Storm Front: A Derrick Storm Thriller

by Richard Castle

  “Now, I’m going to have the Fed intervene, in the same way it did before,” Click said.

  The numbers on the left side continued their slide. It had no effect. By the time the numbers on the screen finally begin to stabilize, the dollar was a quarter of what it had been.

  “What you’ve just seen would take place in about two hours of real time,” Click said. “So we’d be talking about the U.S. dollar losing three quarters of its value in two hours. The instability created in U.S. markets would be almost impossible to fathom. And that’s not even counting the ripple effects it would have across the globe. It more than likely would throw the world into a kind of financial Dark Ages that would last… well, who knows? Luckily we’ve never had the chance to find out. Suffice it to say, it would be bad.”

  “And six traders, spread out across the globe, making large enough trades, could make this happen?” Storm asked.

  “Yes,” Xi Bang said. “That’s a very basic summation of the Click Theory.”

  “What would happen if it was just four traders?” Storm said.

  “It would be enough to trigger the slide, but the Fed could still save it.”

  “So six is the magic number.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is there any way to stop it?” Storm asked.

  “Yes, in theory,” Click said. “If the Fed sold everything it has—I’m talking everything, including the kitchen sink—it might have an effect. It would be an extraordinary measure on the Fed’s part. You literally have to max out the size of the Fed’s intervention, and even the model says we’d be looking at a forty-seven percent chance of a correction. Basically, it would be a coin flip as to whether it would work.”

  “And without the Fed?”

  “Armageddon guaranteed,” Click said. “Mind you, it’s a theoretical model. But the math, once you understand it, is really quite simple.”

  “Like three plus three equals six?”

  “More like any number times zero equals zero.” Storm nodded, then pulled out his phone.

  “What are you doing?” Xi Bang asked.

  “Following my intuition,” Storm said.

  Storm stepped out of the server room, climbed back up the steps, then walked outside into the mid-afternoon Iowa sunshine, the kind that made crops grow and Storm squint.

  No one would go to all the trouble to engineer a catastrophe unless they had neutralized the Fed’s ability to avert it. If Storm was able to find someone who had been tinkering with the Fed—either its personnel or its policy—he would be a lot closer to finding whoever hired Volkov.

  And, much as Storm dreaded doing it, he knew he was one phone call away from a man who could probably find out what was happening, a man with his fingers stuck in pies all over Washington. Storm pulled out his satellite phone and pressed each button firmly, deliberately. He had learned this was not the kind of phone call you made lightly.

  “What is it, Storm?” Jedediah Jones said, his voice sounding extra gritty, like he had just gulped an additional helping of sand.

  Storm inhaled, to give himself one more second to think things through. This was a game he had played with Jones many times, the one where each man decided how much he could afford to show the other—and, more to the point, how much he could get away with holding back. For a man like Jones, information was like an Allen wrench—the more he got, the harder he would turn the screws later. And yet, in this case, there was no avoiding it: Storm would have to give some to get some. Given what he had just heard, there was too much at stake not to engage Jones and his considerable resources.

  “I need some of your moles on Capitol Hill to do a little fishing,” Storm said.

  “Yeah? What kind of fish are they trying to catch?”

  “I’m curious if anyone is tinkering with the ability of the Federal Reserve to sell government bonds.”

  “Really?” Jones said, almost sounding amused, because he knew, too—knew the game had already begun. “And why do you want to know that, Agent Storm? You wondering if now is the right time to invest?”

  “Like I said, just curiosity.”

  “Where are you right now?”

  Jones had ways of finding out if he really wanted to know, so Storm didn’t bother lying: “Ames, Iowa.”

  “Ames, Iowa? What’s in Ames, Iowa?”

  “Mostly corn. But also a major American university.”

  “Does this have something to do with dead bankers?”

  “It might, it might not,” said Storm, even if he knew Jones could see through his noncommittal answers. “But probably it does. That’s what you’ve hired me to investigate, after all.”

  “Yes, I’m aware. Can you give me a little more to go on?”

  “Not really. I don’t know much myself right now. But maybe you could look into the person at the Fed who does this sort of thing and see if anything has changed about him or her? Maybe it’s a different person now? Maybe there’s been some kind of procedural change in that department lately? Maybe this person has been compromised in some way?”

  “Who might be doing the compromising?” Jones asked.

  “Wish I knew,” Storm said as he watched some college kids flipping a Frisbee, blissfully unaware of how precarious everything about their way of life had suddenly become.

  “So I’m supposed to just nose around the Fed’s bond sales department until someone admits they’ve been taking bribes?” Jones asked. “Any guidance about how I should go about that?”

  “Say ‘please’ a lot,” Storm said.

  “People really like good manners.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Just trying to be helpful,” Storm said, then ended the call.

  When Storm returned to Click’s office, the economist handed him a bound copy of the article that had been the basis for the Click Theory. Storm read it fast, skipping over the equations. Still, he felt like he was starting to understand it. Having seen the model in action helped.

