24(]hris sighed. '(]aria, could we have this argument some other time, please? Because I haven't rehea.r.s.ed in a while.'

'You got something else you want to do?'

'Well, we could flick by the light of the TV screen.'

'We could,' she agreed seriously. 'Except that I always end up on top and I've still got carpet burns on my knees from the last time you had that bright idea. You want to luck, you take me to a bed.'

'Deal.'

After, as they lay like spoons in the disordered bed, Carla curled around his back and murmured into his ear.

'By the way, I'm in love.'

The too.' He leaned back and rubbed the back of his head against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She shuddered at the touch of the close cropped hair and reached instinctively for his shrunken p.r.i.c.k. He grinned and slapped her hand away.

'Boy, that's your lot. Go to sleep, nympho.'

'So! You just want to f.u.c.k me and leave me. Is that it?'

'I'm,' said Chris, already sliding headlong into sleep. 'Not going anywhere.'

'Just use me, and then when you've used me you go to sleep. Talk to me, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

A grunt.

'You haven't even told me how it went today.'

Breathing. Carla propped herself up on one arm and prodded at the springy muscle in Chris's stomach. 'I'm serious. What's Conflict Investment like?'

Chris took her arm, folded the offending finger around his own and tugged Carla back into the spoon configuration.

'Conflict Investment is the way forward at a global level,' he said.

'Is that right?''It's what the Shorn datadown says.'

'Oh, it must be true then.'

He smiled reflexively at the scorn in her voice and began to drift away again. Just before he slept, Carla thought she heard him speak again.

She lifted her head.

'What?'

He didn't respond, and she realised he was muttering in his sleep.

Carla leaned.over him, straining to catch something. She gave up after a couple of minutes. The only sense she succeeded in straining out of the soup of mumbling was a single, repeated word.

checkout It took a long time to find sleep for herself:

FOUR.

'Conflict Investment is the way forward!'

Applause rose, and clattered at the gla.s.s roofing like the wings of pigeons startled into flight. Around the lecture theatre, men and women came to their feet, hands pumping together. The entire CI contingent of Shorn a.s.sociates were gathered in the room. The youngest, Chris noticed, were the most fervent. Faces gashed open with enthusiasm, teeth and eyes gleaming in the late afternoon sun from roof and picture window. They looked ready to go on applauding 'til their hands bled. Sown in amongst this crop of pure conviction, older colleagues clapped to a slower, more measured rhythm and nodded approval, leaning their heads together to make comments under the din of the applause. Louise Hewitt paused and leaned on the lectern, waiting for the noise to ebb.

Behind his hand, Chris yawned cavernously.

'Yes, yes,' Hewitt made damping motions. The room settled. 'We've heard it called risky, we've heard it called impractical and we've heard it called immoral. In short, we've heard the same carping voices that free market economics has had to drag with it like a ball and chain from its very inception. But we have learnt to ignore those voices. We have learnt, and we have gone on learning, piling lesson upon lesson, vision upon vision, success upon success. And what every success has taught us, and continues to teach us, again and again, is a very simple truth.

Who has the finance.' A dramatic pause, one slim black clad arm holding a clenched fist aloft. 'Has the power.'

Chris stifled another yawn.

'Human beings have been fighting wars as long as history recalls. It is in our nature, it is in our genes. In the last half of the last century the peacemakers, the governments of this world, did not end war. They simply managed it, and they managed it badly. They poured money, without thought of return, into conflicts and guerrilla armies abroad, and then into tortuous peace processes that more often than not left the situation no better. They were partisan, dogmatic and inefficient.

Billions wasted in poorly a.s.sessed wars that no sane investor would have looked at twice. Huge, unwieldy national armies and clumsy international alliances; in short a huge public-sector drain on our economic 26systems. Hundreds of thousands of young men killed in parts of the world they could not even p.r.o.nounce properly. Decisions based on political dogma and doctrine alone. Well, this model is no more.'

Hewitt paused again. This time there was a charged quiet that carried with it the foretaste of applause, the same way a thick heat carries with it the knowledge of the storm to come. In the closing moments of the address, Hewitt's voice had sunk close to normal conversational tones.

Her delivery slowed and grew almost musing.

