Cerise and I slept in on Sunday, arising around nine for a breakfast of cage-free eggs Benedict, broiled organic giant pummelo with Barbados turbinado, home made miniature almond croissants, cappuccino and Taittinger mimosas with blood orange juice I squeezed with my own, bare hands. After that, we went back to bed. When we finally made it down to the living room, with intentions of spending a few hours reading the Sunday New York Times, it was just after one o’clock. But no sooner had I opened the Review of Books than the phone rang. It was Jacques, my old buddy from the Sorbonne.
Tom: Hello?
Jacques: Tom? Tom Collins?
Tom: This is he.
Jacques: Tom, hello, hello, so nice to speak with you once more, mon ami. How are you doing?
Tom: Not bad. I’m wasting a perfectly good Sunday afternoon reading a big, fat liberal urban newspaper.
Jacques: C’est bon, mon ami, c’est bon. I am calling because of a… certain person I know. He is thinking of leaving France, perhaps, to live somewhere else.
Tom: Such as?
Jacques: We… ah, he… he was thinking perhaps of Costa Rica.
Tom: Oh. I see. Who is this… friend of yours?
Jacques: He is my, how do you say it… my brother-of-the-laws.
Tom: You mean your sister is married to this guy?
Jacques: Exactement, mon ami. One of my many sisters.
Tom: And he’s thinking about moving to Costa Rica?
Jacques: That is one of many places under consideration, yes. And you are expert at getting things set up for people to go abroad, especially to Costa Rica, yes?
Tom: I’ve helped a few clients change their address from time to time.
Jacques: Very good. So this is why I am calling.
Tom: Right. Anything for a member of the family.
Jacques: This is true, mon ami. This sister, her husband is a whizzer with the computers, he whizzes all over with them, yes? At a very large French bank, he whizzes all over them, whizzing here and whizzing there. Finally, he makes a big, big whiz and starts using the bank’s money to make big whizzes in the international finance markets…
Tom: Wait, I think I know this guy.
Jacques: Maybe, Tom. Maybe you hear about him on the news, I don’t know. Is Societe Generale on your televisions lately, along with your Brangelina and your car bombs?
Tom: Ah, yeah, as a matter of fact, it is.
Jacques: Well, this fellow, my sister’s husband, he is an associate of a Monsieur Jérôme Kerviel, no? And before, how you say, the [expletive] hits the fan, he wishes to get the [expletive] out of Dodge, yes?
Tom: But does your brother-in-law really have anything to worry about? The media reports are all saying that Kerviel acted alone.
Jacques: Oui, oui, and your Lee Harvey Oswald, he also acted alone, no?
Tom: Sure. So, what did this Kerviel character and your brother-in-law do, exactly?
Jacques: Kerviel, he invested the bank’s money in, how you say, “derivative instruments.” He put 30 billion Euros on the Eurostoxx, 18 billion Euros on the Frankfurt DAX and 2 billion Euros on the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100.
Tom: And your brother-in law?
Jacques: He whizzed all over the bank’s computers.
Tom: You mean, he hacked them?
Jacques: Yes, yes, that is the word – he hacked them. First, he hacked them to get the money, then he hacked them to cover up for Kerviel.
Tom: About how much money did they, ah, divert?
Jacques: My brother-in-law, he says, about 50 billion Euros.
Tom: Okay, I see. And about how much is the Societe Generale bank worth?
Jacques: That is hard to say, of course, but my brother-in-law tells me, probably 35, maybe 40 billion Euros.
Tom: So your brother-in-law hacked the banks computers, and managed to embezzle more money than the bank had?
Jacques: Oui, oui. Est-ce qu’il incroyable, presque une oeuvre d’art, tu est-elle ne conviennent pas? I am telling you, Tom, that man, he is a whiz; and together with Kerviel, they were double whizzes – whizzing all over the computer, whizzing all over the bank, whizzing all over the financial markets! Exploit d’whizz très grand, n’est pas?
Tom: Well, it’s pretty big, no doubt about that. When the bank found out about it and tried to liquidate Kerviel’s positions, it tanked markets all over the world – they started imploding like a house of cards.
