The Last Trade Read Online Free PDF Page A

yachts heading into the glittering harbor, Lau tries to forget about his family and manages to smile again.
    As soon as he finishes the first martini, he begins to wonder if he should fix a second, or if perhaps he should call some friends to have a bit of a celebration. Even if it is a bloody Monday. Even if, technically, he hasn’t yet received a cent for his effort. He doesn’t have to tell them about the magnitude of the transaction or the fact that he’s about to have a hell of a good week, but after months and months of lying low and avoiding almost all contact with the outside world, why not?
    He gets up and decides he’ll do both. He’ll have that second dirty Hendrick’s martini and celebrate. Perhaps at Nobu, or better, Hutong.
    Standing at his kitchen counter, Lau calls three friends in succession, but none of them answer. He leaves the same message for each: “Call me . . . I’m ready to have fun again.” Yet he can’t help thinking, Do they care? Have they moved on like everyone else in my life? Screw it—he uses one hand to scroll through his smart phone for a restaurant app to find the number for Hutong—I’ll celebrate alone. With the other he reaches for the Hendrick’s.
    The call to Hutong has started to go through when he hears the faintest metallic click behind him. He begins to turn, but a hand grabs the back of his neck and smashes his face down onto the counter. The phone drops to the floor as the barrel of a pistol presses against his temple.
    â€œWhat do you want?”
    â€œWho else did you tell?”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    The hand lifts his head off the stone countertop and smashes it back, cracking Lau’s left jawbone and knocking loose a canine and an incisor tooth. “You were specifically told not to tell anyone. Who else?”
    Lau groans, mumbles, “I told no one.”
    The hand raises Lau’s head, poised to smash it again. “Wait!” he says, spitting blood, the uprooted teeth still floating inside his mouth. “Okay. I made some trades. I took some positions, but I didn’t tell anyone, it was programmed. And my money, compared to the others’ . . .”
    â€œAnd who else?”
    â€œNo one. My boss. I had to, but I told you that on the—”
    â€œNot me.”
    â€œOkay. I told the caller that I had to.”
    Pressing Lau’s face against the stone: “Who . . . else?”
    â€œNo one. I called my friends. Please. Believe me.”
    â€œHow can I believe someone who has failed to keep the only promise we’ve asked of him?”
    Lau begins to weep. “I made the trade because I was desperate. I was about to lose everything.”
    The hand loosens its grip on the back of his neck, but the pistol is still pressed against his forehead.
    â€œI can cancel it,” Lau says, somewhat brightening. “I’ll make the call, contact them right now.”
    â€œThat won’t be necessary. Stand up, but don’t turn around.”
    Lau lifts his face off the counter and straightens. “I promise, I won’t tell another soul.”
    â€œThis is correct,” the voice says. “You won’t.” The bullet enters through the base of Lau’s skull and exits through the floor-to-ceiling harbor-view window.
    His body stiffens, then goes slack all at once, and he pitches face-first toward the soon to be bloodstained white marble countertop as a squall of glass shards begins to float like snow through the Hong Kong twilight toward the warm asphalt of Harbour Street, seventeen stories below.
    On the counter next to him the light on his phone flashes with a message, a text with the heading URGENT from NYC .

5
    New York City
    W eiss has a whiteboard on his living room wall that is covered with cities, dates, symbols, account numbers, quotations, and theories written in multicolored markers. What Weiss