Read Online The Fear Index by Robert Harris - Free Book Online

profile of a man in his fifties with a high-domed head and unkempt grey hair pulled into a ponytail. He stayed level with Hoffmann for an instant, then the tram accelerated and in a stink of electricity and a cascade of pale blue sparks the apparition was gone.
    It was all so quick and dreamlike, Hoffmann was not certain what he had seen. Quarry must have felt him jump, or heard him draw in his breath. He turned and said, ‘Are you all right, old friend?’ But Hoffmann was too startled to speak.
    ‘What’s happening?’ Gabrielle stretched back and peered around Quarry’s head at her husband.
    ‘Nothing.’ Hoffmann managed to recover his voice. ‘Anaesthetic must be wearing off.’ He shielded his eyes with his hand and looked out of the window. ‘Turn on the radio, could you?’
    The voice of a female newsreader filled the car, disconcertingly bright, as if her script were unfamiliar to her; she would have announced Armageddon through a smile.
    ‘ The Greek government vowed last night to continue with its austerity measures, despite the deaths of three bank workers in Athens. The three were killed when demonstrators protesting against spending cuts attacked the bank with petrol bombs …’
    Hoffmann was trying to decide whether he was hallucinating or not. If he wasn’t, he ought to call Leclerc at once, and then tell the driver to keep the tram in view until the police arrived. But what if he was imagining things? His mind recoiled from the humiliations that would follow. Worse, it would mean he could no longer trust the signals from his own brain. He could endure anything except madness. He would sooner die than go down that path again. And so he said nothing and kept his face turned from the others, so that they could not see the panic in his eyes, as the radio jabbered on.
    ‘ Financial markets are expected to open down this morning after big falls all week in Europe and America. The crisis has been caused by fears that one or more countries in the eurozone may default on its debts. There have been further steep losses overnight in the Far East …’
    If my mind were an algorithm, thought Hoffmann, I would quarantine it; I would shut it down.
    ‘ In Great Britain, voters are going to the polls today to elect a new government. The centre-left Labour Party is widely expected to lose office after thirteen years in power …’
    ‘Did you use your postal vote, Gabs?’ asked Quarry casually.
    ‘Yes. Didn’t you?’
    ‘Christ, no. Why should I bother with that? Who’d you vote for? Wait – no – let me guess. The Greens.’
    ‘It’s a secret ballot,’ she said primly, and glanced away, irritated that he had got it right.
    Hoffmann’s hedge fund was based in Les Eaux-Vives, a district just south of the lake, as solid and confident as the nineteenth-century Swiss businessmen who had built it: heavy masonry, wide faux-Parisian boulevards webbed with tram cables, cherry trees erupting from the kerbsides to shower dusty white and pink blossom over the grey pavements, shops and restaurants on the ground floors, seven storeys of offices and apartments stacked imperturbably above. Amid this bourgeois respectability Hoffmann Investment Technologies presented a narrow Victorian facade to the world, easy to miss unless you were looking for it, with only a small name tag on an entryphone to betray its existence. A steel-shuttered ramp, watched by a security camera, led down to an underground car park. On one side was a salon de thé , on the other a late-night supermarket. In the far distance the mountains of the Jura still bore a faint rim of snow.
    ‘You promise me you’ll be careful?’ said Gabrielle, as the Mercedes pulled up.
    Hoffmann reached behind Quarry and squeezed her shoulder. ‘I’m getting stronger by the minute. What about you, though? You feel okay, going back to the house?’
    ‘Genoud is sending someone round,’ said Quarry.
    Gabrielle made a quick face at Hoffmann – her Hugo face,