by Davis Bunn
Patricia said, “I’m hearing words but not understanding a thing.”
“The lady across the table is passionate about numbers,” Craig said. “She can pierce the veil and see things that others assume are well-concealed.”
“Like you?”
“Oh, no. Accountants are a dime a dozen.” Craig’s gaze held Esther’s. “We gather on street corners and stare up in awe at the offices of risk analysts like Esther.”
Patricia demanded, “But what does that mean?”
Esther liked how she could talk directly with Craig even while the others listened in. “My favorite part of the Carolina spring is when the nights get warm enough for me to go outside and sit on my deck and watch the sky. I love studying clouds blown by the wind.”
“Turned silver by moonlight,” Rachel put in. “I know, it’s so beautiful.”
“I was going to say,” Esther continued, “this is the closest approximation in the physical universe to risk analysis. Clean numbers stretched across the universe, then clouds of risk come and go. My job is to predict the clouds’ pattern and their course.”
Craig added, “And identify which stars will remain clearly defined, uninterrupted by the clouds.”
This time a little shiver touched her reply, “Exactly.”
Esther gathered dishes and helped carry them to the kitchen. On her third pass through the dining room, she was halted by the sight of Lacy seated on the floor by the living room sofa. Her family all listened with grave expressions. Esther doubted the young woman was even aware of the tears dripping off her cheeks.
Esther turned and slipped silently across the kitchen and let herself out the back door. She was trying to decide which patio chair had the best sky view when the door opened behind her and Craig asked, “Mind some company?”
She stepped over to the brick wall housing the grill, feeling its heat rise against the back of her legs. “It seemed like a good time to become invisible.”
“No one objected when I excused myself,” Craig agreed.
Esther could see through the rear windows that Patricia had left her husband’s side and moved around to hold her daughter. She said, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through, Craig.”
“Thank you.” He settled onto the brick wall. “I think there were kernels of transcendent truth in my tragedy. I missed years of signals because it was easier to focus on the pressures of work. I had to be really smacked down hard to pay attention.”
“Kernels of transcendent truth,” Esther repeated. “That’s a lovely turn of phrase.”
“It’s not original with me. A Supreme Court justice said it first.”
“Do you know which one?”
“Roberts. Heard him on the radio. I was driving to work, oh, it must have been about a year after my wife left me. I was still trying to climb out of the black hole, but I kept coming up against the same awful question—what was the point of it all?”
“Hearing the words helped you.”
“They did. I realized that so long as I returned to what had cost me so much, there wasn’t any point. The question was, what could I possibly do differently that would give meaning to my days?”
“So you decided to become a pastor.”
He was silent so long that Esther feared her rather offhand comment had offended him. Then, “Not exactly. At least, it doesn’t feel that way to me.”
“But . . .”
“What happened in the car that morning was, I started looking for something more.” He turned toward her. “Why do you think they invited us here tonight?”
Esther was glad he could not see the crimson flush rise to her cheeks. “What kind of question is that?”
Craig did not appear the least affected by her sharp-edged response. “I mean, beyond the obvious. They are concerned about you.”
“They told you this?”
“Not in so many words. But Patricia is not the only one in that family who can’t keep secrets. They care for you, Esther.”
“They hardly even know me.”
“And why is that?” Craig’s tone was gentle, but he was also insistent. “Rachel described you as beautiful, intelligent, and troubled by something you either can’t or won’t discuss.”
“So they’re using you to pry free my secrets?” Esther knew her charge sounded awful. Even before the words were fully out, she wished she could take them back. “Sorry, I just, I don’t—”
“You are perfectly correct. I am out of line. And I won’t say anything else about this unless you speak first. I mean it. Even if we meet again at your brother’s or anywhere else. Just let me ask you one question. Do you have anyone you can confide in about the burdens you’re carrying? Because I sense there’s more at work here than . . .”
Craig stopped talking, because Esther had spun around. She watched as cinders rose from the grill and joined with the night. The backyard was bordered by a stand of Carolina pine that cut a jagged silhouette from the city’s glow. Esther felt a sad lump rise from the empty place where her heart should reside.
Behind her, Craig said softly, “Everybody needs a friend. Even a hyperintelligent analyst.” His footsteps carried him back across the patio. She heard the door to the kitchen open and close.
8
The dinner party was well into wind-down mode when Esther reentered the house. She stood on the periphery where she could observe and remain unnoticed. Esther saw how they comforted Lacy, shared her pain. She followed them across the foyer and out the front door. All Esther’s familiar reasons for staying silent clamored for her attention. But the arguments no longer worked.
They gathered on the home’s curved front portico, its five steps descending to a path of the same fired brick. The faint whiff of new magnolia blossoms hinted at an awakening season.
Esther gripped her arms around her middle, terribly conflicted.
Patricia laid a hand on her shoulder and asked, “Esther, honey, what is it?”
She looked from one face to the next, seeing exactly what she expected to find, what she needed.
