Reckless

by Andrew Gross

  Keaton’s gaze grew somber. “I’m still waiting for you to take this somewhere, Agent Blum.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m fairly certain Mr. Hassani, Mr. al-Bashir, and Thibault developed this plot to collapse the financial markets in June of last year. We found evidence that all three men were in Gstaad, Switzerland, on the same day, June twenty-sixth.”

  “Gstaad?”

  “Hassani’s private jet landed at the Geneva airport the day before. Geneva is the closest international airport, at which he would have had to land. He took off to London two days later. I believe they discussed this at a restaurant there named Christina’s, on the mountain. I’m in the process of trying to nail down their whereabouts, the hotels they might have stayed at as well as the restaurant where this meeting took place.”

  “Proving they were there at the same time doesn’t exactly tie them to this plot, does it, agent?”

  “No, you’re right.” Naomi nodded. “It doesn’t. What does is that Dieter Thibault was actually the assumed identity for an ex-Serbian-paramilitary officer who was implicated in a mass murder in Bosnia during the war. He’s been directly linked to the murders of Glassman and Donovan. Tying him to Hassani through the money that went to bribe Donovan, and then tying Hassani to al-Bashir through the monitored transcript and the sell-off of global stocks, is enough in my eyes to warrant a full investigation, Mr. Secretary. But it gets more urgent. That’s not in itself why I’m here.”

  Thomas Keaton motioned for her to continue.

  Naomi took a deep breath. “Hassani is currently in the United States. He’s attending a board meeting at Reynolds Reid tied to their annual meeting. It’s clear he orchestrated a major international conspiracy that resulted in the collapse of U.S. banks—and contributed to a worldwide panic that cost billions in lost net worth and personal hardships.”

  Hastings cut in from the couch. “Hassani and al-Bashir didn’t bring down these banks, Agent Blum. Are you forgetting a few minor issues such as the subprime mortgage collapse, the housing meltdown, CDOs, the rating agencies’ lack of governance…?”

  “No, sir, you’re right, but they clearly hastened it. It’s just as much of an attack against the United States as if they flew a plane directly into the Capitol dome.

  “Not to mention,” Naomi said, looking back at Keaton, “at least eight innocent people presumably killed between here and the UK.”

  Keaton’s face grew stonelike.

  “I can’t put everything together. I can’t put together why this was done or ultimately who benefited from what took place. There may even be others involved I haven’t identified yet. But there was a plot, sir, make no mistake. A plot to destabilize the U.S. economy by taking advantage of weaknesses in the financial system. Hassani should be detained—today. He should be made to provide answers about his activities in this plot. If he was carrying a bomb you would have no problem picking up the phone to the FBI immediately. This is no less a bomb, and it caused more damage than any device they could have detonated. I wish I didn’t have to come to you on this, sir.”

  “And the reason,” Keaton asked, “you’re not proceeding through normal channels is…?”

  “You mentioned London, Mr. Secretary. You know what happened there. Somehow someone beat us to both Thibault and al-Bashir before we could take them in. Two days earlier, Thibault had been killed in Serbia. It was made to look like a retribution killing for his offenses in the war. But no one knew about that, sir. And no one knew he was back in his home village.

  “I don’t know who it is,” she continued. “Hassani, I assume, covering his tracks. But only a handful of people knew we had placed Thibault and Hassani together. In light of this I couldn’t take the chance of what I had on Hassani finding its way into the wrong hands. I felt I had to go directly to you with this, sir. I hope you understand.”

  Thomas Keaton’s jaw grew taut and he glanced toward Mitch Hastings with a sobering stare. The lawyer eyed him back with an equally concerned expression.

