I waited in the reception area for nearly half an hour, staring at what I took to be an original Goya on a wall opposite where I was sitting. The receptionist was

extremely friendly and smiled over at me every now and again. When Van Loon finally arrived, he strolled across reception with a broad smile on his face. He slapped

me on the back and ushered me into his office, which was about half the size of Rhode Island.

‘Sorry for the delay, Eddie, but I’ve been overseas.’

Flicking through some documents on his desk, he then explained that he’d flown in direct from Tokyo on his new Gulfstream V.

‘You’ve been to Tokyo and back since Tuesday evening?’ I asked.

He nodded and said that having waited sixteen months to get the new jet, he’d wanted to make sure that it was worth its not inconsiderable price tag of $37m and

change. His delay in arriving this morning, he added after a pause, had had nothing to do with the jet, but was rather the fault of gridlocked Manhattan traffic. It seemed

to matter to him that I understood this.

I nodded, therefore, to show him that I did.

‘So, Eddie,’ he said, sitting down behind the desk, and indicating that I should sit down too, ‘did you have a chance to look at those files?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And?’

‘They were interesting.’

‘And?’

‘I don’t think you should really have much difficulty justifying the price that MCL is asking,’ I began, shifting in the seat, aware suddenly of how tired I was.

‘Why not?’

‘Because there are some very significant options embedded in this deal, strategic stuff that isn’t evident in the existing numbers.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, the biggest option value lies in the build-out of a broadband infrastructure, which is something Abraxas really needs …’

‘Why?’

‘To defend itself against aggressive competition – some other portal that might be in a position to develop faster downloads, streaming video, that kind of thing.’

As I spoke – and through the almost hallucinatory quality of my exhaustion – I was becoming conscious of how large a gap there was between information and

knowledge, between the huge amount of data I’d absorbed in the last forty-eight hours and the arrangement of that data into a coherent argument.

‘The thing is,’ I went on, ‘building-out broadband is a big cash drain and highly risky, but since Abraxas has a leading portal brand already, all it really needs is a

credible threat to develop its own broadband.’

Van Loon nodded his head slowly at this.

‘So, by buying MCL, Abraxas gets that credibility, without actually having to complete the build-out, at least not straightaway.’

‘How’s that?’

‘MCL owns Cableplex, yeah? That puts them directly into twenty-five million homes, so even though they might need to upgrade their systems they’re ahead of the

game. Meanwhile, Abraxas can slow down MCL’s spend on the broadband build-out, thereby delaying any negative cashflow, but retaining the option to develop it

later should they need to …’ I was having a sensation I’d had a couple of times before on MDT – one of walking on a verbal tightrope, of speaking to someone and

clearly making sense, but at the same time of having no idea at all what I was talking about. ‘… and remember, Carl, the ability to delay an investment decision like

that can have enormous value.’

‘But it still remains risky, doesn’t it? I mean, developing this broadband thing? Regardless of whether you do it now or later?’

‘Sure, but the new company that comes out of this deal probably won’t have to make the investment in any case, because I think they’d actually be better off

negotiating a deal with another broadband player, which would have the added advantage of reducing potential overcapacity in the industry.’

Van Loon smiled.

‘That’s pretty fucking good, Eddie.’

I smiled too.

‘Yeah, I think it works. It’s basically a win-win situation. And there are other options as well, of course.’

I could see Van Loon looking at me and wondering. He was obviously unsure of what to ask me next … in case it all fell apart and I somehow revealed myself to be

an idiot. But he eventually asked me the only question that made any sense in the circumstances.

‘How do the numbers add up?’

I reached out and took a legal pad from his desk, and a pen from my inside jacket pocket. I leant forward and started writing. After I’d gotten a few lines down on

the page, I said, ‘I’ve used the Black–Scholes pricing model to show how the option value varies as a percentage of the underlying investment …’ – I stopped, flipped

over the page and continued writing at the top of the next one – ‘… and I’ve done it over a range of risk profiles and time-frames.’

I wrote furiously for the next fifteen minutes or so, copying from memory the various mathematical formulae I’d used the previous day to illustrate my position.

‘As you can see here,’ I said, when I’d finished, pointing to the appropriate formulae with my pen, ‘the value of the broadband option together with these other

options easily adds an extra $10 a share in value to the MCL stock.’

Van Loon smiled again.

Then he said, ‘This is just great work, Eddie. I don’t know what to say. This is just great. Hank’s going to love this.’

*

At about twelve-fifteen, after we’d gone through all the figures carefully, we wrapped up and left the office. Van Loon had booked a table for us at the Four Seasons.

We made our way over towards Park Avenue and then strolled the four blocks uptown to the Seagram Building.

