Crash

by David Hagberg

  “Goddamnit, I want you to sit on Julia, and I mean sit on her hard,” Treadwell said, shouting. He very seldom raised his voice, but this day was turning into nothing but shit.

  “We’re on it, Mr. T,” Dammerman said.

  Treadwell slammed down the phone, and when he looked up, Heather Rockingham charged past Ashley’s desk and barged into his office.

  Ashley got up, but Treadwell waved her back.

  “Shut the door, if you would, Ash,” he said. When she did, he got up and went around his desk to embrace Heather. “What are you doing here?”

  “To see you, of course,” she said. She wore a clingy, short, low-cut red dress that showed off her legs halfway up her thighs and a lot of her chest.

  Treadwell thought she looked like a whore, but a desirable whore, and he tried to kiss her again. She held him back.

  “Hold on, tiger,” she said. “Before you bend me over the desk, we have some business to discuss.”

  “Business?”

  “Cutting me in on the deal,” she said. “What did you think?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do, Reid.” She took an iPhone out of her purse. “This thing’s got a great recording app. I switched it on the moment I walked into your apartment.” She grinned. “I got your conversation with Clyde Dammerman, plus your text while I was sitting on the toilet.” She smiled again. “Do you know that you make a hell of a lot of noise during sex? I just love it!”

  Treadwell didn’t know what to say. He went around behind his desk and sat down.

  “You called it the greatest financial coup in history,” she said. “I want in.”

  TEN

  CLOSING BELL DAY ONE

  70

  Ben Whalen and Chip Faircloth landed at LaGuardia’s private jet terminal a little after two in the afternoon, and the pilot taxied over to one of the hangars, shutting down when they were stopped.

  The copilot came back. “What’s your pleasure, guys? We can refuel and return to Andrews, or if you’re only going to be a couple of hours we can stick it out here.”

  “Head back to the barn,” Ben said. “I don’t know how long we’ll be here. Maybe even overnight.”

  Chip had gotten back on his computer once they’d landed, and he looked up now. “I suggest that if we’re going to Cassy’s bank we start at the top. CEO’s name is Reid Treadwell. I did a bio check on him: The guy is well-connected, but he’s considered one of the top sharks on Wall Street.”

  “I’ll start with him, but you’re going back to D.C.”

  “I’m in this too,” Chip said.

  “It’s probably going to get messy, and you’re still wearing a uniform, which means you answer to the admiral. But I’m in civvies, which means I can quit.”

  “Huggard will never dump us, at least not till W is certified. Anyway, you’re just a grunt who’s going to need some backup. So I’m staying here in case the waves start piling up.”

  The copilot had opened the hatch, and he turned back to them. “Looks like whatever you guys are up to has already started to create waves. We’ve got company.”

  Ben got up as a stocky man with a salt-and-pepper mustache, dressed in a sport coat and tie, came aboard, holding up his NYPD ID wallet, a gold shield badge on his belt. The copilot stepped aside.

  “My name is Sergeant Adams,” he said. “Which one of you is Benjamin Whalen?”

  “That’s me,” Ben said.

  The sergeant pocketed his ID. “You’re under arrest. Do I have to cuff you?”

  “That depends on what I’m charged with.”

  “Threatening an individual with bodily harm.”

  “If you’re talking about my telephone conversation with the chief of security at Burnham Pike, it’s not how I remember it.”

  “You were recorded, and I listened to it,” Adams said. “What’ll it be, tough guy, cuffs or not?”

  “I’ll talk to the admiral, and we’ll straighten this out,” Chip said.

  “I don’t think we have a lot of time,” Ben said.

  “I’m on it,” Chip said. “We’re going to stick around for a bit,” he told the copilot, who nodded.

  “You and this aircraft will go back to where you came from,” Adams said, but Chip was on the phone again, and the pilot was in his seat in the cockpit.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Ben said.

