The Warning Read online

  “That’s good, sport. Real good. The old man will be pleased.” The voice sounded like a robot’s voice in a human body. “Say, what happened to the two security guys? They never checked back in.”

  Thad heard the flatness of his own voice, knowing the dead sound matched Fleiss’s exactly. “I guess they must still be celebrating.”

  “Yeah, well, they deserve it. Say, you seen the market this morning?”

  “It’s rising,” Thad guessed. It had been setting new records all week.

  “Like a skyrocket. We’re going for the stratosphere, you mark my words.”

  “Time to grab hold and ride the bull.” Thad mouthed the words, but felt nothing.

  “You got it. Heard your new office is gonna be ready first thing Monday. You still moving into your brownstone this weekend?”

  “Tomorrow,” Thad confirmed, searching inside himself for a shred of pleasure over the coming step, the arrival of all his dreams. All he found was a gigantic void.

  “Good timing, kid. Nothing I like to see better in a trader.” Larry’s chuckle sounded machine generated. “Well, back to the trenches.”

  “Right.” Thad hung up the phone and returned to staring sightlessly at the flickering screens.

  He would leave early, as soon as he was certain the market was going to continue its ride into the wild blue yonder. Monday would come soon enough, then Tuesday, and with it Korda’s downfall. As soon as the world saw that Korda’s predictions were wrong, Thad’s failure to take the banker down would not matter.

  He struggled to draw the screen’s numbers into focus; he saw that the prices continued to rise. He sat back, deaf to the screaming pandemonium rising around him. His lie was indeed intact. The market was going to rise, and Buddy Korda was soon to be history.

  –|| FORTY–THREE ||–

  Three Days . . .

  The Saturday morning papers were vicious. The market had broken all records on Friday afternoon. The pundits who mentioned him at all made Buddy out to be a disgruntled former bank employee who had turned against everything and everyone.

  The weekend editorials read like obituaries. They were putting his time in the spotlight down as another of those unexplainable aberrations, symbolic of how people preferred to follow their hearts rather than their minds. With words as brooms, the papers and the radio and the television all pointed at the market’s continued rise, then swept Buddy Korda into the back room of oblivion.

  Buddy did not budge from his backyard. At his request, Molly had gone out and returned with as many papers as she could find. She delivered them with a set mouth. When Buddy asked her what the matter was, she simply said, “Stay where you are.”

  The day was warm and the sunlight strong in a cloudless sky. Buddy felt the light reach down and work to release the cold and the tension and the weariness trapped inside his bones. Through the open windows he heard the phone ringing continually. It awoke him from his brief naps, jerking him awake with electric jolts. He would reach out, as though still in some distant hotel room, still pressed for time, still driving himself and his friends to bone-weary exhaustion.

  And for what?

  He knew what the phone calls were saying. He knew people were calling, panic-stricken over having done as he had said. As he thought the message from heaven had said. But did he have it right? How could he be sure that he had listened to the right voice?

  He had no answers. His prayers felt like dust rising from the emptiness of a spent and overworked heart. God remained silent and distant. Buddy had nothing to offer those who called, or the few who stopped by. His little back garden was a refuge from the world.

  Saturday night they disconnected the phones. Sunday morning Buddy brought his coffee cup outside and sat looking out over an unseen lawn.

  He did not even turn around when he heard Molly’s swift steps swishing through the grass. “Aren’t you coming with me to church?”

  “You go ahead.” Buddy sipped at a cup long gone cold. “If Monday goes like Friday, I doubt I’ll ever move from this garden again.”

  The expected reprimand did not come. Instead, Molly’s hand reached over to stroke his cheek. “My poor man. You’ve given everything you have to give, and you’re afraid.”

  “Terrified.” Buddy swallowed hard, fighting down the terror and the despair. “What if I was wrong all along?”