'All over the world, men and women still find causes worth killing and dying for. And who are we to argue with them? Have we lived in their circ.u.mstances? Have we felt what they feel? No. It is not ourplace to say if they are right or wrong. It is not for us to pa.s.s judgment or to interfere. At Shorn Conflict Investment, we are concerned with only two things. Will they win? And will it pay? As in all other spheres, Shorn will invest the capital it is entrusted with only where we are sure of a good return. We do not judge. We do not moralise. We do not waste. Instead, we a.s.sess, we invest. And we prosper. That is what it means to be a part of Shorn Conflict Investment.'

The lecture theatre erupted once more.

'Nice speech,' said Notley, pouring champagne into the ring of gla.s.ses with an adept arm. 'And press coverage too, thanks to Philip here.

Should profile us nicely for license review on the eighteenth.'

'Glad you liked it.' Hewitt lifted her filled gla.s.s away from the ring and looked round at the gathered partners. Excluding Philip Hamilton at her side, the five men and three women watching her accounted for fifty-seven per cent of Shorn a.s.sociates' capital wealth. Each one of them could afford to acquire a private jet with less thought than she gave to shopping for shoes. Between the eight of them, there was no manufactured object on the planet that they could not own. It was wealth she could taste, just out of reach, like bacon frying in someone else's kitchen. Wealth she wanted like s.e.x. Wanted with a desire that ached in her gums and the pit of her stomach.

Notley finished pouring and raised his own gla.s.s. 'Well, here's to small wars everywhere. Long may they smoulder. And congratulations on a great quarterly result, Louise. Small wars.'

'Small wars!'

'Small wars.' Hewitt echoed the toast and sipped at her drink. She surfed the polite conversation on autopilot and gradually the other partners began to drift back to the main body of the hotel bar, seeking out their own divisional acolytes. Hamilton caught her eye and she nodded almost imperceptibly. He slipped away with a murmuredexcuse, leaving her with Notley.

27'You know,' she said quietly, 'I could have done without Faulkner falling asleep in the front row. He's too impressed with himself, Jack.'

'Of course, you never were at his age.'

'He's only five years younger than me. And anyway, I've always had these.' Hewitt set her gla.s.s aside on the mantelpiece and cupped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as if offering them. 'Nothing like a cleavage for reducing professional respect.'

Notley looked embarra.s.sed and then away.

'Oh, come on Louise. Don't give me that tired old feminist rap agai--'

'Being a woman around here makes you tough, Jack.' Hewitt let her hands fall again. 'You know that's true. I had to claw my way up every centimetre of the way to partnership. Compared to that, Faulkner got it handed to him on a plate. One big kill, catch the imagination of App and Prom and he's made. Just look at him. He didn't even shave this morning.'

She gestured across the bar to where Chris appeared to be deep in conversation with a group of men and women his own age. Even at this distance, the dusting of stubble on his face was visible. As they watched, he masked another yawn with his gla.s.s.

'Give him a break, Louise.' Notley took her shoulder and turned her away again. 'If he can do for us what he did for Hammett McColl, I'll forgive him not shaving occasionally.'

'And if he can't?'

Notley shrugged and tipped back his champagne. 'Then he won't last long, will he.'

He put down the gla.s.s, patted her on the shoulder again and walked off into the press of suited bodies. Hewitt stayed where she was until Hamilton appeared noiselessly at her side.

'Well?' he asked.

'Don't ask.'

On the other side of the room, Chris was in fact deep in nothing other than the cla.s.sic party nightmare. He was becalmed at the edges of a group he had only pa.s.sing acquaintance with, listening politely to conversations he had no interest in about people and places he did not know. His jaws ached from trying not to yawn and he wanted nothing more than to bow out quietly and go home.Five days into the new job? I don't think so, pal.

Out of boredom he went to the bar for a refill he didn't want. As he was waiting, someone nudged him. He glanced round. Mike Bryant, grin on full beam, with a Liz Linshaw clone in tow and a tray full of drinks in his hands.

28'ttey, Chris.' Bryant had to raise his voice above the crowd. 'How did you like Hewitt? Talks up a storm, doesn't she?'

Chris nodded noncommittally. 'Yeah, very inspiring.'

'You're not kidding. Really gets you in the guts. First time I heard her speak, I thought I'd been personally selected to lead a holy f.u.c.king crusade for global investment. Simeon Sands for the finance sector.'

