would buy up thirty-five million in put options on Cliffes Aeronautic 
Ltd. If its share value dropped by only three percent, Edward stood 
to make over a million pounds in profit. Normally a trader, seeking to 
make a huge investment on this scale, would consult senior 
colleagues, sound it out, and hope to spread blame were something 
to go wrong. Edward couldn't afford to do that—if the Cliffes deal 
were to have the effect he wanted he needed to be able to take sole 
credit for the move. Thirty-five million was well above his own daily 
transaction limit; fortunately, CD's tech team were slow movers and 
Peter Davis's account remained on the system, live and accessible 
by anyone in his team. Between the two accounts Edward drained 
the market dry before news of the investigation hit. 


Cliffes released a press release filled with officese—"We look 
forward to co-operating any way we can with the Commission and 
reassert our belief in the European project and a free, open market," 
the sort of stuff that made traders throw up a little in their waste 
paper baskets before hollering ‘sell’. By the time the markets closed 
Edward was already a good hundred thousand up; he hung on, 
however, sure that as soon as Jacques took the stand Cliffes' losses 
would snowball. 


On the Fifth of September Edward sat silent in front of his computer, 
hammering the refresh button every few minutes as the investigation 
continued. It soon became apparent something had gone wrong. 
The hearing—held in a recently refurbished wing of the Chateau of 
Val-Duchesse—ended hours early, and it quickly emerged that 
Martin Jacques had experienced some kind of nervous breakdown, 
having an aphasic episode under questioning where he had 
gibbered nonsensically with no awareness that he was speaking 
anything other than his native French before collapsing. It had 
further impacted Cliffes' share price, but with no further information 
on the alleged collision coming to light, investors were wary about 
giving up their positions on a high-performing firm. Jacques had 
been a charismatic front man but his good health, or lack of it, 
impacted little on Cliffes' value. Looking back, Edward thought later, 
he should have taken the one hundred and fifty thousand profit and 
run—it would have been a decent trade, even if he would have had 
a dressing down for his use of Peter's account. Instead, he clung on 
a full week, barely closing any other trades, as Cliffes' shares 


teetered, wobbled, and even revived a little, until Jacques finally 
recovered enough to face the Commission again at the Berlaymont. 


It was a disaster. Even before Jacques had opened his mouth, the 
share price spiked sharply, and continued rising until it had wiped 
out the profit Edward hoped to make. Edward interpreted it as a 
simple reaction to Cliffes' CEO looking hale and hearty as he waved 
to reporters outside the Commission, but later he wondered if 
documents had been leaked to key investors. 


Then the hammer-blow. Jacques—now cool, calm and collected, to 
the extent that it seemed immediately obvious that his previous 
performance had been a sham to buy time while he collected 
ammunition, brandished papers documenting electronic 
communications between Cliffes and the Commission weeks before 
the announcement of the investigation. Cliffes had signed a contract 
with the Belarusian government to provide chips for a new 
generation of cruise missiles; the European Commission had 
warned Jacques off—even spelling out that they would find some 
fault with Cliffes Aeronautics’ import agreements—but found their 
bluff called. 


It was horribly obvious that the investigation could not go ahead; it 
had become a political embarassment for the Commission and the 
European Union more widely, with Belarus' Lukashenko weighing in 
smugly on the hypocrisy of EU protectionists. The market saw it as a 
triumph for Cliffes—not only was Edward now making a loss, but so 
unwilling were his partners in New York or Beijing to accept his 
tainted options that he had to watch Cliffes' share price skyrocket for 
a full eight hours before he was able to unload them all ata 
sickening low of twenty-eight million. Instead of making the company 
a million pounds he had cost it seven million. It was an appalling 
failure, something the average trader would barely be able to make 
up in a year. But Edward didn't have a year; he had under a month 
before he had to sit down with his managers and explain what had 
possessed him to break company rules to make such a horrendous 
trade. 


Within hours, he thought, the little bespectacled men on the floor 
below them would have noticed the loss and reported it to Raymond 
Maclntyre. He might not even last until the review unless he pulled 


something now that wiped out every last penny of the deal. He sat 
for half an hour, clenching and unclenching his fists, face white as a 
ghost. He was lost. 


The feeling clogging his throat was the feeling he had whenever he 
tried to play chess now; there was some shining path, some route 
that would save him, but the door was locked. He could no longer 
roam those mental avenues. As a child he had been a prodigy—he 
had stalemated his father—Bernard Gradley, a man who would 
never let another sentient being win a game if you tore his 
fingernails out—the first time he showed him the game, beaten him 
the second time. His parents had taken him to clubs and 
tournaments where elderly men stroked their beards and swore in 
Polish as he skewered their queens and forked their knights and 
rooks with a pawn. 


