Drummer In the Dark

by T. Davis Bunn

  “Wynn?”

  He gasped, or thought he did, and found himself sitting up even before he had fully opened his eyes. Gradually the sands departed, and the howling wind diminished. Carter stood in the open doorway, watching him anxiously. “Are you sure you’re up to going by the Hutchings’?”

  In response, he rose and slipped on his jacket, stuffed his tie in his pocket, and brushed at his sleeves. Slapping away not dust but rather the impression that lingered from his dream. When it did not depart, he motioned for Carter to lead them out. Resigned to the fact that he would remain ever scalded by his sister’s blood.

  The taxi ride seemed as endless as the surrounding night. Carter spoke several times, but the words became lost in winds that still whispered and threatened. Every time Wynn blinked his eyes, he could feel the desert grit grinding away, streaking his vision and choking off his air.

  When Esther opened the door for them, Wynn slipped by both her smile and her welcome and entered the crowded living room. There were at least a dozen people scattered about, many of whom Wynn recognized from the committee hearings. Graham’s wheelchair was in its usual spot, the sofa alongside still dimpled from where Esther had risen. Wynn walked over and sat down.

  Up close, Graham looked truly ravaged. But the eyes were brilliant, the strongest light in Wynn’s entire day. Esther sat down at Wynn’s other side and slid over the box of tissues. “You need to use these every once in a while and clean his face. Swallowing is such a struggle.”

  On the opposite sofa, Kay sat surrounded by officials and staffers. When Wynn looked over, she asked, “You all right?”

  “Sure.”

  “I heard one of your interviews on the way over. CBS used it as their lead story, that and how the financial markets are going ballistic. The banks’ spokesman did everything but blame you for the bubonic plague. You sounded very solid by comparison. Very sane.”

  A young woman in one of the dining room chairs said, “If I read this correctly, Senator, I’d say we should hit them head-on. Explain that the currency traders acting for hedge funds and private equity funds are the ones imperiling the financial health of our nation. Not us.”

  Kay exchanged smiles with Carter, two people who had been at the game for a very long time. She said, “Tell her for me.”

  “Your ideas are fine,” Carter said. “But they won’t wash.”

  “It’s all too far away,” Kay agreed. “None of this really concerns the average person. That’s why the banking lobby’s managed to wreak as much legislative havoc as they have.”

  “Our only hope,” Carter said, “lies in finding something that will put a local face on this thing. Something that defines a threat people can point to and say, this could cost me big time.”

  “Other than a severe recession,” Kay added. “Or a meltdown of our banking system. Let’s try to avoid both of those.”

  Wynn turned his attention back to the figure in the wheelchair. Graham reached out the one hand still mobile, a trembling leaf fighting his own storms. Wynn gripped it very gently, and allowed his hand to be drawn back over to rest upon the wheelchair arm. He could feel every bone beneath Graham’s skin. But there beside this man who could do little more than sit and wait for death to strike the final blow, Wynn found peace. The winds stopped their whispered wrath. He could swallow down the sorrow born of all his futile days, and breathe free.

  The phone rang. Esther rose to answer. The talk swirled. Beyond the window the night glowed with tiny lights that came and braved the darkness for a time, then departed. Wynn stayed where he was, listening to all the lessons the old man left unspoken.

  “Wynn?”

  Esther gazed down at him, both hands clutching the phone to her chest. “Something terrible has happened.”

  68

  Tuesday

  OUR AGENTS FOUND the house by the light the fire made against the rain.” Agent Welker sounded grim as the news he carried, hard as the night. “The old place went up like a torch. Rain was hissing and dancing off the roof. The local cops stopped a lone male driving a Chevy with stolen plates. Turns out he smelled like he’d bathed in gasoline. Had quite an arsenal in his trunk. He refused to supply any ID. They’re holding him on suspicion of arson.”

  The room around him was a single set of eyes, silent as the grave. “What about Jackie?”

