Drummer In the Dark

by T. Davis Bunn

  “I believe Carter is holding those files.”

  “Perfect.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m headed over to the White House now.”

  “Your meeting’s been changed to the OEOB.”

  Wynn started to ask what that was, then decided he’d rather reveal his ignorance to a taxi driver. “Have Carter meet me in the lobby.”

  He clicked off, then dialed another number from memory. He still had some fury to vent, and his sister was scheduled to have arrived back from Ecuador that morning. Her convenient absence throughout the campaign had rankled deeply.

  “The governor’s mansion.”

  “Is Sybel Wells back yet?”

  “Who is calling?”

  “This is her brother, Wynn.”

  “Of course, Congressman. She arrived about three hours ago. I believe she’s in her office. One moment, please.”

  A pair of clicks, then, “Wynn? I was going to call you tonight—”

  “What have you gotten me into here, Sybel?”

  “Just a moment.” She spoke in low tones to someone else, then, “All right. What’s the matter?”

  “I’m trapped up here in Washington. I’m drowning in bureaucratic garbage. Everybody is an enemy with an agenda I don’t understand.”

  “Not everybody.”

  He hated her calm, tight control. “Jackson Taylor is here, Sybel.”

  “Of course he is. He’s the chairman of your party.”

  “He asked to see me. Just to make sure I’d drop the Jubilee Amendment. You know what that is?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Did you also know Grant ordered me to kill it?”

  “Grant told you that?” A pause, then, “So that’s why he didn’t fight my idea any more than he did.”

  “Wait, it gets better. Grant threatened me, Sybel. He said he’d go public with our funds transfer—”

  “Stop right there.” It was her turn for panic. “You’re a congressman now, do you understand me? You’re calling the governor’s mansion.”

  “All right. Fine.”

  “I’ll deal with Grant. You deal with Washington.”

  “I don’t think I can.” A wrenching confession.

  “Deal with it, Wynn.” Revealing her core of stainless Sybel steel. “I’ve got to go.”

  THE DRIVER was from Outer Slombonia and drove a taxi that smelled like an imported camel. But even he knew what OEOB stood for, or at least he took off as soon as Wynn repeated the letters. Only they soon became caught in a long, simmering Pennsylvania Avenue traffic jam. Wynn glanced at his watch and saw he was soon to be late for his first appointment with White House personnel. He leaned forward to repeat, “OEOB?”

  “Is Old Executive Office Building just there.” A swarthy finger pointed at the appendage attached to the White House’s right side. “You are walking maybe, yes?”

  “Absolutely.” He paid and started hoofing it down the sidewalk. Someone should hand out a booklet to all incoming politicians, he mused, something entitled Welcome To The City That Will Eat You Whole. He glanced at his watch, started sprinting.

  The OEOB was the kind of building Wynn might have enjoyed researching for a couple of days, entering only when he could greet it properly. This had become a habit of his in the first empty days, studying up thoroughly before diving into any new experience. The OEOB’s exterior invited that kind of study, a palace of age and dignity, an appropriate home to federal power. But Wynn was running to somebody else’s schedule now. He took only a moment to stand with a group of tourists, gasping for breath and combing his hair with his fingers while they flashed their video cameras. When they moved on, so did he.

  Carter Styles was in the lobby waiting for him, and for once the man looked right at home. The lobby was utterly without charm, a monument to just how awful a job bureaucrats could do. Take one incredibly beautiful building and remodel the entry with a plywood security desk, steel-reinforced doors, and institutional gray-green paint. Fill the stone-walled chamber with echoes of self-important people, clanging metal detectors, ringing phones, and crashing security locks. Light it poorly with asylum-style hanging fluorescents. Welcome to the machine.

  Carter Styles displayed a charm as paltry as the lobby’s. He showed his driver’s license to the guard, gave the name of their host, passed his briefcase through security, and marched Wynn down a high-ceilinged hall. All without speaking a word to his new boss.

