A Different War [antikvár]

All Fools' Day. The markets had been telling him that - laughing at him, in effect - ever since they had opened that morning. The share prices, the snippets of information, the rumours, the heavy selling, the nervousness of the banks Like the chuckling of people at a joke at his expense. Twenty million dollars had been wiped off the asset value of Winterborne Holdings in a matter of hours. Wall Street, open an hour earlier, had caught the infection and the stock of the US subsidiaries was sliding downwards in price. It could be fifty million dollars by the day's end. All Fools'Day In enraged frustration, David Winterborne stood up and walked to one of the full-length windows of the first-floor drawing room which overlooked Eaton Square. The London traffic filtered politely through the square, sunlight was dappled in the gardens. There were a few well-dressed pedestrians enjoying the spring sunshine. The scene appeared painted, formal, like a landscape he had commissioned to celebrate ownership. Yet, as if in the moment of an earth tremor, the whole vista of wealth, exclusivity, decorousness was rendered shimmeringly unreal by the shocks of a threatened financial disaster. Fraser, who remained seated on the sofa behind him, was just another of those bringing the bad news, a functionary reporting that the Oracle hadn't found in his