The Predator
First Chapter
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'Ridpath has all but cornered the market in glossy
financial thrillers and this one is well up to standard'
- Mail on Sunday

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© Michael Ridpath 2004

Chris pulled the yellow sticker off his favourite coffee mug and read the note in its familiar loopy writing: Gone to Prague. Back Wednesday. Maybe. Love L.
   He sighed and shook his head. It was Monday morning, the first day back after ten glorious days skiing in the French Alps. He had been in the office since half past seven, refreshed, eager to sort out whatever tangles Lenka had made of their firm while he had been away. As he had expected, there were quite a few. The computer was down, there was a letter from the fund's auditors about a problem with the accounting of accrued interest, and she had bought a pile of bonds issued by an extremely dodgy-sounding Polish mobile telecoms company.
   And now there was this note.
She knew he would be angry. She must have left it on his mug in the kitchen so that he would have a few minutes to settle in before he found it. How thoughtful. She could at least have stayed a day in London to brief him on what had happened since he had been away. This was the first holiday he had taken since he and Lenka had set Carpathian Fund Management up two years before and he had expected things to fall apart without him. But, as he closed his eyes and remembered the feel of the fresh crisp powder under his skis, he knew it had been worth it.
  The phone rang. He carried the mug of coffee back to his desk and picked it up. `Carpathian.'
  `Good morning, Chris! How's your tan?' He recognised the hoarse, exuberant voice immediately.
  `Lenka! Where are you?'
  `Didn't you get my note? I'm in Prague.'
  `Yes. But what are you doing there? You should be here, telling me what's been going on.'
  `You're a clever boy, Chris. You'll figure it out. Anyway, I've got some great news. I've found us an office!'
  `In Prague?'
  `Yes, of course in Prague. Remember, we discussed it?'
  It was true. They had discussed gradually opening up small offices throughout Central Europe. But not quite yet, Chris had thought. The idea of all the admin involved in opening and running one made his heart sink.
  `What's the matter Chris? It's in a great location. And I think I've found the right person to run it. Jan Pavlík. You'll like him. Come over and have a look.'
  `When? How can I do that? There's too much to do here.'
  `It'll wait,' said Lenka. `This is important. And we have to move fast to get this office. Come on. I don't want to take these decisions without you.'
It seemed to Chris that that was exactly what she was doing.
`But what about the computer? And what on earth are we doing with twenty-five million euros of Eureka Telecom?'
  `Don't worry. Ollie has got a man coming in this morning to fix the computer. And I'll tell you all about Eureka Telecom when you get here. There's a story.'
  `There'd better be,' he said.
  `Oh, Chris, you sound so fierce,' Lenka said in mock awe.   `Look, the office is right across the street from The Golden Bear. It's a great pub. It serves Budvar. You'll like it, I promise.'
  He hesitated. He glanced out of the window at the upper branches of the oak trees reaching up from the square below. The din of London traffic drifted up to the fifth-floor office, pierced by the cries of a taxi-driver hurling abuse at a bicycle courier. It was true, they had promised their investors that they would open up in Central Europe. They had said it was essential to have a local presence to understand the market properly. Well, it was about time they did something about it.
`Oh come on, Chris.' Lenka said. `If you want to give me a hard time about it, you can do it here.'
  As usual, Lenka was getting her way.
  `All right,' he sighed. `See you tonight.'

The taxi nosed through the cars parked haphazardly in the small snow-covered square, and pulled up in front of the Hotel Paríiz. Chris paid the driver and checked in. He called up to Lenka's room: she told him she would meet him in the lobby in ten minutes. It took him less than that to dump his case, change into some jeans, and get back downstairs.
  Lenka, of course, made him wait. The lobby was dripping with accoutrements from the beginning of the twentieth century: ornate chandeliers and elevator doors made of brass, a Rodin-like sculpture of a nude, and art-nouveau posters advertising everything from Czech chocolate to French plays.
