by Jeff Nesbit
“I might be able to, Mr. Asher. I just might. But you should be prepared for what you might find. They can be a bit like the Knights Templar order centuries ago. They’re out to protect someone or something for reasons that don’t always make sense. Catching hold of them is like chasing a cloud. They always seem to retreat into the mist.”
Chapter Sixteen
“It’s not like some bet in Vegas,” I warned my brother on our twenty-fifth birthday. “You’re talking about a huge gamble, with a whole lot of the money we’ve inherited.”
“It’s not a gamble,” Jude insisted. “I know what I’m doing. More importantly, the regents know precisely what they’re doing.”
I’d looked around the deck of the cruise ship that Jude had rented out for our birthday celebration. It was comical. Jude had rented an entire cruise ship for three days—the whole thing, every berth—to celebrate in style. He’d invited hundreds of our “closest friends” for the party. I knew, at most, twenty or so of them.
Standup comics and top-tier rock bands were performing. There was a world-premiere launch of a new Hollywood film. He’d even managed to convince the cast and crew of the most popular reality television show in America to film an episode aboard the ship during the party. Jude had spared no expense.
“By the way,” I said to him, as we viewed the festivities from the captain’s quarters high above the ship’s deck, “was this absolutely necessary?”
“Go big or go home,” Jude said with that megawatt smile of his that was rapidly becoming a trademark. “It’s all illusion, brother of mine. Just a big show.”
“And you’re the center of attention.”
Jude shrugged. “Someone has to be. Might as well be me. It could be you as well, if you’d ever loosen up and enjoy what we have.”
There was no need to answer him. Jude knew where I stood. We’d had this argument so many times that neither of us even brought it up much anymore. Jude wasn’t about to change the way he grabbed the world by the throat, and I wasn’t about to change my own habits anytime soon either.
“So this bet?”
“Not a bet,” Jude said. “I’ve been studying it for six months now. My advisors assure me that it’s all headed in this direction.”
“You mean your regents,” I corrected him.
“Whatever.”
“Speaking of which …”
“They’re around. You know, one of these days, you’ll stop asking that question.”
“All right, all right,” I grumbled. “So your advisors tell you that this thing makes sense. Why?”
“Because they know what’s happening at the nation-state level. The new Japanese prime minister is serious about finally devaluing the yen. He desperately needs to boost their exports to shore up their economy.”
“You’re talking about that principalities and powers stuff?”
“Yeah, that,” Jude said casually. “They’re never wrong about those things. When they say a world leader or a government is going to do something, go a certain direction, it happens. And, in this case, it means that the yen is going to be devalued. We’re going to gamble on that, bet against the yen.”
There was a sudden burst of activity below. Glancing down at the deck, I watched as deckhands started to clear the center of the ship and bring in barrels and boxes. “Something else you’ve cooked up?”
“Fireworks—to celebrate our own independence day four years ago,” Jude said.
“Like they’re gonna get that.”
“Like I care. The fireworks are for me—and you. Our own private joke.”
“Great,” I mumbled. “So, seriously, Jude, tell me—how do you know this will happen with the yen? Japan’s leaders have been trying to devalue the yen for twenty years without any success. People have tried to short Japan for most of that time. I think they call it a ‘widow maker’ on Wall Street. What makes this time any different?”
Jude turned away from the festivities below to face me, as if he wanted to make certain that I understood. “Because this time I’m asking the question and demanding the right answer. I studied the situation with Japan’s leadership and national intentions and asked the regents to tell me what would happen. I’m satisfied with the answer. It’s that simple.”
Weirdly, I believed him. When it came to Jude, he’d never failed to get what he’d wanted or sought. Not really. This was a much bigger lift, with more at stake. But, in the end, it did seem to be that simple. Jude was asking the question, and he was almost certain to get the answer he wanted.
“I get it.” I nodded. “So how much are you putting in play?”
“A good part of the $15 billion in the hedge fund,” Jude said. “I figure we’ll make almost $2 billion if the yen falls the way I know it will.”
“What do you need to make that bet?”
“The dollar buys about eighty yen right now,” he explained. “I need it to buy more than one hundred yen to the dollar over time. If it does, we’ll make $2 billion on paper.”
“And if the yen doesn’t fall? If it goes the other way?”
“Then we’d lose that much,” he said in a straightforward tone. “But trust me, it won’t.”
“And are you, or we, telling anyone about this gamble? Not that I care one way or another. Just curious.”
Jude remained calm, unruffled. “No, we’re not. This is merely a test, mostly on my part. I want to see how some of these reverse-knockout options work. I don’t need this to be public—not this time.”
Six months later, almost to the day, The Wall Street Journal reported that Germany and France intended to take legal action against Japanese government for its successful efforts to devalue its own currency, boosting its trade and exports.
Other countries—those as dependent on exports as Japan—quickly announced that they would join the efforts of Germany and France and take action to reduce their own currencies in order to remain competitive with Japan.