  “Very serious stuff,” he said, turning back to Naomi. “You were absolutely right to bring this to me, Agent Blum.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  Peter Simons was skimming the Wall Street Journal in the back of his company Maybach, making his way down the FDR. He had an eight thirty breakfast with the head of the New York Fed in the Washington Room at their headquarters on Liberty Street. Along with the chiefs of Goldman, Citi, and Blackstone, some of the most powerful people in finance. The government had to craft a response to the deepening Wall Street crisis, a plan for how to hold the system together. And who better to consult with than the very people most responsible for pushing it over the edge? The historic meeting room on the Fed’s thirteenth floor was three stories tall and completely windowless. In the most symbolic sense, to lock in whatever was discussed within its hallowed walls.

  You didn’t have to be a genius, Peter Simons knew, to have seen it all coming. The geniuses were all responsible for creating the mess. For years, the world had been lulled to sleep by the toxic double dose of credit and debt. The banks, the rating bureaus, the governance agencies tasked with keeping it all together. Even the insurance giants who devised the logarithmic schemes to offset all the risk, like AIG. The system was corroded, rotted from the core. And, as most failed to understand, completely rigged. Deregulation had allowed the banks to lever their capital up at forty to one. Rating agencies were collecting fees from the very firms they were assigned to vet. Complex derivatives and credit-default swaps no one understood drove trading volumes. The mortgage market had melted down to dross. The whole rotted mess spiraled upward in an unimpeded arc, throwing off record profits for everyone. Until it stopped.

  Until it simply didn’t anymore. Until the winds changed. No, you didn’t have to be a genius, Simons knew. Certainly he wasn’t. You just had to be willing to do something about it. To make sure not to be blown away by the gale.

  And Simons had never been one to be pushed aside by a little shift in the winds. His father had been a middling merchant outside of Philadelphia, and from the beginning, Simons had dreams that he was destined for higher things. He had run track in high school, still held the record for the four hundred at his school. Now the stadium was named after him. At Yale, he had been invited into Skull and Bones. The day he had been asked into the exclusive club was one of the proudest of his life. It had made his ascent to the top of Wall Street almost a self-fulfilling plan. Opened doors to the right contacts. There was always a hand above him guiding his way. No one worked harder. No one sold his ass off like he had. He knew he wasn’t one of the “geniuses.” And he surely had no pedigree that was going to pave his way.

  First, he became head of the trading floor at Reynolds, when it was a quiet, retail-based institution. Then he was put in charge of the bond department, riding the wave of growth in the nineties. He built the firm from a quiet old-line brokerage house into the new model of leading investment banks in the world. He rode the crest of the subprime rally all the way to the top. But the signs became clear—when everyone else started piling on, he wasn’t about to let it take him down as well. That was the difference between him and many of his peers. Even the people who, in fifteen minutes, were about to sit around the same table with him and thrash over how to right the ship in this storm.

  In school, Simons had studied the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, and it had formed his view that the system was made anew by every generation. Capitalism wasn’t static. It was constantly remaking itself, like a living organism. Innovation cleansed the system. Behemoths rose and fall. Creative destruction. Nature did it, in evolution, in great forests ravaged by fire. Schumpeter called it being carried away by the “gale.”

  The idea had first occurred to him a year ago over drinks with Hassani in Dubai, after the Bahraini had helped facilitate a needed investment by the royal family. How, if they could just influence events, tip the scale, you might say, in their favor, despite the coming downturn, everyone cou
ld win. It was all inevitable anyway. Nature was going to take its course. Simons had the network of like-minded people. People to make it happen on a global scale. Hassani would just need to implement the plan. Put it all in motion. Give it the proper impetus. That was where al-Bashir fit in. A man with obligations to Hassani of a different sort. The perfect fit to start the chain unraveling. Send the banks’ stocks plummeting. Bring the short sellers out. Then the rogue traders. That was Hassani’s idea.

  And he had found the perfect piece of scum to make it happen.

  What a lark that that scum had ended up seducing his ex-wife.

