Sophie had first-day questions about Alphabet, and he answered them genially. He told her that perhaps a half dozen of his employees were of Pakistani origin, including several in the IT department, and one in accounting. He promised to get their names and pull their files. And he explained Howard Egan’s routine: He had made his travel arrangements through Perkins’s secretary, Mona, and he drew on his own operating account when he was traveling; it was one of several accounts Alphabet maintained at Federation des Banques Suisses, but had its own routing number and depository arrangements. Normally, Egan and a private banker at FBS named Felix Stern were the only people with access to these records, but Perkins said he would try to get them, too.
She listened attentively, and took some notes in a wire-bound pad she had brought in her purse. As he talked, she recalled another conversation, several weeks before, when she had first heard the name Thomas Perkins. She had been sitting in Gertz’s office in Studio City, listening in on one of his phone calls. Perkins had asked, “What about the system?” but Gertz had blown him off. She had wondered about that at the time.
“I have a question,” she said. “What’s ‘the system’?”
There was a little flutter of one of his eyelids. He tried to cover with a smile and another tug on his Margaux.
“What are you talking about? I don’t know about any system. What system?”
“That’s what my boss said when you asked him about ‘the system.’ ‘Mr. Jones,’ that was the name my boss was using. You remember: He called you to say that Howard Egan was missing. Toward the end of the conversation, you asked him, ‘What about the system?’ And he said he didn’t know what you were talking about, just like you said a minute ago. So, being a curious girl, I want to know: What’s this system that nobody seems to know about?”
He shook his head. “How on earth did you overhear that conversation?”
“I was listening on the extension. Don’t be angry. My boss wanted me to hear the call. I think he knew we were going to be friends.”
Perkins had drained his wine and was starting in on his mineral water. He was trying very hard to act normal.
“I can’t talk about it, Sophie. I’m sorry, but it’s not my secret to share.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if you don’t know about it already, then there’s a reason. And it’s not my business to go blabbing about it. Surely you understand that. This is your world, your rules. I’m a bystander.”
“Will you check with Anthony Cronin?” she asked.
“I certainly will.” The easy smile had returned, not just a million-dollar smile, but a thousand times brighter. “You can count on it.”
Perkins proposed that they walk back to the office. It was a fine summer afternoon, with little flecks of cottony cloud padding the blue sky. He seemed to want to tell her about himself, to explain who he was and how he had gotten to this pinnacle: He had been a professor of economics long ago at MIT, he said, teaching students about efficient markets and portfolio theory. He had been a prodigy, in academic terms: the youngest among his peers to get a doctorate, the youngest to get a tenured teaching job, the youngest man, as one of his friends needled him, ever to turn thirty. All he had ever wanted was to be a professor, but once he achieved that goal, he found to his surprise that it bored him.
He stopped Sophie on the sidewalk and took her arm; he seemed especially to want her to understand why his life had turned toward business, and how the money had begun to shower down on him.
“My academic friends all thought it was a betrayal, going to Wall Street. There weren’t any hedge funds back then; people disapproved of making money. But I thought to myself: Why is it better to lecture about the financial system as a professor than to be part of it? That was when I first thought about starting a fund of my own. It wasn’t that I wanted to be rich. I just wanted to be an active person in the world, not a passive one.”
He seemed to want validation, to need approval from this woman who had risked her life in faraway places.
“I was insecure, the way professors are,” he continued. “I didn’t know if I was tough enough to make it in the real world. That bugged me.”
“So are you? Tough enough, I mean.”
He flinched. The question wounded him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course you are. You’re a natural. That’s obvious, even to me. You make it look easy.”
They were passing Jermyn Street and were nearly to the Ritz Hotel. They were walking the richest square mile on the planet, and he wanted her to understand.
“It’s not easy. What you are seeing is an illusion. Markets are not a gentle ride, they are a hurricane. They can destroy you. They almost destroyed me a couple of years ago.”
She laughed. She thought he was joking.
“You? You’re the golden boy. That’s what everyone says. You’re the one who came through the bad years without getting whacked. You’re the Pacman. You eat everyone and everything.”
“That’s all crap. I was nearly destroyed. My creditors were lining up all the way to Trafalgar Square. I survived that, but barely. And I could be wrecked tomorrow. Looks are deceiving, my dear. All that glitters may be gold, but that doesn’t mean it’s yours for keeps. You have to make arrangements, visit the pawnshop. You need to have friends. You are forced to play the game.”
“Everyone does that, right? Behind every great fortune, there’s a crime, as somebody said.”
“It was Balzac, and it’s true. And do you know what? It makes you vulnerable.”
“Sorry, Tom, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He took her arm again.
“When I was on the edge in 2008, I cheated. It was the only way to stay afloat. And the people who knew what I’d done had a handle on me after that. I was not a free man.”
“Who were they?”
“None of your business. Well, that isn’t exactly true. It is your business. But I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You don’t sound very happy, for a multibillionaire.”
The look on his face confirmed her intuition.
“I’m trapped,” he said. “I know that sounds crazy, but if I could escape this world, I would do it in a minute. But I can’t, so I try to collect the things that money can buy, to help me forget about the things it can’t.”
Sophie wasn’t sure what he was talking about, and now, having said so much, he stopped talking. He was quiet the rest of the way back, almost taciturn. His step didn’t seem quite so light and carefree. Sophie felt sorry for him, though she couldn’t say why.
Perkins went into his office when they got back and began making phone calls. Sophie had another Bloomberg tutorial scheduled for three o’clock. When she got back to her desk at five o’clock, there was a one-sentence message from Jeff Gertz: We need to talk.
She took the elevator down to Curzon Street and walked north until she found a private spot. It was a small park off Mount Street that was enclosed by grand brick apartments. She took an empty bench and called Gertz. He was angry, you could hear the effort in his voice as he tried to control himself.
“Where are you?” he began. “And don’t say London. What street?”
She gave him the address of the leafy park and said it was off Audley Street, behind a public library. The phone went dead, and she knew instantly that Gertz was there, in the city, must have been there since she arrived, shadowing her. As she waited, she watched the squirrels dance across the tree branches, so nimble, so certain where they were going, limb to limb. Lucky squirrels, that they could do it on instinct and didn’t have a consciousness that could visualize the idea of falling.
In less than five minutes, the familiar form entered the park; the lean body, almost gaunt; the lupine face, hard-cheeked, softened with the goatee. He was dressed in one of his California outfits: black shirt, black trousers, as if he were going to Dan Tana’s to meet his Hollywood friends. Gertz scanned the park and the surrounding buildings for surveillance and then took a seat next to Sophie Marx on the wooden bench.