  Molly squatted down beside his chair, gripped his arm with both hands, and said, “It’s not time to worry about that yet. One more day. Can you hold out that long?”

  He jerked a tight little nod. “Say a prayer for me.”

  “I always do, my husband.” She kissed his cheek and rose back up. “The children wanted to come over after church. I didn’t have the heart to say no again today.”

  “That’s all right.” Buddy turned now, looked up, and stiffened. For the first time he could ever remember, Molly wore her collar open. The scar was partially covered with makeup, but it was still there for the world to see. “Honey, what are you doing?”

  She gave the open collar a nervous pat, as though unsure herself if it was right. But her voice was quietly resolute. “I’ve hidden behind my walls for too long.”

  “Molly, I . . .” Buddy struggled to his feet. “Wait and let me get on a tie.”

  “No, you stay here and rest.” Molly guided him back down. “This is something I want to do on my own.”

  He must have fallen asleep, because the next thing Buddy knew, Alex was dragging one of the other lawn chairs over next to his own. “How you doing, little brother?”

  “All right.” But Alex deserved more than platitudes. “Tired. Scared.”

  “Sure you are.” Alex seated himself, reached into his Sunday blazer, and brought out a slip of paper. “Clarke asked me to give you this.”

  Buddy accepted the paper, unfolded it and read:

  The LORD lives! Praise be to my Rock!

  Exalted be God my Savior!

  You exalted me above my foes;

  from violent men you rescued me.

  Therefore I will praise you among the nations, O LORD;

  I will sing praises to your name.

  Psalm 18:46, 48-9

  Slowly, carefully, Buddy refolded the paper and inserted it into his shirt pocket. “I wish I was as sure as he sounds.”

  “I guess you’ll just have to let us be sure for you then, won’t you?”

  Buddy looked in helpless appeal at his brother. “Are you really so certain?”

  “More certain of that than I have been of anything in my life.” Alex’s eyes held a burning light, one that seemed to touch Buddy as not even the sun had been able to. “I have discovered a love that will never abandon me. And I know that you serve the Master. I know it.”

  Buddy took a breath, drawing in Alex’s confidence as well. “This is like a dream.”

  “Wait, it’s about to get a lot better.” He turned to where Agatha was hesitantly approaching and reached out a hand in greeting while rising to his feet. She walked over, allowed Alex to slip his hand into hers, and gave Buddy a shy smile. Alex turned back and beamed. “Little brother, we’ve got ourselves an announcement.”

  Buddy felt it coming before he knew what it was. He struggled to rise from the chair.

  Alex watched him with an ever-widening grin. Molly was hurrying over, wiping her hands on her apron. When they were all together, Alex announced, “Agatha is going to make an honest man of me.”

  “You’re already honest,” Agatha said, the edge totally gone from her voice. “But I have agreed to marry you.”

  Molly said for them both, “This is wonderful.”

  “I didn’t want to ask her,” Alex said. “Can’t even say how many days the Lord has left for me on this earth.”

  “None of us do,” Agatha countered. “But whatever days we have left, I want to spend them with Alex.” She looked at him with shining eyes and said with strength and quiet conviction, “Whatever comes.”

  “Praise God,” Buddy w
hispered. He reached out and gripped Alex’s hand with both of his. “Whatever tomorrow brings, I now count this whole trial a grand personal success.”

  –|| FORTY–FOUR ||–

  One Day . . .

  A rascal wind greeted Thad Dorsett as he stepped from his new house Monday morning. Grit lashed at his face and tried to sneak in around his sunglasses. The air was far too hot for October. His skin felt dry as parchment and his tongue overlarge for his mouth. He nodded a silent greeting to the limo driver and slipped gratefully into the back.

  Though not yet eight o’clock in the morning, the financial district throbbed with tension and activity. The communities of Riverside and Soho and rejuvenated Tribeca divulged their battalions of Wall Street warriors. They marched in their legions, racing toward the battle zone.

