They are effectively creating and destroying cash. By shrinking or expanding the supply of money in the global economy, making it more or less scarce, they also make it more or less expensive to borrow: the interest rate. In this way, trading back and forth with the largest banks in the world, they can drive interest rates toward their target.
The amount of actual physical currency in circulation is only a quarter of the total monetary supply. The rest is just numbers on a computer somewhere. When people say the government can print as much money as it wants, they’re really talking about the desk doing its daily work of resizing the monetary supply—tacking zeros onto a bunch of electronic accounts—that big banks are allowed to lend out to you and me.
In the Fed basement, I didn’t see any guards or any guns, just tour groups cycling through. We walked through a narrow hall toward the gold. And then the reason for what seemed like lax security became clear.
We weren’t in a hallway. We were in a ten-foot passage through a cylinder of solid steel. The gold vault has no door, because that passage is the door. Picture a giant wheel of cheese laid flat, with a tunnel carved through it from one end to the other.
That’s what protects the gold. The cylinder weighs 90 tons. The frame around it weighs 140. Every night, a guard cranks a heavy wheel and slowly turns the cylinder ninety degrees, then drops it three-eighths of an inch. It then rests against the frame, forming an airtight and watertight seal, an impenetrable bunker sitting on the Manhattan bedrock.
After the walk through that beast, the gold was almost a letdown. The bars were dull, like yellowish lead, stacked in cages. The vault interior could have been an old apartment building’s basement storage lockers, except for the huge balance scale in the middle of the room.
What I took to be a friends and family tour actually went inside the cages, where a vault keeper passed them a gold bar from some country’s stash—98 percent of the gold consists of foreign reserves we’ve kept safe since Europe stashed it here during World War Two—and they all hefted it and oohed and aahed.
Gold is a pain to move. Each bar weighs about twenty-seven pounds and is worth about half to three-quarters of a million dollars—the sizes aren’t standard. If one country wanted to loan another a few billion dollars, one of those clerks would just strap metal covers over his shoes, load up a trolley from country A’s locker, and walk the bars a few feet over to country B’s. I watched Jack’s eyes as he schemed like a madman in there. I was afraid he’d pull something, telegraph that we were casing the place, call down the guards. My focus was on the passes the visitors wore: red, cheap printouts with names but no bar codes. The employee hard passes were blue.
After a minute the guide ushered us out. Jack took a last hungry look at the vault, but I could only think about the billions of dollars flowing through the computers upstairs, at the end of an unkeyed elevator, behind a door secured only by RFID, surrounded by friendly folks who don’t bother challenging a badgeless visitor.
Some will rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen. But probably your best bet these days is a Bloomberg terminal.
Every morning, on the ninth floor of the New York Fed, the desk gets ready to go out and manipulate the markets according to the instructions laid out in the directive. Its traders are linked by computer with twenty-one of the largest banks in the world. When they’re ready to buy and sell, in what are called open market operations, one trader presses a button on his terminal and three chimes—the notes F-E-D—sound on the terminals of his counterparties. Then they’re off to the races.
There are usually eight to ten people on that desk, mostly guys in their late twenties and early thirties, and they manage a portfolio of government securities worth nearly $4 trillion that backs our currency. Without it, the bills in your wallet would be as worthless as Monopoly cash. The traders on that floor carry out nearly $5.5 billion in trades per day, set the value of every penny you earn or spend, and steer the global economy.
If you stole their game plan, you could make hundreds of millions of dollars in a few minutes, without picking up a gun or setting foot in a bank. You wouldn’t even have to leave the house. You would take your money in the markets, robbing the Federal Reserve in plain sight.
Forget the vault. Forget the bales of currency locked away in the basement. Forget the gold bars. Whoever was behind Lynch was right about one thing. The big money was upstairs. The real score was the directive.
The tour guide herded us onto the elevator back to the main lobby. When the doors opened, I saw a man about Jack’s age waiting to board. I knew from my research that he worked on the desk. I dropped another thumb drive as I stepped out, hoping that he might pick it up.
I lingered near the back of the group as we returned to the museum area. Slipping off the tour seemed like a hokey, amateurish plan, though that didn’t mean it wouldn’t work. I watched the guards. They were sure to notice someone peeling off the tour and doubling back to the elevators. I paused in the lobby, noting every door, every exit, whether they had locks or crash bars, and whether they were alarmed. There were Medeco locks everywhere. Each time I saw one, it tightened up my spine as I remembered my failure with Lynch. I memorized the layout, imagining myself running, soaked in sweat, with a pack of cops behind me.
How would I get out? Where would I go?
The most important part of any robbery isn’t getting what you’re after, it’s getting away after you’ve got it. Considering that my employers might be setting me up for a fall, on this job the escape plan was even more crucial than usual.
I let the group go ahead, and walked over to the far side of the room to get a view down a corridor. Then I saw motion over my shoulder: a police officer, walking purposefully. I ducked into the museum.
