by James Conway
Inside a VIP lounge overlooking the trading floor, Salvado asks the head of communications for the NYSE, “Anyone know what’s causing it?”
The man manages a gallows laugh. “You’re asking me? Shit, I thought if anyone, you’d know.”
A financial reporter for Reuters, tagged by a field producer with a video cam, asks, “Rick, can we get you on the record for a quick sound bite to discuss what we might be in store for today.” Tommy Rourke gets between the reporter and Salvado.
“Give him a break, guys,” Rourke says. “He just got here.”
Under his breath Salvado whispers to Rourke, “What do I tell these people?”
“Gotta stay positive, Rick. Too late to change now.”
Salvado turns to face the reporter. “Look,” he says, “I’m here to talk about the biggest financial and business gathering in the history of New York, held in the coolest corporate public space in the world, owned by my pal Ben here,” he says, pointing to Transmediant!’s Krupp, who teeters bug-eyed on the other side of the room in deep jittery conversation with a circle of advisors.
“Okay,” replies the reporter. “How about we ask how you and Mr. Krupp feel about the fact that on the day you are to ring the bell, the day of a historic event, the world markets are tanking and the value of a share in his company has plummeted more than 40 percent?”
“How about you take your remote and go fuck yourself,” Salvado answers, staring directly into the camera. Then, turning to Rourke and the NYSE communications guy, he says under his breath, “Transmediant! is already down by half?”
Rourke shrugs and says, “Everything’s down half, pal.” The PR guy claps his hand together and forces a smile. “This is a problem. Plus, how do you ring the opening bell for a market that, technically, if they impose curbs, will remain closed?”
Salvado’s phone rings. He holds up a hand, excusing himself, and steps away. It’s Roxanne. “Rick, I’m getting bombarded. The press. The conference people. Your investors are freaking. They want out now. Chilton at Goldman has called three times. He’s worried about the fund, if it can handle this with all the longs. If we go under, he said it would not bode well for Goldman, either.”
He hands the phone to Rourke. “Tell them I stand by my positions. No one even knows what’s causing this. Say this could very well be some kind of market anomaly like a black box–induced flash crash. I don’t know. Turn this into a statement with confidence. A smile. A steady hand. Give it to PR and make it an electronic release. Tell them that Rick Salvado still believes.”
When he turns back around, a reporter from CNN is in front of Salvado. “Can you give us a version of what you just said, for Morning Edition?”
He is about to blow them off as well, but after making eye contact with Rourke, he catches himself, recalibrates the value of the proposition. “Sure. First give me a minute to talk to my pals here.” Three grim-faced men are waiting for him. One is second in command at the exchange, and the other two not far behind.
“What do you think, Rick? We have no info on this at all, other than, according to Treasury, a bunch of rumors and chatter. But it’s bad. Like some kind of micro arms race is being waged. Computerized arbitrage.”
Salvado squints, clicks his tongue. “Shit, you all know much more than me, and have much more information at your disposal, but my two cents? If it was me, and I had no hard evidence of anything, no overseas catastrophe, no explicit threat, no institution straddling the abyss, on the day of a major happening that transcends finance, after all we’ve been through, I’d open the goddamn thing. On freaking time. Last thing we need in this country is another collapse, or even a scare. Get a bunch of us to stand up, not just me and Ben, but some G20 guys, Trump, the mayor, and Zuckerberg go on camera and project confidence, downplay this and get things moving. I mean, the NYSE should be able to withstand a rumor storm, right?”
3
New York City, 8:39 A.M.
Miranda is led through the bowels of a midtown office building and into a storage room. A bearded man with an unholstered pistol and a thick Russian accent points to a straight-backed office chair and tells her to sit.
“I want to talk to Rourke,” she says.
The man shoves her onto the seat and trains the pistol on her face. “Rourke,” he says, mock laughing. “There is no Rourke.”
After they took her out of the Chelsea, she was certain they were going to kill her and dump her somewhere on the west side, but they didn’t. “You still have value,” the Russian tells her. “Diminishing by the second, but if we reach your husband and he becomes a threat and he knows that we have you, we have leverage.”
A welt has risen on her cheek. Her head throbs from a lack of sleep. To the dismay of the Russian, she begins to cry, overcome by the weight of what she’s been through, what she knows, and the certainty that she and her husband and many others are about to die.
4
New York City, 8:48 A.M.
The TV anchors share facts they don’t understand in voices that lack their usual swagger.
Havens and Sobieski watch it bearing down on them while frantically working to stop it.
The overnight dip. The approaching storm. The imminent crash.
One talking head wonders if black box algorithms have somehow overloaded the exchanges, if thousands of speed-of-light auto traders attempting to stay one step ahead of the meme have simultaneously placed a blizzard of sell orders. One anchor wonders about cyber warfare. A guest calls it, as if she’s overheard the NYSE PR official, “computerized arbitrage.”
Under his breath, Havens simply calls it “a disaster.”
“What do you know about Transmediant!?” asks Sobieski.