  Simons knew, in the end, he was only speeding up the inevitable. Reynolds Reid would be poised to pick up the pieces. Some of his competitors would be blown away; that was bound to happen. Surely he would suffer losses. Personally. As well as the firm. In the short term.

  But in the end, he would be one of the winners. The innovative player. The one who alters circumstance to fit design. They would be made stronger by the gale.

  After breakfast he had a board meeting. At that meeting they would ratify the acquisition of Pacific-West, California’s largest bank, which had just been taken over by the Fed. They had picked up coveted pieces of Wertheimer. And ArcCo, the country’s largest mortgage company. They would announce it at the annual meeting this afternoon.

  What they would never announce was just how it all came to be.

  Simons’s car pulled up at the Fed on Liberty Street. His driver, Carl, leaned back around. “Shall I let you off here, Mr. Simons?”

  “Great, Carl. Stay close to the phone. I should be back down in ninety minutes. We have to be back up at the office by ten.”

  “You got it, sir.”

  Simons stepped out onto the street. There was only one thing that gave him pause.

  His friend.

  At his core, Hassani was still too much of an ideologue for him. He still carried this crazy belief in jihad. People who believed too strongly in anything always made Simons a little nervous. It made him smile that despite the lavish meals and the warm hugs of friendship, the Bahraini probably shared the same doubts about him as well.

  You never knew how that would fall.

  Heading through the gilded door, Peter Simons reminded himself he’d have to do something about that.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  Naomi was at Reagan International, waiting for the government jet to take her to New York. She had finally found a moment to look over what Ty had sent.

  She was on her way up to connect with Anthony Bruni, a senior agent in charge of the FBI Financial terrorism task force. Together, they would take Hassani into custody later that day.

  Keaton had given the word. It was delicate. There were many entanglements between the U.S. and Bahrain over matters of national security. The king might well be enraged. Hassani might even claim diplomatic immunity. As the jet rolled out, Naomi quickly scanned through Ty’s attachment. The e-mail it had arrived in said, Proof Hassani was there. And check out who else.

  Excitedly, Naomi clicked back and forth between the three hotel guest lists. Her blood whipped like a squall running through her veins. Thibault. Al-Bashir. Hassani. All highlighted in Ty’s document. She felt vindicated.

  They’d all been there.

  Just as she had laid it all out weeks before. Only this made the case against him a hundred times stronger. Not to mention her job security. Naomi took out her BlackBerry and was about to place a call back to Ty when the “who else” he was referring to hit her like a lacrosse stick to the face.

  Peter Simons.

  Peter Simons was head of one of the largest investment banks in the world.

  Naomi’s stomach almost climbed up her throat. Simons was there. She tried to wrap her brain around what this meant. It made it a whole new thing.

  It was no longer about jihad or some terrorist plot to cripple the West; this was a deep-rooted conspiracy, one that sprang up not from overseas but from within. Naomi tried to grasp it. How did anyone profit from this kind of thing? What did Reynolds Reid have to gain?

  A military officer came through a door. He nodded at Naomi. “Agent Blum, your aircraft’s on the tarmac now.”

  “I’ll be there in a second,” Naomi said, her body breaking out in an exhilarated sweat.

  Could there be others?

  Excitedly, Naomi scrolled up and down the three lists, shifting between hotels, the two nights.

  Other names began to pop out. Important names.

  Marshall Shipman. Shipman was chief of Orpheus, a large hedge fund. She felt her hands tremble. Stephen Cain. Cain ran a boutique private equity group. A mini-Blackstone. Vladimir Tursanov. A huge Russian financier.

  Hassani. Al-Bashir.

  The Gstaad Gang.

  She took out a pad and feverishly scratched the names on it as she read on. It left her feeling queasy and uncertain, like she was facing the unclimbable walls of some deep well she was at the bottom of.

  She realized she was opening a Pandora’s box of something that was way beyond her control. Like al-Bashir had said on the landing before he was driven away. This was much larger than simply terrorism.

  She punched in Ty’s number on her BlackBerry.