  The President’s gophers were a pair of quietly intense midlevels. A young man in an ill-fitting suit and checked wool tie met them in an outer office as cramped as Wynn’s, and led them into another tight cubicle. Only this one had an utterly awesome view of the White House, seen through the brushwork of new leaves. As Wynn gaped, the trio exchanged tight little smirks.

  “We’re so grateful you could grant us a few moments of your time, Congressman. Why don’t you have a seat over here.” The spokesperson, Harriet something, was a tightly unattractive package with burning hazel eyes and a bulky knit suit. “Could we ask you what you have planned for this weekend and the Easter recess that follows?”

  “I’ve got a little catching up to do.”

  “We were wondering if we could ask you to represent the administration at a pair of international finance conferences.” The woman’s preppy tone managed to turn the request into a slur. “Apparently Congressman Hutchings was an official sponsor of both events. The first one takes place this Saturday in College Park, that’s about an hour’s drive from here. Congressman Hutchings was pressuring the President to attend. But you must already be aware of this.”

  Wynn resisted the urge to turn and glare at Carter. “Is the President going?”

  “Unfortunately he has meetings scheduled at Camp David. The Treasury secretary is also involved. The President thought you might make a natural replacement.”

  The young man spoke up. “You’re no doubt aware of the Easter Conference. The Jubilee 2000 assembly in Cairo has been one of Hutchings’ pet projects for over a year.”

  “He’s deluged the entire city with papers on this subject,” the woman agreed.

  Wynn said slowly, “Cairo.”

  The woman registered surprise. “You weren’t aware of this?”

  Carter pointed out, “This is the congressman’s first day on the job.”

  “It’s no big deal, Congressman,” the young man said. “If you refuse, it won’t cause an international crisis.”

  “As far as this administration is concerned, the debt-relief issue is dead in the water,” the woman agreed. “Something we never could get Hutchings to understand.”

  “Obviously the President wouldn’t expect someone fresh on the Washington scene to drop everything and fly off to the ends of the world,” the young man added. “Especially for a non-starter like debt relief. We were told to sound you out. Nothing more.”

  “The College Park Conference is equally back burner,” the woman agreed. “According to our read on the situation, attendance will be limited to the sort who don’t matter.”

  “We’re doubtful it will even get a mention in the national papers.”

  “Anything the press considers below the event horizon definitely is not going to raise this administration’s flags.”

  Wynn rose to his feet. “This has been most enlightening.”

  The young man said, “So we can tell the President you won’t be attending?”

  “College Park sounds fine.” If for no other reason than to do the opposite of what this snide pair expected. He headed for the door, not caring whether Carter was with him or not. “Cairo is definitely out.”

  Wynn passed through the dismal lobby and rejoined the tourist hordes, just another Washington suit. When Carter caught up Wynn demanded, “Exactly when were you planning on telling me about all this?”

  His chief aide shot back, “You made a big mistake back there. And it cost us.”

  “Would it be too much trouble to put me in the loop here?”

  “Big
mistake.” Carter stopped on a relatively quiet stretch of sidewalk and glared at his new boss. He was unattractive in a distinctly Florida cracker manner—piggy eyes, curly reddish hair going patchily bald, sizable gut. Utterly un-Washington in appearance, wearing a rumpled blue blazer, button-down Oxford shirt, stained tie, pressed chinos. “You missed out on a chance to score by asking for something in return.”

  “That’s what was behind this, they wanted to size me up?” The slow burn intensified. “I’ll do better next time.”

  Carter snorted and turned away. “That was your one and only. You’ve now been dismissed as somebody who’ll be gone before you matter.”

  “I’m not through here,” Wynn said, his voice sharp enough to command Carter’s full attention. “What’s going on with this Jubilee Amendment?”

  “What difference does it make? You’re just a caretaker, right?”

  “I want to know.”

  “Don’t bother. It’s totally over your head.” Carter’s sneer finally surfaced. “Eighteen months of embassy parties and scoring with the power groupies, and you’re extinct.”