His success had excited his father, who had a bespoke display 
cabinet produced by one of his top designers; dark wood with 
rounded corners and a polished glass front, lit by small, triangular 
spotlights. The cabinet had collected a steady smattering of trophies 
as Edward's victories grew, and his mother began to speak in 
hushed tones of a professional career. It all ended when Edward 
turned thirteen—his ranking collapsed almost overnight with the 
onset of puberty and his matches became a litany of defeats, 
reducing him to tears. Even now he could more or less remember 
what it had felt like to be able to think that way—looking at dozens of 
possible outcomes six moves ahead, comparing probabilities then 
sliding one's own life into the universe where success is guaranteed 
—but he could no longer access it. Whether it had been banished by 
hormones, the pressure to succeed or, as his father contended, just 
incipient laziness, his talent was gone. He had sought that vanished 
golden aura in everything he did, abandoning it as soon it became 
clear he was not a genius at it—music, arts, philosophy. Now 
banking was failing him too. He was hyperventilating, tears prickling 
his eyes. Fuck you, Bernard Gradley. 


There was nothing else to do. He got up, knees weak, and walked 
what seemed like a mile to David's table, where he and his high- 
powered team threw tens of millions of pounds of government debt 
backwards and forwards like it was confetti. In Edward's head, 


everyone was watching, intimately aware of his humiliation. He was 
trembling—shaking like a leaf, worse than with MacIntyre. 


"David. David," he said, his voice tiny and adrift. 


"Edward? What is it? You look like hell. Seriously, calm down, you 
look like you're going to have a coronary." 


"I've screwed up. I'm sorry, I've screwed up. | need help." David 
listened as Edward told him what he could, omitting how his desire 
to beat his father had led to him taking such a senseless risk. David 
spent a while in thought then spoke. 


"Okay. How much liquid capital do you have?" 
"W-what?" 


"You haven't registered a ticket for the twenty-eight mill, right? It's 
still in yours and Peter's accounts?" 


Of course he hadn't. He'd been too upset. The little men at their 
terminals wouldn't see anything, because as far as they were 
concerned the money was still in play. 


"No. It's still there." 


"Good. Now, I'm going to do you a huge favour. Maybe sometime 
down the road you let me in on something big, or we pair up our 
positions and | get the excess, right?" 


Edward nodded, mutely, still mortified beyond belief at his own 
weakness and stupidity. 


"Cholmondeley Holdings is buying up Hong Kong Electric. The 
announcement is this afternoon, three pm sharp. HKE has 
subsidiaries on the mainland; Cholmondeley's gone from having no 
presence in Asia at all to being the pack leader. | was really hoping 
to save this one for myself, but with the amount you need back 
there's no way anyone else can get in on this. You'll need to use 
Peter's account again. Oh, and you absolutely didn't hear this from 
me, okay? Seriously. I'll fucking bury you if you say otherwise." 


Edward was still shaking so hard he had to get one of his team to 
help with the transfer; they would almost certainly tell MacIntyre, but 
it no longer mattered. Cholmondeley was considered a busted flush 
in Beijing and Edward bought everything he could find. At three in 
the afternoon, just as David said, the venerable utility holding 
company announced its latest venture, taking over a concession-era 
Hong Kong utility with holdings throughout Guangzhou. Edward 
watched, hope welling in his heart, as the face value of their shares 
rose one percent, two, four, eight... By the close of the markets 
Cholmondeley was worth a quarter again what it had been and 
Edward held stocks worth worth well over thirty-five million pounds. 
He had not only made up his lost ground but converted a loss into a 
profit of close to a quarter of a million pounds. He cashed out 
immediately, not waiting to see if they rose further. Fortune had 
deserted him once today. Now he just needed to explain why he had 
used a previous colleague's account to gamble with far more money 
than he was trusted to handle. But there was one thing that needed 
to be done first. 


Edward felt very small and fragile as he went over to David and 
shook his hand. David clapped his arm and looked him in the eye, 
smiling darkly, as though some great secret had passed between 
them. 


"You see, Ed? It all worked out in the end. Don't forget that favour." 


