"A cracking, fast-paced thriller. Excellently researched. I thoroughly enjoyed it."
General Sir Peter de la Billiere General de la Billiere commanded the British forces in the Gulf War and had previously been the commander of the SAS. He is a director of the British investment bank Flemings, (founded by the grandfather of Ian Fleming - the creator of James Bond). Therefore as well as being no stranger to the thrills and danger of undercover operations, he is well qualified to comment on financial adventures! |
For modern hikers, like the ancient pilgrims before them, walking the
Inca Trail over the high passes of the Andes, the
Sun Gate or Intipunku is the place on their arduous trek where they are rewarded
by their first glimpse of the fabulous ruins of
Machu Picchu, the Lost City
of the Incas. At the Sun Gate the pilgrims' old world is left behind and a
new one begins. However for Helen Jencks, the heroine of the new novel by
Linda Davies, her escape from London to Peru after her banking career is
wrecked by colleagues she regarded as friends, simply exposes her to far
greater perils as she discovers that there is no Shangri-La or safe haven
beyond reach of corruption by money.
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Dangerous Derivatives
Derivatives were financial contracts just like bonds or shares, but were a
stage more complex. They had no intrinsic value, but derived it from
something else. That could be anything from soy beans to a share index
like the FT100. The most straightforward derivatives contracts were
futures. Originally, these were developed to protect farmers against
fluctuations in the value of their crops. A farmer could protect himself by
agreeing, say in December, the price at which he would sell his harvest
next October. If people asked Helen what she did, this is what she
generally told them. Wallace on the other hand, impassioned by his
market, could give a historical treatise. He seemed to read almost
everything that was printed on derivatives. He was Goldstein's head
derivatives structurer, a job he described to laymen as a bit like that
of a bookie, once removed. He took bets on people making bets. In his
spare time, Wallace was writing a book on the development of the market.
The day before he had announced to Helen and Paul Keith, who'd just
started on the desk, that there had been a futures market in rice,
in Dojima, near Osaka, in the late seventeenth century.
Modern futures markets developed in the 1850's with the opening of the
Chicago Board of Trade, but it was only in the mid 1980's that financial
futures markets dealing with shares and bonds, really took off. Wallace
had been there as it happened. He'd grown up with a market that had
exploded and now, counting just those products traded on organised
exchanges, was worth over six hundred and fifty trillion dollars a year.
Wallace loved to quote the example of seventeenth century derivatives as
if age seemed to make the market more familiar, friendlier. There was
nothing familiar of friendly about the derivatives market. It could rip your
guts out overnight, as it had done to Barings, when a lone trader built up a
derivatives loss of seven hundred and forty million pounds, breaking the
bank. Derivatives were the biggest, most potentially lucrative, and
destructive market in the world. Wallace was in love with the market.
Helen kept it at a distance, respected it as a fearsome adversary.
The River of Drug Money
Freedom, imprisonment; silence, information; fortune, destitution;
entrapment, deliverance; life, death. The legacy of the coca leaf.
Something like 40% of the world's cocaine originates in the Huallaga Valley.
Coca's grown there, and flown as basic paste to Colombia for processing into
cocaine. There are hundreds of tiny airstrips dotted throughout the Peruvian
jungle ... Pilots get paid around $50,000 a pop, about a thousand times as
much as they'd make on a legal flight, so there's no shortage of planes.
Many consignments go from army controlled airstrips, or else the army and
airforce just turn a blind eye to some of the private strips.
Their brief had been to fight that estate, not to perpetuate it, but
the finer objectives had long ago been swept away by the river of money
that flowed from the jungles where the coca leaf grew, through their hands,
into Colombia, where it became a sea that could wash away the world.
But even if the military were straight, they wouldn't stand a chance against
the drogistas. The narco business is worth probably four hundred billion
dollars a year worldwide. That's about eight per cent of world trade, more
than the trade in either iron and steel or motor vehicles. Just to give you a
little example, there are two thousand drugs police in the Policia Anti
Narcoticos in Colombia, which is a much richer country than Peru, and
they're armed with twenty two fixed wing, single engined aircraft, and
sixty odd helicopters. Stack that against the Colombian narcos who make
at least twenty billion dollars a year from drugs, equivalent to eight per
cent of Colombia's GNP. Imagine how many of them there are, what kind
of gear they can afford and you begin to get an idea of the battle. There
was one big Colombian narco, Parafan, arrested in Venezuela not long
ago. He's being extradited to the US now, every narco's nightmare.
Anyway, he alone had over twelve billion dollars in his private bank
accounts. The whole continent's awash with drug money. About thirty per
cent of the Colombian economy is driven by drug money. Just about
everyone in its path gets corrupted.
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The Many Faces of Peru
'Tell me about Peru,' said Helen, gently.
Maldonado gazed at her, sitting there with the candle light turning her hair
golden, her smile warm, her eyes compassionate. He found himself
yearning to speak, to tell someone from outside his world, someone
untainted, who might not judge. He saw his fantasy for what it was and
felt a flood of bitterness. He took a long draft of wine, leaned back in his
chair and turned his eyes full on hers.