  “I said I want this aircraft out of here.”

  “Sorry, Adams, but you don’t have the authority,” Chip said, and he turned back to his phone.

  “We’ll see,” Adams said.

  He turned Ben around, cuffed him, and, taking his arm, led him down the steps and across to the backseat of a waiting Chevy sedan, another man behind the wheel.

  71

  Once they were clear of the airport it took about thirty minutes to cross the river into Manhattan and the Midtown South Police Precinct on West Thirty-fifth.

  Adams took Ben directly back to an interrogation room with only a small steel table and two chairs. “Are you going to cooperate or will this get difficult?”

  “Your call,” Ben said.

  “Goddamnit, you threatened a friend of mine, and I want to know what the fuck you’re up to.”

  “A friend of mine was kidnapped by two Russians and probably taken somewhere in Brighton Beach. I came up from D.C. to find her.”

  “She’s at lunch with another friend. Maybe she dumped you.”

  “Let’s get this over with, okay?”

  “It’s not going to be that easy. A formal complaint has been lodged against you. And like I said, I listened to the recording.”

  “I have a recording of my own. How about we make an exchange?”

  Adams took the cuffs off. “Everything out of your pockets and on the table,” he said.

  Ben did as he was told, and the sergeant motioned for him to sit down, then made a phone call.

  “Have Sid come in,” he said and sat down across from Ben. “You claim to be a former Navy SEAL, that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks for your service. What are you working at in D.C.?”

  “It’s classified.”

  A gruff-looking young man with a scorpion tattoo on the right side of his neck came in, and Adams gave him Ben’s cell phone. “There may be a recording on this thing, make me a copy.”

  “It’d be too bad if something happened to my phone, even though I don’t need it,” Ben said.

  “You’re full of threats.”

  Ben sat forward. “Cut the bullshit, okay? I didn’t come up here on a government jet to play games, nor did I want to get the police involved, because I’ve dealt with the kind of people who took my friend. They don’t give a shit about local cops, who they think of as only minor annoyances. It’s why they still operate in front of your noses. So let’s get on with this so I can get on with finding her and get out of your hair.”

  “Tough guy,” Adams said. “But even if you’re telling the truth, which I doubt, what makes you think you could go up against these Russians of yours?”

  “I can.”

  “Have you ever killed a man?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than one?”

  “Yes.”

  “I meant more than one at a time, on your own, with no team to back you up.”

  “Yes,” Ben said.

  Adams sat back, and after a moment or two shook his head. “I believe you,” he said. “Problem is, you’re not going to run around my town killing people.”

  “Whatever it takes to get my lady back.”

  “Cassy Levin, that her name?”

  “Yes.”

  “The other problem is that my friend thinks that you could be a real threat to his safety.”

  “If he’s involved with Cassy’s disappearance, then he’s right.”

  “So what do we do?” Adams said. “Butch told me that the young woman—who he calls a gigantic pain in the ass—went to lun
ch with a friend of hers, and that she’s not back yet. But when she does return he’ll have her give me a call.”

  “She doesn’t answer her cell phone.”

  “Lots of people switch off at lunch.”

  Ben said nothing.

  “If you’re released, will you promise not to try to contact Mr. Hardy?”

  “He’s the first one on my list, because he knows what happened and where in Brighton Beach she was taken.”

  “Then I’ll have to hold you overnight, at least,” Adams said.

  The man who’d taken Ben’s cell phone came back with it and handed it to the sergeant. “Nothing on it. I think the SIM card was probably damaged.”

  72

  The Sikorsky touched down on the White House south lawn around three, and a flight crewman hustled to open the hatch and lower the boarding stairs.

  “Watch your step, sir,” he said politely.

  Nast just glared at him, wondering why he always had to be surrounded by complete idiots.

  One of Sam Kolberg’s interns, a kid with the remnants of acne, was waiting for him. “How was your flight, sir?” he asked, extending his hand.

