The others are already waiting in the bank’s restaurant when I arrive.‘Stephen’s downstairs,’ one of the lawyers tells me. ‘Here all night apparently.’Ironic cheers greet our chef when he emerges from the kitchen. He’s Vietnamese, about five foot two and very slight. He smiles a lot, you’d never guess his boyhood was lost to war and his teenage years to a refugee camp in Hong Kong. His name is Win Doi but everybody calls him Big Win. Gathering the empty cups, he disappears back into the kitchen.I turn to the young MBA, Cawley. ‘How’d it go? Haywood give up?’‘We got it done.’ Cawley looks haggard. Still in jeans, he must have been here with Vance since yesterday. ‘Haywood went home, I can call him if you want.’I tell him not to bother. No need to add another sleep-deprived zombie to our number.From down the table, Gary Leicester enquires languidly if there’ll be many more of these early starts. He’s the head of Leicester and Partners, the PR firm we’re using on the bid.