   Lenka always stayed in the Hotel Paríz; she said it was one of the few hotels in the city that still had style. She had grown up thirty kilometres from Prague, and she had spent her student days there. She loved it. Chris wasn't at all surprised that she wanted to open an office there.
  And Chris wasn't going to stop her. Although technically they were equal partners in Carpathian Fund Management, the fund had been her idea, and he still considered himself lucky that she had asked him to join her. They had first met ten years before, when they were both eager participants on the training programme of Bloomfield Weiss, a large New York investment bank. They had become friends, and had kept in touch as they went their separate ways: he to Bloomfield Weiss's London office, and she to their Emerging Markets group in New York. Then, when he was holed up alone in his flat recovering from a stomach bug he had picked up in India, fired in disgrace from his job, abandoned by his girlfriend, his self-confidence demolished, she had called him. She was leaving Bloomfield Weiss to set up her own fund. Would he like to join her?
  She had saved him. Of course, he had refused her offer at first, saying he was the wrong person, that he would be a hindrance rather than a help. He had believed this, but she had not. With her encouragement, he pieced together the fragments of his shattered self-esteem. It turned out she was right: they made a good team.
  Carpathian was a hedge fund investing in the government and high-yield bonds of Central Europe. Or at least that was the way they had described it in their marketing literature. In reality, "hedge fund" meant high risk, "high-yield" meant junk bonds, and Central Europe meant the old Eastern Europe less the basket cases, like Russia. The investors knew what they were doing, though. They wanted to make as much money as possible from the integration of the old Iron Curtain countries with the rest of Europe. They wanted Lenka and Chris to take big risks, and make them big bucks, or to be more precise, big euros. Lenka, with some help from Chris, had raised fifty-five million euros, and borrowed more to maximise the return on investment.
  So far, all had gone well. They had achieved a return of twenty-nine per cent in their first full year. They were eight per cent up in the current year, and it was still only February. Chris had been a trader long enough to know that some of their success was down to luck. But he knew how to trade government bonds well, and she knew the high-yield market. She had the vision to see the big play; he got the details right. She wowed their investors; he made sure they received high quality reports on time. She had found the office in Hanover Square at a bargain rent; he had negotiated the lease. And now she had found an office in Prague, the first step towards making them a truly European fund manager.
  But Chris knew from painful experience that in the bond markets things could change in an instant. His skiing holiday was the first time for two years when, for a few short days, he had not been worrying about Carpathian. Now he was worrying again.
  Ollie, their young analyst, could sort the computer out. He and Tina, an even younger receptionist-come-assistant, would cope for a couple of days. But a bigger concern was the Eureka Telecom holding. Twenty-five million euros was a large position for a fund Carpathian's size. Chris knew little about Eureka Telecom, except that it intended to build a mobile telephone network across Central Europe, and that the bond had been issued during the week he was skiing. Bloomfield Weiss, his old employer, was the lead manager. He couldn't help it, but he still found it hard to trust any bond issue that was led by them.
  He was studying a poster advertising a play starring Sarah Bernhardt when he heard a familiar voice. `Chris! Nice of you to show up. You're late!'
  She smiled and kissed him on both cheeks. She was a tall woman, with white-blonde hair, angular cheekbones and wide, almond-shaped brown eyes. She was wearing tight jeans, a leather jacket and boots. She looked stunning. Had Chris been meeting her for the first time, he would have gaped. But this was Lenka, and he was used to her by now. Everywhere she went men turned to get a second look at her, and that was just how she had always liked it.
  `I sat on the tarmac at Heathrow for three-quarters of an hour,' he said. `Can we get something to eat? I'm starving.'
  `Didn't you eat anything on the plane?'
  `I was saving myself.'
  `Well, good,' she said. `Let's go to The Golden Bear. We can have a beer or two, and I'm sure they'll still do some food.'
  `Are we going to see the new office?' Chris asked.
  `Only from the outside. We'll look at it properly tomorrow morning.'