  “I’m sorry, Congressman. I really am. The agents tried to make it up the stairs. The place was a furnace. These are good men, believe me, I checked. If they say they tried, that’s what they did.”

  A chiming came from where his jacket was slung over the sofa back. Wynn gestured at the room, urging someone to pick up his phone. Carter was the first to move. “I understand.”

  “Apparently the agents heard music and they think a voice. But who was actually in there, we won’t know until the firemen finish going through the ashes.”

  Carter stepped over to him and said, “It’s Jackie.”

  The agent heard that. “You’ve got the woman on another line?”

  “Hold on a second,” Wynn said, trading phones. “Are you all right?”

  “Barely. We almost had a heart attack. We were just working away, minding our own business, then whoosh. The whole place went up like a bomb.”

  Jackie did not sound the least bit worried. In fact, if Wynn had to put a name to her tone, it would have been elation. “Where are you?”

  “Millicent Kirby’s upstairs front room. We wanted to go to a hotel but Millicent wouldn’t leave her house. We knew they were on to us soon as they cut our feed into Hayek’s mainframe. But we had enough by then. Almost everything, in fact. Colin just did these huge dumps. Basically ever since then we’ve been trying to figure out what it is we’re looking at.”

  “You’re not making any sense, Jackie.”

  “Colin is a genius. He rewired my phone so it played over my stereo, we left on all the lights, then worked up here with his cellphone dialed to my apartment number. We could hear ourselves talking from the back porch. Brilliant.” She paused to cough. “Millicent hasn’t been up here in twenty years. We’ve had sneezing fits that’ve lasted for hours. The place smells of mildew and cat pee and we can’t get the window open. It’s awful.”

  “I know this woman?”

  “She’s my landlady. Crazy as a loon. But a sweetheart.” A voice spoke behind Jackie. She seemed to stifle laughter as she went on, “Colin says I need to get to the business at hand. Don’t mind me. I’m giddy over not being a crispy fritter. Not to mention what we’ve discovered.”

  The phone in Wynn’s other hand began squawking angrily. Wynn said, “Hold on one second.” He took the other phone, said, “Ask your agents if there’s a woman named Kirby living nearby.”

  Welker said tightly, “We’ve got a felonious situation on our hands, and you want them to play twenty questions?”

  “She’s Jackie’s landlady. Jackie says she’s hiding upstairs with somebody named Colin.”

  “Who?”

  “I have no idea. Oh, and tell your men the Kirby woman is apparently not entirely sane.”

  A huffing breath, then, “Why should she be any different?”

  Wynn returned to the cellphone. “What have you discovered?”

  “Oh, man,” Jackie replied. “This is sweet. It really is.”

  69

  Wednesday

  WYNN WAITED UNTIL five o’clock the next morning to waken the Fed official, Gerald Bowers. It had taken Jackie and Colin that long to sift through all the data and come up with something that resembled a case they could walk around with. Show to people, convince others they weren’t totally off the wall. Add to that another half hour it had taken to explain it in single syllables so that Wynn and Kay and Carter could understand.

  But when he got the Federal Reserve Bank official on the line, Wynn stared down at the pages in front of him as if they contained the cuneiform scribblings of some alien race. Which is why he woke the man up with, “Sir, I have reason to believe that
the nation’s financial system is going to be attacked this morning.”

  “It happens every day at nine, Congressman.” The man croaked a tune that truly fit his appearance. “The moment Wall Street hits that morning bell.”

  “No sir. This is something different. At least, that’s what we think. Or thought.” Wynn looked helplessly across the room. The Hutchings parlor was much the same as it had been upon Wynn’s arrival. Graham was lying down in the other front room, but the last time Wynn had checked, the old man’s eyes were open and fully alert. One staffer had surrendered to fatigue and was sacked out on the floor by Graham’s bed. The tables were littered with papers and coffee cups. The air had the stale quality of gritty exhaustion. “Somebody come help me out here.”