“Beside the fact that it’s another Salvado favorite? It claims to be the future of media and entertainment. Convergence specialists, bringing together new models and combinations of entertainment, content, branding, and tech. Decent numbers. Modest growth projections. Et cetera.”
“So it fits in with the other six?”
“Yeah. No. Four of them, anyway.” Havens remembers the point he wanted to make about the relationship between the real estate and insurance stocks. The outliers in the mix. “Hey,” he asks, “is there a way with this program to track which NYCRE real estate holdings are insured by CGI?”
“With this? Yeah.” She’s already typing. Havens watches the TV. POSSIBLE TRADING CURBS BEFORE THE BELL scrawls across the bottom of the screen, followed by COMPUTERIZED ARBITRAGE? followed by BLACK FRIDAY? Then come the futures, a sea of red symbols.
Sobieski waves him over and jabs at the screen. “Here’s a list of every company that’s part of NYCRE. And here’s a list of the companies from that group who are on record as having some level of an insurance relationship with CGI.”
Havens leans in. “Of the seventy-eight real estate companies on the first list, at least nine are insured in some degree by CGI.” As they look closer at the nine, one jumps out.
“Transmediant!” Sobieski says, straightening up and backing away from the screen as if it’s on fire.
Havens moves to the keyboard and takes over while she paces, processing this new packet of information. He calls up the Transmediant! stock profile. “Down almost fifty percent before opening. Heavy volume. One of the ups that appeared all three times on Hindenburg Omen days in the past month.” He opens the Wiki page, the Hoover profile. The company Web site. “Worldwide headquarters in midtown Manhattan,” he reads aloud, “at the newly renovated, landmark Transmediant! Conference Center and Theater.” Then, “A NYCRE property.” Now he stands as well. “And look . . .” He points at the corporate logo at the head of the home page on the company Web site. She leans back in. “Transmediant!” Havens repeats.
“With an exclam, in red,” Sobieski adds. “Just like Weiss’s board.”
<
br /> They’re hovering over the screen, shoulder to shoulder, looking for more. Sobieski says, “I had an English teacher in ninth grade who said a good writer never uses an exclamation point unless the world is on fire.”
“Well, apparently, this one is especially well placed.” Havens points at the screen, beneath the logo, at the copy under a headline that reads:
WHAT’S NEW AT TRANSMEDIANT!
Transmediant! to host the inaugural DAVOS WEST (World Economic, Security, and Technology) Conference
Join the world’s financial and tech elite @ Transmediant! Theater and Conference Center in NYC October 21–23.
“There it is,” Havens says. “Book 22. There’s our ‘Death in the Great Hall.’”
5
New York City, 9:10 A.M.
Twice the Russian’s phone rings. Each time he leaves the room to take the call. Each time he turns to her at the door and says in broken English, “If you try to leave . . .” and finishes his thought with a wave of his pistol.
After the second call he returns with another chair and Deborah Salvado. He sets the chair down beside Miranda, looks at Deborah, and points at the chair. Deborah’s hair hangs wild over the right side of her face, and her left cheek is also red and swollen. The women nod at each other but otherwise say nothing. What a strange fate, Miranda thinks, dying in this place alongside this woman.
Not until the man returns to the hallway to take a call does Deborah look up. She has tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“We have to get out of here, Deb.”
Deborah nods unconvincingly. With trembling fingers she brushes the loose strand of hair from her cheek.
Miranda stares at the man in the doorway. She considers rushing him and making a desperate dash to freedom, down the hall, up the stairs, onto the street. She imagines herself bursting out the front doors, flagging down a police car, and then what? Even though she knows she’s about to die anyway, she knows such a move will also end in death, only sooner.
Deborah speaks as if reading her mind. “Don’t even think of it. That pistol is an automatic weapon. They told me. You’d be torn to pieces before you got halfway to the stairs.”
“Then what?”
Deborah whispers, “They’re going to blow something up.”
“This guy?”
“This guy. Rourke. My husband and whoever he’s with.”
“Today”
“Soon.”
“Where?”
“Here. Then, once they have no use for us, they’ll kill us.”
“How do you know?”
Deborah lifts her chin toward the man. “I know because I just heard my husband tell him to. On speaker phone.”
6
Johannesburg–Hong Kong, 9:29 EST
“Michaud.”
“My name is Sawa Luhabe. I am calling from Johannesburg, South Africa. Does this mean anything to you?”
Michaud sits up. He’s in front of a bank of monitors, each displaying a different aspect of agent Cara Sobieski’s story. He’s smoking a cigarette, nursing a Chinese beer, and listening to Tony Bennett’s “The Best Is Yet to Come.” He lowers the music as his eyes track to the Jo’burg screen. “Ms. Luhabe. It is a pleasure to hear your voice. I’ve got people scouring the continent looking for you.”
“I am presently in front of a TSI satellite office, prepared to surrender myself in exchange for your protection.”
“You have my word. I’m sending a note to my colleague there as we speak and someone will come out to get you. I promise you’ll be safe.”
“Thank you.”