He followed, scanning between the exhibits. I walked a little faster and started mentally cataloging the contents of my backpack. There was nothing obviously criminal in there, though I had seen Jack take a few notes on the access control.
They had eyes everywhere. Had they caught me dropping the drives?
“What’s up?” Jack asked as he caught up to me.
“Stay close,” I said. “May be trouble.”
We did our best to cover ground without seeming panicked, circling around toward the exit to get behind the cop.
I could hear the boots behind us.
“Excuse me,” the officer said.
I started to sweat. Our cover identities weren’t backstopped. That would have cost thousands of dollars more and required a dedicated team. If they ran our licenses, we were done.
I pretended to ignore him and turned through the main lobby toward the exits. One of the police at the guard desks blocked our way.
The pursuing cop stepped in front of us, holding the USB drive in his hand.
I could see Jack getting ready to speak, to string out some bullshit.
“You dropped this,” the cop said.
My eyebrows rose as I wondered what he’d say next: And I know your game? You’re going to jail? I’ll be shooting you now?
All valid options. He held it toward me. It took me a second to realize he was just giving it back. I took it and said, “Thanks!” in a voice an octave too high. I smiled, turned, and fast-walked toward the open door, the cold rain, and freedom. I didn’t stop or look back until we’d reached South Street and the river.
Jack’s eyes were wide and he was breathing fast, puffs of white in the cold.
“I knew we were fine,” he said, lying.
I looked out over the tall ships and antique tugs.
“So what do you think?” he asked.
I had hoped the job would be impossible. That would narrow my choices, simplify things. But it wasn’t. I had seen a way past the perimeter. Internal access control was beatable, at least until the suite, and I had just carpet-bombed the place with surveillance and malware. That was the only unknown: the security in the target suite around the directive. But if my cameras or malware worked, I
would soon have an inside view.
I looked back toward the Fed and the towers of the Financial District. Then I turned to Jack.
“I can do it,” I said.
Chapter 25
IF THE TOUR wasn’t going to work, I needed one of those visitor passes. My first thought was to pose as a financial lobbyist, which opens all doors. But that would introduce too many loose ends. Better something simpler. During the ride home from New York I searched until I found a gym that was set to open near the New York Fed in the next month or two. I tried its corporate parent’s office and asked for a packet of materials about workplace wellness programs. They said they would send it.
“Overnight, please,” I said, and gave them my UPS account number.
Next I contacted Human Resources at the New York Fed. I bounced around among a few people until I reached someone in charge of benefits.
I introduced myself as a sales manager at the fitness center. “I was wondering if we could set up a meeting on Tuesday,” I said. That was Fed Day, the day of the heist.
“Well, we’re actually really busy, and we have most of our accounts set for the year.”
I assumed a mood diametrically opposite my own: chipper gym rep. “Well, I’d just love to tell you all about our corporate wellness benefits. You could be on your way to a happier, healthier—”
“We’re only free for lunch.”
“That would be great,” I said.
“Lunch,” he repeated.
“Oh…” I realized it was a shakedown. “I’d be happy to pick up lunch for the team there, if we could discuss setting up a table in the employee cafeteria one day to share some of our exciting membership options.”
“Basil Thai,” he said. “Tell them it’s for Steven at the Fed. They know the order. I’ll e-mail you a form to get a pass for security.”
I gave him a dummy e-mail address.
“Can we do it early?” I asked. “Say eleven forty-five?” It wasn’t going to last long, and I needed to be free not long after noon to snag the directive.
“Sure,” he said.
I ordered a pair of fleece vests from the gym so Jack and I could pass as reps, then checked the e-mail Steven had sent. It was what I suspected: for all visitors, they required a name, address, and Social Security number. Maybe they didn’t run a full background check on all of them, but I couldn’t risk making one up.
I would have a visitor badge waiting for me on Fed Day and a longer leash than I’d had on the tour, but it was going to cost me. I needed to see Cartwright.
I was feeling pretty good about the plan and the casing job after I dropped Jack off. I told him I’d work on our credentials for Tuesday. He had to meet someone, but said he’d catch up with me later to help finish the prep. I pulled out for home. I needed to remind myself: I wasn’t actually breaking in. I was only buying time, going through the motions perfectly to keep Lynch happy long enough to play this back at him. Then I noticed someone following me. After five turns, I was certain; I could tell by the radio antenna. It was a cop, making no attempt to hide the tail. Staring at my mirrors, I nearly rear-ended someone.
I turned on the radio to try to distract myself. Marketplace was airing a segment about the Fed’s committee meeting. For the first time in years, the outcome was an open question. Normally these meetings are scripted affairs, the numbers set in advance. They spend whole sessions arguing over minutiae, because even minutiae—saying “substantial” developments rather than “meaningful” developments—can shock the markets. But now there was finally a good-sized voting bloc of dissenters to the easy money policies.
Trading volume was high, and the markets were mixed. The committee meeting was going to be a showdown, and no one knew who would win. That would make early access to the directive even more valuable and security even tighter.