  Wynn watched in amazement as the man walked away, dismissing his own boss as he would a bad smell. Unbelievable. Wynn no longer cared whether the party chairman had an ulterior motive for wanting Carter Styles gone. The man was definitely history.

  But before Wynn could call him back a second time, his cellphone sounded. He watched Carter’s departure as he said, “Bryant.”

  “Good afternoon, Congressman. Might I please ask where you will be tonight?”

  The voice was male, but lilting with softness and foreign vowels. And utterly unfamiliar. “Who is this?”

  “Libretto is my name. Father Libretto. I bring very best wishes from your sister.” He had the brisk cheeriness of one utterly alien to Wynn’s new world. “A newly arrived man of power such as yourself, surely you were planning to join Washington society at one place or another this evening.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Consider it a request for information passed by your dear sister, Sybel.”

  Wynn answered numbly, “The British embassy.”

  “An excellent choice. Until tonight, then.” The phone clicked dead.

  5

  Wednesday

  COLIN READY logged off his main computer, a final act that occurred only when he was leaving for the day or going upstairs. One dimension of reality suspended to make room for another. Points of convergence altered across space and time. Colin hesitated a long moment, then decided there was no alternative but forward motion. He left the safety of his cubicle, padded down the long line of fluorescent caves, waved his pass at the electronic doors, and entered the maelstrom.

  Once strictly a magnet for kids hunting mouse ears and Sleeping Beauty dunce caps, Orlando was now enduring ravenous expansion and the fastest service-sector growth in the United States. Many large New York companies were either relocating south or sending down their peripheral operations. The lure of cheap land and hourly wage rates sixty percent below those in the Big Apple proved too hard to resist. Schwab was the latest Wall Street defector, now running a huge campuslike operation near Winter Park and employing over two thousand people, most of them techies.

  Farther south, in the former no-man’s-land between the airport and the Kissimmee sprawl, another series of collegiate buildings housed the Hayek Funds Group. With fewer than nine hundred employees, Hayek was small by Schwab standards. Yet Hayek had moved not only its ops center but the whole shooting match—funds management, bonds, derivatives, foreign exchange, international corporates, everything. The move made Wall Street Journal headlines for over a month, because this was the first U.S.–based hedge fund that saw no need for a substantial Wall Street presence. Some called it an indication of Hayek’s personal power, a man so good at his job that the money would follow him to Patagonia if required. Whatever the reason, Hayek was now the largest hedge fund and currency trader based south of the Mason-Dixon line.

  Orlando’s recent influx of computer-driven companies had resulted in a sudden dearth of specialists. High-tech headhunters swooped about like vultures over roadkill. Salaries had risen. The search had moved farther afield, then farther still. Which was how Colin came to be there at all.

  The Hayek Group’s trading room floor was a windowless box, three-quarters of an acre in size. Three hundred desks. Two glassed-in balconies. The wall clocks now read a half hour past Wall Street’s closing bell, and the place stank of tension and money and deodorant-tainted sweat. Couriers scurried. Traders shouted and gestured and cursed and attacked their boards. The room was littered with paper shreds, remnants of that day’s kills. Normally Colin fed upon the floor’s energy. The buzz, as much as the money, was why he stayed around. The trading room was an incredible high, like working inside a war zone without the flak. At least, it had been so before his personal universe had tracked upon a dark and deadly orbit.

  Eyes followed Colin’s progress along the back of the trading room floor. He was an enigma, the techie granted access both to the floor and the people upstairs. He was called upon whenever traders’ hardware glitched and was almost always able to offer a quick solution. He was known to be soft-spoken, almost apparition-like, and available when needed. One day he had simply appeared out of nowhere; the next he was indispensable. And that accent. One moment southern, the next foreign as warm red beer.

  Colin entered the elevator and used his pass to access the penthouse. In truth, Hayek’s offer had rescued him from the dicey realm of gray-market e-theft, scamming money as a sometime game designer, but mostly living for the forbidden rush.