Esther whispered, “I’m so scared.”
Patricia declared that whatever it was Esther wanted to share, it wasn’t meant for the front porch. The family and their guests reformed in the living room, this time with Esther at its heart.
Rachel went into the kitchen and put on a fresh pot of coffee. Craig drew a hardwood rocking chair over and invited Esther to make herself comfortable. Lacy seated herself on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, pulled the sleeves of her sweater down so they covered all but the tips of her fingers, and wrapped her arms around her legs. Patricia and Donald sat on the couch. Craig carried in a chair from the dining table and seated himself across from Esther.
After a moment’s silence, Esther confessed, “I have no idea what to say.”
Patricia suggested, “Why don’t you tell us a little something about yourself.”
“Most of the time I feel like a total alien around other people. I suppose I have all my life. My parents passed away when I was very young. But I remember my mother calling me her changeling. She was a specialist in medieval literature. A changeling originally meant a child of forest sprites who had been snuck into a home.” Esther found it easier to address her words to the empty fireplace. “I like Italian operas and Victorian architecture. I am a student of Talleyrand and Churchill and Machiavelli, whom I consider the three greatest strategists when it comes to risk management.”
She knew the words were disjointed and random. A new thought welled up so strong it nearly choked off her air. She whispered, “I need to tell someone.”
Craig asked, “Is this about your work?”
“Not the bank. But yes. In a way.”
“The economy?” When she nodded, Craig said, “What frightens you, Esther?”
“In the days following the Wall Street crash of 2008, I started what I call my Doomsday List.” Esther could hear the tension in her voice
, a jagged quality she had never noticed before. Then again, she had never spoken of this. Not once. Not to anyone. “It began as two books. Book One contained all the certifiable factors that led to the collapse. I took no single source for what went in this first book. Every issue was confirmed by a minimum of three respected experts.”
The others had gone rock still. The only motion was when Rachel handed around coffees and then joined her husband on the loveseat. Craig asked quietly, “How many factors do you have listed in the book?”
“Five. I call them dynamics. Each holds a confirmed level of destructive force. None of them alone could cause another financial institution as large as Lehman Brothers to default. But put several of them together and that would cause a major meltdown.”
Craig now served as the group’s moderator. “You know this because you’ve calculated their potency, correct?”
“Yes. Book One now has six volumes, almost seven hundred pages of notes and calculations along with corroborating support.”
He nodded slowly. “And Book Two?”
“This contains other activities employed by financial institutions that I am fairly certain played a major role in the worldwide economy’s near collapse. This list holds another eleven dynamics.”
“But you can’t confirm their role.”
“Correct. Most of those dynamics are based on rumor and innuendo.” Esther hesitated, then added, “I also used sealed documents from Senate investigations.”
Craig asked, “And do you have allies who share your concerns?”
“A few.”
“These allies are professionals who trust your abilities as an analyst.”
Esther did not know what to say, so she remained silent.
“These dynamics,” Craig continued, “many of them are illegal, aren’t they?”
Again Esther did not reply.
“Which means you cannot confirm in any concrete way that they played a role in the economic mess.” Craig gave her a chance to respond, then asked, “Do you have a list of the banks you suspect use these methods?”
Her heart hammered in her chest. “They are on the front page of Book One.”
“How many banks are engaging in these dynamics?”
“In the US, sixteen. Globally, another forty-seven.”
“You notice I didn’t ask how many employed these dynamics prior to the 2008 crash.”
It was Esther’s turn to nod.
“Which means you are not simply doing an analysis of past events,” Craig said.
“Correct.”
“You are looking at the situation today.”
“Yes.”
“And that is what alarms you.”
“Yes.” Esther waited for someone to object. How the SEC held new regulatory powers. Or how the banks certainly must have learned the lessons of 2008 and pulled back from the wild maneuvers that had pushed the global economy to the brink. But no one breathed, no one moved.
That was when Esther hit the wall.
Her geeks used that phrase a lot. The wall could be anything—fatigue, stress, or simply an analysis that did not come together. Whatever the reason, the outcome was the same. One minute the data was pouring in, the analyst was cooking, the intel read like a good novel. The next minute . . . total confusion and panic.
Esther sprang to her feet, startling them all. Her mind scrambled for a way to take it all back, make the confession simply vanish. But all she could think to say was, “I have to go.”
They followed her to the door, but the gathering’s collective nature was gone. Craig seemed deeply concerned by her abrupt departure. Esther offered lame thanks for a lovely evening and hurried out to her car. As she drove away, one refrain echoed continually through her mind: They probably thought she was crazy. And maybe they were right.
9
SATURDAY
Esther awoke expecting blowback. The term came from the military, but it had spread via electronic games and was now adopted by geeks everywhere. Blowback meant any repercussion from a forward movement, especially one that risked exposure to incoming fire. As she prepared her morning coffee, Esther saw any number of potential sources of worry and threat, starting with her own internal alarms. She was surprised not to have been repeatedly awakened by their clamor.