  Carter merely smiled. Kay watched him with the grim satisfaction of seeing an acolyte come into his own. “You’re doing fine.”

  “Thirty seconds,” Bowers finally growled. “Then I’m hanging up only long enough to call Welker and have him lock you in a cage.”

  “Too late. Welker is on the FBI jet they’ve sent down to collect Jackie and Colin.”

  The voice on the other end sharpened a notch. “Who?”

  “They’re supposed to be arriving at National about seven,” Wynn said. “Why don’t you come join us. Hear this straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  “And why on earth should I do that?”

  “Because,” Wynn announced. “They’ve located Tsunami.”

  THE RAIN PASSED with the dawn. Not that Jackie gave it much notice. The FBI formed a three-car convoy in Millicent’s front yard. Two men with shotguns stood sentry at either end of the porch. Welker waited in the front hall as first Jackie, then Colin, used the downstairs bathroom, showering under a trickle of rust-colored water, trying to scrub away the fatigue and the fear.

  When Jackie came out of the back room, her wet hair was plastered to the same shirt she had worn the previous day. And all night. It was all she had. Everything else had gone up in the backyard bonfire. Welker paid her clothes no mind whatsoever. He glanced at his watch and said once more, “We really need to be going.”

  “Almost ready.” Jackie slipped by the agent and walked down the back hall. Millicent was in the same place she had been since the agents stormed her house. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Mrs. Kirby will be fine,” Welker replied, stepping in behind her. “We’re stationing an agent here on permanent watch.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Jackie said, seating herself beside Millicent, taking her hand.

  “Ms. Havilland, we need to be leaving now.”

  Jackie massaged Millicent’s hand, shifting in her seat until she was as close as she could get to the center of the woman’s roving gaze. “You remember how you told me you were afraid of being alone in the dark? This nice man will be around just to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  The gaze might have been as scattered as sunlight on windswept waters, but the voice was all there. Soft and precise and terrified. “They’re going to put me in a home.”

  “Not a chance in this world.”

  “You don’t know. They’ll watch me and they’ll see what they want to see.”

  “Millicent, look at me.” Jackie waited until the woman had brought her gaze under some semblance of control. “How would you like me to move in upstairs?”

  The fragile shoulders lifted a fraction. “Live with me?”

  “It won’t be all the time. I don’t know where I’m going to wind up after this, but I doubt it will be here.” Jackie pushed away thoughts of any future beyond the next few hours. “I’ve got some money coming. At least, I think I do. We could have some people come in, build me a little apartment I’d use whenever I’m in town. Would you like that?”

  The tiny woman used her free hand to wipe shaky streaks down both sides of her nose. “We could be best friends.”

  “That’s exactly right.” Jackie rose, then bent down and kissed the top of Millicent’s head. Her hair felt like spun glass. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  She turned to the FBI agent and gave a little nod. Welker lifted his wrist to his lips and said, “Heads up. We’re moving.”

  70

  Wednesday

  BURKE STUDIED THE dawn beyond his window. The rain had passed with the night, and the sun rose within a pristine sky. He reached for his phone and dialed Hayek’s private line. The hand holding the phone stank of petrol and charred wood. He had showered four times after finally arriving home and still could taste the fumes.

  The man answered himself. “What is it?”

  “I’m just making sure,” Burke replied, “you want me to go ahead as planned.”

  “Yes, Burke. I want you to do exactly as we discussed. Make the two calls. Report back to me. Now precisely which portion of this did you not understand?”

  “But Crawford hasn’t checked back in. Which means he might have been arrested. And we still don’t know what Colin Ready managed to steal or whether—”

  “Fear, Burke. When you begin to question the course of events, remember that. The greater their terror, the larger our gain.”

