‘Nice one,’ said Hickey.
‘Is that sterling or euro?’ Boyler or Coyler or Doyler asked.
‘Who gives a shit?’ said the Duffer. ‘We’ll make that on the farmland alone. Once we get the Metro diverted and hyperinflate the price.’
‘And London is just the start,’ said McGee. ‘Questions?’
There were none.
After the motion to annex London had been passed, it was time for lunch. It was served in an adjoining room. I left the building to take a call from M. Deauville. ‘They’re talking about making a load more trophy purchases in London,’ I told him. ‘They’re all draped in the green jersey up there.’ I kept my voice to an urgent whisper, wary of being overheard, for the plaza was crawling with investment bankers. I could be shot for desertion.
‘I see.’
Tocka tocka in the background, always the tocka tocka, so that I felt I was vying with a thousand others for his attention. ‘They’re planning on purchasing the Battersea power station.’
‘Mmmm?’ He sounded interested, but only mildly. Did he appreciate the scale of the acquisition?
‘It’s a prime redevelopment site. Thirty-eight acres in Central London. Seven million square feet of mixed-use residential, retail and office space. And £150 million of the £400 million purchase price will be funded by issuing loan notes.’ I hissed those last two words as if they were contraband, a hard-drugs consignment. Loan notes. IOUs.
I waited for M. Deauville to plead caution — to plead reason — to point out that this whole thing was getting out of hand, that it was one matter when we were talking about the site across the road from the castle gates where I could keep an eye on things, keep an eye on Hickey, but that we now appeared to be entering a realm of fantasy. Tocka tocka on the other end of the phone until even that petered out and I was listening to silence. Was he still on the line? I looked at the screen. The call-duration counter was running. I put the phone back to my ear.
‘They’re buying it with debt, M. Deauville,’ I said at the risk of repeating myself. ‘That’s what they’re talking about up there. They’re paying for £150 million of the Battersea site with debt.’
‘How can you buy something with debt?’ I persisted when he passed no comment. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening any more.’ I glanced up at the penthouse suite to make sure they weren’t spying, but the glass reflected the sky. Office workers were striding about checking themselves out in the many mirrored surfaces. They spoke in a contorted nasal accent that hadn’t existed in Dublin in my day. I didn’t like this hard new elite. They made me feel that my day was over. ‘I’d better go back upstairs,’ I eventually conceded when it became evident that I was only taking up M. Deauville’s time.
There was an acrid smell of sweat in the boardroom, or maybe it was the smell of money. ‘Can’t we open a window?’ I asked, tugging at my shirt collar, ‘isn’t there a window we can open?’ but nobody was listening to me. McGee stood up and I sat down.
He touched his giant screen to reveal a satellite photograph of an archipelago.
‘What the fuck is that?’ said Hickey, eager to display his hunger to learn. Top of the class was not a role in which he was well versed.
McGee eyed him over his glasses. ‘Are you seriously telling me, Mr Hickey, that you don’t recognise The World in Dubai?’
A confused hesitation and then Hickey laughed. A course he recognised The World in Dubai! Any developer worth his salt recognised The World in Dubai, and D. Hickey had been monitoring property prices there for months, ready to swoop and make a killing. It was all a question a timing, wasn’t that right, lads? He looked around the table.
McGee zoomed in on one of the islands. ‘Last month, we purchased the Ireland Island for €28 million and we’re developing it into an Irish-themed resort, to include a large internal marina,’ a computer-generated image of a marina on the screen, ‘apartments and villas,’ accompanying artwork, ‘a gym, hotel and an Irish-themed pub. To distinguish it from the other islands, the Ireland Island will feature a recreation of the Giant’s Causeway. And so, going forward.’ He enlarged a grey blob in a navy ocean. ‘What we’re here to do today, gentlemen, is purchase Britain.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
Laughter. They thought I was joking.
‘Now,’ McGee continued, ‘given how much property we’ve added to our portfolio this quarter, we’ll have to issue commercial bonds to cover it.’
Commercial bonds. More debt. McGee didn’t have any money left and yet he refused to fold. I recognised the compulsive behaviour of an addict. This wasn’t a boardroom. This was a betting shop. McGee needed to join the programme. They all needed to join the programme. But first they had to hit rock bottom. You couldn’t help them. They had to help themselves. I put down my pen and folded my arms.
My mouth was sour with the taste of coffee. The girl in the pinstripe suit brought in a fresh pot on the hour and the men obediently contemplated her backside, for this ritual was a duty, it was being part of the team.
I took the opportunity to catch Hickey’s eye. ‘I think we should leave now,’ I told him quietly, and he threw me this imploring, panicked look: don’t ruin this for me, please. It wasn’t the wealth that Hickey was after, I saw then, or not only the wealth, but also the opportunity to sit at the big boys’ table, to be on the other side of the fence for once in his life. Can I leave the Minister with you, Dessie? You can a course, Mr McGee!
McGee summoned another map onto the screen and slid his glasses down his nose to peer at us over them, nodding gravely as if yes, it was true: he was divulging the blueprint of a top-secret military base. ‘This, gentlemen, is the real target. We’re onto the hard stuff now.’
Shanghai.
More food appeared when darkness fell, as well as a brace of bottles of Brunello di Montalcino. McGee made a show of blowing the dust off the labels to demonstrate their vintage. He had tried to fill my glass and I had covered it with a demurring hand. ‘You’ll take a drop,’ the man insisted, and Hickey had shot him a warning look, shaking his head as if I were a volatile animal to be handled with caution. McGee had backed off. The wine was rich in tannin and it blackened their lips. I could smell it on their blackened breaths, their blackened hearts, their blackened souls. All of them laughing in a medieval display of mettle and Hickey laughing loudest of them all, having discovered the dark art of the calculator. What I cannot remember is anything being funny.
‘My colleagues inform me that you’ve placed a bid on a site on the Pudong skyline,’ M. Deauville commented some hours later when I left the boardroom to accept his call. Tocka tocka, tocka tocka: messages were criss-crossing the World Wide Web like shooting stars. The news had travelled fast. This was big. I had known it was big. M. Deauville had known it too. Perhaps he had been testing me earlier. Seeing what I was made of. Seeing if I would go all the way.