by Tom Clancy
“My fellow Americans,” President Durling said at exactly 7:05 A.M. on every TV network. “On Wednesday night I told you that today American financial markets are going to reopen ...”
“Here it goes,” Kozo Matsuda said, just back in his office and watching CNN. “He’s going to say that they can’t, and Europe is going to panic. Splendid,” he told his aides, turning back to the TV. The American president was smiling and confident. Well, a politician had to know how to act, the better to lie to his citizens.
“The problems which the market experienced last week came from a deliberate assault on the American economy. Nothing like this has ever happened before, and I am going to walk you through what happened, how it was done, and why it was done. We’ve spent an entire week accumulating this information, and even now Treasury Secretary Fiedler and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board are in New York, working with the heads of the great American financial institutions to set things aright.
“I am also pleased to report that we have had the time to consult with our friends in Europe, and that our historic allies have chosen to stand with us as faithfully in this time of difficulty as they have in other times.
“So what really happened last Friday?” Roger Durling asked.
Matsuda sat his drink down on his desk when he saw the first chart appear on the screen.
Jack watched him go through it. The trick as always was to make a complex story simple, and that task had involved two professors of economics, half of Fiedler’s personal staff, and a governor of the Securities and Exchange Commission, all working in coordination with the President’s best speechwriter. Even so, it took twenty-five minutes, six flip charts, and would require a number of government spokesmen talking who were even now on background to reporters whose briefings had started at 6:30.
“I told you Wednesday night that nothing—nothing of consequence had happened to us. Not one piece of property has been affected. Not one farm has lost anything. Each of you is the same person you were a week ago, with the same abilities, the same home, the same job, the same family and friends. What happened last Friday was an attack not on our country itself, but on our national confidence.
“Our confidence is a harder and tougher target than people realize, and that is something we’re going to prove today. ”
Most of the people in the trading business were en route to their offices and missed the speech, but their employers had all taped it, and there were also printed copies on every desk and at every computer terminal. The trading day would not start until noon, moreover, and there were strategy sessions to be held everywhere, though nobody really had much idea of what to do. The most obvious response to the situation was indeed so obvious that no one knew whether or not to try it.
“They’re doing it to us,” Matsuda said, watching his screens. “What can we do to stop it?”
“It depends on what their stock market does,” his senior technical trader replied, not knowing what else to say and not knowing what to expect, either.
“Do you think it’ll work, Jack?” Durling asked. He had two speeches sitting in folders on his desk, and didn’t know which he would be giving in the evening.
The National Security Advisor shrugged. “Don’t know. It gives them a way out. Whether or not they make use of it is up to them.”
“So now we just get to sit and wait?”
“That’s about it, Mr. President.”
The second session was held in the State Department. Secretary Hanson huddled with Scott Adler, who then met with his negotiating team and waited. The Japanese delegation arrived at 9:45.
“Good morning,” Adler said pleasantly.
“A pleasure to see you again,” the Ambassador replied, taking his hand, but not as confidently as on the day before. Not surprisingly, he had not had time to receive detailed instructions from Tokyo. Adler had halfway expected a request for a postponement of the session, but, no, that would have been too obvious a sign of weakness, and so the Ambassador, a skilled and experienced diplomat, was in the most precarious of diplomatic positions—he was forced to represent his government with nothing more to fall back on than his wits and his knowledge. Adler walked him to his seat, then returned to his side of the table. Since America was the host today, Japan got to speak first. Adler had placed a side bet with the Secretary as to the Ambassador’s opening statement.
“First of all it needs to be said that my government objects in the strongest terms to the attack on our currency engineered by the United States ...”
That’s ten bucks you owe me, Mr. Secretary, Adler thought behind an impassive face.
“Mr. Ambassador,” he replied, “that is something we could say just as easily. In fact, here is the data which we have developed on the events of last week.” Binders appeared on the table and were slid across to the Japanese diplomats. “I need to tell you that we are now conducting an investigation that could well lead to the indictment of Raizo Yamata for wire- and securities fraud.”
It was a bold play for a number of reasons. It showed everything that the Americans knew about the attack on Wall Street and pointed to the things yet to be learned. As such, it could have no effect other than to ruin the criminal case against Yamata and his allies, should it come to that. But that was a side issue. Adler had a war to stop, and stop quickly. He’d let the boys and girls at Justice worry about the other stuff.
“It might be better of course for your country to deal with this man and his acts,” Adler offered next, giving generous maneuvering room to the Ambassador and his government. “The net effect of his actions, as may be seen today, will be to cause greater hardship to your country than to ours.
“Now, if we may, I should like us to return to the issue of the Mariana Islands.”
The one-two punch predictably staggered the Japanese delegation. As was often the case, nearly everything was left unsaid: We know what you did. We know how you did it. We are prepared to deal with all of it. The brutally direct method was designed to conceal the real American problem—the inability to make an immediate military counter—but it also provided Japan with the ability to separate her government from the acts of certain of her citizens. And that, Ryan and Adler had decided the previous night, was the best means of achieving a quick and clean end to the situation. To that end, a large carrot was required.
