The Last Trade

by James Conway

  He taps the screen. Sobieski looks more closely at the home page staff photo for Siren Securities, which is basically the default photo for every financial institution’s home page, newsletter, and annual report: rich men in suits forcing smiles in front of a fountain at the base of a glass-and-steel tower. Beneath the logo is the phrase:

  Square in your ship’s path are Seirenes, crying

  beauty to bewitch men coasting by;

  woe to the innocent who hears that sound.

  “The Iliad,” Michaud says.

  “No. The Odyssey. Ulysses had his men strap him to the sail to resist the Sirens’ temptation. Any other activity coming out of their Berlin server?”

  Michaud stands and rolls his neck. “Nah.”

  “Do you know who placed the orders with Siren? Where the trades initiated?”

  “Yes and no. I saw that they came out of the U.S., but I can’t be sure until my guy in D.C. gets in.”

  Sobieski stares at him, waiting for an explanation.

  “Here’s the thing: Soon after I hacked into it, they went dark. I got what I could, but it’s like its tracking software picked up on ours and shut down at the first sign of a breach. Which means whoever this is may have a version of ours . . . or something better.”

  Sobieski starts to leave, then turns. “So, we’re onto this because some Hong Kong PD pal of yours needed a favor?”

  Michaud shrugs.

  “And this pal, this ordinary Detective Mo, initiated contact? He sniffed out a potential global financial plot and just happened to ring you up?”

  “Stranger things have happened, Sobes,” he replies, avoiding eye contact and pretending to call up a new screen.

  7

  Dubai

  Three hours after his trek in the desert, the survivor pulls into the parking garage of his condominium in Ocean Heights. After the walk, he drove to the Festival City Mall and met his brother-in-law and a friend from his Lehman days for a drink on the top floor of the Intercontinental. One drink led to three, but he called his wife and she understood. Supper could wait. After the third drink he told both men everything he knew about the trades he made earlier in the day. Before he left the table, they were on their BlackBerrys, placing shorts of their own.

  He gets out of his Mercedes and takes three steps toward the elevator before clicking the key remote to lock the door. A hand grabs his and twists his arm behind his back. The keys drop to the concrete. He bends forward as his wrist is shoved up the ridge of his spine between his shoulder blades. He doesn’t resist.

  “Come,” the man says in Arabic. Saudi, Al Mar surmises. The man turns him back toward the cars, then stops to pick up Al Mar’s keys. As they walk, the man says, “Of course I have a gun, so . . .” Al Mar nods. No need to say more.

  A second man, with a mustache, in a wrinkled black suit, is standing on the driver’s side of Al Mar’s Mercedes. The locks click open. Al Mar is shoved into the front passenger seat; the man who had grabbed him first, the one with the gun, gets in behind him. Al Mar closes his eyes. When he opens them, he sees the elevator doors to the garage begin to open. It’s his daughter Risi. Most nights she watches for his car from their living room window, and lately his wife has allowed the six-year-old to come down to greet him on the elevator. Her eyes widen when she sees his car. When she doesn’t see him driving, she tilts her head, confused. His heart feels as if it will burst. He checks to see if the others have seen Risi, but they are too busy watching him and settling into the unfamiliar car. As they begin to pull away, the girl steps forward. Al Mar looks at her, unsmiling, grim, his eyes wide and filled with tragic urgency. He stops her in her tracks with a glare and the slightest shake of his head. As only a father can with a daughter when he knows her life is at stake.

  Within minutes they are away from the lights of the towers and the harbor, cruising slowly on an empty road. “Where are we going?”

  From the back: “You know this road.”

  Al Mar looks out the window. He does know this road. Oasis, the road on which he takes his walks. Then he looks at the driver. Of course, it’s the man in the Mercedes that slowed as it passed him this afternoon. His instincts were right, only his timing was off.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “We would like to know if you’ve told anyone about your interaction with the Berlin client today.”

  Al Mar blinks. “No. I was asked not to and I honored the request. I’m not—”

  “Where were you this evening?”

  “After my walk? I met friends at the Intercontinental.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing. I said that business is picking up.”

  They pull over soon after the highway lights end. Al Mar recognizes the burned out frame of the deserted car. His turn-around marker. The man in the back gets out and opens Al Mar’s door. The gun is out in the open now. A Sig Sauer P226 nine-millimeter.

  It’s clear to Al Mar that he is about to die. “If I kept my word, I don’t understand . . .”

  “I believe you.” The man with the gun guides him to the shell of the abandoned car. His hands rest on the chalky black sheet metal of the vehicle’s roof. Things not meant to burn always smell the worst.

  “Then why now as opposed to when you drove past me this afternoon?”

  “Things changed. Someone who didn’t know you existed has discovered that you do. And because of this I’ve been told, unfortunately, that you can’t.”

  “I give you my word, praise Allah. Please, call them and at least ask.”

  The man pauses. “All right. Spread your hands and lay your head upon the roof while I check.”

