Crash Page 22

  If Burnham Pike was afraid of a computer virus it would explain why Julia had been a part of their inner circle, which almost never included a woman. And Amsterdam, if that’s what they’d said, was a well-known home base for world-class hackers.

  “You sure they used the word Amsterdam?”

  “Pretty sure,” Denise said. “But the funny thing was, they seemed happy about it—about the virus.”

  “Happy?”

  “Yeah, and they even had a name for it. Called it Abacus.”

  After Denise hung up, Betty sat back and tried to make some sense of what she’d just been told. Reid was up to something; she’d known that when she’d learned he’d been taking BP to all cash.

  And she didn’t trust the bastard any farther than she could throw the building she was in. But a virus named Abacus from Amsterdam? And Julia’s meeting her in the park, and later Cassy’s frantic phone call that she was coming to the exchange with something, and then her disappearance.

  None of it was adding up, on top of which was the nosedive the market had been taking since midmorning.

  “I’ll be downstairs,” she told her secretary as she emerged from her office and headed to the elevator.

  80

  The floor was in near-total meltdown. Traders were shouting back and forth even though almost all of their trades were done on tablets. Television monitors were showing continuing stories on the Chinese financial mess, as well as the failure of the Treasury auction.

  For several seconds she merely stood on the outskirts, trying to take it all in. It seemed like the panic of ’08 all over again. She felt in her gut that somehow this was Reid’s doing, and yet intellectually she knew that wasn’t possible. This was simply a meltdown, not the result of some virus in BP’s system.

  She spotted Seymour Schneider near his post, where he was talking to someone on his cell phone—almost certainly someone at BP. She walked over, and when he looked up and saw her, he said something else and broke the connection.

  “We’re just about at twenty percent,” he said.

  He almost looked frightened, and it was something Betty had never seen before. “I know,” she said, and it sounded stupid even to her own ears. “But I have a question.”

  “Not now.”

  A computer-generated voice came over the public-address system: “Trading is suspended for the day.”

  Monitors showed that Standard & Poor’s had just crossed the 20 percent threshold, and a large moan went up from the floor.

  “A train wreck,” Seymour muttered. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.

  A Fox News reporter and cameraman started over, but Betty held up a hand for them to give her a minute, and they pulled up short.

  “I’ll make this quick,” she told Seymour. “Has Reid, or anyone else from BP, mentioned something called ‘abacus’?”

  “Julia said something about it when they were on the floor this morning. Something to do with the Rockingham IPO, but it didn’t sound good to me. Anyway, Reid seemed pissed off, and he told her to shut the fuck up.”

  “And?”

  “When I got a chance, I asked him what ‘abacus’ was, and he said he wasn’t sure. He thought it might have been a joke about how Keith Rockingham was so stupid he couldn’t count without using an abacus. The ancient Chinese beads-on-strings computing machine.”

  “Did he seem on the level to you?” Betty pressed.

  Seymour’s eyes narrowed. “If this is about your feud with him, I’m staying out of it.”

  “Okay,” Betty said. “I was just curious, is all.”

  Seymour glanced up at the monitors. “I knew we were in for a ride, what with China’s debt and ours,” he said. “I hate to tell people I told you so, but I told you so.”

  He moved off, and the Fox reporter and cameraman came over. “What happens next, Ms. Ladd?”

  “I wish I knew,” Betty said, and before he could ask a follow-up, her cell phone rang. It was her secretary.

  “Keith Rockingham’s daughter is here.”

  “What does she want?”

  “She says she has a secret recording of Reid Treadwell that you need to hear.”

  “I’m on my way,” Betty said, trying to keep the grin off her face.

  81

  Heather was waiting in Betty’s walnut-paneled reception room, and she jumped up when Betty walked in.

  They shook hands. “I’m sorry that your IPO had to happen on a bad day,” Betty said. “But the market always recovers. Always.”

  “Thanks for seeing me without an appointment,” Heather said.

  Betty thought that the woman looked a like a whore, but she smiled. “No calls,” she told her secretary, and ushered Heather inside.

  When they were settled across from each other on matching nailhead chesterfield sofas, Betty asked if she would like to have a coffee or perhaps a glass of wine.

  “Maybe later, but right now I want you to listen to something. And then I have a text you need to see.”

  “Very well.”

  “Some of it is … intimate.”

  “I don’t embarrass easily,” Betty said.

  Heather played the recording of her and Reid making love—the encounter had almost certainly taken place at Reid’s pied-à-terre on Rector Street—and then the calls he’d made to Dammerman and Julia. “Sorry about the noise,” she said, but it was obvious she wasn’t sorry at all.

  Betty waved it off. So far nothing she’d heard was new or even interesting.

  Heather handed her phone over. “This is the text about someone named Levin being gone and the kid being missing.”

  Betty quickly read through the text. She had no idea what it meant, except that Cassy was apparently missing, and she felt a chill. She listened to the recording again, of Reid’s abusive language with Julia, and his mention of the “greatest financial coup in history,” as well as her own conversation with him.