  `So, what's this Golden Bear like?'
  `It's a dive, Chris. Just your kind of hole. Come on.'
As she pushed past him, he smelled the expensive perfume that she always wore that had become so familiar. Annick Goutal, he had discovered. He followed her out of the hotel and into the night air. It was cold, a penetrating cold that bit straight through Chris's London coat to his bones. He wished he'd brought gloves.
  `Come on,' Lenka said. `This way,' and she set off down a quiet snow-covered street.
  `Is it far?'
  `Ten minutes walk. It's just off Príkopy, where most of the big banks are located. It's a good address without being too expensive.'
  `What about Jan Pavlík? Do you think we can persuade him to come on board?'
  `Yes, as long as you like him. We'll be meeting him tomorrow. He's good, I think.'
  `Have you spoken about a package?'
  `Of course not,' Lenka said. `I wouldn't dream of doing that without asking you, would I?'
  Chris just looked at her.
  Lenka laughed. `We can discuss it when we get to the pub if you like. There's some other stuff I want to talk to you about as well.'
  `I'm all for that,' Chris said. `But I need food first.'
  `OK, OK,' she said. `I'm sure they'll do some goulash and dumplings. That will fill you up.'
  They turned a corner and emerged into the Old Town Square. Chris stopped and stared, overcome by the magic of its subtly illuminated fairy-tale buildings glowing in the snow. The medieval town hall rose above brightly painted baroque merchants' houses, and a monument to someone or other lurked darkly in the centre. The rich notes of a saxophone drifted out of one of the bars around the square's rim.
  `Come on,' said Lenka, tugging Chris's arm, `I thought you said you were hungry.'
  Chris knew that she had brought him this way deliberately, that she wanted to show off the city she loved so much, but he followed her as she led him down a series of ever smaller streets.
  `I hope you know where you're going,' he said.
  `Of course I do,' said Lenka, and turned under an arch into a tiny alleyway.
  An occasional lamp lit up quiet doorways and a couple of closed-up crystal shops. Chris could smell coal in the air. The snow still lay on the road here, gleaming in the lamplight, only slightly compacted by the few cars that must have passed by since it had fallen. All was quiet, the din of the city's traffic muffled by the walls and the snow.
  Suddenly, Chris became aware of soft rapid footsteps behind them. As the sound came nearer, he turned. Lenka had just begun to say something. A man was striding rapidly towards them, only a couple of paces away. He was holding something in his hand, and making straight for Lenka.
  For a fragment of a second, Chris didn't react: he was too surprised to take in what was happening. Then, when he realised what the man was holding, he shouted and dived at him. But he was too slow. In one swift movement, the attacker grabbed Lenka by the collar of her coat with his left hand, yanked her backwards, and raised his knife to her throat with his right. Her eyes were wide with fear and shock, steel glinting against the paleness of her neck. Her breath came in short sharp bursts. She stared at Chris, her eyes imploring him to do something, too scared to struggle, or even to speak.
  `Steady,' Chris said, slowly raising his hands towards the man.
  The man grunted. Chris saw steel flash and heard the gurgle of Lenka's attempt to scream. He dived forward, but the man pushed Lenka into him, and turned and ran. Chris caught her, and hesitated, unsure whether to go after him. But he let the man go, and lay Lenka gently on to the pavement. Blood poured out on to the snow, and all over her prized leather jacket. Chris tore off his own coat and tried to hold it against her throat.
  `Help!' he shouted. He didn't know the Czech for help. He tried the Polish instead. `Pomocy! Policja! Pogotowie! Lekarza! Oh, come on somebody, help me!'
  Lenka was lying still beneath his hands. Her face was already pale, her eyes open and limp. Her lips moves as she tried to say something, but they made no sound. Desperately, Chris pushed down hard on her throat with his coat, as though by sheer force of will he could stanch the flow. Within seconds, his hands and arms were covered in her blood.