Somehow the nature of what he had done escaped Edward in the 
rush of adrenaline, the flight-or-fight response that comes with the 
loss and subsequent gain of seven million pounds. He woke up that 
night, screaming, scrabbling at the sheets. You bastard! There was 
no way David could have found about that deal—it had been agreed 
in total secrecy to protect Hong Kong Electric's shareholders. He 
lay, soaked in sweat, mind a black whirlpool. Insider trading. 
Probably the police were already coming for him. He would walk in 
tomorrow and Macintyre would be standing with a squad of New 
Scotland Yard's finest, and he would point to Edward and say 
"That's him." They would walk him past David, who would sit there 
with that smile on his face. "I'll fucking bury you." But what did he 
have on Edward besides knowledge of the failed Cliffes deal? There 
was nothing illegal there, just another gamble by a City trader that 


went wrong. I'll tell them everything, swore Edward panickedly, 
curling up into a fetal ball. But was it illegal if you didn't act on it 
yourself? As far as he knew David had made no moves on HKE 
under his own account. Christ, oh Jesus. Maybe David had done it 
to get rid of him, feared ending up like Peter... Morning saw Edward 
still plotting, engaged in his long, dark Mutually Assured Destruction 
of the soul. 


The roadworks were back, this time right outside his apartment. The 
workmen seemed to eye him suspiciously as he drove past and 
wrote things down in little notebooks. It did not escape him that no- 
one was even remotely near the roundabout. 


Chapter Three: "Tender" 


"You've impressed," said Raymond Macintyre dryly, fingering 
through the stack of papers detailing Edward's trading over the past 
four months. "You've worked hard and added value—both on trades 
and in terms of new clients. | believe congratulations are in order." 


"Thank you," said Edward, breathing slowly and carefully. The days 
after the Cholmondeley deal had been nervewracking, always 
wondering if something was about to happen. Now, the final moment 
of truth—the review. Once again he sat in Raymond Macintyre's 
office with Will, as lead Partner, sitting in. MacIntyre furrowed his 
eyebrows and tilted his head forward so the light through the 
expansive glass ceiling lit up his scalp through his gelled hair. 


"Frankly | thought your stunt with Peter's account was too cute for 
your own good. We place restrictions on how much associates can 
throw around for a reason. However, | understand you made several 
hundred thousand on the deal and we are not in the business of 
punishing success." 


"Much appreciated, sir." 


"Sir, now? Ah, it seems like just yesterday you were calling me a 
‘wanker’. Just one little query on the Cholmondeley business," 
Edward's breath caught in his throat again, "it seems an 
uncharacteristic choice. Your portfolio is overwhelmingly weighted 


towards aerospace; a utilities company seems a little out of your 
area of expertise. May | ask what influenced your choice?" 


"|," Edward began, suddenly aware of David's eyes drilling into the 
side of his head. "I thought this was an excellent opportunity for me 
to expand into a new area; | think I'm ready to take on a broader 
portfolio and hope to continue to diversify my stock picks over the 
next few months." 


"Good to hear it," replied MacIntyre—was there a brief sideways 
glance at David there, a measured appraisal of the situation? 


"You will receive a bonus of twelve thousand pounds,"—significantly 
less than Edward had hoped, barely above average in fact, but a 
miracle given what he thought was inevitable after he screwed the 
pooch over Cliffes. "You'll be expected to better your performance 
next year, and the next, and the next; if you continue to perform, 
you're well on the road to partnership." 


It was with some surprise that Edward heard himself speaking in an 
eager, almost aggressive tone. "And if | wanted to make partner this 
year?" 


"I'm not sure | follow." 


"How much would | have to bring in for you to make me a partner 
straight away, with no consideration of seniority?" Oh Christ, 
Edward, what are you saying. You've learned nothing, have you? 


"| think, Raymond, he's asking whether there might be some target 
he can hit to accelerate the process, as it were," chipped in David. 


"Hmm—our friend David here brings in three million pounds in profit 
to the firm every year, not counting clients added. | think, if we were 
talking theoretically, that any associate able to equal our lead 
partner would be automatically considered for partnership. | must 
stress, however, that does not mean that | am looking for you to take 
risks with the company's money." He looked away and started 
tapping away on his computer. David nudged Edward, clearly taking 
itas a sign for them to leave. They had risen from their chairs and 
were halfway to the door when Macintyre threw out a final comment. 


SCP-573: The Pied Pipe 


Item #: SCP-573 
Object Class: Safe Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: None needed. Object is stored 
inDr.L — s desk. Object is to be locked in one of Site 62's secure 
lockers. SCP-573 requires the agreement of two members of Senior 
Staff in order to be removed from containment. No one is allowed to 
make use of SCP-573 without at least two back-up researchers. 
Testing of SCP-573 around children is hereby denied without O5 
approval.