by Davis Bunn
Suzie leaned forward. “If the markets only appear to shift.”
“Correct. Computer algorithms cannot tell the difference between appearance and reality. This means any activity that seems to indicate a crisis will be treated as a crisis.”
They were seated behind a slightly curved desk, so she and Suzie could face each other as well as the cameras. The wooden desk was empty except for two mikes on stubby stands, similar to the ones formerly used on the Larry King Live show, and a pair of coffee mugs. Esther’s contained green tea. Her stomach would not accept any more acid. During their first break she had tried to eat a bagel and barely managed to get down a few bites.
Technicians still worked setting up more trading desks. But six were functional now, four of them staffed by Jasmine and her three traders. They worked the phones and the e-markets, establishing positions for Esther’s new fund. Beyond them and to the right sat Craig, his desk piled with the forms required by the SEC for registering such trades. Many hedge funds used legal loopholes to avoid disclosing their ongoing positions. Esther considered that just another symptom of a critically ill trading system. At the desk beside Craig, Lacy typed furiously, feeding onto the website each transaction as the paper was passed to her by Craig.
Technicians scrambled around the perimeters, laying cable and unpacking more workstations. Suzie had insisted they go ahead and film from their new positions with all this activity taking place behind them. Esther liked how the scene added to the dramatic tension of the moment. They were not just sitting back and playing observers. Instead, she and Suzie McManning were deeply involved in the unfolding events, entrenched in the action. Today’s tension was good.
Lining the far wall were three large flat screens. As they talked, the third went live, bouncing from matte gray to a display of the South American markets. Suzie said, “It is now fifteen minutes to Wall Street’s opening bell. Let’s take a moment and examine the current electronic positions. Esther, it looks to me as though the Brazilian markets are stable.”
“They’re not stable, they’re static.” Their desk was backed by a low credenza. On it, five flat screens had been lined up like electronic soldiers. Esther traced her hand along the graph representing the morning trades. “A static market means far more than an absence of movement. This signifies an unnatural break in the action. What you see here is only a fraction of the normal number of electronic trades.”
“Everybody is waiting,” Suzie said.
“Right. The trading divisions of major investment banks are holding their collective breath, like runners on the starting block. All they need is the gun to set them off.” Esther turned from the unchanging screen. “Right now the intel we shared this morning is nothing more than rumor. Traders around the globe are waiting for confirmation that our information is on target. When that happens . . .”
Suzie started to ask her to complete the sentence. But the simple fact was, at this point, Esther couldn’t. She gave her head a fractional shake, just a single but faint tremor. But Suzie was alert and they were in sync. The newscaster caught herself and turned to face the camera. “We’ll be back after a short break.”
Five seconds later, the cameraman said, “And we’re off.”
Chuck came down the stairs from the production booth and said, “Every major network has carried a report of our announcement. Most name you specifically.”
“What’s our next topic?” Suzie asked.
Esther rose from her chair. “I don’t know.”
Chuck jammed his glasses up his nose and stared. “You don’t . . . What are we supposed to do now?”
“We wait.” Esther walked between the cameras and left the studio. She knew what they were thinking. That perhaps she had it wrong. Maybe the markets would use this announcement and stabilize. Yet she knew this wasn’t going to happen. It was more than knowing about the hit men. It was more than Hewitt’s news about the banks’ secret trading arm in Bermuda. It was more than the current tumult. She felt certain that her worst-case theory was correct, but she could not go public. Not yet. She needed one more piece to her puzzle, one more item. She was an analyst. She did not deal in half-completed investigations.
Esther stepped into the empty makeup room, shut the door, and leaned her head against the mirror.
“Come on, Hewitt,” she muttered. “Talk to me.”
57
The US markets opened and held steady. Esther could feel the tension mount throughout the station as Wall Street trended only slightly downward. Trading remained very light through the first two hours.
Esther waited for someone among the team to express doubts over her announcement. They had every reason to suspect that her news about Brazil’s default was off, or that her analysis remained skewed by an inbred pessimism. Which was what the pundits on other networks were saying. Most simply dismissed her announcement out of hand. They called it the ramblings of a regional wannabe analyst, who was using her ninety seconds of on-air fame as a lever to spout total nonsense.
But Esther was not wrong.
Perhaps her own calm certainty in itself was enough. Or perhaps no one wanted to be the first to question their direction. Esther had no idea. She had never been in a position of leadership before. All she could tell is that whatever doubts they might have felt were kept well hidden. To her careful eye, it appeared that everyone remained with her. The feeling of being trusted to get it right was . . .
Exquisite.
All morning, the global markets remained trapped in the amber of indecision. Brazil’s own news sources remained utterly silent. The world held its breath.
One o’clock came and went. Europe started shutting down for the night. England’s post-market reports carried a mention of Esther’s claim, delivered with a proper amount of derision.
By two o’clock on Friday afternoon, the financial pundits were calling for Esther Larsen’s head.