  Nast brushed past him. “Smoother than your complexion,” he said, and he headed across the lawn, the intern trailing behind.

  He had been thinking about Farmer’s direct order to cut off all contact with Reid, which was as surprising as it was disturbing to him. Reid was one of the largest contributors to the president’s war chest, but there had to have been some sort of a rift recently.

  But then, as the saying went: If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

  The president was in the Oval Office, his feet up on the Resolute desk, which had been crafted from the wood of a nineteenth-century arctic exploration ship, when Nast walked in. The ornate desk had been a gift from Queen Victoria to Rutherford B. Hayes, and had been a fixture in the Oval Office since.

  Kolberg sat in one of the two chairs across from him.

  Nast’s proposal lay open on the desk, and Farmer tapped a finger on it.

  “You’ve got balls of steel, Spence,” the president said, chuckling. “Using Federal Reserve money to pay for your financial rescue plan.”

  Nast took a seat. “That’s the beauty of it, sir. The precedent has already been set for us. After the ’08 crisis, the Fed pumped money into the economy by buying T-bonds and mortgage-backed bonds. It has the power to create money. That’s the key to its existence.”

  “But that creates inflation, something nobody wants to see happen,” Kolberg said. “Prices going through the roof like in the seventies and eighties.”

  “In the first place double-digit inflation is no longer the problem,” Nast shot back. This was his territory. Kolberg was clueless. “The world has changed since then. Technology has made most businesses faster and more efficient. And that alone tends to keep prices down.

  “So does the surge in international commerce. High-paying union jobs have disappeared because they’ve been transferred to Mexico and Vietnam and China, where labor is cheap. Which means that our labor costs have plummeted, which tends to keep inflation in check.”

  “A lot of good-paying jobs have gone up in smoke,” Farmer said with a bite. He was back in his populist, friend-of-the-average-working-stiff mode. “And that’s a damn shame. The American worker has been fucked more times than a tied-up goat.”

  “But this gives us a lot of leeway, Mr. President,” Nast said, pressing his argument. “In the wake of the ’08 problem, Congress voted seven hundred billion to bail out the banks and another eight hundred billion to stimulate the economy, using tax credits for businesses and consumers, plus spending on public works like roads and bridges.

  “That money came from the taxpayers themselves, plus borrowing from the bond investors who buy Treasuries. And on top of that was the three trillion plus the Fed created to buy those bonds.”

  “Why can’t we do the same thing now?” Kolberg asked.

  “Do you mean more borrowing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even you should know the answer to that one, Sam,” Nast said, loving it. “The failure of today’s Treasury auction would simply be repeated.”

  “Not if we paid higher interest.”

  “Pay all the interest you want, we still wouldn’t be able to overcome the widespread perception that we can’t afford to pay even a small interest rate because of the gargantuan debt load we’re carrying. And that would be especially true if China decided to dump the two trillion in our bonds that they hold.

  “Hua would get far less than the two trillion, of course, because he’d have to sell at a discount. But if he gets desperate enough, with the PBOC turning its back on him and the commercial banks falling like dominoes, he’ll do it. For us, the bottom line would be a disaster. We’d never be able to raise the money.”

  Farmer took his feet off the desk and sat forward. “What you’re asking is that Congress create a new stimulus program plus a bank bailout if it comes to that. And a big chunk of that would be used to send half the American public a check for twenty grand. All courtesy of the Federal Reserve.”

  Nast nodded. “Yes, Mr. President, that’s exactly right.”

  “Well, I see two problems right off the bat. First, we gotta get Congress to go along with this. Holland and I have had our differences, so that’s a definite hard sell. And to convince that hard-assed Miller to have the Fed create abracadabra big bucks—trillions of dollars—won’t be easy either.”

  Farmer exchanged a glance with his chief of staff.

  “The Fed is independent of me. I can’t tell Miller what to do. Which means we’ve got ourselves a briar patch to hack through.”

