First Horseman, The Read Free

life with a sharp crack. He noticed one of the students flinch. She was a thin, dark-haired specimen, pale and, he judged, weak. He laid the mouse flat on the board and pulled its forelegs apart. He smiled faintly, seeing, as he pinned the paws down, the tiny marks of a mouse crucified, blood seeping from the punctures.
    He sliced open its belly from throat to tail. Even now, though he had done this thousands of times, he could have gasped with pleasure at the perfection before him. The miniature work of art lay wet and quivering, exposed and vulnerable to him.
    He looked up at the students. ‘See?’ he said, in his slow, deep voice. ‘The heart still beats.’
    The girl’s eyes were closed. She had picked the wrong course if the death of a mere mouse was too much for her.
    ‘This is the machine that serves as our toolbox of discovery,’ he said. ‘It is a small analogue of the machine that drives our own existence.’
    The students looked on, hungry for mastery.
    Kate turned and eased her way back through the small crowd. She had made a mistake: even at this early stage she couldn’t stomach her subject. At the door she looked back. The professor caught her eye. She held it for an instant, then turned and left.

6
    The sound of a helicopter passing above him filled Jim with gloom. He recognised the sound even though it was strangely attenuated and much quieter than he had expected. He had had enough of two things in his life: volcanoes and helicopters. Every time he got into serious trouble they were somewhere in the mix. The first volcano had been at Las Palmas in the Canaries: he had flown there in a chopper and ended up inside the accursed thing.
    Then there had been Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a volcano so active that it had recently erupted and cut Goma, a major city, in half. A helicopter had been his only means of getting out.
    Finally there was Fuji, a beautiful snow-capped mountain, the backdrop to a nasty scrap in Tokyo. Thankfully, no helicopters had been involved.
    Yet helicopters, unlike volcanoes, were hard to avoid. As far as Jim was concerned, a lunatic had invented the helicopter and lunatics flew in them.
    As Jim got up from his desk, Max Davas, the grand master of hedge-fund managers, shadow banker to the US Treasury, would be landing in the paddocks behind the house. There was no way the old man would contemplate arriving in a car, to come crunching up the long drive like everybody else. Davas had to arrive in the grandest possible style.
    Jim went out to meet him. The helicopter was huge, marked with matt grey cloud patterns that made it look like part of the sky above. It was weirdly angular with more than a hint of menace. Jim hadn’t seen a chopper like it before. It reminded him of objects the military considered classified. Where rich men had Gulfstreams, Davas owned the biggest Airbus they made. For some people a 250-foot yacht was enough; for Davas, nothing short of a frigate would do. He was astonishingly rich, with billions more than Jim, and he spent money like only countries do.
    Jim waited by the paddock gates and watched Davas emerge. His mentor wasn’t moving with the agility Jim remembered: he had suffered a bout of pneumonia and still looked as though he’d had a close shave with the Reaper. Weeks in bed had withered him like an uprooted plant.
    Davas was wearing a black blazer, dark blue jeans and black cowboy boots. He was carrying a large case. Somehow the smart informality was at odds with his uneven pace. The last time Jim had seen him, his friend had bounded across the field like a young man, full of energy and bounce. Now there was a shaky, careful determination in his walk, which was more of a stagger than a stride. Davas acknowledged him with a weak wave, as if raising his hand too high might cause him to lose his balance and fall.
    Jim opened the gate.
    ‘How are you, my boy?’ said Davas, clearly relieved to get on to firm ground.
    ‘Great,