Mike did a pa.s.sable burlesque of the satellite-syndicated demagogue. 'Hallelujah, I believd I have.faith/Seriously, you look at the productivity graphs following each quarterly address she gives. Spikes through the roof, man.'

'Right.'

'Hey, you want to join us? We're sitting back on the window f.l.a.n.g.e there, see. Got some of the meanest a.n.a.lysts in creation gathered round those tables. Isn't that right, Liz?'

The woman at Bryant's side chuckled. Shooting a glance at her, Chris suddenly realised this was no clone.

'Oh, yeah, sorry. Liz Linshaw, Chris Faulkner. Chris, you know Liz, I guess. Either that or you don't have a TV.'

'Ms Linshaw.' Chris stuck out his hand.

Liz Linshaw laughed and leaned forward to kiss him on both cheeks.

'Call me Liz,' she said. 'I recognise you now. From the App and Prom sheets this week. You're the one that took down Edward Quain in '4I aren't you.'

'Uh, yeah.'

'Before my time. I was just a stringer on a pirate satellite 'cast in those days. Quite a kill. I don't think there's been one like it in the last eight years.'

'Stop it, you're making me feel old.'

'Will you two stop flirting and grab some of these drinks,' demanded Bryant. 'I've got a dozen thirsty animals back there to water. What do you want in that, Chris?'

'Uh, Laphroaig. No ice.'

'Yyyeurgh.'

They carried the gla.s.ses over to the tables between the three of themand unloaded. Bryant pushed and shoved at people, joking and cajoling and bullying until he had s.p.a.ce for Chris and Liz to sit at his table. He raised his gla.s.s.

'Small wars,' he said. 'Long may they smoulder.'

Approval, choral in volume.

Chris found himself squeezed in next to a tall, slim executive with steel-rimmed gla.s.ses and the air of a scientist peering down a microscope lens at everything. Chris felt a ripple of irritation. Affected eyeware had always been one of Carla's pet hates. f.u.c.kiJ,g povey chic, she invariably 29snarled when she saw the ads. Fake fitcking human imperfection. It'll be cool to ride around in a f.u.c.king wheelchair next. It's f.u.c.king offensive. Chris tended to agree. Sure, you could run a datadown uplink projected onto the inside of the lenses, but that wasn't it. Carla was right, it was zone chic. And why the luck pretend you couldn't afford corrective surgery when everything else you were wearing screamed the opposite.

'Nick Makin,' said the narrow face behind the lenses, extending a long arm sideways across his body. The grip belied his slender frame.

'You ah Faulkner, ahn't you?'

'That's right.'

Mike Bryant leaned across the table towards them. 'Nick was our top commission a.n.a.lyst last year. Predicted that turnaround in Guatemala over the summer. Went against all the models for guerrilla conflict that we had. It was a real coup for Shorn.'

'Congratulations,' said Chris.

'Ah.' Makin waved it off. 'That was last season. Can't live off things like that indefinitely. It's a whole new quarter. Time for fesh meat.

Another new appoach. Speaking of which, Chris, ahn't you the guy that let a pomotion challenger off the hook at Hammett McColl last year?'

Probably imagination, the way the whole table was suddenly listening to this sharldsh young man with the carefully masked speech impediment.

Probably. Chris's eyes flickered to Bryant. The big blond was watching.

'You heard about that, huh?'

'Yeah.' Makin smiled. 'It seemed kind of. Odd, you know?'

'Well,' Chris made a stiff smile of his own. 'You weren't there.'

'No. Lucky for Elysia Bennett that I wasn't, I'd say. Isn't she still awound somewhere?'

'I a.s.sume so. You know, Nick, I tend not to worry too much about the past. Like you said, it's a whole new quarter. Bennett was two years ago.'

'Still.' Makin looked around the table, apparently to enlist some support. 'An att.i.tude like that must make for a lot of challengahs. s.h.i.t, I'd dive against you myself just for the expewience if I thought you'd have a sentiment attack like that after the event. If I lost, that is.'

Chris realised abruptly that Makin was drunk, alcohol-fuelled aggressive and waiting. He looked at his gla.s.s on the table.

'You would lose,' he said quietly.

By now it wasn't his imagination. The buzz of conversation was definitely weakening as the executives lost interest in what they were discussing and became spectators.