“The United States seeks little more than a return to normal relations. The immediate evacuation of the Marianas will allow us to consider a more lenient interpretation of the Trade Reform Act. This, also, is something we are willing to place on the table for consideration.” It was probably a mistake to hit him with this much, Adler thought, but the alternative was further bloodshed. By the end of the first session of formal negotiations, something remarkable had happened. Neither side had repeated a position. Rather, it had been, in diplomatic terms, a free-form exchange of views, few of them well considered.
“Chris,” Adler whispered when he stood. “Find out what they’re really thinking.”
“Got it,” Cook replied. He got himself some coffee and headed out to the terrace, where Nagumo stood on the edge, looking out toward the Lincoln Memorial.
“It’s an elegant way out, Seiji,” Cook offered.
“You push us too hard,” Nagumo said without turning.
“If you want a chance to end this without getting people killed, this is the best one.”
“The best for you, perhaps. What of our interests?”
“We’ll cut a deal on trade.” Cook didn’t understand it all. Unschooled in financial matters, he was as yet unaware of what was happening on that front. To him the recovery of the dollar and the protection of the American economy was an isolated act. Nagumo knew different. The attack his country had begun could be balanced only by a counterattack. The effect would not be restoration of the status quo ante, but, rather, serious damage to his own country’s economy on top of preexisting damage from the Trade Reform Act. In this, Nagumo knew something that Cook did
not: unless America acceded to Japanese demands for some territorial gain, then the war was quite real.
“We need time, Christopher.”
“Seiji, there isn’t time. Look, the media haven’t picked up on this yet. That can change at any moment. If the public finds out, there’s going to be hell to pay.” Because Cook was right, he’d given Nagumo an opening.
“Yes, there may well be, Chris. But I am protected by my diplomatic status and you are not.” He didn’t need to say more than that.
“Now, wait a minute, Seiji ...”
“My country needs more than what you offer,” Nagumo replied coldly.
“We’re giving you a way out.”
“We must have more.” There was no turning back now, was there? Nagumo wondered if the ambassador knew that yet. Probably not, he judged, from the way the senior diplomat was looking in his direction. It was suddenly clear to him. Yamata and his allies had committed his country to action from which there was no backing away, and he couldn’t decide if they’d known it or not when they’d begun. But that didn’t matter now. “We must have something,” he went on, “to show for our actions.”
At about that time, Cook realized how slow he’d been on the uptake. Looking in Nagumo’s eyes, he saw it all. Not so much cruelty as resolve. The Deputy Assistant Secretary of State thought about the money sitting in a numbered account, and the questions that would be asked, and what possible explanation he might have for it.
It sounded like an old-fashioned school bell when the digital clock turned from 11:59:59 to 12:00:00.
“Thank you, H. G. Wells,” a trader breathed, standing on the wooden floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The time machine was in operation. For the first time in his memory, at this hour of the day the floor was clean. Not a single paper slip lay there. The various traders at their kiosks looked around and saw some signs of normality. The ticker had been running for half an hour, showing the same data it had displayed the previous week, really as a way of synchronizing their minds with the new day, and everyone used it as a touchstone, a personal contact with reality that both was and was not.
It was a hell of a speech the President had given five hours earlier. Everyone on the floor had seen it at least once, most of them right here, followed by a pep talk from the head of the NYSE that would have done Knute Rockne proud. They had a mission that day, a mission that was more important than their individual well-being, and one that, if accomplished, would see to their long-term security as well as that of the entire country. They had spent the day reconstructing their activities of the previous Friday, to the point where every trader knew what quantities of which stock he or she held, what every position was. Some even remembered the moves they’d been planning to make, but most of those had been “up” moves rather than “down” ones, and their collective memory would not allow them to follow through on them.
On the other hand, they remembered well the panic of the afternoon seven days before, and, knowing that it had been both artificial and malicious, no one wished to start it afresh. And besides, Europe had signaled its confidence in the dollar in the strongest terms. The bond market was as solidly fixed as though set in granite, and the first moves of the day had been to buy U.S. Treasuries to take advantage of the stunning deal offered by the Fed Chairman. That move was the best confidence-builder they’d ever seen.
For over ninety seconds by one trader’s watch, exactly nothing happened on the floor of the exchange. The ticker simply displayed nothing. The phenomenon evoked snorts of disbelief from men whose minds raced to understand it. The little-guy investors, without a clue, were making few calls, and those who did were told by their brokers to sit tight. And for the most part that was what they did. Those who did make sell orders had them handled in-house by their brokerage houses from the reservoir of issues that they had on hand, left over from the previous week. But the big traders weren’t doing anything, either. Each of them was waiting for somebody else to do something. The inactivity of merely a minute and a half seemed an eternity to people accustomed to frantic action, and when the first major play happened, it came as a relief.
That first big move of the day, predictably, came from the Columbus Group. It was a massive purchase of Citibank common. Seconds later, Merrill Lynch pushed the button for a similar acquisition of Chemical Bank.
