up his face as if he was sucking a
lemon. Well, what do you need?
I don t know, said Jim. Nothing, really. But an expla-
nation of any of it would be nice.
First, said Fuch-Smith, I have no clue about this key-
logging business. It s all very worrying. Something s wrong
but we re onto it and we re going to straighten it out. As far
as the support goes, you can have the short answer or the
long answer.
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Give me the short answer first.
Well, the short answer is, if there s a terrorist attack, we
support the market for the British Treasury. We do that in
the same way as other departments might buy sterling or
sell euros when the Bank of England wants to support the
pound or boost its Forex reserves.
The customer s idea is that these attacks can only do real
damage if they create a loss of integrity in our institutions,
of which financial markets are a key component. While the
shock of a terrorist attack is brutal, the real effect is minimal
unless the outcome is allowed to get out of control. When
something nasty happens it s our job to prop up the equity
and derivatives market until normality returns.
A massive grin spread over Jim s face. He d been
working for the government to save Britain from interna-
tional terrorism. That was overwhelmingly cool. All of a
sudden he felt like a hero. Is there more?
Fuch-Smith slumped a little and looked uncomfortable.
Well, not much really.
Go on, spill.
Fuch-Smith took a deep breath. That s all this depart-
ment is here to do. Well, that s what it was set up for. Prop
desks went out of fashion years ago. You simply can t make
money playing the markets anymore, not unless you cheat.
It s a fifty-fifty game. The only way to make money is to
front run orders or insider trade and, funnily enough, that s
been illegal for ever. Any prop book that s making money
has to be a fluke or a fraud. We are, in effect, the emergency
market-support department, the plunge team .
I expect, though I don t know, that this is all done to
keep cosy with HM Treasury, because of all the other work
we do for them, with bonds, advice, privatizations,
et cetera. As I understand it, we get our losses underwritten
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C LEM C HAMBERS
and we get to keep the profits if things go the other way,
which isn t a bad deal as things turn out.
However, we aren t meant to be doing as well as we are,
day to day. We re meant to scrape a living and keep out of
trouble. It s simply not meant to work the way it is. That s
why my predecessor was happy to head for the beach.
When prop desks make money there has to be a trick
involved, which is bound to come back and bite you on the
arse.
But we make a ton of money.
Yes, we do.
And we don t take big arse-biting risks.
No, we don t. We re making big money and we re
utterly by the book. I know, I check and check. I m not
playing the ostrich, just hoping no one s cheating I don t
want to get fired because of some rogue trader.
So what does it all mean?
Fuch-Smith smiled. It means nothing. It means we re
doing a great job. In fact a mind-bogglingly great job, and
we ve got nothing more to do than keep doing what we ve
been doing.
And the logging? There must be a connection, right?
Who knows? For now it s just a mystery.
It could be anyone, right?
I haven t the foggiest idea. Just keep it under your hat
that s the only way we ll get to the bottom of it, if we ever
do. And the stuff about support, keep that close to your
chest as well. Let s play it cool.
Jim nodded. No problems, he said. I m as keen on the
next Christmas bonus as anyone.
Just keep trading away and scribbling on those charts
and everything will turn out just fine. It s my job to make
sure nothing goes pear-shaped. Well, that s the plan
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T HE A RMAGEDDON T RADE
anyway. Trouble is, it s still a long way to 2012.
Almost twelve months, said Jim.
We ll get there, said Fuch-Smith.
107
Chapter 14
Jim flicked through the market charts like a kid through a
flip-book. He could see that the January equity markets
were going straight up without the slightest pause. It was
going to be an old-fashioned bull-market rally. It would be
a simple matter just to buy all the big caps with strong
charts, sit tight and watch the profits roll in. However, this
would freak out the folks who watched risk. What they
liked to see were lots of fast trades, not a large static posi-
tion left to run. Hyperactivity looked safer to their mathe-
matical models: it meant he was on his toes and watching,
ready to flee the markets at the first sign of trouble.
The old trader maxim was that making money in the
markets was like running in front of an oncoming steam
roller to pick up a dollar bill. One stumble and you d be
crushed, yet as long as you were fast, focused and fit, you
could scamper to safety. Standing in the middle of the street
and waiting was a recipe for disaster, or so the thinking
went. However, if you knew nothing would come down the
road for days, you could just wait there and collect the
money without any dashing about. The trouble is you
couldn t know what was around the corner, so staying put
was a lazy, greedy, high-risk bet, anathema to the trading
management. It wasn t trading, after all, it was investing,
the game for boring old fund managers with a slick line in
patter.
Survival in the short term was more important than fat
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T HE A RMAGEDDON T RADE
medium-term profits, so when Jim looked at the charts for
January, his only option was to trade the upcoming rally as
a series of short-term swings rather than as a Napoleonic
long-term strategy. That would keep everyone happy.
Drop by my office at 10.45 tomorrow, said the email
from Fuch-Smith.
That sounds ominous, thought Jim.
Dr Ali Muhammad had sat in the place before. It was a hot,
sun-blasted hilltop overlooking a brown land punctuated by
patches of stressed green cultivation. Above, the sky was
bright blue and the sun was blinding. He peered out onto the
flat featureless valley below. To his left large stands of
cedars flanked the slopes, and in the far, hazy distance
another range of hills seemed ghostly and forbidding. The
landscape echoed with a forlorn resonance as if soaked in
untold pain and suffering. There was no beauty for miles,
just exhausted, worn-out, blighted countryside, scarred and
ground down by millennia of habitation. The very hill itself
seemed composed of the rocky compost of aeons of human
life. As untold generations had built and bred, smashed,
broken and buried, so the remains had risen up from the
valley to become a hill. Then the hill had grown in impor-
tance and was considered a mountain in the flat, featureless
landscape below.
As he watched, he saw the human creatures crawl over
the denuded land, every stone valued, every clod of
exhausted earth delivering a little bread to sustain their
tenuous lives. That mouthful might make the difference
between life and death to one of their children. No one was
a friend when such worthless things could be so precious.
Every animal, every bird, every insect was a deadly enemy
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