  Thad took the elevator to the top trading floor. He stopped in the doorway of his new office, surveying with deep satisfaction the wood-paneled expanse and navy blue carpet. Looking around the room, imagining where he would station his desk and the conference table, and seeing himself enthroned by the window went a long way to restoring him.

  The weekend had already done much to renew his confidence and enthusiasm. His new house was fantastic. The move had given his exploits a new sense of reality. Other than a series of jarring nightmares, moving into the top realm had been everything he had dreamed of.

  But the nightmares had been vile. Thad Dorsett had woken time after time, bathed in sweat, chased by fiends taller than the Wall Street skyscrapers. Last night he had decided to take no chances and had swallowed a double dose of sleeping pills. The nightmares had been reduced to vague phantoms that he had managed to push away. Most of the time.

  As the din from the trading floor began to build, Thad entered the main hall and slid into his seat. His last day among the peons. His furniture was scheduled for delivery by mid-morning. On the desk in front of him was the folder containing the outline for his proposed changes. A note from Larry clipped to the outside said that the old man had given his approval.

  Thad laced his fingers behind his head, leaned back, and returned greetings from people he scarcely saw. Hearing the envy and the awe in their voices helped make the day truly complete.

  At ten minutes to ten, Thad looked up as a sudden silence gripped the room. The floor manager had the ability to draw major news bulletins off the top board and flash them on every screen at every trading desk. If any news bulletin ever deserved being called major, this was it.

  Maurichi Securities was the largest financial institution in southern Japan. It controlled a full one-third of Honshu Island’s total wealth. It employed 39,000 people worldwide. It had over eight hundred offices, including trading operations in Sydney, Hong Kong, Calcutta, Paris, and New York.

  Thad sat joined with all the other traders in stunned silence and watched the words race remorselessly across his central trading screen. The chairman of Maurichi Securities had called a press conference and announced that undisclosed positions on the international derivatives market had cost the bank nine billion dollars. The bank’s cash reserves were depleted. The bank had no choice but to close its doors.

  The moment seemed to stretch into eternity, frozen by a universal desire to ignore the bulletin, to refuse to accept what it meant. Then Larry Fleiss’s voice crackled through the intercom, shrieking at a level Thad had never heard before.

  “Sell yen! ”

  The trading floor erupted. Thad was grabbing phones and punching buttons and screaming with the others, dumping every yen-based position the bank held. Or trying to. Everywhere around the world, traders were scrambling to do the same. Thad’s screens began flashing new rates so fast Thad could not find a strike price.

  Fleiss’s voice sounded overhead once more, instantly freezing the clamor. “Okay, listen up. We’re getting a feed on the stocks and bonds held by Maurichi. They’re coming up on your screen now. Dump them fast. Take any price.”

  Like most Japanese banks and security firms, Maurichi had concentrated its U.S. holdings within the range of companies known as blue chips. These were the largest and most stable earners within the American economy. Yet earnings and price-share ratios and future profitability meant nothing at this point. Maurichi would be forced to dump all its assets in order to meet as many of its outstanding positions as possible. Prices were going to hit the basement and keep falling. It was vital they get out, and get out fast.

  By two o’clock in the afternoon the Dow had dropped 850 points from its Friday close. A thirty-minute breathing space had been imposed when the market was down 500 just before noon, but the instant it reopened the frantic selling resumed. By mid-afternoon the traders were hoarse, exhausted, and sweat-stained. Thad had taken to drinking tea laced with bourbon and honey to hold on to what voice he had left.

  Ninety minutes before closing, the next nail was set into the coffin. The chief official of the Japanese National Bank issued a formal statement declaring his “grave concern” over the state of the U.S. market. Ten short words, but enough to transform the traders’ panic into sheer unbridled terror. Ashtrays and coffee cups went flying in every trading room around the world as dealers sought frantically to unload anything and everything tied to the dollar.