  “You see what I found?” he answered on the first ring. “Simons.”

  “Simons is only the tip of the iceberg, Ty. It was a plot—a plot to take down the markets. Not some terrorist thing. Well-orchestrated, by some of the most influential people in the investment world. From within.” Her mouth was dry. “I don’t know what we stumbled into.”

  “Is it possible this was just a part of other meetings that were scheduled around it? Legitimate meetings?” Hauck asked.

  “No. Nothing like this. Nothing this big. It would be public. I would know about it.” She had to hold her head to keep it from spinning.

  “Naomi, who have you shared this with?” Hauck pressed. His voice was laced with urgency. “Who approved the arrest? Who else knows?”

  “I went directly to Thomas Keaton. I…” As soon as his name fell off her lips her heart slowed to a stop. “Oh my God, Ty…”

  She hadn’t seen it before, but now she did. It was all there. Not behind some curtain. But in plain day. Hassani. Al-Bashir. Tursanov.

  Simons.

  She had to hold her stomach from lurching up inside her. Even a blind person could see. If they knew what they were looking for.

  “Naomi, what—”

  “Ty, I need you to meet me in New York. I’m about to board a government jet. We’re taking Hassani into custody. Today, after the Reynolds Reid meeting. But Hassani’s only the front man for this…” She put her fingers to the front of her head as if she was trying to keep it from exploding. “Oh, God, what have I done, Ty?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  Red O’Toole leaned against the car and stared out at the New York landmark.

  He had been told to come here and wait. That this was a final job for him. An important one. Then he could collect his last pay and disappear. He had sensed a tone of desperation in his contact’s voice. He knew that sign—like in the field when a position had become too hot to hold. Taking on fire. He’d been in several of those, and this one had that feel. You always had to have a way out. A line of retreat.

  He was mapping his now.

  He knew he’d done more bad stuff in his time than he cared to admit or remember. He figured one or two more added to the list wouldn’t mean shit when it came to an accounting of these things. It’s not like he’d set out to do them. If his dad, a devout man, was still alive, he’d have said, Johnny, don’t do anything you can’t repent for. That’s the one rule.

  O’Toole smiled and wondered if there was enough repentance left in the world for what he’d been forced to do.

  He knew Merced had been ID’d. His name was now all over the news. They knew his background. In Iraq. At Global Threat Management. Sonny had always been careless. And a little desperate. O’Toole realized it wouldn
’t be much of a stretch for them to find a connection back to him.

  After this last job, he needed to disappear.

  Behind his shades, he watched taxis and limos pull up. His cell phone rang. He knew who it was. He didn’t even have to look. He took it out of his pocket and flipped it open. “I’m here.”

  “Are we secure?” the caller asked, meaning the line. The caller never lost the chance to dot his “I’s” and cross his “T’s” he was not a little paranoid. Guess a man like him had to be. An important man.

  O’Toole assured him that it was.

  “Matters have gotten a little out of hand,” the man began. “I need you to settle a past-due account for me. We’ve set it all up. We’ve got a way in for you. But it’s tricky…”

  He took the target’s name and looked at the location. It was tricky. Getting in. Cameras all around. Lots of people. A public venue. Not to mention bodyguards.

  “Call it in to me when you’re done,” his contact said on the line.

  “When I’m done,” O’Toole mused, “I intend to be long gone.”

  “Before you go, there are one or two last details that need to be settled. One you already know. It’ll be almost a sort of reunion for you. The other, call it your retirement party.”

  He gave O’Toole the names. He’d seen them before. A fist of anger ground inside him. He lowered his shades.

  “That one I do for free.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

  Two large black Suburbans pulled up in front of the Waldorf on Fiftieth and Park Avenue. The doorman attempted to wave them along, but the driver in the lead vehicle rolled down his window, flashing his ID. The doorman’s expression changed and he motioned for them to double-park right in front.