The driver gave him a look. “You better have taken a wicked piss, my brother. We’re going to be driving a long time.”
And despite himself, Mattias laughed.
It was time to give back.
Allahu Akbar.
God is great.
Chapter 37
Singapore
London Li hadn’t been in the bullpen for a month. It was just past nine as she made her way across the floor of theFinancial Timesoffice in Singapore, offering a “Good morning” or “How are you?” to the journalists she knew (too few) and several she didn’t. She went from desk to desk, speaking with reporters who had written pieces on Harrington-Weiss over the past few years and who might have contacts at the secretive bank. Doing so, she managed to put together an organigram of sorts with names and positions. Ivan S., head of investment banking. Sheila G., capital markets. Freddy N., equity research. It was a start.
Just as an army needed perfect cooperation between its branches—infantry, artillery, intelligence—to mount a successful invasion, a bank needed the same to underwrite a billion-dollar bond issue. No one person did it all.
In addition, London asked who the big players were these days, the alphas. Only a top dog could go to the Indonesian minister of finance and convince her that HW and HW alone should underwrite her sovereign wealth fund to the tune of six billion dollars.
For all the power a bank’s name might bring to a deal—the clout of a long history and the allure of a burnished reputation—in the end, finance turned out to be a people business. Deals were closed on the power of personality. The highest paid bankers, the highest ranking execs, the “big swinging dicks,” didn’t get to where they were by sitting at a desk crunching numbers. You would never see an equity analyst seated in the royal box at Wimbledon. But if you knew who to look for, you’d see the top dealmaker at Barclays, and ten to one, he’d be joined by a face you’d seen on the cover ofVoguemagazine.
London knew plenty of these bankers. To a person, they were brilliant, charismatic, larger-than-life characters who filled any room they entered. Personalities in their own right. Whatever “it” was, they possessed it in spades. Like she’d said, “alphas.”
In the space of a few hours, she’d assembled a list of six executives at Harrington-Weiss who might have overseen the deals in question.
She found an empty desk—there were too many for her taste—and called HW’s public relations department. Stating that she was doing an article on the firm’s work with Asian governments to raise money for the SWFs, she asked to interview the bankers who ran the deals. The PR person was all too happy to help, though unfortunately interviews were out of the question. HW policy. She could, however, provide answers to any of London’s questions on an unattributed basis, and,whoop-de-do,even hand her a quote from the chairwoman of HW Asia herself. How did that sound? Was two weeks soon enough?
London hung up the phone, middle finger raised to express her gratitude.
“That for me?”
London lifted her eyes to see Mandy Blume,FT’s managing editor, arms crossed, glaring at her.
“HW. Jerks.”
“Not getting anywhere? You could have asked me.” Mandy was fifty, blond, battered, and as elegant as the day is long, a longtime expat who’d gotten her start chasing celebrities for a Fleet Street tabloid before making the jump to the respectable side of the street. The side where women didn’t show their boobs on page 3. Mandy’s husband, Michael, ran HW Asia’s foreign-exchange desk.
“Really?” said London.“Really”because it was verboten to mix the personal and professional sides of a journalist’s life.
“You working a story? I haven’t seen you around in a while. Don’s about to type a letter with your name on it. Give me something positive to tell him so he’ll tear it up.”
Donald Manning, the publisher, was the executive responsible for all hiring and firing decisions.
“Are you serious?” asked London.
Mandy didn’t bother saying yes or no. Her look said it all.
“I think I have a big one,” said London.
“How big?”
“Madoff times ten.”
Mandy raised a skeptical brow as she pulled over a chair from a vacant desk.Prove it.She was dressed in a pencil skirt the color of clotted cream and a flashy striped men’s dress shirt, opened a button farther than her mum would like. Her hair was teased and frosted and fell about her face in a perfectly controlled chaos that had to cost London’s weekly salary. It was good to be married to an I-banker. Her skin was pale and papery, decorated with a network of lines no amount of makeup could conceal, the result of thirty years smoking Players, a habit she’d only recently broken. Instead of a cigarette, she held a pencil between her fingers and tapped it on London’s desk. “And HW’s involved?”
“Looks like it.”
“How sure are you?”