“Yeah,” a few voices said on the floor. It made sense, didn’t it? Citibank was vulnerable to a fall in the dollar, but the Europeans had seen to it that the dollar was rising in value, and that made First National City Bank a good issue to pick up on. As a result, the first tick of the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up, defying every prediction of every computer.
“Yeah, we can do this,” another floor trader observed. “I want a hundred Manny-Hanny at six,” he announced. That would be the next bank to benefit from the increasing strength of the dollar, and he wanted a supply that he could move out at six and a quarter. The stocks that had led the slide the previous week would now lead a rise, and for the same reasons as before. Mad as it sounded, it made perfect sense, they all realized. And as soon as the rest of the market figured it out, they could all cash in on it.
The news ticker on the wall was up and running, again giving shorthand selections off the wire services. GM, it said, was rehiring twenty thousand workers for its plants around Detroit in anticipation of increased auto sales. The callback would take nine months, the announcement didn’t say, and was the result of a call from the Secretaries of Commerce and Labor, but it was enough to excite interest in auto stocks, and that excited interest in machine tools. By 12:05:30, the Dow was up five points. Hardly a hiccup after the five-hundred-point plummet seven days before, but it looked like Everest on a clear day from the floor of the NYSE.
“I don’t believe this,” Mark Gant observed, several blocks away in the Javits Federal Office Building.
“Where the hell is it written down that computers are always right?” George Winston inquired with another forced grin. He had his own worries. Buying up Citibank was not without dangers, but his move, he saw, had the proper effect on the issue. When it had moved up three points, he initiated a slow sell-off to cash in, as other fund managers moved in to follow the trend. Well, that was predictable, wasn’t it? The herd just needed a leader. Show them a trend and wait for them to follow, and if it was contrarian, so much the better.
“First impression—it’s working,” the Fed Chairman told his European colleagues. All the theories said it should, but theories seemed thin at moments like this. Both he and Secretary Fiedler were watching Winston, now leaning back in his chair, chewing on a pen and talking calmly into a phone. They could hear what he was saying. At least his voice was calm, though his body was that of a man in a fight, every muscle tense. But after another five minutes they saw him stretch tense muscles and smile and turn and say something to Gant, who merely shook his head in wonderment as he watched his computer screen do things that it didn’t believe possible.
“Well, how about that,” Ryan said.
“Is it good?” President Durling asked.
“Let’s put it this way: if I were you I’d give your speechwriter a dozen long-stemmed red roses and tell her to plan on working here another four years or so.”
“It’s way too early for that, Jack,” the President replied somewhat crossly.
Ryan nodded. “Yes, sir, I know. What I mean to tell you is, you did it. The markets may—hell, will fluctuate the rest of the day, but they’re not going to free-fall like we initially expected. It’s about confidence, Boss. You restored it, and that’s a fact.”
“And the rest of it?”
“They’ve got a chance to back down. We’ll know by the end of the day.”
“And if they don’t?”
The National Security Advisor thought about that. “Then we have to figure a way to fight them without hurting them too badly. We have to find their nukes and we have to settle this thing down before it really gets out of control.”
Ryan pointed to the screen. “We didn’t think this was possible, did we?”
35
Consequences
It happened in Idaho, in a community outside Mountain Home Air Force Base. A staff sergeant based there had flown out to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam to work on the approach-control radars. His wife had delivered a baby a week after his departure, and she attempted to call him that evening to tell him about his new daughter, only to learn that the phones were out due to a storm. Only twenty years old and not well educated, she’d accepted the news with disappointment. The military comm links were busy, an officer had told her, convincingly enough that she’d gone home with tears in her eyes. A day later she’d talked to her mother and surprised her with the news that her husband didn’t know about his daughter yet. Even in time of war, her mother thought, such news always got through—and what storm could possibly be worse than fighting a war?
So she called the local TV station and asked for the weatherman, a sagacious man of fifty who was excellent at predicting the tornadoes that churned through the region every spring, and, it was widely thought, saved five or ten lives each year with his instant analysis of which way the funnel clouds moved.
The weatherman in turn was the kind who enjoyed being stopped in the local supermarkets with friendly comments, and took the inquiry as yet another compliment for his professional expertise, and besides, he’d never checked out the Pacific Ocean before. But it was easy enough. He linked into the NOAA satellite system and used a computer to go backwards in time to see what sort of storm had hammered those islands. The time of year was wrong for a typhoon, he knew, but it was the middle of an ocean, and storms happened there all the time.
But not this year and not this time. The satellite photos showed a few wispy clouds, but otherwise fair weather. For a few minutes he wondered if the Pacific Ocean, like Arkansas, was subject to fair-weather gales, but, no, that wasn’t likely, since those adiabatic storms resulted mainly from variations in temperature and land elevation, whereas an ocean was both flat and moderate. He checked with a colleague who had been a Navy meteorologist to confirm it, and found himself left only with a mystery. Thinking that perhaps the information he had was wrong, he consulted his telephone book and dialed 011-671-555-1212, since a directory-assistance call was toll-free. He got a recording that told him that there had been a storm. Except there had not been a storm. Was he the first guy to figure that out?