The Warning Read online

  Thad allowed himself the first full breath of the morning and let his mind roam. Trading was the empire of the nineties. The futures market was transforming itself so rapidly that regulations and laws could not hope to keep up. Such trading was totally invisible to the common people, yet it was beginning to control their destinies like an economic puppet master. This was where Thad wanted to be, where he belonged, running a massive empire built on trading.

  Financial trading knew neither borders nor loyalties. Patriotism was an outdated joke, as practical to a trader as a steam locomotive. Money circled the globe in an electronic sea, with tides and currents determined by the highest rate of return.

  Windows of opportunity opened for seconds only. New information surged like geysers. Traders discounted companies before factories were built. They took their profits before the products hit market shelves.

  They bundled Iowa mortgages and sold them to buyers in Paris or Calcutta or Baghdad. Computers were trained to fire off contracts as soon as enemy tactics were spotted. Millions were lost or gained in the blink of an eye. Cash was never touched. Zeros proliferated on daily balance sheets like goose eggs.

  Larry shifted in his chair. “And the next alternative?”

  “Door number two.” The file remained unopened in Thad’s lap. He had no need to review his notes. “We set a rumor in motion. You’ve got contacts at the Journal and other places.”

  Larry shrugged casual agreement. “So?”

  “So at the next auction of U.S. treasury bonds, your connections report that the yen is so low and the Japanese banks are in such bad shape, they’re not going to buy. Have the rumor start in London. Feed it through viable trading operations to your Journal friend so he’s covered.”

  Thad waited. If his first suggestion was illegal, the second was totally outrageous. Being caught would stain the reputation of the entire financial community. Not to mention that it would result in felony charges and sky-high fines for all involved.

  But all Fleiss said was, “How do we cover ourselves?”

  Thad felt the band of tension around his chest tighten another notch. So close. “Both bond and stock markets will react, we go short in both. A one-time rake-off. Everybody knows the Japanese hold to the blue chips; we take short positions through other traders in different countries on the major utilities and federal treasury notes.”

  Again he waited while Larry mulled it over. Thad wondered if this was just an exercise or the real thing. What kind of pressure would push a major Street player to take such a risk? Thad could not imagine it, which was why he figured the exercise had primarily been to show one thing: that he was willing to go all the way and do whatever it took to succeed on the Street.

  Another slow blink, a single nod. Then, “And the third?”

  “The third.” His breath quickened. “The third needs a little more work, so I can’t talk about it yet. But it’s good. And big. Bigger than the other two combined. And what’s more, it’s totally legit.”

  And more than that, it was too good to give up without being able to implement it himself. Thad had decided that in the sleepless hours of the previous night. He would give it up, but only in exchange for the gold ring. He readied himself for a battle over this and was determined not to give in.

  But Larry did not object. “Okay. Good work.” Larry gave another nod, then slid a folded newspaper across his desk. “Now take a look at this.”

  Thad picked up the paper and saw it was the business section of a Philadelphia paper. Then his eye spotted a name in the lead article, and he sank into the seat. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Had it couriered up this morning by one of the branch managers. Seems your man Korda’s got some of our local people running scared.”

  “Don’t lay the goofball on me,” Thad objected, reading swiftly. “Korda is not my anything.”

  The headline read, “Now Get Ready For A Real Bear.” The lead paragraph began, “For months the market has been celebrating the longest running upturn in history and thumbing its nose at all those who predicted a downward correction of 10 percent or more. But Valenti banking official and economic pundit Buddy Korda insists otherwise. After addressing close to a thousand like-minded people at a standing-room only affair, Mr. Korda stated in an interview with this paper that . . .”

  Thad slammed the paper back onto the desk. “They’re calling him a pundit!”

  “Keep it. Having that thing around gives me bile.”

  “Don’t tell me you actually think there’s something to what this wacko is saying.”

  Fleiss slid his cup around in a slow circle on the immaculate desktop. “You’re a good trader, Dorsett. But you haven’t been around the market as long as I have. The Street is as nervous as I’ve ever seen it. They’re a wolf pack and have a pack mentality. The secret of my success has been in seeing which way the pack is going to move and beating them to the punch. I’m a loner, and loners can always get the jump on a group, so long as they’re not ruled by fear.”

  He thumbed the switch that raised his coffeepot into view. Refilling his cup, Fleiss went on, “Right now the pack is waiting for a leader to emerge and tell them which way to run. At a more stable time, this Korda would be laughed off the stage. But at this point in time, he’s a threat.”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing you say this.”

  “Believe it,” Fleiss said. The words held a bitter edge. “If Korda can sway the investment habits of a thousand small investors, he can do it with ten thousand. If he does it with ten, it might become a hundred. And if a hundred thousand smalltime investors react to his scaremongering tactics, there’s a good chance Korda’s prophecies will become self-fulfilling.”

  Thad felt Fleiss’s words push him back into his seat. “You really think it could spread like that?”

