Colin used his well-chewed pen to point at the central screen, on which he had thrown up the floor’s highest camera, the one showing the upstairs balcony. “It’s empty now, but they started showing up about noon.”
“I saw.” Alex leaned over, squinted into the screen, and asked, “How’d you do that?”
“Tapped into the security system. They walked around, made themselves comfortable, checked the monitors, spent a couple of minutes grinning down and watching you guys kill yourselves.”
“Which means either they weren’t in on the action, which I doubt. Or they’d set their dollar positions hours ago.”
Colin said nothing. Just sat and chewed on his pen and watched the empty screen.
Alex eased himself slowly back, testing each muscle in turn. “Hedge funds run off information. We’re hunters and gatherers. I use brokers who give me fresh data, and give it to me first. We bring all this information into one place, and a small group of us makes the decisions. Only nine of us really pull the trigger. Nine senior traders. Seventeen billion and counting on the balance sheet. A lot of ammo.” A pause, then, “You see where I’m headed with this?”
“I really don’t know anything more,” Colin replied solemnly. “If I did, I’d tell you.”
“So you’re not part of this new team who might be running an inside feint on us.”
“Not a chance.”
“What about Hayek’s personal stuff, can you get in there?”
“Out of the question. He uses a special coding system, one-timers off an electronic encryption pad. The man is supercareful.”
Alex backed off a notch. “You’re what they call a hacker, am I right?”
“Since the very beginning,” Colin affirmed, not minding that it was finally out in the open. Wishing he could trust this guy fully. “When I went over to the other side and joined Hayek, I became what is known as a white hat.”
“Hayek’s bound to have something on you,” Alex guessed with a trader’s intuition, far beyond the realm of normal logic. “He’d never just up and give his electronic security to a guy off the street, no matter what credentials he carried.”
Colin had known it was bound to come, had imagined the moment and the response. He did not hesitate. “FEMA.”
“What?”
“Federal Emergency Management Agency. If the Afghanis ever manage to sneak in a nuclear bomb and plant it in Times Square, FEMA will be the people to pick up the pieces. If California finally gets hit by the big one, same thing. They’ve written up reams of contingency plans for everything from terrorist attacks to an attempted military coup to aliens landing on the White House lawn. That’s their job. Imagine the worst that can happen, then find solutions.”
“So?”
“I got caught taking a peek.”
Alex grinned for the first time that day. “No way.”
“Utterly real, I’m afraid. They had an invisible firewall. Lit me up like a Canaveral launch. I was arrested, fingerprinted, photographed. The works. A full dose of reality. Grim and horrid.”
“And Hayek bailed you out?”
“In a manner of speaking. He sent his security man, Dale Crawford. I was nol-prossed, which means no record. Hayek won my undying loyalty.”
“No kidding, alien invasion contingency plans?”
“So I’ve heard. I wasn’t able to see for myself, and after they caught me I was left wondering if anyone has ever really been inside.” Colin began the process of cutting off his electronic bits and pieces. “Whatever the case, FEMA remains one of the dream sites.”
“Like the Everest of hackers.”
“Precisely. Every conspiracy nut in the universe wants a look into their files. Not just to study the eventualities, you understand. FEMA reportedly keeps tabs on what has actually happened. They’re supposed to have records on all sorts of supersecret events.”
“X-Files come to life,” Alex said.
“I suppose it was inevitable they would be well protected. Actually, much better shielded than the Pentagon.”
“You’ve hit Defense?”
Colin rose to his feet and flipped the light switch. “Perhaps I should stop there.”
Together they headed for the rear entrance. Alex held his briefcase with two fingers of one hand. His jacket was slung over his other shoulder. His hair was as limp as his tie. “I haven’t felt this tired since the day my ex took me to court. Hayek placed us at the very core of an active bull market. We talked the market up five percent in less than ten hours. Biggest short-term dollar rise in over a year. Everybody’s watching us. The brokers, the Street, everybody. I’ve got dealers I haven’t heard from in years calling me out of the blue, asking why I wasn’t there for the Forex convention this weekend, talking to me like I’ve been lost in the Sumatran jungle and all of a sudden they want to play my best pal.”
“Which means everybody’s looking to hear what big news Hayek is holding,” Colin surmised. “That doesn’t make sense to me. If it was big enough to talk up the dollar, how could he keep it quiet with the whole world sniffing around?”
“Listen to you.” Alex pushed through the doors and entered the parking area. “A backroom geek figures it out after I’ve spent all day hammering on the other senior traders, getting nowhere at all. All they want to know is what bonus they’re clearing off this deal.”
Alex twisted his neck back and forth, hearing it creak. The moon was brilliant enough to outshine the yellow lights rimming the parking area. Cicadas played a summertime chorus in the empty lot across the street. Alex murmured, “Almost looks normal.”
“Whatever that is,” Colin agreed.
“I tell you something, sport. A couple of billion put the other way, a flash of bad news, and you’re going to see people start dumping dollars, stocks, bonds, the works. We’re talking full-scale panic.”