At two forty-one that afternoon, she and Suzie took another break. The monitor showed a woman happily applying a stain remover to her children’s clothes. Chuck stepped onto the dais, his shirt rumpled, a pair of headphones slung around his neck, his glasses askew, his hair a mess. He smiled at Esther and handed Suzie a note.
Suzie read it, paled, and passed the page to Esther.
Its impact slowed time. Esther felt the crystalline quality to every frantic heartbeat.
Suzie’s voice shook slightly as she asked, “How do you want to play this?”
“You make the announcement, I’ll comment.”
“Got it.”
“Hang on, there’s more.” Chuck then handed Suzie a second note.
She read it, and offered them both the day’s first smile. She asked the station director, “For real?”
“It’s nice to know this day holds some good news,” Chuck said. “They start the feed at the end of this break.”
Suzie’s first on-air words were, “This is Suzie McManning, coming to you from the newsrooms of WFPX in Charlotte, North Carolina. We are now being carried live nationwide by ABC. So, hello, America. We have just learned that the White House has called a press conference for three o’clock local time, which puts us nineteen minutes out. With me is Esther Larsen, who this morning broke the news of a pending default by the Brazilian government on its national debt. Esther, I think it’s safe to say . . .”
Suzie’s voice trailed off. She had no choice. Jasmine stepped into the camera’s view, her face stricken. She planted her phone on the desk beside Esther’s coffee mug. And stood there. Too broken to realize she was on air.
The phone’s screen carried a message of one word. The single word was all that was required.
Dollars. H.
Esther looked up, said to the camera, “Yes, the White House will confirm the Brazilian event. Yes, this has seismic potential to rock the global markets. But no, this is not the worst that we can expect.”
“Explain to us what that term ‘cascade’ means,” Suzie said.
It was th
e fourth time Suzie had repeated the word. Esther had used it in the run-up to the announcement by the White House press attaché. The press conference was still under way, and the central wall monitor showed the attaché speaking on C-SPAN. But all attention was now centered on the market’s reaction, which was massive.
Jasmine and their new chief trader were bouncing back and forth now, shifting from the trading stations to Esther’s desk. Esther had never wanted to be a trader, never even imagined that one day she might hold a position similar to Jason’s. But here she was, not just doing so but handling the new duties on air. Live. Nationwide.
She checked Jasmine’s latest note, jotted a swift response, handed it back, then said to the cameras, “Think of an earthquake. Anybody who has been through one knows the first thing that hits is not panic, but questions. First comes the worry of what it is. Then you want to know, are you at the epicenter? Is this the worst or is it stronger somewhere else? And then there are the aftershocks. Will there be a string of quakes, each worse than the last? All the unknowns triggered by the shaking of your world.”
“Cascade,” Suzie repeated for the fifth time.
“Right now, everyone is focused on Brazil. The pundits will talk about how the Dow has dropped another twenty-six hundred points, and the press conference is still ongoing. European aftermarkets trading is further off than the Dow, because their banks are far more deeply invested in instruments of South American national debt. And all the while we are missing the real event. Because what we don’t see is that this is not the epicenter.”
“How can you be certain?”
“Because this is my job. As an analyst I’m paid to see what’s coming next.”
Suzie gave that a beat, then almost whispered the word for the sixth and final time. “Cascade.”
Esther turned and faced the camera directly. “A collective of international banks has gathered together a war chest of eleven billion dollars. They have been lying in wait, secretly preparing for just such a moment. They are not intent upon profiting from events. They are not satisfied to benefit from the resulting downturn. They intend to use this moment while the global markets are teetering on the brink. They are going to blast away the cliff and send our economies tumbling into the abyss.”
58
Sir Trevor’s voice sounded as splintered as Reynolds felt. “Are you listening to this woman?”
“I have been all day.” In fact, Reynolds had been so rattled by Esther’s first announcement that he had called in sick. Reynolds had not missed a day of work since being named CEO. His wife was so alarmed, she wanted to drive him to the emergency room. Reynolds had finally locked himself into his home office and refused to answer when she knocked.
Reynolds asked, “Where did she get that lead on Brazil?”
“We’re past that,” Trevor snapped. “The question is, what else does this Larsen woman know? What more does she suspect?”
As though in response, Reynolds heard Esther Larsen say, “A twentieth century banker once told his employees, the best time to make money is when there is blood in the streets. Until now, bankers have used global events to turn a profit. But like we’ve been saying all week—”
“The rules have changed,” the newscaster, Suzie somebody, supplied.
“Exactly.” Larsen looked straight at the camera. To Reynolds, it felt as if she were reaching through the distance to take a firm grip of his heart. “Bankers are no longer content with the standard model of observation-analysis-response. They want to control the markets. They have forgotten that the money we entrust to them is not in fact theirs at all. All they can see is the power this money represents. They have lost their moral compass. To them, there is nothing more important than raising their quarterly profits.”
Reynolds had forgotten he still held the phone until he heard Trevor groan, “She knows.”