  “It’s already started. The reason the Philadelphia branch manager contacted us is that they’ve been sitting there all morning, watching people pull their money out of savings and bank-controlled fund accounts. Customers who have been with the bank for years are closing everything down. Mutual funds, IRAs, savings, college trust funds, the lot. From what they’ve heard, it’s happening at banks all over town. According to what they’ve been told, the money is being channeled into put options.”

  Thad worked it out and said slowly, “They’re betting the market is going to decline.”

  “All because of something this Korda’s been telling them in his talks.”

  “He can’t be having this kind of effect,” Thad exclaimed. “You don’t know this guy. He hardly knows how to string a sentence together. I worked with him for the six longest months of my life and never heard him raise his voice. Not once.”

  “Well, he’s found his voice now.” Fleiss motioned with his cup. “I want you to go out there and stop him.”

  “What, me?”

  “That’s right. Do whatever it takes. Find out where he is and figure out something to stop him in his tracks. The Philadelphia branch has ordered one of their guys to follow Korda and find out where he’s going to be on Monday and pass the information back to us here. I’ve spoken with security. They’ve assigned a couple of guys to go along and do whatever you tell them to do. They’re downstairs waiting for you.”

  Thad stopped his objection before it surfaced. Deep within the folds of Fleiss’s doughlike face, he could see the eyes watching, measuring, waiting. Another test, this one unspoken. If he refused, he would also be turning down the job. This was what Larry wanted, he knew, someone willing to do whatever it took.

  Thad forced himself to shape the words, “You’ve got it.”

  Fleiss smiled for the first time Thad had ever seen. “Take a long weekend; enjoy your first taste of New York. Then hive off to wherever they’re going to be on Monday. Work fast and stop this guy in his tracks, before this thing goes any further.” A second smile flitted in and out of view. “In the meantime, I’ll have the office next to mine fitted out for when you get back.”
>
  –|| TWENT Y–NINE ||–

  Twenty-Three Days . . .

  Sunday morning found Buddy and Molly in the town of Altoona, Pennsylvania, just north of the Laural Hills. The evening was booked with another talk, the morning was free for worship. Buddy was silent as he, Clarke, and Molly drove to the red-brick downtown church. There he endured the stares and the handshakes and the overloud welcome. He entered the church and slipped into the pew, immensely glad to be able to sit and relax and listen.

  His first prayer was for himself, for strength and patience and the ability to see it all to the end. Buddy stayed there through the first song as all the others around him rose to their feet. He prayed to accept his Father’s call fully. To stop his objections and his foot-dragging, and to strive to overcome his own limitations.

  As he was about to raise his head again, Buddy found himself thinking of Alex. His brother felt so close it was as though he had suddenly appeared to sit there beside Buddy. A burning sensation came to his heart and his eyes. Buddy experienced a gradual joining with his brother. In that moment all the years of distress and all the problems he had endured because of Alex simply disappeared. The exasperation and the worry and the sorrow were no longer a part of him. In their place was only love.

  Buddy leaned over so far his forehead touched his hands, which were clasped together on his knees. He felt Molly’s soft touch on his back—comforting and joining with him, not needing to know what he was praying for, simply wanting to join with him.

  He prayed for Alex. He prayed for a healing. He prayed that the healing would start in his brother’s spirit and expand to include every part of his being. He prayed that Alex would rise and accept the greatness he had been born with, that he would rise and accept his Lord.

  After the service Buddy felt himself much more calm about the attention directed toward him. His heart remained full, his peace intact.

  They left the church and drove back toward the hotel. As they were turning into the parking lot, a pinging sounded from within the glove box. Buddy opened the lid and extracted the cellular phone. “Hello?”

  “I wanted you to be the first to know,” Alex said in greeting. His voice sounded even more hoarse than usual, as though roughened by an emotion he could barely contain. “I went to church with Agatha again this morning.”

  Buddy knew what was coming even before his mind had fully formed the thought. He felt his entire body squeezing tight, as though the sudden flood of joy was so great that if he did not clench up tight, he would explode. He shut his eyes and turned to the window. He simply said, “Yes.”

  “I took the walk, little brother. I did it.”

  His body was trembling so hard he could scarcely whisper the words, “Oh, Alex.”

  “I walked up and I asked the Lord Jesus to come into my life,” Alex said, whispering himself now, forcing the words out around the emotion that choked him. “I confessed my sins, and I prayed for forgiveness, and I said that if it was His will, I wanted to spend the rest of my life being His man.”

  Whey they came back from lunch, Buddy sat and pretended to read while Molly stretched out on the bed. He spent more time looking at his wife than he did his book. The travel had not just tired Molly, it had worn her down. For the first time since she had been sick with bronchitis two years earlier, Molly looked her age. She was drawn and thinner looking than before all this had begun. Yet there was an ethereal quality to her quietness, as though this, too, had been distilled by the road. She was suffused with a light Buddy felt with his heart, rather than saw with his eyes.