Colin found himself not merely listening to Alex’s words. Suddenly he heard not with his ears alone, but rather with an auxilliary system that did not belong to him at all. He felt another’s presence, gentle as the breath that no longer sighed on his cheek, and it stopped him in his tracks.
He searched the night, saw nothing but softly rattling palms and pools of light in an asphalt sea. He was missing something. The message had not come in words but rather in a whisper of wind. Colin asked, “What would happen?”
The yellow streetlights turned Alex’s features metallic and impossibly hard. “The market would panic in stages. First there’d be this flurry of reverses. The Fed would probably intervene at that point, and hopefully I’d be proven wrong.”
The night became still. The cicadas’ concert drew to a hushed close, the wind halted. “And if the Fed didn’t move?”
“Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it would. Buy a little, shove interest rates up a notch, sometimes just a good word is enough. You know, Big Brother is watching and all is well. But if the news were bad enough, then maybe the Fed’s nudges might be overridden. Then there’d be the risk of the dollar sliding down to the panic stops.”
“The what?”
“Every spot desk has what are called panic stops. Usually it’s the lowest position that currency has hit in the previous twelve months. If the dollar ever gets to that point, the traders would automatically get out of every dollar position they held. It’s called puking your positions, and it is a horrible thing to observe. And rare. I’ve only seen it twice, the day Reagan was shot and then the day Soros and his crowd broke the pound.”
“But what happens?”
“Everybody in the business holding serious dollar positions has computerized stops in place. All these stops create an artificial floor. The instant the dollar touches that zone, the market would be flooded with sell orders. The dollar would shoot down a further ten, fifteen, even twenty percent.”
Colin wanted to turn and shriek to the night that he was not the person to receive any such message, not with silence, not with wind, not even with Alex’s words. He just did not know enough. �
��But it would be corrected, right? The Fed would just do more to prop up the dollar.”
“The Fed can’t. The market’s gotten too big, too powerful. The day Reagan was shot, within ten minutes they had closed markets all over the world. But those ten minutes were enough for the dollar to lose eighteen percent of its value. Why? Because all those spot positions are electronic.” Alex studied the asphalt at his feet. “Now imagine what would happen if they didn’t know the cause of the slide. The President getting shot, that’s a clear signal, something that will make people act fast. But what if it took them three hours to respond? Or three days?”
“The dollar would collapse,” Colin said, still not seeing.
“Not just the dollar. Investors would pull out from every dollar position they held. Stocks, bonds, futures. Every market in the U.S. would drop into oblivion. There would be a full-scale destruction of the American economy.”
The whisper came again, this time clear enough to turn him around.
He watched as night shadows congealed into a dark, swiftly moving shape. A black automobile shushed forward, a glimmer of oncoming death.
Colin shouted, flung his arm around Alex, and leaped forward. Together they fell behind the fender of a parked Mercedes.
As they struck the asphalt, the automobile hit the opposite fender and broke the bumper loose in a shower of sparks and shrieking metal. Despite the noise, Colin heard yet again the silent whispers, the voices from all the untried paths, the ones telling him it was not over yet.
He wrapped his arms around the sprawled senior trader and rolled, pulling them both as close to the Mercedes’ undercarriage as they could go. The attacker’s motor raced, the bumper tore free and clanged onto the pavement. There were two brilliant flashes and quick bangs. Then a whanging sound by Colin’s ear. Then the car raced away.
Gingerly the pair of them raised up, searched the empty reaches, saw only the splash of streetlights and empty asphalt. Alex gaped about him, and demanded, “Were they after me or you?”
“Use your cellphone,” Colin said. Feeling lightheaded. More. Almost light of heart as well. “Call the police.”
Alex bent over and fumbled with numb fingers at the latches of his briefcase. He hesitated long enough to search the darkness once more and ask, “What should I say, we were attacked by a phantom locomotive?”
“Mention the gunshots,” Colin replied. “That should get them here in a hurry.”
59
Monday
THE NIGHT WAS humid and close. Heat lightning flickered occasionally, faint skyborne reflections of the neon clamor. Kissimmee was alive with a crowd that either could not afford or had no interest in the Disney world order. Eric sat in a rental car, far to one corner of the bar’s parking lot. Just being there caused the gradually healing welt on his forehead to throb.
Once more the bevy of cars were parked in the handicapped zone, five of them this time, including a showstopping Lamborghini Diablo and a Mercedes 500 SEL custom convertible. Eric had come prepared for a long wait. There was no telling when the traders would emerge, probably not for hours. They had been forced to forgo the Forex convention. Like his own colleagues, they were probably determined to party with violent abandon. Eric understood them with an insider’s bitter wisdom. These traders would get off on the bar’s edgy danger, especially as they had bought themselves a measure of safety. They impressed the girls with their hundred dollar tips and tasted the peril like just another drug. They were a macho crowd. Almost all traders were. The floor’s tension was an impossible opiate. They required somewhere loud and close to the edge to forget, even for a few hours.