  “That’s why Miller and Nichols are on the Hill at this moment,” Kolberg said. “We’d be facing a lot of legal barriers to what you’re proposing.”

  “Christ, Sam, can’t you get it through your thick head that what is about to hit us will change all the rules?” Nast practically shouted. “The bolder our strategy, the better. If Joe Miller and the Speaker of the House put the brakes on our rescue program, they’d become the most hated people in the country. And you could use your bully pulpit, Mr. President, to stick it to them big-time.”

  Farmer turned a wistful glance out the window toward the Rose Garden for a long moment. “You’ve got a point, Spence. If things do go straight into the toilet, like they’re looking to do, then we need to offer leadership that can save our economy and our nation.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” Nast said, holding back a smirk for Kolberg.

  “Sam?” Farmer asked.

  “You’re the president.”

  Nast almost laughed out loud. What the idiots didn’t realize was that whatever the government ended up doing would probably not work. But right now he was playing the role of the savior of the nation, who was trying to keep the ship from sinking.

  “What if your idea doesn’t work?” Farmer asked.

  “Years of depression, maybe,” Nast said. “Farmervilles.”

  “The big boys didn’t starve in the thirties, and they won’t this time if the shit hits the fan,” Farmer said, not taking Nast’s bait about Farmervilles. “And from what I know about Reid Treadwell’s fancy footwork, I have a hunch that he and his Burnham Pike pals will be eating caviar and drinking champagne no matter what.”

  Nast felt a sudden chill. “They’re in my past, sir. As you’ve instructed, I will have no further contact with Reid or his people.”

  “That best be true, because this time, unlike after ’08, I will see some of those Wall Street butt wipes who game the system end up on the guillotine.” He smiled. “Do you get my drift, Spencer?”

  “Yes, Mr. President, I do.”

  73

  Julia O’Connell was lost in thought, trying to figure a way out of the mess she’d been part of creating, when Dammerman burst into her office like a tidal wave ready to destroy everything in its path.

  “Betty Ladd is your fu
cking cousin,” he shouted. “When were you going to let me or Reid know?”

  Julia was knocked completely off balance.

  “What kind of shit are you trying to pull on us?”

  Julia forced herself to get it together, because in less than twenty-four hours, win, lose, or draw, she was out of here. “Lower your voice,” she said. “This is my office.”

  “This office belongs to Burnham Pike, not you. And maybe you should never have been here in the first place. Maybe Butch could round up a crew to move you out.”

  “I’ve had my fill of you, Clyde. Your loudmouth bullying, your low-class attitude, your wrong-side-of-the-tracks boorish mouth.”

  Dammerman was nonplussed for a moment.

  “When it’s done, I’ll have all the money I’ve ever wanted, and delighted to never see you or this place again.” Her voice was even, despite the effort it took her. “And if you and Reid don’t stop with the threats, maybe you’ll find out why you still need me. The hard way.”

  Dammerman came to the edge of her desk, his bulk towering over her. “Reid wants to know what you and Betty talked about.”

  “I’ve already told him.”

  “I mean about our work here.”

  Julia got to her feet and came around the desk to him. “I’ll go up and tell him again. Maybe he’s as dim-witted as you are, and he needs me to draw him a diagram.”

  Dammerman pushed her back. “You’re not going anywhere until you start giving me some straight answers.”

  “Get away from me, you bastard,” Julia shouted and tried to step around him, but he grabbed her arm so hard it hurt.

  “She saved your ass in college after you pulled your little stunt, and now you owe her something. What is it?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. I’m sure as hell not going to blow the whistle on myself.”

  “Bitch.”

  The door swung open, and Todd Borman, an IT tech who’d been with her for a long time, came in. Broad-shouldered and six-three, he’d played football at Stanford starting his freshman year. He thought Julia was a goddess.

  “May I help?” he asked.