COLIN WAS BACK DOWNSTAIRS inside five minutes. The duration of his stay at the top of Everest was not the surprise factor here. Meetings with Hayek never lasted very long. But today Hayek’s secretary had immediately ushered him inside, without the customary wait to remind him of his lowly grub status. Hayek had then grilled him about the Havilland woman. For a man controlling multiple billions to spend this much time on a lowly peon was beyond bizarre.
The downstairs front lobby was Friday-evening calm. Across from the elevators, the receptionist sat behind her desk buffing her nails. The pair of sofa sets flanking the front windows were empty, as was the carpeted stairway leading up to the trading room balconies. That was another strange thing about recent developments—how every day spawned more gray-suited goons unable to speak decent English.
Beyond the security doors, the trading floor was in cleanup mode. As soon as Colin appeared, Eric and his boss emerged from a cluster of spot traders and walked over. “The man goes upstairs just another electro-nerd,” Eric taunted. “He comes down a stud muffin.”
Colin stared at the one trader he might class as a pal. Eric’s words made no more sense than Hayek’s. Discordant random acts were becoming one solid mass, tearing through everything in its path. “What are you on about now?”
“Power, my man. Access. Fresh data. The keys to our world. They’ve been slipped into your mangy paw and you don’t know enough to know you’ve been remade in the master’s image.”
“And you,” Colin replied, “are seriously twisted.”
“Absolutely. But it’s still true.” Eric leaned closer still. “The hoodoo beauty in Records was breathing hot over you, my man. Tell me you know who I mean.”
“Mandy,” Colin said. She was the talk of the entire Hayek team. A redheaded Popsicle with a polar glower. “That is nothing but myth and dangerous fabrication.”
Alex broke in, pointing toward the empty balcony. “Your confabs with the King wouldn’t have anything to do with the new realm up there, would it?”
“Not a hope.” Colin turned his gaze upward. The parapet was empty for a change, the workers gone for the weekend.
“Come on, you can tell your old pal,” Eric goaded him. “Word is, Hayek’s bringing in a load of fresh meat. Fitting them out with data he’s not sharing with the rest of us. You know what that means?”
“Yes.” Colin understood the looks now. They saw him as part of a new threat.
“It means we’re finished,” Alex said. From this range the senior trader had the pungent odor of an electric fire. “The first in the know takes home the bacon. The rest get the street.”
“I don’t have any idea what’s intended,” Colin replied. Both traders responded with tight-eyed distrust. “Look, I don’t know any more than you do.”
Alex said, “So what is it exactly that you discuss with the King?”
“Fire walls. Security. The same as always. Only right now they’re extremely amped about something. They’re giving a ridiculous amount of attention to what anyone else would call smoke in the wind.”
“They think somebody is breaking into our system?”
“I’d stake my life the shields are intact. My guess is they’re planning something new. Something extremely large.” Colin looked up at the mysterious parapet. “We’re talking galactic war here.”
Alex scratched his chin. “Could be this new fund Hayek mentioned a few days back. But why put them in a separate cage?”
Eric mused, “Wonder if this has anything to do with the gray goons we’ve got wandering around outside.”
“I have no idea.” Colin smarted over suddenly being classed as a foe. “But I’m fed up with the present state of affairs, I can tell you that.”
Colin exited the trading floor by the front doors. The receptionist had packed it in for the week, and the foyer was empty. Checking out the upstairs balcony was a random act of madness, but he did not care. Actions like this used to drive Lisa crazy. But he had always enjoyed the odd moment of reckless abandon. He liked to call them the nerd’s alternative to extreme sports. They were usually done on-line, but not always. Like now. Lisa had loathed these exploits, calling them acts of a forfeited life, indications of all the wrong turns he took inside himself. Colin had hated it when she began talking like that. But now she was gone, and the imaginary argument was all he had left.
The carpeted stairwell curved around the elevator shaft, rising to a newly formed antechamber. The air conditioner sighed softly. There was no other sound.
