First Horseman, The Read Free Page A

Max.’ Jim smiled and shook his hand. He wanted to give him a manly hug but held back. He didn’t want to embarrass him.
    ‘Sorry for the short notice, Jim, but you know how it is.’
    ‘I know what you want, if that’s what you mean. Let me take that.’
    Davas handed him the case, seeming glad to be shot of the load. To Jim, it felt almost empty.
    ‘Let’s go inside,’ said Davas. ‘Is your house swept for bugs?’
    ‘Only insects,’ said Jim. ‘I’ve got no secrets.’
    Davas was disapproving: ‘That could be seen as sloppy. You should keep your guard up.’
    They walked through a large red-brick arched portico into a long, galleried hall.
    ‘You’ve done a beautiful restoration job,’ said Davas, his boots echoing on the wooden floor.
    ‘You wouldn’t believe how much it all cost,’ said Jim. He stopped in his tracks. ‘No, I guess you’d know pretty much exactly how much this kind of thing costs.’
    ‘Chicken feed,’ said Davas.
    ‘I suppose,’ said Jim, ‘but a hell of a lot of it.’ He walked on.
    ‘One day, Jim, you’ll understand the scale of things. The important and the trivial will be clear to you. There have always been kings and princes and they have always lived in castles and palaces. They always will. They may not be called emperors or maharajas. They may not be seen as living gods or Dear Leaders, but they will always have everything. It’s Pareto’s Law. It’s the eighty-twenty.’
    ‘I can’t get used to it,’ said Jim, as they walked towards the door at the far side of the hall.
    ‘Well, Jim, it’s down to statistics and physics, anything but ethics.’
    ‘I don’t get you.’
    ‘Eighty-twenty means one per cent of the people get half of the whole pie, the one in ten thousand group gets a quarter and the lucky group that are one in a million get about an eighth of everything. The guy at the top of the pile ends up with three to four per cent of all the assets in the world.’ He patted Jim on the back. ‘That’s three to four per cent of all the money, the land, the combined wealth of the globe, and that’s as a result of the eighty-twenty rule. Think about it.’
    ‘No, thanks,’ said Jim. ‘It’s not worth my time. I’ve got way too much already, I don’t want to think about more.’
    ‘Nonsense,’ said Davas.
    They crossed a corridor of ancient red tiles and went into Jim’s study.
    Jim plonked himself in a mottled brown leather armchair by the empty fireplace. Davas took his case. He opened it, pulled out a file and handed it to Jim.
    Jim flipped through its contents and sighed. It was what he’d expected, a collection of currency and bond charts with a large blank area representing the future for him to fill in with his prediction. He dropped the papers on the floor by his feet.
    ‘So, what do you think?’ Davas wondered.
    ‘I told you last time I wouldn’t read charts for you any more. I meant it.’ He looked at Davas, whose right hand was in the case, holding something. Any second he was going to break into a rant. He was going to say that Jim had a God-given talent to read the future of financial markets and that gift was to help the world, more particularly Max Davas, by manipulating the bond markets so that the US could continue to control the global economy by the dominance of the dollar. The US was bust, but in fiddling the bond market and the connected currencies, Davas kept the US all powerful and, by implication, safe.
    Davas had used Jim’s predictions to crush the euro to the edge of collapse so that the US could fund its overwhelming debt; the dollar had staggered on as the global currency. Davas would say Jim was turning his back on God by not using his gift, that he was inviting the barbarians to pillage the West if he didn’t help Davas and the US Treasury. Only he could see the possible future, and with Jim’s vision, Davas could mould a favourable outcome, crafted for the good of all.
    Jim had resolved that he was not