  Colin Ready was a white-hat programmer, a former hacker now working for the people he had formerly sought to break and enter. Colin studied his reflection in the elevator’s polished brass doors, saw a man in his late twenties with a narrow build and smooth ageless features, a weak mouth, mousy brown hair, and the eyes of a corpse. No outward sign of techie mania. No pager, no palm-pilot, no bottle-bottom glasses. Trembling slightly now, but extreme nerves were standard in forays to the penthouse.

  Colin entered Hayek’s outer office and squinted against the glare. His cubicle was two rows removed from a window, and here the afternoon light branded his eyeballs. The senior secretary knew him so well by now, she did not even ask if his errand was urgent. Nothing less would have brought Colin upstairs. He seated himself and waited with the suppressed tension of one who knew he was the bearer of vital data.

  Colin’s father was British, his mother a true Georgia fireball. After years of legendary battles, they had finally split when Colin was eight. Which had left him spending summers in Leeds, winters wherever his mother happened to be wed that season. For years he had lived with the knowledge that he was born to solitude, his only friends fenced beyond electronic barriers of his own creation. Once there had been another, Lisa, a truly chaste woman so far as computers went. The impossible love. He had lost her earlier that spring, and now his heart lurched with a permanent limp.

  “Mr. Ready?” The senior secretary was a narrow-faced woman turned old by her work, with eyes that only feigned feelings, and not well. “Mr. Hayek will see you.”

  Now that he was here, now that the time had come, Colin had difficulty finding the strength to rise and cross the palatial expanse. But the secretary was holding open the twenty-foot doors. So he took a hard breath and pushed himself forward, into the inner sanctum. Mentally he reviewed the array of armaments he had prepared for just this moment. The warrior ready to battle giants and win the invisible prize.

  The chairman was seated at his polished boardroom table. To enter the conference alcove meant crossing two silk Isfahans and passing the boat-sized stinkwood desk, the pair of Monet oils, and the bronze Rodin nymph dancing by the corner silk sofa set. The alcove was separated from the office proper by sliding shoji screens with frames not of paper but mother-of-pearl. The conference area itself had glass walls with lakes and green beyond. Computer screens shone
everywhere, silent projectors positioned so that wherever the chairman sat, all he had to do was glance up and instantly be fed the market’s constant spew.

  Colin stood by the alcove entrance, waiting for the chairman to look up and motion him forward. The atmosphere was more subdued than the trading floor itself, yet far more intense. Around the table sat a group from the trading floor, including Eric, the closest Colin had to a friend among the traders. They circled the paper-stacked table like sated pumas around a fresh kill.

  Pavel Hayek himself was not attractive, but his visceral power was so obvious the man’s physical attributes meant almost nothing. Today he wore a double-breasted blue blazer with the fancy crest on his pocket. The chairman was a trim late fifties, with even features, softly accented English, and perfect grooming. His gold ring matched the crest on the doors and the wall behind Colin, a crowned phoenix rising from burning brands. Colin had done some checking on Hayek, as much as he dared. Enough to know the man’s rumored royal heritage was genuine. The guy actually was a prince. Which meant he lived up to his nickname, the King, in more ways than one. At least, that was what most people called him around here. It was only beyond the Hayek compound that one heard his other nickname, Elvis. No one doing business with Hayek dared use it, even in jest.

  “A half-billion dollars in new long-term capital is a big mouthful.” This from Alex, the firm’s senior foreign exchange trader. “How much time do we have to lay it out?”

  “Not long.” Hayek was very tight with his words, measuring them like gold. The man was known for having no capacity for small talk. None. “A few days at most. And directed exclusively at the foreign exchange markets.”

  “You want us to lay out half a big one, only in forex derivatives?”

  “That is correct.”

  Alex had a trader’s ability for rapid assessments. “You want to make the market sit up and take notice, is that it?”

  Hayek seemed pleased by the appraisal, but said merely, “This could be the beginning of a very large fresh inflow.”