15
Tuesday, July 1
A few hours later that same morning, David stepped off the plane that had taken him back to Malmö again. He glanced at his watch, which said it was 9:30, squinted into the sunlight, and stretched slightly to wake himself up.
During the last year, as he and Michel had literally flown around the world looking for financial backers, he occasionally realized that he hadn’t been in the same country for more than a day at a time for several weeks. It was hard work, he thought, walking down the staircase that had been rolled over to the little domestic plane, but it was necessary.
Their financial backers were all over the globe. Banks and funds, the biggest of the big, had their offices in Moscow and Beijing, in London, New York, and Singapore. So they’d flown there, given their pitch, presented their plan, and then moved on to the next one. Always on the go, twenty-four hours a day. They had compiled all the information, formulated their strategy, and then done the same thing all over again. And again. They slept on the plane they’d chartered, each in his own airplane seat.
Outwardly, in interviews and articles, David always maintained that he liked to fly, that he lived for this. And that was partially true. You couldn’t work like this if you didn’t have a deep conviction that it was meaningful. But the truth, David thought as he strolled across the tarmac toward the terminal, was that the travel wore on him. And he’d been doing it for so long.
He had been about twenty when he started his first business. The first few years it was pretty much all about survival. In the following years it had been about going from an upstart to a superstar without losing focus.
David walked through the gate and out onto the street, flagged a cab, and gave the driver the address of the man he was going to meet. He leaned back in the seat and watched the familiar buildings and streets pass by. How many times had he been here? Twenty? Thirty?
He knew he was good at what he did, maybe one of the ten best in the world. Of course he had failed sometimes. Especially in the beginning, when he was inexperienced and compensated for that by being excessively ruthless.
The first time Hammar Capital had wound up in the spotlight was when he’d pulled off a really brazen coup against one of the most venerable companies in Sweden, a medium-size company with a good reputation among the conservatives, but one that he’d known he could make more efficient. It had been lunacy from beginning to end. With an extremely large loan, he’d made an aggressive move. It had failed, which earned him a lot of bad press. The Investum-owned evening paper, in particular, had hung him out to dry, called him a butcher, a pirate. It had been tough, but it had also made him stronger. Because the abuse he took in the press—sometimes deservedly so, sometimes completely undeservedly—taught him to take a beating. If there was anything his childhood had demonstrated, it was the importance of being able to handle a real thrashing. He’d always endeavored to learn from his failures and bring that experience to his next deal.
Twice Hammar Capital had struck at Investum directly. Twice, they had fought for dominion of a company they both wanted to control. And both times, the bigger and stronger Investum had emerged victorious.
The first time, David had been almost bankrupt. Hammar Capital had been up to its ears in debt again, and David had only managed to save the business by a hair’s breadth. The second time, a few years after the dot-com bubble, which had weakened Investum but made HC strong, the battle for a position on the board of a software company had been more evenly matched, but HC had still lost. They had had to back out, injured and humiliated in the press, but largely intact.
After that David had decided that he needed to stay away from Investum for a while. He realized he needed to plan better, that he needed to rely more on a cool head and logic, and act less out of emotion and hatred. He had started over, taking on Michel, whom he’d known from both his military service and the Stockholm School of Economics, as his partner. And that strategy had paid off. In recent years, Hammar Capital had gone from being an admired but very small venture capital firm to one of the biggest and most respected in Europe.
Now David didn’t have any trouble getting meetings with the foremost representatives of superbanks and superfunds the world over. Everyone knew that HC delivered, and today, whatever money David Hammar asked for, they gave him. His team of analysts was talented, his whole organization was as efficient as well-oiled machinery. They had never been stronger. He belonged to a new generation of finance men without old-school loyalties but with global contacts, and if he wanted to he could take over any big company.
David watched out the cab window. The thing was, he needed to think about where he was going next. For almost so many years he had dreamed of what he and Michel were about to do in a few weeks: a hostile takeover of Investum. Take it over and break the company up, crush it and crush Gustaf and Peter.
And Natalia.
God. Natalia. The woman with the golden eyes and the silky soft skin. What had he gotten himself tangled up in?
As David greeted the Russian he had come here to meet, as he summarized all the details, as he invited the man to lunch, as he flattered and convinced him, as he packed up after the successful meeting and took the afternoon flight back to Stockholm, he must have thought of Natalia a hundred times. As he walked into his office at Blasieholmen, he thought about how she was just a short walk away, so close over there at Stureplan. As he sat in his desk chair, he thought of her.
Was she also both tired and upbeat at the same time?
When was the last time he’d made love to a woman three times in the same night? He had no idea. She’d felt it too. He didn’t need to wonder. He knew that she’d felt what he’d felt, the intensity.
It had been unparalleled.
He let out a heavy sigh. There was a huge problem here. It was supposed to have been a one-time occurrence, making love to Natalia De la Grip. In principal, he reminded himself with a grimace, it shouldn’t even have been that, of course. But then when he’d agreed to go in, against all better judgment, he’d known that it could only be one night, nothing more. He hadn’t exactly been promiscuous in his life, but he’d never had any difficulty moving on from meaningless, casual dalliances.
David stretched, started his computer, and then just sat there, his eyes glazed over. He knew what he had to do, what he should have done from the beginning, before things had gone this far.