“In for a penny,” Colin whispered, and pushed through the glass doors.
The balcony offices and the partitions were gone. The open space was now fitted with three rows of state-of-the-art trading desks and ergonomic chairs. Colin did a slow sweep of the room, stunned by the realization that they must have rewired the company’s system so that all these new operations would be routed outside existing channels. Otherwise he would have noticed the traffic. He announced to the empty chamber, “This makes no sense whatsoever.”
He walked over to the outer wall. The glass was so thick he could not hear a sound from the scene below. Heads popped up, gawking at him. But Colin had no answers for them. The mystery had only heightened.
With no notice or warning, Colin was abruptly hefted by the back of his shirt. He would have protested, but his throat was being sliced by his collar riding up and cutting off his wind. He was pulled back a fraction, then slammed cheek first into the glass wall.
A deep-chested grizzly voice roared in his ear, but the words were so mangled by a strange accent Colin heard only the anger and the force. Colin used one hand to try and pull his collar far enough from his throat to take a decent breath, and the other to pry his face from the wall. He might as well have attempted to lift the Hayek building.
The assailant pulled him back once more, far enough for Colin to see the imprint of his face in the glass. As the gray-jacketed goon started swinging him forward again, Colin tried to protest but could only manage a strangled “Aack.” Then he was mashed flat once more. A bug on the windshield of life.
A voice from behind them demanded, “What’s going on here?”
The goon spun Colin about, Colin’s toes barely brushed the floor. He now faced Dale Crawford, head of Hayek’s security team. Colin could hear the awful sound of his own choking and felt his chest burning with need. He tried in utter futility to pry off the iron-hard arm. Another moment and he was going to pass out.
The goon shook him like a puppet and growled his mangled version of English. The blue-suited security man moved forward. “This is one of the old man’s chosen.” To Colin, the security guard went on, “You’re not permitted up here, Mr. Ready. This area is strictly off limits.”
The goon growled something further and shook Colin so hard his teeth rattled in his skull.
“I said let the guy go.” Just as the periphery of Colin’s world began to blur, Crawford stepped forward and chopped down hard on the goon’s arm.
Colin was unable to break his fall. His legs were little more than water and gossamer casings. He lay on his side and took the sweetest breath in his entire life, and struggled to his knees. Coughed. Wiped a string of dribble from his mouth. Coughed and breathed again. Looked up.
The blue suit was nose-to-nose with the goon. “You don’t like it, why not take a piece of somebody who bites back.”
The goon in gray roared and waved his fists. Crawford stayed in tight. “Guys like you make me puke.” Without taking his eyes off his adversary, the security guy said, “You better clear on out of here, Mr. Ready.”
Colin stumbled to his feet. One hand searched for whatever support was closest, the other held his throat. He stumbled from the room and blundered down the stairs. When he pushed through the trading doors, he endured gaping stares from the crowd that had watched his humiliation. Eric rushed over, took his arm, and helped him back to his cubicle. Colin’s meager consolation was that nobody on the trading floor would ever again doubt on
which side of the line he stood.
12
Friday
ON THE FLIGHT from Orlando to Reagan National Airport, Jackie found herself thinking of a list she and Preston had made, back when the money had first started coming in. Jackie had been pulling in about two and a half thousand a month, working overtime every chance she got, while Preston somehow crammed six years of school into three and a half. Preston had been too busy for girls most of the time. And Jackie despised how guys had assumed a girl with a high school equivalent and night school credentials would pant when they spoke the magic words, Porsche and a gold card.
Then Preston had gone to work for Hayek. His starting salary had been no great shakes for that industry, forty-six thou and change. For the next five months Jackie had pressured him, using every possible argument for him to quit that crazy job and go for something normal. She had wanted him to go back to school for his doctorate. She could support them for another couple of years, no problem. Then Preston had come home with his first bonus check.