“While you’re waiting,” he says. “By any chance have you recently spoken to our friend Sobieski?”
“Just via e-mail. While she was in flight, en route to New York.”
7
New York City, 9:31 A.M.
The U.S. markets open, but under a yellow flag.
Within five minutes the Dow falls off a five-hundred-point cliff. Stocks are down across the board. The seven securities of the seven trades fall the farthest, but programmed trading takes hundreds of others down with them. There are three thresholds, each of which represents a different level of decline in terms of points in the Dow Jones industrial average. Since it is before 2 P.M., the first halt will shut down the market for an hour. If threshold number two is breached before 1 P.M., the market will close for two hours.
They’re in a cab, heading toward midtown, when Sobieski’s phone rings. Michaud. “I just heard from your friend in Jo’burg. Tell me everything you know about Trans—”
“—mediant! We’re heading there now.”
“You think they’re gonna hit the event?”
“Everything we’ve found points that way. Any way you can—”
“I’m already putting out word to clear it, but they won’t unless I have something hard.”
“How does that feel?” She looks out the window. Traffic on Sixth slows near the Garden. Havens rocks back and forth, glaring out the other window. Then, poking at her handheld, she says, “I’ll forward what I have. . . . For starters, Transmediant!’s building is an NYCRE holding. CGI insures the building. CEOs for the other five stocks that were attached to the bloody short trades are going to be in the building today to hear Rick Salvado of The Rising give the keynote—”
“I just saw him on TV. Ringing the bell on crash day, telling everyone it’s gonna be all right.”
“Michaud, this is bad.”
“You’ve got to wait for backup. I’ve already contacted Homeland, Treas—”
Sobieski interrupts: “We gotta go. . . .”
Michaud pauses. “Wait, Sobes. We’ve got to get the building shut down. Just wait, Cara. Wait until I get you backup.”
Cara, she thinks. “You know I can’t do that, Michaud. If it was just money, maybe.”
“Jesus.”
“Listen, Boss. I e-mailed you every passage we’ve found from The Odyssey. Someone somewhere is using them as a way to activate the trades and murders. Is there a way to run them all to see if they’ve shown up recently on a platform somewhere? A newspaper or blog or series of social media entries?”
“Sure. Already starting to look.”
The cab turns left off the avenue.
“Here’s something,” Michaud says.
“Shoot.”
“Crimson Classics: A Harvard Dude’s Take on Greek Lit.”
“Do you have an addy?”
“We’re trying.”
They see the logo on the side of the building up ahead. She clicks off.
Havens turns to her. “They found a blog?”
“Yup.”
“Do you have a gun?”
She shakes her head, pounds her fist on her thigh. As soon as the traffic slows, she opens the door to the still moving cab.
“Do they have the blog guy?”
“They’re tracking.”
“What are we going to do when we get there?”
“Clear the building . . . take Salvado down,” she answers, already three steps in front of him.
As they near the building, he asks one more question, “The blog—what was it called?”
8
New York City, 9:45 A.M.
In the limo uptown, Benjamin Krupp begins to cry.
Pathetic son of a bitch, thinks Salvado. A hundred million in the bank. Twenty-five-million-dollar bonus this year, with another twenty due in December, if he lives that long, and he’s still crying. “Buck up, pal,” he tells the Transmediant! CEO. “You’ve got about five minutes to get your shit together and give the most important speech of your life.”
“I know,” Krupp whimpers. “I know. But it’s just that no one see
ms to have a goddamn clue.”
“You do your part, Kruppy, and I promise, when I go on at ten, I will rock the place.”
The limo slows as it turns off the avenue and heads toward the freight entrance. Salvado’s BlackBerry vibrates. He holds it up with the screen facing away from Krupp.
At 9:39, despite Salvado’s bold public proclamation at the Exchange, the first threshold of a crash was breached and a trading halt has automatically been triggered. You’re powerful, Salvado thinks. But no one is powerful enough to override the automatic halts. In a few hours they’ll give it another shot and try until the third threshold is breached, closing the market for the day. However, Salvado doesn’t dwell on this. No way it’s gonna get that far.
At 9:48 Krupp wipes his eyes, takes a stuttering breath, and opens his door. Media vans with satellites on their roofs line the street. Mic-toting correspondents scan the sidewalks for a notable willing to talk about the collapse. Two security guards step forward to greet Krupp at the loading dock on the side of the Transmediant! mail room. He looks back into the limo.
“Coming, Rick?”
“You and David go on in without me,” Salvado says, gesturing to his bald, backpack-toting assistant. “I’ll finish this message up and join you in a sec. And Ben . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Strong like a rock.”
While he watches Krupp enter the building, Salvado checks the markets, shakes his head at the catastrophe in the making, and wonders how much of it is his fault, his doing.
The driver adjusts the mirror. “Sir?”
“Right. I’m going.” He opens the door, then leans back inside. “You’ll wait right here, front end pointing out, ready to roll?”
“Yes, sir.” After Salvado closes the door, the driver pulls out his device and types,