The Twain Maxim by Clem Chambers Page A

random walk: the financial world was just an encrustation of fools, crooks andfunctionaries driven by fear and greed. Baz fed the greed and the City paid him for it.
    Barron was going to be a hell of a ride. Even those who knew what he was up to, and that included many around the table at the completion meeting to finalise the flotation, still thought they could ride along to their advantage. They could own the share on the ride up and drop it on to a greater fool before it turned to shit.
    The wild journey might last three years – he never knew how long a story would hold. What he did know was that he would make another fortune and get away with it. In the thirty years he had spent taking the piss, no one had even come close to collaring him. It was caveat fucking emptor .
    Everything was ready to go into phase two and he felt as bullish as hell.
    He was going to place 49 per cent of the business for £ 30 million ostensibly to fund the mine and he would start sucking that money out of the business almost immediately. Then he would ramp the stock price higher with exciting but bogus news, secretly selling shares as it rose. Then the bad news that the mine had chewed through the money raised in the float would collapse the price. He would buy back the stock he had sold, closing his short for a massive profit, and the cycle would continue until the market tired of the Barron story and it was time for Baz to lie low and drop his notebook into the lagoon.

13
    I don’t fucking need this, thought Baz, as the DC-9 started its approach to Goma international airport with a tight, bumpy swerve. None of the planes that flew into Goma were allowed to fly anywhere other than domestically – the EU listed them as too dangerous to fly at all but, as usual, standards were different in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It would be ironic if, after all his hard work, a dodgy junk aircraft was his undoing.
    The millions were raised and now it was just a matter of siphoning the money away without leaving any obvious clues that it was all one big con. In theory the location was perfect. The forty square miles of prospect were north of Goma and between a set of volcanoes. It really was the arse end of the world. Not only had it been a war zone until recently, but the two volcanoes went off as regularly as clockwork. No one in their right mind would go there and he was suddenly regretting being quite so thorough in his selection of a site that no one would check up on.
    He was going to stay in Goma and make arrangements for his expatriate construction party. They would fly in and put up the mining compound. Then he would ship in the putative drillers and appear to be prospecting. He had to get the ball rolling: soon enough people would be enquiringabout progress and he’d need photos of how things were going to keep them happy.
    The plane was shaking as if it was about to fall apart. He took a slug from a miniature of vodka and gritted his teeth. He could see Nyiragongo through the window.
    Fuck me, he thought. That really is a mean-looking bastard. McCoy was a fucking idiot: this certainly was the place where the devil would put the pipe in to give the world an enema. Lava had flowed across much of the city and had even swept over the end of the runway. Perhaps the enema had already happened.
     
    When the two men met in the airport building, Higgins looked happy enough. He was worth every cent Baz paid him. But Baz was either getting softer or the world was getting harder: whichever it was, he promised himself that this would be his last ramp. He’d have enough from this job to last him for all time. Once it was over he’d sit on his beach and screw and drink himself to death.
    “Good news and bad,” said Higgins, as he slammed the jeep’s door.
    “Tell me the good news first,” said Baz. “I could use some after that flight.”
    “Well, we’ve got a nice hotel on the lake. Good grub, clean, friendly and a pretty view over the