Traffic along the eight-lane Highway 50 had thinned out and the clock’s dial had lost all meaning by the time the traders finally straggled out. Eric watched them play the doorman like a muscle-bound joker. He saw the tension in the bouncer’s shoulders, observed the clenched way he pulled his face into a smile when they handed him a two hundred dollar tip. The dregs of Eric’s thermos were bitter with memories of his own similar stupidities.
He followed them along the strip. They were flying now, revving engines at the stoplights, shouting and calling back and forth between cars. Two ladies they had picked up at the joint displayed the stoic boredom of women who had seen all there was to infantile behavior. One of the cars peeled off and headed back toward Orlando. Eric decided to follow the others.
They pulled into a Denny’s and made a clamorous entry. At least most of them did. One head remained visible in the back of the open-top Mercedes.
Eric waited until he could see the traders causing mayhem in the restaurant before cautiously approaching the car. The top remained down. The guy in the back was a total stranger and snoring gently. Heart in his mouth, Eric slipped his hand into the guy’s jacket. Nothing on the first side. He held his breath and reached over, peeling back the other lapel. The wallet slipped out easily. He raced back to his car.
The problem with long computer entry codes was that they were almost impossible to remember. Especially now that they were changed every quarter. Hayek’s system also denied code holders the privilege to personalize access. Some versions used fourteen-digit strings but were capable of being rewritten within six hours of every quarterly change. But Hayek’s security program was not so flexible, which meant most people kept a written reminder close at hand.
Eric found the slip of paper sandwiched between two credit cards. He copied down the string of letters and numbers, then replaced the paper back into the wallet. He rose from his car and checked the parking lot. His blood congealed and his heart entered overdrive when he realized the guy’s head was no longer visible.
Eric sprinted back to the Mercedes. The car was empty. Crouching low, he moved closer to the glass front wall, and searched the inside of the restaurant. He wasn’t absolutely certain, but he didn’t think the guy was among the traders carousing at the tables.
Eric spent frantic minutes searching the lot. Nothing. He crawled back to the Mercedes just to be certain the guy had not somehow reappeared. Empty.
Keeping at least one car between him and the windows, he slipped around to the entrance. The gray-haired woman on cash-register duty started to greet him, when from inside the restaurant there came a crash of dishes, and a great shout of laughter. Grimly she slipped her key from the register and hurried back. “Wait right here, please.”
Eric hustled toward the washroom and pushed through the door. The guy from the convertible eyed him blearily and slurred, “Don’t feel so hot either?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re all bent over.” The guy rolled his forehead against the ceramic tile. “Where’d the music go?”
“Here, try washing your face. That always works for me.” Eric eased the guy toward the sink, slipping the wallet back in the process. He turned on the cold water and stepped back.
“Can’t focus ’thout the music.” The guy splashed his face, then raised his head and stared into the mirror. “Do I know you?”
“Not a chance.”
“You look like somebody.” He gave a bleary grin. “Sure. You’re all banged up.”
“Slipped in the bathtub.”
“Nah, it’s something else.” Doused himself a second time. “Give me a second.”
“Sorry, wrong guy.” Then the outer door squeaked. Eric took another step backward, entered a cubicle, and shut the door. Heard the new voice say, “Tony, hey, what are you doing in here?”
“There’s somebody in there, I know him.”
“Forget it, man, he’s not one of us.” The voice was familiar. Not shouting, but Eric knew it instantly as the guy who had sicced the bouncer on him. The trader Colin had attacked. Brant somebody. Eric crouched lower and heard, “Look at you, man, you’re a mess.”
“But I was talking with somebody.”
“Forget him, I tell you.” There was the sound of towels being pulled out of the container. “Here, dry yourself off. Okay, good, now let’s go join the party.”<
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“Is the music gonna start again?”
The guy barked a hard laugh. “Sure man, sure. I’ll have one of the little darlings sing you a song. You’ll like that.” The door closed.
Eric waited through three tight breaths, then slipped out and raced into the night.
60
Monday
EVENING’S APPROACH FOUND Jackie wondering if perhaps the search of her old university books was merely a quest for fables. Eric’s silence only compounded the lack of solutions. And she missed Wynn. The fact that she was even admitting to such an emotion left her battered by all that might still happen.
She carried her laptop out into the darkness and softly closed the balcony door behind her. An earlier rain had cleared, leaving the air warm and windless and filled with the chorale of tropical springtime. The surrounding Florida oaks were twisted Chinese etchings upon a wash of stars and moonlight. Jackie turned her chair so that she was staring out over the treetops toward the north. All evening she had heard hints of churchbells fading into the distance. Now she sat and sipped at her mug and mourned how time and distance were already blurring her Roman memories. The questions she had asked herself in Rome and the faint awakenings of new hope were too fine to let slip away. She flipped open the cover of her laptop and began a new file. One she simply called Essential.
She stopped only when fatigue stripped her words of meaning. The wind rose with the night, whispering in the language of trees and nightbirds that such thoughts were too vital to be addressed with a sleepy heart. She closed the laptop, stretched, and felt as good about the hour as she had in a long time. She was not finished. In fact, she had scarcely begun. But admitting there was reason enough to remember, and to question, was the biggest step she had taken in years.
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