Free Blood Money by Julian Page Page B

relationships, both with family and friends, he’s effectively cut himself adrift from the realities of everyday life. Fifteen years ago he set himself on a course toward the mental equivalent of a black-hole and five years ago he passed its event-horizon. There can be no going back to normality for someone who believes he now holds a divine right whether people who cross him should live or die.
    He considers the way in which he selects what shares to buy and sell to be a masterstroke of genius. The involvement of the men who actually put together the computer hardware and developed its software are now barely a memory at all. It was he alone who created the electronic brain that continues to work so tirelessly down in the bowels of the building day and night, feeding on an immensity of data. Digesting a digital mountain, analyzing and sifting, searching and assessing. And every morning he reaps the fruits from his very own tree of knowledge. He truly has to be the smartest man on the planet. And soon…he will surely be the most successful man on the planet too.
    Alexis finishes his cup of coffee and brings his daydreaming to an end. It’s time to return to the small matter of making serious amounts of money, so he leaves the office and uses the lift to descend three floors.
    Walking across the gleaming tiles he goes over to the far corner of the foyer and slipping behind the reception desk he approaches the plain, steel door. He stands just to its right, in front of a small wall-mounted box positioned at his head height.
    The machine scans Alexis’s right eye, creating images of the detail-rich intricate structures of his iris. Its technology represents the ultimate in biometric security. Iris textures are completely independent and unique, even between cloned animals or genetically identical twins. This particular model even uses spectral analysis to distinguish that it’s definitely looking at actual iris tissue, avoiding the possibility of anyone trying to fool it with anything as amateurish as a super high-resolution digital photograph.
    An almost inaudible bleep is followed by a mechanical clunking noise as multiple bolts mounted within the door retract in synchrony. Then, without human assistance, the door opens smoothly inwards to reveal a simple stone staircase leading down into a well-lit subterranean vault. The pretty young woman behind the reception desk barely glances across at Alexis. She keeps herself busy, avoiding eye contact with her lecherous boss in case it’s wrongly interpreted by his twisted mind as a flirtatious glance.
    Security is highly important to Alexis, and keeping the contents of the basement protected is paramount. Taking advice from industry experts, he selected a stainless steel door that was impossible to force and had no apparent points of weakness. The reinforced steel frame had then been anchored into a similarly reinforced wall and by marrying it with the ultimate in biometric access control he’d created a supremely secure facility to house the things he treasures most dear.
    Only after careful consideration had he decided that it would be prudent for a second individual to have access down into the basement…just in case anything unforeseen ever happened. Eddie is the only one he trusts never to come down here unless specifically instructed to do so; therefore his bodyguard became his ‘back-up man’.
    Of course, the human element of any high security system is always its weakest point, so if anyone were to ever force Alexis to open the door against his will he would simply use his left eye and a silent alarm would trigger the bank’s attendant security staff to respond immediately.
    As the Greek begins to descend the stone stairs he hits his palm against a metal pad built into the wall to his right, triggering the door to close behind him.
    *
    The full size of the basement underneath 60 Lombard Street is the same as that of a couple of