  “So there’s one thing I still don’t understand,” Storm said, as much to Xi Bang as to Click. “Say you’re the person killing these bankers. Why? What are you getting out of that? Dr. Click’s model would say you need these bankers alive, acting in concert, not in a morgue somewhere.”

  “Well, we’ve already had some time to think about that and we have a theory,” Xi Bang said. “You have to recall, they were not just killed. They were tortured first.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “We believe they were tortured for their MonEx passwords,” Xi Bang said.

  “Translate, please.”

  “The MonEx Four Thousand is the brand of terminal used by most major international currency traders,” Click said. “Part of what makes it pop u lar is the speed with which it completes trades, and that it allows you to access all your accounts through one interface.”

  “So if you were looking to pull the so-called Korean trade, that’s what you’d use,” Storm said.

  “Exactly,” Xi Bang said. “So, basically, Volkov is collecting these passwords for someone else, someone who would know how to use them to pull off this doomsday scenario.”

  “Well, then isn’t this an easy problem to solve?” Storm said. “We just call the people who make the MonEx, tell them those accounts have been compromised, and ask for them to be shut down.”

  Click had started shaking his head midway through Storm’s so-called solution.

  “MonEx makes the terminals and licenses the operating system that runs them,” Click said. “But for liability reasons, it disavows any control over the accounts created on them or what happens with the accounts. Essentially, MonEx is insulating itself legally from this very sort of thing. It’s saying, ‘Hey, we just make the tool. What people do with the tool is up to them.’ The only person who can terminate an account is the pass code holder. And traders treat their pass codes like something more than gold. They are instructed to share them with absolutely no one. Not their spouses. Not their employers.
Not anyone. The idea is that if they should happen to die, the accounts die with them.”

  “Instead, even though these traders are dead, their accounts live on.”

  “As far as the MonEx is concerned, they’re still alive, yes,” Click said.

  “But, okay, let’s just say Volkov is able to get two more pass codes and is able to feed them to someone who can make the Click Theory a reality? Why would that person want to do that? Who would actually benefit from the dollar plunging in that matter?”

  “Anyone could,” Click said. “Anyone who has advance knowledge that a market is about to make a dramatic move in one direction can use that knowledge to make an extraordinary profit.”

  Storm leaned back in his chair, the copy of Click’s article resting on his chest as he stared up at the ceiling for a moment.

  “And how many people read the Journal of Global Economics?” he asked.

  “There are maybe a few thousand subscribers spread out across the world,” Click said. “Most of those are going to be large university libraries, so there’s no telling how many people are actually reading it. There are probably some large, institutional investors that subscribe, maybe a few of the shops on Wall Street. But when you get right down to it, it might be no more than fifteen hundred people, worldwide. Why do you ask?”

  “Because,” Storm said, “at this point, that’s our suspect pool.”

  CHAPTER 14

  NEW YORK, New York.

  Time was running short. The ghosts were blinking. There were three of them left, flashing pink-white, pink-white, pink-white. They would soon be deadly again. The window of opportunity was closing fast.

  Whitely Cracker waited until the last possible second, until he had all three of the ghosts lined up perfectly. Then he slammed the joystick hard to the right, making Ms. Pac-Man plow through them in quick succession. A jubilant sound escaped the machine. A 400, 600, and 800, packed tightly together, floated toward the air. Victory. Victory. Victory.

  Ordinarily, Whitely loved that move. Line ’em up, mow ’em down. The ghosts never knew what hit ’em. Nothing was more satisfying.

  Except today, it gave him no satisfaction. And so, even though there were just a few pellets left to gobble before he reached the next screen, he committed video suicide, leaving Ms. Pac-Man to be consumed by the soon-to-be-regenerated ghosts.

  Then he left the arcade room. He was still wearing his driving cap and driving gloves, having just made the trip in from Chappaqua. Finally, he took them off and got to work. He had his own ghosts to avoid.

  The margin call bothered him, no question. He had played it cool on the tennis court, because no one wants to see their investment manager looking otherwise. But the first thing he had done on returning to the office was take a gander at Lee Fulcher’s account. The grand total was $43,509,184.33, and Fulcher wanted everything, right down to those last thirty-three cents. It was just damn inconvenient, to say the least. Whitely was in a moment where he needed more liquidity, not less.

  Still, a client was a client. And it was Fulcher’s money, after all. Whitely had assigned Teddy Sniff to come up with the cash from whatever holes he could find it in, then done his best to put the whole thing out of his mind.

  He settled in front of his MonEx 4000, entered his password, and began making trades—unaware, as ever, about the cameras monitoring him.

  Whitely could feel himself growing more serene as he settled in. His brain had been working on what moves to make the entire time he had been playing video games, and he came out swinging. It sometimes surprised Whitely where the trades even came from. At times, it was like they burst unbidden from his subconscious, and he was just following his impulses.

  He had just successfully bid on six thousand troy ounces of gold when the instant messenger function on his MonEx filled the top of his screen. It was from another trader in Manhattan.