  Al Mar presses against the car. He opens his arms as wide as they can reach and lays his left cheek upon the charred roof, still warm from the afternoon sun. He’s looking down the road, farther than he’s yet walked, and thinking of the most profound joys and failures of his life, all of his own making, and of Risi, if she made it back to the flat, when the bullet tears into the flesh behind his right ear and exits through his left temple. His splayed arms rise once in a flapping motion, his legs spasm and then go slack. A jet of blood sprays from the notch behind his ear, then his legs give and he slides down the side of the car, folding over upon himself, onto the sand.

  The shooter holsters the gun, then turns to the driver and motions him forward. He leans in through the nonexistent driver’s side window of the abandoned car, pushes a button, and to his surprise the trunk clicks open. “Imagine that,” he says. “German engineering.”

  He bends and stretches Al Mar’s arms over his head. The driver grabs him by the shoes and they lift him up and drop him into what is left of the trunk.

  8

  Katonah, New York

  The Rick Salvado that hired Drew Havens four years ago was a bombastic, megalomaniacal ass, but not a killer.

  That Salvado was aggressive and cunning, heartless and demanding. But he demanded as much from himself. He worked long hours—coming in most days before dawn and leaving long after the U.S. markets closed—and he expected the same of his employees. Sure, everyone at The Rising, including Salvado, conceded that he was a publicity whore. Indeed he loved it when, after he named the fund The Rising, the media had a field day, calling him “The Boss” and a number of other bad Springsteen puns. But billions in profits later, after 2008, no one was laughing. After that, when they played Springsteen’s song as he took the stage, it was without irony or mockery. Because of his success, coupled with undeniable skills and an addiction to self-promotion, he became a fixture of the Street and a warm, fuzzy mascot for the American business psyche. He was especially appreciated by the sales force charged with championing The Rising’s vision to new clients. Havens’s pal the rainmaker Tommy Rourke has often said that selling Rick Salvado to the
financial world was the easiest job on the Street, even now, as his positions are beginning to be challenged once again. Ultimately Salvado’s frequent media appearances are for the good of the fund. And what is good for the fund is good for all of them.

  By the time Havens came on board, the $15 billion Rising Fund was already considered “hot,” its rankings were rising, and Salvado had already, once again, become quite wealthy. In those days, when Havens was Salvado’s fledgling “Quant in the Cave” and Rourke was transforming the new business group, there was camaraderie in the halls. The morning calls were filled with racy jokes, cocky barbs, and confident observations exchanged between analysts, quants, and traders. Often evenings entailed drinks at Cipriani followed by a dinner at the type of establishment that Page 6 would call a “trendy Manhattan eatery.” Although Havens was new and unproven, he was always invited. Perhaps it was because for the first time quant geeks and their elegant mathematical models were becoming the new stars of the Street. Numbers were supplanting reason and truth, and the clever intuitives of the hedge world were deferring to the cadre of socially incompetent nerds who programmed the black boxes and dark pools of mega finance. For the first time in his adult life Havens was beginning to feel comfortable in social situations. He was happy to tag along.

  At first, Miranda was pleased for Havens. They’d been married for just over two years, and while she wasn’t thrilled that she was responsible for caring for their young daughter, Erin, she understood and was encouraged by the fact that her husband seemed to be coming out of his shell. Also, within months, Havens’s salary had doubled and he was told that if things continued to go well, the big money would come. But while she was pleased by Havens’s sudden success, inwardly she was having a hard time with the fact that her shy, socially limited husband was going out on the town three nights a week when he rarely was available to go out with her. Or Erin.

  Staring out the train window on the way to Katonah, it occurs to him that the one thing he never considered during his time at The Rising was how exactly Salvado had gotten back in the game after the disastrous fall of his Allegheny Fund. Was it all media bravado and hard work? Or maybe an angel investor? Someone who oversaw his transformation and salvation, and at what price?

  He gets off in the dark late night silence of the village of Katonah. This is where Miranda had wanted them all to live after Erin was born and it’s where she moved, alone, after they lost her.

  Miranda’s apartment is two blocks from the train, on the first floor of a large stone house across from the library. He walks past the music shop and the hardware store, stopping in the shade of a maple tree a hundred yards from the house. Her Prius is parked out front, and the best he can tell the building isn’t being observed.

  A breeze coaxes sidewalk leaves into a lazy spiral. Someone clicks a light off in an apartment on top of the dress shop. At one point before everything changed, Miranda had the three of them come up on the same train that he just got off to look at houses in the village.

  He thought it was almost too perfect. Too orderly. Too entitled. He said it felt like a make believe town.

  “Just because something happens to be nice,” she responded, “doesn’t mean it’s fake.”

  This was when they were newly rich and Havens was becoming increasingly troubled. Conflicted. This was after his research and models had confirmed Salvado’s hunch, after the markets had validated their bets and the fund had made billions on the U.S. sub-prime housing collapse. The biggest success of his professional life was going to be directly tied to the crushing failure of millions, and unlike his boss he was having a hard time with it. “So quit,” Miranda told him during more than one of his prolonged sulks. “We have enough money to keep us happy. You’re talented. We’ll find something else.”

  But he knew he’d never find a job like his job at The Rising.