  When she looked up, Heather was watching her, an angry expression on her face.

  “He’s got this big deal, and he won’t let me in. And I sure as hell don’t buy his bullshit about taking his bank to all cash. And did you hear how he threatened me and Julia O’Connell?”

  “He has a history of doing just that,” Betty said, but she couldn’t get her mind away from Reid talking about a worm in their system, and something about a flash drive that Cassy was carrying, and now she was gone, which was the most ominous thing.

  “This could be a blessing in disguise,” Heather said. “I think whatever the bastard is up to is probably crooked, which is why I came to see you. Maybe we can help each other nail him. Send him to jail.”

  Betty almost smiled, except she was worried about Cassy, who had probably been so frightened she had gone into hiding somewhere. “I think you might be right about Reid trying to pull off some sort of a fast deal. And I think that we might be able to help each other, if you’re willing to go toe-to-toe with him.”

  “You’re damn right. I’m willing to do anything to stick it to him after he treated me like I was some common whore.”

  Betty held up the phone. “There’s nothing solid here that would hold up in court, so what we need to do is rattle his chain, get him to lose his composure so he’ll make a mistake.”

  Heather was doubtful. “I don’t know if something like that would work. He’s smooth.”

  “But besides money, his top priorities are his reputation and his social standing.”

  “That sounds like him.”

  “How would you like to go to a party tonight at the Met?”

  “I really didn’t bring anything formal to wear.”

  “Don’t worry, you look fine as you are right now. Where are you staying?”

  “The Grand Hyatt on Forty-second.”

  “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  “Is Reid going to be there?”

  “Yes, and so will everyone in the city who counts,” Betty said. “Including his wife.”

 
82

  Miller and Nichols had a very late lunch at the Hay-Adams because Stephanie Holland was on the floor riding herd on what an aide described as a crucial bill that needed her full support. At the table, they had looked over Nast’s absurd plan, and it was even worse than they thought it probably would be.

  They didn’t make it back to her suite of offices in the Longworth House Office Building on South Capitol Street until well after three, and neither of them was happy about the delay. But they were coming with hats in hand, and it was never wise to anger the woman who was second in line to succeed the president behind the VP.

  Nevertheless it was galling, especially to Nichols, who as Treasury secretary was fifth in line to the presidency. But it was all about pecking order, and Holland was letting them know just that.

  The same aide came out to the anteroom. “Gentlemen, the Speaker will see you now,” he said and turned on his heel and walked across the corridor, not bothering to make sure they were following until he was at the open door and stepped aside.

  Holland was at her desk, her eyes glued to her computer screen. Without looking up, she waved them to sit down in front of the fireplace, which during the summer was always filled with bouquets of flowers.

  “Be just a minute,” she said.

  Miller and Nichols exchanged a glance, but took seats across a low coffee table from a beautiful Eames chair known as the Speaker’s Throne.

  After a full two minutes, she looked up, smiling. “That’s done,” she said, and she got to her feet and came over to them.

  She was a stylish woman in her mid-fifties, slender, with soft brown hair parted down the middle—the same as her politics, she liked to say. She almost always dressed in a white silk blouse and plain skirt, medium heels, and a simple strand of pearls that accented her lovely neck.

  They stood up as she came over, offering her hand first to Nichols. “Bob, how lovely it is to see you again.”

  “And you, Stephanie,” he said, taking her delicate hand in both of his for a longish beat.

  She turned to Miller. “Mr. Chairman,” she said, and shook his hand for just a moment. “Sorry I had to keep you waiting, but it was the new fisheries bill, which needed a steady hand. It’s been a pet project of mine.”

  “We understand,” Nichols said.

  “Please have a seat, and tell me what I can do for you this afternoon.”

  “We talked last week at the Kennedy Center party, and I touched on the problem we’re having with debt,” Nichols said. “Especially ours and China’s.”

  “You bored me to tears,” she said, fluttering her fingers, which she did when she was dismissing something she thought irrelevant. “And before you start again, I know all about Spencer’s master plan to save our republic as we teeter on the brink of economic disaster.”

  Miller gave an involuntary grunt. How she had been able to get her hands on Nast’s crazy plan was beyond him. Except that, although she wasn’t an intellectual giant, she did have daunting contacts.

  “Do you have a comment, Mr. Chairman?” she said, smiling, something she always did when she was being sarcastic.

  “This is not a frivolous issue, Madam Speaker,“Miller said. “At this very moment, China’s central bank is about to let its commercial banking system go under, which threatens to bring on worldwide chaos. In fact, we got off the phone with Governor Liu, who’s head of the People’s Bank of—”

  “I know who he is,” Holland interrupted. “In fact, we played tennis once at Merion Cricket Club outside of Philadelphia.”

  Miller was beyond frustration, but she held up a hand for him to allow her to continue.

  “I’m not being frivolous,” she said. “I realize that we couldn’t sell all our Treasury bonds at today’s auction, and that the stock market is in a free fall because of it. But I have to wonder.”

  “Wonder what?” Nichols asked.