There was a flurry of activity at every level on the world economy. Investors and hedge funds changed their ratios on the yen. Financial analysts predicted that Japan’s six-month antideflation efforts would rapidly come to an end.
The dollar brought in 105 yen on that day, up from eighty yen six months earlier. Jude, on the advice of his regents, pulled back all of the efforts to short Japan on that day. But not before we’d made nearly $2 billion in six months, just as Jude had predicted.
Chapter Seventeen
I’d have been lost without Frank Gore’s road map, frankly.
As Jude’s Senate campaign progressed throughout the late summer and fall months that led to the general election, I crisscrossed the country by myself to call on various places Frank recommended I casually, unobtrusively visit.
Meanwhile, my own newspaper and others now predicted an easy, twenty-point landslide win on the basis of a combination of Jude’s name recognition, financing, leadership network, and activist groups that fanned out across the state to literally go door-to-door to round up every conceivable “issue” voter who’d ever identified with progressive issues—from gun control and immigration reform to climate change and marriage equality.
As for me, I tucked Jude’s Senate campaign into the far recesses of my mind. I knew what he hoped to get from the Senate, and I was equally certain he would win the Senate seat as a first step toward a larger political objective. Jude had always gotten what he wanted, and politics would be no different. Unless there was an intervention or a mistake out of his direct control, he would become president.
On Frank’s gracious recommendation and invitation, I didn’t visit these places as a reporter for the Times. I wasn’t shy about who I was when pressed, but I didn’t lead with that.
Instead, Frank agreed to be a researcher for my book project. That, in turn, allowed me to simply tell people that I was working with the great “Off th
e Grid” Frank Gore on a new project. The mention of Frank’s name was like magic—better than anything I’d ever seen in my life.
It was extraordinary. Clouds of suspicion on people’s faces simply vanished when I mentioned I was working with Frank. They broke into knowing, welcoming smiles of recognition. We were, almost instantly, fellow travelers with a common language and an unspoken calling and mission.
I was also frankly shocked at what I found in the remote parts of the United States, especially out West in place like the Dakotas, Idaho, and Montana. People were serious about their homesteading. They’d adopted every word from Frank’s handbook and blog as if the words had come straight from God’s mind and a burning bush.
I was welcomed into homes by people who, honestly, should have known better. But if I was Frank Gore’s friend and I was working with him, then I was welcome almost anywhere.
I very quickly learned the secret words and phrases that unlocked any manner of new lines of discussion about fears of a centralized government; worries that America had lost its moral center; a belief that poor, single mothers would rather live in Section 8 housing in big cities and have lots of kids than work; an uneasy sense that any number of disaster scenarios were just over the horizon; or thoughts about how huge, global corporations were soulless, greedy, ravenous entities that served only themselves.
More importantly, I learned an even better secret—the art of asking questions and then shutting up. Most reporters take years to actually learn this secret. But it was invaluable here. I could simply keep asking questions, and people opened up.
Because I’d arrived with Frank Gore’s blessing and I wasn’t talking about my own beliefs or views—I was simply listening to theirs—I was able to spend countless hours, days, and weeks soaking up the heart of a subculture I’d never even known existed in America.
One thing became abundantly clear to me: whatever the big power centers in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles believed they knew about the other parts of America, they were simply wrong. There was another America that didn’t believe a single word that was written, spoken, or displayed from any institution associated with or established in these centers of American culture, politics, or finance. Not a single word.
This—among all the aspects of this other America I was learning about—is what shocked me the most. Oh, people were polite about it. They talked in calm, easy, almost-casual tones about the political, financial, or entertainment worlds.
But deeper, below the surface—as I was now, thanks in no small part to Frank Gore’s social-network connections—I very quickly learned the truth. These people held deeply entrenched, foundational beliefs that weren’t reflected in the media or political discussions. Vast parts of America not only distrusted their leaders, they reviled them. They believed—with passion and conviction—that corporate, political, and financial leaders were liars, thieves, crooks, and moral reprobates.
They took every word they heard from these leaders and assumed the opposite was true. They took every action and assumed the worst intentions. This other America was utterly, unequivocally convinced of the self-centered, greedy, and even immoral aims of the leaders of industry, finance, politics, and entertainment. And there didn’t appear to be anything that would move them or convince them otherwise. They’d moved as far away from the power centers as they possibly could, and there seemed to be no going back.
Hints about the mysterious Christian Brigades wound their way through several of these conversations. But they were always just that—hints. The group wasn’t physically located anywhere. People knew of them or had heard of them. Their adherents, like the Knights Templar, seemed committed to a larger crusade. But whenever I found myself getting closer to some sort of truth about the Christian Brigades, the information drifted off into the mist. I nearly gave up my pursuit of them.