She took her coffee out to the rear deck and watched the pale wash of dawn grow in the east. The birds were especially strident this morning, cardinals and mockingbirds and jays and robins, all shrilling their amazement at a new season. The air was crisp and the city weekend quiet, so Esther decided to go for a long run.
Esther left for the bank at nine. The downstairs guards were in laid-back mode. The trading floor was closed, the executive level vacant. In her group’s converted factory space, her team hummed along at the typical weekend pitch. Esther surveyed her crew with a sense of deep affection. Even the admins tended toward geeky and awkward, yet they were her geeks.
Jasmine greeted Esther with, “So where do we go from here?”
“Assemble the team,” Esther replied. “Conference room. But give me fifteen minutes. First I want to check the traffic.”
Esther rarely used the conference room assigned to her team. They shared it with the accounting division responsible for all mortgages the bank kept on its books. The bank’s home-loan portfolio was growing by leaps and bounds. The market for bundled mortgages and all their derivatives had dried up after 2008 and never fully recovered. The SEC kept too close a watch. This meant the bank was keeping a larger portion of the loans they wrote on their own books. The accounting division treated the conference room as their exclusive turf. They considered Esther’s team usurpers. She used it today because she wanted the solemnity of a structured environment. As usual, she included her admin staff as well as the analysts. It was her way of showing that they were all in this together.
She began the meeting without preamble. Lengthy sessions tended to send her geeks into severe withdrawal mode, as it disconnected them from their computers and data streams. “You know how much the bank made from the trade they concluded yesterday. I have orders from Jason to find another target.”
Jasmine frowned, but did not speak. Their newest member, a recent graduate with a voice as high as a squeaky toy, did so. His name was Bradley, but his first week he had repeatedly bragged about his alma mater. Now everybody simply called him MIT. “Is that wise?”
“It is inevitable,” their lone Pakistani spoke up. “If they want to make another hundred mil in a week.”
Jasmine said, “So Jason isn’t giving back the two billion.”
Esther replied, “The note from our boss said nothing except ‘find me the next one.’ His exact words.”
“Does the top floor realize what that does to the bank’s exposure?”
“When I went upstairs yesterday, Reynolds and Sir Trevor both complimented us on the role we played. I assume the answer is that they know what they want to know.” Esther held up her hand, halting further comment. “Our task has been set. Let’s focus on the objective.”
Once the discussion started, Esther allowed Jasmine to take over and did not speak again. Nor did she pay close attention to the swirl of talk and calculations. Instead, she concentrated on her own internal debate.
When the meeting broke up, Esther returned to her office and lowered the translucent screens over her internal windows. That was her signal for the team to leave her alone unless there was an impending tsunami. She faced her monitors, both because the team would see her familiar silhouette and because she found the data stream reassuring.
Esther left the office at midafternoon, pausing only to review the half-completed ideas her team was putting together. She ordered them to leave by six, a command she knew most would ignore. She drove home with her windows open to the cool spring air, then sat in the driveway, staring at her front door and facing her internal realization.
The status quo no longer worked.
Remaining silent, not speaking, that was what had
weighed her down the most. More than the plight of her beloved brother. More than the risks the bank currently exposed itself to. Her time of remaining on the sidelines and simply observing was over.
But what possible good could come from the actions of just one person?
Esther prepared a packaged dinner of rice and stir-fried vegetables with Thai sauce while watching the business channels’ weekend roundups. The Dow had ended the week down by over four percent, which left the stock market’s key indicators in negative territory for the entire year. The talking heads were gloomy in their forecasts for the next week. All their discussions carried a sense of grim foreboding. Esther agreed with their predictions, but not the reasoning. They focused almost exclusively on the American economy. And the problem was that their answers did not fit with the questions.
As she switched between channels, the voices became a unified anxious chorus. Junk bonds were down to their lowest level in seven years. Stocks were sinking across the board. The economy seemed to be stagnating. In the raw-material sectors, four years of rising values had been wiped out. Investors were acting like herd animals, fleeing the first rumble of thunder beyond the horizon.
But what Esther did not hear anyone discussing were next steps. What were people supposed to do? How were they to protect themselves, their families, even the country? Esther pulled out a pad and pen and began sketching out her thoughts. She felt many of the answers were right there, waiting for someone to lift their gaze beyond the horizon of this single economy and look at the bigger problems. As she ate, she watched half-formed concepts take shape.
The longer she sat there, the more certain she was that the time had come to act.
Midway through her meal, the phone rang. When she answered, Patricia asked, “What are you doing tomorrow after church?”
“Same old,” Esther replied. “Go to the gym, then swing by the office. Prepare for the coming week.”
“Could you take time for lunch at our place?”
“Twice in one weekend? I don’t—”
“Please.” Patricia’s voice carried an unusual level of stress. “It’s important. Really.”