I had floated along during most of the morning in an icy and exhausted state of awareness – on automatic pilot in a way – but when I arrived with Van Loon at the

Fifty-second Street entrance to the Four Seasons restaurant, and passed through the lobby, and saw the Miró tapestries and the leather seats designed by Mies van der

Rohe himself, I began to feel energized again. More than being able to speak Italian, or read half a dozen books in a night, or even second-guess the markets, more than

the fact that I had just outlined the financial structure for a huge corporate merger, it was being here, at the base of the Seagram Building, the holy of architectural holies,

that brought the unreality of my entire situation home to me – because under normal circumstances I would never have found myself in a place like this, would never

have found myself swanning into the legendary Grill Room, with its suspended bronze rods and French walnut panelling, would never have found myself gliding past

tables occupied by ambassadors and cardinals and corporation presidents and entertainment lawyers and network anchormen.

And yet, strange as it seemed, here I was … happy to be swanning and gliding …

The maître d’ led us to one of the tables under the balcony, and just as we’d settled down and ordered some drinks Van Loon’s cellphone went off. He answered it

with a barely audible grunt, listened for a couple of moments and then flicked it closed. As he was putting it away, he looked at me with a thin, slightly nervous smile.

‘Hank’s running a little late,’ he said.

‘But he’s coming, right?’

‘Yes.’ Van Loon fiddled with his napkin for a moment, and then said, ‘Listen, Eddie, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about.’

I swallowed, unsure of what was coming next.

‘You know that we have a small trading floor at Van Loon & Associates?’

I shook my head.

‘Well, we have, and I was thinking – that run of trades you made at Lafayette?’

‘Yeah?’

‘That was pretty impressive, you know.’

A waiter arrived over with our drinks.

‘I didn’t really think so when Kevin told me about it at first, but I’ve looked into it since, and well …’ – he held my gaze as the waiter laid out two glasses on the

table, plus two half-bottles of mineral water, a Tom Collins and a vodka Martini – ‘… you certainly seem to know what you’re doing.’

I took a sip from the Martini.

Still staring at me, Van Loon added, ‘And how to pick them.’

I could see that he was burning to ask me how I’d done it. He kept shifting in his seat and glancing directly at me, unsure of what he had in his possession, tantalized

at the prospect that maybe I did have some system after all, and that the Holy Grail was right here in the Four Seasons restaurant, sitting at his table. He was tantalized,

and at the same time a little apprehensive, but he held off, skirted around the issue, tried to act as if the whole thing wasn’t that big a deal. There was something pathetic

and awkward about the way he did this, though – it was ham-fisted, and I began to feel a mild contempt for him stirring inside me.

But if he had asked me straight out, what would I have said? Would I have been able to bluff my way through some yarn about complexity theory and advanced

mathematics? Would I have leant forward in my chair, tapped my right temple and whispered un-derstand-ing, Carl? Would I have told him that I actually was on

special medication, and that I had occasional visions of the Virgin Mary, to boot? Would I have told him the truth? Would I have been able to resist?

I don’t know.

I never got the chance to find out.

*

A few moments later, a friend of Van Loon’s appeared from across the room and sat at our table. Van Loon introduced me and we all engaged in small talk for a few

moments, but pretty quickly the two older men got to discussing Van Loon’s Gulfstream, and I was happy to fade into the background. I could see that Van Loon was

agitated, though – torn between not wanting to let me out of his immediate sphere of attention and not wanting to disengage from the conversation with his billionaire

crony. But I was already gone, my mind drifting into a contemplation of the impending arrival of Hank Atwood.

From the various profiles I’d read of him, something had become clear to me about the Chairman of MCL-Parnassus. Even though he was a ‘suit’, a grey corporate

executive who mainly concerned himself with what most people thought of as the tedious business of numbers and percentage points, Henry Bryant Atwood was a

glamorous figure. There had been larger-than-life ‘suits’ before him, of course – in newspapers, and in the early days of Hollywood, all those cigar-toting moguls who

couldn’t speak English, for example – but it hadn’t taken long, in the case of Hollywood, for the ivy-league accountants on the East Coast to step in and take the reins.

What most people didn’t understand, however, was that since the full-steam-ahead corporatization of the entertainment business in the 1980s, the centre of gravity had

shifted again. Actors and singers and supermodels were still glamorous, sure, but the rarefied air of pure glamour had quietly wafted its way back in the direction of the

grey-suited moneymen.

Hank Atwood was glamorous, not because he was good-looking, which he wasn’t, and not even because the product he pedalled was the very stuff of people’s

dreams – the genetically modified food of the world’s imagination – Hank Atwood was glamorous because of the unimaginably huge amounts of money he made.

And that was the thing. Artistic content was dead, something to be decided by committee. True content now resided in the numbers – and numbers, large numbers,

were everywhere. Thirty-seven million dollars for a private jet. A lawsuit settled for $250 million. A $30 billion leveraged buyout. Personal wealth amounting to

something in excess of $100 billion …

*

And it was at that point – while I was in the middle of this reverie of infinite numerical expansion – that things started to unravel.

For whatever reason, I suddenly became aware of the people sitting at the table behind me. They were a man and a woman, maybe a real-estate developer and an

executive producer, or two trial lawyers – I didn’t know, I wasn’t focused on what they were saying – but there was something in the tone of the man’s voice that cut

through me like a knife.