She had arrived back from work and found him seated at the kitchen table. The house had been dead quiet, her brother’s face waxy. He had explained how he had made a couple of bets for Mr. Hayek, predicting how the market was going to swing. He had insisted the pound was overvalued and sterling was going to plummet. He had convinced Hayek he was right, even when his calculations had gone directly against the chief trader’s bets.
Jackie had seated herself across the table from her brother and repeated the one word, “Bets.”
“Listen to what I’m telling you, Sis. I used this model I’ve cooked up and identified a clear disparity in the market. So I argued my case, and Hayek backed me. He told the senior trader to put a hundred and fifty down on my trend assessment.”
“A hundred and fifty what?”
“Million dollars.” The words were spoken with the ease of one utterly disconnected from reality, so calm Jackie’s heart lurched for them both. “And we won. Big time.” Preston pushed the envelope closer still. “It’s my bonus check. Go on. Take a look.”
The check was too big to fit inside that slender little envelope. Seventy-nine thousand nine hundred and twelve dollars. Jackie looked at her brother, wanting to tell him to take it and quit, put the tainted money to some decent use. But he was beaming now, happier than she could ever remember seeing him. “How did he get these numbers? I mean, twelve dollars, why not just round it up to eighty thou?”
He laughed, the sweetest sound in Jackie’s universe. “Leave it to you to pour on the cold water. You know what this means, Sis? We’re free.”
“We’ll be free when you find yourself a real job in the real world.”
“You can quit your job. Finally go to school.”
That froze her up solid. She could scarcely squeak, “What?”
“You don’t think I’ve noticed how you’ve listened when I talk about school? Now’s your chance to stop living your dreams through me and go for your own brass ring.” He reached for the pencil she used to make her shopping lists, pulled the envelope back over. “We’ll start a list. Things we’re going to do. Not just talk about them. Do. Normal things.”
“There’s nothing normal about any of this.”
“Careful now. You’re almost sounding like Mom.” He scribbled across the top end of the envelope, and said aloud, “Normal things. First on the list is Sis going back to grad school. Gainesville should do, you can commute, we’ll get a house on the north end of town. That’s number two. A house.”
“We’re fine here.”
“This place is a dump. A house with a pool. You’ve been driving around looking at houses and neighborhoods for years.” He looked up, pressing her with the eagerness of a kid the day before Christmas. “Come on, help me out here.”
She was urged forward, not by her own desire, but his euphoria. “Vacation.”
“There you go. Ship or plane?”
“Plane.”
“Right. Mountains or ocean?”
“Mountains.”
“You got it. Start packing, Sis, we’re on our way.”
She shook her head slowly back and forth, feeling then and there the unspoken threat, the gnawing worry. This isn’t real, she thought, almost wishing it was so.
JACKIE STOOD OUTSIDE the Watergate Complex, wondering what to expect. Or pretend to be. She watched four couples emerge through the glass front doors, glittering in evening wear and jewels and musical prattle. Jackie forced herself up the stairs and into the brightly lit lobby. As she waited while the doorman called the Hutchings apartment, she wondered how people could grow so comfortable in their masks they stopped hearing all the lies they sang.
Upstairs, Esther Hutchings was the same woman Jackie had met before, only now she was utterly undone. The poise was shattered, her cashmere sweater heavily stained, her makeup streaked and two days old. “Come in. Sorry, the time has gotten away from me. Graham has had a very bad day.”
“It’s no problem.” The living room was tasteful, the lighting muted, the oils on the wall no doubt original. The carpet was thick as a newly trimmed putting green. The upholstered furniture and the cushions and the silver-clad table were all perfect.
“My husband hates hospitals. He would rather die than go into a nursing home.”
“I understand.” Double sliding doors opened off the living room onto what had probably been a formal dining room. Paintings also hung on those walls, and additional silver ornaments stood upon other antique cabinets. Only this room now held a pneumatic hospital bed that could be electronically cranked to a hundred different positions. The kind necessary for someone who might never rise again. The back was pumped up so that the inhabitant could stare out over the dusk-washed Potomac. Jackie said, “You don’t need to explain.”
