‘Just finish it, will you.’

She pulled a glum face. ‘”In populist recognition of this underlying truth, the cry during the latter half of the last century became if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” Aaaagh, new paragraph. “What any survivor of late Marxist ideology would be forced to recognise in the politics of the twenty-first century is that the contradictions are now so heavily disguised that it would be the work of decades simply to reveal them, let alone sharpen them into anything resembling a point.” A bit like this prose style, huh? Alright, alright, nearly there. “An overall problem is now no longer perceived, therefore an overall solution no longer sought. Any distasteful elements within the world economic order are now considered either candidates for longer term fine tuning or worse still an irrevocable by-product of economic laws supposedly as set in stone as the laws of quantum physics. So long as this is believed by the vast majority of the populace in the developed world, the contradictions identified by Marxism will remain hidden and each individual member of society will be left to resolve for themselves the vaguely felt tensions at an internal level. Any effort to externalise this unease will be disdained by the prevailing political climate as discredited socialist utopianism or simply, as was seen in chapter three, the politics of envy.”’ She laid down the book. ‘Yeah, so what?’

‘That’s your problem, Carla.’ Erik had not sat down while she was reading. He stood with his back to the fire and looked down at her as if she were one of his students. She felt suddenly fifteen years old again. ‘Unresolved contradictions. Chris may still be the man you married but he’s also a soldier for the new economic order. A corporate samurai, if you want to adopt their own imagery.’

‘I know that, Dad. That’s nothing new. I know what he does, I know how his world works. I help build and repair the vehicles they use to kill each other, in case you’d forgotten. I’m just as involved in it all, Dad. What?’

He was shaking his head. He crouched to her level and took both her hands gently in his own.

‘Carla, this isn’t about you and Chris. It’s barely about you at all. Benito’s talking about internal contradictions. Living with what you are, with what your society is. At Hammett McColl, Chris could do that because there was a thin veneer of respectability over it all. At Shorn, there isn’t.’

‘Oh, bullshit. You’ve read what these people are like. Dad, you used to write about what they were like, back when there was anyone with the guts to publish it. The only difference between Conflict Investment and Emerging Markets is the level of risk. In Emerging Markets, they don’t like conflict or instability. The guys in CI thrive on it. But it’s the same principle.’

‘Hmm.’ Erik smiled and let go of her hands. ‘That sounds to me like Chris talking. And he’s probably even right. But that’s not the point.’

‘You keep saying that, Dad.’

Erik shrugged and seated himself again. ‘That’s because you keep missing it, Carla. You think this is about a rift between you and Chris, and I’m telling you it’s not, it’s about a rift inside Chris. Now you’re saying there’s no difference in what he used to do and what he’s doing now, and aside from a few semantic quibbles that may be true. But Chris hasn’t just changed what he does. He’s changed where he does it, and who he does it for, and that’s what counts. Along with Nakamura and Lloyd Paul, Shorn Associates is the most aggressive player in the investment field. That applies to their Arbitrage and Emerging Markets divisions just as much as to Conflict Investment. They’re the original hard-faced firm. No gloss, no moral rationalisations. They do what they do, they’re the best at it. That’s what they sell on. You go to Shorn because they’re mean motherfuckers, and they’ll make money for you, come hell or high water. Fuck ethical investment, just give me a fat fucking return and don’t tell me too much about how you got it.’

‘You’re making speeches, Dad.’

There was a taut silence. Carla stared into the fire, wondering why she found it so easy to sink these barbs into her father. Then Erik Nyquist chuckled and nodded.

‘You’re right, I am,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Sorry about that. I miss seeing myself in print so much, it all just balls up inside me. Comes out whenever I have someone to talk to.’

‘I don’t mind,’ she said distantly. ‘I just wish ...’

‘Wish what?’

She had a vivid flash of recall, toothpaste-white. She would have been about six or seven at the time, staying with grandparents in Tromso and cocooned in the cold outside - warm inside security the visits there always brought. She remembered Erik and Kirsti Nyquist on skis, propped against each other for support on the hill behind Kirsti’s parents’ house and laughing into each other’s faces. Having fun in the definitive Nyquist fashion that she, as a child, had always imagined would characterise her future married life, the way it would always characterise her parents’.

The flash faded, into the dull red glow of the electric fire. She reached for her father’s hand.

‘Nothing.’

Chapter Eleven

‘Drink?’

Mike Bryant shook his head. ‘Still dealing with a hangover, thanks, Louise. Just water, if you’ve got it.’

‘Of course.’ Louise Hewitt closed the steel-panelled door of the office drinks cabinet and hefted a blue two-litre bottle from the table beside it instead. ‘Sit down, Mike. Drinking - or whatever - mid week, that can be a pretty lethal mistake.’

‘Not lethal,’ said Bryant, massaging his temples a little as he sank onto the sofa. ‘But definitely a mistake at my age.’

‘Yeah, must be hell being thirty-four. I remember it vaguely.’ Hewitt poured water into two glasses and sat on the edge of the sofa opposite. She looked at him speculatively. ‘Well, I won’t toast you with water, but congratulations do seem to be in order. I just got off the phone to Bangkok. That sketch on Cambodia you dropped last time you were out there finally landed on the right guerrilla head.’

Bryant sat up straighter, and forgot his hangover.

‘Cambodia? The smack-war thing?’

Hewitt nodded. ‘The smack-war thing, as you so elegantly define it. We’ve got a guerrilla coalition leader willing to deal. Khieu Sary. Sound familiar?’

Bryant drank from his water glass and nodded. ‘Yeah, I remember him. Arrogant motherfucker. Had ancestors in the original Khmer Rouge or something.’

‘Yeah.’ There was the slightest hint of mockery in Hewitt’s echo of the grunted syllable. ‘Well, it looks like this Sary needs arms and cash to hold the coalition together. The Cambodian government’s on the edge of offering an amnesty to any of the heroin rebels who want to come in and disarm. If that happens, the coalition’s gone and Sary loses his powerbase. But if he can hang on, our sources in Bangkok reckon he’s in line to march on Phnom Penh inside two years.’

‘Optimistic’

‘Local agents always are. You know how it is, they pitch rosy so you’ll bite. But this guy’s been on the money in the past. I’m inclined to go with it. So you’d better break out your copy of Reed and Mason, because this one’s yours, Mike.’

Mike Bryant’s eyes widened. ‘Mine?’

‘All yours.’ Hewitt shrugged. ‘You made it happen, you’ve got the executive experience to cover it. Like I said, congratulations.’

‘Thanks.’

‘The proposal is not uncontested,’ said Hewitt casually.

Bryant grinned. ‘What a surprise. Nakamura?’

‘Nakamura and Acropolitic both. Nakamura must have parallel information on Sary, they’re offering him essentially the same deal you put together in Bangkok, and the bastard’s smart enough to know that forcing us all to tender will bring the prices down.’

‘And Acro?’

‘They’ve got the status quo mandate. Official economic advisers to the Cambodian regime. They’re in it to squash the proposal before it gets off the ground. It’s all already cleared with Trade and Finance.’