Her parents had come that morning. Small, mild, humble people, they were totally unlike Lenka. He was a country doctor, she a nurse. They were crushed. Chris had done his best to comfort them, but their English was rudimentary. Their grief tore into his heart. He had left them, feeling once again useless.
He made his way to the street where she had said their new office was to be. She hadn’t told him the number, but he saw the tavern with the sign of a yellow bear holding a mug of beer outside it. Opposite was a cream three-storey building with an ornate wooden door. Chris looked more closely and saw five steel nameplates bearing the logos of international lawyers, accountants and consultants. That must be the place. A Prague office would have to wait now. So would Jan Pavlík. Chris realized the man must be expecting to talk to him that day. Chris would have to call him to let him know what had happened.
He hesitated, tempted for a moment to go into the tavern and drink an early beer. But he turned away from its warmth. He wanted to walk, to feel the cold air on his face, to feel Lenka’s death.
He wandered aimlessly through the old town, with its little squares, its churches, and its buildings of orange, yellow, cream and green, each one exquisitely decorated, all of them mocking Lenka’s death with their beauty.
He found himself at the Charles Bridge and, hunching his shoulders deep within his overcoat, he strode out on to it. He stopped in the middle and turned to look back at the city. Lenka had spent many years here as a student. He could imagine her during those heady days of the Velvet Revolution, shouting with the loudest of them. A young, idealistic woman looking forward to a life of freedom ahead of her. Or only half a life.
An iron-grey cloud pressed down on the town, threatening to engulf Prague Castle on the opposite bank. A viciously cold wind whipped off the Vltava, its waters churning swiftly downstream. The chill bit through his coat, and he shivered. What about Carpathian? Forget expansion, it would be difficult to keep the firm going at all without Lenka. But he was determined to do it. She was his partner, she had trusted him, and he wouldn’t let her down.
He leaned over the parapet of the old stone bridge and stared down at the angry river. He remembered the first time they had met, ten years before in New York. And, with a shudder, he remembered that other death.
Part Two
1
The crowded train pulled into Wall Street subway station, and a twenty-two-year-old Chris Szczypiorski fought his way on to the platform, followed by two other young British bankers. Fresh faced, they looked out of place in their suits; they gazed about them with the curious bewilderment of tourists, rather than the determined blank stares of the other commuters on their way to work.
‘I never thought we’d get here in one piece,’ said Chris. ‘I can’t believe what you did back there, Duncan.’
‘I swear, I saw them do it on TV,’ the tall red-haired young man behind him protested in a mild Scottish accent. ‘It’s a tough place, New York.’
‘You know, Duncan,’ drawled Ian, the last member of the trio on to the platform, ‘I wonder if that was Tokyo you saw?’
‘It wasn’t,’ said Duncan. ‘You didn’t see it. How do you know?’
‘I bet it was,’ Ian repeated with confidence, grinning.
Duncan frowned. ‘Oh,’ he said, doubts flooding in.
When they had changed subway trains at Grand Central, Duncan had decided to push the jammed commuters further into the crowded carriage so that there would be room for the three of them. Chris and Ian had had to pull him back, and if the doors hadn’t shut at that moment, Duncan would have been lynched.
‘Anyway, let’s not try that again, shall we?’ Chris said, as he pushed his way through the exit turnstile. ‘I agree with Ian. I’m pretty sure the locals don’t like it.’
They climbed out of the subway station into Wall Street, descending like a narrow ravine down the hill from the blackened façade of Trinity Church at its head. They threaded their way through the hot-dog and pretzel stands, past the classical columns of Federal Hall and the solid entrance to the New York Stock Exchange, until they came to an alley, darkened by the great buildings looming on either side. There, a little way up the street, was a sleek, black block, with the name Bloomfield Weiss written in neat gold letters above the entrance lobby. A line of office workers filed into the building, like ants returning to their nest.
They introduced themselves to the squad of security guards at the front desk and headed up to the twenty-third floor. That was where Bloomfield Weiss housed its world-renowned training programme.
Chris had joined Bloomfield Weiss’s London office six months before, in September of the previous year. He had arrived straight from university, as had most of the nine other graduate trainees. Seven of them had left immediately to go to New York, and they were just coming to the end of their stint on the programme. Chris, Ian Darwent, and Duncan Gemmel had been shipped out in April to join the second programme of the year. Young bankers from Bloomfield Weiss’s offices all over the world would be gathered there to spend five months of their lives on the toughest training programme on the Street.
Although they were very different, the three Brits had developed a kinship during their six months rooting around at the bottom of the London Office food chain. It was in Duncan’s nature to be friendly, but Ian’s attitude surprised Chris. Chris had known of him at university, they were at the same college, but their paths had scarcely crossed there. Ian was an Old Etonian, the son of a junior cabinet minister, who belonged to a string of dining clubs with obscure classical names. He was frequently seen around the college with a different blonde double-barrelled girl on his arm. Chris came from Halifax. Although Ian had spent three years barely acknowledging the very existence of the likes of Chris, he seemed to realize that now they were on the Bloomfield Weiss payroll, all that was in the past. Chris wasn’t about to bear a grudge: they needed each other.
As they disembarked from the elevator on the twenty-third floor they were met by a small blonde-haired woman wearing a severe suit, her hair scraped back in a bun. She didn’t look much older than them, but then she didn’t look like one of them, either.
She held out a hand. ‘Hi. My name’s Abby Hollis. I’m the programme coordinator. And you are?’
They gave her their names.
‘Very good. You’re almost late. Your desks are through there. Drop your stuff, and go through to the classroom. We’re about ready to get started.’
‘Yes, Miss,’ said Chris with a wry glance at Ian and Duncan. Abby Hollis frowned, and turned to the next group emerging from the lift.
The classroom was a large, circular auditorium, with desks rising in five rows from a central space in front of an array of teaching aids: a computer, a large projection screen, a flip chart, and even a twenty-foot rolling blackboard. There were no windows, just the gentle whir of air-conditioning bringing in oxygen from the outside world. Above and below them toiled hundreds of investment bankers turning money into more money. Here, at the core of the building, almost exactly half way up it, were the trainees, protected for now from the dangers and temptations of the billions of dollars swirling around the street outside.
The room was already full of men and women of all shapes and colours. Chris scanned the nameplates. For once, his own name blended in with its exotic neighbours. Szczypiorski was no odder than Ramanathan or Ng or Nemeckova. He took his seat between a tall, fair-haired, obviously American man named Eric Astle and a black woman named Latasha James. Duncan was seated directly behind him, Ian on the other side of the classroom.