  Thanks for buying that option from me, but why are you just giving me money? You know it’s never going to drop that far.

  Whitely paused for a second, trying on several possible replies. He went with:

  What can I say? Consider it corporate welfare.

  He went back to his next trade, dumping a few hundred thousand shares of a blue chip stock that he had a hunch was going to miss its earnings expectations. Then the IM popped up again, from the same guy:

  The great white is up to something.

  Having already gone the modest route, Whitely kept with it:

  Just trying to make you look good. And I might be willing to do it again. How about Mickey D’s at 60?

  Having tossed out the bait, he waited to see if the guy would bite. Sure enough, he did.

  You’re nuts. But sure. How much?

  Whitely wrote back quickly.

  350?

  The man would know he meant 350,000 shares. And he didn’t hesitate.

  Done. Easiest money I’ll make today. I still think you’re nuts.

  Whitley was considering if he should try to lure the guy into one more supposedly-too-good-to-be-true deal, but he became aware that Theodore Sniff was lurking in his doorway again. Ordinarily, he would have just ignored the accountant. But since he had given Sniff a specific errand, he might as well get it over with.

  Whitely looked up. Sniff was wearing a suit that looked like it had been balled up and stuffed in a trash can for several days before he put it on.

  “Teddy, did you sleep in that suit or something?” Whitely asked.

  “No, I… It just came from the cleaners,” Sniff said. He was always at a loss to explain his various deficiencies to his boss. Of course, only so much of it was Sniff’s fault. It was as much Whitely’s incomprehension as anything. Men with perfect hairlines could seldom understand balding.

  “Well, tell them to actually press it next time,” Whitely said. “Or maybe switch dry cleaners? I’m just trying to look out for you, buddy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “By the way, did you get anywhere with that girl from Match dot com?”

  “We met for coffee and now she doesn’t answer any of my messages,” Sniff said. “I winked at her three times, but she just ignored me.”

  “Well, look on the bright side: It’s better than that girl from quote-unquote ‘Ridgefield, Connecticut’ who turned out to be a Slovenian prostitute,” Whitely said. “Anyhow, what’s up?”

  “It’s… it’s the Fulcher margin call.”

  “What about it? We ready to deliver? He needs the money by three.”

  “Yeah, about that…” Sniff said, and suddenly he couldn’t look at his boss. The carpet in front of him had gotten far more interesting.

  “What, Teddy?”

  “We don’t have it.”

  “So you keep saying. But how is that even possible?”

  “Well, that donation you just made didn’t help,” Sniff said.

  “Still, I… I just don’t understand: My trades are good. My trades are great. I can count on one hand the ones that go bad in an entire month. I’ve got to have one of the best win-loss records in the business. How is it possible we don’t have the money?”

  “I’m just telling you what the books are telling me,” Sniff said. “The books don’t lie.”

  “Yeah, well…” Whitely said, running his hands through his perfect coiffure, actually mussing it slightly.

  “So what do we do about Fulcher?”

  Whitely stared into the distance. He tented his hands, brought them to his lips, and held them there for ten seconds.

  “His margin call is at First National,” Whitely said at least. “We know some people there. Call them up and convince them to hold off on the margin call for a week or two. We’ll make sure Fulcher knows we did him the favor and tell him to just rest easy, that we’ll have the money when the time comes. And by then, we will.”

  Sniff mumbled something that Whitely couldn’t hear. Only the sensitive microphones picked up the words and piped them straight to the eighty-third floor.

 
; And the words were: “I doubt it.”

  CHAPTER 15

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Donny Whitmer had been up all night.

  Normally, that meant drinking booze and chasing tail—the preferred pastimes of powerful men the world over.

  But this time was different. Donny Whitmer had discovered, somewhat to his surprise, that even after all those years in Washington, he still had a conscience. And that conscience was in something of a crisis.

  It ate at him, what he had done. Threatening his best donor with exposure like that. It was actually making his stomach hurt—to stoop that low after a lifetime of honorable public service. It was so unbecoming of a senator. He tossed and turned in bed until Sissy made him sleep in the guest room.

  Somewhere after midnight, the thought occurred to him: In the morning, he’d call the guy and tell him he didn’t mean it. It was a bluff. It was said out of anger or out of fear. No, better yet, it was a joke. Ha ha, good one, right, buddy? Because ol’ Donny would never do something like that.

  The next morning, before Donny even finished his coffee, Jack Porter was back in his office. They had done some more polling. There were more charts and graphs. The Tea Party sumbitch had much better name recognition than anyone had realized, much lower negatives than seemed possible, and what’s more, there were fewer undecided than there should have been six weeks out.

  In other words, the problem was worse than Donny had thought. Yesterday had been a little dreamlike—nightmare-like—but today the reality was setting in. He might really be done. He found himself ignoring Porter and looking around his office, at the view of the Capitol that he commanded from his corner office, at all the knickknacks and plaques and commendations he had collected over the years, and he just didn’t want to pack them up. He wasn’t ready to be done.