In fact, I often wondered, late at night, as I collapsed in my hotel room, whether I’d wandered down into some abyss I would never be able to forget. How could a people, even a subculture, genuinely structure their lives and families around hopelessness, fear, mistrust, and even hatred? How could you believe that your lives and your communities meant something when you also believed that everyone else in every other part of the world was out to harm you in some fashion with their words or actions? How could escaping “off the grid” be something of value to anyone beyond yourself and your immediate family?
But then a curious thing happened. I headed to the city that I’d heard had, without any thought or planning, become the de facto, unclaimed capital of this new confederacy of disenchanted, disaffected, mistrusting, and perpetually angry mob who genuinely believed that “off the grid” was their salvation and path to freedom.
I came to Bozeman, Montana. And everything changed.
Chapter Eighteen
Jude was in his midtwenties when fame began to follow his fortune.
“Why that one?”
It had been a logical question that day in Kentucky, when Jude was still trying to build his brand and name recognition beyond financial circles. But that wasn’t what I had been asking Jude, and he knew it. So he waited for the handlers around us to provide their answer. And then he told me the truth.
That day had been preceded by a trip two years prior to the yearling sales at Keeneland’s racetrack. There we’d spent the days prior to the yearling sales wandering around the various barns and listening to young sheikhs from Saudi Arabia ask questions of the trainers and owners about the young horses that would shortly go up for bid.
Jude had known very little about bloodlines, famous or otherwise, prior to that Keeneland auction. But he’d learned a great deal in a very short period of time, and he settled on a young bay colt from an undistinctive sire for reasons I hadn’t asked about at the time. He’d paid $2 million for the yearling, based on advice from the various handlers, trainers, and racehorse bloodline experts who’d flown out to the sales with us to advise Jude on his purchase.
But I’d known that Jude wasn’t paying much attention to those various handlers as they gave him advice on which yearling colt to purchase—other than to make certain that the horse he eventually did buy at the auction had at least some modicum of respectability in the racing world and wouldn’t seem outrageously overpriced when he bought him. Jude had a plan for this horse.
“Because it will make a truly incredible story when he wins,” Jude told me as we strolled through the grounds of Churchill Downs on the day of the Kentucky Derby.
“What makes it a great story?” I asked him, more out of politeness than conviction. I didn’t even bother to ask why he was so convinced that the horse he’d purchased two years earlier would win. If Jude said his horse would win, it would win.
“When was the last time a horse won the Triple Crown?” Jude asked.
I’d never been to a racetrack before, much less a track like Churchill Downs during the Kentucky Derby. It was quite a spectacle. Extraordinarily wealthy, older women in broad hats and pearls walked side by side with regular bettors who came to the track every day to scratch out a living or lose their last paycheck. Men in tailored suits who would never ordinarily set foot in a place that reeked of urine and stale beer chose to stand with the rest of the rabble to watch the horses on parade before taking their spots at post in the first leg of the Triple Crown. I was thoroughly enjoying myself. It was the kind of place where a fortune could be won or lost by anyone with any means.
But Jude wasn’t here for those reasons, and I knew it. “I really don’t know all that much about the Triple Crown,” I said, “so I couldn’t even begin to tell you who won it last.”
“At all?”
“No, not at all,” I confessed. “I’m assuming there are three races?”
Jude laughed at my naïveté. “Yes, three races. The Kentucky Derby is the first leg. The second leg is in two weeks. It’s called the Preakness, in Baltimore. The thi
rd and final leg of the Triple Crown is the Belmont in New York. We’re going to be in Baltimore, and then New York for the last leg—cheering on our horse as it attempts to win the Triple Crown. Three-year-old horses that win all three races are considered the greatest horses of all time and take their place alongside horses like Secretariat.”
I shrugged. “Okay, so it’s a few horse races. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal,” Jude answered, “is that millions and millions of people pay attention to the Triple Crown every year. They may not pay attention to horses at any other time, but they do when it’s the Triple Crown. They learn all about the horses, their trainers, and their owners. Every racehorse owner who has ever lived has hoped to see their horse in the Kentucky Derby someday. The Kentucky Derby is like the Super Bowl or World Series of horse racing. The best of the best compete here, and only the very greatest are capable of winning all three races in a row. The last time a horse won the Triple Crown was in 1978, a horse named Affirmed. It’s been decades since Affirmed, and the world pays attention every year to see if a new champion will emerge.”
“But one hasn’t since 1978?” I scratched my head. “So you paid $2 million for that yearling two years ago hoping it would be good enough to compete here and pursue the Triple Crown?”
“Yes, we did,” Jude said. “But not just any old yearling. I wanted one that had two important aspects. I heard all the experts about the horses’ bloodlines, and then I asked the regents to identify the exact type of horse I was looking for. They found that yearling, and that’s the horse we bought.”
“Which was?”
“A yearling that had a compelling story behind it, that would capture the public’s imagination if it won. But it also had to have bloodlines that would make sense to the racing world as well—a horse that could withstand the grueling nature of the Triple Crown. It’s why part of his bloodline includes probably the most correct broodmare sire in history, Buckpasser. But that isn’t the real story behind our horse.”