  `Please, Lenka!' he urged her. `Come on, Lenka! Stop bleeding. You must stop bleeding! For God's sake, don't die on me. Lenka!'
  But it made no difference. Beneath his hands, her eyes fixed into a stare, and her breathing stopped. Chris lifted up her blood-soaked head to his chest and held it, running his fingers through her short white hair.
  `Lenka,' he whispered one more time, kissing her forehead. Then he lay her gently back on to the snow and wept.

Shoulders hunched, Chris trudged through the urban snow, eyes down, scarcely noticing the city around him going about its morning business. He needed air. He needed to try to calm the tumult of emotions boiling within him. He needed time.
  He felt strange. After his initial tears, a coldness had crept around him. Outwardly he felt numb, impassive. He had slept poorly the night before. Images of Lenka's panic-stricken eyes pleading with him to do something to save her, and her pale face pressed against the blood-spattered snow, intruded into every spell of drowsiness. His brain was tired, stunned. But underneath, underneath there lay a turmoil of emotions churning away inside him. There was the horror of her death, fury at whoever had killed her, guilt that he had been able to do nothing to stop it, and the knowledge that he would never see her again, or hear her laugh, or argue with her, or tease her, or celebrate Carpathian's minor victories with her. All these emotions lurked there, waiting to burst out in a prolonged scream. Somehow, though, the brittle exterior held, keeping it all trapped inside. His face was stiff with the cold air on his cheeks, an icy membrane encasing the loss within him.
  The police had come quickly. They asked Chris questions about Lenka, about the attack, about the man with the knife. Chris hadn't seen the man's face clearly. Medium build, wearing a dark jacket and a dark woollen hat, was all he could manage. Useless. And a moustache. He remembered a moustache. Still useless. The Czech police said that the man must have been a trained killer. Apparently, it is difficult to cut someone's throat efficiently. No, Chris said many times, he had no idea who might have wanted to kill Lenka.
  Her parents had come that morning. Small, mild, humble people, they were totally unlike Lenka. He was a country doctor, she a nurse. They were crushed. Chris had done his best to comfort them, but their English was rudimentary. Their grief tore into his heart. He had left them, feeling once again useless.
  He made his way to the street where she had said their new office was to be. She hadn't told him the number, but he saw the tavern with the sign of a yellow bear holding a mug of beer outside it. Opposite was a cream three-storey building with an ornate wooden door. Chris looked more closely, and saw five steel nameplates bearing the logos of international lawyers, accountants and consultants. That must be the place. A Prague office would have to wait now. So would Jan Pavlík. Chris realised the man must be expecting to talk to him that day. Chris would have to call him to let him know what had happened.
  He hesitated, tempted for a moment to go into the tavern and drink an early beer. But he turned away from its warmth. He wanted to walk, to feel the cold air on his face, to feel Lenka's death.
  He wandered aimlessly through the old town, with its little squares, its churches, and its buildings of orange, yellow, cream and green, each one exquisitely decorated, all of them mocking Lenka's death with their beauty.
  He found himself at the Charles Bridge, and hunching his shoulders deep within his overcoat, he strode out on to it. He stopped in the middle, and turned to look back at the city. Lenka had spent many years here as a student. He could imagine her during those heady days of the Velvet Revolution, shouting with the loudest of them. A young, idealistic woman looking forward to a life of freedom ahead of her. Or only half a life.
  An iron-grey cloud pressed down on the town, threatening to engulf Prague Castle on the opposite bank. A viciously cold wind whipped off the Vltava, its waters churning swiftly downstream. The chill bit through his coat, and he shivered. What about Carpathian? Forget expansion, it would be difficult to keep the firm going at all without Lenka. But he was determined to do it. She was his partner, she had trusted him, and he wouldn't let her down.
  He leaned over the parapet of the old stone bridge, and stared down at the angry river. He remembered the first time they had met, ten years before in New York. And, with a shudder, he remembered that other death.