Dollar Down by Sam Waite Read Free Book Online Page A

said that Bizet had worked in
the firm a little less than two years. He had left because he
disliked what he considered the servile posture of consultants
toward their clients. When a client called, the consultant came.
Also, in the end, the client made all the decisions. Consultants
could only recommend. He was open and friendly, she said, but
he was emotionally an aristocrat. Besides, he had made much
more money as a quant than as a consultant.
    Alexandra turned onto a narrow gravel road that ran
through fields of grapevines and stopped in front of a
sprawling two-story home. When I got out of the car, a rangy,
longhaired dog looped toward me. He planted his front paws
on my chest. A man as rangy as the dog followed and grabbed
its collar.
    "Bonjour, M. Bizet," Alexandra said.
    "Jack likes you too much," Bizet grinned and reached
out with his free hand.
    I shook it, and then scratched the dog behind his ear.
"Hello, Jacque."
    "No," Bizet corrected. "He's an English hound, so he's
Jack."
    Alexandra laughed. "It sounds the same when you say
it."
    Bizet shrugged. "I know six languages, but when I
speak them they all sound French. Only I know what language
I'm speaking. Let's go inside."
    Bizet's wife greeted us briefly before excusing herself.
We drank coffee in a parlor, while Alexandra filled in details
about Sabine's death and Trevor's disappearance. By the time
she showed him the chart, Bizet was beginning to look uneasy.
Nevertheless, he studied it for several minutes before inviting
us into his study.
    Alexandra and I sat quietly as he ran through computer
programs. After about twenty minutes, the mechanical shush of
a laser printer broke the silence. He handed us another chart
that showed fluctuations of the dollar against the euro over the
past two months. Each peak and dip corresponded to a date on
Trevor's chart and the percentages cited in the chart were
close to the rise or fall of the dollar against the euro on the
corresponding day.
    Bizet had replaced the letters in one of Trevor's notes
with numbers. He pointed to the date of one example. "This
appears to represent a set of derivatives and a futures contract
that would have paid more than nine hundred percent of the
initial investment, if they were entered into and executed on
the dates cited in Trevor's chart. That means a one thousand
dollar investment would yield a profit in excess of ten
thousand dollars within six days."
    I frowned. "Legally?"
    "A derivative is a financial instrument that derives its
value from something else. For example, you can buy a futures
contract on a stock index that will pay off if the index rises to
the target level, but you don't own actual shares. This one is
quite complex. It would pay only if the dollar traded within a
range of half a percentage point of your target rate on a
selected time frame in the future. You get great leverage with
something like that. A very small investment earns an
enormous payoff, or loss. You'd have to be crazy to bet on
it."
    "You got all that from equations?"
    "They aren't equations. They're just notations. A lot of
it is math, but some of the letters are simply
abbreviations."
    "Alexandra, does this fit into your petroleum
study?"
    "Not that I can see."
    Then where did it fit? The checks I had requested on
the client team and on Cervantes might have been a
waste.
    "M. Bizet, would it be useful to work out all the
notations on Trevor's chart? Would that show us anything,
else?" I said.
    "What are you looking for, exactly? "
    "We just wanted to know what these meant."
    "In that case, I doubt it. I don't know if these were
actual trades or he was back-checking a theory."
    I had a final question. "Do you know an investment
banker in London named Gordon Mumby?"
    "I know of him, but the last I heard, he worked at
LIFFE."
    "Life? Insurance?"
    "The London International Financial Futures and
Options Exchange."
    Alexandra said, "It was purely British, until it was
purchased by Euronext. It's still one of