  The U.S. treasury secretary lashed back thirty minutes later in a hastily declared press conference, accusing the Japanese bank official of “shock tactics in idiotic revenge for his own financial institution’s precarious position,” and declared that the weight of the entire U.S. government would go into supporting the dollar and the American financial markets.

  The markets reacted with a violent about-face. The dollar leaped from the basement to the attic, rising seventeen yen in seven minutes. The dollar climbed 20 percent against its low of the day, just 5 percent down from Friday’s high. But the stock market continued to drop. There was nothing that hit share prices like uncertainty.

  When the closing bell sounded, traders stumbled about like shell-shocked victims of a bombing attack. Thad staggered to the back pantry for another cup of something he would not taste. His feet scuffled through paper and tear sheets three inches thick. Two traders he knew vaguely were sprawled on the floor, phones dangling by their sides. As he picked his way over their limbs, Thad happened to catch sight of a Reuters news flash streaking overhead. The Dow’s final position was down one thousand, four hundred seventy-five points. A one-day decline of 19 percent.

  –|| FORTY–FIVE ||–

  The press began arriving about three o’clock that Monday afternoon. The first few teams had the temerity to ring their doorbell. Molly appeared on Buddy’s behalf, quietly refused their requests for interviews, but said he would make a statement later.

  That was enough to galvanize the gathering. By five the street was blocked solid from end to end with television vans. The police had been called in, the front lawn cordoned off, and a semblance of order restored. Molly had given permission for the media to position microphones by the front steps, but otherwise the throng was kept well back.

  Still the crowd grew. People who drove found themselves parking as far as three blocks away. There was no need to ask directions, not even for those arriving from out of town. The steady stream of people all took the same route.

  Buddy appeared at six. There was a stir of recognition, and instantly the bank of television lights switched on. Buddy stood on his top step, endured the flashes from the photographers, and simply waited through the screaming flood of questions.

  He spent the time looking out beyond the horde of press to where the gathering continued to grow. He nodded to a few familiar faces. They, in turn, were silent, somber—the exact opposite of the journalists and their shouted, aggressive questions. He stood there and waited, content to look out.

  Once the journalists finally accepted that he was not going to respond, the tumult gradually died away. When all was quiet, Buddy stepped up to the huge bunch of taped-together microphones. “I have an announcement to make,” Buddy said. “
I will not answer any questions, because I do not want anything to take away from the critical nature of this message.”

  A reporter shouted, “Will the market continue to fall?”

  “I will not answer questions,” Buddy repeated, and waited until he was sure the silence would hold.

  Then he looked out to the cameras, bunched on ladderlike tripods behind the reporters. He focused all the power he could muster and said simply, “This message is intended for all the friends and brothers and sisters out there who have heeded the directive I was told to bring.

  “This message is, SELL.”

  Buddy tried to look through the camera, wanting to communicate directly with the people, make them understand how vital this was. “Sell your put options now. Sell first thing tomorrow morning. There is no telling how long the market will hold together. Do not allow greed to hold you in place. Sell it all.

  “Then convert everything you have, everything you can transfer, everything you can withdraw, everything into cash. Not cash in a bank. Cash in your hand. Gold would be good. If not gold, then dollars. But cash.”

  He waited through a long, silent moment, and then said again, “Sell now. That is all I have to say.”

  A voice from far back in the throng shouted, “Thank you, brother!”

  “Thank God,” Buddy replied, turning away. “Good night.”

  –|| FORTY–SIX ||–

  At Buddy’s request, Alex called and simply informed the national networks that Buddy would respond via a feed set up at the Aiden television station, and would be interviewed by Lonnie Stone alone. They had no choice but to agree. By this point, Buddy Korda and his on-target predictions were making headlines right around the globe.

  When it came time that evening to leave for the local station, they had to call in the police once more. A phalanx of bodies was necessary to clear a way to the cruiser assigned to take them downtown.