  The words were the same, but not the power. Burke had the impression that Hayek himself no longer fully believed what he was saying. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “Chaos. Turmoil. Frenzy. That is what we are after here. Remember this at all times. Our success will be determined by one thing. The market’s level of panic.” When Burke did not respond, Hayek continued, “War is won not merely by force. They must hear our approach like drumbeats from the forest shadows, and fear what they can neither see nor understand. That way the battle will be decided before we even commit our forces.”

  Burke cut the connection. He went through the motions of following Hayek’s orders, trying to stifle the argument he could not bring himself to present to his boss. That they were overextended, dangling on the precipice. And the unknown was still out there, the menace still not entirely checked.

  He dialed Thorson Fines’ home number. When the man answered, Burke said, “Be ready to start buying more dollar-long contracts.”

  “But the new money hasn’t arrived.”

  “It will.”

  “When?”

  “This morning.” Burke almost added, soon as the markets crash. But there was no need to reveal his hand. “Right after the markets open. Five billion will be transferred straight into your accounts. Remember, use Interbank only. Fully leveraged. Max out every credit line.”

  Fines hesitated. “So it’s really happening?”

  Burke hung up the phone. He said to the empty office, “I hope so.”

  He unlocked his lower drawer and brought out the secret folder. The phone was answered by a voice more wheeze than sound. “Harris Forex.”

  “This is Burke.”

  A swift intake, then, “Back in five.”

  “Make it less.” But the man had already hung up.

  When Burke’s phone rang, he took a long moment and breathed hard before answering. It was not a big step in and of itself, except for the fact that he was afraid. Of what, he could not say. He was doing as he always had, following his master’s directions. But today the fever was not present, and he saw his actions with the cold clarity of one who was utterly divorced. Or perhaps one who had already lost. Still, he had no choice. So he answered the phone with a simple, “Yes.”

  “Okay.” The sound of heavy breathing signaled a swift dash to a pay phone outside the building. “I’m here.”

  “It’s a go.”

  The breathing stopped, then restarted. “Go?”

  “Exactly as we discussed.”

  “And the money?”

  “As promised, the second half will be paid upon confirmation that the insert has gone as planned.”

  “I can only write the pieces and put them out, I can’t guarantee the papers or television will carry the spots.”

  Burke started to say that it wasn’t the papers he was
concerned about, then decided that was one point he definitely did not need to pass on. “Do what you can.”

  71

  Wednesday

  THE FBI JET LANDED at National beneath a dawn hammered from blue and palest gold. Jackie had spent the journey reviewing the data with Colin, going through it all one more time, committing as much of it as possible to memory. But now, as she watched them taxi away from the main terminals and over to where a convoy of dark cars and gray-suited officials awaited them, she found it hard to conjure up her own name.

  It helped marginally that Wynn was the second person up the stairs, behind the welcoming agent. He gave her a hug fierce enough to still some of the jitters, at least momentarily. “You okay?”

  “No.”

  “You look fantastic.”

  “No I don’t. I’m wearing the same clothes I’ve had on for thirty-six hours, I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since I left Rome, and I’m so full of burned coffee they could plug me into the airport system and light up a runway.”

  The cleft of his chin turned ax-blade deep, his smile was that big. “I’d say that pretty much sums me up as well.”

  She reached back into the plane and pulled Colin through the door. “This is the man himself. Colin Ready, meet Congressman Bryant.”

  The young man stammered, “I’m not certain I’m ready for all this.”

  Wynn nodded agreement. “Who is?”

  A voice from down below shouted, “I’m waiting!”

  Wynn stowed his grin away. “Heads up.”

  Jackie glanced over his shoulder and saw a man who made Carter Styles look good enough for the cover of Vogue. “Who’s the frog?”

  “Gerald Bowers, Federal Reserve Bank.” Wynn gripped her hand and led her down the stairs. “This is not turning out as I’d hoped.”

  The man waiting for them danced on the tarmac like an overhot junebug. He could not keep still, not even as his eyes tracked Jackie’s progress over toward him. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You called me in the middle of the night to say I’ve got to shut down the nation’s entire financial system because of her?”