asked whether there was any truth to recent rumours within the financial community that he had taken a number of very significant short positions in leading energy and oil corporations. Zorn replied that, ‘It’s my practice never to disclose any of the positions that I’ve taken while they are still active. There are many reasons for this, commercial confidentiality being the most obvious. But I’m also wary of creating self-fulfilling prophecies. I have, as you have suggested, a certain reputation in my field. I don’t want to sound unduly arrogant, but if my trades became public knowledge, it’s very possible that other traders might wish to copy them, hoping to ride my professional coat-tails, so to speak. This would have two effects. Firstly, it would create exactly the kind of downward pressure on the corporation in question that you, sir, seem so keen to avoid. And second, it would actually destroy the market. After all, someone has to buy my trade. So I can’t go short on a stock unless someone else wants to go long. I depend upon genuine and healthy differences of opinion within the market – a kind of commercial democracy, if you will – to create the margins from which I profit.
‘But I’ll say this about the general subject of the energy industry in all its forms. My personal view is that there are many members of extremist special-interest groups who’ll look at the impact of Islamist terrorism and be tempted to apply it to their own causes. In business terms, terror is a product that works. I therefore anticipate that environmental activists will seek to emulate the activities of groups like al-Qaeda by attacking specific targets related to oil, nuclear generation and power transmission – to take three examples. If by my investments I highlight the current vulnerabilities of a particular sector, I believe I’m not only doing good business, I’m doing my patriotic duty, too.’
More than one reporter present at the hearings picked up on the phrase, ‘Terror is a product that works,’ and contacted their newspaper or TV network, alerting editors to its headline potential. Sadly for them, however, one of Hollywood’s leading action heroes, a tough yet sensitive Australian much loved for his clean-living, family-loving lifestyle, crashed his Ferrari 458 Italia that afternoon in the parking lot of the Hideaway Inn, Malibu while severely intoxicated. With him in the car were a young Asian woman and a small, zip-up leather holdall in which were a number of plastic bags containing cocaine, marijuana and various illegal and prescription pills. On arrival at the Malibu/Lost Hills police station, his ‘female’ companion was discovered to be a nineteen-year-old Thai ladyboy. A recording of the star’s heated but barely coherent insistence that he had no idea of his companion’s true gender was online within the hour. The line, ‘I thought she was a Sheila!’ was a talkshow punchline around the world that night.
No one, anywhere, wanted to hear about terrorists in the subsequent news cycle.
Zorn repeated his warnings about the vulnerability of energy and oil installations in remarks made to a specialist blog aimed at hedge-fund managers and investors, and also in private conversations with a number of extremely wealthy individuals. None of his warnings, however, penetrated the public consciousness or had any immediate political or economic effect. So it seemed that for once in his life, Malachi Zorn had failed to make the impact he desired.
Friday, 24 June
1
* * *
The Greek island of Mykonos
PELICANS HONKED. THAT was something Samuel Carver had never known before. But there was the pelican, its feathers a pale baby-pink, like an anaemic flamingo, and it was clearly honking.
‘I’m going to take its photograph. Want to come?’
Her name was Magda, but everyone called her Ginger, for reasons made obvious by one glance at her freckled skin and fiery hair. She had wide-spaced grey-blue eyes, soft, slightly pouty lips, and a little groove at the very tip of her nose. She admitted to being ‘about forty’, but looked no more than twenty-eight, and worked, she said, in corporate finance. Carver was driving a small, hired Japanese Jeep. He’d pitched up next to Ginger’s Porsche Boxster in the line of cars at the port of Piraeus, outside Athens, waiting for the ferry to Mykonos. Both cars had their tops down. Carver and Ginger had exchanged looks, started talking, and discovered they were two unattached adults who’d both chosen to spend a couple of weeks exploring the islands of the Aegean. It made sense