Break things off with Natalia for good.
He had to put it behind him. Not dwell on thoughts of the best sexual experience he’d ever had, not fantasize about seeing her again, not suspect that sex could never be meaningless or even casual to her.
He gazed out the window, wondering absentmindedly where Michel was. He’d forgotten to call Michel. Forgotten to call his closest and most important colleague, his best friend, while at the same time he’d thought about calling Natalia a hundred times.
He opened a couple of documents on the computer to do what he needed to do, focus on what was important. They had everything they needed now. Signed confidentiality agreements from everyone in question. Nothing could get out. Access to four billion euros. Brokers at the ready. In a week, when Båstad week began, the financial elite would all be off at their summer homes. Stockholm would empty out; all the alert systems would be running at half speed. They had chosen the timing with care. By this time next week pretty much every Swedish banker and moneyman would be in Båstad or Torekov, or on a boat in the Mediterranean. Summer, sun, and vacation would take over. And then they would strike.
David took a deep breath and decided to get to it.
Ten minutes later he hadn’t done a thing.
His mind kept turning to Natalia the whole time, replaying little movies in his head of how her skin glowed when she was aroused, how her eyes had shone in the dawn when they made love that last time, how she sounded when he kissed her, the taste of her tongue and mouth. He could hardly bear the thought that it wouldn’t happen again.
He abruptly stood up, walked over to the window, and looked out over the water. Actually it would be completely insane to deprive himself of a sequel. This had nothing to do with deepening the relationship, he convinced himself. He just questioned why it had to end so abruptly.
The more David thought about it, the more sensible he thought it seemed. Nothing was keeping him from seeing Natalia one more time. Of course he could call her if he wanted to, invite her out for a real dinner. Natalia was a sophisticated woman, an adult, her own person. They could have another night of sex. David ignored the alarms going off in some remote part of his brain. Of course he could call her.
“How did it go?”
David was snapped out of his reverie as Michel walked in, studying him with a puzzled expression on his face.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” David said.
Michel looked at him with concern. “Is everything okay?”
“It went well in Malmö,” David said. “The Russian is in. Now we have what we need.”
Michel nodded. “Good. And how did it go with the boat?”
“The boat?”
“David, are you alright? You seem really distracted. Are you sure it went alright in Malmö?”
“Sorry. It went well in Malmö with the Russian. And with your boat,” he added. “Thanks for letting me use it.”
“How is she?”
“The boat?”
Michel rolled his eyes. “Not the boat.”
“She’s decent. Not like the other members of her family. Different from all the bank women I’ve met. Not typically upper class. A nice person,” he concluded lamely.
Michel gave him an odd look.
David hadn’t planned to say so much, but he needed to express it out loud, put what he was thinking into words. Natalia was unique. And fun. And genuinely good-hearted, he was convinced of that. Somehow she managed to be a rock-solid finance woman—David knew very well what J-O demanded of his staff—and yet she was profoundly human, almost fragile when they were together.
“You know that I would never intrude into your personal affairs,” Michel began in a somber voice, and David knew he really didn’t want to hear this. Michel scratched his scalp. “But, David, what the fuck is going on between you two? Do you know what you’re doing? Are you going to see each other again?”
“Nothing happened,” David said tersely, without blinking. He didn’t like lying to his best friend, but he couldn’t talk about sex with him. Although, he thought uneasily, of course that wasn’t the worst thing he was keeping from Michel. “She’s working on something that has to do with Investum’s bank,” he said. “A big acquisition of some kind. She has insight into Svenska Banken.” That much was true. J-O had said it, and there had been rumors, the way there always were in this industry. It was a massive deal, a gigantic merger, and it would make Investum vulnerable precisely at the right time, as if he’d ordered it. “If I keep tabs on Natalia, then I’ll find out if she suspects anything.”
As excuses went, it was pretty lame.
Michel shook his head as if he saw right through it. “Just try not to ruin us. That’s all I’m asking.”
“You know how important this is to me; you don’t need to worry.”
“I know.” Michel was quiet, shifting from one foot to the other. “So what did you guys talk about?” he asked nonchalantly.
“What or who?”
“Nah, it’s not like I care.” Michel twisted one of his thick, gold rings. “We were never a couple,” he said. “I didn’t even think she’d remember me.” He started poking at a pen on the desk. “I don’t think she likes me anymore. We were friends, but then something happened, and now I don’t think she likes me at all. And why should she? You’ve met her. She could have anyone in the world she wants.”
David tried to keep a straight face, but he’d never seen Michel like this, like a twelve-year-old who wanted to ask out the most popular girl in class. “She looks good,” David said neutrally. “I assume we’re talking about Åsa Bjelke now, right?”
“She works for Investum,” Michel pointed out. “So she’s off-limits anyway.”
“But she’s not responsible for their operations,” David said. “Try not to mention that we’re planning to do a hostile takeover of her company and destroy her boss, and I’m sure it’ll be fine. Call her.”
Michel shook his head. “That woman is trouble. One hundred percent.” He gave David a wry smile. “We would do best, both of us, to keep away from the Investum women.”
“You’re right,” David said, his voice lacking conviction.
Because he wasn’t sure he could do that.
Keep away from Natalia De la Grip.