  A half hour later she rolled over and sat up. “I want to go back and help out Trish. She’s had this strep infection for nine days now. Her fever this morning was a hundred and four. Jennifer has a bad throat and a fever as well, and it looks like Veronica might be coming down with it too. Jack sounded exhausted when I spoke with him before church.”

  Buddy felt as though he had been waiting to hear her say the words. “I think that’s a good idea, hon.”

  “I’m sorry to be leaving you, but not sorry to be going,” Molly told him. “I need to see the leaves change color. Not these leaves. My leaves. I want to watch the elm in my backyard get ready for winter.”

  Buddy found himself worried that when she left, she would take the light with her. “I’ll miss you.”

  Molly smiled only with her eyes, but it was enough. She seemed translucent, as though held to earth only by bonds of love. “I’ll be talking to you every day.”

  “You’d better. I need to keep getting your Bible passages. They really help me, hon.”

  “I’m glad.” She reached into her purse and came up with one of her little cards. “This is the one for your work tonight.”

  He accepted it and read: Who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Esther 4:14 Buddy looked up. “This is beautiful. And scary.”

  Molly met his gaze with a calm brilliance, and quietly declared, “You are growing into a prophet.”

  The simple statement made him shiver. “I’m not so sure—”

  She stopped him with a simple raising of her hand. Buddy halted, took a breath, and nodded acceptance. Molly went on. “Almost despite yourself, you are growing. I see it happening. Don’t stand in the Lord’s way, honey.”

  He did not need to ask what she meant. “It’s frightening. And it hurts.”

  “The prophets of old were not happy men. They were forced to carry the weight of an entire nation.” Her gaze was as quietly commanding as her voice. “But if you are truly chosen, as I believe you are, then the Lord must feel you are strong enough to bear up under the burden.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “No, my darling.” Molly reached over and took his hand. “You must do.”

  –|| THIRTY ||–

  Twenty-Two Days . . .

  The security guys were about what Thad would have expected, silent and hulking and at first a little frightening. They wore matching blue blazers and crew cuts and had muscles so pumped up their shoulders remained bunched in permanent shrugs. He had asked their names and got mumbled replies he only half heard and instantly forgot. By the second hour of the early Monday drive, however, he had mentally designated them as Frick and Frack, his two silent shadows. They spoke a grand total of six words the entire trip down to Pittsburgh.

  The bank’s spy had done his job well. He was a nervous bespectacled kid by the name of Wesley Hadden, nine months out of MBA school and desperately eager to please. When Thad and the guards pulled in front of the Pittsburgh hotel, Hadden handed him a file containing Buddy Korda’s movements over the next three days.

  Thad endured the kid’s business-school handshake and hearty voice, congratulated him on a job well done, and sent him on his way with a sigh of relief. He returned to where the security pair hulked, and laid out the plans he had formulated on the drive down. They accepted their marching orders with stony silence.

  Thad went up to his room—the lousy hotel had only one suite, and it was being renovated. No matter. He would only be there one night. Then it would be back to the Big Apple and his office next to Fleiss. Vice president and number two trader in the Valenti banking empire. It had a nice ring. He stretched out on the bed, pleased with himself and excited about his plans.

  It was a risk to stay in the same hotel as Korda, but Thad was not planning to move very far until this was over and done. Or lift a finger to do anything but give orders, for that matter. Having muscle at his beck and call wasn’t all that bad a thing, when push came to shove. He laced his fingers behind his head and ran through his preparations one more time. If he had to be Fleiss’s troubleshooter, this was the way to do it—separated from both the risk and the public eye, but close enough to revel in the action.

  The ache from Molly’s absence kept Buddy company through the Monday afternoon drive. Clarke showed his usual understanding and drove in silence. The sun was a ruddy globe crisscrossed by power lines and road signs by the time they p
ulled into the Pittsburgh hotel parking lot. Buddy pulled his cases from the trunk and followed Clarke through the lobby and over to the reception desk, amazed that he had ever become so accustomed to the routine of checking in.

  “Mr. Korda?”

  Buddy looked up from signing his registration form. “That’s me.”

  “Okay, you’re in room two-fourteen.” But before the clerk handed over the key card, he swiveled the form around so he could examine the signature for himself. He gave Buddy a sidelong glance, then passed over the plastic key card and said again, “Room two-fourteen.”

  “Thank you.” Buddy walked with Clarke toward the elevator and said quietly, “What was that all about?”

  “Word about you must be filtering beyond the churches.” Clarke punched the button, entered the elevator, and glanced at his watch. “If we want to grab a bite before we head over, we’ll need to meet in about forty-five minutes.”

  “Fine.” Buddy walked down the hall, entered his room, dropped his bags, and went straight to the window. He swept back the curtains and flipped the window catch. He pulled, but could not get the window to open. Buddy was a fanatic for fresh air, especially in a strange room that smelled vaguely of disinfectant. He hit the catch a couple of times, but the window was jammed tight. He made a mental note to speak to the front desk about it, then reached for his cell phone and punched the number for Alex’s office.