As I approached my neighborhood, I didn’t see the cop behind me any longer. It must have just been my nerves. I found a parking spot around the corner from my house and scanned the street again. There was no sign of the unmarked car.
I was halfway up the block when I heard it pull up behind me. It was the same car. The cop rolled along with me at walking pace as he looked back and forth between me and his dash-mounted laptop. I tried to stay calm and think of what a normal, non-murder-implicated, non-lockpick-wielding, non-heist-planning citizen would do, which is a great way to end up acting shady.
Our eyes met. I gave him a nod. He stared back at me. I stopped. He stopped. I turned up my front walk and ditched my pick and tension wrench into a bush beside the mailbox, shielding them from his view with my body. Possession of what are called “burglarious tools” in the Virginia code is a felony.
A floodlight lit up the front of my house. Enough of this. I turned and walked toward him. The light died. I saw him say something into his radio, then pull away.
So much for my clean getaway. The cops were putting the pressure on. But if I were a suspect in the murder, they wouldn’t be playing mind games, they’d have me in custody. I knew who was behind it.
I needed to go deeper on our fake identities to pass the visitor check at the New York Fed. After I grabbed a cup of coffee at home, I went to Ted’s. Cartwright was in the back room, sitting at a table stacked high with what looked like life insurance applications.
I explained what I needed. He scratched his cheek with one finger as he thought about it.
“So this is for one-time verification?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Social search? Are they going to be checking the date of birth to match, all that?”
“Maybe. I’d better be prepared.”
“Then I’ll have to find you a grown-up,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“Most of the identity theft stuff these days, you take a kid’s Social, sell it to an illegal immigrant. Kids never check their credit. They don’t apply for jobs. They don’t learn it’s been stolen until the parents apply for college loans and find out junior has been working in a poultry processing plant for fifteen years,” he said. “But for this I need a fresh wallet of someone in the ballpark of your age. I’ll have to do some calling around.”
“In other words.”
“Friends and family: three grand.”
“I can swing that,” I said. “Can you turn it around by next Tuesday?”
He nodded. “Your baseball work out?”
“It’s not online yet.”
“Is that your only way in?”
“I dropped some flash drives, too.”
He made a disapproving hum from the back of his throat. “They’re on to that.”
“You sure?”
“It used to be like a skeleton key. Sprinkle some in the parking lot. If you put wedding photos on there, or kids, or dogs, forget about it. They’d hand it around the whole office, louse up every machine in the place. But every chief security officer read the same article. They’re real pricks about it. No one uses autorun anymore. Sometimes they glue the USB ports shut. You want to be careful with the USB drops, you’ll have the Secret Service knocking on your front door.”
“Not the FBI?”
He nodded. “Secret Service does bank and computer fraud. Also counterfeiting, and protecting the president. Makes perfect sense, right?”
“By DC logic.”
“You have the name and workup on your target?”
“Yeah. A woman in the office, a couple of others.”
“Want to back up the USB key drop?”
“What are you thinking?”
“The hot thing now is putting a Trojan on the smartphone and praying they plug it into the USB to charge it. Then you can actually use the phone’s network connections and not have to fuck around with the company network and firewall. But that’s a lot of ifs. I’d say just spear-phish her.”
I was having some trouble with this conversation, not because of the technical stuff, but because it was coming from Cartwright. He was of the old school, like my dad; I
had a hard time imagining him using anything more modern than a smokeless ashtray. He walked over to the couch and pulled a laptop out of a battered leather attaché. Then he brought it back to the checkers table and pulled up a website. All Derek’s pals were there: the webcam girls, the weird Russian fantasy games, the credit card machines.
I looked from the laptop to Cartwright.
“You’ve got to stay on top of this shit, Mike. You don’t even need to put pants on anymore to rob people. So you know phishing, right? Those sketchy e-mails that say ‘There was a problem with your account, please click here.’ And then that link hijacks your computer? Spear-phishing is sending a Trojan specifically tailored to the recipient. Tell you what. Send me her e-mail and a plausible origin for the message, and some kind of PDF or JPEG she’s sure to open, and I’ll set it up for you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I can probably write up something right here if you have a second. She doesn’t have to run a program or download anything?”
“Nope. She just looks at it and the payload is injected. PDFs are full of vulnerabilities.”
He handed me his laptop, then walked over and poured himself another drink while I drafted the message. I made the attachment seem to be a typical internal Fed newsletter I’d come across in their public archives.
Cartwright looked it over. He must have seen the worry on my face as I thought about my growing bill. I could barely afford a wedding or a bank job, and certainly not both.
“I’ll just throw that in,” Cartwright said as he took the computer back. “I could use the practice, and you’ve certainly racked up some comps. I’ll send it out tonight. And who knows, maybe your USB drives will hit, too. Drink?”
“No. I should probably get going.” I stood, then thought about it. “You know what? Sure. A beer. Whatever you got.”
Annie was out of town, and I didn’t feel like rattling around the empty house, waiting for Lynch to stick a gun in my face.
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