Esther went on, “Through most of the twentieth century, our nation’s banks remained focused on servicing their clients. They knew the companies and the individuals who relied on their services. They were partners in the advancement of our economy. Nowadays, bankers scorn this construct as being out-of-date. The clients are seen as servicing the traders. The focus now is on two things, and two things alone. How to maximize the bank’s short-term gains, and how to increase the size of their bonuses.”
The newscaster broke into his response by asking, “So what are they going to do?”
“They have been waiting for this precise moment,” Esther repeated. “When the global economy is weakest, they intend to push it over the ledge.”
Suzie McManning protested, “But eleven billion dollars, if this truly is the amount they hold—”
“It is.”
Sir Trevor said, “She knows everything.”
“That isn’t enough to push an entire nation’s economy over the brink,” Suzie said, “much less the world’s collective markets.”
To Reynolds’s horror, Esther was ready with the answer. “Which is why they will most likely focus all their funds, all their efforts, on the one market that grants them the greatest amount of leverage.”
Suzie nodded. “And that market is . . . ?”
“Forex,” Esther said. “The foreign exchange markets grant large investors the ability to leverage their bets at up to ninety-eight percent.”
Suzie McManning’s expression mirrored the shock and dismay Reynolds felt, but for different reasons. “So their eleven billion—”
“Means they will be laying out leveraged bets worth five hundred and fifty billion.” Despite the makeup, Esther Larsen’s face was taut and pale as parchment. “In a highly vulnerable market, it might just be enough to cause the dollar to crash.”
Sir Trevor said, “We have to stop her—”
Reynolds threw his phone at the side wall. The idiot was two steps behind the ball. There was no way they could halt anything. The bets were laid, their allies bribed, the action set out in a sequence of carefully timed events. It was too late to do anything but run.
He unlocked his office door and opened it to find his wife in a near-panic state. Which was altogether a good thing as far as he was concerned. She cried, “Reynolds, what is happening?”
“Pack a bag. Bring your passport. We leave in five minutes.”
“Pack? But where are we going?”
“Anywhere. Away.” Suddenly he felt not just weary, but a thousand years old. “And we’re never coming back.”
59
Welcome back. We are live nationwide. It is three forty-five, the Dow is down seven percent on the day in heavy volume, and the SEC has just stepped in and closed the markets for a ten-minute cooling-off session.” Suzie McManning offered the camera a tight smile. “This after Esther Larsen urged the authorities to do just that during the previous half hour of our program. You heard it first here, on ABC.”
Esther felt as though she had aged a decade in the past nine hours. Suzie McManning, on the other hand, appeared fresher and more alert than the hour after dawn. “So, Esther, if the dollar forex market is going to be used as the lever to cause global collapse—”
“It is not an issue of if, but when,” Esther said.
Suzie merely smiled once more. “If this is happening, what do you see as the sign?”
“Indicator,” Esther corrected.
“Whatever,” Suzie said.
“The banks acting as perpetrators will have set up in advance a series of carefully timed steps. This will begin with the short sale of half a trillion US dollars.”
Suzie’s smile vanished, but her voice remained both crisp and bright. “For our viewers, a short sale means the banks have bet that the dollar will fall. This means that if they are successful, if they indeed push our economy over the brink—”
“They will reap billions in overnight profits,” Esther said.
“Where have they placed these short sales?”
“Such a massive bet against the dollar will be spread all over the globe, concentrated in
forex markets that defy international regulations and keep a tight grip on personal data. My guess is, Singapore, Bahamas, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein.”
“Back to my original question. If we are unable to obtain the trading data from these countries, what will be the first”—Suzie gave a somewhat canted smile—“indicator that this is happening?”
“An ally of these two banks, either a major overseas financial institution or a foreign country’s central bank, will announce that they have lost confidence in the US economy,” Esther replied. She felt like the minuscule lunch she had eaten hours ago had become a concrete slab in her gut.
“Because, as we’re seeing, the markets are in free fall,” Suzie said.
“Correct. The calmer heads within their organization will be stifled. Their ally will insist that the group or central bank must exit their dollar positions while their holdings have some value at all. Because . . .”
Esther caught sight of the ticker tape streaming across the bottom of the central wall monitor. The words in her throat became a solid and unyielding mass.
On national television, anchorwoman Suzie McManning’s calm façade broke wide open. “Tell me what is going on!”
Esther pointed at the screens. “The governing committee of China’s central bank has gone into emergency session. An announcement is due within the hour. China holds more dollar-based assets than any other foreign country. It is, I have to admit, a brilliant start to the banks’ assault on our economy and currency.”
The frenetic activity that had filled the space behind their desk froze. Even the scurrying technicians and their electricians straightened slowly. Every eye was on the large wall monitors and the news headlines sliding across the bottom.
Suzie demanded, “What will happen next?”
“As soon as China’s central bank makes its formal announcement, the bank’s forex agents will simultaneously dump their shorted dollar positions.” Esther no longer recognized her own voice. “This will be timed for right after the close of Wall Street. That was why the Chinese announcement was set for this hour, so the banks can wreak their havoc over the weekend through the electronic trading system.”