Jacques: I think I prefer “fell over like dominoes,” yes? One can almost see them, toppling over, one by one. But now, Tom, it is the gendarmerie, yes? They are just yesterday questioning Kerviel. Such a shame, Tom! This Kerviel, I have met him, and he is quite a nice man. I have seen him, helping little old ladies across the street, reading stories to blind children. Now, the neighbors, they are saying it is too bad France no longer has Devil’s Island, so we can send him there. But the authorities, Tom, they say Kerviel is cooperating. So I think it only a matter of time before my brother-in-law’s neighbors are also regretting that there is no longer any Devil’s island and wanting to send him there, too.
Tom: Have they charged Kerviel yet?
Jacques: Not today.
Tom: Did your brother-in-law provide you with any details about what they did?
Jacques: Yes, he told me about that. They were very successful, you see, too much so. The bank was going to make so much money, they could not hide what they had done. So they decided to create losing positions to get rid of some of the evidence – the too much money they had made, yes? But they also were also very clever about creating the losing investments, and did too well at that, too, and all the money disappeared – even more, Tom, so that the bank lost 5 billion Euros.
Tom: Okay, I get the picture – they were playing around with the bank’s money. But why? It’s not like they could cash in on any of the investments themselves, is it?
Jacques: Oh, no, they could not. But Kerviel, he was thinking “If I can do this, then I will get a big bonus, maybe 300,000 Euros this year.”
Tom: But his plan backfired?
Jacques: This is true, Tom. My brother-in-law, he has told me that everybody at the bank did what Kerviel did, you know, take a bit more of the bank’s money than they were allowed to manage, and invested it for the bank. This was the trick to get a good bonus, you see.
Tom: Hey, wait a minute! You’re telling me that all the traders in Kerviel’s department were embezzling the banks money, just not as much as him?
Jacques: Well, they could not possibly embezzle as much as Kerviel! After all, they did not have my brother-in-law to help them whizz all over the bank’s computers. But you know what I think, Tom?
Tom: What?
Jacques: I think the bank’s top men, they knew what Kerviel and my brother-in-law were doing. One of them, he made the big inside trade before what Kerviel did was reported to the authorities, and what is more, this whole thing, I am thinking, it is a perfect, how you say – smoke screen, yes that is the word – a perfect smoke screen to hide the bank’s incompetent investing in American subprime mortgages.
Tom: Oh, no, not that!
Jacques: It is deja vu all over again, Tom, just like Crédit Lyonnais ten years ago. Once more, French banks are a big, steaming pile of merde noir! And the Bank of France, yes? The governor of that, Monsieur Christian Noyer, the French Senate has demanded his presence for an explanation! President Sarkozy, they say he is so enraged, if you bring a soufflé within one meter of him, it falls! My sister, she is so mad at my brother-in-law, that she made a… how you say, yes, picked a fight with his mistress at the boulangerie, the baker-man, yes? And they are making the duel with baguettes – pom, pom, pom! Like that, with le pain flying everywhere, and all the time his wife, she is screaming “You filthy whore, you put my husband up to this disgrace! My entire family is totally dishonored!” And his mistress, she is yelling, “Go back to your kitchen, you flat, homely cow! Your feet are too big and your face looks like Charles de Gaulle! From your husband I get nothing but the rent on a lousy studio apartment in a building full of Arabs! It is you who is nagging him all the time for vacations in Tahiti and a new Peugeot!”
Tom: Sounds like maybe it’s going to be your brother-in-law who ends up regretting there’s no Devil’s Island for him to be locked up on. Does he intend to take his wife and his mistress to Costa Rica with him?
Jacques: He had better take my sister, at least! I could not bear the thought of him leaving her here in France.
Tom: It would break her heart, huh?
Jacques: Maybe, I don’t know about that – but I am sure she would move in with me, and then, I think, my wife will be picking fights with my mistress at the baker-man’s. Tom, you simply must help me get my brother-in-law out of France before it is too late! Already, Kerviel’s family, they are talking to the press, saying that Kerviel is carrying the gunpowder can for a midnight fiddle that went over a false duck’s hind feathers!