  “Wonder if it’s as bad as you say it is. Nast wants to take us to DEFCON Five and have you print unlimited amounts of money to make up for the T-bond debacle. The fool wants to give just about every other American twenty grand in cash—and you have to admit that’s a slick move. Meanwhile I’m told that the two of you want to go to DEFCON Three by raising the rates on Treasurys until someone buys them at a hell of a cost to us, and then ask Congress to hand out maybe a trillion dollars like we did in ’08 to save Wall Street.”

  “Spence’s proposal would ruin our fiscal standing,” Miller said.

  “Well then, what do you want from me?”

  “Go public with your opposition,” Nichols said.

  “To your idea or Spence’s?” She smiled. “I’ll think about it.”

  Miller shook his head in disbelief. “With all due respect, Madam Speaker, we need to act right now.”

  Nichols broke in. “If and when the PBOC refuses to help the commercial banks—which is in actuality a scheme to oust Hua as head of the government—it will end up being ’08 or something even worse.”

  “Are the both of you so sure that you’ve read the China situation accurately?”

  “Yes, we have,” Miller said. “As head of the PBOC, Liu is in a strong enough position to pull it off. He’ll take charge in Beijing, and Hua will be exiled, jailed, or executed.”

  “An interesting assessment,” Holland said. “But wrong.” She let it hang for a moment. “Liu, like you, Mr. Chairman, prides himself on being an economist, not a politician. While Hua, though low-key, is a superb politician. Between him and Liu there is no contest. From what you told me, I think you misheard Liu on the phone today and came to the conclusion that he was talking about nuclear war.”

  “That’s not true,” Nichols said.

  “When it comes to politics, both of you are out of your depth,” Holland said. “If you want my advice, gentlemen, leave politics to the politicians.”

  “China or not, Madam Speaker, we’re in trouble,” Nichols said. “Our debt load is killing us, and something will have to give if we can’t raise money in the bond market to spend our way out of it.”

  “That makes me wonder if this might be some clever ploy by Spencer’s old boss, with Nast himself right in the middle of it.”

  “Ploy?” Miller asked, scarcely able to believe what he was hearing.

  “By Reid Treadwell,” she said. “I know the man well. Very well.”

  “You went to college together,” Nichols said.

  “Yes. And we were an item for a bit, if you can believe it. I got to know him before he became the big man on campus, but even then he was a scheming son of a bitch.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” Nichols asked. “What’s your point?”

  “No matter what happens in the next few days, I want you to take a very hard look at Reid and Burnham Pike and Spence’s current relationship with the firm. Nast may be the president’s man, but he’s still Reid Treadwell’s humble servant.”

  “I’m still not following you.”

  “I got a call from Betty Ladd today. She and I are what you might call members of a women’s club—women who Reid has used and discarded. She said that from her perspective as president of the NYSE she’s been conducting an informal inquiry into his recent business practices. He’s taken his firm to an all-cash position, and she thinks that could be a prelude to some sort of an under-the-table maneuver.”

  “The man has a lot of friends here in Washington, including Farmer himself,” Nichols said.

  “Not a lot of people want to cross him,” Miller added, realizing his mistake the moment the words came out of his mouth.

  “Including you, Mr. Chairman?” Holland asked. “The Federal Reserve regulates the major banks, including Burnham Pike. Or does Reid have some sort of a hold on you?”

  “Certainly not,” Miller said. “But he is one of Farmer’s major supporters.”

  “What about the chair that BP endowed when you were in academia? That was a million a year. And you did a stint as a consultant for the firm, which paid well, I�
��m told. Maybe after the Fed you might want to return.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re getting at, Madam Speaker. Treadwell may own Spencer, but the Federal Reserve—and that’s me—is independent from everyone, bankers and politicians.”

  “I’m not insinuating anything here. All I’m saying is that Reid Treadwell is a slippery customer whose major passion in life is Reid Treadwell, because at heart he’s just a frightened little boy from a small town in Ohio.”

  “He doesn’t come across that way,” Miller said.

  “In school he was class president and had a Rhodes scholarship lined up when one of his professors accused him of cheating on a test. He came to me in tears saying that his life was over. He would be a laughingstock, and even his summer internships at Burnham Pike would disappear.”

  “What happened?”

  “He called me that night and said he was going to end his problems once and for all. No one would be able to laugh at him ever again. I ran over to his dorm and found him sitting on the edge of his bed with a gun against his temple, his finger on the trigger.”

  “Jesus,” Miller said. “That’s not the Treadwell I know.”

  “Anyway, I managed to talk him down, and it was just a few days later that he dumped me,” Holland said.

  “So, what was the upshot?”

  “Before we parted company, I told him that with his golden tongue, he could probably talk the professor into withdrawing the charges. But it didn’t matter because he said that he had it all worked out.”

  “And?”

  “I told him what he was going to do was unethical at the very least, but he wouldn’t listen. Turns out he had a friend at Burnham Pike who told him that the professor had inherited a small sum of money and had opened an account there. Between the two of them, they doctored some trading records and reported the professor for insider trading.”