Misti gave him a warm, genuine smile: one that came from the real woman, not the stripper.

‘You sound so passionate, like this isn’t just about business. It feels much more personal.’

‘Yeah, right again. This was very, very personal.’

‘Well, you put on quite a show.’

Malachi Zorn shook his head with a wry grin. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘That wasn’t the show.’ Then he laughed again so that Misti laughed too, assuming Zorn was just kidding as he said, ‘That was just a rehearsal.’

Washington DC: 17 March 2011

Three years in, and still the repercussions of the banking crash had not even begun to be resolved. At a congressional hearing into the practice and regulation of short-selling, Malachi Zorn effortlessly ran rings around the members of the House Committee on Financial Services, who attempted to portray him as an unscrupulous profiteer. Dressed with uncharacteristic formality, Zorn made his point not with any firecracker display of wit or mockery, but by speaking with a seriousness which suggested that the politicians questioning him were guilty of an improperly frivolous, exploitative attitude to the subject, whereas he was genuinely acting in the public interest.

Zorn was asked whether there was any truth to recent rumours within the financial community that he had taken a number of very significant short positions in leading energy and oil corporations. Zorn replied that, ‘It’s my practice never to disclose any of the positions that I’ve taken while they are still active.