“No. I suppose I don’t.” Wearily Esther observed her husband. “He has good days and bad days. This one . . .”
“Hasn’t been so good.”
“Here, let me take your bag. Would you like something to drink? A coffee, perhaps?”
“Not if it’s any bother.”
Esther managed a tight little smile. “We keep a fresh pot charged at all times around here.”
“A coffee would be great. Black.”
“Just a moment.” Esther took the back way and disappeared.
Jackie walked to the open double doors. She was not drawn by the figure in the bed so much as the man seated beside it. The visitor was ugly and overweight, and his carrot red hair grew in odd tufts. His shoes were stranded at the end of the bed along with his jacket and his briefcase. He was reading the Washington Post with the steady drone of someone who had been at it for quite a while. He did not look up until Jackie’s shadow fell on the page. Then he said in greeting, “Graham understands every word.”
“I’m sure he does.”
“You know strokes?”
“My mother.”
“Right. I remember. Esther told me.” He offered a hand. “Carter Styles.”
“Jackie Havilland. Do you do this every night?”
“My wife wouldn’t permit that. Or my kids. I try to make it by a couple of times every week. I used to work for him.”
But the look he gave the immobile man with the glittering dark eyes said that Esther’s husband had been far more than a boss. And still was.
Jackie’s eyes searched the room for something that would explain how a silent man with parchment skin could lie in this bed and command the world about him. How Graham Hutchings could grip this visitor so fiercely he would come and read the paper to a corpse.
A wooden cross hung directly in front of the bed. All the paintings in this room, Jackie now noted, were religious. The one over the glass balcony doors captured her. A figure holding a lantern stood at an ivy-clad door and knocked.
Carter Styles flipped over his paper, but did not resume his reading. Instead he asked, “So tell me what you see.”
Jackie sensed Esther moving up behind her and knew the young ma
n’s words were some form of test. “The door doesn’t have a handle.”
“Which means?”
“Either the door was meant to stay shut,” she mused aloud, “or it has to be opened from the inside.”
Carter glanced to the woman behind her, said nothing. Esther touched Jackie’s elbow. “Your coffee is ready.”
Jackie nodded to the man in the bed, received a flickering shift of the gaze in reply. She followed Esther back into the living room and chose the sofa that would place her back to the sickroom. She needed to concentrate here.
Esther put the steaming cup on the table in front of her. “My husband was absolutely certain that the American fund managers and the Washington lobbyists were conspiring to emasculate our financial system’s oversights and restrictions. Are you aware of the Ecuador currency crisis?”
The bone china was eggshell-thin, the aroma rich enough to shove the sickroom stench momentarily aside. “It happened just as I was leaving school. The professors were all certain it had been orchestrated.”
“They were correct. Hayek was behind it.”
Jackie set down her cup. “You’re sure?”
“Of course not. If I were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But Graham was certain enough to take this on as his mission in life.” Hands unaccustomed to being idle straightened everything in reach—magazines on the table, throw cushions, the edge of the carpet, Jackie’s own saucer. “Today’s hedge fund operators and the investment bankers who front for them are nothing more than financial gunslingers. The forex traders are the worst of the lot. Of course you know what Soros did to the pound sterling and the financial markets of England.”
“Yes.” In other circumstances, Jackie would have found the woman’s constant plucking and straightening enough to give rise to a good scream. But now, with the mantle of sorrow draped over those strong features, she could not help but reach over and settle her own hand upon Esther’s. Showing her that she was not alone.
Esther stared down at the hand covering her own. Misery and fatigue smudged and slackened her face. “You can’t imagine what it’s like living with a man on a mission. I positively loathed it at times. I was jealous of his cause and everything that kept him from caring for me as much as he did all these other things.” She blinked once. Twice. “And now it’s all in my hands. Life is such a lover of cruel irony.”
Drummer In the Dark Page 10