'Which Peru would you like to know about? The land of Machu Picchu
and the Incas? A postcard for the innocent? Framed, contained beauty?
Amazonia, quinine, una de gato, destruction of the rainforest, the old
tribes, the Machigengua, the Pira, jungle warriors guarding lost cities, el
Dorado and dead treasure hunters, the pueblo jovenes where the people
starve, the IMF, the Brady plan and slick bankers, the earthquakes in
Yungay, the thousands buried. The Brujos and shamans, white magic and
black. The miners five thousand metres up, burrowing under glaciers.
The complacent would be Spanish Peruvians, or the true Peruvians, the
Indios. the society ladies at the beauticians, chatting with each other on
their cellulars, swapping notes on their sons and daughters at Miami State,
what are they gonna wear for graduation, or perhaps you'd like to hear
about the terrorist training camps in the jungle, the PLO visits, or the
narcos, or the people who fight them, or the masked judges so reviled by
the editorial writers of the New York Times as they sit in safety in
Manhattan. There is no Peru, Helen, it's a bastard with many fathers, pick
the one you want.'
'Someone must understand it. Someone must see the whole picture.'
Maldonado gave a smile that seemed to span in its curve the spectrum
from love to hate. He spoke softly, as if at Confession. 'I understand it,
Helen.' His eyes glittered with the pride and sorrow of a great sin.
'This country is mad, completely mad. It's like a beautiful woman who's
been raped many times. She can no longer respond to a gentle touch.
She's been brutalised, but she still has the sensitivity to know it. She
knows what she was, what she is, and what was done to her and she takes
revenge whenever she can. This country is racked by violence, by acts
of God. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, tidal waves, floods,
droughts, fires. Go to the high Andes sometime, see the violence of the
mountains. There's no tame beauty here. Go to the glaciers for the Ice
festival, watch closely and you might still see a human sacrifice,' he
pointed at her. 'Be careful it's not you. Every year several people
"disappear" into the ice crevices.'
'Go to Machu Picchu, climb Wayna
Picchu, climb Ausangate, cast back your mind, imagine you were an Inca
girl, beautiful and pure. You'd be murdered as a sacrifice to the mountain
gods, promised immortality. But the frozen corpses I've found were fixed
in terror, drugged and drunken to ease them into death. Covered in vomit
and diarrhoea. They didn't want immortality, just life on earth, and death
in its own good time.'
'Death stalks this place. Acts of God, more like acts
of the devil. You think I'm an old man who's grown too fond of his stories,
has taken liberties with fact. Get out there, and you'll see what 1 mean.
Stay here long enough, behind these walls, and you'll still see it. You think
you're safe here, don't you, but you're not. Don't worry, neither am 1. High
walls, guards with guns, it doesn't make any difference. Stay in Peru long
enough and you'll see what 1 mean.'
'What do you do then? How do you fight it?'
'I'm not sure you can. You invite it. You see too much. You have an
imagination, and it will curse you. Nothing you can do, except turn and
face it.
'So why do you stay?' Helen asked softly, 'if it's so terrible, if it can
be so brutal.'
'Because it's in my blood, I'm addicted to it. Because it's the most
beautiful country on earth.'
Victor Maldonado, in the conversation above, is the fictitious head of SIN (Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional), the Peruvian National Intelligence Service, which played a major role in crushing the Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path terrorist movement but later came to be regarded by many Peruvians as an instrument of repression. On November 2, 2000, the Peruvian authorities announced that they were investigation allegations of money laundering involving the real former head of SIN, Vladimiro Montesinos, making Into the Fire look prophetic! |
The texts above on derivatives, drug money, and Peru are a mixture of quotations
and paraphrased material from Into the Fire. The material
was selected by the author's brother, Roy Davies.
The Inca Trail and Machu Picchu in Into the Fire
Linda Davies lived in Peru for 3 years while writing her thriller Into
the Fire and hiked the Inca Trail while doing her
research. Over half the novel is set in Peru, including about 35 pages on
the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu. Apart from a small section set in Colombia,
most of the rest is set in England. At one time she thought of calling the
book the Sun Gate before deciding on Into the Fire.
In an extensive interview for HarperCollins Linda describes how
life in Peru influenced her writing.
This page, like the others on the Inca Trail at this site, is maintained by her brother Roy Davies, who has hiked has hiked it twice, in 1989 and 1997. British EditionDavies, LindaInto the fire. London : HarperCollins, 2000. - 483p. ISBN 0-00-651188-0. (Paperback). Into the Fire may be ordered through bookshops or through some Internet suppliers such as Amazon.co.uk, the British branch of Amazon.com. If you wish to be notified of future books by Linda Davies, then join our mailing list. It will be used only for announcements of different versions and editions, future titles, and possibly the occasional book tour etc. Your address will not be given to anyone else. Foreign TranslationsGermanDas Sonnentor, v. Schröder, Ddf; 448 Seiten (1999). ISBN: 3-547-72048-6 (hardback). Ullstein TB-Vlg., B.; 464 Seiten (2000). ISBN: 3-548-24792-X (paperback). Both versions may be ordered from Amazon.de, the German branch of Amazon.com. Hardback from Amazon.de. Paperback from Amazon.de
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