  The house that Miranda had taken them to see that day, across the street from her present apartment, a large yellow Victorian with wine red shutters, had gone to foreclosure since the first time they viewed it. What had been a bargain had become a steal because of the collapse he’d predicted and exploited. The last thing Drew Havens wanted at that point in life was a house that was a steal and a constant reminder of the circumstances that led to its acquisition. Everywhere they went, even in posh Westchester, FOR SALE signs dotted the lawns and many homes were flat-out abandoned. Havens had become rich, but he couldn’t help but feel responsible for the scores of devalued and deserted homes in this small village, and everywhere.

  Back in their Manhattan apartment he continued to sulk. He rededicated himself to his work, but this time his obsession was to find a pattern in the numbers that foretold something good. In theory, this is what Salvado was doing. But Havens’s numbers never jibed with Salvado’s. Salvado was foretelling an artificial, ideologically driven, unsubstantiated good. As much as Havens wanted to believe, to be a part of an American financial renaissance, he couldn’t endorse a lie. Giving people false hope was almost as bad as taking away their dreams.

  He asked the other quants if he was crazy, but none was foolish enough to go on the record against Salvado. He asked his friend Rourke what he thought. What did the rainmaker and his clients think about Salvado’s rah-rah shtick? They went out to dinner. After Erin died, Rourke had taken it upon himself to take Havens out once a week to talk. “You were a hermit when you got here,” Rourke told him. “Unless you fight it, you’ll go to a darker cave and never come out.” Rourke, to Havens’s surprise, agreed with him. He couldn’t figure out Salvado either, but he said he was going to give it time. Rourke said he didn’t understand Salvado, but he believed in him. “What about you?” Rourke asked. “Are you getting out? Seeing anyone? Happy?”

  “Happy,” he answered. “Define ‘happy.’”

  Within a week, despite his misgivings, Miranda had made an offer on the Victorian in Katonah. Twenty-two days before the closing, Erin died. Since then Havens has made a point of blocking many things, but he never allows himself to block out thoughts of Erin. Even the most painful ones make him feel closer to her than none at all.

  He sees Miranda through the first floor window from across the street. His ex and always. She is wearing navy blue yoga pants and a sleeveless gray T-shirt, and she looks thinner than the last time he saw her. Already he feels sick to his stomach, filled with anxiety and regret and a wan sort of desire. The same he’s felt every time he’s seen her since the divorce. There’s been no sign of movement from the cars parked along the road outside her place, but it’s hard to see inside the cars from this distance. He crosses the street and walks along the sidewalk until he comes to the back wall of Miranda’s apartment house. He steps out of the streetlight and into the shadows of a narrow alley that separates the side of a pizza parlor and the five-foot-high stone wall that borders the apartment house. Wide joints in the stone provide sound footholds, and in an instant he is over the wall and standing amid the shoots of the forsythia hedge that rims her backyard. He’s tempted to let himself in through the basement hatch, the red steel Bilco doors that he remembers from when he helped her move in, but decides against it. Instead he waits until she appears in her kitchen window. But rather than approach, he watches her a moment more, transfixed and sickened by the sight of the woman he loves going about her life in a world that does not include him.

  When he taps on the window, she looks up from the sink, surprised but far from startled. She’s been expecting him.

  He raises his right forefinger to his lips, then points down with the same finger at the hatch to the basement.

  A few moments later one of the steel doors opens. She doesn’t speak until he comes down the last step and the hatch closes. She whispers, “How nice of you to finally visit.”

  Miranda leads. Up the darkened stairs to the edge of her living room. He stands to the side as she closes the curtains facing the street and pulls do
wn the shade in her bedroom. Then she shuts off the kitchen light, the entry hall light, and a torch lamp in the living room.

  She turns on the adult contemporary music channel on her TV, Kings of Leon, then stands in front of him, arms crossed, eyes beginning to well with tears. When he reaches out to soothe her she smacks him across the cheek. He stares at her with his hands at his side. “If you’re going to tell me anything,” she tells him, “then I want to know everything. No half truths or holding back for my benefit. Because once again, this is my life, too.”

  “Okay,” he answers. “What do you know so far?” He sits on an antique couch to the right of the front window, slouches down, and stares at her.

  “For starters, I know that someone has murdered Danny Weiss, who apparently discovered incriminating information about the fund. And I know that you wouldn’t have come here unless you thought I might be in danger.”

  “Okay.” He takes a long breath and rubs his eyes before continuing, “Here’s what I know.”

  * * *

  It takes a half hour for him to bring her up to this moment: her ex-husband, on the run, involved in a global financial conspiracy and at least one homicide, sitting in her living room. He tells her about the voice mails, the texts, the photo of the board from Weiss’s apartment that he wasn’t able to clearly view, and the flash drive, which he tried to access on the train.

  When he’s finished, Miranda says, “We should go to the police.”

  “We should. But right now it would end up with me in jail.”

  “Better than dead.”

  “Who’s to say that won’t happen first? It would take no time to show that I’m linked to phone calls to and from Weiss the night he was murdered. I’m sure my prints are in his place. My DNA. I took his hand, Mir. I took his flash drive and climbed down his fire escape. His blood is on my damned clothes! And what do I have on them?”