Tom: Excuse me?
Jacques: They mean, they think he is like your Oswald – a, what is it… a patsy for… how you say, the big ringleader? Yes, the big ring leader, and they are telling the press that the gendarmes, they should be looking for that guy!.
Tom: Your brother-in-law.
Jacques: Yes, yes! But it is ridiculous! My brother-in-law, he is the patsy! How can some, how you say – computer geek, who plays World of Warcraft and has all the Star Trek action figures, even the ones from “Voyager!” – how could someone like that be the mastermind of anything?
Tom: Well, if that’s true, it does sound like your brother-in-law’s lawyer could make a good case by ridiculing him.
Jacques: Maybe in America, but in France, you are guilty until you can prove yourself innocent!
Tom: Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.
Jacques: And the experts, they are also telling the press the same thing – that it is unbelievable, this story the bank is telling everyone, that Kerviel must just be, how you say, the stumbling person… no, ah, what is it… ah yes, the fall guy for some big conspiracy.
Tom: Well, he’s a bit of hero on this side of the pond – today, at least. At lot of the insiders are crediting his debacle with prompting the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by the largest amount in twenty five years last week.
Jacques: So, if he is a hero in America, then my brother-in-law, he would also be one, too, no? And if that is so, do you think he could hide in the United States instead of Cost Rica? Maybe some gratitude… no, grateful investors could put him on… no, I mean, put him up?
Tom: I don’t think so. The US has an extradition treaty with France, after all; and after 9/11, our government, well, ils ont quarante doigts vers le haut de chacun pipe de pluie, you know? Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, all day long.
Jacques: So, that is the reason I hear so much about people with, ah how you say, “special problems” going to Costa Rica?
Tom: That and the climate, I suspect. It’s the same latitude as Hawaii, you know.
Jacques: Sounds like paradise.
Tom: It is, if you have the money. Ah, your brother-in-law does have plenty of money, right?
Jacques: How much is plenty?
Tom: A million Euros, minimum.
Jacques: Sacrebleu! There go my dreams of getting rid of him for good!
Tom: About how much money does your brother-in-law have?
Jacques: I estimate he owes way more than he’s got, Tom.
Tom: Gee, sounds like your brother-in-law should have been an American. With a net worth like that, he’d fit right in with the rest of us over here.
Jacques: If he can’t afford Costa Rica, where can my brother-in-law hide?
Tom: Mexico.
Jacques: But does not Mexico exchange prisoners with the United States?
Tom: Yeah, there’s an extradition treaty, but if he stays away from the US border, the resort towns, the tourist attractions and Mexico City, nobody will ever find him.
Jacques: Why is that?
Tom: Because the rest of Mexico is in the Twilight Zone.
Jacques: Pardonnez-moi, Tom, mais je ne comprends pas.
Tom: What I mean is, the rest of Mexico is off the grid.
Jacques: Grid? What grid is this?
Tom: I mean, as far as America, the Mexican government, and the world are concerned, the rest of Mexico doesn’t exist. If he brings twenty thousand Euros with him, he’ll be set for life. A very quiet, boring life. No electricity, no telephones, no running water. I hope he likes beans and masa harina.
Jacques: Masa harina?
Tom: Ground maize treated with lye.
Jacques: Maize? They eat maize?
Tom: So do most Americans.
Jacques: Unbelievable! In France, we feed maize to farm animals, yes, but to eat it yourself? Zut allor!
Tom: It’s an acquired taste, to be sure.
Jacques: Now I am thinking, after a year of that, my brother-in-law would come back to France and beg on his knees for them to put him in prison. Perhaps he should stay here. The judges might have mercy on him, since he showed everyone how very smart he is, whizzing all over the computers, the banks and the world markets.
Tom: Could be. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to say goodbye.
Jacques: You must? I hoped we could chat some more.
Tom: Oh, all right. Just call back in five minutes. There’s something I have to do.
Jacques: What’s that?
Tom: Take a whiz.